The later Middle Ages in Europe c.1150–c.1500 can be viewed as an extensive scientific laboratory, with scholars and other writers producing texts that sought to define and redefine the human body – in relation to its daily work and environment, and in relation to God. This volume draws on written and visual evidence from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, placing gender at the centre of its enquiries, addressing the relationship between the human and the 'natural' (including the non-human) at a time when new worlds, new texts and new religious experiences were reshaping the individual and collective relationship with the cosmos, and challenging as well as reinforcing established hierarchies.