Wietse de Boer's book represents an ambitious and welcome contribution to our understanding of the sacred image debates following the Protestant Reformation. De Boer's book aims to clarify the misconception that the Catholic Church's response to the Protestant disavowal of the function of sacred images materialized only in the Council of Trent's decree, formulated in its final session in December 1563. He highlights a series of texts by Catholic theologians fifteen years prior to the decree, elucidating the context of the formulation of its final form.
De Boer's study not only fills a void in our knowledge of the sacred image debates pre-Trent, but through the examination of these texts, in addition to a newly discovered draft of the Council of Trent Decree on Saints, Relics, and Images, De Boer challenges not only the longstanding perception that the Tridentine decree on images was the product of political pressures from French theologians (first proposed by Herbert Jedin in 1935, and more recently by John O'Malley in 2013), but also the assumption that Catholic theologians were in agreement about the nature and function of sacred images before, during, and after the formulation of the decree.
The book is divided into two main parts. Part 1 centers on the historical examination of texts written by Catholic theologians from the mid-Cinquecento through the Tridentine and post-Tridentine periods to highlight continuities and discontinuities between the authors and their positions on the function, materiality, and veneration of sacred imagery. Part 2 includes six texts in their original language and in English translation, by Martín Pérez de Ayala (1549), Matthieu Ory (1552), John Calvin (1553), Ambrogio Catarino Politi (1552), Iacopo Nacchianti (1557), and a draft of the decree on images (30 November–1 December 1563).
One of the major contributions of part 1 is its reconstruction of the history of the debates regarding the materiality and veneration of sacred images within the context of religious crisis leading up to the final session of the Council of Trent. Pérez, Ory, Catarino, and Nacchianti all engage with Thomas Aquinas's position on image perception from his Summa Theologiae, but with different interpretations.
The Scholastic premise that perception and veneration were unified, and the emphasis on likeness between sacred image and what it represented, suggested that a sacred image (sign) deserved the same type of veneration or adoration as the holy subject (signified). Although these authors acknowledged the semiotic theory of image perception, they either disagreed or remained silent on the nature of images and their veneration.
This reconstruction of midcentury debates on sacred images proves that the concern for sacred images began almost immediately after Protestant charges of idolatry and outbreaks of iconoclasm emerged in the 1520s and did not suddenly emerge during the Council of Trent. De Boer's extensive discussion and analyses of these Catholic texts explains why the topic of sacred images was not addressed until the final session. It was less an issue of disinterest among Catholic prelates regarding sacred images, as has been long argued, and more a matter of the controversy among their own regarding the veneration of images. The supposition that council members had no stake in the image debate facilitated the easy acceptance that it was the French delegation to Trent that pressured the Church into addressing images.
These midcentury debates in turn informed the Tridentine discussions and the decree on images during its final sessions under Pope Pius IV, supported by De Boer's rediscovery and examination of a draft of the Decree on Saints, Relics, and Images. The draft and the final text of the decree reveals that, in the end, the Council of Trent made every effort to justify the function of sacred images in the face of Protestant attacks, while also steering away from the unresolved Scholastic and theological debates about image perception and the relationship between sign and signified.
Although the book is dense, and at times difficult to follow, the value of Art in Dispute is undeniable. It is a necessary reference for graduate students and scholars in early modern religious history and art history. For art historians, the book opens avenues to consider the potential impact these debates had on sacred style during these respective periods.
