In the first half of the twelfth century, all Benedictine monks, penned defences of Christian art. This chapter discusses the three functions, namely didactic, affective, anagogic, were those most frequently evoked by medieval theologians. Yet these approaches barely begin to describe the manifold uses to which images were put. The chapter offers the role of images in high-medieval Christianity. It also provides such traditional art-historical considerations as patronage and commission, style and iconography, and shows how people viewed and used the images around them. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, sculptures and paintings seemed to absorb the holy powers traditionally attributed to relics, inspiring quite new kinds of image-based venerations. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were the heyday of the religious image. Image-based devotions had always had a strong tactile element, and in the later Middle Ages art more than ever facilitated the physical expression of religious feeling.