Consorting with Saints: Prayer for the Dead in Early Medieval France by Megan McLaughlin (review)

254 BOOK REVIEWS Consorting with Saints: Prayer for the Dead in Early Medieval France. By Megan McLaughlin. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. 1994. Pp. xii, 306. $32.50.) By "early medieval" Dr. McLaughlin understands the period between the mid-eighth century and ca 1 100. The thesis of her book is that, during it, prayer for the dead followed a distinctive pattern which differed from what came before and followed after and which reflected current social, economic, and cultural structures. By 750, people were no longer participating directly in most rituals for the dead but sought to be associated with clerical, and especially monastic, devotions on behalf of die faithful departed. The consequence was an age of ecclesiological symbolism; a prime manifestation was the collective service which spiritual communities undertook on behalf of the dead. After 1100, this rapidly changed. Prayer for die dead became dissociated from the context in which it had been performed and, in line wiüi the commercial emphasis of later medieval society, became more of a commodity . If it became theologically more sophisticated, it also became more numerical and even mechanical. Dr. McLaughlin's monograph has solid merits. She offers a conspectus, much needed by Anglophone readers, of the recent historical study of the commemoration of the dead. Such study was promoted in the second half of die nineteenth century by Delisle in France and the Monumentists in Germany until, in 1890, Adalbert Ebner published his still useful survey of commemorative practices up to Carolingian times. Relative neglect followed until after World War II, which was followed by a major revival, especially but by no means only in the Münster-Freiburg school. In her first two chapters, Dr. McLaughlin discusses the funerary ceremonies that followed die death of an individual, and then prayer for the dead collectively and the continuing commemoration of individuals. The core of the book, and its strongest part, is constituted by two further chapters on the laity and liturgical communities, noting the different treatment of humiles and potentes. A long final chapter on the ideology ofprayer for the dead is less successful because more couched in generalities. Dr. McLaughlin's principal contention is that early medieval rituals for the dead were primarily "associative," that is, their symbolism exhibited the complex relationships that bound the intercessors with the dead and the divine. She has surprisingly little to say about die biblical citations and references which suggest more individual preoccupations. Perhaps the most often attested is Christ's mysterious saying about the mammon ofiniquity (Luke 16:8), which was used to suggest how the tables might be turned upon a corrupt world by diverting its goods to endow and to win a part in the prayers and good works of the monks. Abbot Odilo of Cluny's statute about AU Souls Day ends with the thought that everyone in God's household should offer according to his means lest he share the fate of the slothful servant who hid his BOOK REVIEWS 255 talent in a napkin. A just balance between the individual and the social is difficult to strike. However, it is probably significant that confraternity with an older black-monk monastery does not seem to have established any such solidarity amongst confratres as would mark the Third Orders of the later medieval mendicants. H. E. J. Cowdrey St. Edmund Hall, Oxford The Church in Western Europefrom the Tenth to the Early Twelfth Century. By Gerd Teilenbach. Translated by Timothy Reuter. [Cambridge Medieval Textbooks.] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1993. Pp. xix, 403. S79.95 cloth, S22.95 paperback.) This is an outstanding translation of an outstanding book; it was published originally in German as Die westliche Kirche vom 10. bis frühen 12. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1988). English readers will be especially grateful that Professor Reuter has updated and expanded the bibliography in accordance with English practice as well. Tellenbach's masterful survey of the history of the tenth- and the critical eleventh-century history of the Church deals with the Church as both an institution and as a spiritual body in eight chapters·. "Western Christendom and its environment in the tenth and eleventh centuries " (1), "The church and...