Tomás de Aquino y la astrología

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORS: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PRoVINCE OF ST. JoSEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington 17, D. C. VoL. XI JULY, 1948 WHAT THE MODERN MAN SHOULD NOT BELIEVE No.3 UNDER the heading, "What The Modem Man Can Believe," there appeared in the November Atlantio Monthly an article by Rufus M. Jones, the principal thesis of which was: We must readjust faith to discovered facts. The present article is an examination of that thesis. The pivotal point of Mr. Jones' thesis is that what he terms the " Copernican Revolution " necessitates a complete re-evaluation of the traditional faith. " Every aspect of our religious faith must be rethought, reconstructed, and adjusted to the demonstrated facts which this Copernican Revolution forces upon our minds." Consequently, the whole urgency of Mr. Jones' argumentation is based upon the supposition of this " Copernican Revolution, which came in the dawn of the Renaissance, [and] was one of the most staggering blows at the dQminant faith of the western world that has ever been leveled lJ.77 278 PIERRE CONWAY against it in the long undeclared warfare between science and religion." It is the uncritical acceptance of such suppositions that has caused a sort of " Iron Curtain " to fall upon the Middle Ages, that has caused many moderns to reject the ancient faith before they have even. heard it. Because of them the modern man dares not seek the truth farther back than the Renaissance. But now the precarious position of western civilization has sent serious thinkers on a desperate inventory of wisdom through the ages. In this search for whatever is solid and durable, whatever inay prove a guarantee of survival, it is more necessary than ever to rend now this " Iron Curtain," to be .willing to face the facts even at the price of cherished illusions. There is nothing to fear from the truth. So let one not be afraid to look, for once, at the Middle Ages as they really were, and the ancient faith, as it really is. Today it is no longer a mere academic luxury but a vital duty in the interests of man's heritage of wisdom, to re-examine the picture of the medieval world as Mr. Jones so persuasively draws it. One must indeed, as Mr. Jones urges, be prepared to sacrifice·beguiling fantasies for uncompromising facts, which, if they exact a readjustment of one's beliefs, are nonetheless a salutary revision in the direction of a truth which is full of hope, ever new and ever living. Since Mr. Jones is engaged in the serious task of evaluating the basis of one's approach to God, his reconstruction of. medieval thought should be approached, not as a well-written and imaginative essay, but with the studious intent of uncompromisingly winnowing the wheat from the chaff. Upon what concept of the universe did the so-called "Copernican Revolution " come stealing in at the dawn of the Renaissance? In Mr. Jones' words," Slowly, through centuries of imaginative thinking and speculation, ... it had become a settled conclusion that the earth was the c.enter around which everything else in the visible universe revolved. This earthcenter for which everything else was created was thus obviously the focus of interest...and attention of whatever divine beings WHAT THE MODERN MAN SHOULD NOT BELIEVE 279 there were above it." But are we quite sure that in the Middle Ages the earth was the center of the universe and the focus of divine interest? What did Aristotle, whose thought was predominant in the pre-Copernican world, have to say about the matter? "They [the Pythagoreans] hold that the most important part of the world [universe], which is the centre, should be most strictly guarded, and they name it, or rather the fire which occupies that place, the ' Guard-house of Zeus,' as if the word ' centre ' were quite unequivocal, and the centre of the mathematical figure were always the same with that of the thing or the natural centre. But it is better to conceive of the case of the whole heavens as analogous to that of animals, in which the centre of...

Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) marks a turn in human perspective parallel to and as significant as the turn from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican angle of vision. The Ptolemaic way of viewing the world is named after Claudius Ptolemy, one of the great geographers and astronomers of the Graeco-Roman period, who was active in Alexandria, Egypt, in the Second Century of the Christian Era. In Ptolemy’s world, humanity and earth were regarded as the center of the universe, with the earth motionless and the moon, sun, and planets circling around it; the stars were spots of light on the dome arching over the whole. This view was generally accepted through the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Western Europe. It began to be displaced by the view of Nicolaus Copernicus (14731543), a Polish astronomer, set forth in Concerning the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres in 1543, that the earth was not the center of the world but was itself one of the planets circling the sun. Copernicus sparked what has become known as the Copernican Revolution. This momentous change of perspective requires humans to reject the notion that they live as the center of the physical universe and to accept the view that the center is displaced away from earth. Since the time of Copernicus, there have been a series of events heralded as “Copernican Revolutions” in many areas of human life articulating the implications of the insight that our world can no longer be regarded from what has been called an anthropocentric perspective.

The year 2024 will witness the 300th anniversary of Kant, the philosopher, whose works, according to many researchers, began modern philosophy. However, the outstanding achievements of Kant, his “Copernican revolution”, the transcendental method did not appear from scratch. The revolutionary ideas of Kant absorbed the experience of outstanding representatives of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the New Age. The political and socio-cultural situation in Europe in the 18th century also had a certain impact on the formation of his philosophy. Among the outstanding philosophers of the preclassical period, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas should be noted. Hobbes, Locke, Newton, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Rousseau should be mentioned among the representatives of the New Age. Some of these philosophers influenced his ethical philosophy, which is beyond the scope of this work. It is advisable to consider all the above problems in the context of the coordinate system of the world based on the limiting dynamic equilibria, since Kant raised questions about the boundaries of the sensory sphere, reason, reason, and human freedom. He resolved many of them or outlined approaches to their solution. Kant also claimed to remove the contradictions between empiricism and rationalism – the main epistemological currents of the New Age; however, according to the researchers of his creative heritage, he did not succeed. At the beginning of his philosophical activity, Kant tried to find the ultimate foundations of metaphysics, the value of which Kant constantly emphasizes. He believed that this was necessary in order to elucidate the final foundations of reality. Kant continued the search for ultimate foundations in his “critical philosophy” in aesthetics, analytics, and dialectics. He revealed the boundaries of reason, sense, and free will. He drew the line between the “idea of God” – the “ideal of pure reason” and its actual capabilities.

In the center of all the celestial bodies rests the sun. For who could in this most beautiful temple place this lamp in another or better place than that from which it can illuminate everything at the same time? Indeed, it is not unsuitable that some have called it the light of the world; others, its minds, and still others, its ruler. Trismegistus calls it the visible God; Sophocles' Electra, the all-seeing. So indeed, as if sitting on a royal throne, the Sun rules the family of the stars which surround it. Nicolaus Copernicus in De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543) THE COPERNICAN REVOLUTION We find it difficult to imagine the frame of mind of people who once firmly believed the earth to be the immovable center of the universe, with all the heavenly bodies revolving harmoniously around it. It is ironic that this view, inherited from the Middle Ages and handed down by the Greeks, particularly Greek thought frozen in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, was one designed to illustrate our insignificance amid the grand scheme of the universe – even while we resided at its center. Aristotle's world consisted of four fundamental elements – fire, air, water, and earth – and each element was inclined to seek its own natural place.

