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BOOK REVIEWS443 them are passages from Aquinas, Thomas of Chobham, Wyclif, Langland, Lyndwood , and a little-known poem,Many are the Presbyters. However, the bulk of the material in the book comes from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: the Gregorian item is the only one pre-Conquest, there are no Anglo-Saxon laws, charters, wills, or sermons cited, and no reference to the clergy in Domesday Book; while a few of the entries derive from the sixteenth century, the visitations of Canterbury diocese by Wareham in 1511, unusual for preserving the consequent injunctions, are passed over. Nevertheless, such omissions are more than offset by significant extracts from sources not otherwise readily accessible to students, notably William of Pagula's Oculus Sacerdotis, the Summa of Hostiensis, the rites of Sarum andYork on the sacraments, and—from Maskell's Monumenta Ritualia—a bishop's instructions to ordinands; furthermore, the shrewd inclusion of the notebook of aYork priest gives some idea of how seriously one curate took all these exhortations. The editors' judicious selection is also apparent in its balance: a chronicler's account of Bishop Louis de Beaumont 's illiteracy at his appointment to Durham in 1316 is set against the concern shown by Bishop Hamo de Hethe of Rochester thirty years later when he established a reference library for his clergy; on pluralism, the notorious example of Bogo de Clare is juxtaposed with that of the worthy, and more typical, Master Roger de Otery, priest and canon lawyer, engaged in diocesan business for the bishop of Hereford in the 1360's. In the course of this book the ideal of the pastors is set beside their public repute, education beside the procedures of ordination and promotion,prescriptions beside recorded behavior,and spiritual duties beside economic necessities. Altogether this volume is an admirable and welcome addition to the bibliography of the English parish clergy. Peter Heath University ofHull Other Middle Ages: Witnesses at the Margins ofMedieval Society. Edited by Michael Goodich. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1998. Pp. viii, 265. $3995 cloth; $18.50 paperback.) Medieval Europeans, like people in every age and region, found it difficult, often distasteful, to deal equitably with persons who ostentatiously deviated from the norms by which mainstream elements in their society defined proper belief and behavior. One consequence of this was that people on the fringes of medieval society were apt to be ignored, in which case they left scant trace in the historical record. Those who attracted attention were apt to be pursued, isolated, or persecuted, in order to force them to conform to mainstream behavior or, failing that, to eliminate them from the community altogether. In OtherMiddleAges Michael Goodich has assembled six sets of texts in English translation to illustrate the problems that medieval minority groups faced. The first set deals with Jews whose lot, Goodich notes, worsened substantially after the middle of the twelfth century. From being a tolerated minority during 444BOOK REVIEWS the earlier Middle Agesjews were increasingly cast as enemies of the Christian faith and traitors to civil society, with the usual unpleasant consequences. The second group of texts deals with Jewish converts who subsequently apostatized from their adopted faith. A third and much larger deviant group comprised those who flouted medieval sexual conventions, with whom Goodich rather oddly classes those who suffered from leprosy. Fourth in this catalogue of the despised we find mentally unstable persons thought to be possessed by the devil and his minions, including those unfortunate souls whose derangement led them to suicide. Next come heretics of various stripes, from Waldensians and Cathars to Guglielmites and the Brethren of the Free Spirit. As his final specimens of medieval marginality Goodich introduces us to texts that deal with persons who deviated from social and religious norms temporarily , often at some critical transition point in their life cycle. Thus we are introduced to Canon Thomas de Mathia, who doubted the efficacy of relics of St. Thomas Aquinas until personal experience of their power convinced him of his error. St. Clare of Assisi appears here in an account of the antagonism that her designs for a community of poor nuns aroused among more conventional Christians. Similarly Goodich treats us to...

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