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The Materiality of Devotion in Late Medieval Northern Europe: Images, Objects, and Practices. Henning Laugerud, Salvador Ryan, and Laura Katrine Skinnebach, eds. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2016. ix + 192 pp. + 16 color pls. $45.

“Contrary to one’s first impression, the End of the World does not occur in a chaotic manner, but is orderly and organized, just as the Beginning was” (202). The most interesting and informative aspect of Wagner’s research considers the individuals who commissioned paintings of the Fifteen Signs for public spaces. Based on Wagner’s evidence, one can conclude that many individuals viewed the Fifteen Signs as suitable subject matter for endowments specifically designed for a general Christian public. Both the evidence of manuscripts, and that of public commissions, supports Wagner’s conclusion about the intention of depictions of the Fifteen Signs to inspire penance and piety in preparation for the Last Judgement. However, Wagner observes, this does not mean the people who commissioned or encountered the Fifteen Signs were gripped by apocalyptic fear. Rather, Wagner questions long-held assertions that the prevalence of expressions of the end time in the later Middle Ages indicate either heightened expectations of the end or a time of crisis. Perhaps, finally, we as a scholarly community will be able to dismiss these assumptions and instead see depictions of the end for the complex documents they were: prompts to piety, attempts to understand the world and its historical trajectory, political statements, and even entertainment.