Law and Theology in the Middle Ages (review)

220 Reviews Parergon 20.1 (2003) are also present, namely Ramon Llull, Meister Eckhardt, Thomas Bradwardine and William of Ockham. The enigmatic figure of Dante Alighieri stands sui generis in this collection. John Wyclif and Pierre D’Ailly are included for their ‘political’ theology and Baldus of Ubaldis for his legal theology. The fifteenthcentury theologians Jean Gerson, Nicholas of Cusa and Gabriel Biel make up the last group of ‘medieval thinkers’. Rather than treating each of the fifty individuals in isolation, Evans links them with their masters, pupils and ‘disciples’, and thus their social, political and intellectual context. Such ‘inter-connectedness’ ensures this work fulfils its stated intention to be ‘a resource book which will do more than enable someone new to it to get inside the world of medieval thought’ (p. viii). So effective is this continuity, indeed, that the book may be read through from cover to cover as an absorbing chronological account of medieval intellectual history. This task is made all the more easier by Evans’ simple and concise prose. A minor quibble regarding the contents page is that it omits Peter Lombard’s entry and thus throws out the ensuing page references. This infelicity should not, however, prevent this book becoming a useful reference for all medieval intellectual historians. Jason Taliadoros Department of History University of Melbourne Evans, Gillian R., Law and Theology in the Middle Ages, London/New York, Routledge, 2002; paper; pp. vii, 259; RRP US$27.95, £18.99; ISBN 0415253284. This study of law and theology in the Middle Ages is a bold attempt to cut across and synthesise several areas which have become established as discrete and specialised medieval disciplines in their own right, namely canon law, RomanoJustinian law and theology. Gillian Evans undertakes this task using material from the late eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, a period to which she has devoted previous studies on medieval intellectual history. She illustrates the inherent tensions both between law and theology and within law itself with a passage from Stephen of Tournai; Stephen is embarrassed by the difficulty of finding a dinner menu which will suit both lawyer and canonist, ‘for one delights in what is bitter, the other in what is sweet’ (p. 1). Reviews 221 Parergon 20.1 (2003) Evans’ work surveys the medieval concepts of canon and civil law in twentyfour chapters which are grouped into six ‘parts’: the notion of justice and sin; the difference between theories of justice and reality; the link between theology and the teaching of law; legal procedure; the processes of inquiry and inquisition; and, finally, resolution of disputes by judgment or settlement. She is partially successful in her aim of demystifying and laying open these areas of study traditionally the preserve of highly specialised scholars. She effortlessly weaves a wealth and variety of canon law treatises, theological summa and Roman law texts into her work. For example, Evans draws on material from the little-known mid twelfth-century German canonist treatise Summa Elegantius in discussions of justice, law teaching and equity. In addition, her prose is jargon-free and concise, and her constant comparison of medieval legal concepts to modern legal notions adds an urgent readability to the book. For all this, however, the reader is not left unaware of the complex interconnections between the different types of law and theological notions. The study, however, suffers several shortcomings which will irk the specialist and general reader alike. Despite its rich scholarship, the work is fragmentary and fails to enunciate clearly its very complex argument. The very subject which the reader may have expected Evans to deal with at length, namely the epistemological developments in theology and the arts, which were the focus of her Old Arts and New Theology (Clarendon Press, 1980) and The Language and Logic of the Bible: The Road to Reformation (Cambridge University Press, 1985), as well as law, occupy the middle chapters of the work. These chapters, entitled ‘A moot point: disputations as academic exercises’ and ‘Legal argument and the mediaeval study of logic’, draw a series of illustrations regarding the relationship between the disciplines, but do not provide an explanation or argument from them. Exactly what techniques did medieval...