Working within the paradigm of ‘global Catholicism’ Erin Rowe explores the popularisation of the cult of black saints in the early modern Iberian world. Rowe distinguishes two strands of early modern devotion to black saints: the veneration of black (often Ethiopian) saints from the early church period, such as St Elesban and St Efigenia, and the devotion to early modern black saints such as St Benedict of Palermo and St Antonio da Noto, both of whom were Franciscan friars in Sicily. Where Rowe links the rise of the cult of Ethiopian saints in the Iberian world to the claims of catholicity and universality of the Latin Church and the advance of its global missionary endeavour, she connects the popularity of the early modern Sicilian black saints to the upsurge of the slave trade and the spiritual needs of free and enslaved Afro-Iberian Christians in Europe and the Americas.

Rowe explores the topic through two lenses. The first part of her book, entitled ‘Devotion’, situates the rise of the cult of the black saints in the wider religious and geo-political settings of the early modern period. It introduces the key players of the book, maps the rise of black confraternities in the Iberian world, and reflects on the function of the devotion to black saints for Afro-Iberians, both in Europe and in the Americas. Despite the challenges of having to work with fragmented sources, Rowe makes a convincing case for the widespread popularity and interconnectivity of the cult of black saints in early modern Iberia and Iberian-America.

The second part of the book, entitled ‘Illumination’, focuses on the representations of black saints in Iberian devotional art and literature. It explores how physical ‘blackness’, with all its contemporary negative connotations, is depicted in baroque sculpture and early modern devotionals and discusses the strategies artists and authors devised to transpose the categories ‘black’ and ‘white’ from bodily features into spiritual qualities, with black saints being represented as ‘luminous’ and ‘radiant’ with virtue, humility and piety, thus simultaneously confirming and challenging racialist thinking.

The last chapter of the book, entitled ‘The practice of humility and spiritual authority in the lives of black holy women’, though interesting, seems somewhat disconnected from the main focus of the book.

Rowe's book is well worth reading and beautifully illustrated. Rowe makes a convincing case for the widespread dissemination of the cult of black saints in the Iberian world and its significance both in Europe and the Americas. She takes the reader through a fascinating landscape of stories, imageries, examples and anecdotes. However, due to the book's kaleidoscopic approach, the overall argument of the book remains somewhat vague. This becomes most apparent in the absence of a concluding chapter. While the introduction situates the research within ‘global Catholicism’, this theoretical framework is not revisited towards the end of the book.

The book also raises some other questions. While Rowe indicates at numerous occasions that the cult of black saints was not merely a product of African devotion – some of its staunchest proponents were white clergy – she pays little attention to the significance of the cult of black saints for white Iberian devotees and the social impact that this may have had on racial and/or imperial ideologies, linking the cult mainly to black confraternities. Also, while the book maintains that it investigates the cult of black saints in the ‘Iberian world’, it is oddly silent on the significance of black saints – or the absence thereof – in early modern Africa itself. One can only hope that Rowe considers a sequel that focuses on the African part of the narrative.