Sacred Players: The Politics of Response in Middle English Religious Drama by Heather Hill-Vásquez (review)

REVIEWS 280 memory in the region of Savonarola’s birth when it was politically impossible to do so publicly. The use of Savonarolan language by Brocadelli and Ercole (75, 85), the use of Observantine monastic reform like Savonarola (88), and the commemoration of St. Catherine of Sienna by Brocadelli and also Savonarola (93) constitute evidence of this crypto Savonarolanism. Andreasi however kept a lower Savonarolan profile spreading her prophesies that criticized pope Alexander VI and warned of impending doom only to her local followers. Throughout the early sixteenth century the Florentine Piagnoni continued to press the papacy to recognize Savonarola’s Orthodoxy. By 1558, his supporters celebrated the reduction of his banned writings to that of his treatise On the Truth of Prophesy and a selection of sermons. It was during this period that the stories associated with the northern visionary women also disappear from texts actively used to remember Savonarola. Herzig makes the claim that the holy women surveyed above played a leading role in perpetuating Savonarola’s cult. While certainly these women acknowledged Savonarola’s holiness through their visions of him, it is less clear whether or not this acknowledgement resulted from a unique veneration of Savonarola or from participation in the same Observant tradition as the Florentine prophet. Herzig often presents the use of reforms such as the adoption of female monastic enclosure, absolute poverty, and criticisms of clerical abuse as evidence of loyalty to Savonarola’s ministry. However, such reforms were general goals of the Observant tradition established by St. Catherine to which these women belonged. It is perhaps more significant that these northern visionary women did not adopt Savonarola’s republicanism, the political doctrine that set him apart from other Italian Observant Dominicans. In any case, periodic visions of a glorified Savonarola should not lead us to believe these women considered themselves “Savonarolan ” per se. This is particularly true given that they had similar visions of St. Dominic, St. Catherine, and at times each other (55). That being said, Herzig’s work offers a fascinating account of the ways devotees of Savonarola’s cult negotiated his relationships with recognized holy women and distanced potentially damaging association from him. Along the way, Herzig resurrects an interesting web of relationships and patterns of support among female religious women that would otherwise be lost in unedited manuscripts and early printed sources. ANDREW FOGLEMAN, History, University of Southern California Heather Hill-Vásquez, Sacred Players: The Politics of Response in Middle English Religious Drama (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press 2007) vii + 229 pp. As of late there has been a good deal of scholarly interest in the subject of periodization , especially as it pertains to the literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Heather Hill-Vásquez’s wide-ranging study Sacred Players: The Politics of Response in Middle English Drama joins this lively conversation by starting at the end of the Middle Ages and looking back at the period’s drama. In using this approach, Hill-Vásquez aspires to demonstrate that some religious drama was actually reformed and reshaped, rather than destroyed, as a way to illuminate and explain emerging Protestant belief. By carefully examining individual characters from the drama and the ways they model appropriate response REVIEWS 281 for their audiences, Hill-Vásquez provides a learned and valuable account of early English drama. The first section of Sacred Players begins with an examination of the Chester cycle, partly because these manuscripts date from late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, but also because of the cycle’s insistent awareness of the audience . From there, Hill-Vásquez moves into a discussion of the Expositor’s role and suggests that this character serves as a model for Protestant response and belief. By placing the drama in conversation with the writings of William Tyndale , Hill-Vásquez sees the Expositor as an interpreter who could provide the audience with Protestant analysis and explain a right way of interpreting the biblical narratives in the drama played before them. In chapter two, the discussion shifts from modeling response to correcting response. Drawing on Digby’s Conversion of Saint Paul, Hill-Vásquez argues that the play becomes...