In Knowledge and Cosmos: Development and Decline of the Medieval Perspective, 2nd Edition, Robert K. DeKosky focuses on issues in astronomy, cosmology, physics, matter theory, philosophy, and theology vital to the “Copernican Revolution.” This book describes efforts among individuals advocating different world views to fit new ideas compatibly into broad perspectives reflecting four traditional patterns of interpretation: teleological, mechanical, occultist, and mathematico-descriptive. These four modes had guided medieval accounts of heavenly phenomena, material process, and motion. The teleological explanation, prevalent in Aristotle’s natural philosophy, posited “final causes” (ends or goals toward which objects strove or attempted to become). Ancient classical atomists had emphasized strictly mechanical explanations, invoking direct material contact and collision of moving matter as agents of physical change. Traditions of astrology, magic, and alchemy embraced an occultist pattern of interpretation—citing hidden forces opaque to both sensual detection and rational understanding as explanations of various phenomena. Finally, the mathematico-descriptive approach interpreted natural phenomena according to geometric or arithmetic relationships; unlike the other three, this did not involve causal explanation of a process. Part I discusses development of the four patterns in the ancient period and their uneasy medieval relationships with each other and with basic Judaeo-Muslim-Christian exigencies of faith. Theory of the heavens follows, including the mathematico-descriptive approach of Ptolemaic astronomy, the teleological and mechanical cosmology of Aristotle, and occultist interpretations of astrologers and magicians. Part I then turns to matter and materiality, discussing differences among the mechanical philosophy of classical atomism, teleological emphases in Aristotle’s material theory, and occultist assumptions of some alchemists. Finally, Part I analyzes conceptions of motion, focusing on Aristotelian interpretations and critical commentaries thereon during the Middle Ages. Part II relates struggles of leading early-modern figures to adapt new concepts (e.g., Copernicus’ heliocentric astronomy/cosmology, Galileo’s inertial theories of motion, and Kepler’s elliptical planetary orbit) to an allegiance to two or more of the four patterns of interpretation. By this approach, it identifies decreasing dependence on teleological explanation of physical phenomena as crucial to decline of medieval interpretations of those phenomena, followed by rejection of teleology in the natural philosophy of Descartes, and subsequent fruitful confluence of the mechanical, mathematico-descriptive, and occultist patterns in the physics and cosmology of Isaac Newton.

Bruno Latour’s distinctive historiographic standpoint on the origins of scientific revolutions and the multifarious accounts of their reconstructions are elicited. It is contended that, in spite of their highly iconoclastic character, Latour’s views can be welcomed for their innovative approach to the inquiries of social facets of science. In particular, they can elucidate the foundations of the lucid mature theory change model proffered in our preceding writings. Correspondingly, the Copernican Revolution is envisaged in the wayward context of intense interaction and interpenetration of Aristotelean and Ptolemaic sophisticated research practices. Eventually, the Aristotle – Ptolemy pagan cosmology could not help but be exposed to repeated cogent attacks during the Middle Ages since it apparently confronted the renowned principles of monotheism, not admitting the impervious demarcation line between the celestial and mundane realms. All the opposite worlds should have one and the same Creator. Commencing with the unification, Copernicus, in effect, paved the way for the descent of mathematics from Heaven to Earth and the spread of natural philosophy from Earth to Heaven.

The publication of Nicholas Copernicus’s (1473–1543) De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, which presented a mathematical planetary theory based on heliocentric hypotheses, has often been regarded as a watershed in the history of science and civilization.3 The new planetary conception had a tremendous impact on European culture and undermined the medieval theology-loaded understanding of nature, with man at its center as the spectator of God’s Creation. Thomas Kuhn even argued in The Copernican Revolution that the heliocentric theory and the motion of the Earth eventually exploded the entire cultural system of beliefs and values received from the Middle Ages. In particular, many ideas descending from literal exegesis of the Bible were irremediably cast into doubt.4

