Reviewed by:

• Materiality and Religious Practice in Medieval Denmark ed. by Sarah Croix and Mads Vedel Heilskov
• Roderick McDonald

This is a handsome volume. Although using a font size smaller than is usual, this book is a pleasure to read: the paper quality is remarkable, and the manifold-coloured illustrations and photographs leap from the page. Happily, the book’s contents live up to its materiality, which is as well, for materiality is the hub around which this work revolves: religious practice sustained through material entanglement, materiality as ritualistic and devotional focus, and materiality as embodiment of both faith and authority.

The introductory chapter is a well-wrought overview of recent research into the Nordic reflexes of medieval Western European Christianity. The key aspects of this field are laid out, with prominence given to the diversity of practice across the medieval West, despite central attempts at harmonisation of liturgy. Notwithstanding this diversity, the point is made that medival religious culture can be consistently characterised as performed ritual piety, in which devotional acts imbued material objects with sacred significance, where the worldly and the divine become fused through codified ritual movements, bodily enactment, and the translation of matter between places and vessels. Key to such an understanding of material practice is the agency of the practitioner, the interconnectedness of people with things, and the notion of potency (rather than agency) embodied in the object.

There are nine chapters in addition to the introductory chapter and an epilogue. Chapters 1–4 examine the research context and aspects of liturgy and materiality in medieval Scandinavia. Chapters 5 and 6 look at corporeality in the context of cults of saints, and Chapter 7 examines material tokens of personal devotion. There then follow two chapters dealing with the religious relevance of the materiality of memory, and the epilogue emphasises the necessity of interdisciplinarity in this field, and reflects on the overall enterprise.

In the first chapter, Morten Larsen synthesises and critically assesses the array of currents and ‘turns’ in Danish medieval religious scholarship, and explores their impact on and relevance to the study of materiality. Importantly, Larsen emphasises the recent trend in considering religion as centrally integrated in a community, rather than being treated as an isolated subsystem within society. Next, Bertil Nilsson focuses on Lund Cathedral, exploring the role and importance of material objects in rites of consecration of both church and cemetery, and revealing important theological conceptions in medieval Christianity in relation to how objects and matter were understood, including the important belief that objects can be possessed by evil powers, for which consecrative exorcism was necessary. Chapters 3 and 4, by Nils Holger Petersen and Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen respectively, both consider different aspects of medieval Scandinavian liturgy. The former looks to the role that the gospel book plays in the Mass, as a venerated physical object, representative of and embodying Christ, while in the [End Page 248] 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...

审阅者：

• 中世纪丹麦的物质性和宗教实践编辑。作者：莎拉·克罗伊 (Sarah Croix) 和麦兹·维德尔·海尔斯科夫 (Mads Vedel Heilskov)
• 罗德里克·麦克唐纳

这是一本很漂亮的书。尽管使用的字体比平常小，但这本书读起来很愉快：纸张质量非常好，彩色插图和照片从页面上跃然纸上。令人高兴的是，这本书的内容符合其物质性，这也是如此，因为物质性是本书围绕的中心：通过物质纠缠维持的宗教实践，物质性作为仪式和奉献的焦点，物质性作为信仰和权威的体现。

介绍性章节精心概述了中世纪西欧基督教的北欧反射的最新研究。尽管主要尝试统一礼拜仪式，但该领域的关键方面仍被阐述，并突出了中世纪西方实践的多样性。尽管存在这种多样性，但有人指出，中世纪的宗教文化可以始终如一地被描述为仪式虔诚，其中虔诚的行为给物质赋予了神圣的意义，世俗和神圣通过编纂的仪式动作、身体的表演和仪式而融合在一起。地点和船只之间的物质翻译。对物质实践的这种理解的关键是实践者的能动性、人与物的相互联系、

除绪论和结语外，共有九章。第 1-4 章探讨了中世纪斯堪的纳维亚半岛礼仪和物质性的研究背景和方面。第五章和第六章着眼于圣人崇拜背景下的物质性，第七章探讨了个人奉献的物质象征。接下来的两章讨论了记忆物质性的宗教相关性，结语强调了这一领域跨学科的必要性，并对整体事业进行了反思。

在第一章中，莫滕·拉森综合并批判性地评估了丹麦中世纪宗教学术中的一系列潮流和“转折”，并探讨了它们对物质性研究的影响和相关性。重要的是，拉森强调了最近的趋势，即认为宗教是社区的中心整合，而不是被视为社会中的孤立子系统。接下来，伯蒂尔·尼尔森重点介绍了隆德大教堂，探讨了物质对象在教堂和墓地的祝圣仪式中的作用和重要性，并揭示了中世纪基督教中关于如何理解对象和物质的重要神学概念，包括重要的信念：物体可能被邪恶力量附身，为此必须进行神圣的驱魔。第 3 章和第 4 章，分别由 Nils Holger Petersen 和 Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen 撰写，两人都考虑了中世纪斯堪的纳维亚礼拜仪式的不同方面。前者着眼于福音书在弥撒中所扮演的角色，作为受人尊敬的实物，代表并体现基督，而在弥撒中，福音书则着眼于福音书所扮演的角色。[完第 248 页]在这两章的后半部分，Jürgensen 追溯了物质物品的使用，例如饰带、人物雕塑、游行秩序以及圣杯和香炉等教堂设备，以执行和体现礼拜仪式，尤其是绘画圣维克多休关于教会仪式的三个基本且平等的要素的声明：言语、动作和物体。

接下来的两章将介绍文物和拟人化人物的作用和礼仪重要性，这些章节着眼于中世纪丹麦的文物和充满神圣力量的实体拟人雕像的具体例子。在第五章中，莉娜·利佩 (Lena Liepe) 探索了位于罗斯基勒的教皇卢修斯 (Pope Lucius) 头骨的来世，强调该遗物是“ pignis”，是圣人对持久关注和关怀的承诺。在第六章中，麦兹·维德尔·海尔斯科夫（Mads Vedel Heilskov）研究了将生命物质融入崇拜的物体（例如十字架）中，以便在神圣世界和物质世界之间建立一个界面，从而促进本体论边界变得可渗透的相互作用。重要的是，Liepe 和 Heilskov 都考虑了这种拟人化的界面……