Blockchain Papers

Marleen Cré

Justine L. Tombley’s excellent study A Diabolical Voice: Heresy and the Reception of the Latin “Mirror of Simple Souls” in Late Medieval Europe is the following step in the medieval historian’s groundbreaking output on Marguerite Porète’s Mirror of Simple Souls. This highly focused study offers a comprehensive and insightful discussion of the reception of the Latin text in Italy and Southern Germany in the first decades of the fifteenth century and connects this to some of the extant manuscripts of the Mirror in Latin. Introducing the study is the story of Marguerite Porète’s repeated condemnation as a heretic (in Valenciennes in 1306, and Paris in 1310), the concomitant condemnation of her book as heretical, and her death at the stake on June 1, 1310, as well as a survey of eighty years of scholarship following Romana Guarnieri’s identification, in 1946, of the Mirror of Simple Souls as the text that led to its author’s death. This makes the introduction a concise and impressive state of the art of textual and historical scholarly work on Marguerite and the Mirror in all its surviving versions (the French original and the medieval translations into Latin, Middle Dutch, and Italian), and sets the scene for the detailed analyses of the manuscripts and texts that criticize the Mirror discussed in the following four chapters, of which chapters 2, 3, and 4 are devoted to a single manuscript or text.Chapter 1 describes brief warnings against the Mirror as a worthless, deceptive, and dangerous text in, among others, the sermons of Bernardino of Siena (between 1427 and 1444), letters by Giovanni of Capestrano and Lorenzo Giustiniani, who led an inquisition into heresy in Venice for Eugenius IV, and by Antonio Zeno, who sent a list of propositions from the Mirror to theologians at the University of Padua to be investigated. It also looks into the intriguing mention by the Council of Basel’s historian John of Segovia of an accusation of heresy, including the ownership of a copy of the Mirror, against Eugenius IV himself. Though mostly very brief, these mentions allow Trombley not only to gain insight into the double-faced reception of the Mirror (acceptance–rejection), but also into how the discourse and the ensuing actions against the Mirror are interwoven with conciliar politics. The repeated warnings against the text suggest a wide dissemination among both religious and lay readers, and, as Trombley shows, quite a few of its readers did not see any danger in the text. (A case in point is John-Jerome of Prague, who copied the Mirror in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Conv. soppr. G.3.1130, and who drew a smiling monk in the decorated initial A at the beginning of the text.) The readers who denounced the Mirror and urged against its dissemination did so independently of the 1306 and 1310 convictions, yet did associate the work with the decree Ad nostrum, written at the Council of Vienne in 1311 and believed to have been partly based on the condemnation of the Mirror as heretical. Their rejection of the text also seems to rest on the belief that it was a founding text for heretical groups and that it led to error and ruin for its adherents.Through Trombley does not go into how specifically “ruin” is to be understood, she carefully analyzes all the instances in which the Mirror is described, decried, confiscated, vandalized, and condemned as a dangerous, diabolical, heretical text in letters and warnings mainly written in Latin, and, as mentioned before, traces the texts and their authors back to a network of clerics around pope Eugenius IV, his mission to eradicate heresy and the themes and controversies surrounding the Councils of Basel and Ferrara-Florence (1431–1449), and to Giacomo de Zocchi, professor of canon law at the university of Padua since 1428, thus uncovering a web of attacks on the Mirror extending from Italy into Germany more than 120 years after its author’s death.Chapter 2 offers the first full codicological analysis of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Latin 46, a manuscript famous in Mirror studies as the only physical evidence of efforts to suppress and destroy the text, as the larger part of the copy was cut out of the manuscript (apart from the opening page written on the verso side of f. 70, and the last eight lines of the text on f. 72r–f. 71 being misbound). An eclectic copy with possible Benedictine origins and suggestive of humanist interests (texts by Seneca and John Chrysostom are included in the codex) on the part of the compiler, this copy is yet another proof of the double-faced reception Trombley is documenting. Someone wanted the Mirror in this collection of texts, yet someone (else?) later decided that the text was problematic and needed to be destroyed. Presenting codicological evidence that points both to Italy and Southern Germany, this chapter presents intriguing scenarios as to where and when the Mirror may have been excised. If this was in Italy, the owner of the manuscript may have been alerted to the heretical nature of the text in one of the inquisitorial campaigns against the text. If in Germany, the owner may have received word of the warnings against the text through the network of Southern German clerics who studied, likely under de Zocchi, at the university of Padua. That the codex was carefully studied for problematic content also shows in “evidence of suspicion and scrutiny” (88) in Angela of Foligno’s Liber and a Pseudo-Augustinian epistle that mentions an apocryphal Origen text, both also included in the collection.Chapter 3 focuses on the list of thirty propositions from the Mirror occurring in Vatican City, BAV, MS Vat. Lat. 4953. As a similar list drawn up for the theologians of Paris in the early fourteenth century does not survive, this list, potentially drawn up to be investigated by the theologians of the university of Padua at the request of Antonio Zeno, helps shed light on the reasons why the Mirror may have been condemned by the Paris theologians, whose refutations may well have been similar to those added to the propositions here. Yet the significance of the list in MS Vat. Lat. 4953 is not just retrospective. As the remaining texts in this codex are all linked to the theological disputes between the Greek and the Latin Churches–the focus of the Council of Ferrara-Florence, Trombley suggests the likelihood of this codex being a handbook to help its owner, most likely someone involved with the papal court, navigate the negotiations at the Council, and of the list having originated in the context of Giovanni of Capestrano’s investigation of heresy in Venice. (Again, the study suggests several possible scenarios.)After a detailed discussion of the possible association of the Mirror and Palamism—a Greek theological view revolving around “the question of the divine attributes and the nature of union between humans and the divine” (99)—and Ferrara-Florence, the chapter includes a detailed discussion of the refutations found in the list. These boil down to objections to five main themes: the special status of the simple, annihilated souls as exempt from normal spiritual practice as taught by the Church, the souls’ indifference to practicing the virtues and to emotions, the idea that the simple souls can experience full union with the divine during their earthly lives, the souls’ complete surrendering of their will to God’s, which would mean that they no longer have free will, and the Mirror’s insistence on the “unknowability” of God.A Diabolical Voice closes with the discussion of Padua, Biblioteca universitaria di Padova, MS 1647, a fifteenth-century codex that contains a seven-folio text that denounces excerpted passages of the Mirror as heretical and the book as a whole as diabolical. This manuscript and text are discussed at the end of the monograph, because the polemic is a fifteenth-century copy by Padua theologian Giacomo de Zocchi of a much earlier text, possibly written before the 1306 and 1310 condemnations of the Mirror, and most likely before the Council of Vienne, as the canon lawyer who writes the text does not refer to Ad nostrum in his refutations. As this author quotes from the Latin translation, this also pushes the terminus ante quem of the Latin translation back to the end of the thirteenth century. The early fourteenth-century original of the mid-fifteenth-century copy found here was, thus, contemporary with but independent of the investigation of the Mirror by the Paris theologians that led to Marguerite’s execution.Interestingly, this attack on the Mirror assumes that the work was written by a man and formulates an appraisal of the work in virulently hostile language that leads, as Trombley points out, to a condemnation that reads as if it is a verdict in a heresy trial. The themes picked up for refutation by this author are the same ones as those singled out by the compiler of the list of propositions in MS Vat. Lat. 4953: the soul’s indifference to moral guidance and its rejection of Christian works and practices, its proclaimed ability to gain knowledge of God without Church teachings, and the deification of the soul in mystical union.In addressing the concerns about and attacks against the Mirror in Italian and Southern German sources in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, this monograph complements and adds nuance to the narrative of the Mirror’s successful, if not triumphant, survival often, if not predominantly, highlighted in Marguerite scholarship. Thus, this book truly fills a gap in our knowledge about the Mirror and its medieval reception. Not only does Trombley uncover the intricate connections between people and texts that created this web of references to and judgments of the Mirror, she also shows how their concerns fit into the late medieval spiritual upheaval that shows in an explosive increase in lay and religious interest in the contemplative life, but also in fears of heresy through revelations and visions, and of new reform movements in the Church and monastic orders. The study hints at the uses of texts and condemnations of them as church-political moves, and at the clash between mystical experience expressed in literary form with doctrinal theology and canon law. Above all, it shows how two opposite assessments of a text coexisted and how important nuance is in academic research. Whether or not the Mirror was heretical is not the question Trombley asks in this book. Rather, she asks “whether medieval readers believed the text was heretical” (24). Some of them did, and others did not.The detail with which Trombley clarifies the many theological, doctrinal, and historical issues surrounding the texts she analyzes in the book cannot be conveyed in a review. As a reader, you are thinking along with the author, and I found myself eager to find out what the next step in the journey of discovery through these texts and manuscripts would be. The completeness in Trombley’s description of the various connections between the texts and the careful listing of the different scenarios of text production and exchange make the reading of this study a highly satisfying intellectual experience that this review cannot do justice to. Trombley also offers complete and detailed descriptions of the manuscripts in chapters 2, 3, and 4. The texts from MS Vat. Lat. 4953 and Biblioteca universitaria di Padova, MS 1647 are translated by Trombley and added in the two appendixes to the book, opening them up for future work. The bibliography is extensive and an invitation to further reading. This is an incredibly rich book for scholars of the Mirror, and as such it is an invaluable addition to the field. Also, it is a riveting read for any scholar of medieval religious cultures, be they historians, theologians, or literary scholars, even when the stress is on the historical. The importance of this book for anyone studying whatever aspect of the Mirror cannot be stressed enough.

Christopher Fletcher

The survival or loss of literary manuscripts has always depended upon many factors, but questions of value are chief among them: the cultural value, or otherwise, ascribed to them by authors, collectors, publishers, libraries, funders, and government agencies; and the commercial value, determined in part by cultural value but also through questions of rarity, authenticity, competition, fashion, and research potential. This chapter explores these issues through the consideration of manuscript examples ranging from the first manuscript in the English language to survive wholly in the hand of its author, dating from c. 1200, to digital texts accruing monetary value through non-fungible tokens. It looks at how authors have ignored or embraced their manuscripts as financial assets and how that may affect their textual meaning; how contingencies surrounding funding or legislation, particularly export control, contribute to our understanding of the literary canon; and how institutional collaboration or competition, together with decisions made in the book trade can shape the archival landscape. Finally, it speculates about the implications for the material literary manuscript, as a tangible witness to the writer’s hand and an artefact relatively easy to value in commercial terms, in a world where collectors are beginning to privilege digital artefacts.

