The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c. 350-c. 1450 ed. by J. H. Burns (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER should read 2 Thessalonians, folios 118v-119v; 1 Timothy, folios 119v122r ; 2 Timothy, folios 122r (rubric)-124r. It is a pity, too, that the admittedly and understandably summary list of contents nevertheless does not mention that the Table of Lessons, Epistles, and Gospels at the end of the manuscript is stated explicitly to be for the "Use ofSalisbury," and a pity that the very good and apparently early pen drawings ofthe Crucifixion with a chalice and ofa shieldand motto (folios 194v and 195r) are not mentioned (cf. the drawing noted in MS 323, though not a later addition), even though they can be associated with an early owner of the manuscript, given in the Summary Catalogue as "Thomas Peuere." It is unfortunate that the not inconsiderable effort of compiling a handlist of this kind seems, in this case, to be undermined by the sorts of inaccuracies detailed above. The level of inaccuracy in the three entries examined here in detail does not inspire confidence in the reliability ofthe Handlist as a whole in points of detail, even though it remains a useful overall guide to the Middle English prose in the Douce Collection. JEREMY GRIFFITHS St. John's College, Oxford J. H. BURNS, ed. The Cambridge History ofMedieval Political Thought c. 350-c. 1450. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp. viii, 808. $89.50. This massive collaborative effort, in which nineteen scholars cover 1,100 years of political thought, has much to teach us not only about the age of Chaucer but also about the problems, pitfalls, and disciplinary limits of political historiography. Suchlimitsare acknowledgedfrom thefirstby the volume's editor: Burns concedes that "the character of 'medieval political thought' is problematic. Its very existence, as an identifiable entity or subject, may be questioned, and has been denied" (p. 1). His response to such doubts, here and elsewhere, is pragmatic: something has been going on under the name of political thought for the best part of a century, and, therefore, the disci­ pline may be assumed to exist. Before turning over the volume to his contributors, he succinctly reviews the three pillars of this century-old 194 REVIEWS tradition: Otto von Gierke, R. Wand A.J. Carlyle, and Walter Ullmann. Gierke's work is best known to English readers through F. WMaitland's translation of part of the third volume of Das deutsche Genossenschafts­ recht (3 vols, 1868-81) as Political Theories of the Middle Age (1900; reprinted 1987). The Carlyles produced the six-volume thematic narrative of A History ofMediaeval Political Theory in the W<:st between 1903 and 1936 (reprinted 1970). Before his death in 1983, Ullmann wrote a wide range of articles and books emphasizing the importance of legal and juristic sources. Each ofthese authors strove to generate a unified vision, or narrative, of "political thought"; but it is the recognition of their particu­ larities and differences that provides the point ofdeparture for this current undertaking. No grand synthesis is foreseen here: contributors are called upon to work within their own theological, legal, sociological, economic, and literary-critical specialisms. The sequence oftheir efforts is to be read as "The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought." This history comprises five sections: 1, "Foundations" (pp. 11-47); 2, "Byzantium" (pp. 49-79); 3, "Beginnings: c. 350-c. 750" (pp. 81-153); 4, "Formation: c. 750-c. 1150" (pp. 155-338); 5, "Development: c. 1150c . 1450" (pp. 339-648). Following a brief "Conclusion," we have "Notes on Medieval Authors" (pp. 653-89), a series ofpotted biographies with refer­ ences keyed to the bibliography. This section reflects the editor's resolve to organize his volume as a series of "issues," rather than as a series of "great political thinkers." So instead of a chapter on Aquinas, for example, we find diverse aspects of Aquinas (kingship, tyranny, community, property) discussed under different thematic chapter headings. This is a sensible strategy, although the "biographies" device proves problematic: many of the authors of "medieval political thought" are anonymous or obscure, so we get cross references such as: "York Tracts (Tractatus Eboracenses): see Norman Anonymous" (p. 689). There are over eighty pages of bibliogra­ phy, organized under the five major sections. The book provides two excellent, detailed indexes to encourage readers who, unnerved by bulk, will wish to consult the volume as a work of reference. This is a work designed to be read backward or forward. The few lapses in editorial vigilance in this volume stem, perhaps, from Burns's decision to let each contributor work with a free hand. R. A. Markus's introduction to section 3 is at times repetitive and awkwardly expressed, although his chapter on the Latin fathers is much more lucid. Readers of chapter 9 will be surprised to learn that "Charlemagne and his successors disposed ofthe necessary central organs ofgovernment and local officials" (p. 175). A few pages later we are told that "the Latin Church... 