Matter and piety have been in close alliance throughout the centuries. It is the job of research to analyze the conditions and influence of this relationship and to find out how it has been affected by breaks and upheavals. Ruben Suykerbuyk seeks to investigate this link, choosing an unusual time period for his analysis, ranging from the late Middle Ages (part 1) to the unrest of the Reformation (part 2) and the Counter-Reformation (part 3). In doing so, he exceeds the period border of the Reformation. This overstepping of supposedly separate temporal boundaries proves to be highly fruitful.

In order to trace the importance of the “Matter of Piety,” Suykerbuyk investigates Saint Leonard in Zoutleeuw, which was furnished with a statue of its patron around 1350/60 and became a pilgrimage site. Suykerbuyk also focuses on piety among lay people. However, he does not merely dwell upon this Flemish church and its surroundings but expands his investigation to encompass the whole of the Netherlands to determine whether the events he observes in Saint Leonard were a regional or countrywide phenomenon. Through this combination of detailed local research and a more general overview, Suykerbuyk presents a fascinating cultural history of piety as expressed in the pilgrimage site and its media.

The main sources for his investigation are records of the furnishing of St. Leonard's and the account books of the church wardens, which were kept starting in 1452. Through his detailed evaluation of this somewhat sparse genre of sources, a vivid picture of the conditions of matter and piety emerges. One follows Suykerbuyk's intensive calculations with considerable amazement as he counts how much wax was purchased for ex-votos and how much money the cult of Saint Leonard brought in, and presents his findings in text and charts. With this method of “counting piety,” to use a phrase coined by Thomas Lentes (“Counting Piety in the Late Middle Ages,” in Ordering Medieval Society: Perspectives on Intellectual and Practical Modes of Shaping Social Relations, ed. Bernhard Jussen [2001]) that is used throughout the entire investigation, Suykerbuyk unearths astonishing results. Particularly revealing is the realization that with the spread of Reformation thought in the 1520s, piety did not decline, as previously assumed, but persisted. Accordingly, instead of a rupture of piety, the Reformation led to the transformation of its material expression and motivations.

Since Zoutleeuw was spared from the iconoclasm of 1566, older church furnishings could be renewed or replaced with new works. For this third part of the book, the term Counter-Reformation, which is omnipresent in research on the southern Netherlands, forms the epistemological basis. When, for example, Merten van Witre and Marie Pylipet commission a sacrament house in 1550/52, or a healing miracle occurs after a long break in 1612, or when Luis de Velasco donates the first (!) relic of Saint Leonard to the church in 1616, Suykerbuyk interprets these primarily as acts in the fight against Protestantism.

He differentiates between the various actors and explains the political level, which is tangible. The arguments are plausible, and one gladly follows the references presented. However, one would often like to add a building block of non-material piety to the structure of the argument. Thomas Lentes was able to prove that late medieval piety was a “counted piety”—he focused on prayer services—that served as an external stimulus for inner piety. One wishes to emphasize the spiritual level of counting for Zoutleeuw as well: the large sums of money spent on the rich furnishings of St. Leonard's Chapel served not only to attract pilgrims, but also provided an appropriate dwelling for the saint, who was believed to be actually present there. The donors depicted on a memorial stone opposite the sacrament house were not only representational in value. Given in the attitude of ewige Anbetung (eternal adoration), they also venerated the sacrament post mortem.

The brief mention of the aspects of inner piety is not intended to name a shortcoming of the book, but to show that Suykerbuyk's carefully crafted publication, which is rich in material and findings, makes for stimulating reading. It is a basis and inspiration for further tracing the connection between matter and piety beyond the boundaries of epochs of research.