Alexandra Reider

The literary culture of early medieval England was thoroughly bilingual: prose and poetry were composed in Latin and Old English.2 Prose in Latin survives in greater quantity than prose in Old English while the numbers for poetry are more evenly split: 270 Anglo-Latin poems are extant compared to 244 Old English poems, by one reckoning.3 It is not enough, however, to note the coexistence of these two languages and their circulation (jointly or separately) in manuscript. Early English literary culture was not simply the “sum” of its Old English and Latin “parts” but was also rather more. Each language was involved with the other behind the scenes, as scholarship on pre-Conquest poetry has made especially clear. Many poets who composed verse in Old English would also have known Latin—the more prestigious, more institutional language.4 By the same token, Latin verse did not exist in a vacuum: certain prosodic features in the Latin poetry of Aldhelm, for instance, are thought to have been inspired by vernacular poetry.5 The copresence of both languages is palpable and can be sought, even in nominally “single-language” verse.But what about the mixed-language poetry of early medieval England? What does it reveal of the inner workings of this bilingual literary culture, beyond the readily gleanable observation that Latin and Old English were both languages of literacy? One admittedly wishes for a larger data set to consider in mulling over the question. The corpus of surviving pre-Conquest mixed-language verse consists primarily of the three “major” such poems: The Phoenix concludes with eleven Old English-Latin verse lines (if Alleluia counts as Latin, more on which below); the poem Aldhelm combines Latin, Old English, and some Greek; and the poem known as A Summons to Prayer mixes Latin and Old English evenly.6 Some other bilingual verse has survived, such as the Latin-English proverbs preserved in both London, British Library MS Cotton Faustina A. X and London, British Library MS Royal B. 2. V.7 Yet one might have expected to inherit a more robust body of mixed-language verse from such a bilingually literate and literately bilingual culture. More—perhaps much more—may have been lost.But other testaments to the fundamental, indeed material bilingualism of early English poetry do survive. One excellent example might come as a surprise, in light of its given name: the “Exeter Book of Old English poetry” (Exeter, Dean and Chapter MS 3501) has a notable amount of Latin—certainly the most versified Latin of any of the four “Old English poetic codices.”8 Riddle 90’s five lines are entirely Latin; they are joined by the Latin half lines of The Phoenix and also by the half line lux et tenebre (l. 100b) in the poem alternately titled Azarias or Canticle of the Three Youths.9 There is also the Finit at the end of Homiletic Fragment III and The Partridge as well as the phrase sancta Hierusalem at Christ I line 50b. While Latin is not structurally constitutive of all these works in the way it is for the three mixed-language poems named above, it is nevertheless a consistent presence in the Exeter Book: texts ranging from a single Latin word to an entire Latin work can be found in the manuscript.Another kind of proof of the Exeter Book's deep Latinity is the fact that the volume is full of direct translations from Latin and has other obvious dependences on Latin literature. We can be confident that most of the poets whose work it preserves were bilingual to a considerable degree. Christ I, for instance, is a loose rendering of the Latin Advent antiphons, and Guthlac B is based closely on the final chapters of Felix of Crowland's Latin vita.10Canticle of the Three Youths derives from deuterocanonical Biblical content.11 In addition to its mixed-language conclusion, the first half of The Phoenix is a loose translation of the Late Antique poet Lactantius’ De ave phoenice.12 Michael Lapidge has proposed a specific manuscript of the acta sanctorum as the one (or very like the one) from which Cynewulf may have been working as he adapted the Latin text for the Old English Juliana.13Vainglory stands in the tradition of Prudentius's Psychomachia.14 Patrick W. Conner has incisively situated The Riming Poem within the realm of complex Anglo-Latin hermeneutic verse, and the three animal poems—The Panther, The Whale, and The Partridge—together enact an English version of the Latin physiologus genre, as has long been noted.15 Even in less obviously Latinate texts, Latin remains a relevant context: Lindy Brady has recently proposed a twelfth-century Latin vita as an analogue for Wulf and Eadwacer.16 Although though they are in the vernacular, the Exeter Book riddles are, in the words of Andy Orchard, “intimately connected” to the Latin riddles, even “parts of the same literary tradition.”17 The poem known as Pharaoh is based on the Biblical Book of Exodus, and the Lord's Prayer is a translation—a very loose translation—from the Latin.18 And these are only some of the more obvious examples. The Latin of the Exeter Book is, on aggregate, both visible and invisible, surface-level and structural. We should speak, then, not of an Exeter Book of Old English poetry but rather of an Exeter Book that stands as sterling witness to the bilingual poetic culture of early England.If the two primary corpora of pre-Conquest mixed-language verse were to be set out in a Venn diagram, the circles would overlap at The Phoenix. It is one of the few mixed-language poems to survive from early medieval England, and it is one of the poems in the Exeter Book that is at least a partial translation of a Latin source. It is therefore particularly well positioned to illuminate the possibility and potential of this bilingual literary culture, to reveal how language choice could itself be a skillfully deployed literary act—in other words, to answer the question I pose above: what can mixed-language pre-Conquest verse reveal of the inner workings of this bilingual literary culture?The bilingual ending of The Phoenix offers one answer by engaging what I call the “interlingual mode”: a style of writing—either poetry or prose—that operates in two or more languages at once. As I shall demonstrate, the first and final lines in the conclusion of The Phoenix do not shuttle back and forth between Old English and Latin as much as they exist in both languages simultaneously. They thereby reward the reader who does not simply code-switch but instead thinks more extendedly in the two languages in unison—interlingually, in so many words—so as to receive some kind of payoff in each, and thus in both.19 In my use of the prefix “inter-,” I envision something closer to the imbricated separation conjured by “interstitial” or “intergalactic” rather than the fused connection implied by “intermarriage” or “interstate.” Accordingly, I identify the interlingual mode, as it operates in this poem, to be the product of conscious effort on the part of the Phoenix poet to construct poetic lines that remain thematically resonant with—add additional layers of meaning to—the larger work upon being mentally translated by the reader into the text's “other” language. The copresence of both languages is crucial, as is their difference from one another: it is their difference that invites comparison and makes their ultimate harmony all the more significant.My understanding of the “interlingual mode” is informed by and indebted to, even as it diverges from, previous theorizations of a hybrid “interlingualism” by scholars of multilingualism and of Chicanx language mixing in particular. The similarities and differences between these concepts, which each name a kind of linguistic interaction in a multilingual culture (and share a prefix in so doing), are instructive and illuminating. “Interlingualism” and the “interlingual mode” are both rooted in a form of “both/and” multilingualism, though the two phenomena differ based on how fundamentally distinct the component languages are assumed to be.20 In Chicanx communities, “interlingualism” most often refers to, in Juan Bruce-Novoa's words, “the mixing of two languages [here, Spanish and English] . . . because the two languages are put into a state of tension which produces a third, an ‘inter’ possibility of languages.”21 He elaborates elsewhere: This practice rejects the supposed need to maintain English and Spanish separate in exclusive codes, but rather sees them as reservoirs of primary material to be molded together as needed, naturally, in the manner of common speech. This interlingual form is the true native language of Chicano communities, even though some members speak only English or only Spanish—as a whole, the language spectrum covers these and every potential blend.22While interlingualism encompasses an entire “spectrum” of language use, the interlingual mode acknowledges and upholds the component languages as separate codes, each with attendant affiliations and associations.23 Put another way, instead of asking interlocutors and readers to dwell in a hybrid linguistic space, as Bruce-Novoa argues that Chicanx communities and writers do, the interlingual mode of The Phoenix asks readers to inhabit two distinct language spaces simultaneously, as one primary language draws on the resources of a copresent second language in order to achieve certain ends.24I suggest, furthermore, that the interlingual mode in The Phoenix is mobilized to religious, indeed eschatological ends. By encouraging the reader to think in two languages at once, the poem moves the reader closer the language of an that makes the of all the more and out this this the of a kind of literary for the a that could exist in the between Latin and Old English because it was both Latin and Old In early medieval England, the possibility of the was to be as the between words to meaning on the as the between Old English verse so could the between languages be a of in the English the first half of its The Phoenix the of a in an in its the and of this within the realm of The are for the in on of this like that of in the how with the of the they in this the and for in the on Phoenix poet in from Latin have long known that the first half of the poem is a loose translation of De ave composed by the poet in the or The Phoenix poet also on other Latin for the second half of the poem, though which these were is less well and a on to the and other have recently been The of some of the primary has a body of scholarship on the translation particularly in the first half of the The conclusion is that the Phoenix poet a and to it as a of a text and it with mixed-language conclusion of The however, is not the of it does not from a single but instead the of And what he has composed is the final eleven the half line the is Old English, and the half line the is Latin Alleluia as a I in in et et of light has to that might to with in might the and on the in the of light and of have of upon the of and and to with the this the Latin the of the Old English it the in every the Latin also its with of the half lines as Some of furthermore, to have been poetic in as has both and in both and they (or also both in This offers about the and it the possibility that other common poetic and literary Latin or Old be in these on Latin and on Latin at the conclusion of over lines of Old English verse also the poet that the Latin and Old English poetic could be the Latin and Old English of the poem are the languages each particularly in of their poetic The of Latin with vernacular verse the in the Latin and vernacular In the the line of Old English poetic as in the poem as a whole, an of Latin material is as Old English as the Latin lines are by Old English in this so are the Latinate of and the by vernacular the of And as these Latin lines are adapted into the of Old English verse, so are the Latinate in the poem into the of the most of the poem, in other words, the Phoenix poet Latin poetic into Old English poetic in the conclusion, both are on the of and this of the of The Phoenix by how and put together this of the as the two poetic the linguistic of this final also the between the two By on the literary of Latin and Old English, these lines beyond the poetic and the to the realm of the the reader who is the mixed-language of the poem with the line of light has to (l. the Phoenix poet with an interlingual a to the fact that he is and working in two The Latin of a name for more or less in Old English as And being by the phrase of in Old English poetry a of The half its The on a meaning in that first with the work of and the and the of to the phrase is a of direct to in and the Guthlac it in to in Guthlac the found it The also in of the Old English which Book of the Latin In this the Old English the Latin text's of and refers instead to the as thereby as of and of he of the of for as long as he wishes to this can is and the is in of Old English verse, the poetic is most for it is known and the line (l. the at the of the that in Old English poetry would to an that as the of the Old English is into The also works to in a kind of in the text of The this first line only that something not what he has The of is in the conclusion to The it is not that is being but rather The of the the that can but the is in the first line of the two languages but nevertheless to who their Old The poet is in Old English and Latin simultaneously, and to the the is expected to do the of is the with and so does it Early English writers often to and complex so it is to in a the final line of The the (l. one its of and it refers to the most example of in early English upon the of England from the or in a The is rooted in the similarities between and and between and both and Alleluia the in the of is the of these and affiliations was in early medieval The is in two Latin texts, which may have of one another: the and The in of the is to a back and . . . from within by he from what they . . . they from come are he of he is the name of the of that And they And he for of should be version in the is more but more with the difference being of on to on the name of the he for Alleluia to be them to be so that they might and of the a to to the of the the it as a the and it by should to the about that has been to by were a of and to who translated the into English In is how many from the of early British their in tradition to the and of the words in which they were There is preserved or more example than these is The Phoenix the only Old English poem to the The in the final line of The Phoenix is out in a in Guthlac on how Guthlac the The Phoenix asks to the from to this in Guthlac B “the and asks to think of The of this is by the in the in both Guthlac A and the of the that the English has been made by the In the of this one one it the the two in The Phoenix poet would have expected to the connection he for Phoenix poet that and could a the of the would the upon the of and Alleluia in the final an informed reader would have been to the both and the of the is as the reader think back to Old English poetic to in the first line of this so they the of to whose whose is at in the It is their interlingual mode is thus to the it and a on which the may be I should note that engaging the interlingual mode is not for understanding the meaning about what between Old English and Latin while What an interlingual of the offers is to the that it is the of the at This meaning is to the reader who not only what all the words but who also how the words are in the other languages of a text's and can the literary The interlingual it the to into Old English, and to the Old English poetic more involved for an of the on of the such as and on the (l. The which the reader to think between is the which in the work from the is And the interlingual and only into is also Latin with all its for its is a both text and It itself also as a to think as the Alleluia may its use is not In this is its only in Old English verse it being in the one more in prose and The also by in Old English not the to three in the for The is by to and certain poetic in the One of these is as Alleluia is often as something or situated in a This would with the by the as that he Alleluia be the It also with the in the an Alleluia is an conclusion to a poem that is full of It is only in the half line that the Alleluia also the poem with an interlingual a into Old English as well as Latin, was an of in early medieval England for its as a In the Alleluia is as In the in for that is word is on and is a word that in Latin, the and language is as as should Alleluia not into English but Latin what for the of Latin to even as he in the same was more in the of translation in of and and one to the that the call and the Latin call and the English of and of I suggest, both to or at least their to language. what has as to a of By might be with of of languages to separate and like . . . from readers who can only identify with It is who works to a of and whose of the and like . . . from readers who can only identify with be would have been readily to with even in their of and are out of more like each This it was both (and thus not in need of would have been to and of linguistic (and thus the of The of by and reveal that Alleluia was a word of known and in early medieval England, and for a it would have the of not only the that makes the interlingual but within the of a single the of the interlingual in a multilingual culture, words can their translations with them and can their in another the literate of these interlingual which upon a of Latin, English, and at least one word of is the in the which an interlingual The and are to to The and of the deployed in this the conclusion as a distinct that acknowledges the of linguistic even as it the of the is with a and a and these are more than the of the the of these that they would have thereby of a The that for understanding the with the poem as particularly is The in manuscript is from the of and it was a separate from the of the work by of its use of use of language literate these not only but also The of for the two A vernacular is for the Old English half by the Latin half lines are in an that for a reader would have conjured how Latin to these would be and as separate is into the of this this linguistic however, is the vernacular verse The Old English and Latin each a in and of but the of the entire is the text of Old English I this choice of a vernacular over a one not as a of the the with Latin is more obvious than rather as a of the could in two at in the interlingual mode, a text's in manuscript can between Old English and Latin because it is both Old English and it is as that the Alleluia is a and A it is as Latin because it is in the same as the As I above, Alleluia is a word that itself to the interlingual mode, and in the manuscript it has been given a linguistic not its it is not only the of the Alleluia but also the of its that the interlingual of the so on the specific as it the word into and the in the word the between Alleluia and the This Alleluia is a material of the with its of word and Latin form as well as its of as a single This is interlingual made simply a poetic the interlingual mode work for The its and its the of the mixed-language with its interlingual a between the languages in the the Latin of the poem is to the A kind of with the is The Old English translation from Latin in the first half of the poem is in the second by Old English in part on other Latin In the of the conclusion, the in is by another in the between the two they each the two words in interlingual and in the first line and in the have been especially for the Exeter Book's English who for I note that of this are out over the of the the same for the who might be as the of the three that these eleven are and in a of the in an interlingual they into but are not The reader do more work to to to a understanding of the and its interlingual mode, then, stands as a even a particularly English of the or deployed in of in the first by that a or is such a not at least the of its the with a of what a or the at in De ave a that the Old English poet on and has the of the within The from to the mixed-language of the and the more of and that have beyond into the of is in observation that the is at long a of but not has been remain and a of interlingual is to The interlingual mode, which draws on the resources of distinct languages simultaneously, a way to or at least the and language that was the of as as one can to the of the in the interlingual with separate languages so as to at the final line of The the poet of to the interlingual workings to have at and in both Latin and The Phoenix is thus witness to a mode of interlingualism that was within early English literary culture, a culture that was Latin and English and the for The interlingual mode may have as a form of poetic to the the name recently to the by which a of Old English verse offers its readers of the of Latin The mode offers its the to Latin in Old English is that a poem as it might have a Latin The mode, then, is to a Latin of an Old English poem By the interlingual mode on the that the think languages as they that they be for their early English writers a way to the literary potential of a bilingual culture and to it to their And both as to the a one in the how the two languages might be together in and resonant In the of the interlingual mode, an and kind of was The can how it

