In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries the emerging printing press released many devotional books that had already circulated in manuscript, as well as new ones. Clearly, there was a market for these devotional works, and issuing them was profitable. But how were these treatises read, and how did they affect readers’ minds? In this study—a reworking and publication of her PhD thesis from 2020—Van der Laan examines the ways devotional literature was read in the Low Countries, roughly corresponding to present-day Belgium and the Netherlands, between c. 1470 and 1550.
The history of reading is a fascinating one. In antiquity, texts were read aloud, either for an audience—as a means of publication—or in private. Ambrose famously astonished his contemporaries by being able to read silently. This silent reading continued, but involved an “inner” reading, also for religious purposes. By the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, many devotional books and booklets were written, printed, and read in the Low Countries. This was considered necessary for, or at least conducive to, an attitude that could lead readers to piety and eternal salvation. At the same time, the Low Countries, with their Burgundian court culture, constituted a “performative” society, both in terms of pomp and ceremony and in the popularity of dramatic literature. “Performative” reading brings these two phenomena—devotion and performance—together. For how can the reading of devotional literature be made as effective, and as enduring in its effects, as possible? By imagining, or even acting out, what is written and read.
Chapter 1, “The Performance of Reading,” serves as an introduction. Van der Laan uses “performance” and related terms not in a philosophical sense, as in speech act theory, but quite literally, referring to reading in a theatrical, performative way. She argues that “devotional books seek to move their readers to imagine a performance taking place. Readers may be stimulated to experience this play as spectators, but more often they are asked to immerse themselves in the performance, to take up a role in the action and move, act, and think as a leading character within the play” (63). This approach moves between “(re)enactment” and “embodiment”: when people imagine themselves as part of a text, they become more engaged and more ready to “convert,” that is, to transform themselves towards a better and/or more spiritual life. According to Ramakers, the effects of theatrical performance include religious and spiritual identity formation, as well as internalisation through memory and the imitation of models of thought and action (63). When readers enact their own performance during the act of reading, similar effects may occur.
Chapters 2-4 address aspects of performance and performative reading: space, body, and mind, respectively. “Space” refers here to “real, imaginary, or metaphorical spaces while reading, which inform and shape their performative experience” (72). In Van der Laan’s conception, the body plays a crucial role in the reading of devotional literature in late medieval culture, while the mind refers to “various cognitive techniques” (72). Through these three elements—space, body, and mind—the authors of devotional works sought to strengthen their impact on readers, even beyond the moment of reading itself. The study aims to “reconstruct the way that the performativity of devotional books shapes the reading experience of lay readers” in the Low Countries in the late fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth century (73). This approach sheds light on how the laity participated in religious culture. Thus, “[t]he laity’s access to religious knowledge—involving both intellectual knowledge and, even more so, a way of being and acting in the world—was negotiated through their engagement in performative reading” (73).
Van der Laan demonstrates how this constellation of space, body, and mind operates on readers’ hearts, minds, and souls through an impressive corpus of forty-three primary sources. These are listed in a substantial appendix, complete with full bibliographic descriptions and an inventory of each book’s “performative” utterances (315-367). Equally impressive in scope is the bibliography (369-392). Somewhat surprisingly, but convincingly, even the famous Ghent Altarpiece by the brothers Van Eyck is related to this performative reading of devotional literature (270-271).
In Chapter 2, Van der Laan thoroughly conceptualises the notion of space. The space in which reading takes place matters: reading on a crowded, delayed train is a different experience from reading in the quiet reading room of a library or in a monastery. Even the reader’s own body forms part of that reading space. In all cases, however, readers “perform” their reading through imagination, constructing an “imagined” or “symbolic” space, either guided—or not—by the texts themselves. Consider, for example, the Berch van Calvarien, which presents a virtual journey to Jerusalem and Mount Calvary, where Christ was crucified: “If you want to dare to climb this mountain, go sit down on both your knees in a secluded space, turn your eyes to heaven and acknowledge to God that you are a wretched sinner, that you are not worthy to follow Christ on his burdensome path. Then set a good intention in your heart that you will honour God” (79).
