Monastic History Research Articles

Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600-900 (review)

Reviewed by: Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600-900 David Rollason Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600–900. By Sarah Foot. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. xvi, 398. $90.00.) The publishers of this handsomely and generously produced book have included on the jacket an evaluation of it by Nicholas Brooks as "a beautifully structured and magisterial treatment." It is certainly a capable and well-informed commentary on the English church before the tenth-century Reformation, which shows a comprehensive knowledge of the written sources for its history, and students will find it a useful guide. It is, however, in essence the author's doctoral thesis of 1990, and, although she emphasizes that it has been much revised and improved, there is still a sense that it belongs to a somewhat earlier generation of discussion. Foot adheres to her previously expounded view that all English churches of the period in question should be called minsters and that the word monastery should be abandoned, although not apparently the adjective monastic. Her argument that early monasteries were various and their pastoral functions essentially unpredictable is set out in more detail than previously, but given the limitations of the written sources, certainty is not possible. It is striking how often Foot declares that something is hard or impossible "to imagine," as in "it is impossible to imagine that all ministers of baptism belonged to episcopal households" (p. 301). The imagining seems to depend as much on our preconceptions as on precise evidence. Crucially, the nature of lay interaction with monasteries, which is an issue for any period of monastic history and which Foot declares to be central to her book, is not handled in the sort of depth which it receives in other contexts, for example, from Arnold Angenendt, even in the case of the importance of monasteries for land tenure. It is unfortunate for Foot that her book has been overtaken by John Blair's The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford, 2005). Blair has been very successful in pushing the analysis of English monasteries in new directions, noting that further study of the origins of parishes and their relationship to monasteries "cannot [End Page 329] progress significantly without another generation of local studies, and ultimately a complete catalogue of Anglo-Saxon religious sites supported by a cartographic database" (p. 7). One of Blair's great strengths in his book is his cross-disciplinary approach, especially his expertise in topographical, archaeological, and to some extent art historical research. By contrast, Foot's book contains plates of manuscripts and churches and plans of sites that are never more than illustrations without close analysis or even particular relevance. The plate of Escomb church (p. 104) is apparently to illustrate a point about the (dubious) antiquity of its churchyard enclosure, which is not shown on the plate, while the highly relevant issues of the proportions and liturgical function of the church are not touched upon. Students will need to be encouraged to look more closely at the nonwritten sources, not least stone sculpture following the publication of the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, than this book does. [End Page 330] David Rollason Durham University Copyright © 2008 The Catholic University of America Press

Três ensaios de história monástica medieval portuguesa

Três ensaios de história monástica medieval portuguesa

Bibliotheken in Neuburg an der Donau: Sammlungen von Pfalzgrafen, Mönchen und Humanisten (review)