Nigel Rapport

It is a special responsibility to incur individual readings of one’s work from colleagues. I hope the following line of thought does them justice. Nay Rather, an essay by Anne Carson (a translator and poet as well as a classical scholar), begins with an account of the trial of Joan of Arc. Caught in battle against the English and their Burgundian allies on 23 May 1430, a year after she had assisted a French army in lifting the English siege of Orleans, Joan of Arc was put on trial for heresy. The trial lasted from January to May 1431, and Joan was burnt at the stake on 30 May, aged nineteen. In recounting this history, Carson explains that she is particularly interested in the way in which, as she puts it, Joan was ‘distant’ from her own words. Carson (2014: 8) elaborates. Joan of Arc’s guidance, military and moral came from a source that she called ‘voices’. She began to hear them at the age of twelve, and they commanded her style of dress, her beliefs and the revolutionary politics of her action. At her trial, her English ecclesiastical prosecutors wanted to know her voices, for Joan to name and describe them in ways in which they might understand: in terms of recognised religious imagery and emotions, and in a conventional narrative that might then be subjected to mechanisms of theological proof.

Akihiko Shimizu

This essay explores the discourse of law that constitutes the controversial apprehension of Cicero's issuing of the ultimate decree of the Senate (senatus consultum ultimum) in Catiline. The play juxtaposes the struggle of Cicero, whose moral character and legitimacy are at stake in regards to the extra-legal uses of espionage, with the supposedly mischievous Catilinarians who appear to observe legal procedures more carefully throughout their plot. To mitigate this ambivalence, the play defends Cicero's actions by depicting the way in which Cicero establishes the rhetoric of public counsel to convince the citizens of his legitimacy in his unprecedented dealing with Catiline. To understand the contemporaneousness of Catiline, I will explore the way the play integrates the early modern discourses of counsel and the legal maxim of ‘better to suffer an inconvenience than mischief,’ suggesting Jonson's subtle sensibility towards King James's legal reformation which aimed to establish and deploy monarchical authority in the state of emergency (such as the Gunpowder Plot of 1605). The play's climactic trial scene highlights the display of the collected evidence, such as hand-written letters and the testimonies obtained through Cicero's spies, the Allbroges, as proof of Catiline's mischievous character. I argue that the tactical negotiating skills of the virtuous and vicious characters rely heavily on the effective use of rhetoric exemplified by both the political discourse of classical Rome and the legal discourse of Tudor and Jacobean England.

