The primary objective of my project is to situate devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus in the realm of intellectual history. By analyzing the works of three Observant Franciscans, namely, San Bernardino, Giacomo della Marca, and Matteo d’Agrigento, I map out how the devotion was conceived on the ideal level. I focus particularly on their reading of the abbreviation of the Holy Name (yhs) to show how it aurally and visually reflects their vision of the sacramentality of the world and words. There are two parts to my project. The first part traces the hermeneutics tied to the abbreviation of the Holy Name (IHC/IH†/IHS/yhs) from the first century CE through the fifteenth century. In it, I consider devotion to the Holy Name in the context of Franciscan spirituality, especially, highlighting the role of the Incarnation and Glory in Franciscan writings. Simultaneously, I contend that the abbreviation of the Holy Name can be seen theologically and artistically as an icon and a pertinent symbol that resolves the tension between an ordinary and a sacred name. The second part of my project dwells on criticism of the devotion. A guiding question of the dissertation is: how did the Name of Jesus become controversial in the fifteenth century? By analyzing the works of two prominent Augustinians, Andrea Biglia and Andrea Cascia, I demonstrate how they are creating a crisis rather than describing one. When it comes to Biglia, I show that his works were shaped by the humanistic method (i.e. a historical-critical one), and how his literalistic approach to the abbreviation of the Holy Name bulldozed the symbolical-allegorical reading that was propagated by the Observant Franciscans. Likewise, I map out Cascia’s apocalyptic imagery to demonstrate how this crisis was blown out of proportion. The last part of my project centers on the indictment of the devotion to the Holy Name as superstition. In contrast to previous scholarship that analyzed the actual practices that are tied to the word ‘superstition,’ I rather ask what the word meant in the fifteenth century. Because of the purported similarities between superstitious practices and miracles, I juxtapose them to show how Franciscans conceived a distinction between them, especially as I focus on the concept of causality.