Memory and the Medieval Tomb gathers together eleven essays that explore the commemorative function of the tomb, from the early Christian catacombs to the fifteenth century, in England, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and France. It is a valuable collection that offers a wide range of themes and approaches. Some papers are about the way in which the design and location of tombs were carefully contrived to keep alive the memory of the deceased, so that his or her soul might enjoy the benefits of repeated masses and prayers. Others are about the ulterior meanings these monuments might bear and the connotations they would have had for contemporaries. Several of the authors reconstruct social and historical milieus to provide a context for rediscovering the forgotten significance of unusual imagery. A recurring theme is the way in which sepulchral art is deployed for the manipulation of memory, either to shape public perception of the deceased or to re-present the past in ways that redound to the credit of those in the present.

Stephen Lamia discusses the relationship between twelfth-century descriptions of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem—with its apertures through which pilgrims could kiss or touch the precious slab on which Christ was laid—and representations of the tomb from the same period. This need to get close and touch the sacred object affected tomb design throughout the Middle Ages.

Elizabeth Valdez del Alamo’s essay, previously published in the June 1996 issue of the Art Bulletin, examines the twelfth-century sarcophagus of Doña Blanca of Navarre, particularly how its iconography suggests aspects of her life and virtue that her husband wished to commemorate. The extravagant expression of grief depicted, which was typical of medieval Iberia, is set within its literary and historical context. An image of the dead woman’s soul might have simultaneously suggested the child to whom she died giving birth.

Anne Morganstern revisits a theme that she explored at greater length in her recent book, Gothic Tombs of Kinship (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2000). She notes that family members—often referred to mistakenly as "weepers"— represented on certain English kinship tombs (e.g., that of Lady Montacute in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, and the Burghersh tombs in Lincoln) are often listed in chantry benefactions. The tomb figures may have served a mnemonic function to remind the priest of those for whom he was supposed to pray—an idea supported by Bradwardine’s treatise, Ars memorativa.

The book is brought into the early Renaissance with Gerladine Johnson’s discussion of Donatello’s tomb to Giovanni Pecci in Siena Cathedral. The design of the bronze slab was conditioned by the liturgical rituals conducted before it. Donatello’s virtuoso illusionism conveys a powerful sense of the bishop’s corpse being present. The immediacy of the image would have brought to the mind of an officiating priest the memory of the dead bishop, thus involving him, as it were, in perpetual masses said on the altar beside his tomb.

Patrick Lenaghan’s engaging study of the chapel of Alvaro de Luna in Toledo Cathedral (1489) shows how the descendants of Alvaro—who had been executed for treason—in choosing the iconography of his tomb, glossed over the historical facts of his life to present their kinsman in a more favorable light and redeem his memory from opprobrium. The chapel’s heraldry and sculpture responded directly to critics who had impugned his virtue, piety, lineage, and standing in Toledan society.

Dorothy Hoogland Verkerk takes us back to the early centuries of Christianity, to the fourth-century Cubiculum C of the Via Latina catacombs and the famous Ashburnham Pentateuch of the sixth century. Baptism and Christian burial, she observes, are parallel rituals in so far as they stand at the thresholds of altered states. The idea of passage that they imply—to a higher spiritual existence—might be suggested by Old Testament themes such as the crossing of the Red Sea. This theme not only appeared in liturgical readings for baptism and burial but was also represented in the Pentateuch and the Via Latina tomb chamber to remind worshipers that, as God led the Israelites to the Promised Land, so too would the Christian soul be led to Paradise.

Kyle Crocker’s lucid and concise article deals not with tombs at all but with late Viking rune stones in Sweden. These simple standing stones, inscribed with the names and familial relation of donor and deceased and occasionally the signature of the carver, served multiple functions. Partly memorials to the dead, they also attested to the status of those who raised them. More significantly, they indicated rights to the land on which they stood—solid signs of stability at a time when ancient traditions were being threatened. The large numbers of them concentrated in Uppland were both land markers and records in stone of kinship and social relations.

The first Venetian tomb of St. Mark is the subject of Thomas Dale’s paper. Around the holy column in S. Marco, in which the saint’s remains were preserved, are mosaics that illustrate the arrival and rediscovery of St. Mark’s body in Venice. Contemporary secular and ecclesiastical powers used these images to provide a version of events that reflected favorably on themselves. Other mosaics with scenes from the legend of the True Cross commemorate Venice’s ownership of relics of the Passion plundered from Constantinople during the fourth Crusade. Not only did the images seek to justify the theft of the relics but also implied that their appropriation signaled the transfer of power from Byzantium to Venice.

Carolyn Carty looks at the twelfth-century shrine of St. Heribert of Deutz and the use of dream imagery to depict the life of the saint. Dreams, which occupy a place between the natural and supernatural, were a mental state in which God could make an appearance to instruct the dreamer. They might provide the impetus for a course of action, particularly the building of churches, or they could signal the birth of great men. The structure of the shrine, with its compartmentalized images, was like the medieval conception of memory itself.

The earliest surviving effigy of a French queen, on the twelfth-century tomb of Adelaide of Maurienne in St. Pierre de Montmartre, Paris, is the subject of Kathleen Nolan’s paper. This queen was buried there, rather than in the royal mausoleum at St. Denis, because dynastic power was not as readily associated with queens as with kings, and because St. Pierre was her foundation. The Merovingian spolia incorporated into St. Pierre, and the deliberately archaizing form of her tomb slab—originally comprising a mosaic of colored stones—suggested her own ancient Carolingian lineage and the antiquity of the site on which her church was raised. The presence of her tomb may have helped preserve the church from spoliation and safeguarded its independence.

Finally, Roccio Sánchez Ameijeiras investigates the thirteenth-century tombs of bishops in León Cathedral. Deliberately constituted as an episcopal pantheon by Bishop Martín Fernández, the purpose of these tombs was both commemorative and propagandist. Their iconography was chosen with the purpose of promoting episcopal authority and shaping public awareness of the virtues and the commitment to the pastoral care of the people of successive Leonese bishops. The prototypical tomb of Rodrigo Alvarez shows extravagant grieving at the loss of this man. His charity to the poor is represented by a ceremony of almsgiving that was continued in his memory. His fight against heresy is implied in the unusual iconography of the Crucifixion.

While none of the essays in Memory and the Medieval Tomb can be said to offer new ways of thinking about tomb sculpture, the compilation as a whole provides a conspectus of current theories and approaches that will prove useful to students of medieval art. Specialists too will find valuable evidence from the sculpture of different times and places that may illuminate their own researches. The one major criticism I have of the book is its irritating design. The separation of text, notes, and illustrations in three different sections makes it cumbersome to use. Given the sophisticated technology now available to publishers, this seems inexcusable.