Rebekkah Hart has been named the incoming 2026 Schallek Fellow. During the tenure of her fellowship, she will be working on Chapter 2 of her dissertation entitled “The Kiss of Peace: Materialities and Afterlives of Liturgical Paxes, or ‘Kissing Images,’ in Late Medieval England (c. 1250-1550).” While the “Kiss of Peace” was a common liturgical ritual in the Christian mass from at least the second century, this ritual became materially embodied around 1250 in the form of the “pax” object, first recorded in England. A pax (Latin for “peace”) is a small object that generally features a Christological, Marian, or hagiographic image, which the celebrant used to present to another person to kiss. Every church had at least one pax, as they were a central component of the mass. Thus, they survive today in significant numbers across museums and collections, and contain vast potential for understanding how medieval worshippers physically interacted with sacred and religious images. Yet, paxes remain chronically understudied. Their wide-ranging visual and material forms complicate identification, and their censure at the Reformation further obscured their original contexts. An entire class of objects has fallen through the cracks. This dissertation will be the first large-scale English-language study of paxes to rectify this oversight and mine these objects for what they can tell us about image veneration, sensorial functions, and the lived bodily experiences of worship in late medieval England.
Rebekkah Hart is a PhD candidate studying late medieval art with Professor Elina Gertsman. She is currently a curatorial intern at the J. Paul Getty Museum in the Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department during the 2025-2026 academic year. Her research interests include the role of sensorial reception, performativity, and materiality in late medieval devotional imagery. First and foremost, Rebekkah is fascinated by objects. Forthcoming publications investigate the curative consumption of medieval alabaster sculpture and the theological implications of transparent materials and oil paint in early Netherlandish painting.
