Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. „‰, No. , January ‰‰ˆ.

Printed in the United Kingdom 

#  Cambridge University Press

Reviews

Basilides und seine Schule. Eine Studie zur Theologie- und Kirchengeschichte des zweiten
Jahrhunderts. By Winrich A. Lo$ hr. (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum
Neuen Testament, .) Pp. x­. Tu$ bingen : J. C. B. Mohr (Paul
Siebeck), . DM .     ;  
This careful and scholarly work on Basilides, his son Isidore and his immediate
circle, is Lo$ hr’s Bonn Habilitation, following hard on the heels of Markschies’s
massive work on the – even fewer – fragments of Valentinus, and suggesting a
similar need to distinguish between the man and the sect of the heresiologists,
Irenaeus, Clement and Hippolytus. Even more than in the case of Valentinus the
accounts of all three widely diverge, but Lo$ hr follows the scholarly consensus in
accepting only Clement’s fragments (as well as those of Origen and the Acta
Archelai) as authentic ; the other sources, he argues, are only of value to the degree
to which they can be reconciled with them. And he rightly insists on first
identifying and discounting the bias at work in all the heresiologists (not
sufficiently recognised in Clement’s case). Thus after a chapter of testimonia
(selected reports on external aspects of the life and work of the Basilidians), in the
second chapter, the heart of the work, Lo$ hr presents a text, German translation
and detailed commentary on the fragments in Clement (in their order in the
Stromateis), Origen and the Acta Archelai. This is followed by a chapter analysing
the reports in Irenaeus and Hippolytus in the light of the results of chapter ii,
which concludes that, although perhaps dependent on sources emanating from
Basilidian groups, these two reports cannot supply authentic information about
Basilides himself. In a concluding brief chapter Lo$ hr sketches a profile of Basilides
and his immediate circle in which he and his son emerge as teachers and pastoral
theologians, the first to combine an eclectic use of Greek philosophy with a
concern with the Judaeo-Christian tradition, focusing on ethical issues and
theodicy rather than on cosmology, Christology and soteriology. Basilides’s
kinship with the Platonic tradition in particular is emphasised, including cautious
support for the claim that Basilides taught a doctrine of transmigration of souls.
His importance as a forerunner of the later great theologians of the Alexandrian
school, Clement and Origen, is stressed : Clement had to consider the Basilidian
interpretation in treating all his major themes in the Stromateis, and he often ends
up in tacit agreement. Although the influence of Basilides and his school perhaps
spread little farther than Egypt, it remains a vital element of second-century
Christian theology. However, whether Basilides is still to be regarded as a Gnostic
is a moot point, left open by Lo$ hr, although he does tentatively suggest
how followers might have developed more dualistic, mythological versions of
Basilides’s ideas. This last point is perhaps a weakness of the book : can we entirely
discount the information in Irenaeus and Hippolytus ? And can Clement’s silence
on key issues like Christology not conceal the possibility that Basilides did present
a more mythological scheme, if on Platonic lines, to explain how this world came
    
to be ? On the other hand this is a long overdue and invaluable contribution
offering firm stepping stones in what was previously a quicksand.
U  E A H. B. L

Les Romains chreU tiens face a[ l’histoire de Rome. Histoire, christianisme et romaniteU s en
Occident dans l’AntiquiteU tardive (IIIe–Ve sie[ cles). By Herve! Inglebert.
(Collection des E; tudes Augustiniennes. Se! rie Antiquite! , .) Pp. .
Paris : Institut d’E; tudes Augustiniennes, .     ;  
It has been said that when French historians write on a massive scale they
surpass those of any other nation. This assertion – clearly a debateable one – may
seem to students of early church history to be supported by the writings of Paul
Monceaux, H.-I. Marrou and Pierre Courcelle. Herve! Inglebert stands in this
great tradition. His study is marked by vast erudition and covers a very wide field
of enquiry into factors which ultimately determined the intellectual history of the
western Middle Ages. His conclusion : ‘ Depuis l’Antiquite! tardive, l’histoire est,
pour les Occidentaux, ce qui re! ve' le la volonte! de Dieu ou le destin des hommes ’
(p. ), is not likely to be disputed.
Inglebert’s book demands a review article, if it is to be analysed adequately.
Here, a brief exposition must suffice. The triumph of Christianity in the fourth
century through the conversion of Constantine caused Christians to consider
their past in the light of their present fortunes and resulted in the Chronicle of
Eusebius of Caesarea, which offered a history of Christianity related to secular
history, and his Ecclesiastical history, which sacralised the Roman empire under the
rule of a Christian emperor, God’s vicegerent upon earth for the defence of
Christianity (p. ). Eusebius made the Roman empire an instrument of divine
providence and saw the Christian emperor as a Messianic figure, the
consummation of history (pp. –). The empire represented the final stage of
human history, coinciding with the Church under Constantine. Eusebius was
hostile to any form of millenarianism and saw the empire as lasting to the end of
the world (pp. –). As an educated Greek Christian he had no interest in the
history of the city of Rome, as opposed to the Roman empire. It was Augustus,
in whose reign Christ was born, and his successors, not his predecessors, who
concerned Eusebius.
The influence of Eusebius, whose Chronicle was translated, with additions, by
Jerome, and whose Ecclesiastical history was translated and continued by Rufinus
of Aquileia, was immense, in the west no less than in the east. In the west,
however, another factor supervened : an interest in the history of Rome, inspired
in the s by the attempted revival of paganism and pagan culture by Julian
and expressed largely by epitomes by abbreviators like Florus, Aurelius Victor,
Eutropius, and the Historia augusta, which expressed a view of Roman history
which was overwhelmingly urban and senatorial, and praised the virtues and
piety of the ancient Romans, as opposed to the Greek Christian interest, which
was concerned with the peace and order brought about by the Roman empire,
as contrasted with the imperialism and exactions of the Republic (pp. –).
There was, however, a third attitude, which Inglebert calls the Latin (p. ),
which saw the achievement of Rome in the extension of Roman citizenship to the
Italian peninsula and thence to the Mediterranean world, which could be
 
accompanied by a denunciation of unjust wars of domination, like the third
Punic war, the sack of Corinth and the taking of Numantia.
The urban and senatorial and the Latin views of early Roman history
profoundly affected those Latin theologians who were not persuaded by the
Eusebian view of the identification of the Roman empire and the Christian
Church. They could use the pagan historians of Rome both against the pagans
as evidence of pagan depravity, and as a rebuke to their fellow Christians who fell
below the moral level of the ages which lacked the illumination of Christianity.
This was the technique of Augustine, to whom Inglebert devotes a very long
section (pp. –), as the outstanding representative of the anti-Eusebian
reaction in the west. The De civitate Dei begins as an apologetic work against
paganism but develops into a philosophy of history in which worldly success and
failure provide no indication of the moral state of a society or its worth in the eyes
of God. As Inglebert trenchantly puts it : ‘ In three days in  a century of
eusebianism collapsed ’ (p. ). Yet the Eusebian outlook was a long time dying.
Orosius, a disciple of Augustine, wrote his Histories under its influence and book
 of the De civitate Dei seems to be directed against his views (pp. –).
What finally destroyed it in the west was the establishment of Arian Germanic
kingdoms and the end of the imperial line in , which left the theology of
Augustine with only one rival, in what Inglebert calls ‘ the heritage of Damasus ’
(p. ). Under Pope Damasus, a view had developed among the Roman clergy,
reflected in the Calendar of ƒ „ – ‘ un bon te! moin du milieu aristocratique de Rome
au milieu du e sie' cle ’ (p. ) – in which belief in the dual foundation of the
Roman Church by Peter and Paul had been replaced by the notion that St Peter
was not only the founder, but also the first bishop of Rome. The implications of
this change were reflected in the letters and sermons of Pope Leo the Great
(pp. –) and in the Chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine (pp. –). The more
spiritual theology of Augustine, which Inglebert calls ‘ l’hapax augustinien … une
position latine sous l’empire chre! tien ’ (p. ), which drew upon the pessimism
of Sallust and the republicanism of Cicero, was too subtle for ordinary medieval
theology, which preferred a political Augustinianism which completely mis-
understood Augustine’s theology.
The last Roman thinker to be studied by Inglebert is Sidonius Apollinaris, a
traditionalist Roman senator in a society from which the Roman empire had
passed away. For him, Rome had ceased to be either a religious reality, pagan
or Christian, even though he was a Catholic bishop in an Arian kingdom, or a
political entity. Rather, it was a cultural heritage, which had to be preserved and
passed on to future generations (p. ). It was the Petrine tradition of Damasus,
Innocent and Leo the Great which was destined, according to circumstances, to
complete or to oppose the Eusebian notion of the Roman empire which, however
unreal in the actual historical circumstances, continued to haunt men’s minds in
the Middle Ages.
Herve! Inglebert has made a notable contribution to the study of late Latin
Christian thought and his book will be a quarry for future generations of scholars.
D G B

Basil of Caesarea. By Philip Rousseau. (The Transformation of the Classical

Heritage, .) Pp. xx­ incl. map. Berkeley–Los Angeles–Oxford :
University of California Press, . $.    
    
Die Entwicklung der TrinitaX tslehre des Basilius von CaX sarea. Sein Weg vom HomoX usianer
zum NeonizaX ner. By Volker Henning Drecoll. (Forschungen zur Kirchen- und
Dogmengeschichte, .) Pp. xiv­­map. Go$ ttingen : Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, . DM .    
Basil of Caesarea, Homilien zum Hexaemeron. Edited by Emmanual Amand de
Mendieta and Stig Y. Rudberg. (Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller
der ersten Jahrhunderte, Neue Folge, .) Pp. xxii­. Berlin : Akademie
Verlag, . £.     ;  
The three books reviewed here all make important contributions, in different
ways, to the study of Basil of Caesarea and thus to our understanding of one of
the most vital periods in the development of Christian doctrine and institutions
in the later Roman empire. Philip Rousseau’s biography is a full and balanced
account of Basil’s life and work. The treatment is chronological, but at the same
time each chapter can be read as a more or less self-contained and penetrating
discussion of a particular theme in Basil’s career. His controversy with Eunomius,
his work of building up the Church (both as an institution and as the community
of the faithful) in the context of the civic society of Caesarea, his contribution to
monasticism, his painful doctrinal break with his friend Eustathius of Sebaste,
and his role in ecclesiastical politics during the reign of the Arian emperor Valens
– these are all dealt with in chs iv–viii following three chapters on his background,
education and early ascetic experiments in Pontus.
Rousseau understands Basil’s rhetorical and dialectical brilliance, and
perceives how he could use his talents to shape his readers’ understanding of
events and of his own past life. Basil’s relationship to philosophy and with
individuals such as Eustathius and Apollinaris of Laodicea were all more complex
than he would like us to believe. But, even though Rousseau draws attention to
the hiatuses in Basil’s intellectual development which are overlooked in less
critical accounts, this is no cynical deconstruction of Basil as a sincere churchman
and theologian. Rather, the impression he gives is one of profound sympathy and
admiration for his subject. While theology and the Christian life are not the main
theme of his treatment, Rousseau displays at numerous points a rare insight into
Basil the Christian thinker. He is particularly to be commended for his discussion
of the character and underlying motivation of Basil’s view of the monastic life,
which stresses personal progress through dialogue with others, theological
reflection and repentance (pp. –). It is also a pleasure to note the final
chapter on Basil’s Hexaemeron (or homilies on the six days of creation), which
brings out the richness of their theology and relates it to Basil’s earlier works.
It is not Rousseau’s goal to discuss every chronological problem. He accepts the
theory that Rufinus’ Latin version of Basil’s Rules preserves an earlier stage in the
evolution of the text, but does not discuss the differences between the Latin and
Greek versions systematically – this is still one of the most obvious important
lacunae in modern Basilian scholarship. He devotes an appendix to the date of
Basil’s death, which has become a crux of scholarship in recent years, but believes
that the arguments for an earlier date than the traditional  January  are
inconclusive.
Critical problems are much more to the fore, and personal engagement with
the subject much less in Volker Drecoll’s massive doctoral dissertation on the
development of Basil’s Trinitarian thought. Here one will find a much more
exhaustive treatment of many of the themes discussed in Rousseau’s book,
including Basil’s early correspondence with Apollinaris, his break with
 