Mayke de Jong, Irene van Renswoude

This collection of articles on the theme of Carolingian cultures of dialogue and debate may seem a contradiction in terms. After all, it has recently been argued that by the end of the fourth century, Christianity had created authoritative structures of knowledge in which public disputation was replaced by catechism-like exchanges. This also spelled the end of classical dialogue, that is, the searching and open-ended exchange of ideas as it had been practised in the ancient world since the days of Socrates. Medievalists, on the other hand, have maintained that something resembling a public sphere emerged in the so-called ‘high’ Middle Ages; the lively and wide-ranging debates engendered by the Investiture Controversy have been cited as a case in point. A superficial combination of both perspectives, however different, yields the early medieval west in its traditional guise as a convenient and static backdrop that articulates previous declines and subsequent ‘rises’ of phenomena connected with modernity. For obvious reasons, this image needs to be discarded, but not simply by arguing for greater continuity, or by attempting to rehabilitate a period of roughly five centuries that was ‘actually’ much more culturally complex than has been hitherto assumed. On the contrary, we should make the most of the scholarly debates outside the orbit of Early Medieval Europe, for these raise questions that can be fed productively into our own analytical framework. This is why this themed edition on Carolingian dialogues and debates opens with an extensive contribution on late antique Christian dialogue. It is also the reason why in this Introduction we shall take some time to explore the common ground between ancient historians and early medievalists, as well as the differences in their approach. To put it succinctly, all are concerned with the larger issues involved, such as the impact of Christianity, or with the shifting balance between oral and written culture. Nonetheless, recent debates among historians of late antiquity have mostly revolved around the question of whether the new religion did indeed put an end to a brilliant culture of open debate. Recently, this contention has been challenged head-on with regard to late antiquity and Byzantium, with much attention to the literary complexity of the relevant sources. 1 The post-Roman west, however, is not part of these reconsiderations, largely because of the general assumption that all the venues that might have enabled public debate vanished along with the Roman empire. Whereas Augustine and his flock had remained attuned to empire-wide religious contestation, Alcuin of York was representative of a restricted palace-connected elite, with great ideals concerning literacy and reform that had, however, little practical effect on society at large. Hence, it is still widely held that early medieval society offered little room for criticism and debate. This tenacious image is based on the preconception that the expression of divergent points of view was unthinkable in a period in which ‘the Church’ was dominant and religious diversity was oppressed. Free expression of opinion is supposed to have disappeared, along with the possibilities of an open exchange of ideas, the very moment Emperor Justinian closed the doors of the Academy of Athens. While it should be noted that ‘free expression of opinion’ is an idealistic construction in the first place, it cannot be denied that religious unity at the level of kingdoms and empires was indeed the professed ideal during much of the early Middle Ages. Yet this ideal had to be constantly negotiated, debated and reformulated, if it was ever to be achieved. 2 Scholars, bishops and rulers were intent on establishing orthodoxy and defending it against heresy, that much is true, but orthodoxy, as is well known, does not exist in and by itself. It develops in a dialectical relationship with ‘heresy’– a position that is not only held by modern sociologists of religion, but was acknowledged in the early Middle Ages as well. Debate with heterodox thinkers was considered necessary to arrive at the ‘truth’. Criticism and divergent opinions were welcomed in the political and religious arenas of debate (at least in theory), as long as they served the uncovering and defence of truth and arguably benefitted the common good. Another widely held notion concerning the absence of debate in the early Middle Ages that we need to address from the outset is the supposed demise of (formal) rhetoric. George Kennedy, an authority in the field of classical rhetoric and its medieval Nachleben even went so far as to claim that formal speech was no longer regarded as an effective form of persuasion, because ‘men's minds and actions were largely manipulated by a rhetoric of brute force and authority [. . .] not by logical argument’. 3 The general opinion is that classical rhetoric dwindled in the sixth and seventh centuries, because there were fewer opportunities for public speaking. With the decay and fragmentation of civic life, rhetoric lost its public function and oratory went into decline. Training in written argumentation became ever more important, and those elements of the rhetorical discipline that were still considered useful were redirected to written discourse. 4 Certainly, there is much evidence that points in the direction of a weakening of classical rhetoric after the municipal schools closed. Yet, rhetoric is so much more than formal rhetoric in the classical tradition of Cicero, Demetrius or Quintilian, a point to which we shall return below. There continued to be venues for oral rhetoric and occasions for debate where one could show off one's skills in persuasive public speaking. We only need to think of assemblies and smaller-scale deliberative meetings at the courts, such as are described in De ordine palatii, or of discussions on orthodoxy during or in the margins of ecclesiastical synods, to imagine places and opportunities where training in oral delivery must have come in useful. Although debates were increasingly based on the interpretation of written texts, that interpretation was still communicated orally in public meetings, and those who could speak well in public received the admiration of their contemporaries. In 800, Alcuin's student Candidus reported to his teacher how much he had admired the outspoken speech that Theodulf of Orleans had delivered at the assembly of Rome in that same year. Candidus praised the ‘free voice’ of Theodulf speaking out in a public meeting. 5 On such eminently public occasions, rulers and their direct entourage were admired for their eloquence. When Agobard of Lyon reported on the assembly of Attigny in 822, he praised Emperor Louis who with God's inspiration interrogated those present, uncovered the truth in a most elegant manner, and ‘announced this faithfully, by his own word of mouth’. 6 The most impressive address at Attigny, however, was delivered by Abbot Adalhard of Corbie, by then an old and experienced orator. According to his biographer, Adalhard's eloquence was such that it was ‘utterly suited for persuasion and dissuasion’. 7 Secular magnates also took an active part in such public discussions; especially the contentious issue of the use of ecclesiastical land for military purposes was debated hotly from the 820s onwards, with churchmen wanting to set limits to this, while the saeculares argued that the res publica could not do without it. 8 The dialogue is only very rarely evidenced as a form for normative Christian writing, despite the strategic place of conversion and theological discussion in Christian communities. The catechism and other question-and-answer structures are not in any significant sense a dialogue: they are forms of exchange to aid controlled learning and to produce certain, fixed responses. 9 For Richard Lim, the new religion indeed spelled the end of dialogue, albeit for different reasons. In classical antiquity, Lim argues, the dialogue belonged to the elitist literary culture of paideia. It was highly influential, yet also a ‘boutique literary genre’, and therefore very different from the inclusive Christian sermo humilis that aimed to reach as many people as possible, including those from lower social strata. Put briefly, the inherent elitism of the dialogue, as Lim called it, was ill-suited to a religious communication that aimed at the masses, so the demand for this particular literary form gradually disappeared. 10 As Averil Cameron recently pointed out, the freedom, democracy and open-ended exchange with which Goldhill and others identify ‘real’, that is, Socratic, dialogue is mostly a modern ideal. 11 A related and equally vexed question is whether the dialogues transmitted through texts in any way reflect ‘real’ public debates and discussions. Since all dialogues available to historians are literary constructs, including the ones that are presented as spontaneous and open-ended, a sharp distinction between literary and viva voce dialogue is not helpful. What we are able to grasp are the cultural ideals of how a dialogue should proceed. 12 In a critique published only a year after Cameron's, Peter Van Nuffelen primarily engages with Richard Lim's Public Disputation, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity (1995). 13 This influential book no doubt inspired the more recent verdict on the ‘end of dialogue’, but its central argument ranges more widely: it is about once wide-open intellectual horizons being narrowed by the increasing dominance of Christian orthodoxy. From the late fourth century onwards, the intellectually demanding public disputation that had been the prevailing norm and practice began to be replaced by statements of religious consensus. First, such debates became staged operations in which the victory of orthodoxy was decided from the beginning, and they just survived as literary exercises, with an even more predictable result. According to Van Nuffelen, however, this transition from once spontaneous and oral events to stilted literary productions represents an evolutionist projection on Lim's part. After all, any knowledge of the supposedly impromptu earlier disputations comes from literary accounts, which may have been just as fictitious as their fifth- and sixth-century successors. And instead of taking the latter to be mere literary productions and therefore not representative of any real-life exchange, a careful study of these texts in fact shows how much public disputation was still valued as a way of gaining truth and knowledge. 14 Whether any of the textual evidence reflects ‘real’ disputes is a moot point, but it surely becomes clear that in this period in which there supposedly was no room anymore for the real and open-ended exchange of ideas, it was precisely this that remained the norm for Christian authors who set out to persuade their opponents. There was of course a tension between this ideal and reality, but this ‘was sustained by a belief in the power and moral propriety of persuasion and reason’. 15 These modern dichotomies – oral versus literate, reason versus authority, and open social competition versus closed group identities – have not just been projected onto late antiquity. They have also been essential in articulating the differences between modern and pre-modern societies in general, and of the position of the Middle Ages within the grand narrative of western history. More specifically, these set oppositions have long informed the dominant image of the western early Middle Ages as a period of political chaos and cultural stagnation, inspiring some lively debates among early medievalists, primarily on the impact of literacy on political communication, on the existence and perception of state-like structures and on the participation of the clergy in the latter. 16 This has yielded a different perspective on the Carolingian world, not just with regard to the wider impact of Christian-Latin literacy on society, but also concerning the importance of religious institutions, both for the governance of this huge polity as well as for the cultural of its as it was once out to of a great of and that were very much part of the Carolingian of This has for any of dialogue and debate in this historians of the early Middle Ages have been about the of the public mostly from the perspective of political history. For has on the of public of the Carolingian and of the as an eminently public place in the minds of even if the As has the of the first there a culture of the even in the early medieval west with its the notion remained a primarily with courts, and both great and should be to this also as of the and therefore an part of a new of in which public both and could take A of bishops is not at first a for that is and even so a yet if one in the to which the Carolingian on governance and on to such ecclesiastical cannot be in discussions about the of an early medieval public of the issues debated in these ecclesiastical such as or religious to come the of but have part of political and social history. its so the earlier Middle Ages a static backdrop for the of new is the Public an study that put the issue of public opinion and the public sphere on the of medieval in the to show that the of and on since the late century did indeed the of a public sphere in sense of the a part of society that is and in a public the of public opinion that could not be controlled by the Early have much time arguing that all this was in evidence in the and in a has in to make it more to the Middle Ages. the of the public sphere to after the period in which the public to to This is not for these authors are about but by no is in the of a political that remained to the public as by the and his in of the common this was the central point of for any of the that were with or It was the real of which the first at which point political fragmentation set public sphere as it emerged during the Investiture Controversy is a more a that is, an between communication on the one and the on the More has the of such a public albeit a more in the Carolingian world as with the case of and as the There are however, to the to which can be in to show that there was a public sphere in a pre-modern for it is based on about the of in the of western As Peter has pointed out, in intellectual tradition is a and with the between the and the and with It is different from the with its of the common and These modern and their should be into have been to the public sphere into a more and a for sphere where common are at which to the to any of social that could be as In this more way of about the notion of the construction of a public sphere does not on such as or to the of but on such as and debates on the common or on of and According to and the of a public sphere on of the common the on the one hand, and the sphere on the this is, for into Carolingian public debates this does not much and not just because of the of in sources. The is the among modern historians to the of to that of the and to identify public opinion with the participation of the opinion only public once it the of ecclesiastical and We think As to this issue this is not the to a polity sustained by and by with bishops and In the debate and dialogue are at it is to make a clear distinction between the in a way that is and does to the of the sources. to be the modern for any of discussion that is or intellectually be it public or or between such a debate might be or through a written exchange of With regard to the early Middle has an with a it can to discussions during public meetings such as assemblies and synods, as well as to the subsequent written and the discussion engendered by the but also to issues that were by just the exchange of written texts, or to a exchange on a issue among more wide-ranging In the latter we can speak of ‘the debate on for or ‘the debate on even these discussions were of a different and use of different As we have the and impact of such as well as the question of may have is our Whereas debate is a modern and are more that the particular form of the The of both forms of discussion is (at least to the but it is different of argumentation and The and the of and could to the question-and-answer of a or to the literary form in which the discussion was In modern the notion of as a literary form is with particular that to the of which is not the case in the medieval of the When speaking of dialogue in modern we have an discussion in in which the to the truth questions and with for This idealistic of dialogue can be in of dialogue, but as we have in the of classical for the and oral of dialogue. When we speak of on the other hand, we a and of While in a dialogue to on a to an argument and their in The between the forms of discussion may seem is an while is a this distinction does not at all with the of our medieval sources. the word as an to while simply as a between or more early medieval texts as that we to dialogue. We only need to think of Alcuin's as on rhetoric and to where the modern and to the and practice of debate in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. of the must be that modern scholarly is in classical and medieval of and than in the early medieval just Nonetheless, this tension can as a useful to the early medieval of debate. For if we to out the of debate were at the the of and normative that how issues were to be we need to attention to the that were to how the the they by recent historians have more in the impact of rhetoric on how was the knowledge of in late antiquity and the early Middle for the of persuasion of the intellectual who took part in more wide-ranging and public it that their were delivered in an elegant and to their or or to the Carolingian rulers and their who served as in debates that to and To an to these questions we might be to to rhetorical the discipline of rhetoric had no on as and not was the of to the of and not to the question-and-answer of the dialogue and the rhetorical many that are relevant to the of such as the different of argument and while rhetoric was dialectical in in the first we at of rhetorical that were and in the early Middle however, such as De and the book of to we that these received any in the that the rhetorical to of dialectical were at least from the century onwards, in a way that to These that we should to instead of rhetoric to come to a of the and practice of debate in the Middle Ages. We have no reason to however, that rhetoric was relevant to the medieval practice of debate. form of whether the speech of the or the questions and of needs to be persuasive if it to at of on the of rhetoric as transmitted by rhetorical it might be more to for for debate that our medieval may have to in to of persuasive to others of their point of we could think of debate dialogues such as the disputation of Augustine and against or the dialogues by in this one could of debate that offered useful rhetorical to persuade or one's These were that have come in in any debate. of the debates between and their such as the ones have been transmitted in that also medieval debate texts, which could be as evidence that these texts indeed served as for debate in the early Middle Ages. For this this issue opens with of the of contentious literary dialogue that was so for the Carolingian world on which the other whether public disputation and dialectical could have a part in the of around 800, and the of of such As there was more room for dialectical in meetings than in the of or The latter are the of which the way Carolingian aimed at and an for debates that could the and useful then the to the debate between of and and shows that as a was largely of his own and an part of his own of With we from these for to the of the debate among lower They were not supposed to in this but they did so all the and shows some of the of this contribution is on the a that shows how especially in the Carolingian world of the and the to the res publica became more the of public among highly both ecclesiastical and The common of these articles is that all the authors show that the of Christianity did not the end of dialogue and debate. The cultural practice of and was and in the early Middle and into new by from the and classical The question the still that a public sphere can only exist outside we to to as ‘the In to this they have to show that the Carolingian of many different discussion of public debate in the century needs to from this point of not the as an notion or but the of and clergy and and how these into at the level of kingdoms or even the relationship between the political and the religious is not but it comes to the lively contribution of ecclesiastical and to the Carolingian there is still a of to be It is to this that this issue to