Reviewed by: Bibliotheken in Neuburg an der Donau: Sammlungen von Pfalzgrafen, Mönchen und Humanisten Matthew Z. Heintzelman Bibliotheken in Neuburg an der Donau: Sammlungen von Pfalzgrafen, Mönchen und Humanisten. Edited by Bettina Wagner . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005. x, 216 pp. €38,00. ISBN 3-447-05197-3. Books, collections, and even whole libraries move—a lot. This set of essays celebrates the two hundredth anniversary of the Staatliche Bibliothek (previously, the Provinzialbibliothek) Neuburg an der Donau. Growing out of a series of lectures given in the summer of 2003, these contributions provide both a historical overview of the library and insights into social and political history, the history of collections and libraries, rare books and manuscripts, and monastic history. [End Page 91] Complementing the texts are several photographs of related materials in Neuburg and elsewhere as well as thirty-two color plates depicting architectural history, decoration, and collections. Thus, this is neither a catalog nor an introduction to the use of the collections but rather a celebration of libraries and collections in or from Neuburg. In the opening essay Reinhard Seitz outlines the history of the Staatliche Bibliothek from the earliest records of the building through the formative stages in the early nineteenth century and up to the present. The essay concludes with an overview of directors in the last two centuries. Under the direction of Johann Christoph Freiherr von Aretin the initial core of the library grew out of secularized collections from the Cistercian abbey of Kaisheim (1804) and the Dominican library at Obermedlingen (1806). In 1822 the library absorbed the collection from the former Jesuit school in Neuburg. Medieval manuscripts and incunables from these libraries were largely transferred to the Hofbibliothek (today, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) in Munich. While secularization improved access to the collections for scholars and the public, periodic removal of duplicate copies has greatly complicated studies of the provenance and earlier history of the collections. Franz Jürgen Götz describes the medieval books from the Cistercian abbey of Kaisheim (founded 1135) in the next essay. Approximately 225 manuscripts from this collection have found their way to Munich, although some disappeared during foreign occupation and during the secularization. While most of the Kaisheim incunables found their way to Munich, some remained behind in Neuburg. Götz explains the roots of the Cistercian book culture and the minimal library necessary to establish a Cistercian house (e.g., the psalter, antiphonal, gradual, missal, etc.). After an early blossoming in the thirteenth century the Kaisheim scriptorium gradually lost out to books imported from Italy and France. As with manuscripts, incunables require copy-specific study. Bettina Wagner discusses the history of research into the incunables from Neuburg collections and the role of the secularization of monastic libraries in the opening of antiquarian collections to the public. These collections did not represent the full range of fifteenth-century published works, in that most monastic libraries contained works on theology but not as many literary or other kinds of texts. At the same time, the secularized collections in Bavaria formed the foundation of some of the earliest authoritative incunable studies, such as Ludwig Hain's Repertorium Bibliographicum (Stuttgart, 1826–38). Manuscript notes in incunables can also supply invaluable information about the early history of printing, such as the authorship of the popular Schatzbehalter or the dating of the earliest German-language edition of the Bible. In 1557, after several years of peregrination across Reformation-era Germany and Austria, the classicist Hieronymus Wolf (1516–80) found stability in Augsburg, where he remained until his death. Helmut Zäh recounts Wolf's practice of collecting books to support his teaching and translation activities in classical literature, theology, and philology. In 1572, with his eyesight failing and after many unsuccessful attempts, Wolf was able to sell his collection to the Protestant-oriented Gymnasium illustre in Neuburg. When the Neuburg counts reverted to Catholicism in the early seventeenth century, the Jesuits took over the collection, and upon their dissolution in 1773 the collection came under the control of the Knights of Malta. Eventually, the collection was absorbed into the provincial library, where it still represents a rare example of a relatively complete personal library...

:The Books of King Henry VIII and His Wives

King Henry VIII and his wives are among the most well-known historical figures in the world; their stories have become absorbed into Western culture through biographies, documentaries and dramatisations. However, what is still not greatly appreciated is that Henry VIII was one of the most intelligent and widely read kings who ever lived. He read or dipped into a huge range of books, in many languages, and amassed several libraries. From surviving catalogues, which tell us what books he had, it is clear he was deeply involved in theological debate and monastic history, especially when moving to the Break with Rome (the English Reformation). At the same time, he was a Humanist scholar ahead of his time in all the liberal arts, especially music and poetry. Equally, most of his wives were also avid readers who collected a variety of books. The fact that we know what they owned, and then left to posterity (including several now in The British Library), gives us a fascinating new perspective on their personalities. This book is a major contribution to the study of Tudor intellectual life as well as the history of the book.

Renunciation of Will in the Monastic School of Gaza

From the outset of Christian monastic history, renunciation was universally considered an initial step along the ascetic path. In various circles of early monastic tradition there were different emphases on renunciation. In contrast to anchoritic monasticism, which felt less threatened by the dangers of personal will, coenobitic monasticism placed paramount importance on social cooperation and obedience. Close examination of the place of this topic in the paideia of early monastic literature reveals a shift in its importance and centrality that can be clearly traced in the various phases of the monastic school of Gaza. It developed a special emphasis on extreme self-renunciation, achieving its apogee in this circleʼs late coenobitic forms and epitomized in the second half of the sixth century in the Life of Dositheus, the disciple of Dorotheus.