Eustathius, and his response to Athanasius’ theology, as well as analyses of the
context and purpose of Basil’s major theological works, Contra Eunomium and De
spiritu sancto. The story of Basil’s theological evolution from a homoiousian to a
Nicene position on the Trinity is well-known in general terms ; the greater detail
which Drecoll provides reflects the increasing attention paid in recent scholarship
to the later phase of the Arian controversy and to the church parties which it
generated (see works by H. C. Brennecke, W. A. Lo$ hr and D. H. Williams
among others).
Drecoll emphasises that Basil did not, in becoming a Nicene, abandon his
homoiousian inheritance, but modified it under the influence of his new
knowledge of Nicene thought in }, and continued to hold to it as he
simultaneously came to terms with Athanasius’ views in the Contra Eunomium (p.
). Basil’s correspondence with Apollinaris, however, is not to be taken,
according to Drecoll, as evidence of a direct and significant influence of this
important pro-Nicene figure on Basil (pp. , –). A more controversial
feature of Drecoll’s work will be his use of Basil’s ep. xxxviii as evidence of his
views in the period after writing De spiritu sancto. Drecoll believes that the case for
Gregory of Nyssa’s authorship of the letter has not been conclusively established,
and that it provides a powerful insight into Basil’s later thought (see esp. p. ).
Finally, we come to the edition of Basil’s Hexaemeron, originally undertaken by
Emmanuel Amand de Mendieta (whose interesting scholarly and ecclesiastical
career ended with his death as long ago as ), which has been completed and
published by his friend S. Y. Rudberg. The new text is printed with an apparatus
of biblical references, of philosophical and scientific sources, of textual variants
and of scholia and glosses taken from some of the manuscripts. A full lexical index
follows. The Greek text is somewhat crabbed in appearance. The introduction is
brief and devoted mainly to a discussion of the textual materials ; only a few
paragraphs discuss the contents of the work and its origins. While this new edition
is to be welcomed, it is unlikely to supersede the Sources ChreU tiennes edition by S.
Giet for general use ; and for English-speaking scholars a modern translation and
extensive commentary on this work remains an unfulfilled desideratum.
K’ C, G G
L

A history of Canterbury Cathedral. Edited by Patrick Collinson, Nigel Ramsay and

Margaret Sparks. Pp. xxii­­ colour plates,  plans and figs­
black-and-white plates. Oxford : Oxford University Press, . £.  
 X
This fine volume appeared just two years before Canterbury Cathedral celebrated
the th anniversary of the mission of St Augustine to the kingdom of Kent,
and is an important addition to the many commemorations of that event. Twelve
contributors provide us with a rich history of the development of the cathedral
and the community which has served it for fourteen centuries. Seven chapters
take a chronological approach, and the remaining five deal with the cathedral
archives and library (Nigel Ramsay), liturgy and music (Roger Bowers), the
medieval and the post-Reformation monuments (Christopher Wilson and
Katharine Eustace respectively) and the cathedral school (Margaret Sparks).
What emerges from the first chapter, in which Nicholas Brooks faces the task of
    
covering  years, is the speed with which Canterbury achieved its dominant
position, a success which was largely due to the cathedral’s economic pre-
eminence. He argues for an early date for the substantial endowment of the
community, which by  – and he suggests a great deal sooner – controlled a
quarter of Kent. This wealth enabled the cathedral and its archbishops to survive
the changing political climate which came with Mercian overlordship in the
eighth century and West Saxon from the ninth. The Conquest brought with it
famous names like Lanfranc and later Anselm, but what emerges from Margaret
Gibson’s chapter is the dominance of the priors of Canterbury, a formidable
succession of men who presided over the establishment of an archive, an active
scriptorium, and a transformation of the fabric of the cathedral. The gradual
separation of the chapter under these men from the ‘ glittering household ’ of the
archbishops becomes apparent until, by  ‘ the only common ground between
the community and its archbishop was the cult of Becket ’ (p. ). Barrie
Dobson’s chapter begins in , with the triumphant translation of Becket’s
tomb to the site where it remained until , and a dominant theme is once
again the tensions between archbishop and chapter. However, we also gain a
clear picture of the learning of Canterbury, with the appearance of Canterbury
monks at Oxford, and the construction of a new library in the s and s.
The Reformation brought with it the question of what function or purpose a
cathedral should now serve, and it is with consideration of this that Patrick
Collinson begins his chapter covering the years  to , in which he
discusses the impact of the ‘ new establishment ’, of the Laudian programme, and
finally of the Civil War. Jeremy Gregory considers the cathedral as an institution
and a community, and its relation to the city, diocese and county through, for
example, its patronage of parish churches, between the Restoration of  and
the  parliamentary legislation which ‘ drastically affected the Constitution
and cathedral bodies ’ (p. ). This period also saw the pilgrimage traffic of the
Middle Ages replaced by a minor tourist industry, a development to which the
dean and chapter reacted swiftly by the financing of histories and guide books.
A major theme in Peter Nockles’s chapter is how expectations of the relations
between cathedral and city changed in the late nineteenth century : in the s
all cathedrals attracted the interest of reformers who questioned the use of these
institutions, and were affected by the creation of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners
in  and by the  Cathedrals Act. Keith Robbins in his treatment of the
twentieth century evokes the world of the cathedral close, and brings to life the
great names, from the Victorian Dean Farrar, and Dean Bell with whom the
‘ twentieth-century history of Canterbury Cathedral might properly be said to
begin ’ (p. ). Bell it was who took stock of the attitude of the cathedral to
visitors, and consciously endeavoured to make it a more welcoming and less
prohibitive place, and who brought broadcasting to the mother church of the
diocese. Robbins also considers the impact of two great wars on Canterbury, and
the chapter and cathedral’s role in the twentieth-century ecumenical movement.
Themes discussed or touched on in these seven chapters are brought together and
amplified in the five later chapters. These raise questions, for instance, of why the
survival of the library was poor in comparison with, for example, that of Durham,
and the impact of the genealogical ‘ bug ’ on the cathedral archives ; and how
concepts of order and hierarchy of space affected the disposition of monuments
within the cathedral. One of the strengths of this volume is how the chapters
constantly return to common themes which dominated the history of the
 
cathedral : the scholarship of Canterbury ; the relationship between the cathedral
and its archbishops ; the cathedral in the context of city and county ; the
archbishops and deans in the life of the Church of England and the Anglican
communion ; the cathedral as landlord and economic force. The six colour and
 black-and-white plates add to the richness of the book and are beautifully
selected. This is a handsome volume at – for its size – a remarkably low price.
U  W, J B
L

Symeon the holy fool. Leontius’s Life and the late antique city. By Derek Krueger. Pp.
xvi­. Berkeley–Los Angeles–London : University of California Press,
. £ ($).    
This publication represents a valuable contribution to discussion on the nature
of the holy in the late ancient world in the east Mediterranean basin, on the
development of the genre of hagiography and on the fate of late ancient urban
culture. The book is organised into seven chapters, with an appendix consisting
of a translation of the Life. Krueger sets out to analyse the Life of Symeon the holy
fool in respect of the social and cultural context in which it originated, Cyprus in
the s immediately before the first Arab attacks on the island and its eventual
occupation. His main purpose is to look at the Life (and related works of Leontius
of Neapolis) as a source for the history of the period in which it was written ; and
at the development of this particular variant on late ancient hagiography. In
some respects, the title of the book misrepresents the contents, since although
there is some discussion of the late ancient city this subject plays a very minor role
in the book (and the author’s conclusions can be challenged on one or two issues,
although his summary of the discussion and the contribution of the evidence from
the Life is helpful). The emphasis is on the Life and on hagiography. Krueger
arrives at some important and interesting conclusions, including the fact that the
non-Christian elements in the development of this genre are especially important
if we are to grasp why it was that the image of the holy fool could work as an
exemplar (an image which Krueger traces back to the early fifth century,
although in a somewhat different form, in the Christian literary tradition). He
stresses that, in spite of the scandalous and shameless behaviour exhibited by the
saint upon his arrival in Emesa, Symeon is presented by the hagiographer in the
first part of the Life as a model holy figure and monk, pious, devout and ascetic
in his ways. Frequent parallels with the life of Christ are included, which Krueger
argues were incorporated as didactic episodes to edify and instruct the listener or
reader. But, by the same token, his deviant behaviour and his ‘ concealed
sanctity ’ are explained as stylistic devices intended both to stress the saint’s real
holiness and devotion to God and to highlight the hypocrisy of urban society,
devices which worked because, Krueger argues, the image of the cynic – a man
who deliberately sets out to challenge all the norms of social behaviour in order
to reveal their shallowness – remained current in the late ancient educational–
pedagogical tradition in the form of stories about Diogenes of Sinope. Symeon’s
absurd behaviour and the physical discomfort that accompanied it – both in
terms of his own actions and dress and in terms of the physical abuse which
follows – thus served a double purpose, concealing his true identity as a real holy
man, and at the same time enabling him to ‘ transcend his body ’, in Krueger’s
    
words. It functioned hence as another form of ascetic praxis. In short, this is a
useful contribution to an important discussion.
C  B,
O  M G S, J H
U  B

The Germanization of early medieval Christianity. A sociohistorical approach to religious

transformation. By James C. Russell. Pp. xiii­. New York–Oxford :
Oxford University Press, . £.    
In Germany the topic of the ‘ Germanisation of Christianity ’ was as much an
argument for, as a result of, National Socialism ; worse than that, an argument for
a ‘ German Christianity ’. Small wonder, then, that scarcely anyone in Germany
still talks about the subject. Nowadays one tends to refer to the German peoples
as ‘ primitive cultures ’ with a correspondingly ‘ simple ’ or even ‘ archaic ’ religion.
The encounter with Christianity, according to the Germanist W. Haubrichs,
occurred only at a rather elementary level. However, it is less this ‘ low ’ culture
but rather the small population that limited the scope for Germanisation ; in Gaul
one is talking of five million Gallo-Romans and roughly , Franks. It is,
therefore, astonishing that a book of Anglo-Saxon origin should again speak of
‘ Germanisation ’ and, what is more, of a substantial one (p. ). Has German
research of the last thirty years perhaps gone too far to the other extreme ?
The reader’s illusions are soon shattered. Germanic influence, we are told,
manifested itself in the proprietary church system and the proprietary monastery
system, both of which have long been shown to have existed in a Byzantine and
also a Slavic context ; in the cult of relics, even though its pre-Germanic origin in
the Church is later admitted (p. ) ; above all Germanisation is made to
account for the ‘ warrior code ’ : Christ as a victorious Germanic warlord. But
what, then, was Constantine’s dream of the cross as a sign of victory ? Russell also
still sees the comitatus (Gefolgschaft), once seen as the touchstone of a national
German character, as a ‘ distinguishing feature of early medieval Germanic
society ’ (p. ), even though F. L. Ganshof identified it as a universal
phenomenon of pre-state societies and found it in other societies than the
medieval. For Russell, however, the consequences of the German warlike spirit
as well as the comitatus extend as far as the crusades and the knightly orders. In
this context Russell refers to the code of behaviour of public shame, and one
would have appreciated more light on this from the relevant Anglo-Saxon
ethnographic literature, since ‘ shame culture ’ and ‘ guilt culture ’ are now almost
standard expressions in Germany. In dealing with the Adelsheilige, a model that
undoubtedly existed, it should have been recognised that there is nothing
specifically German about a nobility, and further that aristocratic bishops are
found in Gaul before the Franks, as Strohecker proved many years ago. The
assertion that Columba, who propagated the first penitential on the continent,
emphasised ‘ personal, inner sins ’ (p. ) stands in direct contradiction to
C. Vogel’s important research on the concept of penitence in the penitentials, for
he established the complete lack of reference to inner sin. Russell tries to com-
pensate for the well-known dearth of evidence for Germanic religion (p. ) by
maintaining that ultimately it is the Indo-European religion explored by
G. Dume! zil that unites Greeks, Romans, Celts and Slavs. To deduce from this that
 
