Raising Arms: Liturgy in the Struggle to Liberate Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages (review)

Reviews 197 Parergon 21.1 (2004) unfavourable comparison to Aldhelm (p. 113). Discussion of archaeological finds at Barking shows the authors’ unfamiliarity with this kind of evidence, as the reference is to Current Archaeology, a generalist publication, and their interpretation of the evidence is not quite coherent. The final chapter concludes that ‘there are lots of women – upper class women especially – living their lives productively in both social and cultural spheres’ (p. 172) in the Anglo-Saxon period. The authors believe that the agency of such women is elided, silenced or denied in the cultural record, and believe that it is important to continue to research that process and the ‘patristic rhetoric’ which has caused it. Double Agents contains some very informative textual analysis. Its consideration of charter evidence is flawed, and its venture into archaeological evidence even more so. Readers hoping for interesting analysis of the evidence about women and clerical culture in Anglo-Saxon England might be disappointed . Readers interested in analysis of literary representations of the feminine in Anglo-Saxon England will find much of interest if they can persevere through the difficult prose. Pamela O’Neill Melbourne Linder, Amnon, Raising Arms: Liturgy in the Struggle to Liberate Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages (Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 2), Turnhout, Brepols, 2003; hardback; pp. xx, 423; RRP US$90; ISBN 2503510922. Readers of Penny J. Cole’s or Christoph T. Maier’s books and articles on crusade predication may expect something similar from Raising Arms: both the title and the cover illustration of Old Testament slaughter suggest energetic activity. But Professor Linder focuses on different evidence of activity and complements previous work, surveying the manuscript remains of the five main types of liturgical text which developed in reaction to the loss of Jerusalem in 1187 and the crusaders’ subsequent setbacks. The book will be welcomed by specialists because, while ranging across five centuries and throughout the manuscript collections of Europe, Linder treats his sources with a palaeographer’s respect. His method is thematic rather than chronological, treating five types of liturgy relating to the Holy Land. The book is well-designed for consulting as 198 Reviews Parergon 21.1 (2004) well as for reading through, due to the Indices of Manuscripts, Incipits, and Names and Subjects, although the latter does not include secondary sources. Each chapter contains several sub-headings; if these appeared on the Contents page, the casual reader would find the book easier to navigate. As well as Latin quotations, which make up a fair proportion of the text, medieval vernaculars are left untranslated. Linder’s method in each chapter is to follow a structured discussion of the available material with a detailed listing of the manuscript sources. His first subject is the Holy Land Clamor which developed in the first decade after Hattin, a rite inserted into a specified Mass between the Consecration and Communion. Each extant Clamor is anchored on one of three Holy Land prayers, and they all share the same body of versicles and refer to Psalm 78. This chapter further illustrates the association of particular Psalms with crusade goals by means of twelve colour reproductions of Psalter illuminations. The struggles of Joshua and David against occupiers of the Holy Land are depicted as a combination of public prayer and righteous action. Jerusalem appears in illustrations to the Mass Clamor Psalms as alternately an anagogical and an allegorical symbol, and a “realistic” setting for Biblical and contemporary events. The development of the Clamor into an entire Votive Mass is the subject of the next two chapters. Extant Masses, such as those In Time of War or For Peace, might be adapted for Outremer in general or for specific crusades. A Clamor or added prayers might be interpolated, or the dedicated Masses might appear unaltered from their original forms. Common practice from the thirteenth century was to add triple sets of Holy Land prayers to the Collect, Secret and Postcommunion of generic War Masses. From these triple sets emerged a dedicated Mass against the Infidel. Beginning with a fragmentary thirteenthcentury Missa pro tribulatione Ierusalem, these Masses variously specify the Turks, heretics like the Hussites, or pagans in...