"The Gentle Voices of Teachers": Aspects of Learning in the Carolingian Age ed. by Richard E. Sullivan (review)

762book reviews Life. Contrary to Mango's view that Leontius may have used a no longer extant sixth-centurypaterikon, Krueger argues in favor of Evagrius Scholasticus's Ecclesiastical History as the inspiration for the construction of the Life. Chapters three and four present the Byzantine hagiographical tradition combined with tales of Holy Fools and the concept of secret sanctity as a form of supreme humiUty .In chapters five and six the author connects the classical Uterary tradition of the Cynic philosophers, especiaUy the writings and anecdotes associated with Diogenes the Philosopher, with parallels in the Life of Symeon.The author Ulustrates the influence exerted on Christian theologians and Uterati by the moral phUosophy of Cynics.This correlation is made clear particularly in regard to the urban environment considered full of corruption and moral depravity by both Christian thinkers and Cynic philosophers. Chapter seven examines analogies between the events in the life of Christ and that of Symeon with the view that Christ must be the model of sanctity in any saint's vita. In the conclusion Krueger offers some valuable thoughts on how the Life of Symeon may have been used as a didactic tool to instruct Leontius's audience toward conformity to the norms of society and Christian spirituality. STAMAnNA McGrath Dumbarton Oaks "The Gentle Voices ofTeachers":Aspects ofLearning in the CaroUngian Age. Edited by Richard E. SulUvan. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press. 1995. Pp. xiv, 361. $49.50 clothbound; $18.50 paperback.) This book grew out of six papers read at a conference masterminded by Professor Richard Sullivan in 1989. His preface evokes "gentle voices" (the phrase is from an Alcuin in nostalgic mood) in a world "anything but gentle." A sense of CaroUngian hard times recurs in Sullivan's list (pp. 53-54) of "factors " inimical to the nurturing of "culture": "constrained material resources, anemic societal infrastructures, massive illiteracy, brutality of manners, endemic violence, adherence to diverse and 'primitive' mind-sets running counter to the light of learning." It depends, of course, on what you mean by culture. This is not a book about material culture in the archaeologists' sense (there is scant reference to archaeology here), but nor do the authors concern themselves with the wider CaroUngian world sketched with a certain roughness by the editor. Sullivan acknowledges that his is a cultural history which neglects "the little people and the realms where they lived their silent, unlettered , culturally unadorned lives." It is clear what this book is not—and what, perhaps, a broader vision might have made it. Still, "learning" is tackled here from a variety of standpoints, all of them of interest to students and scholars working in CaroUngian and other parts of the medieval field. Are Carolingianists too specialized, asks SuUivan (p. 82)? If they are, this book may be all the more timely. BOOK REVIEWS763 Do not be put off by the Introduction, speciaUy written by SuUivan for the book, rather than the conference,yet perplexingly remote from the rest of it, including Sullivan's own Chapter 2."Factors shaping CaroUngian studies" include a ritual incantation of the names of French structuraUsts (p. 15) foUowed by other (partly overlapping) lists of "seminal thinkers" (p. 19) of the postmodernist brigade, of avatars of"the new social history," "the new cultural history," and the annalistes, aU cited in voluminous footnotes with scarce a reference to anything written on the CaroUngian period.AU allegedly represent "currents of thought" ofwhich CaroUngianists, hitherto negUgent,it seems,"must be aware." WeU, those assembled in this book may not be unaware—but they are clearly old-fashioned, theoreticaUy unaccredited jobbing historians: Lawrence Nees (p. 217) points out that his Carolingians were already postmodern in their receptivity to multivalent messages;Thomas Noble (p. 228), eschews poststructuralism to "proceed on the assumption that Theodulf [in the Libri Carolini] had both the means and the wiU to articulate his own views"; while David Ganz (p. 262), fires off some refreshingly acerbic criticisms at those who apply "concepts such as literacy, dramatic narrative, or 'the social function of grammatica ' ... to the sources in an effort to discover original insights." Frankly, this book is all the better for its contributors' sticking resolutely to their...