Religion and Science

Reviewed by: The Birth of Theory by Andrew Cole Andrew Eichel Cole, Andrew. 2014. The Birth of Theory. Chicago University Press. $90.00 hc. $30.00 sc. xix + 272 pp. Bookstores might have a difficult time deciding where to shelve Andrew Cole’s The Birth of Theory, but an eclectic range of sources and methodologies is just part of what this engaging study offers. Like Paul Strohm’s Theory and the Premodern Text (2000) and Bruce Holsinger’s The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory (2005), Cole’s project is a groundbreaking work of medievalism that subverts commonplace ideas about the medieval, the modern, and the periodizing tendencies that force their separation. Cole argues that Hegel’s dialectic “emerged from the philosophical practices of medieval thinkers” and that his innovations “ultimately lead to what in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is called ‘theory’”(x; xi). Although the importance of dialectics in the history of philosophical inquiry has long been a critical commonplace, Cole’s focus on this method as the origin of contemporary critical theory is contentious, to say the least. Besides accounting for the diversity of approaches produced in the name of “theory,” especially after the influx of French structuralism and post-structuralism in the 1960s and 1970s, Cole also faces the issue of settling on a definition of dialectics that will suit its antique, medieval, and modern versions. A description of this mode in Hegel’s writing would demand a book-length exposition, space Cole simply does not have, and so readers must accept Cole’s conception of the Hegelian dialectic if they want to follow the rest of his argument. Hegel’s renovation of dialectics is a special case because, as Cole points out, Germany in the eighteenth century was “fundamentally still a medieval [End Page 167] world” in which feudalism dominated as the organizational hierarchy structuring relations between the aristocracy and a peasant class (xiii). Thus, Hegel’s appropriation of medieval concepts of the dialectic, as well as the Hegelian play between identity and difference, stem in part from similar historical, cultural, and social circumstances. However, as Cole makes clear, along with the persistence of feudal practices that hearkened back to former centuries, Hegel’s Germany was also host to an incipient modernity, and the resulting socio-economic turmoil provides the context for intellectual transformations, not least Immanuel Kant’s “Copernican revolution.” While Hegel’s critique of his time and place draw on the past, his concern is with the present and future. He rejects the isolation of the Kantian subject, locked into the static categories of a priori knowledge, and posits a dynamic view of human history and experience that revolves around dialectical confrontations. The Marxism that features throughout the rest of the book emerges here, with Cole acknowledging that his own “thinking about history is rooted” in a Marxian hermeneutic (xiii). Thus, another of his project’s aims is to show that Hegel is “presciently Marxist in his critical thinking” and that the former’s concept of the dialectical dynamic between identity and difference, contrary to contemporary critical consensus, would prove influential for Karl Marx’s writings on economics and history (xvii). In investigating this genealogy, Cole illustrates the various legacies of Hegelianism as this dynamic appears not just in those acknowledging their debt to Hegel but also in renowned “anti-dialectical” writers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Gilles Deleuze (xix). Admitting the difficulty of this reconciliation, Cole nevertheless insists, “theory, as we have known it and practiced it for a century or more, finds its origin in Hegel—and Hegel himself finds his theories, his dialectic in the Middle Ages” (xiii). Cole’s investigations unfold in three parts, “Theory,” “History,” and “Literature,” with each part divided into two chapters. Chapter 1 starts with The Birth of Tragedy in order to show how Nietzsche was “deeply and imaginatively dialectical,” although he has been unfairly handled in this regard by critics, especially Deleuze (3). Cole’s key analysis here juxtaposes Nietzsche’s description of the birth of the tragic artist with the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus’s writings on the Intellectual Principle and the One to illustrate that both episodes revolve around an...

In the present work, I will divide the history of the interpretation of Genesis into three periods. For heuristic purposes, they will be termed the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Copernican periods. Thus, the first section of this paper surveys how the New Testament writers read the first chapter of Genesis. Here I deal with the concept of historicity inherent in Genesis 1-3 and show how the authors of the New Testament believed that Genesis was a reliable historical account of Earth’s Origins. Then I will proceed to highlight the changes that took place. The second section of this paper looks at how such an interpretation shifted in the first four centuries through a Platonic reading of Genesis and in the Middle Ages through an Aristotelian reading. Finally, the third section of this article looks at the Copernican Revolution and points a critique on these conceptions.

