It is genuinely a pleasure to welcome as innovative, wide-reaching, and thoughtful a study of the now-familiar Arma Christi tradition as this one, which breaks new ground while also offering a useful edition of a centrally related text. Although, as the subtitle indicates, the study observes a certain focus on material culture, in practice this interest is generally inclusive of others, and admits of many disciplines, so that, taken together, the chapters open avenues that have not been explored in the past.

Ten different contributions are difficult to summarize, even when focused upon a specific phenomena, for so the Arma Christi undoubtedly was. The first two chapters address, with real learning, a putative earlier tradition that led to the Arma, both in the West, most convincingly in the Latin hymn tradition, and also in the East. It is becoming clear, however, that certain Western devotional traditions either began or, in their early days, were informed by Eastern ones (the influence may have been two-way), and these would include the Anima Christi prayer, as Joseph Munitiz, SJ, has shown (“A Greek Anima Christi Prayer,” Eastern Churches Review 6.2 [1974]: 170–80), and perhaps that of the Holy Name, which Professor Denis Renevey is now investigating. In general, the Eastern versions are far earlier than the Western ones, and it is quite possible that it was in the East that these specific religious traditions began. I should note that certain Eastern examples of the Arma tradition are carefully recorded in Mary Agnes Edsal’s excellent chapter, though without addressing the question as to whether the Arma may have had its origin as a separate, possibly reintegrated, Eastern devotion, as I believe. In fact there is a thoughtful counterargument present in Seeta Chaganti’s particularly fine study of Old English sightings, itself an important contribution to the development of early English meditational devotions, especially in Elene, but not, for me at least, the last word on origin and transmission.

Indeed, like the Anima Christi, the Arma Christi is effectively a late medieval phenomena, and the discussion of its several appearances in Richard G. Newhauser and Arthur J. Russell’s considered study of Scottish Catholic Archives MS GB 0240 CB/57/9 (importantly discussing how the tradition became attached to the English tradition of affective meditation), Ann Eljenholm Nichols’s study of Morgan MS B.54 (including an extended discussion of “O Vernicle”), and Ann W. Astell’s treatment of BL Additional MS 22029 (interesting on the metaphoric relationship to the actual tools of guildsman) all contribute to an overall reading of these multidimensional sacred objects. Moral and ethical implications are treated in Martha Rust’s study of the “Ethics of Reckoning” (but also in Newhauser and Russell). Suzanne Verderber’s examination of Hieronymus Bosch, and Lee Palmer Wandel’s of Michelangelo, usefully show how it could penetrate into masterpieces. Later examples appear in studies by Salvador Ryan (on medieval and early modern Ireland), and Shannon Gayk (on early modern afterlives of the tradition). Taken together but also independently, the chapters engage aesthetic, moral, intellectual, historical, and religious considerations, and, read against Ann Nichols learned critical edition of “O Vernicle,” offer an extraordinarily comprehensive, thoughtful, and imaginative engagement with this important if understudied tradition.

The most problematic part of this study may be the introduction, which fights shy of the evident religious implications in favor of a finally secular reading, which is certainly one way of theorizing cultural studies. But the interaction of religion and cultural artifacts (and cultural studies) needs further exploration, as evidenced by the nuanced readings of the Arma that appear throughout, responsive as they are to the informing influences of history, art, literature, and (especially) religion. Indeed it is the examination of the interaction of these traditions that is the great accomplishment here, and one that both informs and is informed by an inclusive way of understanding cultural studies, one that is concerned less with thisness, than with more final things. The individual chapters here largely observe that philosophical inclusivity, that direction, and as such offer a new opening for the discipline of cultural studies itself.