Art in Dispute: Catholic Debates at the Time of Trent. with an Edition and Translation of Key Documents.

The Catholic Church answered Reformation-era contestations of the cult of images in a famous decree of the Council of Trent (1563). Art in Dispute revisits this response by focusing on its antecedents rather than its consequences. The mid-sixteenth century saw, besides new scholarship on Byzantine doctrines, heated debates about neo-scholastic interpretations. Disagreement, suppressed at Trent but re-emerging soon afterwards, centered on the question whether religious images were solely signs referring to holy subjects or also sacred objects in their own right. It was a debate with major implications for art theory and devotional practice.

The volume contains editions and translations of texts by Martín Pérez de Ayala, Matthieu Ory, Jean Calvin, Ambrogio Catarino Politi, and Iacopo Nacchianti, along with a previously unknown draft of the Tridentine decree.

Wietse de Boer, Ph.D. (1995) is Professor of History at Miami University. His research focuses on Italian early-modern religious and cultural history. His publications include The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter-Reformation Milan (Brill, 2001).