Reviewed by: Handbook of Medieval Sexuality Darrel W. Amundsen Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage, eds. Handbook of Medieval Sexuality. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, vol. 1696. New York: Garland Publishing, 1996. xviii + 441 pp. $68.00. Most of the eighteen essays in this volume were written by scholars who are internationally recognized authorities in their specialties. The lesser luminaries who contributed essays all appear to be competent scholars. The volume is divided into three sections. The first, “Sexual Norms,” contains six essays: “Confession and the Study of Sex in the Middle Ages” (Pierre Payer); “Sex and Canon Law” (James Brundage); “Western Medicine and Natural Philosophy” (Joan Cadden); “Gendered Sexuality” (Joyce Salisbury); “Chaste Marriage in the Middle Ages: ‘It Were to Hire a Greet Merite’” (Margaret McGlynn and Richard Moll); and “Hiding Behind the Universal Man: Male Sexuality in the Middle Ages” (Jacqueline Murray). The same number of essays appear in the second section, “Variance from Norms”: “Homosexuality” (Warren Johansson and William Percy); “Twice Marginal and Twice Invisible: Lesbians in the Middle Ages” (Jacqueline Murray); “Cross Dressing and Gender Role Change in the Middle Ages” (Vern Bullough); “Prostitution in Medieval Europe” (Ruth Karras); “Contraception and Early Abortion in the Middle Ages” (John Riddle); and “Castration and Eunuchism in the Middle Ages” (Matthew Kuefler). The final section, “Cultural Issues,” contains “A Note on Research into Jewish Sexuality in the Medieval Period” (Norman Roth); “A Research Note on Sexuality and Muslim Civilization” (Norman Roth); “Eastern Orthodox Christianity” (Eve Levin); “Sexuality in Medieval French Literature: ‘Séparés, on est ensemble’” (Laurie Finke); “Old Norse Sexuality: Men, Women, and Beasts” (Jenny Jochens); and “Sex Roles and the Role of Sex in Medieval English Literature” (David Lampe). Most of the essays are very circumspect and nonsensational. Inevitably, some are controversial—the essay on “Homosexuality,” written by the late Warren Johansson and William Percy, probably the most so. Commendably, Johannson and Percy discredit John Boswell’s well-known attempt “to find Church toleration if not sanction for homosexuality” (p. 178). They rightly pronounce his efforts to “exonerate the Christian Church from guilt for persecution of gays” as “not dispassionate scholarship” (pp. 178–79); unfortunately, however, in going to the [End Page 487] opposite extreme from Boswell, they have produced an essay that is equally lacking in dispassionate scholarship. Seeing a pervasive intolerance throughout the history of Christianity, they denounce as implicitly “homophobic” those who even lauded virginity and chastity as Christian virtues—on which grounds they label that most moderate and irenic church father, Cyprian, a “fanatic” (p. 162). In their view, John Chrysostom “raved” (p. 163) along with such “fanatic friars” as Thomas Aquinas (p. 168) in expressing their “paranoid beliefs” and “paranoid delusions” fostered by “superstition and fanaticism” (pp. 172–76). Indeed, in the authors’ opinion, “the delusional world of the religious mind” is nothing more or less than “a complex of irrational beliefs” (pp. 178, 179). Such intolerance is not “dispassionate scholarship,” and hence mars an otherwise balanced volume. By contrast, Jacqueline Murray’s essay on lesbianism in the Middle Ages is an excellent example of a circumspect treatment of a controversial subject that avoids the Scylla of apologetic special pleading and the Charybdis of vitriolic denunciation. Some essays are the authors’ distillation of their own massive tomes (e.g., James Brundage on canon law). Others represent, as Joan Cadden says of her study of views of sexuality in Western medicine and natural philosophy, “a progress report on a vast scholarly project, the outlines of which are not yet drawn” (p. 54). “This handbook,” the editors write in their introduction, “aims to address the needs of students (and even faculty members) who are interested in the study of medieval sexuality and who would like a guide to the sources and literature bearing on medieval sex” (p. xv). Although the lengths of the eighteen contributions range from ten to thirty pages, the average essay consists of fifteen pages of text, four pages of endnotes, and four pages of bibliography. Hence, this volume, with its excellent index, has admirably achieved the editors’ goal, especially as a “guide to the sources and literature” on sex in the Middle Ages. Darrel W. Amundsen Western...

