Late Medieval Christianity Research Articles

<i>Frauenlob's Song of Songs: A Medieval German Poet and his Masterpiece</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Frauenlob's Song of Songs: A Medieval German Poet and his Masterpiece Ann Marie Rasmussen Frauenlob's Song of Songs: A Medieval German Poet and his Masterpiece. By Barbara Newman, with the critical text by Karl Stackmann and a musical performance on CD by the Ensemble Sequentia directed by Barbara Thornton and Benjamin Bagby. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Pp. xxi + 242. $25. Why Song of Songs? Barbara Newman's choice of title for this brilliantly successful and ambitious book indicates the vast potential reach of its object of study, the erotically charged German-language praise-song to the Virgin Mary, the Marienleich, by the poet Heinrich von Meissen known as Frauenlob (c. 1260–1317), while placing the Marienleich in a context that was formative for its composition and medieval reception. Far from being a modern "marketing ploy," the title yields to a key medieval witness, the fourteenth-century manuscript Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Cod. Vind. 2701, which ends its copy of this work (with music) with the colophon "Expliciunt cantica canticorum vrowenlobiz." I would like to note that the terminology available to me as a reviewer to describe a project such as this is inadequate. No term (Book? Study? Monograph? Project? Translation? Edition? Recording?) encompasses the many disparate scholarly [End Page 276] elements that are so elegantly united in Newman's work. The high quality of the study makes it more than a translation and edition, whose virtuosity in turn make it more than a monograph. And what about the accompanying CD? If there were such a thing as a "compilation monograph," this is it. This book contains: Karl Stackmann's edition of the original text of Frauenlob's artistic masterpiece, his erudite, ornate, difficult, and beautiful Marienleich, a poem of praise to the Virgin Mary written in a "demanding, virtuosic genre akin to the Latin sequence" (p. ix) that is more than five hundred lines long; Newman's sensitive English translation of the Marienleich into formal English verse, a superb achievement in its own right; a brilliant monograph in five chapters, of which more below; Newman's commentary on the poem, which deftly helps one make sense of this ferociously learned, highly allusive work; a complete scholarly apparatus, consisting of a glossary of technical terms, list of abbreviations, bibliography, and three indices (index of Marienleich citations, index of biblical citations, and a general index); seven illustrations; and its crowning glory, a CD of a performance of the Marienleich by the noted ensemble, Sequentia, reconstructed from fragmentary manuscript remains and performed in the 1980s, recorded in 1990, remastered in 1999, and released here for the first time. Even masterpieces have historical lives and so can pass away. Today Frauenlob's work is unknown outside of the limited circles of German medieval studies scholarship. Newman makes the case that Frauenlob's Marienleich represents a neglected masterpiece of medieval European literature, on par with Petrarch's work, for example. Frauenlob's Song of Songs can be understood as an attempt to back this claim with evidence that is accessible, in English, to a larger scholarly audience. Yet the goal of recovery alone, laudable though it is, would not be enough to give this study its remarkable heft and promise of durability. Newman also makes the case that Frauenlob's Marienleich is an artistic masterpiece that bears witness to the historically distinct religious culture of late medieval Christianity, whose vibrant and tumultuously heterodox forms of belief and worship were uniquely shaped by a devotion to the feminine divine. Frauenlob's Song of Songs clearly overlaps with and elucidates Newman's recent work in God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (2002), for the Marienleich neatly illustrates Newman's claims. Two-thirds of this text of self-revelation are spoken by the Virgin herself, a highly unusual choice for Marian verse that makes the Marienleich a daring example of "woman's song" (a text written by a man in the first-person voice of a woman). Further, the Marienleich systematically conflates erotic and spiritual love. Its refusal to separate the sensual and sacred, which is simultaneously orthodox and radically innovative, poses theological and...