195 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER came to dispose of every institutional advantage" (p. 186); it is clear that Van Caenegem has not quite mastered the functioning of a tricky English verb. Six pages later it is apparent that he is thinking in a language which understands loss to be a relative term: "Few of the old imperial traditions were so thoroughly lost as the publication of constitutions and rescripts" (p. 192). Such minor flaws do not invalidate his chapter: the distinction he draws between seigneun·e and feodalite (pp. 195-210) offers a useful corrective to literati (like me) who have tended to slop the two terms together as "feudalism." The odd typo is almost welcome in a work of this magnitude: Dante might have enjoyed the rendition of Boniface VIII's famous bull as "Unam sanctum" (p. 688). Almost half the space of this volume is given over to the period 11001450 . But Chaucerians should not pass over the early chapters; medieval thought has very long roots. The very first chapter-Henry Chadwick on "Christian Doctrine" in nine pages-hasimportant things to say about the "schizophrenia in Christian attitudes to government" (p. 12), and his paragraphs on the early Christian communities are more germane to the world of medieval parish fraternities (as recorded by the returns of 1389) than anything else in the volume. Authors covering the period ca. 750ca . 1150, faced with a relative scarcity of legal, governmental, and eccle­ siastical treatises, turn more readily than other contributors to the study of metaphor and poetic texts.Janet Nelson draws upon Carolingian and West Frankish court poets and annalists; she makes good use of the royal blessing-prayer Prospice (pp. 217-18) and the later chansons de geste (pp. 217-18, 236-37). She also explains the political rationale for Alfred burn­ ing the cakes and Canute getting his feet wet (p. 242). I. S. Robinson, discussing "Church and Papacy," sees the history ofecclesiology in thissame period written not in concepts but in images: readers of The Man ofLaw's Tale may find useful material in his discussion of theChurch as "the body of Christ," "the ship," "the bride," "the mother" (pp. 252-60). As J. P. Canning notes in introducing section 5, the development of political thought grows ever more complex in the period 1150-1450. Ideas assimilated from Aristotle and Roman law interact with long-standing theocratic, hierocratic, and feudal conceptions; higher education, legal, and juristic studies develop rapidly as the pace of urbanization and eco­ nomic growth quickens. Europe divides into a plurality of sovereign states; toward the end of the period the secular state is considered as an expression of man's political nature.]. A. Watt leads offthis section by describing how theorists of spiritual and temporal powers evolved two competing models, hierocracy and caesaropapism. His long chapter retains focus and concision 196 REVIEWS by concentrating upon the exegetical history ofa single biblical verse, Luke 22.38: "At illi dixerunt: Domine, ecce duo gladii hie. At ille dixit eis: Satis est." In following Watt through the successive interpretations ofthe glossa ordinaria, Gottschalk of Aachen, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of Saint Victor, Gratian, Ricardus Anglicus, Johannes Teutonicus, Bernard of Parma, the decretalists oflnnocent III, Adam Marsh, Robert Grosseteste, Bracton, Aquinas, Dante, and Marsilius ofPadua (pp. 370-422), we more fully appreciate how medieval literary thought is elaborated through the kind ofmedieval literary procedures with which Alastair Minnis has famil­ iarized us. At the same time we gain a deeper appreciation ofthe singular achievement ofMonarchia, book 3, in which Dante brings the apostle Peter vibrantly to life through a detailed character analysis-but only in the interests ofadvancing one side ofthe "two swords" argument. This teaches us something important about the relationship ofindividual characteriza­ tion to representative function in medieval texts. Kenneth Pennington, in "Law, Legislation and Government, 11501300 ," considers the canonists as thefirst lawyers in the Western tradition to establish law as an essential element ofpolitical theory. Certain details of his account form an interesting gloss to phrases familiar from fourteenth­ century contexts.The characterization ofthe pope as the supreme legislator who had all laws in his breast ("omne jus habet in pectore suo," a phrase from Roman law, p. 434) recalls the self-characterization attributed to Richard II in the 1399 Deposition articles. Hostiensis's elaboration ofthe terms by which Innocent III distinguished between his heavenly and human powers ("potestas absoluta et ordinata" p. 435; see also pp. 455-56) forms