Narrating Power and Authority in Late Antique and Medieval Hagiography across East and West ed. by Ghazzal Dabiri (review)

latter of these two chapters, Jürgensen traces the use of material objects, such as friezes, figured sculpture, orders of procession, and church equipment like the chalice and censer, as performing and making manifest the liturgy, inter alia drawing on Hugh of Saint Victor’s statement regarding the three essential and equal elements of church rites: words, motions, and objects. The role and liturgical importance of relics and mimetic anthropomorphic figures come into view with the next two chapters, which look at particular examples from medieval Denmark of relics and physical anthropomorphic statuary imbued with sacred agency. In Chapter 5, Lena Liepe explores the afterlife of Pope Lucius’s skull at Roskilde, emphasising the relic as pignus, a saint’s pledge of enduring interest and care. In Chapter 6, Mads Vedel Heilskov examines the incorporation of living matter in objects of veneration, such as in a crucifix, so as to create an interface between the divine and physical worlds, thereby facilitating an interaction where the ontological boundaries become permeable. Importantly, both Liepe and Heilskov consider such anthropomorphic interfaces to be dialectic rather than simply representational. Next, in Chapter 7, Mette Højmark Søvsø and Maria Knudsen catalogue the wide array of small objects of personal devotion that appear in the Danish archaeological record, such as crosses, brooches, rings, and pilgrimage badges. These are all objects marking piety and personal religious engagement through the intermediary of a physical token. The chapters conclude with two contributions exploring materiality and memory: Laura Katrine Skinnerbach discusses the liturgical use of wax as both a presence and as a means for memorialising, and she is followed by Jakob Tue Christensen and Mikael Manøe Bjerregaard’s chapter on materiality in Danish medieval funerals. Finally, an epilogue is delivered from the perspectives of both an archaeologist and an art historian, in which Mette Svart Kristiansen and Mercedes Pérez Vidal review key aspects and consider directions for future research. In all, this is a fine and useful collection of essays that adds subtlety to our knowledge of medieval Scandinavian religious sensibilities and practices. Roderick McDonald, Emu Forge, Sheffield, UK