Pluralism and the basis of freewill in psychotherapy

In the context of the European Association for Psychotherapy (EAP)'s strengthening of its pluralistic vision through the accrediting of organisations to award the European Certificate of Psychotherapy, and its democratic development of its constitutional structures the papers in this issue are an expression of this pluralistic system of values. Geoff Heath's new paper charts a journey for psychotherapy away from positive science models of reality, towards a model or vision of an irreducibly value-laden form of embodied and emotional being in the world. Paul Ziolo explores the part monastic history played in creating the culture we still are suffering from, of the emotional cauterisation and emasculation, in education, of children. John Nuttall's exploration is of how there is open to us the possibility of, in a very post-modern way, juxtaposing , and thus relativising, models of integration in psychotherapy, not only with each other, but with their analogues in the social world and the world of cultural a...

A Jacobite Antiquary in Grub Street: Captain John Stevens (c.1662–1726)

Some of the multifarious literary activities of Captain John Stevens have received attention from specialists. His journal of the Irish wars of 1688–91, not published until 1912, is now generally recognised as being one of the most important primary sources for the campaign. His place in the history of travel writing, as the translator into English of classical works in Spanish and Portuguese on the history, geography and ethnology of the Iberian world, has been established by Dr. Colin Steele. His major contribution to English monastic history, as the translator and continuator of Sir Thomas Dugdale, though less well known, and deserving closer study, has been recognised by David Douglas. More recently a Portuguese scholar has paid tribute to him as one of the first writers to introduce the English reader to Portuguese history and literature. English Hispanists have acknowledged his prolific output as a translator of Spanish authors, notably Cervantes and Quevedo. More controversially, in Pat Rogers’s fascinating study of the literary underclass in London during the age of Pope and Swift, he is ignominiously—and, I shall argue, unjustly—indexed under the heading ‘Dunces and their allies’.

Brief Notices

BRIEF NOTICES Giou,Antonella. Monumenti e oggetti d'arte nel Regno d'ltalia:Ilpatrimonio artístico degli enti religiosi soppressi tra riuso, tutela e dispersione. Inventario dei "Beni délie corporazioni religiose" 1860-1890. (Rome: Minist ère) per i beni culturali e ambientali, Ufficio Centrale per i beni archivistici. 1997.Pp. iv, 317. Paperback.) This publication of the State Archives ofItaly describes and lists the works of art taken from religious corporations during the first thirty years of the Italian Kingdom. When the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia set out to unite the Italian states under its own leadership, it had already instituted a strongly anticlerical bias. A law championed by Urbano Rattazzi in 1855 led to the suppression of all reUgious communities not dedicated to preaching, education, or helping the sick. The "Rattazzi Law" was rooted in the Enlightenment mistrust of purely spiritual values (the intercessory prayer of cloistered nuns, for example), as weU as the desire to seize control of the artistic treasures and libraries in the churches and monasteries of depopulated religious communities. According to this statute, the possessions of any suppressed community became the properly of the state, to be administered by an "ecclesiastical fund" which "would pay pensions to the same dispossessed religious men and women and defray other expenses of worship. In Piedmont, this law resulted in the extinction of thirty-five orders, with 335 houses. As the wars of unification continued, this law was extended to those Italian provinces added to Piedmontese control by military conquest. Included were two provinces of the former Papal States, Umbria in December, I860, and the Marches in January, 1861. The Neapolitan provinces were added in February, 1861. By the end of 1877, enforcement spread to Sicily and the remaining provinces. Collectively, 4000 religious communities were closed down and their goods confiscated by the state. Gioli's book traces the entire process clearly, with good attention to detaU. The actual inventory of archival holdings takes up seventy-five pages, followed by an additional ten pages of the pertinent legislation. There are three useful indexes , employing reUgious congregations, names of persons, and names of 492 BRIEF notices493 places. This work could be a useful tool for those working in art history or monastic history. Leopold Glueckert, O.Carm. (Lewis University) McGlashan, M. Nona. O Days of Wind & Moon. (Santa Barbara: Fithian Press. 1997.Pp. 127. $10.95.) In an early landscape painting, Ming Huang'sJourney to Shu,human activity is the artist's pretext for his attempt to capture the mysteries of the natural world. The polarity of the brushwork entices the eye to travel the route of the Tang emperor. Bridges, waterfalls, and paviUons frame individual scenes requiring the viewer to stop and reflect on their significance. McGlashan has painted a landscape of her journey as a member of the Catholic Sisters of Social Service in China, 1946-1948. Written fifty years after her sojourn, and following her withdrawal from the community and the onset of blindness, her book is a meditation on the spirituality of the Chinese. She recalled seeing little arches, like gateways to houses. The builder, however, erected the arch to frame a pleasing scene, not to lead to a house. A microcosm of Chinese and American attempts to understand each other, McGlashan has painted a portrait of the polarities of service and superiority, attraction and repulsion , altruism and suspicion, ignorance and knowledge. Historical figures, activities of international agencies and Communists, inflation and black market, interaction with other religious communities and nationals appear as in a Chinese drama,which presumes familiarity with the story. Readers learn that the Sisters of Social Service originated in Hungary, expanded to California, China, and eventually Taiwan. The book, however, is not a history of the Sisters or the civil war. The author's characterization of her work as a "recoUection of how it was and how it seemed to me" and her purpose to present a "small segment of the total picture of China" aptly describe 0 Days of Wind & Moon. It is a work of memory and reflection and not the appUcation of historical method, despite the appended "Historical Perspective." Its philosophical perspective on her experience of Chinese culture and the...

