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The thought of Gregory the Great
Book Reviews rationaiisation of the world-image in the twelfth century. Although perhaps Stiefel’s thesis is overstated, her picture of the intellectual world of twelfth-century Europe is very persuasive.
Women, History, and Theory, Joan Kelley (Chicago Press, 1986), xxvi + 163 pp., paper $7.95.
and London:
University
of Chicago
When Joan Kelly died of cancer in 1982, at the age of fifty-four, the field of women’s studies lost one of its guiding spirits as well as one of its most fertile minds. Kelly had a contract with the University of Chicago Press to do a volume about women, history and theory. She could not finish it because of her illness; so she planned this present work that draws upon previously published essays. Her Preface is based on tapes dictated during the last months of her life, the transcripts of which were edited by Catharine Stimpson. The book begins with an Introduction written by five friends and colleagues after Kelly’s death. Her most significant essays then follow. In ‘The Social Relation of the Sexes’, her first extensive theoretical statement about women’s history, Kelly argues that in regard to periodisation historians should look at ages or movements of great social change in terms of their liberation or repression of woman’s potential. Using this criterion in ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance‘?’ she concludes that there was no ‘renaissance’ for women, at least not during the Renaissance because ‘a new division between personal and public life made itself felt’ and as a consequence women increasingly lost control over production, property and their own persons. Her essay ‘Family and Society’ shows how gender relations and antagonisms are complicated by class and race. She traces the development of family forms and places them within an historical context; thus patriarchy is not some static eternal verity, but rather the product of historical conditions. In ‘The Doubled Vision of Feminist Theory’ Kelly shows how the bourgeois conception of a private (home) and a public (work) domain supports a partiarchal social order, which in itself inhibits the full female potential from being realised. Finally, her essay on ‘Early Feminist Theory’ is rich in sources and ideas for further research. For the period 1400-1789, Kelly discerns a coherent body of feminist thought, i.e. a feminist consciousness. This emphasis on consciousness is central to all of Kelly’s work. She insists ‘on the importance of women’s own experience, including that of resistance and struggle, in demystifying misogynist culture’ (pp. xxv-xxvi). One cannot read these posthumous essays without a profound sense of loss; nevertheless this slim volume contains the fruits of Joan Kelly’s fresh insights, an enduring lagacy for us all.
The Thought of Gregory the Great, G. R. Evans, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Vol. 2 (Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1986) xi + 164 pp., f25.00, $39.50. It is a pity that this carefully researched and eminently useful volume is so expensive. It should be in every university library. G. R. Evans has captured the practical, pastoral mind of Gregory the Great with a fluency and persuasiveness worthy of Gregory himself. Through his close reading of the sources, Evans has allowed ‘Gregory’s thought to shape the discourse’. By Gregory’s time there was an established body of teaching, a full theology upon which the pope could draw; so the intellectual struggles of St. Augustine were not part of Gregory’s world of thought. Like St. Augustine, however, Gregory was uneasy about secular learning; but he, too, felt that the liberal arts were necessary in order to gain a more accurate knowledge of God’s Word. Gregory shared with his contemporaries a strong sense of the nearness of the supernatural world; therefore signs and wonders filled his
Book Reviews works, The miraculous was merely one means by which God instructed; thus wonderworkers set an example of Christian life by being themselves signs. Gregory’s influence on the Middle Ages (at least until about 1200) was enormous, His most popular and practical works such as the Dialogues, the Regufa Pastoralis and the ~oru/ia, were widely disseminated and provided a wealth of material that later writers mined or used for interpreting specific texts. Although Gregory’s influence was most evident in the areas of exegesis, preaching and the attempt to synthesise the active and contemplative in the Christian life, Evans believes that perhaps Gregory’s most important single influence in the West was on the system of interpretation which involved literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The principles of his theology were Augustinian, but he combmed them with passages from scripture and drew out of them ‘a series of vivid and memorable images’ that long persisted in the mediaeval imagination. He used the image of climbing to describe the ascent towards the heights of contemplation. This climbing image appealed to a number of mediaeval monastic writers, including Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux and Richard of St. Victor. Even though Gregory stressed the superiority of the contemplative life, he insisted on the interdependence of contemplation (love of God) and action (love of neighbour) in every fully Christian life. The move from action to contemplation and back again represented good order (bonus ordo) for the individual Christian. On the institutional level there was a corresponding right order (rectus ordo) in regard to Church and state. ‘Since the time of the Emperor Justinian earlier in the sixth century it had been impossible to separate the power of the Church clearly from that of the state. Indeed Gregory does not even think ofdoing so’(p. 118). By Gregory’s time the law of the state assisted and empowered the Church, Although Gregory made no claim to plenitudo potestatis for the bishop of Rome, he did claim papal primacy as the successor of Peter. Gregory was not particularly original, but he had a gift for popularisation. Through ‘edifying stories’ enlivened by pictures and images, mostly from Scripture, he spoke to ordinary people and scholars alike. With economy and clarity G. R. Evans has shown why Gregory the Great was, after Augustine of Hippo, perhaps the most influential of the Fathers in the Latin West during the Middle Ages. John E. Weakland BUNState University Muncie, Indiana
Ransoming Captives in Crusader Spain. The Order of Merced Frontier, James William Bradman (University of Philadelphia
on the Christian-Islamic Press, 1986) f21.95.
