El santuario y el camarín de la Virgen de la Peña de Sepúlveda by Antonio Linage Conde, Marta Alvargonzález,Herminda Cubilla Gonzalo, Raúl Gorriti Yanguas, and Amalia MaríaYuste Galán (review)

BOOK REVIEWS711 lawyers and parochial clergy. Pauli banished from his text the elaborate distinctions , doubts, and dissensiones characteristic of the learned laws. He put the communis opinio into a form that was easy to use. The second, best represented by Lyndwood, was designed to integrate the local law of provincial and synodal constitutions with the law ofthe Western Church. Its object was to harmonize , insofar as possible, local practice with the general canon law. After the Reformation, English canonists, or civilians as they were more normally called, followed the path their medieval predecessors had laid out. Henry Swinburne, Francis Clarke, John Godolphin were the immediate successors. The first integrated the traditional law of wills and marriage with more recent English developments. The second wrote a procedural treatise on court practice , simplifying or eliminating most of the disputed points from the learned laws. The third did both. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most writers on English ecclesiastical law were busy men—judges, bishops, members of Parliament rather than academics—but few of them deviated from this pattern. Richard Burn's popular Ecclesiastical Law (4 vols., 1763),for example, both summarized existing practice and sought to harmonize it with the general law, although for him this was the English common law. The author pays Burn a high compliment by comparing his work with that ofWilliam Blackstone. This is not a book that presents wholly new material. Many of the chapters have already appeared as articles, and Professor Baker has drawn upon research by other scholars. Nonetheless, his book adds real value. He has a perceptive eye for the revealing domestic detail. He excels in drawing the connections between the public lives and the scholarship of his subjects. His judgments about the merits of their work are always worth having. And in the fashion that has graced his work on the common law, he makes superb use of previously untapped manuscript sources. For anyone interested in the history of the law of the Church, this is a book worth having. R. H. Helmholz University ofChicago Law School El santuario y el camarín de la Virgen de la Peña de Sepúlveda. By Antonio Linage Conde,MartaAlvargonzález,Herminda Cubilla Gonzalo,Raúl Gorriti Yanguas, and Amalia MaríaYuste Galán. (Sepúlveda: Hermandad de Nuestra Señora de la Virgen de la Peña de Sepúlveda. 1996. Pp. 389) This book examines the art, architecture, and the history ofthe parish church of Santa María de la Peña, of Sepúlveda (in the Spanish diocese of Segovia), dedicated to the Virgin, whose image supposedly appeared in a cave on the banks of the Duraton River. This book is divided into two sections. The accomplished historian Antonio Linage Conde authors the first, a history of the church, concerned mainly with the early modern and modern period. The bulk of his his- 712BOOK REVIEWS tory meticulously describes the church's acquisition of liturgical artifacts and art, in an attempt to illustrate the high quality of la Peña's religious life. He also pays homage to the clerics important in the history of the church. The second—and most useful—part of the book examines the church's art, architecture, sculpture, liturgical manuscripts, and ecclesiastical artifacts. The church is romanesque, dating to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; its altar constitutes one of the highlights of la Peña's art works. The camarín, the chamber of the Virgin and the storeplace for her jewels and other possessions, was finished in 1692, part of the Baroque additions to the original church. The art and architecture of la Peña is carefully placed in historical context. Sober judgments , for example, are offered on how la Peña's romanesque capitals suggest Aragonese influence, and how the construction of the camarín reflects the overall development of these structures in Spain. Also of interest is the discussion of the various masters, such as silversmiths, who contributed to la Peña's holdings. The book's dedication to the Virgin of la Peña reflects its heartfelt and popular approach. Its extensive description of la Peña's architecture, art, and artifacts , supplemented...