Christianity has been ‘ Indo-Europeanised ’ (p. ) might have been helpful had
not Dume! zil himself long ago abandoned it : ‘ The consonance of an Indian and
Greek or Scandinavian name seemed to justify the claim for access to a common
Indo-European belief. But in the course of the years only few of these equations
could be sustained ’ (Mythos und Epos, ). Another of his premises, that the term
‘ Germanic ’ includes Gothic, Frankish, Saxon, Burgundian, Alamanic, Suevic
and Vandal peoples, and even Vikings and Scandinavians, is no longer shared by
scholars on the continent ; rather it is believed that after the so-called
Voelkerwanderung there was no continuing consciousness of a common Germanic
identity, and that the Nordic sagas in particular cannot be seen as a genuine
expression of this common Germanic world, and finally that the Germania of
Tacitus can no longer be taken at face value. As the central event of the
Germanisation of the Church Russell identifies the ‘ Germanic ’ liturgy transferred
by the Ottonians to Rome. This, however, was nothing more than the Roman
liturgy of the Carolingian age, supplemented by a few ‘ simple ’ forms which
reached Rome under the Ottonians in a single copy and there achieved a very
wide diffusion through the Pontificale Romano-Germanicum. The extraordinary
result of this single event was, we are told, that ‘ Roman Catholicism was
predominantly European and Germanic ’ (p. vii).
It is striking that Russell mainly quotes and discusses secondary sources. As far
as German publications are concerned he seems unaware of the (problematic)
background of some of their authors, and the more recent research of the last
thirty years he ignores. Three points derived from recent research should be
noted here. Firstly, Karl Hauck and others have shown that the large hoards
of bracteates discovered in southern Scandinavia do testify to the existence of
Germanic central shrines, but reveal an iconography that is not genuinely
Germanic at all, but rather derived from Roman coin-images. What then is
‘ purely Germanic ’ ? Hauck rightly identifies the Germans who had the Roman
empire as their neighbours as a fringe culture. Secondly, Russell could have
found support for his ‘ socio-historical approach ’ in a whole series of new insights,
most significantly in the investigation of memoria conducted by G. Tellenbach, K.
Schmid, J. Wollasch and O. G. Oexle. They have shown how religious
communities united by fraternity in prayer formed a network which covered and
reinforced the cohesion of the Carolingian empire. Finally, Russell could have
expanded on the phenomenon of private masses (p. ) which is dealt with all
too briefly. Not only the mass, but all rituals were adapted to family purposes and
interests. This is most striking with godparenting, which, first in Byzantium, then
in Gaul and also very early in England was used as a means to form artificial
bonds of kinship (see B. Jussen, ‘ Patenschaft ’, LexMA, with bibliography).
Finally, it would be valuable to reverse the question, and to consider whether
there were not Christian influences which altered Germanic ways of thought and
life. On all this Russell is silent.
What remains is an account not of Germanisation but of a confrontation of
Christianity with the Germans but at a modest level. Read in this light, the book
has some acceptable passages, if not particularly novel ones.
W$  W-U$  M$  A A
    
Corpus of Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture, IV : South-east England. By Dominic Tweddle,
Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle. Pp. xviii­ incl. frontispiece,
 figs,  tables and  black-and-white plates­ colour plate. Oxford :
Oxford University Press (for the British Academy), , £.    
The first foray into the south by the Corpus is an exciting landmark in the history
of the project. Covering, as it does, the regions containing the cradle of Anglo-
Saxon Christianity and education, Canterbury, and what has been described as
‘ the greatest group of royal and ecclesiastical buildings in any city of its time
north of the Alps ’, Winchester, the importance of this volume for cultural
historians is self-evident. It is true that to some extent the cultural black holes
remain. Assiduous gathering-in has not produced sculpture comparable in
quantity to Northumbrian productions for the period –, and only a small
proportion of carving in the later period, to , occurs outwith an architectural
context. None the less the publication strongly supports Dominic Tweddle’s view
that in quality and variety of form and decoration, the sculpture of the south-east
must no longer be regarded as ‘ a meagre footnote to the sculptural riches of
Northumbria ’.
The volume is divided into two sections. The first covers Kent, Surrey, Sussex
and Hampshire and a selected group of monuments north of the Thames
included, we are told, because they were catalogued in Tweddle’s  PhD
thesis, which covered these regions. The other section provides, ahead of
publication in Winchester Studies, a catalogue in Corpus format, of  carved stones
retrieved by Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle in their excavations of the
Old and New Minster. The preparation of the Winchester material for the Corpus
occasioned detailed geological analyses by Bernard C. Worsaam which, as the
general editor, Rosemary Cramp notes, have significantly advanced knowledge
of the geological picture of the region. Other specialists have as usual been
generous with their expertise. Of these one might single out John Higgitt, whose
discussions of the inscriptions is characteristically wide-ranging, each a cultural
essay in its own right.
The primary aims of the Corpus are to assemble standardised factual records of
the sculpture and to provide informed discussion by current specialists. The
discussions conclude with suggested dates for the individual pieces but these are
not intended, as has sometimes been implied, as fixed, enshrined, dates. The
problem of dating hangs over this volume, as it did with the earlier ones. Issues
such as how styles and repertoires relate to chronology surface from time to time,
but are not resolved, and indeed perhaps cannot be in this format. For all
Dominic Tweddle’s careful work on the archaeology, style and iconography of
the Reculver Cross it cannot be said that its date is now established. Perhaps as
a result of the requirements of the underlying PhD thesis, Tweddle’s discussion,
with its avalanche of stylistic analogies, is too dogmatic. The Corpus format would
have allowed him to take a wider view. His attitude to the serious contribution
by Ruth Kozodoy, who argued for a date in the early seventh century, is
somewhat patronising in tone, and his own preferred date of early ninth century
is overly dependent on the findings in a long unpublished PhD thesis on BL,  
Royal .E.VI. On the other hand, his account will be the necessary starting point
for all further studies of a monument fundamental to the understanding of the
development of Anglo-Saxon sculpture. It must be said that in some ways the
Corpus format is least sympathetic to major monuments, involving an awkward
division between an introductory study and the catalogue entry itself. To
 
Tweddle also falls discussion of the series of architectural roods near Winchester.
He sorts out authoritatively the relationship of carved blocks to the fabric in
which they are inserted, itself often of debatable date. He is less concerned with
the spiritual implications of the monuments.
The Biddles’ account of their material is characteristically exhaustive. Their
demonstration of the relationship of the carved fragments to the demolition stages
of the Old Minster can be said, without affectation, to be riveting. Astonishing
indeed is the figure on p.  showing the trench-plan of the Old Minster with
the find-spots and ornament type of carved fragments. It is the particular gift of
the Biddles that while they write of the often sadly battered carvings with a
thoroughly scientific precision and logical rigour, again and again their
descriptions have an attractive con amore quality attributable to long scrutiny.
The entry for the famous block of narrative frieze is now supported by excellent
photography. There can be no doubt that we have here a representation of the
episode in the Volsunga Saga where the prostrate and bound Sigmund, by the
ruse of having his mouth smeared with honey, is able to bite out the tongue of
the wolf and so kill it ; a clear instance of a highly specific image relating to a text.
Meanings here are fully explored. The publication of other figural fragments
further supports the view of the Biddles that the frieze was an extensive one,
perhaps as long as the Bayeux Tapestry, with which, they suggest, it shares an
origin in an older tradition of narrative art displayed in a variety of media.
Readers will find throughout the volume much that is revelatory about such
matters as the use of pigment and whitewash, the use or non-use of Roman
materials (the discussion of balusters is particularly interesting), quarrying and
carving and the awareness of wooden prototypes. All concerned are to be
congratulated on the uncompromising maintenance of the standards of the
project in what David Wilson, chairman of the Corpus Committee, rightly calls
‘ difficult times ’. Special tribute, however, must be paid to the unflagging work
of the ‘ home team ’, Rosemary Cramp, Eric Cambridge and Derek Craig.
N C, I H
C

Charters of Shaftesbury Abbey. Edited by S. E. Kelly. (Anglo-Saxon Charters, .)

Pp. xxxviii­ incl.  map­ plates. Oxford : Oxford University Press
(for the British Academy), . £.    
In its edition of all the pre-Conquest English charters, the British Academy has
now reached vol. v, Charters of Shaftesbury Abbey. Shaftesbury, though one of the
more prosperous religious houses, and provided with two richly varied cartularies,
has been unduly neglected, and Kelly’s edition is doubly welcome, as a fine
addition to a notable series, and as a study of the early development of a wealthy
royal abbey. Shaftesbury was founded by King Alfred (though his alleged charter
is shown not to be what it seems) and became the centre of two royal cults, that
of St Ælfgifu, first wife of King Edmund (and mother to Edgar) and that of the
murdered Edward the Martyr, whose name was added to the original dedication
to the Virgin. The abbey’s endowment was (a few outlying manors apart)
remarkably compact, concentrated on either side of the Wiltshire–Dorset border,
and not the least valuable part of this book is the detailed study of the boundary
clauses which define the estates, and the accompanying map of the main
    
holdings. The manuscript which preserves the pre-Conquest material (BL, 
Harleian ) is late (early fifteenth century) and the texts have inevitably
suffered some damage through repeated copying. Kelly renders them intelligible
and in the process brings out many matters of local and national interest. One
example must suffice. Edmund’s charter granting Beechingstoke, Wilts, to his
vassalus Eadric has been a problem ; it ‘ stands out among Eadmund’s charters ’ for
the oddity of its phrasing and its drafter was perhaps some one ‘ not regularly
involved in charter-production ’. The now corrupt text is difficult to comprehend
but the long preamble seems to labour the point that ‘ the beneficiary has
committed himself and his descendants to the service of the king in return for the
land ’. Kelly relates the charter to the post-Conquest dispute over the estate
between the abbey and Harding fitzAlnoth, which ‘ may have some bearing on
[its] unique qualities ’, but regards it as probably genuine, since it ‘ does not seem
in any way to support Shaftesbury’s position ’. It does, however, support that of
Harding, who claimed to hold in feudo (i.e. of the king) ; and since he may in fact
be Harding son of Eadnoth, son of a royal staller, and himself a royal justice in
William ’s reign, one is tempted to suppose that it was his title-deed to the estate,
appropriated by Shaftesbury when the dispute was eventually resolved in the
abbey’s favour. In this instance, as in the remainder of the volume, Kelly’s
detailed investigations not only illustrate the charter’s value, but also provoke
further thought ; which is precisely what such a series ought to promote. This is
an excellent volume, and the editor deserves heartfelt congratulations.
W, A W
L

