Violence and Miracle in the Fourteenth Century: Private Grief and Public Suffering by Michael E. Goodich (review)

BOOK REVIEWS319 of LluU's different works on preaching and of his Rethorica nova of 1301 (edited by Johnston, Davis, California, 1994). Employing the whole range of LluU's many works, whether in Latin or Catalan , Johnston shows how the LuUian system evolves, perhaps because of increasing contacts with scholastic learning.Among the many points made in the book one may cite the comparison (p. 15) between LluU's use of"spiritual aUegory " (moraUzation) and that practised by groups such as the Joachimists of southern France. Johnston's view f. 127) that LIuU's sermons would probably have satisfied the audience ofleading Italian preachers ofthe day can be related to the evidence in LluU's contemporary Vita of his remarkable success in preaching the crusade in 1308 in Pisa and Genoa. Given the hard work that has gone into this weU documented study, it may seem invidious to make three specific criticisms. One concerns the lack of direct study of LIuU manuscripts as opposed to reliance on brief descriptions in modern editions of the Latin works.The statement (p. 181) that the Liberpraedicationis contra Judaeos only survives in two late manuscripts—there are five and one is fifteenth century—is an indication here.The tendency to undervalue LluU's originaUty is more serious. Johnston speaks f. 185) of the "overwhelmingly commonplace character of the doctrines expounded in the Great Art."There seems to be a confusion between LluU's sources,which may often be commonplace, and the unique use he made of them. Lastly, the statement (p. vUi) that "for EngUsh-speaking audiences, scholarly knowledge of Ramon LIuU would remain very limited indeed"but for Oxford pubUcations, cannot be taken seriously and is not reaUy corrected by acknowledgments in later footnotes. One has only to think of FrancesYates, Robert Pring-Mill, and, far from least, of Anthony Bonner's invaluable two-volume Selected Works of Ramon Hull (Princeton, New Jersey, 1985).Without the work of these scholars our knowledge of LMl would be immeasurably poorer than it is. J. N. HlLLGARTH Pontifical Institute ofMediaeval Studies Violence and Miracle in the Fourteenth Century: Private Grief and Public Suffering. By Michael E. Goodich. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1995. Pp. xi, 220. $3995 clothbound; $14.95 paperback.) Michael Goodich's latest book is a study of rescue miracles connected to 150 fourteenth-century saints' cults. Most of these stories come from canonization trials. Clement Vs canonization of Pope Celestine V in 1312 was the first to require the performance of miracles to prove sainthood.The disasters of the fourteenth century—war, famine, disease, economic depression—prompted Christians to ask the saints to intercede with God for reUef from pain, loss of property, and anxiety; thus Huizinga's paradigm of"waning" provides the historiographical foundations of Goodich's study. Catastrophes like the Black Death, 320BOOK REVIEWS HundredYears'War, and periodic crop faUures—as well as other, less notorious misfortunes—visited upon Christendom death and starvation, and also contributed to vUlage breakdown and troubled famiUes. Crime proliferated because of the confusion. Faith in the courts' impartiaUty broke down. In the midst of suffering, the saints protected their cUents from bands of mercenary soldiers, sickness, raging spouses, the hangman's noose, or the accidental death of chUdren . In return for such protection, suppliants commonly promised a pUgrimage to a reUc or an offering of candles.Through the intercessions of the saints, God consoled believers for whom peace, health, family, vUlage, and government had aU but vanished. He barred the way for marauding warriors, removed the scourge of disease, withered the arms of abusive husbands, and broke the chains of the jaUer and the rope of the executioner.What lords, courts, and law provided in earlier, more tranquU times, divine intervention provided in a more tumultuous era, hence the fourteenth-century proliferation of rescue stories. Students of late medieval reUgious history wiU find the sources presented here useful and thought-provoking. Questions of interpretation and conceptuaUzation , however, remain. Recent works such as Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars revise Huizinga's interpretation of late medieval reUgion more than Goodich aUows.In summarizing the demographic contractions ofthe fourteenth century, Goodich relies on the Malthusian dilemma...