Richard L. Davis

Reviewed by: Negotiated Power: The State, Elites, and Local Governance in Twelfth- to Fourteenth-Century China by Sukhee Lee Richard L. Davis Negotiated Power: The State, Elites, and Local Governance in Twelfth- to Fourteenth-Century China by Sukhee Lee. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014. Pp. xiii + 347. $49.95. For four decades, historians of China’s middle period have tried to run before they walked, ruminating on the evolution of the country’s political and social elites at a macro level before building the necessary foundation in empirical research, especially in the realm of local history. Sukhee Lee’s impeccably researched and deftly executed book delivers a major salvo to prevailing assumptions in the field, while providing alternative ways of reading some of the same texts that informed earlier scholarship. This is the rare book where the footnotes are nearly as meaty as the text itself, due to the author’s tendency to consign his most biting criticism to the notes. Lee addresses elite development at Mingzhou 明州, modern Ningbo 寧波, from the Southern Song (1127–1279) through the Yuan (1271–1368), when the fortunes of Mingzhou’s elite families soared to dizzying heights, in pace with Ningbo’s growing economic and cultural development. This is terrain familiar to me as a political historian of the Southern Song. Court and Family in Sung China, my 1986 book on the Shi of Yin county 鄞縣史氏, examines the crème of the region’s political crop—a lineage that produced three generations of chief councilors, five generations of assistant councilors, and hundreds of lesser officials in the course of two centuries. 1 I knew that my limited focus on the political story would prompt later writers to take up the many social history issues not addressed there, such as kinship organization, marriage strategies, and community leadership. Since then, new primary sources have come to light and archeological discoveries made, including a cluster of several dozen tombs dating from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries in the Ningbo suburbs. 2 At the same time, interest in the wider history of China’s coastal development has been on the rise at home and abroad, especially in Japan. [End Page 227] Robert Hartwell’s seminal 1982 article, “Demographic, Political, and Social Transformations of China, 750–1550” posited a vast chasm between the Northern Song (960–1127) and its successor in the south. His argument presented the elite devolving from its primary focus on political office to a narrow concern with local activities and networks, a trend that continued into the Yuan and early Ming (1368–1644). As the imperial imprint shrunk, the upper classes became increasingly autonomous and self-perpetuating, while the state’s involvement with local society declined. And the examination degree, rather than providing the path for official advancement, became merely a marker of social status. 3 Hartwell focused on marriage networks and community activism in particular to identify the “localist strategies” of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. He also pointed to certain institutions as markers of this trend toward decentralized governance during Southern Song times, including the Grand [fiscal] commissariat (zonglingsuo 總領所) (p. 14). Unfortunately, Hartwell’s strengths as an economic historian often proved his greatest weakness when venturing into social and political history. A succession of Hartwell students at the University of Pennsylvania would attempt to apply his thesis to individual locales starting from the late 1970s, including Hugh Clark, Paul Smith, and Linda Walton-Vargo, but his most industrious acolyte is Robert Hymes, author of two books on Fuzhou 撫州, Jiangxi, books loyal to the overall outlines of Hartwell’s work. 4 Hymes also coedited a symposium volume on the “Song–Yuan transition,” while Smith coedited a volume on the “Song–Yuan–Ming transition.” 5 I have long referred to the group as the “Penn School,” though it has expanded to include Columbia University, where Hymes has taught for the past three decades and has produced students with similar interests. Later, Peter Bol at Harvard University, the adviser of Sukhee Lee, the [End Page 228] author of the book under review, succumbed to the sway of Hartwell, whose argument about elite evolution dovetails nicely with Bol’s own work in intellectual history. In “This...

Émilie Kurdziel

It is commonly supposed that most of the early medieval forged charters preserved in ecclesiastical archives are related to patrimonial or territorial issues and were often composed in the context of a tension or dispute about the possession of certain resources or the delimitation of two jurisdictions. Forged charters, as soon as they deal with the possession of res ecclesiae in all its guises, from land to ecclesiastical revenues, can therefore constitute a good vantage point from which to view competition for resources. Centred on four collections of false documents produced within the sphere of cathedral chapters in northern Italy during the eleventh and twelfth centuries AD., this paper intends to show what those forgeries reveal about competition for ecclesiastical resources itself, while at the same time shedding light on the strategies developed in this context by canons as a group. This set of documents reveals the frequency of the recourse to forgery during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in the context of competition between two opposing ecclesiastical protagonists, and when substantial resources were at stake. Competition for ecclesiastical resources was also deeply intertwined with political competition, and forgery could be part of long-term strategy intended not only to provide proof to be produced under legal challenge, but also to serve as a means of applying pressure or an argument of authority during competition.

Daniel Cook

In many of the early treatments of Chatterton a strong source of contention concerned authorship. Even though leading scholars, principally Tyrwhitt the philologist and Warton the literary historian, had quickly realized that the texts were modern concoctions, a small band of antiquaries had stubbornly refused to relinquish the fictitious fifteenth-century priest Rowley. More than anything else, authorial decorum was at stake: the works exhibited marks of ‘classical’ genius and so demanded an appropriate figurehead. Such commentators could not bear to see them attributed to an unreliable and dissolute charity-schoolboy. Paradoxically, then, the pro-Rowleians devoted reams of print to Chatterton’s life and character in the very act of excising him from the corpus. They belittled his mock-scholarship, corrected his own glosses and brought forth his private correspondence as proof of his inadequacies of character. To put it another way: far from ignoring Chatterton the antiquaries savaged him. Yet, as we have seen, they belonged to a minority. Warton, Malone, Steevens and a whole host of critics and literary pasticheurs praised the boy-poet as a unique genius, a doyen of modern antiques and a master of a new brand of Rowleyese Englishness. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Leah Otis-Cour

