Saints and Signs: A Semiotic Reading of Conversion in Early Modern Catholicism (review)

Massimo Leone’s book intends to demonstrate the author’s semiotic hypothesis that saints rank among the more important communication media or “signification simulacra” of Catholicism. (pp. 1–2). His case study is the contributions made to the early-modern definition of sainthood by hagiography on the four early-modern saints canonized in 1622: Ignatius of Loyola (chapter 2, pp. 23–203), Philip Neri (chapter 3, pp. 205–319), Francis Xavier (chapter 3, pp. 321–479), and Teresa of Ávila (chapter 4, pp. 481–530).

For Leone, the early-modern conception of sanctity largely differed from the medieval conception (p. 531). Teresa best embodies Leone’s first premise: that, in contrast to medieval saints, early miracles depend more on the transformation of souls than of bodies (pp. 531–32). Neri, Ignatius, and Teresa can be cited to exemplify Leone’s argument that early-modern Catholicism conceives spiritual change as mainly an internal and intimate process of conversion (p. 533). In this sense, the hagiography of Teresa especially emphasized the role of individual will and moral responsibility in conversion (p. 501).

The portrayal of Ignatius as a new St. Francis of Assisi (p. 90) best illustrates Leone’s point that early-modern representations of sainthood serve as different experimental fields (laboratories) of spiritual and religious identity through a reshaping of previous saints (p. 534). The intention to address different constituencies is clear in the cases of Xavier (non-European public), Neri (poor classes), and Teresa (women).

Early-modern Christianity has a global character (p. 535), because sainthood is produced and diffused throughout the whole of the known world and is best represented by the exoticism associated with Xavier. Moreover, fabricators of sainthood used all the means that were to hand (multimedia).

Certainly, Leone’s semiotic approach to sainthood opens up a research pathway that is innovative and challenging. He has an extensive knowledge of primary and secondary sources (the recent and essential contributions on Xavier by Pamplona scholars—in particular, Ignacio Arellano Ayuso and Gabriella Torres Olleta—are, however, missing) and a remarkable ability to decipher the encoded meanings of details presented in the visual arts. Moreover, Leone correctly selects particularly influential texts and images from among the enormous amount of textual and visual testimonies available.

Nevertheless, the reader sometimes might wish that the author had better explained and illustrated his points (this problem is particularly evident in the conclusions compiled as general statements without any reference to the previous analysis of the four saints, pp. 531–36). Moreover, the inclusion of some excursus is difficult to follow and needs closer articulation with the subject of the chapter (this can be seen in the excursus on Tridentine theology, pp. 119–25, of the chapter on Ignatius). Finally, Leone also might have adopted a more comparative approach in analyzing texts and images pertaining to the saints (for instance, Rubens’s altarpiece with the representation of Xavier’s miracles, pp. 471–79, must be seen in context of the same artist’s pendant showing Ignatius’s miracles).