Runaway Religious in Medieval England, c. 1240-1540 by F. Donald Logan

326book reviews tory ..." (p. 231). This is one of the many topics dealt with in this exceUent book which leaves the reader anxious to find out more. Bernard Hamilton University ofNottingham Runaway Religious in Medieval England, c. 1240-1540. By E Donald Logan. (NewYork: Cambridge University Press. 1996. Pp. xix, 301. $59.95.) ReUgious vows, like those of marriage, were for Ufe. Tb leave the monastery was to commit apostasy and be subject to excommunication; as Gerald ofWales expressed it, this was to leave the path of truth and salvation. Not surprisingly, therefore, comparatively few took such a step, accompanied as it was with uncertainty in this world and damnation in the next. The total population of medieval English religious is notoriously hard to gauge; the numbers of runaways can similarly never be more than impressionistic; yet, U Logan is right (and his figures are as convincing as any), no more than about 7% ofreligious were renegades . However, this figure masks considerable fluctuations, peaking (at over 16%) in the generation foUowing the Black Death, a statistic which sheds further light, and from a new perspective, on the monastic crisis of those years. Yet though these figures are lower than those of popular imagination they still constitute a minority of the discontented, who have only now found their historian. Moreover, at the same time we should not infer that 93% of religious were content in their vocation. Logan's analysis of the fugitives clearly demonstrates the tensions inherent in any monastic house, which might result either in apostasy or in suUen acceptance. Logan's magisterial study is a tour de force that nearly juxtaposes casestudies (which he analyzes to great effect) with more general contextualizations , whUe the inclusion of a register of all known apostates is an invaluable guide to further research. His survey begins in the mid-thirteen century, by which time records, papal, episcopal, and royal, are sufficiently rich to enable detaUed analysis, virtually all religious foundations in England had been made, and the codification of canon law on apostasy was secure.Yet to begin here is to enter in medias res and more could have certainly have been said to advantage about earlier runaways and more use made both of the twelfth-century canonists and later synodal legislation. Nevertheless, this study is to be most warmly welcomed as the first authoritative account of a much-neglected field; its findings must now be taken into account by aU scholars of monastic history. Brian Golding University ofSouthampton ...

Medieval

The National Trust Historical Atlas of Britain: Prehistoric and Medieval. General Editor: Nigel Saul The Origins of Cheshire. By N. J. Higham Reading D. A. BROOKS The Lombards. By Neil Christie Family Power in Southern Italy: The Duchy ofGaeta and its Neighbours, 850–1139. By Patricia Skinner English Caroline Script and Monastic History. Studies in Benedictinism, AD 950–1030. ByDavid N. Dumville Medieval London Houses. By John Schofield Medieval Canon Law. By James A. Brundage Medieval Ecclesiastical Studies in Honour of Dorothy M. Owen. Edited by M. J. Franklin and Christopher Harper‐Bill The Chronicle of John of Worcester, Volume II: The Annals for 450 to 1066. By R. R. Darlington and Patrick McGurk England and Normandy in the Middle Ages. Edited by D. Bates and A. Curry Trinity Hall, Cambridge D. J. POWER Chivalry in Twelfth‐Century Germany: The Works of Hartmann von Aue. By W. H. Jackson Bastard Feudalism. By Michael Hicks Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War. Edited by Anne Curry and Michael Hughes The Black Death and Pastoral Leadership: The Diocese of Hereford in the Fourteenth Century. By William J. Dohar Growing Up in Medieval London: the Experience of Childhood in History. By Barbara Hanawalt Women, Family and Society in Medieval Europe: Historical Essays, 1978–1991. By David Herlihy Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence. By John Henderson The Brotherhood of the Common Life and its Influence. By Ross Fuller Valois Guyenne: A Study of Politics, Government and Society in Late Medieval France. By R. Harris

