Medieval Religion Research Articles

Monasteries and society in the British Isles in the later Middle Ages. Edited by Janet Burton and Karen Stöber. (Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 35.) Pp. xiv+255 incl. 13 ills. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008. £50. 978 1 84383 386 4; 0955 2480

Monasteries and society in the British Isles in the later Middle Ages. Edited by Janet Burton and Karen Stöber. (Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 35.) Pp. xiv+255 incl. 13 ills. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008. £50. 978 1 84383 386 4; 0955 2480 - Volume 62 Issue 3

Late Medieval Monasteries and Their Patrons: England and Wales, c. 1300–1540 (Studies in Medieval Religion XXIX). By Karen Stöber

Late Medieval Monasteries and Their Patrons: England and Wales, c. 1300–1540 (Studies in Medieval Religion XXIX). By Karen Stöber

A Very Brief History of Eternity (review)

Reviewed by: A Very Brief History of Eternity Jeffrey Burton Russell A Very Brief History of Eternity. By Carlos Eire. (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2010. Pp. xviii, 268. $24.95. ISBN 978-0-691-13357-7.) A history of the concept of eternity in Western thought is a brilliantly original idea, and Carlos Eire makes complex ideas easily accessible. Eire is deeply learned in history, philosophy, theology, literature, language, and popular culture. His underlying assertion, against the fad of current academic materialism, is that ideas have consequences: Beliefs and social conditions affect one another. His thesis is that ideas of eternity have had an enormous effect on people’s behavior and on culture. His focus is on “eternity as it pertains to human existence, not eternity as abstractly conceived” (p. 17): on what he calls “lived religion” (p. 21). He discusses concepts of time, infinity, immortality, eternal life, afterlife, transcendence, eternal return, eschatology, heaven and hell, and the entropic fate of the material universe. The author divides the book into four chronological sections, preceded by an important introduction and followed by an appendix with an analysis of important ideas. The four sections are the Jewish and Greek origins of the idea and their synthesis in early Christianity; the Middle Ages; the Reformation and rise of science; and the Enlightenment, modernism, and postmodernism. The organization works well, although it might have been better to divide the last section into modernism and postmodernism. The first section shows how the Jewish eternal creating God and the Greek eternal first principle were melded in New Testament and patristic thought. A quibble is that Eire misunderstands the Gospel of John as being primarily influenced by stoicism (p. 41). The second section is a masterful discussion of both the scholastic and the mystical aspects of medieval religion. The third section is the most interesting, treating Protestant views of eternity on society, which created “a wholesale . . . segregating . . . of the dead and the living” (pp. 108, 150). The Protestant critique moved from indulgences to rejection of purgatory and prayers for the dead. The Communion of Saints was postponed to vague eschatology, erasing the Catholic sense that the saints are eternally present in Christ and thus present to us at all times. Protestantism rejected the idea that we can do something for the dead “here and now” (p. 110) and replaced it with the idea that the deceased are dead and gone, at least until the end of time. Protestants have only two alternatives [End Page 328] at death, “only two small doors on the horizon . . . one leading to heaven and the other to hell” (p. 153). Since nothing could be done for the dead, the focus shifted to an emphasis on life in this temporal world; combined with Protestant individualism, this produced a world attuned to modernization and capitalism. A sharp shift in society and property characterized the Protestant Reformation. Earlier, much wealth had been given to churches and monasteries in return for services for the deceased and their families. Once such services were deemed nugatory, the churches’ property was seized by the secular authorities (the most notorious being King Henry VIII), allowing the state to hugely enhance its military, economic, and social power. “The Reformation of eternity was a significant first step toward the elevation of this world as the ultimate reality” (p. 153). The final section contains thoughtful criticisms of modernism and materialism on the one hand, and postmodernism and deconstruction on the other. Unfortunately, while criticizing the postmodern view of the relativity of truth, the author does not escape it. He bemoans the current rule of two false orthodoxies—individualism and collectivism—without offering the alternative of Christian communion in love freed from both selfishness and tyranny. This weakens the strength of his voice, so strong in the previous sections. Nonetheless, this is a book that deserves a lot of attention by historians, philosophers, and theologians, and it is written so clearly that it will also interest the literate public. Jeffrey Burton Russell University of California at Santa Barbara Copyright © 2011 The Catholic University of America Press