Only the wealthy and the well-connected tended to be taken prisoner in wars between mediaeval Christian kingdoms, for the church forbade the enslavement of fellowChristians too poor to ransom themselves. No such inhibition existed in wars against the Infidel, and in Spain men and women were captured and sold into slavery on either side of the moving frontier. The allocation of alms to ransom the poorer Christian captives thus became from an early date an approved form of piety. But the first organisation wholly devoted to the ransoming of captives held in Islamic Spain or North Africa was founded in the thirteenth century by St. Pere Nolasc who began his operations in Catalonia. The origins of the Order of Merced have been swathed in legend and Dr. Brodman has set out to lay bare the ascertainable facts concerning the development of the order up to 13 17. The documentation is sparse and largely consists of charters recording property transactions which the author examines in minute detail. Founded ca1229, probably in connection with Jaume I’s Balearic campaign, the order grew steadily, although never spectacularly, during the rest of the century, with most of its modest holdings concentrated in Valencia
Women, History, and Theory, Joan Kelley (Chicago Press, 1986), xxvi + 163 pp., paper $7.95.
and London:
University
of Chicago
When Joan Kelly died of cancer in 1982, at the age of fifty-four, the field of women’s studies lost one of its guiding spirits as well as one of its most fertile minds. Kelly had a contract with the University of Chicago Press to do a volume about women, history and theory. She could not finish it because of her illness; so she planned this present work that draws upon previously published essays. Her Preface is based on tapes dictated during the last months of her life, the transcripts of which were edited by Catharine Stimpson. The book begins with an Introduction written by five friends and colleagues after Kelly’s death. Her most significant essays then follow. In ‘The Social Relation of the Sexes’, her first extensive theoretical statement about women’s history, Kelly argues that in regard to periodisation historians should look at ages or movements of great social change in terms of their liberation or repression of woman’s potential. Using this criterion in ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance‘?’ she concludes that there was no ‘renaissance’ for women, at least not during the Renaissance because ‘a new division between personal and public life made itself felt’ and as a consequence women increasingly lost control over production, property and their own persons. Her essay ‘Family and Society’ shows how gender relations and antagonisms are complicated by class and race. She traces the development of family forms and places them within an historical context; thus patriarchy is not some static eternal verity, but rather the product of historical conditions. In ‘The Doubled Vision of Feminist Theory’ Kelly shows how the bourgeois conception of a private (home) and a public (work) domain supports a partiarchal social order, which in itself inhibits the full female potential from being realised. Finally, her essay on ‘Early Feminist Theory’ is rich in sources and ideas for further research. For the period 1400-1789, Kelly discerns a coherent body of feminist thought, i.e. a feminist consciousness. This emphasis on consciousness is central to all of Kelly’s work. She insists ‘on the importance of women’s own experience, including that of resistance and struggle, in demystifying misogynist culture’ (pp. xxv-xxvi). One cannot read these posthumous essays without a profound sense of loss; nevertheless this slim volume contains the fruits of Joan Kelly’s fresh insights, an enduring lagacy for us all.