an important precedent for our understanding of the celebrated nominalist distinction between potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata. The canonist habit of mind sometimes invites comparison with the problem-solving sequence that is so deftly concluded by the squire at the end ofThe Summoner's Tale. W hat becomes ofpapal authority, Huguccio ofPisa asks, ifthe pope is guilty ofsimony? Ofstealing? Offornication and concubinage? W hat ifhe fornicates on the altar ofa church (p. 437)? Pennington ends by informing us that it was a Franciscan, Thomas of York (1256), who was the first to claim that the pope'splenitudopotestatis was the source of all jurisdiction within the church. By developing this emphasis upon the all-encompassing and pervasive authority ofthe prince, mendicant theologians helped pave the way for the theoretical justification of absolute monarchy (p. 453). J.P. Canning, in the following chapter, takes up this theme ofprincely voluntas and then goes on to discuss the concept ofcorporate will as developed by Bartolus, Baldus, and the Italian 197 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER city-republics. Jean Dunbabin, in "Government," traces the development of kingly powers, and of strategies to contest or limit them, through a comparative analysis of France and England in the later Middle Ages. Christine de Pisan, who put strong religious sanction against any form of disloyalty or disobedience to the crown, is considered as a useful purveyor of the ideal kingly image Charles V wished the populace to have of him (p. 489). The turbulent peasant community in Jean de Meun's Roman de la Rose is considered as a study of the power of popular contract (pp. 516-17). Dunbabin makes incidental reference to Wyclifand Langland, and there is much material here that proves helpful for our understanding of Chaucer, particularly the discussion of counsel, tyranny, and insufficient title. Dun­ babin's analysis of the language and concepts through which the Deposi­ tions of 1327 and 1399 were handled is particularly helpful (pp. 495-96, 517). Jeannine Quillet, in writing of "Community, Counsel and Representa­ tion," observes that these terms "reflect an organic-even organicist­ vision of society, in which communication between men is unproblematic because the individual is not taken into account in the overall analysis. This is the explanation of the supreme importance of the idea of community which dominates all social and political organisation" (p. 521). This is perhaps the most reflective chapter in the book, one that provides many fruitful points of departure for pondering the forms of association devel­ oped by Chaucer's pilgrim company along the Canterbury road. The concept ofkoinonia as appliedby Saint Paul to the Church, or by Aristotle to the civil community (William of Moerbeke translates the term as com­ munitas, pp. 524-27), has an important bearing on relations of social equality or subordination developed within Chaucerian texts. There is a useful review of organicist conceptions of the city and state, followed by somefascinatingparagraphs onScornsand Ockham(pp. 536-38). Here we grasp, or glimpse, how nominalist insistence on intramental concepts that are unique to each individual rules out the possibility of perfect social exchange: "Personalitas est negatio communicationis," Scorns says; politi­ cal community can no longer be deduced from the natural sociability of man. Parts of Quillet's argument are thinly documented, and historical detail is sometimes sketchily drawn, but the reader should often feel inspired to fill in the picture. For example, the dispute over what con­ stitutes majority opinion, major et sanior pars or valentior pars, has an important bearing on dramaticmoments both within Chaucerian texts and in London politics of the 1380s and 1390s. Following a brief and lucid discussion of "The Conciliar Movement," Anthony Black contributes a second chapter, entitled "The Individual and 198 REVIEWS Society." This chapter develops many of the concerns broached in Quillet's chapter; it experiences similar difficulties with its terms of reference, since "the relationship between individual and society as such was seldom dis­ cussed by theorists or mentioned in medieval sources generally; it was not seen as a special problem" (p. 591). The Middle Ages had many words for "society," but none for "individual" (excepting the scholastic termpersona singularis). Black embarkson a brief quest through medieval textsin search of the absent modern term (pp. 591-97); this quest ends with the human­ istcultivation of privacy (p. 606), a conceptdeveloped underthe protection of despoticgovernments. Black furthers Quillet's discussion ofthe political uses of nominalism by noting how; in the fifteenth century, apologists for monarchy or absolute rule were able to argue that societal wholes have no existential reality (p. 604). Janet Coleman, in "Property and Poverty," differs