The English Church at the Frontier of Early Modern Catholicism

The Restoration of English Catholicism in the mid-1550s came at a fateful moment—familiar currents of medieval religion as partially reshaped by Humanist reform had begun to fade, but Early Modern Catholicism was only beginning to take form, and had not yet been given its ultimate Tridentine direction. The English Church under Mary I was post-Protestant, but pre-Catholic reform. In this difficult environment of sweeping religious change, popular Catholic writers created a new English Catholic identity intended to consolidate the recent Catholic Restoration, support widely held religious values and make sense of ordinary people’s religious experience. This identity arose through a creative synthesis of several disparate themes important to Marian Catholics (Catholic unity, English heritage and traditionalism). The English Catholic identity of popular Marian literature de-emphasised contemporary, international Catholicism, stressing instead the historic component of Catholic unity through shared commitment to the beliefs and practices of the Early Church, which allowed English people to celebrate their own national identity as Catholics while coming to terms with the recent heterodox past.

Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (review)

Reviewed by: Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion Daniel G. Van Slyke Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion. By Derek A. Rivard. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2009. Pp. xii, 332. $39.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-813-21545-7.) One hundred years after Adolf Franz published his monumental two-volume Die Kirchlichen Benediktionen im Mittelalter (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1909), a scholar has dared to explore in a sustained fashion the complex meanings and anthropological import of the Latin blessings that Franz chartered. In Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion, Derek A. Rivard conducts an ambitious study of ritual blessings in continental Latin sources, especially from the twelfth through fourteenth centuries. Rivard’s first and shortest chapter, “The History and Theology of Christian Blessing,” sketches the development of blessings from the Old Testament to the Middle Ages and introduces key liturgical books to be studied. The next three chapters constitute the heart of Blessing the World and its major contribution. Each chapter explores a category of ritual blessings as a “window through which to explore the relationship between the human and the divine in medieval religion” (p. 6). Chapter 2, “Sacred Places and Sacred Space,” analyzes blessings related to agriculture, homes, bridal chambers, work spaces, cemeteries, and churches—including consecrations and reconciliations. Chapter 3, “Sacred Persons: Blessing the Laity,” discusses how blessings instilled divine power in “the visible and tangible elements of special social status” (p.172)—namely, pilgrims’ staves and purses, and knights’ swords, standards, lances, and armor. Chapter 3 also addresses twelve sample rites of blessing related to illness, pestilence, healing, and childbirth. Rivard devotes chapter 4 to “Sacred Vessels, Objects, and Events,” including ships, nets, wells, dishes, vessels, ordeals, and judicial duels. The theological problems of and lukewarm clerical attitudes toward ordeals and duels are noteworthy. Central to the structure and content of each section in the main chapters is a set of rituals drawn from Latin liturgical books copied between the ninth and the sixteenth centuries. Rivard applies “a textual approach drawn more from religious studies than from history and focusing primarily on the broad ideas, beliefs, and trends found within” various formulae of the rituals themselves (p. 2). His translations accurately render the original Latin texts, which are consistently placed in footnotes. The conclusion highlights general themes across individual rites, including the “adaptability” of divine power, [End Page 526] which blessings portray as capable of meeting every need (pp. 209, 214); the “ambiguity” that resulted because petitioners could only guess at how God might respond to the blessing; “belief in the deep engagement of the sacred with the natural world” (p. 271); the notion of a “contract” between God and his worshipers; and the relationship of the sacred to the demonic and profane. Rivard’s most refreshing conclusions regard the “positive perspective on the natural and social world” (p. 280) exhibited by the blessings and the extent to which they were influenced by the piety and concerns of the laity. Rudolf Otto’s anthropological theories, and particularly his notion of the numen, exert a pervasive influence over the study. Commentators on medieval religion such as Augustine Thomson, Keith Thomas, and R. N. Swanson provide categories for Rivard’s interpretation of the rituals. Yet Rivard draws more from Franz and the primary sources than any more recent scholarship. Desiderata include outlines of each rite to contextualize individual formulae. It is surprising, for example, to read suddenly “the seventeenth prayer” of a given blessing (p. 110). The reader also must keep in mind that the texts studied are multivalent and open to other interpretations. For example, what Rivard calls the “ambiguity” of the divinity might be better understood in terms of the subjective disposition of the faithful, even in the medieval mentalité. This study exhibits a lack of familiarity with patristics, liturgiology, palaeography, and theology, which are intimately related to the topic. For example, Rivard follows the formidable but in some respects outdated surveys of Josef Jungmann, Theodor Klauser, and Cyrille Vogel in attributing the Apostolic Tradition to Hippolytus (p. 29), despite more recent research on the document by Paul Bradshaw and...

