Catholica: The Visual Culture of Catholicism
Suzanna Ivanič
Thames & Hudson, £25, 256 pages
The visual has always held a special place in Catholic devotion. Not for the Roman Church the iconoclasms of Byzantium, Cromwell or Calvin. Pope Gregory the Great rationalised this approach in the seventh century: “It is one thing to worship a picture another to learn from the story of a picture what is to be wor-shipped.” St Gregory’s far-sighted approach to art spared the Latin west from the ideological convulsions which were about to destabilise the contemporary Christian east.