from the othercontrib­ utors by beginning not with categories of medieval thought but with a master narrative ofeconomic development within which such categoriesare embedded. She speaks of the formation of a market economy based on towns; of how agriculture became organized for that economy; of popula­ tion expansion, commercial loans, and the massive minting of money. She thenconsidershow legal and politicalterminologiesfacilitated,or adapted to, such changes in the economic sphere. Rights of ownership and expro­ priation are obviously crucial here: Coleman provides a succinct discussion of transitions from feudal to capitalist dominium and possessio (pp. 615-16). She examines canon lawyers on property rights and Aquinas on the expropriation ofeconomicsurplus and writes atlength on definitions of "the poor" and the impact of the Franciscan movement; she ends with FitzRalph and Wyclif (pp. 644-47). By the end of the fourteenth century, Coleman concludes, "dominium in its narrower sense, as dominium in rebus, had become a ius in re, any right to some material thing like land defensible against all others, transferable and capable ofalienation by the possessor-a situation that depended on a profit economy. Men were described in political theory, in legal treatises, in political poetry and prose, in polemic and ephemera, as individuals controlling their lives by being in some way responsible for the material as wellas thespiritualaspectsof their existence" (p. 648). The welcome broadening of argument that Coleman brings to the volume's final chapter highlights one of this volume's abiding dilemmas: the gap that fallsbetween the language ofpolitical thought and the specific uses and interests which such language is being put to at any given historical moment. The volume'scontributors are not, ofcourse, oblivious to this difficulty. Antony Black remains conscious ofit in recordingJuan de 199 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Segovia's eloquent testimony to the power of associational form. At the CouncilofBasel, Segoviasays, men ofdifferent status andnationalitycame together, pooled their knowledge, and produced a common outlook based on"'one intermediate status.' Through being 'almostdaily forced intoeach other's company, there is born true love for persons ofall nationalities ... so that, coming together with a certain delight, they explore more wisely the true and common good."' (p. 586).Black notes, however, that this"com­ mon good" was understood rather narrowly: understood chiefly, in fact, as the good of the clergy who articulated it. Here, in Black's argument, we move from political ideal (communality) to historical moment (Council of Basel) to historical gloss (delimited group interest). More typically, how­ ever,"political thought" tends to get stuck at the first phase of the argu­ ment. But even this first phase is difficult to define, since ideas in medieval political thought are (Jean Dunbabin observes)"so much dominated by the literary context within which they werearticulated-academic treatise, sermon, exhortation, propaganda or official pronouncement" (p. 478). And literary contexts are themselves, ofcourse, unstable: Jeannine Quiller opens her chapter by acknowledging"the lack ofprecision in the medieval political vocabulary and the great diversity of literary genres involved in studying it" (p.520). "Political thought," then, tends to reduce itself to a kind of Jaussian reception theory, in which key phrases or documents acquire meaning only through specific instances ofhistorical deployment and interpretation.The most celebrated such sequence originates with an eighth-century forgery known as the Donation of Constantine. Interpretations differ even at or about the point of origin, since (Janet Nelson argues) this text may be identified either"as a papal document produced in 753 to justify Pope Stephen's summoning of the Franks to Italy to protect the lands of St. Peter... or alternatively as a 'literary divertissement' produced in the late 750s or 760s by a Lateran cleric" (p. 212). Meanings may change or expand dramatically over time. Take, for example, the legal formula"Quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbari debet": in the course of this volume we may trace itsgradual rise (through eight citations in five different chapters) from obscure beginningsasan anthologized maximinJustinian (where itapplies only to guardian-ward relationships) to celebrity status in the Middle Ages as chiefpillar ofa theory ofconsent that was basic to corporate theory and the practice ofrepresentative government. Most of the political categories selected for consideration in this volume ensure that discussion is conducted at a high level of abstraction: much space is dedicated to Church, empire, and state. Van Caenegem, having 200 REVIEWS characterized post-Carolingian Europe as "a phase when social life went on without the state," discovers an opportunity for more localized