Emperor Charles IV (1346–1378) as the Architect of Local Religion in Prague

The idea of reform still supplies the guiding principle for most accounts of late medieval religion in Bohemia. Like a brightly colored thread, reform marks a trail leading forward from Jan Hus (d. 1415) to the leaders of the sixteenth-century Reformation, as well as backward to a series of precursors in the fourteenth century. This essay takes a different path through the religious culture of fourteenth-century Bohemia and of Prague, in particular. Rather than following the traditional historiography in identifying a handful of fourteenth-century Prague preachers as revolutionary forerunners of Jan Hus, this essay situates these and other figures within a more complicated and multivalent local religious culture, a culture that was carefully molded by Central Europe's most powerful authority. No one shaped Prague's local religion more dramatically than the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV (r. 1346–1378), as three examples offered here will illustrate. Like an architect, Charles IV designed much of Prague's vibrant local religion. Nevertheless, neither he nor anyone else completely controlled it.

Antonia Gransden, A History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, 1182–1256: Samson of Tottington to Edmund of Walpole. (Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 31.) Woodbridge, Eng., and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, 2007. Pp. xx, 354 plus 12 black-and-white and color plates and 9 black-and-white figures. $105.

Antonia Gransden, <i>A History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, 1182–1256: Samson of Tottington to Edmund of Walpole</i>. (Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 31.) Woodbridge, Eng., and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, 2007. Pp. xx, 354 plus 12 black-and-white and color plates and 9 black-and-white figures. $105.

Monasteries and Society in the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages (review)

Reviewed by: Monasteries and Society in the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages David Robinson Monasteries and Society in the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages. Edited by Janet Burton and Karen Stöber. [Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, XXXV.] (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press. 2008. Pp. xiv, 252. $95.00. ISBN 978-1-843-83386-4.) As the editors of this very welcome collection of essays state in their introduction, the growth of scholarly interest in British medieval monastic history over recent decades is to be applauded. Diligent new scholars have advanced the subject from strength to strength, often moving into hitherto unchartered areas and forcing a reassessment of the work of earlier generations. Notably, we have seen a shift away from a predominantly institutional approach to monasticism, and there is now much greater interest in what Janet Burton and Karen Stöber term “socio-cultural-economic” issues. A further development is the increasing attention paid to the smaller and superficially less interesting [End Page 335] houses, redressing the imbalance that at one time favored large and well-documented abbeys and priories. Burton and Stöber are two hugely energetic teachers and researchers at Welsh universities. Both through their own work, and as tireless conference organizers, they have contributed much to the recent developments. The fifteen papers they have gathered in this particular volume all emphasize the points made above, but the collection also highlights one other significant recent trend—namely, the need to challenge older assumptions about the quality of the religious life in the later Middle Ages. Indeed, not one of these essays looks at twelfth-century monastic growth, focusing instead on what follows between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. The book is divided into six sections or themes (for convenience, it is said), but the boundaries are far from rigid, and overlap occurs. The editors state that together the papers “offer insight into important interactions between two types of society in medieval Britain, the monastic houses and the broader communities of which they were part” (p. 7). On the whole, readers will surely agree with this assessment, though they may also feel the material is sometimes stretched too thinly over each theme, four of which are illustrated by just two essays a piece. In the first section, “The Meeting of Worlds,” there is a closely worded essay by Martin Heale on the selection of monastic superiors in the late Middle Ages. He argues for the importance of external influence, particularly the Tudor government in the decades before the suppression. Also in this section is an essay by Stöber on the social networks of monasteries in Wales, one on Cistercian hospitality by Julie Kerr, and another on the Cistercians and border conflicts by Emilia Jamroziak. Section 2 looks at “Religious Houses and Their Patrons and Benefactors.” Here the coverage extends to Ireland, and the Observant Franciscans at Adare are considered by Colmán Ó Clabaigh, who also offers insights into patterns of patronage of the Irish mendicants generally. Next, Andrew Abram shows how the small Augustinian house at Wombridge in Shropshire attracted and retained the support of a few minor knightly families throughout its history, ensuring its survival in an area where competition for monastic patronage was always intense. Closing the section, Michael Hicks presents an interesting essay explaining the rising costs that may have contributed to a decline in monastic patronage after about 1300. In section 3 the content turns to “Female Communities,” with an exploratory but assured contribution by Burton on the recruitment of nuns in Yorkshire, and another by Kimm Perkins-Curran in which she argues for the importance of local families in defining the duties of a prioress in Scotland. The fourth section deals with “Monasteries and Education,” in which James Clark gives a fresh and stimulating appraisal of the ongoing role of late-medieval monasteries in education. This is accompanied by Glyn Coppack’s essay on Carthusian Mount Grace, in which archaeological evidence comes to the fore. [End Page 336] The last two sections cover “Monasteries and Urban Space” and “Religious Houses in the Regions.” There is an essay on early Franciscan legislation and lay society (Jens R...