Does any child ever first acquire virtue in an Aristotelian manner? A subtle interpersonal play is the more typical locus of initial ethical formation. Moreover, many modern experiments, such as a picture of a pair of eyes being glued to an “honesty box” (Bateson et al. 2006), reveal how even a lifeless representation that evokes a sense of “second-person relatedness” (SPR) subtly encourages virtuous actions by adults. Classical virtue ethics does not easily accommodate these phenomena, but I have argued previously (Pinsent 2012) that the “infused” dispositions described by St Thomas Aquinas can be understood in terms of SPR. In this chapter, I propose that these insights, with some corroboration from contemporary social neuroscience, highlight the need for a “Copernican Revolution” of virtue ethics. I also review briefly some implications and propose ways in which the role of infused or second-person dispositions might be tested.

Bibliography of the Publications of R. W. Southern

444BOOK REVIEWS the earlier Middle Agesjews were increasingly cast as enemies of the Christian faith and traitors to civil society, with the usual unpleasant consequences. The second group of texts deals with Jewish converts who subsequently apostatized from their adopted faith. A third and much larger deviant group comprised those who flouted medieval sexual conventions, with whom Goodich rather oddly classes those who suffered from leprosy. Fourth in this catalogue of the despised we find mentally unstable persons thought to be possessed by the devil and his minions, including those unfortunate souls whose derangement led them to suicide. Next come heretics of various stripes, from Waldensians and Cathars to Guglielmites and the Brethren of the Free Spirit. As his final specimens of medieval marginality Goodich introduces us to texts that deal with persons who deviated from social and religious norms temporarily , often at some critical transition point in their life cycle. Thus we are introduced to Canon Thomas de Mathia, who doubted the efficacy of relics of St. Thomas Aquinas until personal experience of their power convinced him of his error. St. Clare of Assisi appears here in an account of the antagonism that her designs for a community of poor nuns aroused among more conventional Christians. Similarly Goodich treats us to Salimbene da Adam's description of the troubles he experienced with his family when, to their astonishment and horror, he decided to become a Franciscan friar. He closes his book with a passage from the canonization records of St. Nicholas of Tolentino that illustrates the circumstances in which individuals might invoke the aid of the saints to rescue them from desperate situations. The texts assembled here illustrate the problems of just a few groups who lived at or beyond the margins of medieval society. We hear nothing of the voices of numerous other marginalized groups—thieves and murderers, widows and orphans, prisoners and slaves, or prostitutes and charcoal burners, to cite just a clutch of examples. Nonetheless, within the limits that Goodich sets, the reader will encounter an array of documents that convey a vivid impression of the perils of liminality in medieval Christendom. James A. Brundage The University ofKansas Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages. By Dyan Elliott. [The Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1999. Pp. xii, 300. $49.95 clothbound; $1995 paperback.) As its subtitle indicates, Fallen Bodies deals with pollution, sexuality, and demonology in "the high and later Middle Ages" (p. 6). These themes are examined in six chapters: nocturnal pollution and men's bodies (chap. 1), women's bodies (chap. 2), sex in holy places (chap. 3), priests' wives after the Gregorian Reform's insistence on clerical celibacy (chaps. 4 and 5), later conceptualiza- BOOK REVIEWS445 tions of the nature of demons (chap. 6). Although Dyan Elliott says that each chapter could be read separately, she also insists "the book as a whole demonstrates the ways in which these issues resist separate treatment and interpenetrate one another" (pp. 12-13). The interpénétration results from the author's reading of a wide variety of medieval texts that goes beyond "interpretations that medieval authors would themselves 'approve'" (p. 8). This is accomplished through a penchant for a psychoanalytical reading of texts. The book abounds with the language of impulses , fantasies, dreams, guilt,fears, anxieties, repression, the subconscious. The following comment on an exemplum is illustrative: "This radicalization (and oversimplification) is initially resorted to as a defense mechanism against feelings of guilt, ambivalence, and anxiety . . ." (p. 32). The overall thesis of the book seems to be that in the course of the Middle Ages a subtle development occurred in the conceptualization of women and demons. Demons came to be thought of as intellectual, evil spirits, women as material, impure temptresses. They both came together in the witch, the servant and consort of the devil well expressed in the late fifteenth-century Malleus maleflcarum. This is a textuaily rich book reflecting considerable acquaintance both with medieval and contemporary literature. There are insightful analyses of pollution and ritual purity, virginity, and demonology, and interesting attempts to relate the developing cult of Mary and the doctrine of eucharistie transubstantiation to these...

