The Texture of Images: The Relic Book in Late-Medieval Religiosity and Early Modern Aesthetics by Livia Cárdenas (review)

Despite being concerned with a niche area of publishing, this book should be of great interest to book historians, art historians, and others interested in the thought and art of the late medieval and early Reformation period. Describing itself as ‘the first fundamental analysis and synopsis of the printed relic-book genre’, it began life as a doctoral dissertation, submitted to the Humboldt University in Berlin in 2010, and was published in German under the title Die Textur des Bildes. Das Heiltumsbuch im Kontext religiöser Medialität des Mittelalters (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), which remains in print at around half the cost of this English edition. Cárdenas describes the relic book as ‘a hybrid genre, distinguished by its ability to do justice to a multiplicity of functions while simultaneously focusing on an ideal public orientated towards participation in acts of religious devotion’ (p. 401). In essence, it is an inventory, catalogue or exhibition catalogue (the appropriateness of such terminology is discussed at length in Chapter 8: ‘The Mediality of the Relic Book’ (pp. 373–400)) of collections of sacred relics—splinters of the True Cross, thorns from the Crown of Thorns, pitchers from the wedding feast at Cana, sundry bones of saints, etc.—assembled by various princes and other dignitaries in the later Middle Ages and the early modern period against a background of various political, social, and religious motives. The best known of these books is probably the Wittenberg Relic Book, describing the collection formed by Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, begun with papal permission in 1507 (though Frederick had already picked up the thumb of St Anne while in Rhodes in 1493) and comprising 117 reliquaries in 1509, reputedly worth 1,902,202 years, 270 days and 1,915,983 quad-ragenes in terms of the soul’s penance in Purgatory. Commissioned by the Elector, illustrated by Lucas Cranach the Elder and printed by Symphorion Reinhart at Wittenberg in 1509, this book exists in two variants (VD 16 ZV 24309 and VD 16 Z 250), both of which are in the British Museum (see David Paisey, The British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings. Catalogue of German Printed Books to 1900 (London, 2002), nos. 401 (158.d.64) and 402 (159.c.54(1)).

According to p. 411 of the English edition of Cárdenas’s study, her catalogue of known copies of relic books (here pp. 411–59) includes a number which have come to light since the German version appeared. In brief, the books considered are: Nuremberg 1487, edition A (GW M 27302) 5 copies; edition B, 1 copy; Nuremberg 1493 (GW M 27304), 7 copies; Bamberg (1) 1493 (GW 3232), 4 copies; Bamberg (2), Nuremberg-printed 1493 (GW3234), 3 copies; Bamberg (3) 1493 (GW3235), 1 copy; Bamberg (4) 1493 (GW3233), 2 copies; Bamberg 1495 (GW 3236), 2 copies; Bamberg 1509 (VD16 W 1720), 9 copies; Würzburg ‘1483’ [a misprint for 1493] (GW M51827), 5 copies; Vienna 1502 (VD 16 H 3281–3) and Vienna 1514 (VD 16 H 3284), 12 copies of each; Wittenberg 1509, A version (VD 16 ZV 24309), 1 copy; Wittenberg 1509, B version (VD 16 Z 250), 25 copies; Halle 1520 (VD 16 V 896), 25 copies; and Hall in Tirol 1508/09, manuscript.

The particular merits of the study are not only the painstaking and illuminating analyses of the structure of the individual books and the presentation of the collections in word and image but also that it shows how they influenced one another. The first to be examined are the Nuremberg Relic Books of 1487 and 1493, concerning the imperial regalia and the associated holy relics, first...