Miracula sancti Dominici mandato magistri Berengarii collecta: Petri Calo legendae sancti Dominici ed. by Simon Tugwell, O.P. (review)

292book reviews later article on Saint Remi focuses not on hagiographie content but on the aniconic object, exploring the value of sumptuous decoration as an element of both architectural and contemplative ambiance. Her exploration of Saint-Denis, a monument that has gained status as exemplifying key aspects of medieval thought, becomes an exploration of the methodology of scholarship in a manner that avoids hierarchical categories of meaning. Such clarity in analysis makes this essential reading for all scholars of the Middle Ages, whatever their discipline. In a truly sweeping overview she articulates (citing the manner of Richard of Saint-Victor) a fourfold division of the sources that may contribute to a work of art. Spiritual or iconographie sources include textual inspiration and also pictorial, iconographie guides. Material or stylistic sources are distinct from these and encompass the artist's reception of moduli, certain poses, drapery schémas, or facial types, and secondly the manner of combining all of these elements. Thus she defines a possible separation of iconographie from stylistic sources, a perception revealed through her analysis of Canterbury Cathedral's windows, and an issue not nearly confronted enough by other scholars in the field. Perhaps most keenly, Caviness's work challenges "textual primacy," seeing the work of art as a parallel to a written or oral presentation of the same subject, not as its "illustration" in the modern sense. Although present in much of her work, these issues are reviewed in "Biblical Stories in Windows: Were They Bible for the Poor?" She analyzes entire programs as well as individual windows at Saint-Denis, Bourges, Auxerre, Rouen, Canterbury, Poitiers, and Assisi, challenging reductive systems of meaning. Multivalent readings lurking beneath even her earliest work are here aggressively addressed. Given the present interest in intertextuality, especially from literary or biblical scholars, this is required reading. These essays help frame Caviness's recent work on patronage and text and image that included the French queen,Jeanne d'Evreux, "Patron or Matron? A Capetian Bride and a Vade Mecum for her Marriage Bed," Speculum, 86 (1993), 333-362, and Hildegard of Bingen, Herrad of Landsberg, Christina of Markyate, among many women, in "Anchoress, Abbess, and Queen: Donors and Patrons or Intercessors and Matrons?" in June Hall McCash (ed.), The Cultural Patronage ofMedieval Women (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), pp. 105-154. Always one sees a refusal to find an easy reading, accompanied by passion for analysis of structure and articulate framing of the argument. Virginia Chieffo Raguin College ofthe Holy Cross Miracula sancti Dominici mandato magistri Berengarii collecta: Petri Calo legendae sancti Dominici. Edited by Simon Tugwell, O.P [Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Histórica, Volumen 26.] (Rome: Institutum Historicum Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum. 1997. Pp. 338. Paperback.) BOOK REVIEWS293 This is the first volume of a project which is intended to provide reliable texts for the major thirteenth- to sixteenth-century writings concerning St. Dominic de Guzman (1 170-1221),the founder of the Order of Preachers or Dominicans . At this point, Father Tugwell's principal interest is in the early primary sources for the saint. The earliest lives and sources were published in 1933-1935 by M.-H. Laurent, O.P, in his Monumenta Histórica S. P. N. Dominici (Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Histórica, Volumen 16). This edition is not only long out of print, but the progress of manuscript studies, to which Father Tugwell has contributed enormously, has made the need for a new edition urgent. In comparison to the exhaustive work done on the sources for St. Francis of Assisi and the early Franciscans, early Dominican sources remain almost uncharted and inadequately edited, if at all. As the early lives and miracle collections for St. Dominic have a muddy and mostly uncharted textual history, no edition in this new series will be definitive, if such a word can be used for an edition of a medieval text, until the whole project is complete. Father Tugwell foresees at that point another revision of the texts. He is already involved in such a revision of his edition of the earliest life of Dominic, the Libellas ofJordan of Saxony. This volume contains editions of two previously unedited sources. The first...