Medieval Christianity was a danced religion—or so asserted Barbara Ehrenreich in her 2006 book Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy. Yet, to this point, the few extant studies of dance and religion in the Middle Ages have focused little attention on the theology that led to the dancing of the faith. Kathryn Dickason's Ringleaders of Redemption: How Medieval Dance Became Sacred is an ambitious book as Dickason seeks to correct that omission and to invert current assumptions about medieval dance. Dickason draws on a wide assortment of textual sources from figures as varied as Augustine, Jacques de Vitry, Guillaume Peraldus, Mechthild von Magdeburg, Margery Kempe, and Dante. Additionally, she utilizes seventy visual sources, from reliquaries to misericords and manuscript rubrications. Using this array of sources, Dickason explores “how dance became a legitimate form of devotion in medieval Christian culture,” contending that “during the High and Late Middle Ages, Western theologians, liturgists, and mystics not only tolerated dance; they transformed it into a dynamic component of religious thought and practice” (3). This broad argument, laid out in her introduction, loosely guides the seven chapters that comprise her work, each of which examines a different component of medieval dance and religious practice. Throughout, Dickason weaves theological and theoretical concepts to great analytical effect. Her use of medieval understandings of grace (5, 182), postcolonial theory in discussions of anti-Semitism (36–40), and gender theory in considering female mystics and divine domination (163–73) stand out as particularly insightful.

The first part of Ringleaders of Redemption, “Gracing the Idols,” contains three chapters on the sacralization of dance in patristic and medieval understandings of scripture, saints, and liturgy. In chapter 1 Dickason draws equally on patristic and medieval sources, showing how medieval theologians and authors appropriated, adapted, and sometimes rejected patristic interpretations of types like David or Salome in their engagement with the biblical text. Chapters 2 and 3 move chronologically forward, engaging with dance in the cults of Sainte Foy and St. Francis of Assisi and in the high medieval liturgy; in both of these chapters, however, Dickason continues to point to the ways in which the Christianization of dance she is tracing needed continually to distinguish itself from a “pagan” past. The institutionalization of sacralized dance practices, whether in biblical interpretation, in saints’ lives, or in ritual and liturgy, took place in a constant dialectic with both the past and the expected eschaton. As Dickason puts it, “the ritualized dancing body was an exercise of equilibrium, reconciling pre-Christian legacy with the Christian ordo” (78) and “harmonizing a mythic past with eschatological anticipation” (102).

The four chapters that appear in part two, “Grace Before Its Master,” focus on the application of a sacralized model of dance in penance, mysticism, courtly romance, and the dance of death. Chapter 4, “Discipline and Redemption,” provides a reading of pastoral approaches to dance, contending that these texts reveal a model of dance as penitence, a means of disciplining the body towards redemption. Chapter 5, “Partnering Divinity,” surveys the use of dance by female medieval mystics to attain intimacy with the divine, recorded in their choreo-graphy (dance writing) (142). In chapter 6, Dickason takes a different approach to religious dance, turning to romances, sources generally regarded as secular, to consider the ways in which dance's religious significance sacralized courtly love in Le Roman de la Rose (with consideration of both the works of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun) and Dante's Paradiso. In her final chapter Dickason pivots to dance in the late Middle Ages, investigating religious readings of choreomania and the danse macabre.

Dickason's concluding assessment of her work in her epilogue, as a “revisionist history of medieval religion” and a “long-neglected, yet ever crucial, part of dance history's master narrative” (236), aptly represents what she has achieved with this expansive study. This is not a narrowly argued survey of an aspect of medieval dance, but a sweeping reconsideration of the relationship between medieval dance and religion. This breadth—in sources, in scope, and in the sheer amount of information uncovered about a little-studied area of religious and medieval studies—represents the book's greatest strength. Dickason's work with secondary scholarship is also impressive; her endnotes provide a wealth of resources for scholars interested in pursuing lines of inquiry raised by her research. An odd editorial error unfortunately means that the endnotes occasionally do not correspond with the page number ranges given as references (for example, in chapter 7, note 17 appears on page 210, but appears under the heading “Notes to pages 203–205”). This is a shame, as it makes Dickason's extensive research more difficult to access.

In a book that already considers so many genres and discourses, it is perhaps unfair to ask anything else of the author. But it is important to note the limitations of Dickason's argument, limitations that could have been made clearer throughout Ringleaders of Redemption. First, as Dickason herself notes in her introduction, her focus is primarily on medieval France, Italy, and Germany. Her sources certainly support that focus, but the limited number of sources from other regions suggests that her model of sacralized dance might have more geographic limitations than she discusses. Second, while Dickason does deal with some vernacular texts, such as Ci Nous Dit, many of her sources are Latin texts; the vernacular texts she discusses often present more negative perspectives on dance than do their Latinate counterparts. Similarly, the dance practices that Dickason considers seem centered on elite groups (whether of clergy, of exceptional religious figures like mystics, or of nobility). While Dickason's presentation of the religious potential of medieval dance is compelling, medieval dance's sacred potential may have been more limited by social status than she acknowledges. These limitations do not take away from the significance of Dickason's claims but simply point out directions for further study. And indeed, there should be further study growing out of Dickason's work, for with her broad scope and innovative perspective, she has rewritten and expanded our knowledge of medieval dance and religion.