Without remainder: ruins and tombs in Shakespeare's Sonnets

In the sixteenth century, observes Margaret Aston, ‘England acquired a whole suite of ruins’.1 The widespread destruction of monastery buildings and church fabric – the sheer ubiquity of the destru...

Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages (review)

Reviewed by: Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages Marcus Harmes Van Engen, John, Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008: cloth; pp. xii, 438; 19 b/w illustrations; R.R.P US$59.95; ISBN 9780812241198. There have been earlier studies of the Devotio Moderna, a religious movement emerging from late medieval Holland, but John Van Engen's new study of this topic surpasses them in terms of the breadth and depth of his engagement with surviving archival records and the thoroughness and complexity of his argument. He engages fully with complexity of defining or locating these communities, in terms of what to call them and the difficulty of establishing a working definition of the area of their main influence, be it Flanders, the Netherlands or Lower Germany. On one level, the brothers and sisters of the Devotio Moderna appear in Van Engen's work as part of a wider religious fabric, which included beguines and others who lived in communities but without a rule. However, the brothers and sisters also presented particular interpretative problems to their contemporaries, who called them Lollards or beguines, largely because they struggled to find other terminology to do justice to these small communities of men and women. The difficulties the contemporaries of the brothers and sisters experienced in naming them are reflected in the modern literature and not least in Van Engen's own work. Much of the opening chapters of this book is given over to teasing out the self-generated and externally imposed names for the brothers and sisters and to establishing the nomenclature for the areas where they were territorially strong. The greatest strength of this study, besides the knowledge Van Engen exhibits of the contemporary sources, is the skill he shows in conveying the complexity of this order, both for contemporary observers and for later [End Page 257] historians. He reconstructs a world in which the brothers and sisters, and other communities living without rules, were both derided and defended. As Van Engen points out, it was quite possible for papally-endorsed inquisitors and bishops to clash with each other over how to deal with communities living together but not governed by a rule or under the jurisdiction of an abbot or a prior. The confusion the brothers and sisters generated among their contemporary observers is reflected in how modern scholars have approached them. For much of the twentieth century, the brothers and sisters (as were other groups such as Lollards) were conceived of as proto-reformers or as evidence of an early reformation before the actual Reformation of the sixteenth century. Cruder historiographic methodologies that traced continuities between medieval religious groups and the reformers of the sixteenth century have since given way to more nuanced readings, such as Van Engen's, which are prepared to evaluate Lollards, brothers and sisters and others on their own terms rather than as premature Protestants. Van Engen's subtitle refers to the 'medieval world' and he stakes a claim for the significance of the brothers and sisters in a wider world of late medieval religion, rather than as reformers in waiting. He adeptly reconstructs a world of late medieval religious diversity, showing the brothers and sisters as one of many competing forces, others including the Free Spirits. Van Engen does full justice to the complexity of this landscape, asserting that binary opposition between orthodoxy and unorthodoxy is a methodology which does not do justice to the variety encompassed by the Devotio Moderna or the complexity of official church responses to it. Van Engen makes clear that contemporary observers were often nonplussed by the appearance of sisters and brothers, a response identifiable in surviving evidence, which indicates the visibility and accessibility of the devotees in their contemporary contexts. As Van Engen points out, the brothers and sisters were identifiable by their garb (normally a hooded gown) and other unusual touches, such as overlarge shoes for the insufficiently humble. This book teases out the further implications of this pronounced and enduring suspicion, especially the tension between...

