The study views the medieval concept of representation as always in flux and crossed by different modes of seeing, until, posits the author, it was stabilized by the constitutions of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. To substantiate this claim, the book draws attention to four epistemological fragments -- the Regularis concordia, the Berengar-Lanfranc Eucharist controversy, the ternary mode of the Eucharist sacrament, and the Fourth Lateran Council.

Kobialka argues that the concept of representation in the early Middle Ages had little to do with the prevailing tradition that considers representation in terms of Aristotle or Plato, modified by today's taxonomies and political agendas; rather, it was enshrined in the interpretation of Hoc est corpus meum (This is my body) -- the words spoken by Christ to the Apostles at the Last Supper -- and in establishing the visibility of the body of Christ which had disappeared from view. The four fragments registered the changing conditions of the practice of representing the invisible body of Christ. By so doing, they show us that the notion of representation in the Middle Ages was heterogeneous and that it could morph or be morphed into differentshapes once it entered a specific historical, cultural, or ideological constellation which attempted to form and to lay to rest the body which had disappeared a long time ago.