St Oswald of Worcester. Life and influence. Edited by Nicholas Brooks and Catherine
Cubitt. (Studies in the Early History of Britain. The Makers of England, .)
Pp. xvii­ incl.  figs and  plates. London–New York : Leicester
University Press, . £..    
The later Anglo-Saxon saints Dunstan and Æthelwold have recently been the
subjects of millenially commemorative volumes of essays in which the traditional
scholarly and ‘ hagiographical ’ picture of the reformer bishops, as presented by
Knowles, Stenton and Robinson among others, has been severely criticised and
modified. Continuing this revisionist trend is a new volume of richly detailed and
skilful studies commemorating the third member of Knowles’s ‘ great tri-
umvirate ’ : Oswald, bishop of Worcester –, archbishop of York –, and
co-founder of Ramsey and other monasteries (it should be noted at the outset that
most of the essays, originally presented at a  Worcester conference, assume
a specialist audience well-grounded in earlier scholarship on Oswald and the
Anglo-Saxon reform era in general). Implicit throughout the collection, and
often explicit, is the view that Oswald’s human individuality, not to mention his
sanctity, is essentially unknowable, owing to the unreliability of the only
biography, the lack of writings by Oswald himself, and the difficulty of
attributing surviving manuscript books to his personal ownership or initiative, or
to the communities he founded or controlled. Michael Lapidge, for example, in
a typically incisive source study of Byrhtferth of Ramsey’s idiosyncratic Vita Sancti
Oswaldi (c. –), further undermines the Vita’s value as a witness to
Oswald’s life and times while urging us to read it as an ‘ impassioned apologia ’
 
for Benedictine spirituality. Certainly, Oswald’s own spirituality is hard to find
in Donald Bullough’s biographical introduction, a nuanced appraisal of the
bishop’s career and its sources, the most tangible of which is the collection of
eighty or so authentic Worcester charters, comprising mainly land-leases issued
by Oswald himself to a network of his relatives, retainers and other associates. In
Bullough’s words, the Worcester charters detail ‘ the kind of activity that …
prompts every generation of clergy to wonder whether bishops have souls ’. The
Worcester document collection, along with Oswaldian charters from Ramsey
Abbey and elsewhere, is the subject of intense, expert and sometimes duplicated
exploitation in several essays whose main concerns are with social, economic and
legal history, and with urban and political geography (those of Andrew
Wareham, Julia Barrow, Vanessa King, Patrick Wormald, Nigel Baker and
Richard Holt, Stephen Bassett and Christopher Dyer). The placing of this block
of socio-economic studies in the centre of the volume lends tacit support to the
tenor of Bullough’s remark, and one is not all that surprised to find Barrow
concluding, albeit tentatively, that Oswald never did introduce, gradually or
otherwise, the reformed life at Worcester’s main church, St Peter’s (he contented
himself with establishing alongside it a new community, St Mary’s). Rather it
was Wulfstan  (–) who turned St Peter’s into a true Benedictine
monastery and, as Emma Mason’s essay argues, fulfilled the pattern of sanctity
fashioned by Byrhtferth in his Vita Oswaldi. Corroborating this scenario is
Richard Gameson’s thorough investigation of the elusive evidence for book
production at Worcester, where it appears that neither a distinctive scriptorial
style nor a notable quantity of texts was produced until the time of Wulfstan .
Like Susan Rankin’s study of the musical notation associated with Oswald’s
largely post-Conquest cult, Alicia Correa# ’s ground-breaking exploration of the
manuscript evidence for liturgical activity in Oswald’s circle likewise belies
earlier assumptions, in this case about his importation of Fleury customs
(Correa# ’s essay is important inter alia for its appended edition of thirty-three
unpublished mid tenth-century prayers from BL Royal .A.xx). Among the
collection’s more wide-ranging contributions is John Nightingale’s study of tenth-
century Fleury itself, in which he argues that, to its numerous foreign visitors, the
abbey was less important as a nursery of reform than as the centre of St Benedict’s
relics cult. In a similar connection, perhaps the volume’s sharpest picture of
Oswald’s doings outside the economic and administrative sphere is by Alan
Thacker, who explores the various saints’ cults at Oswald’s houses up to  and
includes the suggestion that the production, at Ramsey and elsewhere in the late
tenth century, of new hagiographies commemorating earlier royal murder
victims was Oswald’s calculated response to the assassination of Edward the
Martyr in  at the height of the ‘ anti-monastic reaction ’.
Q C, E. G W
C U  N Y

Popular religion in late Saxon England. Elf charms in context. By Karen Louise Jolly.
Pp. x­ incl.  ills and  maps. Chapel Hill–London : University of North
Carolina Press, . $. (cloth), $. (paper).     ;
   
This is another of those books that would have been better had they been shorter.
    
The first three chapters treat of the conversion of the Saxons (or as most call
them, the Anglo-Saxons) to Christianity, the spread of churches and the
development of their teaching, particularly in the period c. . These chapters
are full of common-places dressed as learned comments, and are repetitive, often
tediously so – the text reads as if it were written in bits which were then loosely
joined together into a whole that tends to the inconsequential. There is of course
the truth in them, though it is not a particularly profound truth – that the sources
illustrate ‘ the intermingling of a Christian worldview and Germanic folklore ’,
with consequent difficulty in using a modern word such as ‘ magic ’ to describe
some of the thought and action. And there are of course useful passages – the
relationship between herbal medicine and God’s capacity for healing as recorded
in Ælfric’s writings, for instance. Jolly’s discussion in ch. v of the elf charms of
BL,  Harley  (Lacnunga) and Royal  D. xvii (Bald’s Leechbook) is the
most important part of this study – though it spreads well beyond the subject
of elf charms. She takes the sensible approach that not all that is not overtly
Christian is to be taken as pagan, adducing instead the concepts of ‘ Christian
folk-lore ’, ‘ folk Christianity ’, ‘ accommodation processes ’ – here she takes issue
with earlier writers (for example Storms) on the subject. On the other hand, she
does write of the ‘ clerical ’ nature of the Lacnunga (‘ a manuscript of clerical
origin ’), without explaining in detail what she means by ‘ clerical ’. What is clear
about this manuscript (compared with the Leechbook) is that it is of a format
suitable for carrying in a pack, and so more obviously a general practitioner’s
travelling reference work. One is bound to wonder, perhaps unjustifiably, about
Jolly’s command of Old English. Some translations are grammatically confusing
(for example, ‘ existence ’ [wunigende], p.  ; ‘ cursing charms ’ [wyrigedum galdrum],
p. ) ; and it is not unreasonable to question her general use of the form galdra
as a common plural. Indeed, an acquaintance with philological method could
have helped her at several points – as in her discussion of the connotations of
galdor, where the material listed in the Toronto Microfiche Concordance shows
gloss links with words like Marsi, necromantia, praestigiae. Or in examining OE ælf,
to consider the significance of its common use as a personal name element, or
indeed as the first element of place-names (was an Elveden a welcoming or a
threatening place to be ?). But this is a struggle philologists have been engaged in
for a long time, and show no signs of winning.
C C C, R. I. P
C

Benzo von Alba, Sieben BuX cher an Kaiser Heinrich IV. Edited and translated by
Hans Seyffert. (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores rerum
Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, .) Pp. x­.
Hanover : Hahnsche Buchhandlung, . DM .     ; 

Bishop Benzo of Alba was in possession of his Ligurian see by , and his
literary activity culminated in his collection of his writings made in  or soon
after for presentation to the Emperor Henry  of Germany. He was Henry’s
strident partisan against Gregory  as archdeacon and as pope, and against
Gregory’s two papal predecessors, Nicholas  and Alexander . His collage-like
 
compilation, as Horst Fuhrmann describes it in a foreword to Seyffert’s edition,
survives only in a manuscript now in the University Library at Uppsala ; it may
be Benzo’s own autograph, and at the very least it appears to have been prepared
under his supervision. Seyffert’s edition replaces that by Karl Pertz in MGH
Scriptores xi (), which presented an accurate transcription of the text in the
Uppsala manuscript, but which had two serious weaknesses. First, Benzo mostly
wrote items in poetry or rhyming prose which in the manuscript are set out in
ways that Pertz did not make clear for the purposes of literary and cultural
historians. Secondly, Pertz’s annotations to the subject matter and to the
language, which is often obscure and idiosyncratic, were meagre and too often
misleading ; they were only partly made good by H. Lehmgru$ bner’s still useful
monograph of . Seyffert’s careful and thorough edition and en face German
translation are, therefore, most welcome since they make Benzo’s text more
intelligible and readily usable than hitherto. No further writings by Benzo
survive, although Seyffert gives interesting references in a German library-
catalogue of  to a letter and a poem which are, like some letters in the
collection, addressed to Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen ; this confirms that letters
such as Benzo included were, indeed, sent, while the poem, and perhaps the
letter, may have been additional items. Almost all that is known about Benzo
depends on the evidence of his collection. Seyffert argues cogently against the
suggestion that, in view of his use of Greek vocabulary and of his intense hatred
of the Normans, his origins may have been south Italian. Despite the relentless
vituperation, often in the coarsest terms, of Asinandrellus and Prandellus
(Alexander  and Hildebrand), one notices in Benzo a by no means dismissive
attitude to the earlier stages of papal reform which goes beyond merely
underwriting imperial authority. He warmly approved the Emperor Henry ’s
intervention at Rome in  according to his own construction of it ; but also of
the popes themselves, from Clement  – ‘ rightly so called, for he was good and
kind, and pleasing to God and man ’ – to Victor , whom the Romans rightly
received with great joy, he spoke well. Benzo’s writings were not without nuances
that indicate a genuine concern for better things in the Church. They must be set
against the predominating reminders of the milieu of Anselm of Besate, with its
distasteful intellectual life and careerism in the imperial service. Seyffert’s edition
opens Benzo’s writings for fresh appraisal.
S E H, H. E. J. C
O

Charters of St Bartholemew’s Priory, Sudbury. Edited by Richard Mortimer. (Suffolk

Charters, .) Pp. xx­ incl.  map. Woodbridge : Boydell Press (for the
Suffolk Records Society), . £..    X ;  
The monastic establishment which is the focus of this immaculately produced
contribution to the series of Suffolk Charters was distinguished by its obscurity.
Created in the early twelfth century as a dependency of Westminster Abbey, St
Bartholemew’s seems never to have been more than a place of temporary or
longer-term retreat for monks of the great mother house. In the fourteenth
century no more than a couple of monks inhabited the place ; and the final
document in the collection, of , is the touching ‘ appointment by George,
    
abbot of Westminster, of Dom Thomas Flete, fellow monk of Westminster, to be
prior of St Bartholemew’s for the term of his life, to grant him some rest after his
strenuous labours ’. Nevertheless this humble rural cell attracted a modest corpus
of endowments during the thirteenth century, recorded in charters which
comprise the bulk of this collection. The donors were principally men and women
of Long Melford and Sudbury, upon which neighbouring small towns some
sidelights are shed. It is unclear how far lay generosity was stimulated by the
prestige of the Westminster connection, although it is notable that the abbot in
the early thirteenth century had granted to all benefactors of St Bartholemew’s
confraternity and participation in the spiritual benefits of the great monastery. As
the editor suggests, such satellites should not be regarded solely as economic
liabilities. Indeed, they could mediate the fame of the mother house even to
relatively remote local communities.
S C’ C, G R
O

Celtic Christianity in early medieval Wales. The origins of the Welsh spiritual tradition. By
Oliver Davies. Pp. xii­. Cardiff : University of Wales Press, .
£. (paper).    X
This is a welcome introduction to a difficult but rewarding subject. Its first
chapter discusses the Latin and Welsh Lives of the Celtic saints Samson, Beuno
and David, written long after they were dead. The second and third chapters deal
with Welsh poetry (divided into the categories of penitential verse and praise
poems) in the thirteenth-century Black Book of Carmarthen. Much of this poetry is
anonymous and of uncertain date. However, three poems discussed by Davies
were shown in  to be the work of Master John of St David’s, whose name
figures in St David’s documents of between  and . Davies implicitly
denies this attribution (p. ), but his reasoning does not stand scrutiny. The
fourth chapter discusses early poetry in the fourteenth-century Book of Taliesin.
Some of this is clearly Christian, some of it (according to Davies) contains druidic
symptoms. The fifth chapter deals with the religious verse of the so-called ‘ poets
of the princes ’, active between about  and . It includes an analysis of the
famous ‘ deathbed poem ’ of the bard Meilyr (d. ), with his wish to be buried
on the holy island of Bardsey, off the Gwynedd coast. The final chapter deals with
the mystical prose text ‘ The food of the soul ’ contained in the fourteenth-century
Book of the Anchorite belonging to Jesus College, Oxford. This chapter is important,
since it contains translations of large parts of that text, now made available in
English for the first time. It is thus easier for non-Celticists to place ‘ The food of
the soul ’ in the context of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century English and
continental mysticism. Davies’s book will, therefore, have long-term value as a
collection of Welsh religious texts in translation. As for Davies’s theological
learning, which takes us from Celtic head-hunting to Hans Urs von Balthasar,
this is certainly wide-ranging. But his analysis often fails to convince. Sometimes
he is factually wrong. One instance is his derivation (pp. , ) of the word
‘ druid ’ (Welsh derwydd) from ‘ oak ’ (derw) : he is unaware that this picturesque
etymology has long been rejected by competent scholars, who derive derwydd from
British *do-are-uid- ‘ one knowing much ’. He consistently mis-spells the name of
Professor Stuart Piggott. Such criticisms notwithstanding, Owen Davies has
 
written a stimulating and attractive book, which will do much to encourage study
of early Welsh Christianity.
U  N, A B
P