Pluralistic Pilgrimage: Travel as the Quest for the Strange

Pluralistic Pilgrimage: Travel as the Quest for the Strange Frederick J. Ruf “The aim of knowledge,” declares Hegel, “is to divest the objective world of its strangeness and to make us more at home in it.”1 Some might say the same of pilgrimage. William James quotes Hegel’s statement in A Pluralistic Universe, a text that I’d like to propose as a model for contemporary pilgrimage. If I’m allowed to shift Hegel’s concern somewhat, his words surely offer the two chief options in pilgrimage: the effort to be at home, and to use pilgrimage to go, we might say, Home; or the effort to leave home, to seek the strange and plunge into it. It’s a stark choice and one we need to keep in mind when looking at least one contemporary form of pilgrimage, travel. We might see the search for Home in many analyses of Medieval Christian pilgrimage, for it is often seen as a powerful device for establishing and cementing identity. As Jonathan Sumption points out in Pilgrimage: an Image of Medieval Religion, pilgrimage acted as a counter and solution to the profound disruptions of evil, be they physical, emotional, or spiritual. Life was seen to contain overpowering forces that governed and could destroy an individual’s existence, both on earth and in an afterlife. Religious life had “a desperate, almost frenzied quality” in the later middle ages because present and eternal health, harmony, and happiness were so precarious.2 Pilgrimage offered opportunities to re‐form the self according to healing models by journeying to sites that housed the relics of the saints or presented the scenes of Christ’s life and death. Though we might see medieval Christian pilgrimage as itself disruptive since it involved, as Sumption himself suggests, “an escape from the stifling framework of parish life,” as well as “curiosity to see new places and experience new things,” its importance in the stabilizing of the medieval self is certainly what Sumption’s analysis emphasizes. Victor and Edith Turner’s classic study of pilgrimage might be largely viewed as outmoded and non‐empirical, yet it is still highly influential, and it doesn’t contradict this aspect of Sumption’s view, for while there is a separation from home and liminality on the journey, according to the Turners, there is also “aggregation” on arrival when one is exposed to the powerfully formative symbols of the destination at a point (in time and space) when the pilgrim is most susceptible to their effect.3 More recently, scholars like Eade and Sallnow focus on the contested discourses of any given pilgrimage site, an understanding that multiplies the identities that are formed, but that does not seem to undercut the stability of what takes place according to any given story of the site when the pilgrim arrives. The definition of “home” may be contested but it still seems to be Home that is both sought and found.4 What draws my interest in this essay is the very un‐Hegelian desire to be less at home, the desire to seek the strange. I believe it can be found preeminently in the experience of that most contemporary form of pilgrimage, travel, even in the most common tourism. The religious importance of travel and its oddness are insufficiently appreciated and demand greater understanding which I hope to begin to provide. William James’s pluralism and pilgrimage In his classic study of pluralism, James takes issue with what he calls the “block universe,” the view that we live in a clear and unified world that is transparent and uniform and familiar.5 That block universe utterly lacks pluralism. Being an early twentieth‐century New Englander, James probably is thinking of a block of wood or ice, both of them with a uniform composition, grain or crystalline structure. Both are homely objects, perhaps for chopping or carpentry, or for cooling. Severely geometrical, they have the right angles of post and lintel, of beams, of frames, of flooring, of joists and studs, and of civilizations. And, yet, I can’t help but see a neighborhood metaphor in James’s figure, as well. Mightn’t James be arguing against a...

