The world of John of Salisbury (review)

Short notices 319 The study is erected on slight foundations. It centres on the career and milieu of Andr6 Thevet (1516-92), who rose to the position of royal cosmographer, but lived to see his work fall into disrepute. Lestringant focuses on Thevet's commitment to cosmography. He charts the classical origins of this genre, considers its radical claims for the value of experimentation, and explores through it the 'geographical imagination' of the sixteenth century. Cosmography sought to envisage the sheer quantity and diversity of the world, and was thus peculiarly suited to an age of frenetic exploration. Its perspective was Olympian, and its description privileged singularity and inexhaustible variety over order and causation. Lestringant's cultural microhistory is generally compelling. H e illuminates the power of a hitherto misunderstood genre, and also the forces which undermined that power. In Lestringant'sterms,Thevet 'bears witness to the crisis of a genre in transition: at an intermediate stage between medieval Imagines mundi and the adases, encyclopedias and voyage collections of the classical age' (p. 129). But in some places the basis of investigation seems simply too slight. Most importantiy, the chapters on the representation of new world natives offer subtie textual analysis, but their engagement with broader developments in colonialist discourse is a little disappointing. Although Greenblatt's foreword claims a wide intellectual context for Lestringant's work, it retains an ah of insularity that is at once a strength and a shortcoming. It is also disappointing that so little attention was devoted to the presentation of illustrations. The plates are too few and are poorly referenced in the text while the author discusses a number of images that are not reproduced. Andrew McRae Department of English University of Sydney Wilks, Michael (ed.), The world of John of Salisbury (Studies in Church History, Subsidia, 3), Oxford, Blackwell Publishers for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1994; paper; pp. xii, 469; R R P AU$49.95. If there was a twelfth-century Renaissance, as Charles Haskins claimed, then John of Salisbury was its 'Renaissance man' par excellence. Diplomat, philosopher, poet and bishop: he was all these and more. Important as a 320 Short notices participant in, and witnessto,the Becket conflict, he also left the legacy of a significant contribution to political theory through his Policraticus. His life tells us a great deal about the intellectual milieu of Western Europe in the twelfth century, especially in Britain and France. Above all, he is regarded as the embodiment of the humanism of this time. First published in 1984, this book contains the papers presented at a symposium held at Salisbury in July 1980 to mark the 800th anniversary of its subject's death. For this paperback reprint, there has been only the slightest of modifications: a short note in the bibliography covering works published between 1983 and 1991. Otherwise, the complete text of the original book is reprinted here. Despite the age of its contents, this reprint is justified by then quality. The contributions come from an international array of well-known scholars, among them C. N. L. Brooke, David Luscombe, Pierre Riche, Edouard Jeauneau and Raoul Manselli. The international scope is reflected by papers in French, German and Italian. They cover the fuU range of John's interests, from his philosophy to bis role in contemporary events. Almost every paper offers a stimulating and informed discussion of some aspect of John's life or of twelfth-century culture, and has not been superseded by later scholarship. A definitive account of John of Salisbury's multifaceted involvement in the political and intellectual life of the twelfth century is still awaited. But, between them, the contributors to this volume provide thorough and perceptive surveys of many aspects of his career. It is unfortunate, though, that no index is provided, given that there is a considerable degree of overlap between several of the papers. Toby Burrows Scholars' Centre The University of Western Australia Library ...