Defenders of the Holy Land. Relations between the Latin east and the west, ‰–ˆ‡. By
Jonathan Phillips. Pp. xvi­ incl.  maps and  genealogical tables.
Oxford : Clarendon Press, . £.    
In a seminal article, published in , R. C. Smail drew attention to the
numerous contacts between the Frankish Levant and Catholic Europe that took
place in the period between the Second and Third Crusades, and claimed that
about once in five years a crisis in the east led to appeals for help from the west.
Jonathan Phillips now deals with these relations in great detail, broadens the
chronological range to the years – and convincingly replaces Smail’s
model of five-year cycles with a far more irregular pattern. He shows that it was
not only military assistance that the appeals aimed at, but also money and
the recruitment of husbands for important Frankish heiresses. In each case he
attempts to establish whether the appeal originated with an individual or an
institution ; whether the envoys conveying the request to the west were
ecclesiastics, nobles or members of the military orders ; whether the recipients in
the west had family ties in the Frankish Levant ; and whether the appeal elicited
the desired response. The main longitudinal trend he detects is a rise, from the
mid s onward, in the envoys’ status, with the range of recipients broadening
and the appeals becoming more sophisticated. But Phillips (who acknowledges
his debt to Smail’s  article to the point that he erroneously cites it by a title
that well-nigh duplicates the subtitle of his own current book) goes well beyond
Smail’s theme. His true subject is not the connexion between the Frankish Levant
and the west, but the overall mobilisation and utilisation of external support by
the Franks. Hence he deals with the Franks’ appeals to Byzantium no less
thoroughly than with their appeals to the west, analyses the activities of
Raymond of Poitiers upon his arrival in Antioch in , discusses at length the
possible reasons for the deflection of the Second Crusade from Edessa to
Damascus, and so forth. He might have broadened the book’s scope still further
by discussing the mobilisation of external financial help for the construction of
Outremer’s churches, or by considering such problems as why the eight prelates
from Outremer who participated in the Third Lateran Council of  did not
induce it to issue a call for a new crusade (a question raised by Hermann Reuter
back in ). Yet even in its present form the book throws fresh light on several
crucial chapters in the political history of the Frankish states.
T H U  J B Z. K

Texts of the Passion. Latin devotional literature and medieval society. By Thomas H.
Bestul. (Middle Ages Series.) Pp. viii­. Philadelphia : University of
Pennsylvania Press, . $.. p   X
This stimulating volume seeks to establish the social context for the production
of medieval devotional texts centring on Christ’s Passion. It is more a collection
    
of essays than a sustained analysis – there are chapters, but no conclusion, and
little comparative linkage between chapters. The focus is emphatically on Latin
texts, intentionally separated from vernacular traditions and translations. An
excellent first chapter offers a useful and challenging theoretical and methodo-
logical discussion, in which Bestul decries the habit in current literary criticism
of medieval texts of focusing on vernacular texts whilst largely ignoring the Latin
works from which so much vernacular material derived. The Latin Passion
tradition is broadly surveyed in the second chapter, dealing chronologically with
writings from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. The selection ignores prayers,
but includes discussions of the Passion contained in fuller lives of Christ, and
works like Ailred’s De institutione inclusarum. (The texts are listed in an appendix,
as a ‘ Preliminary catalogue of medieval Latin Passion narratives ’.) The
remaining thematic chapters (or essays) deal successively with the Passion texts
in relation to Jews, women and gender and the evolution of torture. These are
significant analyses. Thus, the earlier works are placed within the anti-Jewish
milieu of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, against the backdrop of the
evolution of R. I. Moore’s ‘ persecuting society ’. Although persuasive, the
argument does not fully convince – a difficulty with the Passion story is that Jews
are necessarily in the events, and someone has to be blamed for Christ’s death.
This does not exculpate the tracts’ authors, but there is a danger of translating
coincidence into causality. Notably missing here is consideration of the reception
of the texts, whether immediately, or over time. (Such later reception would be
especially problematic in Jewless areas : did ‘ Jews ’ translate into bad Christians ?)
Important also would be different responses to texts in Latin or in translation –
the two traditions merit joint consideration to reveal the meaning given in
reception to vernacularised texts converted from Latin to the ‘ real world ’.
Chapter iv highlights the reception issue in relation to women (making its
previous absence even more striking). This discussion draws particularly on
Laments of the Virgin (one being edited and translated as an appendix), placed
within a context of changing gender relations and male dominance. If something
is missing here, it is perhaps consideration of the role of gender in the specific
context of medieval death rites. The final chapter – the shortest and perhaps least
convincing – draws analogies between the gory and desensitising descriptions of
Christ’s agonies and the appearance and legitimation of torture in western legal
systems. This is a welcome and rewarding volume, although the stress on
production, rather than consumption (and changing consumption over time),
suggests that there is scope for much more work on the issues raised.
U  B R. N. S

Notre-Dame, cathedral of Amiens. The power of change in Gothic. By Stephen Murray.

Pp. xix­ incl. frontispiece and  figs.­ plates. Cambridge :
Cambridge University Press . £.    
The name of Amiens conjures up not only a great French Gothic cathedral but
also the presence of a great English critic, John Ruskin, whose The Bible of Amiens
() still carries weight in a tradition of appreciation now associated most
closely with Emile Ma# le. Professor Murray, who has written valuable
monographs on the cathedrals at Troyes and Beauvais, approaches Amiens as an
English empiricist of the best sort, neither cowed by the reputation of the object
 
he studies, nor swayed by the burden of received opinion on its history. His main
aim is to tackle the most pressing problems of the building’s chronology of
building sequence by reviewing both its physical evidence, and that of the few
documents that pertain directly or indirectly to its construction, begun in .
His main conclusions seem very sensible. To date, authorities have agreed that
the nave was constructed first with the choir following, and that the process of
construction was inhibited by the presence on the site of the projected transept
of the church of St-Fermin which was only demolished in or around . The
earliest commentators, notably Viollet-le-Duc, took this obstacle as a sign that
work on both the transepts and the extraordinary façade was postponed to the
later s or s. Murray re-examines the documentary evidence and
disagrees ; by  the obstructing church had already gone, and work on the
façade had commenced in the s, so pushing back the date of its earliest
sculptures appreciably. By examining in detail the masonry lying between the
nave and the radiating chapels, Murray concludes that much of the work was set
out rather earlier than is usually thought, under the first mason Robert de
Luzarches – whom Murray understands to be a Picard rather than a Parisian
mason. His on-site foreman, Thomas de Cormont, then proceeded with the
detailing of the apse, working closely with Robert but departing to Paris in
c.  to design the Sainte-Chapelle. Amiens, the structure of which was
complete by about , emerges from this account as a radical and independent
variant of the Chartrain High Gothic tradition designed by an older mason
familiar with Soissons and Laon : far from being a ‘ thinned-down ’ version of
Chartres or Reims, Amiens is in fact a prudently ‘ fattened-up ’ version of older
buildings in the Soissonais.
Murray’s general account is aligned with that offered by Robert Branner,
though Branner was more inclined to stress the Parisian basis of Luzarches’s
work, seeing Amiens as a Parisian church on Picard soil and the Sainte-Chapelle,
undoubtedly an offshoot of the Amiens workshop, as being in a repatriated
Parisian idiom. But more generally this is in no sense the same style of
architectural history as that propounded by Branner. Branner wrote at a time
when notions of the canon of great works of medieval architecture were them-
selves norms. Murray is more ambivalent. He finds it necessary to defend the
monographic approach in face of the new interdisciplinary politics of medieval
studies, in a tone which strikes one as a little defensive (p. ) : ‘ In our topsy-turvy
world, where an object has to be first declared ‘‘ marginalised ’’ in order to merit
scholarly attention, mere suspicion of ‘‘ centrality ’’ is enough to relegate the great
monument to punitive oblivion.’ He is of course right, but his text is itself an
uneasy compromise between old-school empiricism and new art-historical
nostrums. On the one hand the Marxist assumption of the vitiating and generally
tyrannous role of the cathedral in the urban economy is vigorously rejected. On
the other Amiens is not a canonical building in the sense described by Frankl or
Bony. Great play is made in the text and illustrations with the theme of spectator
engagement rather than authoritative creativity, the reader being ‘ empowered ’
to ‘ construct his or her own cathedral ’ (p. ). The metaphor of change is
deployed as a central theoretical preoccupation in criticising the building and its
sculptures. The master masons, bound by a form of parent–child nexus, are
found to be reacting to one another in a rejection of parental discipline. Yet the
fundamentally conventional nature of a text which seems to have a personal and
even confessional aspect keeps breaking through. Having empowered the
    
spectator Murray (p. ) quite reasonably asserts what he authoritatively
believes to be the case : ‘ The start of work was not delayed sixteen to twenty years
after the commencement of the nave, and the west façade is not an unfortunate
compromise ’ (etc.). The product of this restiveness is a series of intellectual
concerns which cumulatively either do not quite carry conviction or are not fully
developed, for example Murray’s interesting observation (which smacks more of
eighteenth-century aesthetic theory, though it is following up an image of Robert
Grosseteste) that the beauty of Amiens liquifies the visitor’s consciousness and
renders it softened in order to receive the impression of the forms of the cathedral.
Here might be the seeds of a real theory of the beautiful and the sublime at
Amiens.
But in general this is a successful and useful book which, for all its anxieties,
makes its main points carefully and authoritatively. The only major gripe must
be the quality of the illustrations and their sense of purpose : too many are not set
straight on the page (what are the unconscious implications of this misalignment
for the authorial voice ?), some are simply photocopies (Fig. G and Plate )
and those which aim to create a sense of movement through the building (for
example, Plate ) simply reinforce the limitations of the book medium itself.
U  C P B

Pflichtbeichte. Untersuchungen zum Busswesen im hohen und spaX ten Mittelalter. By

Martin Ohst. (Beitra$ ge zur historischen Theologie, .) Pp. xi­.
Tu$ bingen : J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), . DM .     ;
 
In dealing with mandatory confession Martin Ohst focuses on a medieval
institution which still has some importance for the religious life, at least of
Catholic Christians. He investigates the origins of mandatory confession,
theoretical concepts which had a bearing on it, the way it was used against
heretical groups and finally how it developed until the end of the Middle Ages.
The book is written from the perspective of a Protestant history of theology. It
was accepted as a Habilitationsschrift by the Faculty of Theology of the
University of Gottingen in }.
Ohst takes as his starting point canon  of the Fourth Lateran Council in 
(‘ Omnis utriusque ’), which defines the obligation to go to confession to one’s
proper priest at least one a year. This was included as papal legislation in the
Liber Extra X , , ) and is still in force as canon  of the Codex Iuris
Canonici of . The special justification for Ohst’s research is provided by two
remarkable circumstances, first the long persistence of the binding force of this
obligation, which only came into question at the Reformation, and second the
uneven if not confused state of research which under the heading of ‘ confession ’
and ‘ penitence ’ has often arrived at seemingly contradictory conclusions about
mandatory confession (pp. ff.).
In the first of his four main chapters on the development leading to the canon
‘ Omnis utriusque ’ (pp. –) the author sets out to throw some light on this
phenomenon. He first investigates whether regular confession was a general
practice before  or already an obligation. Skilfully he examines and evaluates
the relevant sources from the ‘ Regula Canonicorum ’ of Chrodegang of Metz (d.
) through Theodulf, the scholar at Charlemagne’s court, Regino of Prum,
 