Liturgy and the Ecclesiastical History of Late Anglo-Saxon England: Four Studies by David N. Dumville

Liturgy and the Ecclesiastical History of Late Anglo-Saxon England: Four Studies. By David N. Dumville. [Studies in Anglo-Saxon (Rochester,NewYork: Boydell Press. 1992. Pp. x, 193. $59.00.) David N. Dumville's important collection of previously unpublished essays on matters related to the liturgy during the tenth and eleventh centuries is dedicated to Helmut Gneuss,on his sixty-fifth birthday in gratitude for his formidable contributions to the study of Anglo-Saxon liturgy and manuscripts. Such a tribute to Professor Gneuss is appropriate, for his work on liturgical manuscripts is central to the contemporary study of the liturgy; equally central, however, are Dumville's own studies on the provenances and interrelationships of ninth-, tenth-, and eleventh-century manuscripts, and the collection of studies under review presupposes access, if not indeed familiarity, with Dumville's Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar and Caroline Script and Monastic History, volumes three and six respectively in the Studies in Anglo-Saxon History series, as well as his important essays on English Square minuscule script in volumes 16 and 23 of Anglo-Saxon England. first study, The Kalendar of the Psalter, examines the neglected kalendar (fols. 2'-7) of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. 27, the so-called Junius Psalter. feasts in this kalendar that were graded high are indicated by hexametrical verses which replicate the lines in a metrical martyrology, sometimes known as the Hampson martyrology, the earliest surviving manuscript of which is London, British Library, MS. Cotton Galba A.xviii. Dumville constructs an elaborate but plausible hypothesis which suggests Canterbury as the probable point of origin of both the metrical martyrology and the liturgical material in the Psalter's kalendar, which therefore allows the attribution of MS. 27 to Canterbury In The Kalendar of Anglo-Saxon Glastonbury: a Chimaera? Dumville argues that the kalendar of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 579, the Missal, does not derive from a Glastonbury original, but from Canterbury His case for freeing the kalendar from Glastonbury is strong, indeed, since the Glastonbury attribution was constructed on a scholarly repetition of E E. Warren's flawed argument for such an origin when he edited the Leofric Missal in 1883; the case for attributing the kalendar to Canterbury remains, as Dumville admits, to be proven. third article, entitled Liturgical Books for the Anglo-Saxon Episcopate: A Reconsideration, begins with Gneuss's data concerning only those books which would have been used by a bishop or archbishop, to which Dumville adds a brief essay on relevant paleographical and codicological considerations for each book. …

With Great Liberty: A Short History of Christian Monasticism and Religious Orders by Karl Suso Frank, O.F.M.

