Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation (review)

206 Reviews Parergon 20.2 (2003) Although Ingrid Kasten’s connections between Reinmar and the Comtessa de Dia are possible, they seem tenuous. Ann Marie Rasmussen examines words concerning judgement in Walther von der Vogelweide’s poems of male and female voices. Her style is repetitive, a distraction from the material, and a problem of the chapter that follows. Judith M. Bennett’s ‘Ventriloquisms: When Maidens Speak in English Songs, c. 1300–1550’ concerns the ‘singlewoman’ more than the songs of her title. One (unsurprising) assertion is that ‘Some young single women were poor and others well-off; some lived in isolated villages and others in towns or cities; some were more given to piety or lust or empathy than others. Yet all were young, female, and never-married’ (p. 194). Bennett mentions their unmarried status at least five times, and offers some quotation of verses but little close reading to illustrate the ventriloquism which is her topic. Notes provide many Index of Middle English Verse numbers and occasional references to editions of the poems, but few first lines, presenting difficulties to anyone without time and reference books. Unsatisfactory proof-reading saps the reader’s confidence in this book’s scholarship. Conspicuous examples occur in Bennett’s references to Cartlidge’s article, the Manzalaoui festchrift and one of her own works, each of which is cited correctly by other contributors. The arrangement of notes (ranging from ‘ibid.’ and a page number to paragraphs interposed in the middle of a sentence) at the end of the book can interrupt the text. In sum, although some essays probe their topics to present new insights, the overall standard of this collection is disappointingly superficial. Rosemary Greentree Department of English University of Adelaide Lambert, Malcolm, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 3rd edition, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 2002; paper; pp. ix, 491; 6 b/w illustrations, 10 maps; RRP US$69.95, £60.00; ISBN 0631222766. This magisterial and enduring work, first published in 1977, hardly requires yet another review. Lambert will still be the first resort of those who need an overview of the history of heretical movements during the entire span of the Middle Reviews 207 Parergon 20.2 (2003) Ages; his book’s closest rival, Herbert Grundmann’s Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter, though now available in English translation, only covers the topic to the end of the thirteenth century. While it can be read with profit from beginning to end, thus providing a narrative of the development of the heresies themselves and their mutual interactions with the Church as it struggled to combat them, it has perhaps always been a book more often mined for information on particular groups, such as the Cathars, Waldensians or Hussites. So why buy this latest edition? For one thing your (or the library’s) copy is probably now rather tatty, and if anything like the one I recently consulted at Oxford’s Taylorian Institute, heavily annotated. But apart from such material considerations, does the third edition provide added intellectual value? You will not find any new heretics here; the apparently novel ‘Orphans’ who have been added to the list of heretics at the back of the book are, in fact, just the Orebites under the name they took after the death of Zizka. Nor are the general outline and division into chapters any different. The book is still divided chronologically into four sections: The Beginnings; The Twelfth Century; Heresy and the Church (Innocent III to Innocent IV), and Evangelical Heresy in the Late Middle Ages (Benedict XII to Eugenius IV), with the different heresies being treated more or less separately in each section. However, within the original framework there has been a good deal of revision. Some figures, Gost Milutin of the Bosnian Church, for instance, have dropped out completely (together with the appendix and illustrations he occasioned), no doubt to leave room for expanded accounts of urban Waldensians and to accommodate the burgeoning scholarship on Wyclif and the Lollards. The great advantage of the new edition, however, is that in most cases the footnotes which were always a way of pointing the reader to further discussion, or briefly indicating...