Carolingian learning, masters and manuscripts (review)

Reviews 191 and unnumbered figure showing the major features of cathedral construction on the last page of the text. The argument is soundly based on medieval documentation of expenditure on budding projects, some extensive descriptive accounts of three major projects and the surviving buildings themselves. From this there emerges a picture of the daily life of the master mason and his employees on the construction site. They were the elite of building workers, placed above lesser trades like carpenters, glaziers and plumbers. The master mason, as architect had a special relationship with his patron and was sometimes taken into his household. As employer, he also had a special relationship with the members of his workforce, having to provide them with accommodation near the site and with training and clothing. Coldstream addresses practical questions, such as the hours in the working day, the length of the budding season, rates of pay and the few financial provisions made for work related sickness and old age. Her coverage of the actual construction process is interesting in its attention to detati. It ranges from the large issues of the preparation of foundations to the minutiae of scaffolding and ladders. The discussion of the budding process tackles both conceptual and practical areas. Castles and cathedrals were different kinds of building projects. The castle, as fortification, had to be build quickly. O n the other hand, the cathedral could be delayed for years once the choir, the liturgically important section, had been completed. Designs, drawn up by the master mason were based on the geometry of squares, circles and triangles. They were transfened onto wooden templates and incised onto walls and floors for use during the construction process. Structural theory and distinct national styles in design are explained briefly and with a clarity that the non specialist wiU appreciate. One flaw in this delightful book is that thetitleleads the reader to hope for a more extensive coverage of the sculptor. Coldstream, perhaps because of constraints of space rather than lack of material, has relegated the sculptor to a small section at the end of the book and has not fuUy explained the relationship of the mason as artist to the master mason. Margaret Rogerson Department of EngUsh University of Sydney Contreni, John, J., Carolingian learning, masters and manuscripts, Aldershot Variorum, 1992; cloth; pp. x, 333; R.R.P. £47.50. Professor John J. Contreni is a medievalist from Purdue University, which he describes,ratherappeatingly, as 'a kind of Fulda on the Wabash'. Beginning with his doctoral research on the rich collection of manuscripts from the cathedral school of Laon, he has specialized in the intellectual and cultural 192 Reviews history of Western Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries. He pubtished a book (The cathedral school of Laon from 850 to 930: its manuscripts and masters [Munich, 1978)]) and later produced a facsimile edition of one of the most important of Laon's manuscripts (Codex Laudunensis 468: a ninth-century guide to Virgil, Sedulius, and the liberal arts [Tumhout 1984]). He also translated Pene Riclte's long and important book on Education and culture in the barbarian West, sixth through eight centuries (Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 1978). In recent years, Contreni has turned to more general explorations of the Carolingian Renaissance, Biblical studies, and learning in the earlier Middle Ages. This collection, in the usual pattern of Variorum's publications, brings together sixteen articles published in journals, conference proceedings and collections between 1972 and 1990, and adds one previously unpublished paper, a conference address from 1988 (no. I). One of the articles (no. VI) has been revised and reset The volume also includes a section of additional notes by the author, marked by marginal asterisks in the original papers, aimed at bringing the references and the discussion up-to-date where this is considered necessary. There is an index of manuscripts refened to and an index of medieval persons, places and subjects. In four papers concerned with the general history of education and learning in the Carolingian period (nos. I-IV), Contreni explores the consequences of Piene Rich6's thesis that the sixth and seventh centuries were less 'barbarian' than is usually assumed. The...