610 BOOK REVIEWS manists and reformers. For they appear as major architects of an institution apparently familiar and timeless, but actually, as Atkinson demonstrates, a new phenomenon of early modern times. Its central image is "the mother at home, installed in a patriarchal household and naturally inclined toward service and sacrifice" (p. 235) and the obedience these entailed. The outcome of a "domestic revolution" compellingly surveyed in its political and social, as well as its religious setting, the new construction not only fostered the exclusion of "good mothers" from the public sphere but often encouraged more dire forms of exclusion for other kinds of women. Placing motherhood in the contexts of massive historical change, in a study that traverses more than fifteen centuries, is a formidable enterprise and one that Clarissa Atkinson has accomplished with remarkable success. As she explores an immense, varied body of evidence, she invites her readers to participate in her quest, to reflect on the questions of interpretation it raises as well as the answers it offers. Reminding us constantly ofthe gulf that separates the ideologies of motherhood from the realities they were meant to shape, her book also reminds us even more urgently how much of this "vast buried history" remains to be exhumed. Mary Martin McLaughlin Millbrook, New York With Great Liberty: A ShortHistory ofChristian Monasticism and Religious Orders. By Karl Suso Frank, O.F.M. Translated and with a postscript by Joseph T. Lienhard, SJ. [Cistercian Studies Series, Number 104.] (Kalamazoo , Michigan: Cistercian Publications. 1993. Pp. 269) Karl Suso Frank, O.F.M., professor of ancient church history and patristics at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg-im-Breisgau, is well known for his important publications in the field of the history of monasticism. In 1975 he published his Geschichte des christlichen Mönchtums, well received by reviewers and public alike. The Cistercian Studies Series presents here a translation of the fourth edition of Frank's work, supplemented by the translator, Joseph T. Lienhard, SJ., with a "Translator's Postscript" chronicling contemporary developments and a "Further Reading" section, nineteen pages ofwellchosen books and articles on the history of religious orders, the greater majority in English, with a few German, French, and Italian titles. Unfortunately, there is no index provided, nor are there any ofthe usual maps or chronologies students and educated readers find so helpful. The book offers the reader a résumé, intended for a broad audience, of the history of Christian monasticism from its origins through the twentieth century , highlighting periods of transition and innovation. Proposing a volume that will "demonstrate the adaptability of the monastic ideal, namely: living BOOK REVIEWS6ll for God in the quest of one's own perfection, amid a community of brothers or sisters, serving the Church and the world," Frank intends monasticism to be understood here as Christian religious life, the history of which "encompasses all the realizations of the monastic idea up to the present, from the monks of the Egyptian desert to the members of secular institutes who live in the midst ofthe modern world" (p. 15). Under this broad rubric, Frank (and his continuator, Lienhard) treat not only monastic history narrowly defined (Benedict, Cluny, Citeaux, Solesmes, Beuron, etc.) but the history of religious orders in general, including such disparate groups as canons regular, mendicants , missionary congregations, Mother Teresa of Calcutta's Missionaries of Charity, and Opus Dei. Nor are Protestant and Orthodox monasticisms ignored. For this reader, the first was the most successful of the twelve chapters. Here Frank presents a lucid discussion of the movement in die Church from asceticism to monasticism, highlighting the fact that the Gospel was proclaimed in a world familiar with the ascetical life, a world that provided a milieu open to the ascetic impulse. The remaining chapters deal in a rather straightforward and perhaps by now slightly stale fashion with the development or transformation of this original ascetic ideal throughout the centuries as it met challenges presented by the Church and world it was designed ultimately to serve. This book has much to recommend it, not the least of which is the fact that it is a fairly complete survey of the history of religious orders...

Entwicklung der immergruenen Oekosysteme nach Waldbrand in Athos

Development of the evergreen broadleaved ecosystems after a forest fire in Athos. - The peninsula of Athos is the third eastern peninsula of Chalkidiki in Central Macedonia (N. Greece) and it constitutes a self-governed region in the Hellenic State. Its organized monastic history begins in the 10th century and continues uninterruptedly until today. The monastery of Simonopetra, one of the 20 monasteries of Athos, represents a continuous historic life of seven centruries from its establishment, during the 13th century and constitutes the most during edifice on Mount Athos, a miracle of the byzantine and post-byzantine architecture. The territory of Simonopetra on Mount Athos, occupies an area of 1265 ha. The destructive forest fire on Mount Athos which started on August 14, 1990, was extinguished 14 days later. During this period, it caused heavy damage to the forests on the peninsula and destroyed a number of historical buildings. Most of the damage occured in the area of the Sacred Monastery Simonopetra, where 855 ha of the total of 1265 ha were burned. The greatest part of the burned forest area, about 665 ha, they were evergreen broadleaved forests. The ecosystems of the evergreen broadleaved forests are perscribed as well as their development after the forest fire. After the fire, all species which appear in this zone, begun to coppice sprout in a few weeks and after two years, the coppicing sprouts exceeded in height 0,5 - 2 metres depended on the species and site quality. Two years after the fire the vegetation was restored and covered 30 - 76% of the area. The only measure taken in certain positions was the removal of the standing dead material.

True Daughters: Monastic Identity and American Benedictine Women's History. By Judith Sutera, O.S.B. Atchison, Kansas: Mount St. Scholastica, 1987. ii + 165 pp. $6.96.