Confession, Anger and Cross-Cultural Articulation in Papua New Guinea

As will be evident from our introductory essay, the impetus for this Social Thought and Commentary section has come in part from our puzzlement at the co-occurrence within Melanesianist ethnography of two apparently contradictory motifs. One is the widely reported idea that one can never know what is in the minds of others, partly because what they say cannot be taken as a reliable indicator of what they are thinking. The other motif is the rising prominence of various more-or-less institutionalized practices of confession, as exemplified with respect to indigenized Christianity by the Urapmin example discussed by Robbins. These practices of confession would seem to stand in a problematical relationship to claims about the impossibility of knowing what is in the mind of another, since that is precisely what they would seem to be designed to reveal. The essays by Robbins and Schieffelin address this problem by taking the motif as their starting point and then considering new practices of confession and how they impact upon speech communities whose preexisting language ideologies would seem to deny the reliability or appropriateness of such disclosure. Here I approach the problem from the other way around, by looking first at practices of confession and then asking how they do or do not relate to linguistic ideologies. One point of this will be to show that, in at least some Melanesian locales, practices of confession did not begin only with the arrival of Christianity-that there were earlier forms of it which continue to be practiced alongside, and sometimes in tension with, the church-related ones. The question of the relationship between those older practices and the Christian ones is of especial interest in the context of comparative studies of confession that have been stimulated by Michel Foucault's well-known (1978, 1988) account of late medieval Christian practices of confession as the genealogical precursor and matrix of more recent, secular regimes that have produced the purportedly self-disciplined, modern subject. So far, these comparative studies have been carried out mainly by sociologists and historians, with little direct input from anthropologists. This is unfortunate, for two reasons. The first is that, sophisticated as some of this work has been when dealing with European historical sources, when drawing on anthropological ones it is often far less so. The other reason is that, as we hope these essays will demonstrate, such practices offer a fertile field for comparative study in connection with issues of interest to anthropologists (cf. Strathern and Stewart 1998:62). The fullest comparative studies of confession to date, by Hepworth and Turner (1982), and Abercrombie, Hill and Turner (1986:35-72 et passim), while taking issue with Foucault in some respects, have agreed in their finding that the confessional tradition in Europe laid the foundation for the modern personality as self-reflective consciousness (Abercrombie et al. 1986:47). These writers are well aware from their reading of ethnography that there are other confessional traditions outside of Europe which are of longstanding, but, adopting a Durkheimian position-which incidentally, obviates the issue of mental opacity altogether-they have argued that: confession outside the Western tradition normally assumes a collective, group nature, that is, the confession is a reflection not of the state of mind of the individual, but a reflection of the character of the social structure. We would suggest that such confessionals are in fact very Durkheimian: they are statements about collective properties and forms of public thought, reaffirmations of public values and communal practices, rather than reflections of an interior mentality (1986:46). Let us now consider this position in relation to some cases from Papua New Guinea. Turning first to confessional practices of the more traditional sort, in the Ku Waru area of the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea where Francesca Merlan and I have worked, there are well-established practices this kind which are referred to by two kinds of related expressions. …

TRACTARIAN SÄTZE, EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS, AND THE VERY IDEA OF SCRIPT AS PICTURE

Is it possible for a writing system to be based on pictures? In the philosophical literature, the hieroglyphic writing system of the Ancient Egyptians is sometimes taken as the example par excellence of a purely pictorial script. The hieroglyphs are assumed to be signs that do not indicate how they are supposed to be pronounced, as do the signs of the alphabets of, among other, the Indo-European languages; instead, they depict what they mean. Most prominently, Ludwig Wittgenstein draws an analogy between the pictorial semantics of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the alleged pictorial script of hieroglyphic writing:

Pilgrimage, tapestries, and cartography: sixteenth-century wall hangings commemorating a pilgrimage to the Holy Land

The paper considers two large sixteenth-century tapestries, originating in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It is argued that although they are not paper maps, and were never printed or included in any atlas or map collection, these tapestries ought to be categorized as realistic pilgrimage maps, based on first-hand observation and guided by the unique late medieval Christian geo-religious perception of the Holy Land and the Holy City. Furthermore, the resemblance of the tapestries to printed maps, such as the map included in the book of Bernhard of Breydenbach, and other well-known contemporary paintings of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, such as the one commemorating the pilgrimage of Friedrich the Wise, may hint at the source material used by their creators, who lived in a similar social–cultural milieu.

“Matériau de débauche et mère de tous les vices” : goinfrerie, démesure et luxure dans la littérature homilétique anglaise aux Xe-XIe siècles

In Late Antique and Early Medieval Christian literature, the sin of gula is presented as “Adam’s vice”, door of vices and origin of all other sins. This idea is taken up again by Late Anglo-Saxon writers : Ælfric of Eynsham, Wulfstan archbishop of York, and other anonymous homilists, who wrote their sermons between the mid-10th and the early 11th centuries. What they have mainly done is to transfer to a lay audience, and in the vernacular, the ideas of their predecessors. But they have also developed a few original reflexions. The link between gula and lust (luxuria), which had been observed and affirmed for centuries, is no longer seen as purely genealogic, as it was exposed by the Fathers of the Church (even if this dimension does not disappear), nor is it explained in the broader context of medical and humour theories. It is included in a speech about galnes, an Old English word which could be translated by “immoderation” or even “misrule”. For them, gluttony, under its two main aspects, oferfyllo (literally “over-filling”) and druncenness (the meaning is here transparent), is a door to galnes, that is the absence of measure and rules. This interesting shift may be explained as an adaptation to specific social conditions of the Early Middle Ages at large, and of Anglo-Saxon England in particular.

Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition by Éamonn Ó Carragáin (review)

REVIEWS 272 form of exegesis” (140) before demanding that the audience perform interpretation on a significantly higher level. In her own interpretation, she locates a marked movement towards tragedy in Lydgate’s inclusion of Henry V in an otherwise typical catalogue of leaders who “putte Fortune vnder foote” (150)— but still fall victims to contingency, of course, in death. Nolan sums up her textual analysis in this rich and lengthy chapter with the conclusion that “when Lydgate recognized Henry V as a tragic figure—or perhaps, more accurately, when such a recognition become possible—tragedy moved out of the comic fiction of the Canterbury Tales and into the public world of events and their representation” (171). In her final chapter, “Spectacular culture: the Roman triumph,” Nolan addresses Lydgate’s 1432 verses commemorating the entry of the crowned Henry VI into London. Switching to a new method of approaching the text, Nolan considers the shifting signification of the triumph exemplum in the work of Lydgate and several thirteenth and fourteenth century texts, including Gesta Romanorum, Fasciculus Morum, Bromyard’s Summa Praedicantium, Higden’s Polychronicon, and Holcot’s Super Libros Sapientiae. She also links these texts to Lydgate’s Serpent of Division, thereby providing a sense of the overall trajectory of her book’s argument. Her study of these texts yields the conclusion that “Lydgate’s turn to triumph in Serpent of Division and in “Henry VI’s Triumphal Entry” is neither arbitrary nor simple; both uses reflect new ways of thinking about the classical past in relation to the present, and both form part of a complex meditation on the relation between sovereign power and spectacular display” (189). In Lydgate’s struggle to reconcile the “pagan past” of the Roman triumph with the “Christian present” (226), Nolan argues that he recognizes not only its exemplarity, but also its pastness. Lydgate’s ambivalence in his propagandistic use of the triumph, she concludes, is “an historical ambivalence ” (233). The invocation of Caesar glorifies the newly crowned monarch, but it also recalls the threat of division. John Lydgate and the Making of Public Culture breathes new life into scholarly dialogue regarding Lydgate’s literary accomplishment. Nolan’s rich textual analysis, with its wide-ranging consideration of Lydgate’s literary and cultural sources, provides a particularly useful resource to the academic. More discussion of Lydgate’s “public,” often an afterthought in her arguments, would provide a welcome addition to Nolan’s work. Her challenging readings also demand a certain level of familiarity with Lydgate and his oeuvre at the outset, thus diminishing the book’s accessibility to a casual reader. For scholars and readers of Lydgate, however, she has produced an important and insightful reading of some of his more critically neglected works. With a series of thoughtful textual explorations, Nolan makes an intriguing case for Lydgate’s creation of a representative public through social and aesthetic forms. EMILY RUNDE, English, UCLA Éamonn Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2005) 427 pp., ill. Éamonn Ó Carragáin’s Ritual and the Rood uses the Ruthwell Cross as the image of a particularly Anglo-Saxon Christian theological tradition that is REVIEWS 273 epitomized in the Dream of the Rood. This tradition focuses on the cross of Christ, although only in Anglo-Saxon England is the cross itself a sentient object , in dialogue with the Divinity, rather than just an object of Christian devotion or even sanctification. Ó Carragáin’s work is uncommonly comprehensive for a liturgical study. He includes extensive evidence from art, as well as literary , historical, theological, and liturgical sources. He gleans from sources from the seventh to ninth centuries relating to Latin, Germanic, Celtic, and Byzantine Chrisianity. His work is a model of the interdisciplinary approach that has become dominant in late antique and early medieval Christianity. His interpretation of art and liturgy is theologically and historically informed, an all too often rare quality in early Christian art history. Inevitably, however, many of his conclusions rely on analogy and conjecture, because evidence about AngloSaxon Christianity of the seventh and eight centuries is rather scant. Ó Carrag...

Satan’s Body: Religion and Gender Parody in Late Medieval Italy

In late-medieval Italian scenes of the Last Judgment, Satan is a monstrous parody of Christ. These figures are shown to parody not only Christ as ruler, but also the theology of the body of Christ. In particular, the figures of Satan are emasculated, and in some cases they give mock birth to sinners. These Satans confirm the importance of somatization and gender ambiguity in late-medieval Latin Christianity. They also help to explain the Last Judgment as an image: it represents the body of Christ, both historically and institutionally. Examples include the mosaic at Torcello, Giotto’s fresco at Padua, the fresco in the Camposanto at Pisa, the fresco at San Gimignano by Taddeo di Bartolo, and the Satan described by Dante in the Inferno.

