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Reviewed by:
  • Holy Cards
  • Joseph F. Chorpenning
Holy Cards. By Barbara Calamari and Sandra DiPasqua . ( New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 2004. Pp. 144; 110 illustrations in full color. $24.95.)

This beautifully illustrated book is authored by Barbara Calamari, a freelance writer who has worked in both film and television, and Sandra DiPasqua, a graphic designer and art director. Holy cards have had and continue to have a significant role in Catholic devotional life. For example, they may be carried for protection or out of devotion to a particular saint. They are also given as souvenirs of First Communions, Confirmations, Religious Professions, Ordinations and First Masses, Jubilees and anniversaries, and, most often, wakes and funerals.

A single-page introduction breezily explains the privileged status of visual images in Catholicism without reference to either the central mystery of the Incarnation or the debates on images in Christian history (first, in the Byzantine Empire, and later in Western Europe in the wake of the Protestant Reformation): "Since great art, architecture, and music are believed to be divinely inspired, visual art is an important element in Catholic religious expression" (p. 9). More helpful is a two-page "brief history" of the holy card that surveys its development from late medieval woodcut prints through the invention of lithography (1796) and then chromolithography. These technological advances made possible the mass production of images by companies such as Benziger and numerous other purveyors of santini who developed their own distinctive way of presenting devotional images. Holy cards of more recent saints, such as St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Mother Cabrini, or Padre Pio, are basic photo-like portraits that resemble head shots or publicity stills.

The more than one hundred holy cards illustrated in this book are divided into nine sections (prophets and angels, disciples and evangelists, martyrs, hermits, visionaries and mystics, religious orders, missionaries, holy people, halos). The authors acknowledge that many saints qualify for placement in more than one of these divisions. Minimal information is provided for each image to assist the reader in deciphering what is frequently a visual biography of the saint in emblematic form.

Holy Cards barely scratches the surface of an enormously rich and understudied facet of Catholic devotional life. Despite the publisher's claim that this is "the first book to survey this rich and varied art form" (dustjacket), in fact it is not. For example, almost twenty years ago N. Boyadjian's From Holy Pictures to the Healing Saints: Faith and the Heart (Antwerp: Esco Books, 1986) was published in English translation. This book is more profusely illustrated, informative, and substantial than Holy Cards, and its bibliography includes the considerable number of publications on this genre up to the mid-1980's. Today discussion of the holy card needs to take into account not only the growing body of scholarship on this art form, but also the important research on Catholic visual piety by scholars such as Margaret Miles, David Morgan, and Colleen McDannell. While scholars will undoubtedly be disappointed with Holy Cards, it does serve as a popular introduction to the topic that hopefully will also be a catalyst [End Page 348] for more rigorous investigation of this important and ubiquitous form of devotional art.

Joseph F. Chorpenning
Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia
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