No single aspect of the Franklin's Tale has stirred more controversy than the larger issue of the fundamental nature of the work. Is the Franklin's Tale an ode to a marriage of true minds, a fabliau in romance clothing, or a work revealing how Chaucer, despite the best of intentions, failed to liberate himself from the ambient male chauvinism of the late Middle Ages? Although the first and most positive reading has been defended passionately by some—from George Kittredge a century ago, to Gerald Morgan and Jill Mann more recently—negative interpretations have dominated in the last decades, stoked by the fuel of gender issue analysis; the tale has been deemed an “insupportable fiction of prosperity,” and Arveragus accused of “pimping” his wife.1Relying on arguments drawn both from the historical context of the tale and from a critical analysis of Chaucer's use and modification of his sources, I affirm in this paper that the Franklin's Tale is indeed an encomium to the loving, “companionate marriage” of Dorigen and Arveragus.2 By sources (or analogues), I mean not only the Menedon question in Boccaccio's Filocolo, long recognized as the principal origin of the plot, and the Decameron version of that story, which Chaucer may possibly have known,3 but, in addition, a hitherto unrecognized inspiration, the Consaus d'amours, a thirteenth-century French art d'aimer (art of love) attributed to Richard de Fournival.4 An ecclesiastic whose oeuvre included both lyric and didactic works devoted to the love relationship, Richard is best known for his very popular Bestiaire d'amour.5 While no contemporary account links Chaucer to Richard, we know that the works of the latter were often preserved in manuscripts that also included the Roman de la Rose, which was well known, well used, and translated by Chaucer.6 Thus the manuscript tradition reinforces the hypothesis, based principally on textual evidence, that Chaucer knew the Consaus. It is from this text, I argue, that Chaucer has borrowed the fundamental dichotomies that underlie the tale: the contrast between the true lover (Arveragus) and the false lover (Aurelius), and that between franquise (in marriage) and dete (in adultery). It is through the use of these dichotomies that Chaucer has transformed the story from a casuistic jeu-parti (as in the Menedon question) or a fabliauesque narrative (as in the Decameron) into a veritable ode to married love lived “in blisse and in solas” (V 802), extolling “The joye, the ese, and the prosperitee/That is bitwixe an housbonde and his wyf” (V 804–5),7 the very qualities found in the true love relationship described by Richard de Fournival: “soulas, joie, confort, aaise et grant bien” (VI.12).But let us begin by exploring what the historical context can tell us about Dorigen and Arveragus's marriage agreement, from which all maistrie is excluded.8 The historical context is of course two-dimensional, for one must take into consideration not only the late medieval world that Chaucer and his audience knew, but also the pre-Christian “twilight world” in which the characters of the tale evolve.9 Distancing the story from the medieval present is indeed Chaucer's innovation, for the Boccaccian tales are set more or less in contemporary Italy. But Chaucer's two worlds are not hermetically sealed off. Although the tale deals with “hethen folk” (V 1293), many of the customs and values presented in it (such as chivalry) were perfectly compatible with the world of the medieval present.10 The same may be said of the marriage of Arveragus and Dorigen, which has often been deemed “implausible” or an “unattainable ideal,”11 possible only in such an imaginary past, as it was a “revolutionary” step and a relationship of a “radically different type” compared to late medieval marriages.12 David Aers has emphasized the distance between the “utopian aspirations” of the couple and the “orthodox” Christian emphasis on a strictly hierarchical marriage; the famous Pauline passage making the husband the head of the wife could hardly be qualified as an invitation to reciprocity!13Late medieval thinking on marriage was, however, far from monolithic, and many late medieval preachers and theologians preferred to discreetly elude the Pauline text in favor of an “equitable” exegesis of traditional biblical passages concerning marriage.14 Thus the creation of woman as narrated in Genesis was glossed as a model of parity: God created Eve from the rib of Adam precisely in order to advocate reciprocity, designating Eve as Adam's partner (socia) rather than his servant (ancilla), for had God intended her to be subservient, he would have created her from Adam's foot rather than his side.15 Much romance literature, too, from the thirteenth century onwards, extols the virtues of reciprocity in love and marriage.16 And most important of all, contemporary documents at the end of the Middle Ages—notarial records, journals, conjugal correspondence—show that a reciprocal relationship between spouses was indeed put into practice in daily life.17 So we can safely conclude that Arveragus and Dorigen's marriage agreement, far from constituting a naive pipe dream appropriate only to a twilight world, was indeed a model of conjugal relations familiar to Chaucer's readers/listeners, practiced as well as preached in the late medieval world.18 It is no insult to Chaucer to affirm that the views he presented were in fact quite commonplace. It is the marvelous way he treated them, not their supposedly revolutionary character, that attests to his creative imagination.Again, historical context can help to counter arguments that this “ideal marriage” was a hypocrisy from the start, with Arveragus's deepest desire being, according to some critics, to maintain the upper hand vis-à-vis is based principally on a of the passage of the tale concerning and that the of he have for of his passage to be as Arveragus's desire to his despite the fact that it has been that the to the in between Dorigen and in many medieval works the in which Richard de to a Dorigen is (V that Arveragus hardly her at this for his (V marriage can be as the to that of the this is a that could have in the past, and it was also one that and was in the late medieval world, not only in of the but also in marriage was indeed a of for the woman in question was an It was not for a to a to the and to her of of couple with the the husband to to a of and a in than the couple had the audience was well of this as was Chaucer in for he himself had such a and audience were too, of the of that could be at in a familiar in and in was that these were It is for this that Chaucer on the fact that the marriage in the Franklin's Tale is and that the couple be in Arveragus's with his he to his his (V in his that Arveragus has married Dorigen for her qualities and not for or that a with her could have between Arveragus and Dorigen may also the Chaucer has to the his on the (V Morgan has the of this as an in late medieval on of the only Arveragus to in his he take no and in (V Dorigen the but in her be wyf” (V By of that but what mean by Morgan it as a of but interpretations are was, all, a Christian for as well as for and not for It was, a in the of qualities in the and and in Dorigen's the of the of the in many medieval to be rather than to Dorigen is it Arveragus as a her or as a his or her that the marriage in the tale is a a in which of maistrie is The very of the Franklin's Tale is a not between an on the one hand and on the but between a marriage and an It is a that is in the contrast drawn between the two male the husband Arveragus and the lover contrast between the two characters is emphasized by Chaucer, it has been or by It is a contrast that to that described by Richard de in the between the true lover de and the false to be by many that Arveragus is the his wife to the despite Jill of the of the of the is based on a fundamental of the by the two male in the in no to with the but an of a of and (V in a of the same as Dorigen and to we have about his he is described as (V an attributed to the husband in the story of the tale that can indeed be in a described as and in the as to Arveragus not a of and the at the no of Arveragus's his of in the tale with (V The in the best and in the world and in all not only but (V and into of he is not to the characters in the Boccaccian but rather to the presented by Richard de Richard the woman to he his a his and with and et et of a is the not have in a is the very of the that Chaucer de on the Richard, is one not is at a for in the of his all his he his et he is of de Richard a relationship to the one in the Franklin's which the of the true is such a that he not his Richard in the as in the of the Franklin's Dorigen of this for his his and his The true lover how or to his of the love that his grant The de of the Consaus but of the in only one in the Franklin's that in which he to the of Dorigen's It is a of and from a is of (or rather compared to of by has been to Chaucer's and consideration of the historical context can help to this has often been that Arveragus his wife to to a of the that her to her an analysis of the text that this is not the The contrast with the text of the Menedon question in Boccaccio's is in the husband his the and and the wife on of the An emphasis on the of the husband is in the Chaucer had of the husband his and he Arveragus that Dorigen (V to which is in fact the of Dorigen's to the is Dorigen's analysis of the that her that only two are to her or Arveragus is the of Arveragus's is this would to from a desire on his to to the has created to of Dorigen, but in her and some of the for the is his to not of but of the conjugal he is her of of the for created such a of Dorigen's also has a in the have was to on the It is Arveragus's and of Dorigen's that with the to the reciprocal with Dorigen's his of and to the values by the however, issue a true to his the and he into he his wife to her with of (V a that has critical The fact that the the however, that it is a his with Arveragus's at the of his which he in this too, is the of such a in the Boccaccian the are not on the same as Arveragus and not the same The must have indeed for the wife would be as as the husband to such a Dorigen no to is to her is the historical context that can help us to the use of the of The are in fact a borrowed from contemporary documents and their and are to to Arveragus's revealing his at the in which the couple has found The what could on Dorigen, the were known, rather than he would to medieval was of the fact that in be by to be as in the of the in the or the with which was in the more the twilight world of the Franklin's the by could And less in late medieval than in was not in Chaucer's the husband was in the this is an that could have been the of could be both as for a wife or was a the to one of and the critical has not been to the possible by the couple in of some have Arveragus for maistrie in this have found not indeed in his (V his and his to to a has however, that Arveragus's is not of a but rather the of a in the of The the the of a for a from to Richard de in his Consaus such a on the of the true which he to his of and he at that he know that this is one of the most and that one can in de et et The of the all sources and of the has found no of such a in or didactic The true is in medieval passage of the Consaus to have been the of for Chaucer's of Arveragus's to the of Dorigen's in that has the but the is the is the to his love for Chaucer of the it into a of rather than the that such a is to the true to his have that Arveragus is a of a that Dorigen would have rather than a an husband to and a with the as has put as a and as a for her has on to an as well as for the I Dorigen from in his that the de accused a of his the to the for of the husband to the of which a the the the de and his is is that the husband was a a less with as was of Arveragus could have would be the in that was in had also a perfectly to of in order to his to his as the husband an into the Is it to such an the of and the of the than making Arveragus the us to the qualities of Dorigen's husband described by to and (V on the of Arveragus is all the more in that he is presented as a of rather than the of the is indeed the only of in which Arveragus is described as to The to for in and (V is that the is the (V may the that have been on and it can be as in the but an he is not a of (V the or we as in is often the very that the in medieval as Arveragus Dorigen with his a (V too, is the fact that the lover in the is a to the with of that Chaucer is not to to whose of a is not a he a it may be to his (V but it is principally to a of to in to that are to Arveragus's of the two the true a of and the false a to an more important contrast in the tale: that between reciprocity and on the one and on the The of Arveragus and Dorigen's marriage is has maistrie the and is (V this emphasis on the reciprocity, Chaucer is in with Richard de whose Consaus extols the same in this both are at with the many of the of the constituting intended for and by which to the Consaus is a work to a woman concerning The relationship is as from the of the woman as that of the passages with the in which and in love the in which and the and the for or the be or the Franklin's the Consaus extols reciprocity in the love in the Franklin's Tale is of in the of the marriage of Arveragus and Dorigen, but it is also in the in the and of Arveragus and The of the love is on both and in the same Dorigen, it is housbonde as (V and Arveragus Dorigen his (V The of Arveragus on of his to the (V that Dorigen on her way to the that reciprocity, is to the of the of Dorigen as the only to the her and Arveragus for to than his wife from her (V Arveragus's a of what would a the or through of his the Franklin's Chaucer the of reciprocity that is to Richard de Consaus d'amours, and he has created male to of the true and the false one however, Chaucer from The of the despite his fundamental from the love relationship as the of has the between love is love by de marriage de as Richard love which from and from of the de et de franquise de The first by love as to love as It is this contrast that Chaucer in the Franklin's Tale the contrast between conjugal and It is the marriage of Dorigen and Arveragus that is et de and the between Dorigen and that is de the relationship as it the of the conjugal that the of to to the of the according to the of have this to the by the woman to her for that “The woman is as a a of by the Christian his the Franklin's it is indeed Dorigen's that is at Dorigen the to the the husband that (V But Chaucer this in by the rather than the aspect of the Arveragus is to his Dorigen's in order to her to a well that her and her are Chaucer links the conjugal to the of reciprocity that the Franklin's the conjugal is indeed in the is not by the wife to the for the wife has her as as he has “The wife not of her but the and also the husband not of his but the the at hand been a concerning is no to that he would not have of reciprocal the conjugal not the maistrie of one the reciprocity of the conjugal however, been by most and by has the of that reciprocity, in the and to to the of their a for the husband to in and all that are not very far from a of I The at about it that this in no way of the were to have a a fact that was to be compatible with a was the that it had a at the end of the Middle to the husband for the of the he was to her which were and often or (as in many a marriage) he was of he for his as he had is a far from and are that contemporary at that to the for a or on the Roman concerning and and But it is a to that these a on the of Chaucer's for the of and was not only in concerning marriage; the same was in the world of literature, it was often to the between The by which this love relationship is is the and reciprocal by the of their and to one and are is the between the relationship is or (as is very often the many medieval of and is by the in a but the of marriage) not take the marriage is and So we that the of and of or to a of in as well as in and to the of and in the Franklin's Tale is not the conjugal but rather the that Dorigen has with is not by most Chaucer a familiar of of and at in and Roman knew that such an was not and for all or would a as a (V is to that at had in in a of the for the jeu-parti in his Chaucer to in the of the by the on which the was It has often been that Dorigen's the of her by love for her husband as to the for a in in the But it is to that the of the by her not for Arveragus long the The of the has one would that the had or in the fundamental of reciprocity, which no could be an The by Dorigen is what could be a a the very that at the of Arveragus and Dorigen's Arveragus and Dorigen in their world of are with the of the of on a to that of the of the of a are and must be is not a of for a in which and were to have been Chaucer the world was and was it is is for of some a positive of the found the of the of the to be Chaucer's audience through the of an that would have for in the medieval and recognized in the of it a of the with a was It is a to Chaucer's that he could begin with an casuistic and it into a of the of a to a marriage of reciprocal love and in the story is well to the of the however, it is precisely whose had in the the found the Chaucer rather than a such as Chaucer may well have to it was in his a for the of Roman a famous for emphasis and the of have that the was of Roman may indeed have been his for the as the very from the The in whose had found the of the was of (V that a with a in Roman And it is no that the of of is at in the and by to Dorigen from her of with the of the his of Dorigen through her more than at first Dorigen's relationship to her husband is one of reciprocity, her relationship to an lover in a relationship of as we have a at his by to Dorigen the that he is for the only is their her a himself to be the of to in her a of in his first of love to Dorigen, may or (V that the on her is to he I of (V her in her by to an he into the his of (V of such a was in the Consaus Richard the false that he must in order to a woman into a to a in order to into his but to be but are the to be and the as he were with his and the to be to thinking could the and he one in his and de et et la et a et et et et that this of is the on Dorigen's as an to the in order to her in her (V and a on It is on this contrast between a relationship and one based on that to he that I of but (V a of to Dorigen, is with the of the of It is his that the he is to on Dorigen is in a and (V to the husband and the to his to to of marriage as the Franklin's Tale a relationship as a of and marriage as a relationship of not only reciprocity but also or to how the tale extols that Dorigen has the to be and the marriage has been deemed a Chaucer the Dorigen the to be in with her The very of the husband a long of is an that Chaucer has the Boccaccian intended to the of may well have been by the Richard the woman to in love her must for a long of he the for some and must not et in the marriage not to the husband true to his for he no of on from his long No to been he was of he of it no from in Arveragus the of an Chaucer has created in the very of the of medieval the husband to his wife to for her in a as in de the and Chaucer's he was, and in The Franklin's Tale the of the in his and the as is presented as a in his wife is and it is more than a and at Dorigen's to to and it the of the marriage than Dorigen about of her Arveragus her as an to with the French would that he her as a de not an de that as a of into relations with both and and not as the of and her as an not by the relationship, he is the marriage which his her in favor of her to into a is fundamental the marriage of Dorigen and Arveragus can be described as et de rather than their marriage was by the of and a in this as in Chaucer and in by the the century and by and literature, marriage by of the recognized and as in a relationship It is that in the Franklin's Dorigen and Arveragus one of his is no of or a Arveragus's be a to their by the one on their to a marriage of and reciprocity, maistrie that their love may to It is this of and many the relationship and or a Arveragus and Dorigen are in a marriage a relationship et de of reciprocal (V It is this and that is as true The for this relationship Arveragus is in and in (V Dorigen is his wife (V can to be (V by her Arveragus his and his (V for Dorigen he is housbonde and love (V has to some to that are and But were not to Chaucer's as these were a of late medieval and late medieval reciprocity between married as is in the very of a work by Chaucer's contemporary true love relationship of reciprocity presented by Richard de in his Consaus is as we have de as well as is a to marriage at the end of the Middle been a the marriage to be as and constituting a to The in the Franklin's Tale it may be a Christian to be in a story from the the is at the end of the that the marriage of Arveragus and Dorigen, a relationship of reciprocity and Christian may be to in the (V an of the of a on the married the Menedon in the Filocolo, the Franklin's Tale with a was the (V But devoted of the Menedon passage to the question of was the most very of this casuistic the question and could mean or it It in a The that would to Dorigen from is not a true as we have his is a the of from his of a is for the in fact no on his of the as the latter Dorigen, in a Arveragus is but his as himself his her to his and with Dorigen, is in a more of the that in their relationship of reciprocal of and values that can be as compatible or Christian tale is worlds from the of de as by marriage maistrie and by intended to be is the for and It is the relationship, a that is than romance and and the desire of the lover are to the of and Chaucer, by Richard de and from his creative has transformed a casuistic jeu-parti into an of the of the Franklin's Tale is indeed a encomium to the loving, “companionate marriage” of reciprocity, not only as a of but Christian as a and Dorigen his blisse (V

