Earthly Treasures: Material Culture and Metaphysics in the ‘Heptaméron’ and Evangelical Narrative (review)

Although a number of excellent studies of Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron have been published over the last few decades, this work has seen relatively critical neglect compared with that of other French Renaissance authors of her stature. So, a study of the scope of Catharine Randall’s Earthly Treasures is quite a welcome contribution to the corpus of Marguerite criticism. The research Randall has put into this book is impressive, as she has combined significant archival work with extensive readings both on Reformation theology and on early modern material culture. The project itself, a tracing of the place the Heptaméron takes in discussions of material culture in the sixteenth century, is an ambitious and worthy one. The range of objects analysed, from works of art to decorative objects to household items, is breathtaking, and the range of issues addressed, from the Eucharistic controversy to early modern commodification of culture, is also considerable. However, the analysis itself contains some serious flaws, which make the study run the risk of being received with less seriousness that it should. Sometimes the readings are superb, as in page 48 seq., on emblematic texts, but the project as a whole could have benefitted greatly from another round of serious revision. For example, on page 18, the author suggests about the mule-driver’s wife in the second story of the Heptaméron: ‘The woman’s body is yet inviolate, not penetrated sexually. . .’. This suggests that the servant did not succeed in raping her, which is completely contrary to what happens in the story. On pages 50–51 of the study, the correct version of the story is given; some judicious editing would have cleared up this contradiction. More important than these details is the strength of the theological argument being made; for example, a longer and more detailed discussion of the various doctrines concerning divine immanence, particularly transubstantiation versus consubstantiation, at the beginning of the book would have made the argument more accessible to non-Renaissance scholars. The author is so intent on reading the Heptaméron as an evangelical and particularly Lutheran text that she produces overdetermined readings, where the meaning assigned to an object is already Lutheran, and thus justifies reading the text as Lutheran, even though many of these objects could be read from multiple perspectives. When the analysis of an object enters into greater detail, it tends to be more convincing, as is the case with the discussion of a ring on page 51. Nonetheless, a nod to these other perspectives would make the analysis seem more balanced and the argument more convincing. The richness of the research for this study makes it well worth reading, but the devil is in the details, which often undermine the credibility of the analysis, and which often take the place of a larger argument concerning the complex status of material objects in the Renaissance.