This volume of collected essays contributes significantly to the fruitful and burgeoning subfield within early modern studies that examines how interior/exterior, sacred/profane, Catholic/Protestant, and communal/private space was conceived, delineated, used, refashioned, and contested. The great strength of the volume stems from its innovative approach to the study of sacred space, namely, its decision to focus on “the behavior and the communal beliefs that spaces prompt or witness” (19). Jennifer Mara DeSilva's complex introductory essay, which proceeds from an analysis of the strategies employed by a contemporary art museum to manipulate space within its galleries, both to display its objects and to affect the way the audience conceives of the objects as well as the ambient areas, is methodologically promising, goes far beyond the typical introduction for such an edited anthology, and establishes well the overall goal of the volume. Each of the eleven essays (including the introduction) analyzes, to varying degrees, how, and for what purposes, early modern people used sacred space to alter or solidify existing communal behavior and systems of belief, and, again, with differing levels of concern, each essay seeks to “reveal how debates over space could reflect deep-seated social conflicts” (20). Taken as a whole, the essays consider an eclectic set of sacred spaces and geographic areas, including chapels in Italian churches; staged dramas in Belgium that commemorated the canonization of Jesuit saints; the wilderness of Catalonia, sanctified through the establishment of outdoor Marian shrines; neighborhoods in Rome that accommodated ritualized protests; cemeteries in Padua, over whose use parishioners and clerics fought; churchyards in Stuart England which, when used for festive dance, could become sites of conflict and litigation; a French basilica that experienced iconoclasm and subsequent rebuilding projects; and Jesuit missions in South America, evaluated with a more macro-historical concentration on international diplomacy. Far from weakening the volume, the essays’ diverse foci affirm one another's conclusions, and the argument of the whole is strengthened from those of its parts.

The contributors comprehend “sacred space” in novel and heterogeneous ways, and not merely in regard to the sites they have chosen for their investigation. They have selected spaces that often require new epistemologies to fully uncover and consider the ways these sacred sites affected communal behavior and systems of belief, and I imagine their approaches will serve as guides for subsequent inquiry. For example, in her essay on sixteenth-century French nobles’ funerary sculpture, Rebecca Constable analyzes effigy tombs and monuments, not, as is usual, by focusing on their ability to convey the decedents’ piety. Instead, she employs strategies that enable her to regard them also as political works that operated, by using the sacred space of a church, to legitimate and sanctify the nobles’ secular actions and to further their dynastic ambitions. Likewise, Abel Alves's essay on the use of Marian shrines to sanctify the Catalonian landscape not only shows how Christian sacred space could be situated within the natural world, which is in itself an interesting topic, but it also reevaluates the ways early moderns conceived of human culture in relation to the natural world, utilizes gender theory and anthropology to analyze Mary's ability to sanctify nature in ways that transcended the male domination of nature through agriculture, and expands our understanding of how sacred space was created by highlighting the role that animals could play in this process. As a final example, John Hunt's essay, informed by a synthesis of the rich literature on carnival, rites of violence in urban milieus, notions of “the moral economy,” and ideas regarding “the king's two bodies,” explores ritualized attacks upon the images and property of immediately deceased popes, during that interlude before a successor was elected. Hunt reveals how certain spaces in Rome could be “appropriated” by the protesters and politicized, and he shows how formerly sacred images could be degraded. In explaining why the people of Rome chose public and profane spaces to criticize the perceived political tyranny of deceased popes, Hunt explores how spaces that popes used as backgrounds for sacred rituals were transformed into zones of their posthumous humiliation (196).

One pitfall of any work that examines spaces’ ability to affect belief is how to ascertain the belief. Constable's essay on funerary monuments, for instance, is insightful, logical, and highly compelling, but her conclusions must remain inferential. Similarly, DeSilva's essay on one bishop's efforts to introduce a liturgy in a Roman chapel (for which he was the patron) that would motivate and excite the canons, prevent them from becoming disinterested, and, in consequence, stimulate the laity, is based upon her nuanced reading of a prescriptive source. Bored and slothful canons would have been dismissed, but how can we know what the laity thought of this liturgy? This drawback is unavoidable, and the scholarship is first-rate, despite it.

Other essays, given their focus and the source material consulted, are less subject to this dilemma. Annick Delfosse's essay on the staging of spectacles to celebrate the canonization of Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier utilizes descriptions of the events, and, more importantly, considers documents whose explicit function was to record the effect of the performances on the audience, and to gauge the staging's ability to satisfy its pastoral goals. Hunt's essay, discussed above, uses handwritten newsletters, ambassadorial reports, and diaries that record the acts of violence and the collective thoughts behind them. Similarly, Emily Winerock's essay on the controversies over using churchyards for dancing in Stuart-era Somerset relies on trial records and visitation reports that clearly indicate the views of the respective individuals. Eric Nelson's essay on Huguenot iconoclasm in Tours and Winerock's essay are the only two that consider Protestant beliefs or spaces. These minor limitations notwithstanding, this is an excellent and highly recommended volume, and its essays will interest and challenge scholars in a variety of disciplines.