Gothic Tombs of Kinship in France, the Low Countries and England (review)

Short Notices 261 but is written by a scribe who admits that he wrote what he did not always understand . The seeming dialogue of the two could be studied as a dialectic between male/female, physical/divine or literal/allegorical interpretation. Angela protests the blasphemy of describing her ineffable experience, but nevertheless conveys a significant degree of meaning. It provides arichore for literary analysis. Angela's choice of language to describe her spiritual experiences, her references to food and to the smell of the divine, is attributed by Mazzoni to a female's interest in food and the body. However, the ancient mystical tradition described God's word as food to be digested, and divine wisdom was regarded as sweet, or sweet-smelling. Perhaps one should be cautious about ascribing a particular gender to what may be a more general, albeit embodied, experience. The most powerful of Angela's early mystical experiences followed her meditation on the Gospel (the sweet food of the word, p. 31). Food, for Angela, may then have a divine referent (the word) as well as being a metaphor for the divine. Concentration onAngela's physical metaphors sometimes obscures thefrequentlymentioned divine metaphors of thefieryjoy in the soul, or as she says: 'an understanding of the Gospel was so very delightful that anyone who understood it, would not only forget all worldly matters, but would also completely forget one's own self (p. 31). Mystical experience is certainly individual, and expressed in terms ofone's experience, including gender. Yet the commonality of experience, conformity to which validates the authority of the individual mystic, should not be ignored. However, this excellent edition allows the reader to interpret the words ofAngela for herself. Rosemary Dunn School of Humanities James Cook University Morgan stern, Anne McGee, Gothic Tombs of Kinship in France, the Low Countries and England, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000; cloth; pp. xix, 252; 106 b/w illustrations, 4 colour plates; R.R.P. $US60.00; ISBN 0271018593. Large and ornate tombs are not common, for many have been destroyed over the years. The large collection in the royal necropolis of Saint-Denis in France is known to most ofus. Anne Morganstern has presented the genealogical aspects that dominate many ofthese tombs. The sides are decorated with a row of figures, 262 Short Notices which are often identifiable from inscriptions or from attributes that were recognizable to contemporaries. Thesefiguresrepresented family members. The way to read them and to understand the antecedents of the dead is to start with those closest to the head of the deceased. For example, on the tomb of Henry the Liberal that was once in Troyes cathedral, were inscribed the words: HIC EST H E N R I C V S , T H E O B A L D E , TVI GENITIVVS Q V I FVIT ECCLESIAE PRAESENTIS C O M P O S I T 1 V V S . This is Henry, Thibaud, your father, W h o was the constructor of this church. The tomb is a public monument, yet the writing is personal. Feelings are not being hidden under bureaucratic or armorial verbiage. Over other statues were written these words about two young daughters for w h o m they had great hopes: H O S F L O R E S A D O L E R E , V T TIBI V E R PACIS C O N S T E T H A B E R E . It is lovely to be admitted into the tender love that Blanche of Navarre, the creator ofthe tomb, had for her children. These tombs occupied a central place in the medieval religious setting. Beautifully carved, brightly coloured with gold leaf, they must have evoked a sacred response. They were often more sumptuous than the altar itself, and one might not be ashamed to have found oneself venerating the tomb of the church's or the monastery's founder as dearly as Christ on the Cross. Locals knew the people arranged around the sides. The seigneurial families were part of everyone's lives, no matter what their station. There seems to have been, especially in the praying figures more common in the...