Saints and Their Cults in the Atlantic World (review)

Saints and Their Cults in the Atlantic World is the fruition of a conference on the theme held at the College of Charleston, South Carolina, in 2004. The Atlantic basin provides a common geographic location for the twelve chapters, whose time frame spans early Christianity to the present day. The chapters mainly present historical, sociological, and communication theory analyses, against the methodological framework provided by Peter Brown, "lived religion," and material culture. All the chapters illustrate the complexity that devotions and personal access to spiritual power play in the construction of spiritual, social, political and economic identity in relation to place. Forty-four illustrations enhance the individual studies of saints and sites.

Some chapters provide a longitudinal study of a religious practice, such as the one by Robert E. Scully, S.J., "St. Winefride's Well," which encompasses thirteen centuries of experience through the ebb and flow of government sanction or rejection of the devotion. Others, such as Patrick J. Hayes's "Massachusetts Miracles: Controlling Cures in Catholic Boston, 1929–30," consider a brief time in the practice of a devotion. Some chapters, such as John Corrigan's "Saints and Pilgrims on Land and Water," work primarily from secondary sources. Others, like Giovanna Fiume's "St. Benedict the Moor: From Sicily to the New World," make excellent use of primary sources. Her chapter, the lengthiest, stands out in the book. Rodger Payne's "Image and Imagination the Cult of St. Amico," one of southern Louisiana's "peculiar" devotions (p. 52), explores pious practices toward a canonically questionable saint. Michael Pasquier's "Our Lady of Prompt Succor" analyzes why the transatlantic origin of devotion to Mary in that guise did not take on an "indigenous" face, although the local hierarchy attempted to make that happen.

Many of the chapters illustrate a transmigration of religious practice, a plasticity of religious expression, and consequent changes in the focus of the devotion or the people's status. Nicholas M. Beasley's "Wars of Religion in the Circum-Caribbean" examines how England redirected its iconoclasm into Spanish America between 1570 and 1702, with English iconoclasm becoming itself a "ritual behavior." Tessa Garton's "The Influence of Pilgrimage on Artistic Traditions in Medieval Ireland" suggests how pilgrimage and its accouterments, including the renowned pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, transformed Irish artistic expression. Ryan K. Smith attempts to make a case that Florida's self-consciously constructed "Fountain of Youth" bears hallmarks similar to those of a religious shrine. Perhaps the most surprising chapter is Margaret Cormack's "Holy Wells and National Identity in Iceland." The country, which is Cormack's area of research and the most northern of the "Atlantic" countries featured, is little studied for any reason including religious history, at least by North Americans.

While editor Cormack provides an overview of the chapters, I think a concluding analysis chapter, or a more thorough introduction, that discussed common issues and overarching themes, and a response to the question, "Toward what purpose these studies?," might have provided more cohesion and made the book more helpful for use in a university classroom.