'Hamlet' and the Visual Arts, 1709-1900 by Alan Young (review)

194 Reviews their respective fields of study contribute articles published in chronological order of subject, which offerthe reader a panorama of the building of literary careers from Ovid to English women writers of the Renaissance period. In the firstchapter John Farrell develops the idea that 'the literary career took shape in Rome [mainly with Virgil] under the specific influence of the careerist ideology of the patron class' and their socio-political position (p. 44). In 'From Cursus to Ductus: Figures of Writing in Western Late Antiquity (Augustine, Jerome, Cassiodorus, Bede)' (pp. 46-103) Mark Vessey depicts the parallel evolution of literary careers and spiritual progress in Christian intellectuals of the late Roman period, so different from the figure of the author as scribe pre-eminent in late ancient and medieval Christian ideology. Robert R. Edwards shows the difference between the elevated stance of writers in the Roman period and the practical position that they occupied in the medieval age. In Authority and Influence?Vocation and Anxiety: The Sense of a Literary Career in the Sentimental Novel and Celestina' James F. Burke shows how Fernando de Rojas developed an innovative literary career that gave rise to the construction of individual characters in late medieval Spanish literature, and which may antedate Cervantes's texts. William J. Kennedy describes Petrarch's career as oscillating from the point of view of authorship. Kathleen Bollard de Brosse investigates Fray Antonio de Guevara's literary persona, that arises from his manifold professional status. Anne J. Cruz continues with the relationship between the professional role of the writer outside his literary activity and the importance that it has for his literary reputation. Likewise, Anne Lake Prescott applies the same concept of intermingling literary and non-literary careers to English and French poets. Patrick Cheney follows up on this phenomenon of intersection and relocates it in England by studying Spenser's Februarie Eclogue. De Armas analyses Cervantes's career as a writer and relates it to the seminal Virgilian model in that respect. Alvaro Molina joins in the argument that literary fame is directly related to the political positions defended by the authors and applies it to Cervantes's treatment of the moriscos. In the last chapter, 'Renaissance Englishwomen and the Literary Career', Susanne Woods and Margaret P. Hannay, with Elaine Beilin and Anne Shaver, describe the position held by English women writers in the period, such as Margaret Cavendish or Mary Sidney, and defend their inclusion in the contemporary literary canon. University of Corunna MarIa Jesus Lorenzo Modia 'Hamlet* and the Visual Arts, ijog-igoo. By Alan Young. Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2002. 405 pp. ?50. ISBN 0-87413-794-2. 'Hamlet' and the Visual Arts sets out to document the relationship between images of the play and the view of Shakespeare's work in the popular imagination throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Alan Young has been largely successful in accomplishing his goal in this detailed study; however, the argument is somewhat thwarted by its presentational form. Text describing images cannot replace the im? ages themselves and rarely does them justice. While a number of key illustrations are reproduced alongside the text, the overall argument rests on the 'persuasive indication ofthe enormous impact that the proliferation of Hamlet images had upon cultural life at all levels of society in Britain and elsewhere' (p. 371). What the reader encounters is a proliferation of descriptions of images rather than the images themselves. This volume creates an appetite for a more fully illustrated work or, to my mind at least, another form of presentation. That said, the central argument of the book is clearly laid out and convincingly MLR, ioo.i, 2005 195 made. The firsttwo chapters give a detailed history of the development of Hamlet im? agery in the context ofsocial and mechanical developments during these two centuries. The second two chapters trace the history ofthe depiction ofparticular scenes through this complex cultural territory,first looking at the most popular scenes depicting Hamlet and then focusing on images of Ophelia across the period. The final chapter documents the ways in which parodies ofthe play, both on stage and in visual culture, indicate...

Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy, and Gender

Acknowledgements. Preface. Prologue: Powers and Submissions. Part I: The Comtemplative Matrix. 1. Kenosis and Subversion: On the Repression of Vulnerability in Christian Feminist Writing. 2. Traditions of Guidance: Dom John Chapman OSB (1865--1933) on the Meaning of Contemplation. 3. Creaturehood Before God: Male and Female. Part II: Philosophical Interlocutions. 4. Visions of the Self in Late Medieval Christianity: Some Cross--Disciplinary Reflections. 5. Gender and Knowledge in Modern Western Philosophy: The Man of Reason and the Feminine Other in Enlightenment and Romantic Thought. 6. Analytic Philosophy of Religion in Feminist Perspective: Some Questions. Part III: Doctrinal Implications. 7. Persons in the Social Doctrine of the Trinity: Current Analytic Discussion and Cappadocian Theology. 8. The Resurrection and the Spiritual Senses: On Wittgenstein, Epistemology and the Risen Christ. 9. The Eschatological Body: Gender, Transformation and God. Index.

