<i>Picturing Kingship: History and Painting in the Psalter Saint Louis</i> (review)

Parergon 26.1 (2009) they designate the Law by which Christians are damned and the promises by which they are saved; Law and Gospel are both dispersed across the Hebrew and Christian scriptures’ (p. 201). In the last sections of the book, Simpson returns to Thomas More, and argues that his response to evangelical reading and the impact of the vernacular scriptures was more nuanced and intelligent than most historians have credited. His defence of an older Catholic tradition of reading was based on the premise that ‘texts are trustingly made and remade in human history by human institutions’ (p. 223). Simpson shows clearly how More’s position opposes all the dimensions of evangelical reading he has thus far examined. Sadly, in his attempt to refute the new mode of reading advocated by English Protestants, More entered into the same state as those he opposed, eventually backing the persecution of those he viewed as heretics. Simpson’s conclusion that ‘Tyndale and More were both the victims of a new, immensely demanding and punishing textual culture marked by literalist impersonality’ (p. 282) is bound to be controversial. So too is his implication that we are still wrestling with the direct heir of that textual culture, religious Fundamentalism. This is a brilliantly written, fascinating book, and it deserves a very wide readership. Not all will agree with Simpson, but all will learn something new and valuable. Carole M. Cusack University of Sydney