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162 Reviews having had the benefit of the early volumes of Allen's edition, also saw Erasmus as 'the international pivot on which the civilization of his age hinged' (p. 370). Mansfield's book tells for thefirsttime what an important, indeed central, role Erasmus played in 19th- and early-20th-century historiography, partly because anyone who wrote on Luther could not avoid touching him, but more importantly because by the 19th century,rigidconfessionalism of the earlier periods had broken down, and old certainties no longer carried conviction. Mansfield has surveyed the gradual emergence of a more sophisticated Erasmusbild admirably. This is a book for a scholar. Its imperatives (to quote Mansfield) are 'patience, hastening slowly, and even tenor of mind and spirit'. Future generations of scholars will use it as a vademecum of Erasmus scholarship. These two volumes represent a monumental and magisterial contribution to Erasmus studies. Zdenko Zlatar Department of History The University of Sydney Masters, Bernadette A., Esthetique et manuscripture: le «moulin a paroles* au moyen-dge, Heidelberg, Carl Winter Universitatsverlag, 1992; cloth and paper, pp. xxv, 284; frontispiece, 51 plates; R.R.P. D M 1 7 0 (cloth), 140 (paper) [40% discount from Department of French, University of Sydney]. It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of this study, whose focus is the aesthetics of an iconographic tradition in romanesque twelfth-century Europe (primarily France and Anglo-Norman England), a tradition which must firmly include the works of professional scribes in a manuscript culture within its ambit on the same footing as the more immediately accessible and accepted manifestations of art, architecture, and music. It is difficult to do full justice to Masters's profound sense of tradition and respect for a mental universe and a practice so radically different from our own; whence the radical critique of so many modern practices vis a vis the editing and interpretation of medieval manuscript texts. This work is a 'must' for all medievalists, whether they be editor, critic, art historian, musician or philosopher. 'Moderns' also will draw great profit from considering its import, since, implicitly at least, it casts a challenging light on many modern preconceptions about the interrelationship of philosophy, art, letters, and social life. The very construction of this book, in itstenorchestrated chapters, linked by a carefully modulated set of 'entr'actes' and sub-resolutions, is itself an exemplification of the phUosophico-aesthetic principles perceived and espoused. It would be a mistake to seize only on those later chapters which must justly revolutionise editorial practices. The exemplification of editorial problems is built around a detailed study of the Harley group of lais attributed to Reviews 163 the phantom 'Marie de France'. The very 'matter' of the letter of each manuscript with all its variations, from the simplest abbreviation, through dialectal dressings to the overall ordo of its construction, is to be given full weight as the unique creation of a professional 'scribe/author'. The force of this point of view can only be appreciated when full weight is given to the nature of the iconographic tradition in which the craftsmen of the romanesque period worked. It is therefore proper for Masters to establish and conjure up, as she does in a passionately learned fashion, that tradition. She illumines the philosophicotheological underpinnings of the tradition (using contemporary sources, including the important William of Conches), especially in Chapter II which deals with the notion of enteleche (the principles of idem and diversum and the mediation of the two). Underlying all this analysis is a firm grasp of a PlatonicChristian creation theory which is trinitarian in nature. The first practical exemplification of this theory as manifestation is via an examination of a form that is most easily accessible to us, the visible art of sculpture, in this case various re-presentations of the Sedes Sapientiae. A second exemplification of the principles espoused, which comes closer to the heart of the matter because of its use of 'lettered text' amongst other materials such as gesture, music, colour, cloth, and order, is the brilliant study of the Mass (Chapter IV), always the same and yet susceptible of infinite variation. In the case of the Mass, the mediation of the performance...

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