Seeable Signs: The Iconography of the Seven Sacraments 1350-1544 by Ann Eljenholm Nichols (review)

362BOOK REVIEWS has superseded other editions in its accuracy and completeness, the value of Wilson's edition of the Jumièges text and other such editions remain as witnesses to the complexity and versatility of the genre. But even the non-specialist has something to learn from these texts. When one compares the Jumièges text of Wilson with the critical edition of the Gregorian sacramentary by Deshusses, one is struck by the continuity of the text. When one reflects on this line of development from the Gregorian source with its papal concerns to the redactions and additions of the Hadrianum which fit the liturgical (and political) needs of Charlemagne's diverse peoples to the Jumièges version with its adaptations to the English scene, one is envious of a time when such flexibility was seen as normal and pastorally sensitive rather than chaotic and a threat to good order. The value of such scholarly work as that of Wilson and his successors is not only to detail the richness and adaptability of the liturgical traditions of the Church but to remind it of its continuing necessity. I must report, with some regret, that the reviewer's copy at least had blank pages instead of text in important parts of Wilson's commentary (pages xxxviii-xxxix, xlii-xliii, and lxiii-lix with halfblank pages). The Franciscan InstiluieREGIS A. DUFFY, OFM Si. Bonaventure University, New York Ann Eljenholm Nichols. Seeable Signs: The Iconography of the Seven Sacraments 1350-1544. Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, xvii + 412 pp. + 97 plates + maps. $89.00. This book is an unusal but welcome addition to the history of sacraments. The date 1350 marks the first appearance in Italy of seven-sacrament art while the last seven-sacrament baptismal font was created in 1544. The time limits for this interdisciplinary study also span the period just prior to and into the first years of the Reformation. There is, in fact, a connection between the preReformation reform movement of the Lollards and seven-sacrament BOOK REVIEWS363 art. In England one of the 1420s manuscripts of Thomas Netter's anti-Lollard tract De Sacramenlis with its seven-sacrament art was acquired by Oxford University in the 1430s. Oxford had undertaken the training of priests who could combat the Lollard attacks on the sacramental system of the Church. As Nichols notes, the first seven-sacrament window was installed in a Bristol church around the same period. Even the title "seeable signs," a phrase of Reginald Pecock, catches the catechetical tenor of the times: in the face of the Lollard challenge, to instruct lay folk on the nature of the sacraments. The author's basic thesis emerges from this complex reform and counter-reform movement in England in the fifteenth century. Prior to 1450, Nichols notes that the international iconography of the sacraments was shaped by canon law but that in the latter part of the century the English church's efforts to counteract the Lollard anti-sacramentalism resulted in a new approach to sacramental instruction—'seeable signs' that would say more than a list of sacraments. To substantiate this thesis, Nichols, in chapter one, proceeds to sketch the Continental context of sevensacrament art and to situate English efforts within that trend. The second chapter, "Dead Signs," deals with the Lollard challenge to the sacramental teaching and praxis of the church. The third chapter sets up an interesting comparison between the doctrinal teachings on sacrament and their realization in art. The final chapter concentrates on the artistic rendition of each of the sacraments, especially in the baptismal fonts of East Anglia. In her opening chapter, the author notes that seven-sacrament art takes two forms, that of the sacraments represented individually in sequence (as in the baptismal fonts) and that of one image (e.g., the crucified Christ) that serves as the unifying center for the representation of the seven sacraments. Since the first form is studied in great detail at a later point, we begin with the second form of seven-sacrament art. (At this point, I should note the excellent quality and generous number of plates of the art discussed in the book. Without these it would be...