Self and Self-Transformation in the History of Religions

This book brings together scholars of a variety of the world's major civilizations to focus on the universal theme of inner transformation. The idea of the self is a cultural formation like any other, and models and conceptions of the inner world of the person vary widely from one civilization to another. Nonetheless, all the world's great religions insist on the need to transform this inner world, however it is understood, in highly expressive and specific ways. Such transformations, often ritually enacted, reveal the primary intuitions, drives, and conflicts active within the culture. The individual essays - by such distinguished scholars as Wai-yee Li, Janet Gyatso, Wendy Doniger, Christiano Grottanelli, Charles Malamoud, Margalit Finkelberg, and Moshe Idel - study dramatic examples of these processes in a wide range of cultures, including China, India, Tibet, Greece and Rome, Late Antiquity, Islam, Judaism, and medieval and early-modern Christian Europe.

Margery Kempe: An Exemplar of Late Medieval English Piety

When the only complete manuscript of Book of Margery Kempe came to light in the 1930's, it brought both joy and disappointment to students of the religion of late medieval England. On the one hand, Book opens up medieval daily religious practice to modern scholars in way few other sources do. On the other hand, the mystic experience of the author herself proved to be disappointing. Scholars had anticipated another Julian of Norwich; what they got was Margery Kempe. Kempe's description of her religious experience is not just cast into shadow by her fellow-countrywoman's Shewings; her story has struck modern readers as both bizarre and naive.1 reluctance of many modern scholars to take Kempe seriously has been reinforced by her description of the reception her piety received at the hands of her contemporaries. Apparently the English of the fifteenth century were not impressed by Kempe either. According to her own account, she was accused of Lollardy on numerous occasions, constantly rejected by fellow pilgrims, resented and mistrusted by many of the clerics with whom she came into contact, and accused of hypocrisy and hidden vice by her fellow townspeople in Lynne. More recent scholars who do not want to dismiss Kempe so easily have attempted to rehabilitate her by claiming her as feminist heroine. According to one proponent of this theory, Book is a valuable and fascinating testimony into the history of women's liberation, and of a woman's quest for identity and independence.2 Religion here is recognized as subterfuge for Kempe's self-actualization: Fortuitous for the history of feminism, the cloak of holiness allowed her to move in niche sanctioned by contemporary society.3 Though other authors more restrained, many agree that the true merit of Kempe's Book has been hidden because of an insistence on evaluating it, and her, by patriarchal standards. The fitting of her Book into Procrustean bed has confused and negated the values she represents.4 recognition of Kempe as proto-feminist underlies variety of positive evaluations of Book. One theory portrays Kempe as an unrecognized literary genius, of the caliber of Geoffrey Chaucer or William Faulkner, whose brilliant writing and scathing social analysis have been overlooked because she was female. alleged oddities of Kempe's text disappear when the reader recognizes Kempe's need for strategies to conceal and disguise [her] strongly original and, in some cases, destabilizing insights into the systems of theological or communal ordering.5 According to another interpretation, Kempe is revolutionary, woman ahead of her time, some of whose themes and ideas are flourishing in the . . . radical. . . expressiveness of modern Protestantism.6 Modern interpretations, both negative and positive, share the characteristic of ignoring Kempe's context. Those who reject the Book do so because it does not fit the twentieth-century standard of medieval mysticism created by scholars from the works of Teresa of Avila or John of the Cross. Those who admire Kempe do so by an anachronistic (and often unconvincing) discovery of feminist virtues in her story. In either instance, modern scholars do Margery Kempe disservice by ignoring the context in which she wrote. An ahistorical twentieth- or twenty-first-century reading may indeed leave the impression of an hysteric, feminist heroine, or brilliant social commentator. In fact, Kempe was neither visionary in the tradition of the Spanish mystics nor precocious champion of female equality. Instead she was late medieval English Christian. Her piety was the piety of the devout in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England, especially East Anglia. Her mystic experience was based on the devotional practices enjoined on the English faithful by numerous religious works. Virtually every element of her religious life has its counterpart, and more often than not its precedent, in the experience of other medieval Christians. …