Religious Life in Normandy, 1050–1300: Space, Gender and Social Pressure. By Leonie V. Hicks. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 33. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2007. x + 246 pp. $90.00 cloth.

Religious Life in Normandy, 1050–1300: Space, Gender and Social Pressure. By Leonie V. Hicks. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 33. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2007. x + 246 pp. $90.00 cloth. - Volume 78 Issue 3

The legend of the Middle Ages: philosophical explorations of medieval Christianity, Judaism, and Islam

Through a penetrating interview and sixteen essays, this volume explores key intersections of medieval religion and philosophy. With characteristic erudition and insight, Remi Brague focuses less on individual Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinkers than on their relationships with one another. Their disparate philosophical worlds, Brague shows, were grounded in different models of revelation that engendered divergent interpretations of the ancient Greek sources they held in common. So, despite striking similarities in their solutions to the philosophical problems they all faced, intellectuals in each theological tradition often viewed the others' ideas with skepticism, if not disdain. Brague's portrayal of this misunderstood age brings to life not only its philosophical and theological nuances, but also its true lessons for our own time.

Karen Stöber. Late Medieval Monasteries and Their Patrons: England and Wales, c. 1300–1540. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion. Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2007. Pp. xii+285. $80.00 (cloth).

Karen Stöber. Late Medieval Monasteries and Their Patrons: England and Wales, c. 1300–1540. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion. Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2007. Pp. xii+285. $80.00 (cloth).

“Passing into the great romantic loves of rebellious flesh”: medieval religion and the body in Walter Pater's “Poems by William Morris” and “Two Early French Stories”

Résumé La notion d’« esprit médiéval » chez Walter Pater a été relativement peu abordée. À partir de l’étude de deux textes, « Poems by William Morris » et « Two Early French Stories », on s’efforcera de souligner le paradoxe suivant : selon Pater, la réaction contre la religion, qu’elle prenne la forme de l’antinomisme ou d’une libération sensuelle et physique, a pour origine le christianisme lui-même. Notre hypothèse de lecture est aussi que les modalités du discours sur l’amour sont différentes selon que Pater traite du corps féminin ou masculin, l’un évoquant le désordre et l’autre l’harmonie.

Monasteries and Society in the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages. Edited by Janet Burton and Karen Stöber. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion XXXV. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2008. xiv + 258pp. $95.00 cloth.

Monasteries and Society in the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages. Edited by Janet Burton and Karen Stöber. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion XXXV. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2008. xiv + 258pp. $95.00 cloth.

The Culture of Medieval English Monasticism. Edited by James G. Clark. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 30. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2007. xvi + 224pp. $85.00 cloth.

The Culture of Medieval English Monasticism. Edited by James G. Clark. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 30. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2007. xvi + 224pp. $85.00 cloth.

Medieval Religion: A Sourcebook

Bringing together a wide range of sources in translation from western Christendom, which are balanced by the inclusion of texts dealing with the Eastern Church, Judaism and Islam, this new anthology on medieval religion looks to emphasise the all-pervasive quality of the Church within the activities of western Europe while at the same time underlining the diversity of Christian principles and practice in the middle ages. The editors have arranged their selected sources thematically under the headings of saints, monks and nuns, the hierarchical Church, pilgrimage, magic and heresy, devotion and the sacraments, theology, mysticism, the Eastern Church, and Judaism and Islam. The sources, which are reproduced from previous translations—some of which, it must be said, are somewhat dated—are prefaced by very brief introductions, though each chapter concludes with suggestions for further reading that includes quite recent historiography. There are also 20 plates revealing different aspects of devotion and practice, largely from English churches and monasteries.

Janet Burton and Karen Stöber, eds., Monasteries and Society in the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages. (Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 35.) Woodbridge, Eng., and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, 2008. Pp. xiv, 252; black-and-white figures and tables. $95.

