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  • The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 4: Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100-c. 1500
  • Caroline Walker Bynum
The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 4: Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100-c. 1500. Edited by Miri Rubin and Walter Simons. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2009. Pp. xxii, 577. $165.00. ISBN 978-0-521-81106-4.).

It is easy to feel these days as if there are too many encyclopedias and handbooks, often on idiosyncratically chosen subjects, and too many multi-authored volumes, in which an important topic is divided among so many voices that any coherence of interpretation, let alone creativity and energy, is rendered impossible. Moreover, such volumes are often plagued in their choice of authors either by resorting to established authorities who are resistant to current trends or by relying on scholars so new to academic writing that they are hesitant to analyze with the trenchancy necessary to such an enterprise. Happily, vol. 4 of The Cambridge History of Christianity is not an illustration of these problems. The editors have done a splendid job of selecting their authors, who include many young voices and several established masters. The series of volumes that compose this Cambridge History cover a fundamental area of historical research for which—somewhat surprisingly—no up-to-date survey exists. Cambridge University Press has produced an almost impeccable book. Simply put, this volume is both authoritative and exciting—a needed addition to the corpus of fundamental works on the Middle Ages.

As is inevitable in such enterprises, there is some unevenness. A few of the essays wander off the topic, and a few are cursed with plodding prose. Nevertheless, most of the pieces (for example, Anders Winroth on legal texts, Ora Limor on Christians and Jews, Joseph Ziegler on natural philosophical investigations into theological issues, Sarah Lipton on images, and Katherine [End Page 783] Jansen on preaching) are admirably clear and concise summaries of very complex material. Moreover, many of the very best essays manage unobtrusively to introduce original interpretations into balanced and knowledgeable coverage of their topics, without either straining for novelty or indulging in gratuitous disagreements with other scholars. For example, Rachel Fulton returns our attention to the doctrine of creation, too long neglected as a concern in late-medieval piety; Peter Biller convinces us that heresies were more, not less, prominent than our partisan sources suggest; and John Arnold introduces into his discussion of repression a sociologically sensitive treatment of how marking bodies made outsiders and offenders legible to others.

This large volume (almost 500 pages of text) is organized partly chronologically and partly topically. Part I treats the century from 1100 to 1200 under the rubric "institutions and change" but does not manage to make the period—once considered the most innovative of medieval centuries—very lively. Nor do subsequent chapters quite do justice to the period. Although we are ready to dispense with the tired issue of "renaissances," one wonders rather sadly where the creative twelfth century, so beloved of scholars in the 1960s and 1970s, has gone. In part II, the years from 1200 to 1300 are treated under the rubric "forging a Christian world"; and despite excellent discussions of law, preaching, and the development of parishes, the section fails to bring the great achievements of the thirteenth century completely to life. Part IV, however, with splendid essays on the sacraments, liturgy, images, Marian devotion, and mysticism, gives an altogether fuller and more animated view of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The remainder of the volume suggests—as is hardly unexpected—that it is topics of challenge and repression, of the formation and breaching of boundaries, that most excite contemporary historians. In part VII ("Reform and Renewal"), the liveliest pieces deal with demonology and dissidence. Part III ("The Erection of Boundaries") and part VI ("Challenges to Christian Society") draw on much recent scholarship that stresses conflict, aggression, and resistance; and even part V ("Christian Life in Movement") focuses on margins, expansion, crusade, and conquest. The positive and mainstream responses of the often neglected fifteenth century are not, however, ignored. Observant reform is given careful treatment, and André Vauchez reprises his own important scholarship on pilgrimage...

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