Recent years have seen a renewed interest in tomb monuments, with increasing numbers of scholars approaching the subject from not just an antiquarian or art-historical angle but also from archaeological, literary, social, religious, dynastic and gender perspectives, to name but a few. There have also been fresh discoveries through the study of documentary sources (such as contracts and wills) and technical research into stone types and polychromy, which have resulted in new insights and greater understanding of workshop methods, sourcing of materials and customer choice. In short, the area of tomb monuments and commemoration is expanding, and this means it is increasingly difficult for one scholar to write a monograph that incorporates earlier scholarship as well as more recent thinking, and addresses the many different perspectives – in fact, such a challenge would daunt most scholars in the field.

Yet Nigel Saul’s much anticipated survey study delivers on almost every count. It is the first monograph since F H Crossley’s 1921 English Church Monuments AD 1150–1500 to discuss all types of medieval monuments alongside each other, from cross slabs to brasses and incised slabs to canopied monuments. Saul boldly rejects the idea that brasses are a separate category, and the comparisons between these different forms of memorial are one of the book’s many strengths. Another of its key aims is to study these different commemorative forms while taking into account the diversity of approaches to the subject, even if some receive more attention than others – there is very little discussion of petrology, for example. In fifteen lucidly argued chapters, Saul covers a huge range of subjects, including the antiquarian study of monuments, early medieval forms of commemoration and the development of effigial sculpture, market forces, function and meaning, and the different types of monuments from ecclesiastical, military, civilian and female, to macabre imagery and idiom. In addition, there is an appendix containing a list of sculpted effigial monuments to civilians up to around 1500.

As one of the foremost experts on English medieval monuments, Saul is able to illustrate the points he makes by drawing upon a wide range of well-chosen examples from all periods, many of which may be unfamiliar to the majority of readers. This is a wonderful bonus as too often the study of monuments is based on the more prestigious tombs in major churches and cathedrals, which can distort our view of overall production and the great variety that can still be found across the country today. Even so, Saul reminds us that our view is, in any case, distorted by the fact that a greater number of memorials survive in the countryside than in urban churches, especially in London. Unfortunately, it is the nature of survey studies that there is little room for extensive discussion of individual examples, and readers deeply immersed in the study of English medieval monuments will find it easier to visualize the points made succinctly by Saul about particular monuments than those less familiar with the many examples across the country that he cites as evidence. One thus occasionally finds oneself wishing for more explanation, an illustration, or at least a few more references to sources in footnotes.

As Saul demonstrates throughout the book, the purposes of medieval monuments were manifold, but their reception by medieval onlookers would often have been very different from the reaction of the modern-day beholder. The primary purpose was to provoke a reaction, and especially to prompt prayers for the deceased, although it is obvious from the splendour of many surviving monuments that they were also designed to inspire awe. The aspect of aesthetics is rather underplayed by Saul, who declares from the start his intention to examine monuments ‘less as examples of fine art than as expressions of the social, cultural, and religious assumptions of the age in which they were produced’ (p 9). He cites a number of accounts by monks as evidence that their aesthetic appreciation of monuments was at best conventional (pp 85–7), and in his final chapter he even states quite bluntly that ‘at the time [monuments] were regarded as mere artefacts: they were commodities’ (p 369). This seems like an overstatement, as there is evidence that many medieval patrons took great care to choose a reputable carver with whom they discussed the design and materials to be used; the surviving documents relating to the double tomb ordered by Richard ii clearly indicate that he wanted more than a mere commodity, although his patronage was in many ways exceptional. Some medieval preachers fulminated against the money lavished on commemoration and display. That did not deter many patrons from doing just that. In fact, as Saul illustrates with brief references to the lost brass to Canon John Newcourt (d 1485), at Old St Paul’s Cathedral, and two lawyers’ brasses in an unnamed location (also London?), testators appear to have been unaware of any contradiction between the opulence of their monuments and the expressions of unworthiness in their epitaphs (pp 325–6).

While Saul’s angle is very much that of a medieval historian, as he himself states from the outset (p 9), he also addresses such issues as composition and design (Chapter 7) and inscriptions (Chapter 14), discussing not just their language, character and function, but also their audiences and authorship. The long period covered in this book, from Anglo-Saxon to early modern, means that Saul can trace the use and language of inscriptions across several centuries, and ask pertinent questions. He weighs the different interpretations of the use of Latin, French and English (sometimes combined in one monument) over time, the character and function of inscriptions, the question of whether the intended audience was both earthly and heavenly, as argued by Elizabeth Okasha (pp 349–50), and how epitaphs reflect the sense of identity of the deceased.