:From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul: Understanding Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Introduction: Marian Devotion, Popular Preaching, and the Power of Speech in Late Medieval Religious Life 1. From the Very Pure Blood: Mary's Motherhood and Late Medieval Christianity 2. The Sword of Compassion: Mary and the Passion in the Middle Ages 3. Hevenly Conversacion: Mary as Supreme Intercessor and Mediatrix 4. Spiritual Mothers: Mary's Motherhood and Post-Tridentine Catholicism 5. Wounds of Love: Mary and the Passion in the Late Sixteenth Century 6. Ubl Maria, ibi ecclesia: Marian Prayers and Devotional Societies after Trent

The Feast of Saint Abraham: Medieval Millenarians and the Jews (review)

220 Reviews blending of what is local and earthy with what is supernatural and beyond time; crude satire on courtly affectations mingled with the high seriousness of worship; doubt with belief. With such dramatic quality and sophistication, with the professionalism ofactors, singers and stage presentation, the involvement of an audience probably more theologically sophisticated than a modern congregation, it is no wonder that one priest asserted that pageants provided 'more suerte & suffycyent auctoryte' than his preaching. A postscript: on Christmas Eve 2000, immediately after this review was drafted, I saw an Anglican nativity play performed near the old pilgrimage site of Our Lady of Caversham. The performers were children, their acting simple, their lines fewer and less sophisticated, but there was no mistaking the resemblance to the Coventry pageants. Barry Collett Department ofHistory University of Melbourne Lerner, Robert E., The Feast of Saint Abraham: Medieval Millenarians and the Jews (The Middle Ages Series), Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001; cloth; pp. 186; R.R.P. £24.50, US$35.00; ISBN 0812235673. The Feast of Saint Abraham opens by stating that while R. I. Moore's argumen that twelfth-century Europe witnessed the birth ofa 'persecuting society' is essentially correct, 'perhaps we will understand the phenomenon better if we recognize that there were alternatives and paths not taken' (p. 1). The alternative delineated here concerns medieval millenarianism, the belief that the prophecy of Christ's 1000year reign of peace between the Second Coming and the Last Judgment (Rev. 20) refers to an earthly, literal time rather than the reign ofthe Church in the present, as Augustine had posited (p. 17). Pace Norman Cohn's insistence that millenarianism necessarily entailed anti-Semitism (p. 3), Lerner argues that Joachim of Fiore's view ofa millennium brought about by the peaceful conversion ofthe Jews exerted a powerful influence on subsequent thinkers. These eight chapters—two on Joachim, and six on his disciples (and theirs in rum) — thus seek to trace what might loosely be called a 'philo-Judaism', though Lerner admits that 'the more accurate phraseology for the stance of [his] subjects would be a "relatively more benign attitude toward the Jews than the late medieval Christian norm'" (p. 120). Reviews 221 Lerner brings together much new information and showcases a great skill at historical recuperation, especially in the face of often-mangled manuscript evidence. In this regard, the materials on both John of Brassigny's fourteenthcentury prophecies and on Frederick ofBrunswith's heresies, both of which are now intelligible thanks to Lerner's own discoveries, are especially compelling. I t is a pleasure to encounter such fascinating new material, presented in an engaging style, and placed carefully in its larger historical trajectory. The volume's brevity (121 pages ofmain text) ensures that these chapters cohere well, but i t also leaves plenty of room for a broader consideration of the topic. For instance, I would have welcomed treatment ofLangland's Piers Plowman, which, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton has suggested (Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman [Cambridge, 1990]), contains strong traces of Joachism in both its millenarianism and more-benign-than-usual approach to the Jews. But Piers Plowman might have tested Lerner's methodology a bit too sharply. While he suggests that what drove m e n and w o m e n to become (philoJudaic ) Joachites was 'the reading (or the listening to the reading) of books' (p. 120) — an activity that certainly could include the Middle English poet — this claim, put forth in the conclusion, took m e very much by surprise. For a strong current of The Feast of Saint Abraham suggests that real-life relations with historical Jews subtended the millenarianism of many of these authors. Lerner responds with cautious affirmation to the question, 'Could it have been that Joachim had a positive view of the role of the Jews in the divine plan because he himself was b o m Jewish?' (p. 24). This question, and the five-page analysis i t spawns, give the lie to Lerner's concluding judgment that 'it would be unwarranted psychologizing to suppose that philo-Judaism lurked from a sense ofheritage or childhood memories' (p. 29). So, too, do the subsequent discussions ofthese...

