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  • A Sense of the Sacred: Roman Catholic Worship in the Middle Ages by James Monti
  • Daniel Merz
A Sense of the Sacred: Roman Catholic Worship in the Middle Ages. By James Monti. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press. 2012. Pp. xxiv, 684. $34.95 paperback. ISBN 978-1-586-17283-1.)

James Monti takes the reader on a tour de force of medieval liturgical rites, mostly between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries. Without simply reproducing entire manuscripts, he provides large sections of rubrics and prayers to give the reader a more direct experience of the rites. Amazingly, Monti translates every text entirely into English—a somewhat literal translation, which succeeds to take readers out of the contemporary world and into an earlier realm with different customs and culture. A Sense of the Sacred provides numerous manuscript witnesses for every sacrament, as well as several feasts and sacramentals, including extensive footnote citations explaining and questioning the sources he examines. The only textual commentaries are quotations from authors such as Pope Innocent IV, William Durandus, and St. Thomas Aquinas. The book works best when taken as an experiential collage of primary sources, mostly from Spain and England, but also France, Germany, Portugal, and Italy. The author’s intent is not a scientific treatment or evaluation of these sources. He strives, rather, to overawe the reader with the ritual splendor of courtly and monastic liturgy for the sake of inspiring a “reform of the reform,” the phrase used by critics of the liturgy reformed under Pope Paul VI (p. xxii). His bias for the “reform of the reform” comes out explicitly only in the introduction, chapter 1 overview, and the conclusion. The rest of the chapters—which treats the seven sacraments in part 1, aspects of the liturgical year in part 2, and select other rites (sacramentals) in part 3—are focused simply on presenting the texts for consideration.

If readers approach this massive volume with the expectation of historical, critical, or cultural contextualization, then disappointment will follow. Monti simply translates texts from pontificals, missals, liturgical commentaries, and papal documents, laying them out for readers to inhale. With little distinction, he places [End Page 327] texts from the great monasteries alongside those from the great cathedrals, although these rites would have been celebrated differently according to the particular community that used them, and the smaller monasteries and parishes would undoubtedly have diverged even more. One wonders whether less breadth, more depth, and a more narrative approach would have been more helpful for understanding a world rather different from our own. The allegorical commentaries throughout the book do contribute to a situational understanding, but Monti presents them more as a literal interpretation. Allegory serves an appropriate catechetical purpose, but as the sole commentary given, it falls short in a work of scholarship. Granted that one cannot be an expert on every subject, Monti’s bibliography is dated regarding the Apostolic Tradition sometimes attributed to Hippolytus (no mention of Paul Bradshaw and company’s essential volume on that work’s text, dating, and authorship), the liturgical year (Thomas Talley’s essential work, The Origins of the Liturgical Year [New York, 1986], is missing), and confirmation (no mention of Paul Turner). Throughout the book, Monti cites many church documents all favorable toward the medieval liturgy, but in his criticisms of the twentieth-century reform, he gives only anecdotes. Anecdotally, one could find much abuse in the medieval period as well.

In the end, A Sense of the Sacred is a tremendous compendium of translated sources of certain liturgical rites from select medieval places and persons. This is admirable scholarship as far as it goes. The author has pulled together many witnesses, translated them, included some contemporary medieval commentaries— also translated—but provides little critical analysis or contextualization. As it stands, A Sense of the Sacred is a tremendous sourcebook in need of an equally massive companion volume, which would provide the narrative to make “sense” of the Sense.

Daniel Merz
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
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