Chapter 3 focuses on the body—both the bodies of individual believing readers and, of course, the body of Christ—which were central in the late medieval and early Renaissance periods. The texts themselves draw attention to bodily postures and gestures during reading, but the body is also involved in other ways, for instance by kissing the book or carrying it on the body. “In all of these different practices and processes the body and its physical sensations and output are instrumentalised in order to heighten a devotee’s engagement in the performance” (157). Although we cannot know what readers actually did, we can observe that “bodily behaviour is scripted and choreographed on the devotional stage, so that it can become a transformative experience” (157). As is also recognised in modern psychology, body and mind mutually influence one another, and devotional texts often exploited this phenomenon. For example, the Boecxken van der biechten (Booklet of Confession) by Godscalc Rosemondt describes how readers might interact physically with a book: “In the church when you want to pray ardently and profitably...you should close your eyes or cover your face with your veil or hood. And then you should humbly sit down somewhere in a corner and there alone concern yourself with your bloody bridegroom Christ Jesus etc., and you should press the image of the Passion of the Lord that is included in your little book to your heart, and ardently kiss it, and imagine it is Christ Jesus himself or his holy bloody body, that Mary kissed more than a hundred times, bathing it in her warm tears when it was lying in her maidenly lap” (162). In this way, the past is brought into the present and acculturated: readers imagine spaces and bodies within their own cultural context.
Chapter 4 is devoted to the mind, where reading actually takes place. The eyes “see” the letters and transmit this information to the mind, where it is truly “seen” and combined into meaningful words and sentences. Here, imagination is paramount, as illustrated in the Fasciculus mirre (Little Bundle of Myrrh): “The eighth rule is that somebody in the practice of the suffering of our Lord should make his imagination so strong that he, in many articles where Jesus has most suffered insults and pain, will think that he is present there and sees it with bodily eyes as strongly as possible. Because through strong imagination the desire for compassion will be ignited, and through that the heart will be guarded from other cares and overwhelming strange thoughts” (233).
This is a thorough, well-researched, and well-written book, which I read with admiration and assent. Reflecting on it, however, I also considered alternative perspectives that might yield additional insights. First, the application of reception theory could have enabled a more analytical examination of how authors and readers conceived the imagination of the Passion and other devotional practices in the treatises discussed. For instance, settings were “acculturated” to the authors’ own time, and materials were “appropriated” to the goal of leading readers towards piety, Christ, and eternal life. Yet to pursue this line of inquiry would be to ask the author to have written a different book. This observation is therefore meant as complementary rather than critical.
What I missed more acutely, however, is a discussion of Latin devotional literature, particularly that associated with the Devotio moderna, which is mentioned only once, and then only in relation to printing trends (23). A prime example is Thomas à Kempis’s De imitatione Christi. Only Rosemondt’s Latin Confessionale, which went through nine editions, is discussed in any detail—mostly when the author himself refers to it (53, 181, 246). While this study focuses on lay readers, there were certainly laypeople who could read Latin and for whom such texts were intended, as Rosemondt’s Latin Confessionale—the counterpart to his Boecxken van der biechten—demonstrates. A comparison of the two versions might have yielded valuable insights. Did a Latinate readership require different skills from a Dutch-speaking one? Or, to put it differently, did the author envisage different modes of mediation for a Dutch-reading as opposed to a Latin-reading audience? Literacy in Dutch was relatively high in the Low Countries, among both Roman Catholics and proponents of the Reformation. Devotional books largely belonged to the Roman Catholic tradition, with its use of Latin, and for that reason alone Latin literature arguably should have played a larger role in the discussion. It is telling that even in vernacular devotional works, certain prayers, such as the Ave Maria, are cited in Latin. I would also like to encourage Van der Laan to adopt a comparative approach that includes other countries. Was the situation in the Netherlands different from that in other regions?
However, these considerations do not diminish my appreciation of this book, which, for that matter, is beautifully illustrated and likewise beautifully produced by Brepols.