Burchard of Worms, Gratian’s ‘ Decretum ’, the ‘ Sententiae ’ of Peter the
Lombard to high medieval texts : the Hungarian national synod in Gran of ,
a confessional manual of }, the ‘ Summa de arte praedicatoria ’ of Alan of
Lille, synodal constitutions of Bishop Odo of Paris of , and finally Stephen
Langton’s statutes for the archdiocese of Canterbury of }. Thus Ohst can
lay out earlier developments and show what was new in the step taken by canon 
of the Fourth Lateran Council. It emerges that its clauses which call for
confession to ‘ one’s own priest ’ (proprio sacerdoti) and enjoin the secrecy of
confession were themselves not new. What was new was the obligation of annual
confession, the more so since it applied to all believers and not just to priests and
monks (pp. f.). That this was seen as a new step is established by adducing
assessments by Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Henry of Oldendorp.
Since there is no other reference to annual mandatory confession in Innocent ’s
writings (pp. –), Ohst in his second chapter takes a wider view and puts
the obligation of confession in the context of the high medieval history of
penitential procedure (pp. –). From the pseudo-Augustinian tract De vera
et falsa poenitentia, which is first cited in Gratian’s Decretum, the development leads
to the new theoretical positions of Peter Abelard and Hugh of St Victor, who by
postulating God’s unmediated action in forgiving man’s sins partly undermined
the early medieval tariff-penance with its logic of reward (p. ). A new literary
genre dedicated to the actual procedure of penance and its problems, the Summa
on confession, emerges in the twelfth century. In samples from the works of Alan
of Lille and Robert of Famborough Ohst diagnoses a crisis of the ecclesiastical
procedure of penance originating from the rapidly declining plausibility and
practicability of repentance and satisfaction (p. ). Thus at the beginning of
the thirteenth century (and on the eve of the Fourth Lateran Council) we find
mandatory confession integrated in the context of a new understanding of the
whole procedure of penance. Its essential elements are now the indulgence (as
exemplified by the theories of Peter the Chanter, Hugh of St Cher and Thomas
Aquinas), repentance and absolution (especially as seen by William of Auvergne
and Thomas Aquinas) and confession itself as a periodical examination of
conscience (as argued by Duns Scotus and William of Auvergne). Thus the time
preceding Lateran IV is covered and the history of the problem clearly outlined.
The high level of the first two main chapters is not maintained in the other two.
A survey of the issues treated at the Fourth Lateran Council leads naturally to the
question of a possible link between mandatory confession and the fight against
heretics. Ohst devotes a lengthy chapter (pp. –) to this problem, with the
meagre result that mandatory confession played only a marginal role in the
Church’s campaign against heresy. Nevertheless, an attempt is made to
summarise the complete history of the Cathars and Waldensians. The series of
questions of possible fundamental changes in society and mentality which may
have resulted in both the crisis of tariff–penance and the upsurge of Catharism
as a mass phenomenon (p. ), thus opened up, are only partly answered. The
relationship between these two contemporaneous phenomena is not made
explicit. It remains uncertain whether they were parallels occurring by chance or
whether there was in fact a link. To categorise Cathar tactics as a ‘ disguise ’ (p.
), ‘ lie ’ (p. ) or ‘ Waldensian mimicry ’ (p. ) is not helpful when it is not
supported by tangible evidence – and such is not forthcoming – to demonstrate
so deliberate a strategy. In considering the ‘ self-restraint of the inquisition
respecting the inviolability and sanctity of the secrecy of confession ’, reminders
    
of this principle can – as is often the case in a legal context – be interpreted both
ways : either as a statement of the fact, which is Ohst’s view (pp. f.), or, with
equal justification, as evidence for offences against it. Ohst’s failure to take this
second possibility into account has far-reaching consequences because it would
– if it could be substantiated – seriously affect his assessment of the Church’s line
of attack against heretics in matters of confession. What Ohst sees as a spectacular
success for the Church, which had the advantage of being able to operate on two
levels, by means of the indulgence and the theory of the treasury of merit as well
as by the formation of a flexible ethos (penance for ‘ average Christians ’ and for
‘ Christians with a sharpened conscience ’), and which at the same time provided
weight and responded to contemporary theory, is purely hypothetical. Questions
of urgent concern to historians, whether a ‘ mid position ’ (p. ) or opportunism
was prevailing, whether the Waldensian concept of penance really was ‘ archaic ’
(p. ) and thus a priori inferior to the concept of the Church, or whether there
is scope for the assumption that here as well the Church went through a learning
process, remain untreated.
The last chapter is dedicated both to the ‘ Summa Angelica ’ of Angelus de
Clavassio (d. ) and a final resume! of the results (pp. –). It touches on
a further central aspect of the practical relevance of mandatory confession : the
question whether it should be seen as a means of ‘ social control ’ or as a primarily
theological achievement. The ‘ Summa Angelica ’, which together with other
writings was burned by the Protestants on  December , is a handbook for
the sacrament of penance for both theologians and lawyers utriusque iuris. Here it
serves as evidence for differentiation within a range of punitive consequences of
sins. On the correlation between sacramental mediation of salvation and ethical
self-improvement as it is stated by Ohst, the ‘ Summa Angelica ’ favours the
exoneration of sinners through the inherent efficacy of the Church’s salvific action.
The obligation to annual confession is part of this insofar as it constitutes a
minimal participation by the Christian in the whole process (pp. f ). Even so
Ohst sees it as less a coercion exercised for the sake of social control than a part
of the abundant access to redemption offered by the Church. This is surprising
because cause and effect seem here to be exchanged : prescribed action can
scarcely be subsumed under an initiative taken by the faithful. The assertion of
a ‘ co-operation between the hierarchical church and the sinner ’ (p. ) conveys
the image of something close to an equality in partnership between official
Church and sinful believer, on the basis of which both strive to remove a liability
to temporal punishment for sins. Here I suspect that the idealised view of the
theologian has replaced historical investigation. This impression is reinforced in
the following pages which provide the final summary and resume! of the book (pp.
–). The theory of penance of the reformers is certainly a worthwhile topic
in itself, but whether this should be brought in as the final word in a summary
of medieval development may be doubted, the more so, as the introduction (pp.
–) already includes a digression which may be important for Protestant
theology but does not contribute to our understanding of medieval phenomena.
The evaluation of earlier events through later ones signifies either a naive
acceptance of later perspectives or anachronism. The inclusion, therefore, of the
teaching of the Reformation on penance does no justice to either side. As an
approach to a new field of research it is too brief ; as a criterion for the
interpretation of medieval mandatory confession it is of no use. Ohst’s book,
which concludes with lists of sources and books cited and name and subject
 
indices, is of value chiefly for its first two parts. There it maintains a high
standard both thematically and methodically. Its achievement in defining and
clarifying the topic will – in spite of the somewhat distorted perspective built up
in the introduction and the final chapter – be appreciated by both historians and
theologians.
U$  K T W$ 

Runaway religious in medieval England, c. ‚„€– „€. By Donald F. Logan.

(Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, th Ser. .) Pp.
xix­ incl.  plates,  fig. and  tables. Cambridge : Cambridge
University Press, . £ ($.).    
This humane and absorbing study is devoted to the religious of medieval England
who left their houses after profession without lawful reason for doing so. Had the
men and women in question intended to enter other houses or orders, especially
those following stricter forms of observance than their own, or – in the case of the
men – been appointed honorary papal chaplains or received papal dispensations
to hold benefices, they would have committed no offence. Lacking such excuse,
each was guilty of apostasy and might be pursued with the aid of the secular arm.
Professor Logan has identified nearly , apostates by name, and a register
recording what is well known about these occupies nearly  pages of the book.
By no means all the , went absent without leave with the intention of
remaining permanently in the world. The register includes, for example, the
names of eighteen religious who made the pilgrimage to Rome in , a Jubilee
Year, without permission, but sought and obtained papal absolution before
returning to their houses in England. It includes also more than fifty
Premonstratensians accused of apostasy towards the end of the fifteenth century
by Richard Redman, the zealous abbot of Shap and bishop of St Asaph, who
deemed anyone making an excursion outside the enclosure without permission,
for however short a period, to be an apostate. The known apostates, whatever the
precise nature of their offence, represent only a minority of the total number of
offenders : on a conservative estimate, three cases in every four have left no trace,
but the actual number may be as high as seven cases in every eight. Apostasy,
Logan concludes, was neither frequent nor rare, and the apostates themselves
were commoner than lepers but not as common as fugitives from royal justice.
In general, the orders for men seem to have produced apostates roughly in
proportion to their numbers. Women, however, were apparently more faithful to
their vows than men and their orders are under-represented in the total. The
decennial average of known cases, regardless of sex, peaked dramatically in the
middle decades of the fourteenth century (–), the period of the Black
Death of – and the second general epidemic of plague in . In these
decades, the average was more than double the decennial average for the period
– considered as a whole. The number of cases declined sharply after
 and tended to sag over much of the fifteenth century, a period when the
total number of religious recovered to a remarkable extent from the nadir of the
plague years. Very tentatively, it may be suggested that the actual frequency of
apostasy declined in the course of the latter century.
Many different reasons can be advanced for apostasy, and Logan discusses
them with sympathetic insight and well-chosen detail. His suggestion that sheer
    
boredom, brought on by the repetitious character of many features of religious
life, was a potent reason carries conviction. Even so, it contains a paradox, since
boredom tends by its very nature to produce weariness, but apostasy represents
nothing if not a dramatic capacity for action. At the heart of the problem
represented by apostasy was the religious vow itself and the circumstances in
which it was taken. In the main religious orders of this period, the vow was
normally taken after, at most, one year’s probation and without the rigorous
testing of vocation experienced by the modern postulant. Moreover, provided
only that the novice in question had attained the minimum canonical age of
thirteen for a girl or fifteen for a boy, the vow was binding for life. But many took
vows under social pressures which, though not excessive according to the
standards of the time, exerted a strong influence over their decision.
We can assume that family pressures on spare sons and daughters to enter the
religious life lessened in the later Middle Ages, as demographic decline brought
about a squeezing of replacement rates and an enhancement of opportunities for
gainful employment in the world. If so, there may have been significantly fewer
misfits in religious houses in the fifteenth century than in the thirteenth, despite
a probable fall in the actual age of profession in monasteries. In the older
monastic orders, life for the misfits who still existed was perhaps a little easier than
had been the case previously, since the common life, with its insistent demands
for conformity, was by now not merely in decline but in extremis. In the same
period, the availability of dispensations to hold a benefice provided a new escape
route for male religious who wished to leave the cloister. The dispensations were
quite expensive to obtain – indeed, it was the possibility of profit that made the
system attractive to the papal Curia of this period – but many monks now had
wages, and the cost of even the most expensive dispensation would have been well
within their reach. All these circumstances may help to explain the decline in the
frequency of apostasy – if decline it was – in the course of the fifteenth century.
The peak in the period – brings to our attention the almost unimaginable
stresses and strains experienced in many religious communities, especially
perhaps the small ones, as a consequence of catastrophic mortality.
It requires a leap of imagination for us to enter into the experience of the
runaway religious of the Middle Ages, and into the thought-world of the
authorities who sought by every means possible to recover them for a life many
clearly found insupportable. Logan writes about both the pursued and pursuers
with profound insight and unfailing balance. The result is a notable addition to
our understanding of the religious life in medieval England : no one seriously
interested in that life should neglect to read it.
S C, B F. H
O

The pipe roll of the bishopric of Winchester, ƒ€–‚. Edited by Mark Page.
(Hampshire Record Series, .) Pp. xxviii­ incl.  map and 
table­frontispiece,  plates and endpaper enclosing  sheets of microfiche.
Winchester : Hampshire County Council, . £ plus £ post and
packing from Hampshire Record Office, Sussex Street, Winchester, Hants
SO TH.     ;  
 
The pipe rolls of the bishopric of Winchester are among the most remarkable
records to survive from anywhere in medieval Europe. Beginning in , they
form a series with few gaps down to  and (as volumes, not rolls) beyond : for
each year an account from the local officials of every one of the estate’s fifty-odd
manors, giving full details of receipts and expenditure in cash, corn and livestock.
Many of these manors were in Hampshire, but many were much further from
Winchester – several in Oxfordshire, an important complex at Taunton, a
substantial property at Southwark and so on. Their geographical spread, their
completeness and the early date of the start of the series all set them apart from
other groups of medieval manorial accounts : they are an incomparable source of
agrarian, economic and social information from the thirteenth century to the
fifteenth. Although historians have drawn on them for important work – by Lord
Beveridge, Dr J. Z. Titow and others – their sheer bulk has hindered research,
daunting many who could have made valuable use of them. Since  the rolls
have been in Hampshire Record Office, and in  Hampshire County Council
embarked on an ambitious programme to open them up to research, making
them more accessible to professional historians and amateurs alike. The present
volume is the first product of this initiative : a complete translation of a specimen
roll, with microfiches of the original document. It is not the first of the series to
appear in print : the Latin texts of the two earliest rolls were published in 
(–, edited by Hubert Hall) and  (–, edited by N. R. Holt). The
present roll is more than twice the length of either of these, for the accounts
became more and more detailed in the course of the thirteenth century. The
value of its publication lies not only in telling us what happened in – but
in providing a guide to the structure and contents of the other rolls of the same
period ; the next planned stage of the programme is to publish a roll of a century
later, –. Certainly the professional historian need not feel that a translated
text is inadequate : Page has produced it with meticulous care and consistency,
with a list of some  words whose translation calls for comment or discussion.
Arguably the translation with microfiches is more useful to the specialist than the
traditional extended Latin text without access to the original writing, its
abbreviations and its ambiguities. Besides the translation, word-list and a very
full usable index, Page has given us an introduction which describes the
document, the estate and its officials, and which also includes a valuable analysis
of the estate’s income and expenditure. He and Hampshire County Council are
to be warmly congratulated on a book that significantly advances our knowledge
of an important source and of what we can learn from it.
U  D P. D. A. H

Criminal churchmen in the age of Edward III. The case of Bishop Thomas de Lisle. By
John Aberth. Pp. xxiv­ incl. frontispiece,  tables and  ills. University
Park, P : Pennsylvania State University Press, . £. ($).
   