The Thought of Gregory the Great, G. R. Evans, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Vol. 2 (Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1986) xi + 164 pp., f25.00, $39.50. It is a pity that this carefully researched and eminently useful volume is so expensive. It should be in every university library. G. R. Evans has captured the practical, pastoral mind of Gregory the Great with a fluency and persuasiveness worthy of Gregory himself. Through his close reading of the sources, Evans has allowed ‘Gregory’s thought to shape the discourse’. By Gregory’s time there was an established body of teaching, a full theology upon which the pope could draw; so the intellectual struggles of St. Augustine were not part of Gregory’s world of thought. Like St. Augustine, however, Gregory was uneasy about secular learning; but he, too, felt that the liberal arts were necessary in order to gain a more accurate knowledge of God’s Word. Gregory shared with his contemporaries a strong sense of the nearness of the supernatural world; therefore signs and wonders filled his
Book Reviews works, The miraculous was merely one means by which God instructed; thus wonderworkers set an example of Christian life by being themselves signs. Gregory’s influence on the Middle Ages (at least until about 1200) was enormous, His most popular and practical works such as the Dialogues, the Regufa Pastoralis and the ~oru/ia, were widely disseminated and provided a wealth of material that later writers mined or used for interpreting specific texts. Although Gregory’s influence was most evident in the areas of exegesis, preaching and the attempt to synthesise the active and contemplative in the Christian life, Evans believes that perhaps Gregory’s most important single influence in the West was on the system of interpretation which involved literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The principles of his theology were Augustinian, but he combmed them with passages from scripture and drew out of them ‘a series of vivid and memorable images’ that long persisted in the mediaeval imagination. He used the image of climbing to describe the ascent towards the heights of contemplation. This climbing image appealed to a number of mediaeval monastic writers, including Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux and Richard of St. Victor. Even though Gregory stressed the superiority of the contemplative life, he insisted on the interdependence of contemplation (love of God) and action (love of neighbour) in every fully Christian life. The move from action to contemplation and back again represented good order (bonus ordo) for the individual Christian. On the institutional level there was a corresponding right order (rectus ordo) in regard to Church and state. ‘Since the time of the Emperor Justinian earlier in the sixth century it had been impossible to separate the power of the Church clearly from that of the state. Indeed Gregory does not even think ofdoing so’(p. 118). By Gregory’s time the law of the state assisted and empowered the Church, Although Gregory made no claim to plenitudo potestatis for the bishop of Rome, he did claim papal primacy as the successor of Peter. Gregory was not particularly original, but he had a gift for popularisation. Through ‘edifying stories’ enlivened by pictures and images, mostly from Scripture, he spoke to ordinary people and scholars alike. With economy and clarity G. R. Evans has shown why Gregory the Great was, after Augustine of Hippo, perhaps the most influential of the Fathers in the Latin West during the Middle Ages. John E. Weakland BUNState University Muncie, Indiana
Ransoming Captives in Crusader Spain. The Order of Merced Frontier, James William Bradman (University of Philadelphia
on the Christian-Islamic Press, 1986) f21.95.
Only the wealthy and the well-connected tended to be taken prisoner in wars between mediaeval Christian kingdoms, for the church forbade the enslavement of fellowChristians too poor to ransom themselves. No such inhibition existed in wars against the Infidel, and in Spain men and women were captured and sold into slavery on either side of the moving frontier. The allocation of alms to ransom the poorer Christian captives thus became from an early date an approved form of piety. But the first organisation wholly devoted to the ransoming of captives held in Islamic Spain or North Africa was founded in the thirteenth century by St. Pere Nolasc who began his operations in Catalonia. The origins of the Order of Merced have been swathed in legend and Dr. Brodman has set out to lay bare the ascertainable facts concerning the development of the order up to 13 17. The documentation is sparse and largely consists of charters recording property transactions which the author examines in minute detail. Founded ca1229, probably in connection with Jaume I’s Balearic campaign, the order grew steadily, although never spectacularly, during the rest of the century, with most of its modest holdings concentrated in Valencia