The word ‘representation’ in the title of the book raises questions about portraiture versus representation – a topic of debate among art historians. This is one aspect of tomb effigies that is not addressed here in great detail, which is a pity, especially as Saul is himself an expert on Richard ii: many questions about the re-emergence of the portrait in the medieval period have centred on the meaning of the word conterfait in the contract for the tomb of Richard ii and Anne of Bohemia. Nicholas Broker and Godfrey Prest were contracted to produce two effigies of the king and queen that are described as ‘lune ymage conterfait le corps de nostre dit seignur le Roy & lautre conterfait le corps [del] dame Anne’. Saul briefly touches upon ‘the problem of realism’, but concludes that in its original form the English effigy was ‘a portrait of an idealized figure in the prime of life’ (p 144) and that ‘most monuments afford little evidence of individuality’ (p 369).

Yet, where there are apparent signs of individuality, one must be careful how to interpret these. Whereas Saul admits that ‘medieval monuments are in many ways highly conventional’ (p 369), he also claims that ‘a minority of figures show young unmarried women with loose flowing hair’ (p 299), thereby showing a lack of understanding of the medieval convention of ‘maidenly’ effigies. In fact, this hairstyle can be found on effigies to females of any age and status, including infants, elderly spinsters and married women, one example being the magnificent brass at Tattershall (Lincolnshire) to Joan, Lady Cromwell (d 1490), who was twice married and thus presumably no maiden nor in the first flower of youth.

Children are another vexed category, also because of the ways that historians in the past have interpreted their appearance – or non-appearance – on monuments. The statement that ‘Children are invariably shown on memorials as miniature adults, dressed in full adult attire’ (p 150) is questionable as one does find so-called ‘chrysom’ effigies of swaddled infants from the fourteenth century. Some distinctions in dress, size and attributes must have been more obvious to contemporaries than to modern viewers wishing children to look the part, and even anonymous groups of children on brasses may yet have meant more than just a dynastic statement. There is a brief section on family monuments within the chapter on composition and design (pp 147–51) where Saul adopts the distinction between offspring and children in the brief. Yet while he uses the term ‘offspring’ unnecessarily for children represented alone on brasses, elsewhere he confusingly describes the marbler William West as a ‘child’ on the brass that William himself probably produced for his parents (p 78), and also uses the term ‘children’ for the offspring on the brasses at Cobham. The suggestion that Lady Cobham’s sons Reginald, Robert and John might have been stillborn (p 150) is surprising if one considers that the church forbade the baptism – and thus naming – of stillborn children.

There are a few other weaknesses and inconsistencies, minor though they may be in a work of this scope and quality. First of all, there is the annoying omission of page references for articles and essays in the bibliography. Secondly, the quality of the illustrations is varied and sometimes below par, even if this may be due in part to inadequate reproduction of original photographs; for example, for those who do not already know the brass of Joan, Lady Cobham, fig 24 does not clearly illustrate the ‘extreme economy of line’ typical of the London ‘B’ style (p 78) or the two miniature groups of sons and daughters on either side of her effigy (pp 132, 296). There is also the occasional reference to the traditional, but incorrect term ‘gilt bronze’ (pp 100, 123) alongside ‘latten’ (p 124) and ‘cast copper alloy’ (p 178). Yet it is a sign of Saul’s scholarship that there are so few lapses in a work that encompasses so much material over such a long period, from Anglo-Saxon to early modern.

As the title suggests, the book is about English monuments and there are but few excursions into continental Europe, such as the brief references to the tomb monument to Archbishop Salterelli in Pisa (pp 313, 330) and the equestrian monuments in Bamberg and Italy, with a not-very-clear illustration of the famous Cangrande monument in Verona (pp 214–15 and fig 50). When Saul does refer to the ‘overwrought emotional style’ of the weepers on the tombs on Dijon (p 168), one can almost sense a typically British preference for a stiff-upper-lip approach to grief. In his final chapter Saul argues an unusually wide spread of ‘the commemorative urge’ in England when compared to the rest of Europe, as well as what appears to be an exceptional range of monument types (p 372). He admits that some questions simply cannot be answered, however, such as why the separate inlay brass evolved in England but not in all parts of the Continent. It is to be hoped that further international research and collaboration will reveal more about the similarities and differences in medieval tomb production and patronage across Europe.

English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages will prove to be a standard work on the subject. As Saul explains in his preface, this monograph is a synthesis of his own extensive work and thoughts on the subject over many years while also taking into account the recent work of other scholars in the field, although the many references to the Cobhams throughout the book and in the index show how it incorporates much of his own earlier work. There can be no doubt that, in turn, this very impressive study will inspire others to undertake further research and increase our understanding of how, why, by and for whom English tomb monuments were produced during the medieval period.