True Daughters: Monastic Identity and American Benedictine Women's History. By Judith Sutera, O.S.B. Atchison, Kansas: Mount St. Scholastica, 1987. ii + 165 pp. $6.96.

Gerard of Nazareth a Neglected Twelfth-Century Writer in the Latin East: A Contribution to the Intellectual and Monastic History of the Crusader States

Gerard of Nazareth a Neglected Twelfth-Century Writer in the Latin East: A Contribution to the Intellectual and Monastic History of the Crusader States

The collapse of a monastic friendship: the case of Jocelin and Samson of Bury

Despite the popularity in recent times of Jocelin of Brakelond's Chronicle, with its memorable portrait of Abbot Samson, the work has not received sufficient attention for what it reveals about the dissolution of a monastic friendship. If we concentrate on what Jocelin says about himself, instead of mining the Chronicle for nuggets of monastic history, we soon dicover that his personality is just as much on the surface of the work as Samson's is. After examining the vexed problems of Jocelin's identity and the stages in which he wrote his work, we find how Jocelin sought and initially received Samson's friendship. The practice of openness, trust, and love between monks as seen in the lives of Anselm of Canterburn or Ailred of Rievaulx could not survive amid the demands of administration at Bury St Edmunds. Jocelin's work was not recognized for its merits at Bury. But excerpts that were later made from it reveal that Jocelin's monastic readers were attracted mainly by his contribution to the abbey's hagiography. The brilliance of his descriptions of people - including himself - was not noted until the nineteenth century. Jocelin's disappointing experience with Samson and the limited reception for his work at Bury are symptomatic of a decline in individual expression in Western Europe after about 1200. Jocelin's Chronicle is one of the last manifestations of a generous and open quality in twelfth-century monastic life.

Old wine in new bottles: attitudes to reform in fifteenth-century England

Wherever one turns in the pages of those who have written about the later medieval church there are reminiscences of Eliot’s ‘Hollow Men’:Shape without form, shade without colourParalysed force, gesture without motionAs Knowles put it, ‘by and large the whole body ecclesiastic was lukewarm’, adding of monasticism in particular that ‘it had little warmth to spare for others’. It was, he commented elsewhere, ‘an age of waning fervour’ - ‘the rhythm of life becomes universally slower, and scarcely any new feature appears until the abrupt end’. To other less compelling and considered writers it has been all too easy to characterise these waning medieval years simply as ones of ‘inevitable decline’, the retreat of the spiritual tide proceeding unchecked by the vain efforts of even the most able and dedicated men of the period to halt its recession - ‘it was his misfortune’, it has been said of Marmaduke Huby, one of the major English monastic figures of the period, ‘to be born at a time when ideals were at a low ebb, when the spirit of monasticism had grown languid and when material preoccupations demanded far too much attention’. There is little to be gained from such generalised speculation, which, if the subject of the passage was not known, could readily be ascribed, with equal non-validity, to almost any period in monastic history. Nonetheless, it remains true that the particular circumstances of church and society in the fifteenth century placed massive obstacles in the way of men like Huby, and there is ample evidence of the difficulties with which they had to contend.

Once Again Filippino's Panels from San Ponziano, Lucca

When putting together the chain of evidence for the identification of two panels belonging to the Norton Simon Foundation with the painting Vasari saw in San Ponziano, Lucca in my article in the preceding number of The Art Bulletin1 I had clearly in mind the possibility of flaws in one or two links. All the evidence pointed to the correctness of the identification, but the difference between a high degree of probability and certainty is of course significant. Before the article was printed I did not have time to explore the relevance of one rather inconspicuous form: a small seal, measuring thirty-five milimeters on its longest diameter, on the back of each panel (Fig. 1). This seal could, indeed, begin to seem meaningful only after extended study of the style and iconography of the paintings and of the chapter in monastic history to which they appeared to belong.2

Fact and Fiction in the life of St Augustine. An essay in medieval monastic history and seventeenth century exegesis

Fact and Fiction in the life of St Augustine. An essay in medieval monastic history and seventeenth century exegesis

Great Historical Enterprises: Problems in Monastic History. David Knowles

<i>Great Historical Enterprises: Problems in Monastic History</i>. David Knowles