The first Jubilee of the Roman Catholic Church was proclaimed by Pope Boniface VIII on February 22, 1300, granting absolution from sin to all those who visited Rome’s holy shrines. It was not planned long in advance, but rather represented the pope’s enthusiastic response to the vastly increased throngs of pilgrims who had come to the Eternal City to mark the beginning of a new century. Little did Boniface know what he was starting! Timed to coincide with the 2000 Jubilee celebrations in Rome, this engaging and profusely illustrated book adopts the conceit of following a hypothetical female pilgrim through the streets of Rome on August 14 and 15 of the year 1300. This was the eve of the great feast of Mary’s Assumption, celebrated in Rome by an elaborate nighttime procession that bore the famous Lateran icon of Christ, the Acheropita (“made without hands”), on a winding course through the streets of the ancient city to greet another famous icon, depicting his mother, at S. Maria Maggiore. Our pilgrim begins by visiting the papal palace and cathedral at the Lateran (Chapter 1) and its Sancta Sanctorum chapel (Chapter 2), and then follows the procession on its way past the church of San Clemente (Chapter 3), the Roman Forum, and church of S. Prassede (Chapter 4), and ultimately to its goal at S. Maria Maggiore (Chapter 5). To conclude her visit to the holy city, the fictional pilgrim then visits the shrine basilicas of St. Paul’s and St. Peter’s, both situated outside the Aurelian walls (Chapter 6). The 1300 Jubilee marked a high point for the Roman papacy at the very end of the Middle Ages, indeed its last high point for many years to come. The reader is thus presented with a view of Rome that encompasses a millennium of continual Christian patronage, immediately prior to the long hiatus occasioned by the removal to Avignon. This is the Rome that most medieval pontiffs, and certainly Boniface VIII, would have wanted all Christians to experience.

The book is intended for a very general but literate audience, perhaps pilgrims themselves, and it takes absolutely nothing for granted, not even the meaning of the word “pope” (3)! It aims not only to describe in detail what a visitor to Rome in 1300 might have seen or experienced, but also to explain what those sights and sounds meant. No aspect of medieval architecture or its decoration was devoid of meaning, and Kessler and Zacharias have plumbed those meanings fully, relating what their pilgrim encounters on her perambulations to Rome’s urban geography, its history (both prior and contemporary to 1300), the accompanying liturgy, the clerical vestments and other regalia, and ultimately to the whole message and meaning of Christianity as embodied in the church of Rome. Although the authors state in their introduction that “sacred geography and function, and not chronology, iconography, style, or medium, are therefore guiding factors in the book’s focus and organization,” they have not neglected those latter items by any means—and thus they have produced a succinct and highly engaging introduction not only to the place of Rome in medieval Europe, but also to the meaning of Christian symbolism and theology in a much broader context. For example, the fundamental basis of Biblical scripture, and especially of Jewish scripture, is hammered home time and again. And the relationship between the mosaic decorations of the San Zeno chapel in S. Prassede and its funerary function is succinctly and expertly explained, drawing on a series of recent studies, as is a great deal else in the book.

Although perhaps inspired in some way by Richard Krautheimer’s classic Rome: Profile of a City, 312–1308 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980)—and indeed the project was begun when Kessler held the first Richard Krautheimer Visiting Professorship at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome—this book is far more accessible than Krautheimer’s to undergraduate students, not to mention any modern pilgrims. The writing is alive and engaging and couched in a narrative style that is easy to follow, while at the same time almost always fully informed by the most recent scholarship. (An exception that perhaps proves the rule is the belief that the technique used for Paschal I’s enamel reliquaries was “imported from the East” (56), whereas recent scholars like David Buckton have argued convincingly otherwise.) The narrative flow is not encumbered by a vast scholarly apparatus, nor even a single footnote. Instead, we get a “Kodak moment,” a detailed snapshot of a night and a day, as seen through the wide eyes of an informed but credulous believer, with the authorial voice limited primarily to the very detailed captions that accompany the pictures. Only in rare instances does this mask slip, as it does, for example, in the discussion of the famous Donation of Constantine (14). Today it is well known that this document was an eighth-century forgery, but this would not have been the case in 1300. Somewhat truer to the book’s underlying premise is the discussion of the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, moved from the Lateran to the Capitoline in the early sixteenth century (and not in 1471 as stated in the caption to fig. 17!). The correct identification of the Roman emperor in question was still unknown at the time, and thus our pilgrim is limited to the possibilities circulating in 1300, as known from the Mirabilia Urbis Romae and other medieval guidebooks. These tales and legends make wonderful reading, and it is a pity that the authors have not included a few more of them, since they do reflect the popular imagination of the later Middle Ages, however preposterous they may seem to modern readers. For example, the discussion of the bronze pinecone (pigna) in the atrium of St. Peter’s could have been wonderfully enlivened if our pilgrim had mentioned the belief that it had formerly closed the oculus of the Pantheon, and was dislodged by the Devil on the night that Christ was born!

My other quibbles are few, and all very minor. The saintly jailers converted by St. Peter are Processus and Martinianus (47 and 208). It was not Pope Felix who, in the early sixth century, conceded imperial property in the Forum to become the church of SS. Cosma e Damiano (caption to fig. 93). Although he was certainly the pope who undertook this landmark conversion, the building itself was not his to concede, and even a century later Pope Boniface IV would petition the emperor in Constantinople when he wished to convert the Pantheon (imperial property, like all pagan buildings) into a church. Pope Celestine did not “preside” at the Council of Ephesus in 431 (134), although his views on the role of Mary as theotokos were certainly supported there. And apses have “chords,” not “cords” (176 and 202). There is also an inconsistency in the dates given in parentheses after the names of popes and emperors. Usually these are regnal years, but not quite always—and some dates, particularly those for political rulers, designate birth and death: for example, Aurelian (10), Louis IX (40), or Galla Placidia (167), to name but three. The meaning of these accompanying dates is nowhere specified.

In visual terms this book is a wonderful treat. It is elegantly laid out with lots of appealing eye-candy: 301 illustrations, many in color and/or full-page. As an introductory volume used to whet a student’s appetite for the art and architecture of medieval Rome, it should be a great success. It is also a success for those of us who tend to focus too narrowly on the specifics, and in doing so sometimes lose sight of the larger picture.