Born in New York City, Fr. Richard Viladesau has taught theology for over forty years at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington and at Fordham University, where he now holds the rank of Professor Emeritus. A priest of the diocese of Rockville Centre, Long Island, Fr. Viladesau is also the administrator of Our Lady Star of the Sea Church in Saltaire, Fire Island, NY.

"This is an important book for students of Christian theology, liturgical music, and the visual arts, especially given Viladesau's rare skill in weaving an interdisciplinary tapestry." -- CHOICE

"This is a very rich historical study of what theologians (but not preachers) and artists (generally painters) made of the passion of Christ in early modernity. Like others, I hope that Viladesau will complete his masterly work with a fifth volume examining the cross in modernity." -- Gerald O'Collins, SJ, Jesuit Theological College, Parkville (Australia), Theological Studies

"In this fourth volume of his remarkable study of the cross in theology and the arts, Viladesau continues to demonstrate how fruitful it can be to expand theology and cultural interpretation to encompass music, poetry, visual arts, and other aesthetic media (including popular genres). Expertly opening up multiple paradigms for thinking about and imagining the Passion of Christ, he meets 'early modernity' on its own terms, with its many innovations. This is Christology in a new key."--Frank Burch Brown, author of Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste and editor of The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts

"Richard Viladesau exhibits the artistry of a choreographer in integrating the variegated understandings of the cross advanced by early modern theologians, composers, poets, and painters into a coherent ballet. He dramatizes the ways in which theology, devotion, music, and the visual arts reciprocally influenced one another, generating a plethora of rival visions of the passion of Christ, ranging from the death of a revolutionary leader to the apotheosis of the human spirit."--Lee C. Barrett, Henry and Mary Stager Professor of Theology, Lancaster Theological Seminary

"The Folly of the Cross, the fourth in the historical series that examines theology, philosophy, and the arts through the lens of the cross, begins with the Enlightenment. Viladesau brilliantly correlates the intellectual development from 1750 to 1900 with the musical and visual arts of the time. In a most compelling fashion, he charts the paradigm shift from the understanding of salvation as satisfaction for sin to newer theories of Christ as social revolutionary."--Michael Driscoll, University of Notre Dame