This well-integrated collection of essays explores the role of the senses in the Catholic Church in response to the Protestant Reformation. The authors demonstrate that Catholic theologians, councils, prelates, artists, and patrons exhibit a variety of attitudes and practices. Some promoted a very censorious view of nudity and the eroticized body; others were happy to accommodate popular taste. John O'Malley points out that for all that some Catholics are fond of embracing visual piety, their Church has officially endorsed the use of images only twice in its history: at the Council of Nicaea, 787, and at the Council of Trent, 1563 (28). The brief consideration of images at Trent occurred only at the end of the council, and is a balanced, brief statement.

Hall and Cooper have assembled a fine set of essays by both senior and younger scholars whose topic intersects directly with interest among scholars of religion who have turned increasingly in recent years to scrutinize materiality, emotion, embodiment, and sensation. The essays are rigorously researched and bring together visual, historical, and theological analysis very effectively. This is a very useful book for critical reflection on the historiography of the study of the visual aspects of the Catholicism's response to the Reformation. The clear and accessible prose makes this an excellent place to ground a new generation of the study of the sensuous in modern Christianity.