Seeing beyond the Word: Visual Arts and the Calvinist Tradition ed. by Paul Corby Finney (review)

BOOK reviews331 (pp. 24-25), that "the pleasure of women" can be hidden behind walls but avarice cannot (p. 51), and that one should learn to disguise one's true feelings (pp. 85-86). The authors would also have done well to have corrected the factual and typographical errors scattered throughout the book and the page numbers cited in the index which are often one to three page numbers off. They should also rethink some of their strange assertions: that Alidosi's murder was "merely a way" for JuUus II to reward his favorite Antonio Maria del Monte (p. 24); that Cosimo dei Medici "had been the only voice calling for fairness" (p. 176) when Innocenzo was accused of rapine, a charge the authors later accept as true (p. 193); that because Innocenzo was not degraded or executed the charges against him were probably untrue (p. 179), (or perhaps canon law did not approve such punishments when the proof of guUt was inclusive?); that St. Pius V "was not concerned with truth" (p. 179),but was "mean-spirited" and "almost fanatical" (p. 181); and that the cardinal's imprisonment in monasteries hastened his death five years after his release (p. 199). Despite such problems with the authors' presentation, this book is indeed the remarkable product of a freshman EngUsh-composition course. Nelson H. Minnich The Catholic University ofAmerica Seeing beyond the Word: Visual Arts and the Calvinist Tradition. Edited by Paul Corby Finney. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans PubUshing Company. 1999. Pp. xviii, 540. $65.00.) Seeing Beyond the Word: Visual Arts and the Calvinist Tradition is a substantial , gorgeously Ulustrated, and handsomely produced volume. Its angle of inquiry is significant, and fiUs a gap in Calvin studies. Nineteen scholars write essays from a variety of perspectives that attempt to define Calvinism's vexed relationship to the arts. The majority of the scholars work in the field of architecture . The essays are categorized according to geographical or regional area, among them England, France, Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands , and "The NewWorld." I put the last group in quotation marks, as it strikes the reader as somewhat diremptive in a coUection that spans the sixteenth century through modernity, with most of the essays related to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries appearing prior to the New World designation. The strategy of classification is serviceable, if uninspired; a thematic approach, or a grouping of structures and commentary according to inteUectual or theological currents, might have facUitated a framework for at least the beginnings of a larger perspective on the issues addressed, rather than confining the phenomena to discrete areas. As the volume currently stands, it is too easy for a speciaUst to turn only to the section relevant to his or her field. A truly interdisciplinary study wants to encourage, or even to compel, a reader to examine factors and ways of conceptualizing that might not immediately come to mind, which reorganization of the volume along the lines I have pro- 332book reviews posed would facilitate. Be that as it may, the volume is, on the whole, a solid, generaUy conservative coUection of studies. The assumptions of Calvinist scholarship regarding the manifestation of Calvinist theology in concrete form wUl find themselves confirmed here, and their fact-base broadened and deepened . However, the interrogating of structures, paintings, and—to an unfortunately much lesser degree—artifacts in many places faUs short (although Raymond Mentzer's superb, sprightly-written essay on the use and iconography of méreaux, token-pieces used to admit the believer to the communion table, is an exception to the rule). Too often, the volume remains at the level of compilation of visual documentation Ulustrative of emphases and shifts in Calvinist thought in the material realm; the evidence offered in the volume cries out for analysis and interpretation. This is not globally the case, and several essays are stunning in their attempt to reach across disciplinary boundaries and creatively apply categories conventionaUy aUen to the fields of art, architecture, and theology . Peter WUliams' essay, "Metamorphoses of the Meetinghouse: Three Case Studies," is a good case in point. He caUs on the anthropological work ofVictor Turner and others to elucidate the notion of...