Justine L. Trombley

When twenty-one masters of theology at the University of Paris condemned the book The Mirror of Simple Souls as heretical, no doubt the inquisitor William of Paris felt justified in his proceedings against its author, the beguine Marguerite Porete. She had, for a year and a half, contumaciously refused to take the inquisitorial oath and give either an account of herself or of her book. The most learned minds of the Church had confirmed William's belief in the erroneous nature of her work, and with this confirmation he proceeded to call for its extermination. All those who possessed a copy were to turn it in to the Dominican friars fraud under pain of excommunication.1 Its author was likewise condemned, and on June 1, 1310, Marguerite Porete was burned at the stake as a relapsed heretic in the Place de Greve in Paris. For William of Paris, a job neatly done. It ended up being not as neat as William would probably have liked, for the pestiferous Mirror of Simple Souls was never exterminated. It would, without the name of its author, go on to enjoy a long and unusual afterlife throughout Europe as a popular spiritual work. Perhaps one of the most interesting events in its afterlife would occur just one year after Marguerite's execution, when another master theologian, the renowned Meister Eckhart, returned to Paris to serve as the Dominican Chair at the university. Here he lived with William of Paris in the Dominican convent of St. Jacques, where any of the turned-in copies of Marguerite's Mi rror would have been kept. Two years later, upon his return to German lands, Meister Eckhart's vernacular preaching intensified. His most innovative concepts solidified and progressed well beyond what they had previously been. In an interesting twist, however, many of Meister Eckhart's famous ideas from this time exhibit distinct characteristics and language that bear notable resemblances to those found in Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls. It is possible not only that Meister Eckhart encountered The Mirror during his time in Paris, but it may also have influenced his vernacular theology. If so, it is clear that Eckhart must have viewed The Mirror far differently than his Dominican brother William and his fellow masters of theology. It is the purpose of this paper to argue that Meister Eckhart did come across The Mirror of Simple Souls, and that the concepts and language of Marguerite Porete greatly contributed to the ideas found in Meister Eckhart's later vernacular treatises and sermons. Unfortunately, there is no smoking gun that definitively proves a connection between Meister Eckhart and The Mirror of Simple Souls, and so the question remains an open and controversial one. Several prominent scholars have weighed in on the matter over the past few decades, with varying results and opinions. The well-known German scholar Herbert Grundmann had some of the strongest convictions concerning this issue. He believed in a very real connection between Marguerite and Eckhart, citing mostly temporal and geographical evidence as strong support for this assertion. He rejected the idea of a reverse influence, that is, the ideas of Meister Eckhart being appropriated by Marguerite, stating that the works of Meister Eckhart could hardly have been known to her early enough for his ideas to be incorporated into her book.2 He also asserted that, even if it is too much to acknowledge an actual influence of Marguerite on Eckhart, there is still a remarkable accord (^'merkwurdiger Einklang) in many of their spiritual ideas. Perhaps the most intriguing (and frustrating) of Grundmann's statements appears in a footnote, where he states that Josef Koch, in a letter sent to Grundmann in 1961, was thoroughly convinced that Meister Eckhart obtained knowledge of both Marguerite's trial and her book.4 However, as other scholars have pointed out, examination of Koch's papers after his death has produced no proof that may have led him to so solid a conviction. …

William Chester Jordan

Reviewed by: The Trial of the Templars William Chester Jordan The Trial of the Templars. By Malcolm Barber. Second edition.(New York:Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. x, 398. $75.00 cloth; $27.99 paperback.) The first edition of this book (1978) is thirty years old, and as the author explains in both the new preface (p. viii) and the addendum on "Recent Historiography on the Dissolution of the Temple" (pp. 294–311), the last three decades have seen an explosion of scholarship relevant to the history of the [End Page 338] Order of Knights Templars. Much of this scholarship has concentrated on the crusades and the role of the Templars in these wars. Some has focused on the leading figures involved in the demise of the order, men such as King Philip IV the Fair of France and Pope Clement V.Other works have explored many of the issues generated by study of the trial records, such as medieval attitudes toward sodomy, heresy, and the appropriateness of torture as a mode of proof. The scholarship on these and related issues justifies the second edition. As in the first edition, Malcolm Barber tells a fascinating story, and he tells it cleanly, without needless editorializing. Barber, although trying to be as evenhanded as possible, makes clear his own stance, and I think he is absolutely right. The Templars were honorable and mostly courageous men who ran afoul of a few malcontents who made up a great many stories about them, largely drawn from a repertory of slurs men used for centuries against their enemies.The Knights were particularly vulnerable in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century to people's willingness to believe these stories because they were blamed for the loss of the Holy Land to the Muslims in 1291. It was their supreme misfortune to endure these slurs while a vacillating pope reigned and a seemingly obsessive French king, the most powerful man in Europe, ruled. Perhaps the pope's vacillation was courageous in its own right. He had such great burdens, including the desire to keep his predecessor Boniface VIII from being exhumed and judged a heretic at the instigation of Philip IV.The French king meanwhile was probably swayed by the stories of ill-practice, but he was possibly attracted also by the hope of a windfall profit from the suppression of the order and the confiscation of its resources.Worse still, within the arsenal of inquisitorial investigation since the thirteenth century was the weapon of torture. It was applied in the Templars' case, at least in France, with a frequency, cruelty, and arbitrariness that make one's flesh crawl. Its use taints all the trial material, for even hearing about the tortures and the burnings that sometimes ensued created a regime of fear that made even the most courageous of men—isolated in prison, cold and starving—capitulate. Shame led to the recantation of coerced confessions, which in turn led to threats or hints of further torture, the implementation of which induced many recanters to confess again and to weep bitterly at their weakness for doing so. Rather than such prolonged torment, death in battle would have been eminently preferable, even death at the stake, judging by the stoic willingness of some who refused to confess or to renounce their recantations and accepted this fate. Barber describes and admits other possible interpretations of the evidence. He does not even reject out of hand recent approaches that take the testimony—or some part of the testimony—elicited under torture at face value. Yet, I hear a "still small voice" in this wonderful book, a voice that whispers with majesty: the persecutors of the Knights Templars shed innocent blood, and they shed it abundantly. [End Page 339] William Chester Jordan Princeton University Copyright © 2008 The Catholic University of America Press

