The Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform, 1098-1180 by Martha G. Newman (review)

772book reviews and the role of women, and investigations of the manifestations of popular piety with their pagan overtones and of heretical movements, in particular of Bogomilism. The methodology is synthetic, solidly based on the primary sources, often effectively summarized, and supported by a thorough and conscientious weighing -up of secondary sources. The book is an exceUent introduction to a very wide variety of topics and writers, presented with objectivity, sensitive appraisal , and admirable clarity. Despite the wide sweep and complex narrative the overaU theme remains dominant and rises in intensity and interest as the work proceeds.The author is helped partly by the great work of his predecessors (especiaUy the French Assumptionists like Paul Gautier and Jean Darrouz ès), partly by his British contemporaries (outstanding works developing Ln greater depth some of the topics treated here have appeared recently from the pens of Paul Magdalino and Rosemary Morris). The writer is primarily a historian, and theologians should not expect a speculative analytic approach. He also suffers from a blind spot as far as liturgy is concerned. OccasionaUy one may question certain assumptions, e.g., the downplaying of the role of clerics in education, or the importance given to some sources, like Neophytos of Cyprus. Certain themes cry out to be investigated further, such as the work of Balsamon, who surely deserves a book to himseU. Again, some patterns are read into a series of events which are not seU-evident, as when the Church is cast in a somewhat sinister power role in relation to baptism and marriage. But the overall judgment cannot be in doubt: the author has confirmed his mastery in the field of Byzantine studies, and this volume is to be welcomed as a great work. Joseph A. Munitiz Campion Hall, Oxford The Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform, 1098-1180. By Martha G. Newman. [Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture.] (Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1996. Pp. xx, 388. $49.50.) The Cistercian Order in the twelfth century has often seemed paradoxical: an order whose leaders preached retreat from the world at the same time as they became involved in many of the major poUtical and ecclesiastical events of the period, an order based on radical poverty whose houses became very wealthy. Scholars once spoke of a conflict between"ideal"and"reality,"in the assumption that within its first two or three generations members of the Order, faced with pressing poUtical and economic reaUties, were forced to abandon their earlier ideals. Within the last ten years or so, however, it has come to be understood that this approach both creates an artificial "ideal" which in many ways owes more to twentieth-century concepts ofwithdrawal and poverty than to twelfth- book reviews773 century concepts, and necessitates postulating "decadence" in a period, the second haU of the twelfth century, when Cistercian prestige was in fact at its highest. Martha Newman, building on this earUer work, carries it further by incorporating for the first time Cistercian theology into a discussion of the monks' political and economic activities. Her central, eminently convincing argument is that the ways that the monks interacted with the world around them can best be understood as the product of the monasteries' internal culture.This culture, she points out, was created in a constant dialogue with the cultures of the secular aristocracy and of the developing schools, because new Cistercian converts came to the cloister not as boys but as young knights or scholars. Thus Newman suggests that Cistercian culture should be seen not as a complete rejection of the physical world but rather as an attempt to redeem and reform that world. Just as theological discourses on the Song of Solomon by men like Bernard of Clairvaux used the language ofphysical love to describe the love between God and His people, so the Cistercians used the unity created both between monks within a house and between the individual houses of the Order to serve as a model for what the world might strive to be. The primary element of this Cistercian culture, according to Newman, was caritas, the love (or "charity" of the title) that tied together monks, dUferent houses, and indeed the whole Christian...