Priests and Prelates of Armagh in the Age of Reformations, 1518-1558 by Henry A. Jefferies

764BOOK REVIEWS enced those in Spain, and reflected rather the results ofa Christian Humanist reconsideration of scripture. Such independent and spontaneous dissent is at first linked to vestiges of late medieval Christian heresy in the Iberian peninsula, for initially the impact of converso culture is made marginal, as indeed are the alumbrados as such. But after extended treatment of dissidents who were condemned within Spain, whether considered here as truly Protestant or not, and of exiles, the influence of converso tradition re-emerges in appropriate cases. Adriano Prosperi has recently reminded us that, for the Italian sixteenth century , Cantimori distinguished between Protestants and 'heretics' among the Italian exiles. But here the contribution of converso thought to native Iberian dissent is seen not in respect of ritual orthodoxy but in the genesis of a freethinking stance later epitomized outside Spain by Spinoza. A. D.Wright University ofLeeds Priests and Prelates ofArmagh in the Age ofReformations, 1518-1558. By Henry A. Jefferies. (Dublin: Four Courts Press. Distributed by International Scholarly Book Services, Portland, Oregon. 1997. Pp. 213. $49.95.) This is a solid contribution to the current debate on the reasons for the failure of the Reformation in Ireland. Jefferies has combed the registers, "broken" but invaluable, of Primates Cromer and Dowdall, draws upon valuations and inquisitions , and works in the findings of archaeologists and economic historians. He provides, in fact, an outline of socio-economic conditions in the Armagh archdiocese from the mid-fifteenth to the early seventeenth century, so that his work is wider in scope than the title indicates. But its main thrust is to challenge the prevailing view that the late medieval Irish church was in decline. Archiépiscopal rule was effective, whether exercised directly within the "English " portion (Co. Louth) of the archdiocese or indirectly, through dean and chapter, in the larger Gaelic area. Here Conn O'Neill's firm control was a support for the Church (as was O'Donnell control in Tir Conaill—the present reviewer 's 1995 study indicating this appeared too late for Jefferies to make use of); while priestly training at Armagh and other centers was satisfactory. Jefferies has read Duffy, Haigh, and other recent historians ofthe English church to effect, but a study of Scottish work, particularly that of McKay and Donaldson, might have prompted him to pursue parallels within Gaeldom. A surprisingly dense network of churches and chapels, staffed by a priesthood for the most part Gaelic (even within the Pale) and often very poor indeed , provided a pastoral care satisfactory to the laity, who supported the building and improvement of churches. The primates made effective use of annual synods (combining, it might be said, the elements of both modern diocesan retreat and in-service training), visitations, and consistorial courts. David Dumville has recently stressed the importance of councils and synods for main- BOOK REVIEWS765 taining Christian standards in Gaeldom in the early and central Middle Ages.Jefferies ' findings indicate that they continued valuable to the end. Limited in power of collation, archbishops by inquisitions could "screen" candidates. Concubinage seems to have been at about the general European level, the higher the more remote from the archbishop's glance. Primates in dealing with it hewed, of course, to the Roman line. Religious appear in ancillary role, especially as preachers. Given the Irish monastic tradition and the work of friars (e.g., in Dowdall's friary ofArdee) in providing poor and sick relief, something might have been made of direct pastoral care by the orders. The understanding one had from Gwynn of Cromer as reluctant reformer and of Dowdall (this supported by Bradshaw) as good conservative Catholic is here confirmed. Edwardian Protestantism did not appeal to the laity, whose willingness to build and repair churches had, however, been sapped. Beneficiaries of monastic spoils were reluctant to invest in a Catholic restoration that might not last. Jefferies' study does not extend into the Elizabethan period, but he stresses two important factors which prevented the Reformation from making progress in Armagh: failure by the crown (itself a large impropriator) to finance churches and livings, and the lack of attraction these poor livings held for Protestant missionaries. But the inherent strengths of the pre...

Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215-c. 1515 by R. N. Swanson