Janet Burton and Karen Stöber, eds., Monasteries and Society in the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages. (Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 35.) Woodbridge, Eng., and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, 2008. Pp. xiv, 252; black-and-white figures and tables. $95.

Reforming the Art of Dying: The ars moriendi in the German Reformation (1519–1528) (review)

Reviewed by: Reforming the Art of Dying: The ars moriendi in the German Reformation (1519–1528) Thomas Tentler Reforming the Art of Dying: The ars moriendi in the German Reformation (1519–1528). By Austra Reinis. [St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company. 2007. Pp. viii, 290. $99.95. ISBN 978-0-754-65439-1.) Luise Klein’s Göttingen dissertation in theology, Die Bereitung zum Sterben: Studien zu den frühen Reformatorischen Sterbebüchern (Göttingen, 1958), called attention to the centrality of the preparation for [End Page 383] death (especially in the final hour) in the propagation of a Lutheran theology of consolation. An opening quotation from Melanchthon said as much. Klein observed that almost every Lutheran theologian in the first decades of the Reformation promised a cure for the terrors evoked by a late-medieval religion of works. Since Klein’s study, the early-modern preparation for death—Protestant and Catholic—has received much attention, as Austra Reinis’s ample bibliography attests. Reforming the Art of Dying continues this research with a detailed study of a selection of literature from Lutheranism’s first decade. Like Klein, she argues that while the reforming authors preserve features of the late-medieval artes, they consistently offer a radically different evangelical belief and practice. Underlying the study, once again like her predecessor, is a sound appreciation of the importance of printing and the campaign to propagate devotional literature and teaching to a wide audience—beginning in the late Middle Ages and dramatically expanding in the sixteenth century. Reinis is attentive to the individual biographies of her authors and their political and social settings, but her most original contribution is the analysis of classical rhetorical structures and techniques, and her attempt to find in them the reasons for these works’ persuasive force. While admitting the ambiguities inherent in classifying early modern literature, Reinis identifies three genres, selecting sixteen works by fourteen authors: (1) sermons on preparation for death (Luther, Johannes Oecolampadius, Agricola, Georgius Mohr, Georg Spalatin, Johannes Bugenhagen, and Thomas Venatorius; (2) manuals for use at the deathbed (Oecolampadius, Wenzel Linck, and Johannes Odenbach); and (3) catechetical instruction (Johannes Diepold, Kaspar Güttel, Johannes Borner, and Jakob Otter). In each group one work is selected for extensive analysis, while the others are treated more briefly. Her careful literary and doctrinal analysis of these works, along with some attention to their particular historical settings (pp. 47–242) is a considerable contribution to our understanding of the appeal of Protestant theology and practice. For those pages alone this expensive volume would be a useful addition to a Reformation historian’s library. How much rhetorical analysis adds to the appreciation of the message and power of these parenetic works will probably depend on the interpretive preferences of the reader. Reinis’s insistence that the authors in question were trained in rhetorical arts seems indisputable, and most historians will profit from an introduction to a different and more technical way of evaluating these texts. More important for historians is her documentation in Protestant literature of the massive presence of theological commonplaces—medieval and evangelical. Especially welcome is her brief attention to Wenzel Linck’s approval of shouting in the ear of the dying—a medieval custom that Luther noted and one that makes evangelical sense. Not surprisingly, however, Reinis’s main [End Page 384] concern is to show that markers of evangelical authenticity dominate all genres: constant reiteration of a justification pro me; exaltation of Baptism and the Last Supper; a reduced role for a thoroughly transformed confession; an attack on superfluous, “legalistic” conditions for forgiveness; and a general recourse to a language of passivity and salvation extra nos. But aside from a few specific disagreements with Luise Klein, Susan Karrant-Nunn, and Craig Koslofsky (whom she misreads), Reinis’s argument is familiar. She begins with a recapitulation of what she accepts as “the late medieval death culture” (p. 2). Europe is in crisis—angst pervades—medieval religion makes things worse. After describing the contents of the late-medieval artes moriendi (the picture Ars, the longer prose Ars, Gerson’s Opus tripartitum, Stefan von Landskron, the anonymous Versehung leib sel er vnnd gutt...