Shawn R. Tucker, ed.

, The Virtues and Vices in the Arts: A Sourcebook, Cambridge: The

Lutterworth Press, 2015, 288 pp.

Tucker has produced an impressive collection of source material on the Western traditions of
teaching on virtue and vice. Presented here as black and white reproductions of the visual art
works and extended literary quotations, he also provides brief commentary on each selection as
well as an introduction that familiarizes the reader with the traditions under consideration.
Divided into five main sections, the sourcebook proceeds to survey insights on virtue theory
from five historic periods. “Part I – Foundations” begins with the philosophical and theological
bedrock of the classic Greek and Roman thinkers as well as the biblical traditions from both the
Old and New Testaments. “Part II – Codification of the Virtues and Vices” focuses on the work
of early Christian thinkers to solidify what they inherited into a fixed set of codes. Tertullian,
Evagrius, and Gregory the Great feature prominently in the development of the classic lists of
capital virtues and vices. “Part III – The Medieval Apex” spans the period in which the virtues
and vices made the most impact on art and culture (e.g. Giotto’s frescos and Dante’s Divine
Comedy). In addition to the flowering of the imagination, this period also saw a further
instantiation of classic Christian virtue theory in Thomas Aquinas and northern European
mystics like Hildegard of Bingen. “Part IV – The Transformation of the Virtues and Vices”
surveys the breadth of the Renaissance and its reclamation of the Greco-Roman roots of virtue
theory with selections from Mantegna, Machiavelli, Peter Brueghel, and Spenser. “Part V – The
Tradition Extended” examines the challenges and endorsements of virtue theory in the modern
period with insights from a diverse cast that includes Benjamin Franklin, Friedrich Nietzsche,
Bertolt Brecht, and C.S. Lewis. This sourcebook would be great for the classroom but does not
represent a substantive advance in research on the Christian tradition of virtue.

Taylor Worley, Ph.D.

Trinity International University