The dilemma of Arnulf of Lisieux: old ideas versus new ideals (review)

238 Reviews Schriber, Carolyn P., The dilemma ofArnulf of Lisieux: old ideas versus new ideals, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1990; cloth; pp. xxii, 183; 17 plates, 4 maps; R.R.P. US$27.50 Arnulf of Lisieux was one of those minorfiguresof the twelfth century who have never enjoyed a 'good'reputation.John of Salisbury denounced him as an untrustworthy and time-serving bishop who toadied to Henry II for the sake of preferment In his desire to please the king, Arnulf fell foul of Thomas a Becket. H e did not weep when the archbishop was murdered in 1171. Four years later, Arnulf feU from royal favour. He was eventually ousted from the see of Lisieux in 1181, three years before his death. Whtie his letters enjoyed some popularity at the time as models of epistolary style, they have never been given serious scholarly attention apart from Frank Barlow's edition for the Camden Society in 1939. Schribner sets out to remedy this situation by exploring his achievement as a bishop, setting it out within a wider framework. She sees Arnulf as an ambitious but ultimately tragicfigurelocked into a paradigm of service to both Church and State which by the late twelfth century was becoming outmoded by new models of political behaviour. Perhaps her most useful achievement is to shed vivid light on the political pressures confronting a fairly average Norman bishop, with no great reputation as a moratist or preacher, in the twelfth century. She outlines his search for political favour in the Angevin court through the troubled times of the anarchy. The bishopric of Lisieux, which he inherited in 1141 after the death of his uncle, bishop John, was an immensely profitable lordship. Through Arnulf s letters, Schriber is able to document fascinating vignettes of cathedral life. W h e n be acceded to the see, he had eighteen of the canons (half the chapter) publicly abjure their concubines. However, by 1160 the canons' private lives had changed little. Arnulf lamented that 'the whole neighbourhood was rejoicing over new cradles' (p. 60). Schriber also argues convincingly that Arnulf was the driving force behind the construction of the new cathedral between 1157 and 1180/81. It contains sculptured heads of a king, queen and five children. These she identifies as an act of homage to Henry, symbolically 'freezing' the royal family in stone between 1166 and 1170, at a time when the Becket controversy was at its height. Schriber is less than convincing in her argument that Arnulf was operating according to one Kuhnian 'paradigm' which gave way to another. Even if Arnulf had been impressed by the preaching of St Bernard, his subsequent political behaviour was moulded more by traditional desire for grace and favours than theoretical ideals. She glides over serious recent criticism of her ideological reading of the schism of the 1130s (p. 20), symptomatic of her tendency to understand pohtical behaviour in idealistic terms of 'old' against 'new'. Arnulf fell victim not to a new paradigm, but to political misfortune, the fate of the Reviews 239 ambitious in every generation. H e could not be trusted by the royal master on w h o m his career depended. Schriber documents a figure caught in the grip of competing ambitions rather than competing ideals. Constant J. M e w s Department of History Monash University Shailor, Barbara A., The medieval book: illustrated from the Beinecke rare book and manuscript library, (Medieval Academy reprints for teaching, No. 28), Toronto/Buffalo/London, University of Toronto Press, 1991; cloth and paper; pp. 115; 8 colour plates, 106 monochromefigs,and a series of line drawings; R.R.P. CAN$65.00 (cloth), $24.95 (paper). It is a cunent trend, and a commendable one at that, among the repositories of medieval manuscripts to issue iUustrated volumes about their holdings. Three that come to mind are the National Library in Berlin, Kostbarkeiten der Deutschen Staatsbibliothek, ed. H. H. Teitge and Eva Maria Stelzer (Weisbaden, 1986); the Glasgow University Library's catalogue for its itinerant exhibition, The glory of the page (Glasgow and Toronto, 1987); and the omniscient Le Livre au moyen dge, ed. by a team of scholars...