This volume examines the variety of textual incarnations of the sacred and mystical body in French texts of the Medieval and Early modern period. Scholars examine Old French hagiography, epic and romance; Renaissance court ballet; seventeenth-century political treatises, memoirs of royal wedding ceremonies; and utopian, satirical, philosophical and didactic literature. The intellectual scope of the volume covers topics as diverse as medieval scholasticism, the representation of Pascal’s dead body, seventeenth-century political thought, relations between representations of the male and female body, and the foundations of modern scientific notions of the body.