book reviews785 ics embedded in the text. Nelson is especiaUy good at showing that the seemingly ecclesiastical quarrel was in fact a complex socio-poUtical struggle among kinsmen and their supporters in a smaU city. A teacher could use this weUtranslated and richly annotated book for many purposes in an undergraduate class. My only reservation is that in the extensive notes, the translator is occasionally very judgmental about the moral behavior of these long-dead people. Joseph H. Lynch The Ohio State University Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215-c. 1515- By R. N. Swanson. [Cambridge MedievalTextbooks.] (NewYork: Cambridge University Press. 1995. Pp. xv, 377. $6995 clothbound; $18.95 paperback.) This volume presents a general survey of Latin Christianity from the Fourth Lateran CouncU to the eve of the Reformation. Aimed at a general audience of undergraduates and scholarly non-specialists, it eschews aU but essential footnotes and documentation.Yet by condensing the disparate themes of late medieval Christianity into a compact and orderly synthesis, it also offers speciaUsts many useful reminders of how particular issues and movements reflected the underlying dynamics of the era. As the title suggests, the book focuses less on institutional Christianity than on the ways people understood and lived their reUgion. However, the Church as "the body of the faithful" stiU plays the dominant role in Swanson's approach: for him the crucial dialectic involved "the reactions of the widely defined Church to the demands and dictates of Christianity" (p. 7), especiaUy as they affected spiritual Ufe.As the desire for more satisfying and reassuring forms of devotion increased among the laity, old practices were transformed and new ones arose to challenge clerical control over the Church as a whole. Thus for the clergy the major problem was how to satisfy, limit, and direct the upsurge of lay spirituality which threatened to escape their immediate influence and control. Ultimately the need for supervision and control meant that tension between the prescriptive religion of the clergy and the increasingly individualized "religiosity " of the laity dominated the spiritual life of the era. The book's organization correspondingly moves from the "dictates of Christianity " to the devotional needs of the laity.Two chapters consider the content of the Christian feith and its dissemination to the feithful.Three more survey the structures of religious life, the rituals of devotion, and the concerns of charity and salvation.Another two address the issues of lay piety and the need for clerical control, and it is here that Swanson returns to the idea that late medieval Christianity was not imposed from above, but "created from the bottom upwards " (p. 90). In his view, many of the religious innovations of the era were the result of lay invention, and the clergy struggled to keep up and control the proliferation of popular devotions. As a result, distinguishing between orthodoxy 786book reviews and heresy became more critical than ever, and the need for exclusion led to the creation of scapegoats. The final chapter sums up the state ofWestern Christianity circa 1515, and in Swanson's judgment the situation was far from bleak. Considered in its own terms rather than anachronisticaUy, late medieval reUgion was a vibrant and dynamic form of Christianity, which, despite many problems, responded in many ways to the needs of the people. Doubt and skepticism existed, but had Uttle overaU impact.There was a hope for some major reform,but no general sense of crisis.The Reformation was probably unforeseeable, and medieval Christianity was neither decadent nor on the verge of collapse. However, once the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517) failed to accommodate reformist pressures, more strident voices seized the initiative and put an end to the development of the medieval Church. Scholars wUl certainly find much to consider and chaUenge in this assessment of late medieval reUgion. Nevertheless, the author has produced a masterful survey of a large and dUficult field which deserves the attention of everyone concerned ¦with these issues. Steven D. Sargent Union College Laienfrömmigkeit im späten Mittelalter: Formen, Funktionen, politischsoziale Zusammenhänge. Edited by Klaus Schreiner with the aid of Elisabeth MüUer-Luckner. [Schriften des Historischen KoUegs, KoUoquien, 20.] (Munich: R. OldenbourgVerlag. 1992.Pp...

Visions of the Self in Late Medieval Christianity: Some Cross-Disciplinary Reflections

In a volume devoted to philosophy, religion and the spiritual life, I would like to focus the later part of my essay on a comparison of two Christian spiritual writings of the fourteenth century, the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing in the West (1981), and the Triadsof Gregory Palamas in the Byzantine East (1983). Their examples, for reasons which I shall explain, seem to me rich with implications for some of our current philosophical and theological aporias on the nature of the self. Let me explain my thesis in skeletal form at the outset, for it is a complex one, and has several facets.

Paul Tillich's New Science of Values

Sproblems in the study of political theory. Currently there is a revival L of interest in the conflict between realists and nominalists over the reality of universals. The older tradition that of metaphysical realism stems from the medieval formulation of Aristotelianism.1 Late medieval Christianity saw the collapse of metaphysical realism and for six hundred years nominalism has been the more dominant philosophical and social theory. The nominalist tradition became a serious rival of realism with William of Occam,2 found expression in the political and social philosophy of Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Kant, and more recently in modern empiricism and positivism. Medieval metaphysical realism has survived in Catholic Aristotelianism and Catholic social thought, especially in the various formulations and elaborations of Thomism, and has had occasional nontheological revivals.3 Since World War II metaphysical realism has experienced a great access of strength in the United States. Professional political theorists have espoused realism; generally attempting to identify it with democracy.4 This claim has been opposed by those who like Hans Kelsen and Bertrand Russell (in at least one of his phases) have argued that the tradition reaching back to realism, instead of supporting democratic institutions, implies absolutistic authoritarianism.5 A great debate has been conducted in the pages of professional academic journals by the modern partisans of both traditions. This debate has branched out and involved the status of value judgments, the foundations of jurisprudence