Reviewed by: The Quest for the Christ Child in the Later Middle Ages by Mary Dzon Eva von Contzen Mary Dzon. The Quest for the Christ Child in the Later Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. Pp. 424, $65.00. What happened between Christ's Nativity and his first documented public appearance in Jerusalem at age twelve, in which he went missing and was eventually found—to his parents' relief and astonishment—in the temple arguing with Jewish doctors? Of the gospel writers, only Luke recounts this episode; chronologically, the next canonical incident from Jesus's life appears to be his baptism by John, which occurred when both were already grown men. In this fascinating and thought-provoking study, Mary Dzon tackles the "hidden years," as she terms them, of Jesus' childhood—particularly the time between his birth and the episode with the temple doctors in Jerusalem. The book focuses on the later Middle Ages and places particular emphasis on textual and iconographic sources from England, though it by no means focuses narrowly on English materials. Dzon takes her [End Page 329] readers from the apocryphal Infancy Gospels to English vernacular lyrics to Thomas Aquinas; from Francis of Assisi to Brigitta of Sweden and back to England and Margery Kempe. To trace the complex routes and intersections of the material and its transmission across Europe is a challenging task, which Dzon has mastered with great skill, and with a verve that makes the book a joy to read. Dzon places medieval people's desire to know more about the young Jesus in the context of Christocentric affective piety and the emerging interest in the humanity of Christ, propagated by the Cistercians and Franciscans. Popular curiosity gave rise to the Infancy Gospels, widely influential apocryphal texts that closed the biographical void left open by the canonical Gospels. Drawing on topoi from romance and other popular genres, these apocryphal legends of Jesus' early life piqued the interest of medieval readers and aroused the suspicion of members of the clergy, as Thomas Aquinas's extensive engagement with the topic demonstrates. At the same time, the Franciscans played an important role in resuscitating the Christ Child, and their founder, in particular, seems to have actively promoted this devotional trend. A strong Franciscan influence, in turn, can be detected in Brigitta of Sweden's Revelations, a text that brings together the affective devotion to the Christ Child and to his humanity with a decidedly maternal perspective. Dzon's introduction not only provides a succinct overview of the chapters that follow, but also surveys previous scholarship on the topic. Though this overview comes rather abruptly (in the form of a standalone section), it ultimately proves highly useful because it contains a nuanced discussion of the different interests that have tended to underlie previous scholars' works (i.e., feminist approaches; Eucharistic devotion; the social history of childhood; the advent of affective piety, particularly as it relates to the Passion). Because many previous scholars studied legends of the Christ Child as a means to understanding some broader topic, their treatment of the material covered by Dzon has seemed sketch-like and at times one-sided. Given this context, it is obvious why a book devoted to the apocryphal Infancy Gospels and their medieval reception is an important contribution to existing knowledge. The first chapter ("The Christ Child in Two Treatises of Aelred of Rievaulx and in Early Franciscan Sources") analyzes the Cistercian and early Franciscan role in establishing the Christ Child as an object of affective devotion, focusing in particular on Aelred's treatises De Jesu puero duodenni (c. 1153–57) and De institutione inclusarum (1160s). In both [End Page 330] texts, Aelred champions an experiential approach and invites his readers—respectively, his friend Ivo, and his sister, a recluse—to achieve closer proximity to Jesus through meditation and by contemplating his humanity. The Christ Child proves central to both texts. Dzon argues that Francis of Assisi's treatment of the childhood of Christ is even more forceful, thanks to its emphasis on the poverty of the innocent baby. Francis aligned himself explicitly with the lowly conditions of the Christ Child, reflected alike in...