This book seeks to distinguish itself from other biographies of leading churchmen
by setting the career of Thomas de Lisle (bishop of Ely, –) within the
social and economic milieu of the mid fourteenth century. In so doing the author
also reveals his subsidiary aims : to analyse crime and justice during the period
    
and assess received views on Edward ’s kingship. Structurally, the book
comprises three sections each dedicated to a particular aspect of the bishop’s
reign. The first part somewhat briefly examines de Lisle’s early life and his work
as a diocesan. The more bulky middle section seeks to establish in the mind of
the reader the bishop’s ‘ criminality ’, while the final part considers his self-
imposed exile, portraying de Lisle in the role of ‘ victim ’.
The book benefits from the reader-friendly approach cultivated by the author,
even though the knowledgeable reader may wince every now and then. Aberth
provides background detail on the medieval records and the problems inherent in
their transcription and interpretation, together with clear explanations of the
commonplaces of medieval life and its legal processes. There is also a glossary of
legal terms and a useful series of tables relating to benefices, issues of the grange
and manorial income. The lack of translations for the ‘ important documents ’
contained in appendices, however, may frustrate the general reader who does not
happen to possess the necessary language skills.
The considerable amount of research work undertaken in the course of this
project is evidenced in the references to central court plea rolls, papal
communique! s, bishops’ registers and manorial accounts contained in the
footnotes. Indeed, the original material presented in the book is both interesting
and absorbing. Breathing life into dusty records, Aberth provides some unusual
snapshots of medieval life, even if on occasion the detail is somewhat
overwhelming. The centrepiece of the study is de Lisle’s dispute with Lady Wake,
Edward ’s cousin. Particularly fascinating, though, is the material relating to
the two Spynk brothers and the cases arising out of de Lisle’s diocesan visitations.
It is unfortunate that the number of manorial records remaining from de Lisle’s
episcopate amount to a scattered few. Equally, there are no surviving household
accounts, which might have served to provide a more accurate picture of the
bishop’s domestic and financial situation.
The bishop’s medieval biographer, averred by Aberth to be a monk with at
least near-contemporary knowledge, is frequently used as a template around
which his other findings are set. Occasionally one feels the author does not fully
integrate his findings and ideas within the framework of reference provided by
the secondary sources. The opinions of established historians are often confined
to passages devoted to repetition of familiar historiographical debates. Moreover,
there is a strong feeling throughout the work that Aberth has his own agenda and
is prepared to stick to that irrespective of the historical evidence available to him.
He portrays de Lisle as a Jekyll and Hyde character, the ‘ leader of a local gang
of thugs and bullies who terrorized both the poor and the rich of East Anglia and
assisted the bishop in his extensive, unholy activities, including arson, kidnapping,
extortion, theft, and murder ’.
Sensational tableaux emerge from a reconstruction based mainly on the facts
of the indictments against the bishop and his men. Little attention is paid,
however, to the role of complainants or jurors even when an indication of a
deeper level of things is afforded by the presence of servants of Lady Wake as
jurors. Towards the end it is admitted that ‘ by themselves, the Spynk and Lady
Wake suits do not make a convincing dossier for a long career in criminal activity
to be laid at the door of the bishop ’. Have we merely witnessed a mixture of legal
and political posturing combined with the author’s active imagination ? Aberth’s
general theme begins to unravel and the reader is left wondering what Thomas
de Lisle was really like.
 
There are glimpses of the bishop’s true character which serve to rebut the
image generally given in the book. He is seen as a very competent diocesan,
taking a tougher line in his visitations on unlawful and anti-religous behaviour
than some of his predecessors and who, unlike some of them, got on well with Ely
Priory. In September , when the ravages of the Black Death were such that
no peat could be cut at Downham Manor, de Lisle ordered that a penny be given
every Tuesday to eighteen poor men among the customary tenants at Downham.
This service continued for at least a year. Even in disputes there could also be a
certain generosity. Although de Lisle gained the upper hand in the Spynk case,
he never actually pressed home his advantage and actually chose to submit to
arbitration four years later. Having been awarded recovery of a £ debt
against John Daniel, a veteran of previous legal battles, the bishop nevertheless
acquitted the debtor of his sum. Hardly the action of an alleged extortioner.
By the end of the study, Thomas de Lisle is viewed more sympathetically as an
ambitious man alienated from the king and royal circles partly because of his own
arrogant inflexibility (arising from his belief in the superiority of the Church) and
partly because of his background and behaviour : he was one of the very few
Dominican bishops, rarely attended provincial councils and participated little in
politics. His confidence in the pope’s willingness to stand by him was slightly
misplaced, although at de Lisle’s death a rapprochment between Edward  had
almost been brokered.
Ambiguously, the reader is left to judge for himself whether de Lisle was in fact
a ‘ criminal churchman ’. Even if the label does not appear to be entirely
persuasive, the book can be recommended not least for its illuminating perspective
on a complex episcopal character and his effect on Church–State relations during
a generally under-researched period in English history.
C  M S, A M
U  Y

English Wycliffite sermons, IV, V. Edited by Pamela Gradon and Anne Hudson.
Pp. xv­ incl. frontispiece and  ills ; xiii­ incl. frontispiece. Oxford :
Clarendon Press, . £ ; £.     ;    
The appearance of these two volumes brings to a successful conclusion one of the
most important scholarly enterprises of the last half century concerning the late
medieval English Church. The three earlier volumes (reviewed this J
xxxv [], – ; xl [], – ; xlii [], –) contain the text of the
Lollard sermon cycle ; these two, originally planned as a single volume but
expanded to two because of the range of material needing to be covered,
comprise an introduction to the substance of the work, apart from the textual
analysis which was printed in volume i, and an extensive commentary on the text
of most of the sermons. From the time of its publication, the edition has been
recognised as one which should remain definitive, and the new volumes provide
a worthy complement to it. The commentary will serve students of language as
well as those of ecclesiastical history, and more particularly those interested in the
theological ideas of the period. It is very clear that the author, or more probably
authors, of the sermons were influenced by Wyclif, but were not his slavish
followers. Many of their ideas derive from their master’s sermons, but detailed
    
examination of the sermon texts demonstrates that the concepts in them were
more widely rooted in the active theological debates of the period, and that the
authors knew the views of many patristic and earlier scholastic thinkers. Parallels
to such views have been identified from a wide range of texts in Migne’s
Patrologia, although, as the editors point out, one cannot assume that the authors
were actually aware of the particular texts which provide them.
It is the overall impression of the cycle rather than detailed points from
individual sermons which demonstrates most clearly the nature of Lollard
learning in the immediate post-Wyclif period, although some questions about the
character of early Lollardy still remain unanswered. For example, although there
are passing allusions to knights who know the gospel or to lords who should teach
it, the sermons give no indication of how far dissident intellectuals were protected
by influential laymen. Contemporary events are only occasionally mentioned, as
in hostile references to Bishop Henry Despenser’s Urbanist ‘ crusade ’ (a theme
indeed on which Wyclif himself had written extensively), or in the suggestion that
a solution could be found to the Great Schism if the rival popes should abdicate
(an opinion which had been endorsed by the University of Oxford). Clearly there
were areas where there was substantial common ground between orthodox and
heretical thought, so the sermons cannot be seen purely as propaganda for
dissident religion, as they were also firmly rooted in traditional biblical exegesis.
Only when they touch on certain topics do the sermons manifest their heretical
character and their indebtedness to Wyclif – this is seen most clearly in the
virulence of the attacks on the mendicant orders and on the church hierarchy,
and in the way in which the eucharistic views expressed echo Wyclif’s later
teaching. The writers, although not scholars of Wyclif’s quality, were independent
thinkers who were prepared to seek their own proof texts for supporting similar
views to his and even at times to express opinions contrary to his. (The tone of
the sermons on the subject of reprobate priests is more Donatist than Wyclif’s,
and the later writers are more hostile to the memory of Becket than he was.)
What would now be of great value to historians would be a comparable study of
other, but more orthodox, sermons of the period, to see how far their authors’
views contradicted and how far they overlapped with those of the Lollard cycle, as
this would illustrate the extent of theological diversity in the debates of the time.
The multiplication of the sermon cycle manuscripts reflects Wyclif’s intellectual
stimulus to the generation which followed him. This influence, however, could
not be sustained, and it is hard to trace any connection between the theological
sophistication of the sermons and the views held by the humbler Lollards who
were brought to trial in the fifteenth-century persecutions. Indeed the procedures
of investigation adopted by the authorities in such trials, the questioning of
suspects on a series of fairly basic articles, make it clear that the doctrines of the
heretics had undergone substantial simplification from the scholarship of the
sermon writers. This fact demonstrates the crucial importance of Archbishop
Arundel’s successful attack on Wycliffism at Oxford in the first decade of the
fifteenth century, which effectively destroyed the intellectual foundations of
English dissent ; a very marked contrast with the role which the University of
Prague played in the development of Hussitism. It also prompts other thoughts,
on the complexity of the relationship between the secular power, the ecclesiastical
establishment and institutions of higher learning in the later Middle Ages. The
English intellectuals were speculative thinkers, who were not concerned with
trying to bring in a new order, and in only a few cases were they prepared to resist
 
the recognised authority of the Church, particularly when it had the resources of
the lay power at its disposal to deal with dissidents. Furthermore, even in a period
when a king proved vulnerable to the revolt of a powerful magnate, England
possessed a basic political stability, in which the institutions of the State and the
Church were mutually supportive in upholding tradition. The landed class was
loyal both to traditional religion and to the crown, and those who apparently
sympathised with radical teachings were not really prepared to go far along the
road of dissent ; their probable patronage and protection of the sermon writers
reflected spiritual rather than temporal concerns, and their views and those held
by the undoubtedly orthodox overlapped sufficiently to suggest that many might
well not have regarded themselves as conscious rebels. The views expressed in the
sermons are of more importance in understanding the academic world of the late
fourteenth century than as a guide to popular dissidence in the fifteenth, while
the protective anonymity of the writers, which even the outstanding scholarship
of the editors cannot penetrate, bears out the success of the authorities in
enforcing orthodoxy on the English Church.
U  G J. A. F. T

