The Bianchi of 1399: Popular Devotion in Late Medieval Italy by Daniel E. Bornstein (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 263 those articles that were finally censured in the Bull In agro dominico is often insightful in its detail, but suffers from a perspective that is more interested in showing how the Avignon investigators misunderstood Eckhart than in uncovering how they also disagreed with him. At least some Eckhart scholars may be inclined to think that had the inquisitors understood him better the comdemnation would have been even more severe. This judgment would not be shared by all, as witnessed by E.-H. Weber's article. "Maître Eckhart et la grande tradition théologique." Massively documented, but fundamentally wrong, this article seems designed to demonstrate that there is no difference between Eckhart and Thomas Aquinas, especially on the issue of mystical union. By far the best article in the collection is that of Georg Steer, demonstrating how the German sermons ascribed to Eckhart and excerpted by the inquisitors are far more the product of his authentic "authorship" (with all the medieval complexity of the term) than much previous scholarship has been willing to admit. The other essays in the volume deal with aspects of the Dominican's reputation and therefore have sometimes marginal connection to the condemnation itself. Among these we can single out those of Loris Sturlese which provides important information on how Eckhart's writings continued to provide a resource for theology in German-speaking rearms in the fourteenth century, as well as the lengthy and provocative piece of Alois M. Haas, "Aktualit ät und Normativität Meister Eckharts." Haas's essay raises issues of how Eckhart's theology relates to the wider normative theological tradition that go beyond the scope of the historical essays found in this volume and makes it obvious that theological and dogmatic evaluations of Eckhart's thought can still provide food for contemporary thought. Bernard McGinn Divinity School University of Chicago The Bianchi of 1399: Popular Devotion in Late Medieval Italy. By Daniel E. Bornstein. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. 1993. Pp. xii, 232. S32.50.) If this book had nothing else to commend it, it would serve to inform the Anglophone student about a religious movement of some interest which has hitherto been treated principally in Italian. In fact, the merits of Bornstein's book are much more considerable. Some recent writing on the background to the English Reformation, though more polemical in tone, belongs to a related historiographical trend. The thrust is to remind, or convince, us that late medieval men and women accepted, to all appearances willingly, the sacraments and devotional practices offered them by the Church. Religion 264 BOOK REVIEWS may have functioned as social control, but it did so with the complicity of its subjects; and as Bornstein emphasizes in an enlightening first chapter on "The Religious Culture of Late Medieval Italy," clerical regulation even of the sacraments was, in this pre-Tridentine world, less complete than we may suppose. Readers may add their own illustrative examples to Bornstein's. Jean de Joinville , in his life of St. Louis, relates how a companion of arms on crusade, anticipating slaughter at the hands of the infidel, knelt and confessed his sins to him; in the thirteenth century, he clearly believed that "a dying penitent could confess to and receive absolution from a layman" (pp. 13—14). Miri Rubin's study ofCorpus Christi has increased our knowledge ofpopular devotional uses ofthe eucharist. Ifthe clerical monopoly over the consecration of the eucharist was unquestioned (except by outright heretics), it was otherwise with baptism. Bornstein quotes theExultatioDei ofEugenius IV ( 1439) which affirmed both the indispensability of baptism and the permissibility of its performance by anyone, man or woman, in case of necessity. It might have been helpful to stress that this permission was no novelty. The first canon of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which enunciated the doctrine of transubstantiation and simultaneously restricted the power of consecration to the ordained priest also, in explicit contrast, reminded the faithful that baptism could be performed "by anyone whatsoever" in accordance with the formula specified by the Church. The Bianchi processing behind their crucifixes were accompanied by their priests; they dutifully heard Mass and listened to sermons. Yet the apparent...