Holly A. Crocker

B eginning with a broken metamorphosis, Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess attempts to resolve the scandal of gender’s visuality through its relational construction of a memorial poetics. In the Ovidian story, metamorphosis saves Alcyone from suicide; this transformation revives her and reifies her husband, changing both into sea birds. 1 Chaucer’s rendition sees Alcyone dead within three days of the return of her husband’s body. Mortality, along with its ultimate proof, death, is more visible in Chaucer’s poem than in his sources. 2 Chaucer’s treatment of the Ceyx and Alcyone narrative thus reveals a suspicion of superficial visions that is relevant to the larger composition to which it belongs. This account, like the Black and White story it presages, is a tangible arrangement of differences that are narrative, visual, and topographic. 3 Because gender difference is staked on degrees of visual distance in the Book of the Duchess , this chapter addresses the spatial arrangement of perspective across its aesthetic, religious, scientific, and philosophical contexts. The process of spatial arrangement is more relational than linear in the poem itself, so the argument of this chapter will follow the poem’s meandering path in order to address the artistic, religious, and intellectual controversies that Chaucer finesses through his creation of a powerful feminine image. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner

Mathematical Bodies and Fuzzy Logic in the Couplings ofTroubadour Lyric An auraofredcats and suspect body mechanics inevitably lingers in the airwhen the Société Guillaume IX sponsors a session on "Bodies and Texts." Such is the horizon ofexpectation in which this study originated . And, while my discussion here will prove to be disappointingly unpornographic, I yet hope thatsome oftheplayfulness andgame-playing offacc-to-face performance, so characteristic ofthe first troubadour's poetic posturing, may inspire these mathematical fantasies on the body of troubadourpoetry.1 My topic concerns that old chestnut ofthe critical tradition on troubadour lyric: how to sort out real bodies and fictional constructs that appearin and around these poems. A briefand reductive summary ofthe logical possibilities staked out by the history ofscholarly tradition describes a kind ofHegelian dialectic: ( 1 ) Thesis: The songs are the expression ofreal bodies, according to the viewpoint taken by thirteenth- and fourteenth-century vidas and razos and the early stages ofmodern criticism operating underthe influence of Romanticism and its esthetic ofauthenticity and sincerity, from the 19th century to the early decades ofthe 20th. (2)Antithesis: With the workofscholars like Robert Guiette, Paul Zumthor, and Pierre Bee, in the 1960s and 70s, emphasis shifted to formal invention and fictional bodies orpersonae projected by the verbal fabric ofthe songs. In this view, "I" is a shifter, a universalizing subject pronoun taken on by any singerand unrelated to the vagaries ofpersonal embodied experience . (3)Synthesis: More recently apostmodernist swing toward reopening the dialogue between fiction and what lies outside it has been pursuedin multiple guises but especially in relation to issues like performance and performativity. Feminist approaches return, on the one hand, to real bod1 MATILDA TOMARYN BRUCKNER ies connected to the ideologies inscribed in poetry andtheirreflections of, as well as political effects on, contemporary society. On the otherhand, the notionofthe performative and itsconstructions ofgendercall attention to images, fictionsprojected, masculineandfeminineidentitiesconstructed in individual poems orthroughout the repertoire.2 Zumthor's own evolution after the Essai depoétique médiévale led him to continue earlier interests in voice and performance, theatricality and the body, text embodied in the voice of a performer. In his 1991 interview with Helen Solterer, published last year under the title "Performing Pasts," he declared that Medieval poets are profound bodily voices. And that is for a number of reasons. The principal one is that the voice represents the medium ofhumancommunication; it makes for social contact; it creates links. And the voice is intrinsically an emanation ofthebody. (p. 620) Ifthere is currently general agreement that we can neither read thesepoems simply as direct, organicexpressions ofthe poets' hearts and bodies noras totally disembodied lyric conventions, we still need to work out strategies and come to some understanding ofhow to handle the textual bodies before us. I take it as a given that these poems are indeed fictions but that they ask constantly to be read as fictions and nonfictions atthe same time—arequestwe need totake seriously without losing sight ofthe game-playing. They layclaimtothe fictionalbenefitsofplay, as well as the serious burden ofnonfictions that involve real bodies, whether those ofthe contemporary circle ofpoets and their audiences or those ofmodem readers who make an effort through imagination toenterintothe bodies ofthese fictions. In orderto turn this generalprise deposition into amodus operandi , I would like to explore the possibilities opened by fuzzy logic, as popularized by Bart Kosko in Fuzzy Thinking: The New Science of Fuzzy Logic. Since the rhetoric oftroubadour lyric aimed at persuasion, troubadours themselves frequently used the tools oflogic to build con- MATHEMATICAL BODIES vincingarguments,proofs andconclusions invariably slantedin theirfavor. They constructed complaints couched in thejuridical language ofargument and obligation; they articulatedrequests based on the application of general principles topersonal cases and claims. This process ofreasoning through the demands anddesires oflove not surprisingly takes full advantageoflogic , notonlyin itstraditionallyrecognized forms, butespecially in the guise ofwhat modern mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers have baptized fuzzy logic. Whereas traditional logic is basedon theprinciples ofnoncontradiction and exclusion—A and not A cannot both be true—fuzzy logic suggests that they may both be true ... to a certain degree. It graphs the space between these two poles and calibrates the percentages that link them. To take a simple example, considerthe issue ofheight...

Mary Jane Hogan

The administrative system of England after the Norman Conquest has been described as “the adaptation of the ancient customary institutions of a decentralized system to the uses of [the Norman and Angevin kings‘] highly centralized administration”. 1 It was complex, adaptable, efficient to a high degree, and constantly changing. It had only a few of the features of a modern bureaucracy, as “government” to the medieval man did not imply anything resembling the modern state and its workings. It meant the practical expression of the rights owed to the king by his subjects and the duties of the king to his people. Its chief functions were the raising of finance and the administration of justice.

Seymour Byman

SHORTLY BEFORE HIS DEATH IN 1555, the Marian martyr Laurence Saunders condemned the highly ceremonial nature of the Roman Catholic religion. Even from the beginning, he declared, ceremonies had been invented and ordained for the rude infancy and weak infirmity of man. That the primitive had few ceremonies was proof of its greater perfection. By contrast, the many ceremonies of the late church papistical-partly blasphemous, partly unsavory, and unprofitable1-were evidence of its rudeness. Yet Saunders himself displayed a ritualistic pattern of behavior replete with ceremonial devices through much of his life. In study he was diligent and painful; in godly life he declared the fruits of a well exercised conscience; he prayed often and with great fervor; and in his prayers, as also at other times, he had his part of the spiritual exercises.... 2 Saunders was not alone. Many Marian martyrs prepared themselves for death in ways reminiscent of Catholic ceremony. They devised a compulsive ritual that they performed meticulously in exacting detail. This elaborate ceremony followed an inflexible pattern: a precise, self-disciplined daily existence, culminating in a ritualistic burning at the stake that duplicated the deaths of the pre-Nicean martyrs. Why did Saunders and his fellow reforming martyrs adopt a stylized pattern of behavior similar in many respects to the Catholic ritual they abhorred and believed ineffectual for salvation? By using the insights gleaned from psychological theory, it may be possible to shed some light on the phenomenon of Christian martyrdom and to understand why the most fervent and enigmatic of all religious types followed a rigid style of life and a ritualistic ceremony of death. Those insights suggest that the martyrs found it necessary to adopt an unbending form of ritualistic behavior to insulate themselves from the inner perturbations caused by their fear of martyrdom. Many were plagued by the suspicion that the actual motive in accepting martyrdom was suicide. Assuaging this fear required a

Stanley J. Kahrl

REVIEWS Alan H. Nelson. The Medieval English Stage: Corpus Christi Pageants and Plays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Pp. xiv + 274. $12.50. In his introductory chapter Alan Nelson states the thesis of his book as follows: “ I will argue from documentary evidence—much of it previ­ ously unknown—that the fifteenth-century English dramatic cycles de­ veloped out of fourteenth-century festival processions. A corollary of this argument is that the doctrinal relationship of the Corpus Christi dramatic play to the feast of Corpus Christi is almost entirely incidental” (p. 9). This thesis has hardly the revolutionary quality claimed for it by David Bevington on the dust jacket, particularly when the book in fact never discusses the plays themselves or their doctrinal content at all. Scholars at work in the field of medieval English drama have been saying for at least fifteen years, certainly since the appearance of O. B. Hardi­ son’s Christian Rite and Christian Drama in 1965, that the vernacular civic drama of England in the later Middle Ages represents a new begin­ ning, and is not to be understood in its formal aspects by describing it in terms of Latin liturgical plays. The efficient cause of such plays, to use Nelson’s own Aristotelian language, was certainly the context provided by the annual procession of Corpus Christi day. The value of this book lies in its continual insistence on the reality of that Corpus Christi procession, an event that has, in fact, been too often treated lightly. The records that Nelson cites from cities all over England remind those in protestant countries how impressive such a procession was, how involved were the preparations for its occurrence, and how much time and space it took. In pursuit of this interest Nelson traveled this past spring to Spain. His slides of one such procession shown at the conference on Medieval drama held at Leeds in September 1974 were a useful reminder as well of how much of an event the procession alone can be. Those already familiar with Nelson’s article on “Principles of Pro­ cessional Staging: York Cycle,” which appeared in Modern Philology in 1970 and was read at the Medieval Drama Seminar of the MLA meeting in 1969, which reappears here as Chapter II, will realize that more is at stake than simply a reinforcement of the connection between the Corpus Christi procession and the civic plays called by that name, whether pro­ duced then or on another occasion. In that article Nelson applied pure reason, using mathematical formulae, to the problem of what went on in York, and arrived at the conclusion that it was mathematically impossi386 Reviews 387 ble for the surviving York plays to have been put on in one day, let alone in a day which also contained a time-consuming Corpus Christi proces­ sion. It is likely that Nelson chose York as his point of attack because it has for so long dominated histories of medieval English drama as the paradigm of what happened throughout England. The immediate result of that article was to renew interest in the York records themselves. In “Two Studies of The York Corpus Christi Play” (Leeds Studies in English, 6 [1972], 63-111), Margaret Dorrell offered a rebuttal to Nelson’s argu­ ment, offering what to many has been convincing proof that, whether or not the plays could not have been done in one day at multiple stations according to the principles of logic, the fact is that that is exactly how they were put on. Nelson was thus himself forced back to the records if he was to sup­ port his attack on the traditional history of events in York. Thus his in­ sistence on his use of “documentary evidence—much of it previously un­ known.” Certainly he is to be commended for the labor involved in con­ sulting a wide range of documents, from an impressive number of towns and cities in England. Not only has he consulted the local records of such obvious dramatic centers as York, Beverley, Lincoln, Norwich, Coventry, Chester, and London, but in Chapter 11 he has amassed a con­ siderable body of material not easily obtainable before...