Scotichronicon, VII : Books XIII and XIV. (New edn in Latin and English with
notes and indices.) By Walter Bower (edited by A. B. Scott and D. E. R.
Watt with Ulrike More! t and Norman F. Shead). Pp. xxx­. Edinburgh :
Aberdeen University Press}Mercat Press, . £.  
This volume completes the publication of the text and translation of the
Scotichronicon. It covers the period from  to , and concentrates almost
exclusively upon Scottish history and the reigns of David  and Robert . Bower
wrote in the mid fifteenth century, and his work was heavily derivative. Much of
the content of this volume is based on John of Fordun’s work ; there is also a close
connection with Andrew Wyntoun, since both he and Bower appear to have
made use of the same, lost, chronicle of the s. There are some sections for
which Bower alone is responsible, and at one point his own views become very
clear. David ’s marriage to Margaret Logie, entered into ‘ for the pleasure he
took in her desirable appearance ’, led Bower into a remarkable gynaephobic
tirade, notably against women who use make-up, wear false hair and elaborate
head-dresses. Some stories in Bower’s work are not to be found elsewhere. For
example, an otherwise unknown immoral character called Twynam Lourison is
said to have persuaded Edward Balliol to try to gain the Scottish throne. Bower’s
account is not always reliable ; he places the disaster of Black Monday, when
English troops in France were hit by devastating weather, in  rather than
. A curious story has Richard  end his days as a servant in Donald of the
Isles’s kitchen. In contrast, the account of the battle of Neville’s Cross in  has
considerable historical value. The value of Bower’s work is two-fold. It is
important in preserving earlier historical writing, and bringing together the rich
Scottish historical tradition. At the same time, it provides an important insight
into the attitudes and preoccupations of a mid fifteenth-century abbot. This
volume is, as usual with this series, fully and expertly annotated. Not only are
Bower’s sources identified as far as possible, but also extensive work has been done
to identify individuals and explain events. All that now remains to complete a
    
majestic project is one final volume, which will provide a full discussion of the
various manuscripts and the problems they present.
U  D M P

Reordering marriage and society in Reformation Germany. By Joel F. Harrington. Pp.

xv­ incl.  tables and  figs. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press,
. £.    
Clandestine marriage in England,  €€–ˆ €. By R. B. Outhwaite. Pp. xxiv­ incl.
 ills­ plates. London : Hambledon, . £.    
‘ Romeo and Juliet of Stonegate ’. A medieval marriage in crisis. By Frederik Pedersen.
(Borthwick Paper, .) Pp. iv­. York : Borthwick Institute of Historical
Research, University of York, . £ (plus p post and packing, p
overseas surface mail), from Borthwick Institute, St Anthony’s Hall, York
YO PW.  
The study of marriage in early modern Europe has attracted renewed attention
over the last decade or so. Viewed as the very basis of all social order in the early
modern period, shifting marriage patterns and changing legal and moral}
religious concepts of marriage offer insights into the structure and mentality of
society and gender relations. Scholars have long concentrated on legal and
theological aspects, but partially under the influence of the Annales school and
anthropological studies, research on marriage has broadened the perspective.
Marriage is increasingly analysed as a social, economic, religious and legal
institution and an ‘ emotional ’ union. Questions such as violence in marriage
have only recently been addressed for early modern Germany.
Whereas in Germany the Reformation had a considerable influence on
marriage which has almost mesmerised scholars, in England only a few historians
have studied the subject in that context. The books under review here reflect that
national slant. Brian Outhwaite looks at legal and to a lesser degree social
aspects of clandestine marriages in England between  and , Joel
Harrington offers a synthesis of legal, theological and social aspects of marriage
under the impact of the Reformation in Germany, and Pedersen analyses a
(fourteenth-century) pre-Reformation cause paper in York to look at the legal
implications of a marriage dispute.
Let us look at England first. In the late medieval period and way into the
seventeenth century a marriage in England was established simply by the mutual
exchange of vows indicating an intent to marry at once : matrimonium per verba de
presenti. The presence of witnesses was desirable but not necessary, and the
Church accepted the marriage as legally binding, handing a powerful tool to
young people who wanted to marry against the wishes of their parents. In cases
of conflict the parties involved had recourse to the church courts. Although both
Church and State attempted to formalise the process and to introduce some
public control throughout the early modern period, it was still possible in the
early eighteenth century to marry without the publication of banns, the consent
of parents, or the presence of witnesses and a priest, in other words to marry in
a clandestine way. The reasons why it was desirable to marry secretly depended
on the personal circumstances of the couple involved and included being under
age, pregnancy, social difference, poverty or religion. Vagrants, sailors and
soldiers often had no time to wait for the publication of banns, nor could they
 
fulfil residence requirements, and they happily embraced the opportunity to
marry in a clandestine way. With the introduction of marriage fees in the late
seventeenth century, it was also cheaper to marry clandestinely. However,
clandestine marriages also had their drawbacks since it was difficult to prove that
a marriage had actually taken place.
This question lies at the heart of Pedersen’s case study. The story is quite
simple. Against the wishes of her mother and uncle, Agnes Huntington privately
exchanged vows with John of Bristol. However, under intimidating pressure from
Agnes’s family, the marriage was dissolved by the church court. For lack of
evidence of a legally binding exchange of vows, the court declared the couple free
to contract marriage with whom and where they wanted. Agnes married again,
this time with the approval of her family and publicly in the church after the
publication of banns. However, her marriage broke down, partially, Pedersen
argues, over a dispute concerning her land, which she refused to sell. Now Agnes
sought a divorce on the grounds that she had already been married to John of
Bristol when she contracted the marriage with Simon Munkton. Agnes
surrounded herself with legal advisors and produced several witnesses, including
John of Bristol, to prove that she did exchange vows with John several years
previously. If she succeeded, her land would be restored to her. Unfortunately,
there is no conclusive evidence about the outcome of the case. Pederson’s central
argument is that here a woman attempted to gain a divorce from her husband
in order to protect the property she had brought into the marriage. This is a
thought-provoking thesis, especially in view of the limited rights English
medieval women had to protect their property against alienation under their
husband’s authority. (And we have very little source material to tackle the
question of medieval women’s property rights at all). However, it remains
unclear from Pedersen’s study why the court should reconsider her claims to a
previous marriage if the court had already set both Agnes and John free to marry
again for lack of evidence on the mutual exchange of vows. According to the
surviving evidence Agnes first initiated court proceedings because of her
husband’s violent behaviour against her which predated the land dispute.
Furthermore, she did have the right to refuse her consent to the sale of land in
order to protect her property. And obviously her husband tried to ‘ kiss or kick ’
the consent out of her by violence and negotiations outside the court room. In
order to sustain the argument it would be necessary to contextualise this case and
complement the cause papers with other evidence.
Nevertheless, this is a valuable study since it opens up the complexity of social
and gender relations that could evolve from marriage break-downs and the
insecurities – and possibilities – involved in clandestine marriages.
Brian Outhwaite devotes a whole book to clandestine marriages in England,
taking the longue dureU e of  to . He is mainly interested in legal aspects of
clandestine marriages and the drive for reform ; more precisely in the history and
consequences of Hardwick’s Marriage Act of . Consequently, more than half
the book is devoted to a careful and so far neglected analysis of parliamentary
debates about the pros and cons of the Marriage Act, its effects and later
amendments, culminating in the Repeal Act of  and the ensuing ‘ Act for
marriages in England ’ under William  in . These amendments gradually
dismembered Hardwick’s Marriage Act.
According to Outhwaite a prime motive for marriage reform was the increase
in clandestine marriages throughout the seventeenth century, especially in
    
London. Grounding his arguments mainly on the large numbers of clandestine
marriages conducted in London prisons, especially the Fleet, and in alehouses
and specially established marriage houses, he contradicts Ingram and Stone, who
had identified a gradual decrease in such marriages in this period. Clandestine
marriages continued to be possible because proven consent remained the official
basis of the law of matrimony to , when Hardwicke’s Marriage Act became
operative. In his survey of marriage reform attempts, Outhwaite highlights the
underlying religious and secular concerns of each period and their change over
time. While Outhwaite is little interested in the social dimension of clandestine
marriages, he nevertheless mentions some problems that could arise from disputes
over marital validity, such as the forfeiture of the wife’s dowry or jointure, or the
illegitimacy of children. Through his concentration on pressure from reformers to
reduce, for example, the number of instances when a husband, wife or their
respective parents might claim that the marriage was invalid because of some
defect in the procedure, he hints at the personal dramas that could develop. We
still know little about cases where parents pressed the church courts to dissolve
their children’s marriages if they disapproved of them, as originally in Pedersen’s
case, or as in the case of Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas Cornwallis, and William,
the third earl of Bath in the late sixteenth century, as recently discussed by Ann
Weikel. Outhwaite thus raises stimulating questions that encourage further
research while presenting what is basically a very specialised study of the reform
of marriage procedures under the impact of clandestine marriages.
Harrington’s study is based on three secular states of the Rhineland Palatinate
located in west-central Germany and representing the three main confessions of
the empire and the Swiss Confederation : the Palatine Electorate (Calvinist after
), the prince-bishopric of Speyer (Catholic throughout the period), and the
imperial city of Speyer (officially Lutheran after the Peace of Augsburg of
). He successfully proposes the combination of a long-term evolutionary
perspective from the twelfth century and a short-term revolutionary one between
 and , considering in turn the nature and origins of sixteenth-century
marriage reforms (part ) and their social impact (part ). The views of sixteenth-
century reformers themselves, preserved in legal and theological treatises, are
drawn upon as ‘ detached criteria for evaluating the success or failure of
subsequent reforms ’ (p. ). Harrington convincingly demonstrates that
marriage reform in the wake of the Reformation primarily consisted of the redress
of grievances which can be traced as far back as the thirteenth century, namely
those connected with clandestine marriages and with threats to social order.
Although obvious differences developed between Protestant and Catholic
marriage codes – on sacramentality, divorce and forbidden degrees of affinity
and consanguinity – there was a fundamental agreement between both Churches
on the necessity of the ‘ correction of abuses and disorders in the marriage law
with as much legal continuity as possible ’ (p. ). The same general continuity
was true of the practice of marriage, which Harrington deals with by looking at
the consensual doctrine, demands for publicity, marriage feasts, sexual discipline
and domestic stability. Protestant authorities, for instance, stressed that the
introduction of parental consent was an extension rather than a nullification of
the consensualist doctrine. Truly determined couples, Harrington shows, could
still circumvent familial opposition after the Reformation. The Reformation thus
saw not the arrival of the full secularisation and centralisation of marital legal
authority but rather a transitional state – gradually centralising and of mixed
 
secular and ecclesiastical nature. Differences were only partly confessional in
nature. Assumptions of marital jurisdiction had much more to do with the
popular concept of law based on local custom, and its inherent resistance to
bureaucratic expansion. These are important findings warning historians not to
take the success of early modern state-building and confessionalisation at its face
value but to relate it to the physical size of a polity and to social and legal
conservatism.
G H I, D F
L

La teologia e la grammatica. La controversia tra Erasmo ed Edward Lee. By Cecilia Asso.

(Studi e Testi per la Storia Religiosa del Cinquecento, .) Pp. . Florence :
Olschki, . L. ,.     ;  
Edward Lee, a gentleman of good family in Kent, was a person of consequence
in his time, almoner and ambassador of Henry , and archbishop of York from
 to . Earlier, at more than thirty years old, in orders and a member of
both English universities, he had betaken himself to Louvain in  to get ahead
with Greek. There he met Erasmus, who had recently published and was
beginning to revise his Greek and Latin New Testament. Erasmus, favourably
impressed with the debutant’s progress in the new language, showed him what
he was doing and politely invited comment. Lee responded to this encouragement
and, at the beginning of  was equally politely told that it would not do. He
was neither the first nor the last to find that zealous compliance with what he
believed to be a senior scholar’s approving invitation was not entirely welcome,
nor to lapse into paranoia. Erasmus, ever touchy himself, answered Lee’s
criticisms in letters to his English friends among others and complained of Lee’s
conduct. Pamphlets were exchanged after Lee had got his annotations published
at Paris in . This was one battle in the long war over the new New
Testament, in which traditionalist English scholars were involved along with
those of Louvain and Paris on the one side, and Thomas More, in particular, on
the Erasmian. The broad lines of disagreement are characterised in Asso’s titles :
the traditional and theological position taken by Lee is a response to the new
humanist–grammatical–linguistic stance of Erasmus. Hers is the first and so far
best and most thorough attempt to lay out the detail of a controversy that was
both celebrated in its time and symptomatic of it. She is thoroughly in control of
both the detailed and the general issues and she lays them out clearly. Surprising
conclusions were not to be expected, but Asso has done us a real service.
W I, J. B. T
U  L