This rich collection of essays on the history of miraculous images in Christianity is the fruit of a multiday colloquium held in Rennes in 2016 on the subject. As the editors of the volume, Nicolas Balzamo and Estelle Leutrat, explain in their foreword, the essays focus on European images made between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries and are framed by two important historical-theological events, namely the Avignon Papacy and the Jansenism controversy. It is between these two moments, according to Balzamo and Leutrat, that miraculous images play a distinctly important role in Christianity. The contributing authors’ essays offer diverse case studies of miraculous images in Europe across this prolonged period, but they are united in that they engage three primary themes: first, how images become designated as miraculous; second, the relationship between an image's formal qualities and its miraculous properties; and third, the ontological status of these images for the faithful (12).
Nicolas Balzamo's introduction to the volume, “Image miraculeuse: le mot, le concept, et la chose” (“Miraculous Image: The Word, the Concept, and the Thing,” 15–41) is a thought-provoking account of the history and historiography of miraculous images in Christianity that will likely be an important point of reference for future scholars on this topic. It highlights the ways that historians and the devout have thought about and termed miraculous images as well as points to the types of source material in which we can learn the most about them (for example, rarely in theological tracts or synodal documents, but rather in devotional literature). Balzamo particularly shines at moments when he synthesizes and even enumerates the ways that miraculous images across time are in dialogue with one another. For instance, he notes that all accounts of miraculous images share three primary objectives, which are to productively obscure the real origin of the image in question, to give it a unique history, and to justify its exceptional status (19). In another instance, he writes that all images share a set of attributes, namely a proper name, a unique origin story, miracles, and a cult following (21). But his subheadings also reveal the diversity of case studies that he covers, including “Des Miracles Sans Images?” (“Miracles without Images?”), in which he discusses fascinating examples of images that miraculously heal someone even when at a physical distance from the person who is healed (25). There are, however, a few shortcomings in this otherwise thoughtful account: Rome is a central point of interest to occasionally the detriment of other important sites, and the focus does not account for miraculous images prior to the second half of the twelfth century. Moreover, the examples and images cited are not materially diverse: Balzamo exclusively reproduces prints that do not, themselves, have the status of a miraculous image but rather serve as illustrations of the phenomenon.
The essays that follow are divided into three sections: (1) “Naître et durer” (“To be Born and to Last”), (2) “Le Lieu, la forme, et la matière” (“The Place, The Form, and The Material”), and (3) “Pour une ontologie de l'image miraculeuse” (“For an Ontology of the Miraculous Image”). Standouts in these sections include Laura Biggi's article on miraculous images on trial (“Les images miraculeuses en procès,” 57–69), which is an important addition to the ongoing work on this topic by scholars like Erik Inglis (see, for instance, “Art as Evidence in Medieval Relic Disputes: Three Cases from Fifteenth-Century France,” in Matter of Faith: An Interdisciplinary Study of Relics and Relic Veneration in the Medieval Period, eds. James Robinson, Lloyd de Beer, and Anna Harnden, London: British Museum, 2014). In the book's second section of essays, Brigitte Roux's essay on the miraculous breasts of the Virgin (“Les seins miraculeux de la Vierge,” 165–178) is mandatory reading for those interested in this topic that has received significant attention from art historians in recent years. For those interested in assigning an essay to students that invites reflection on medieval and modern miraculous images, Robert Maniura's essay on the ritual manipulation of images in conversation with James George Frazer, Ludwig Wittenstein, and even Harry Potter will prove to be of interest (“Frazer, Wittgenstein, et Harry Potter: Une approche de la manipulation rituelle des images,” 229–239).
Despite the expansiveness of the volume, a significant lacuna is the relationship between miraculous images, as defined by the editors, and other kinds of miracle-working objects like relics and specifically the Eucharistic wafer and wine. Arguably the most central miraculous image, the Eucharist is on several occasions the subject of a cult following in the Middle Ages and beyond, including the case of the bleeding host of Dijon on which an image of Christ appeared (and was subsequently recorded by medieval and early modern illuminators). Given the editors’ interest in the mechanics of miraculous images, it is surprising that we do not hear more about the relationship between Eucharistic debates—in which the sign-status of the Eucharist is intensely argued—and the “theological problem” of miraculous images more broadly (29). Parsing out differences between multiple miraculous image-objects by turning to the terms of these debates (e.g., res, res sacramenti, signum) would have helped clarify the ways that medieval and early modern people understood these images in relation to one another. Moreover, the relationship between relics and miraculous images would have also benefited from more discussion; they are only briefly noted in the introduction, in which Balzamo writes that figural representations (that are considered to be miraculous) actually overtake relics in terms of importance at the end of the Middle Ages (33).
In sum, L'image miraculeuse is an excellent volume for anyone working on this broad topic and specifically for scholars and teachers who are looking for a well-organized and synthetic account of the history of miraculous images in European Christianity. For those teaching at Francophone universities, I could easily imagine multiple essays in this volume being appropriate for both undergraduate and graduate students, specifically Balzamo's introduction and those case studies I have cited above. Although it cannot stand alone as a new definitive history on this topic given its focus on particular media and places, it productively contributes to our ongoing understanding of the history of miraculous images, the ways we might sensitively approach their study today, and what they might have in common across a historically expansive period of time.