analysis. Instead of Annales school microhistory, however, we have an attempt to evoke the spirit of a free landowning class through anecdotal color: "They were constantly involved in warfare, which corresponded to their knightly way of life, and often had great fun-of the sort described in Huizinga's Homo Ludens and hardly distinguishable from our modern sports, al­ though tales of grim mutilation should warn us against undue nostalgia" (p. 180). One sometimes wishes that contributors had paid more detailed attention to those political structures within which most medieval lives were lived: the vill, the manorial court, the trade gild, the parish fraternity. The household is, of course, a political category that boasts an impeccable Aristotelian pedigree, but it receives scant attention here. This suggests that little space will be dedicatedto thepolitical status of medieval women. The first reference to women is made in the first chapter by Chadwick (p. 16), who informs us that "the married woman in ancient society was often not much more than a highly privileged chattel-slave (privileged to the degree that her children alone counted as legitimate, not to the extent that her husband wouldkeep his hands offthe slave-girls)." This first reference is also a last reference: nothing in the next 800 pages addresses itself directly to the political status of women. A volume of this magnitude offers opportunities for revising the tradi­ tional categories and periodizations that comprise the history of "political thought." One moment of rebellion against received categories occurs early in the volume, as P D. King, briefed to write on "The Barbarian King­ doms," resists the methods traditionally employed "to construct the image of a homogeneous Germanentum: "It is high time that they were consigned once and for all to the historiographical curiosity shop, to join other nineteenth-century relics" (p. 147). It seems, however, that the most famous nineteenth-century relic of all, the dividing line between "medi­ eval" and "Renaissance," is still indispensable. J. P Canning, in introduc­ ing section 5, acknowledges that "there is no clear dividing line between what may be termed late medieval political thought and that of the Renaissance" (p. 366). Burns, in his "Conclusion," recognizes that the relationship between what we "may looselydesignate as 'scholasticism' and 'humanism' was at times easier and more peaceful than has sometimes been proposed" and that "humanism itself, after all, must be traced to beginnings at least as far back as the mid-fourteenth century" (p. 651). Humanism will, one assumes, be coveredin the successor volume promised by the dust jacket for late in 1989. The effect of this postponement will 201 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER surely be to perpetuate the traditional notion of humanism as a cultural movement that floats above the immediate constraints of historical place and time; it would have been useful, for example, to consider the contribu­ tion of Petrarch and his fellow humanists to the formation of the first absolutist state in modern Europe under the Milanese Visconti. This volume offers excellent scholarship, generous documentation, and most helpful bibliographical resources. It is worth reading not only for the expert knowledge that the contributors bring to us but also for those instructive moments of doubt, stress, or rebellion they experience in working within the assigned categories that shape and bridle their thinking. DAVID WALLACE University of Texas at Austin ROBERT FRANCIS COOK. The Sense ofThe Song ofRoland. Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1987. Pp. xix, 266. $34.50. The Song ofRoland, like Beowulf, Sir Gawain andthe Green Knight, and The Wife ofBath's Prologue and Tale, occupies a curious place in modern medievalstudies. It is the best-known example of itsgenre, the subject of a greater amount of scholarly commentary than all the other chansons de geste combined; indeed, it is often treated as if it so perfectly exemplifies the genre that no other works need to be considered in a discussion of the heroic ethos ofthe French Middle Ages. As a result, however, it has become an indispensablepart of survey courses intranslation, taught to unsuspect­ ing undergraduates by people who are not specialists in the field, who do notknow thescholarship, and who may even be unable to read the poem in the original language. In such circumstances, teachers tend to rely on received opinion concern­ ing a work's central concerns and interpretative cruces; Roland is too short to make a decent-sized paperback, so translators are quite willing to provide introductions embodying such opinions, developed from the work of generations ofspecialists. The result is that, as Bernard Cerquiglini has pointed out, most studies ofRoland say much the same thing; the difficulty with the common consensus, as Robert Cook argues ably and convincingly, is that it is wrong. 202 ...