L'Église et la mission au VIe siècle: La mission d'Augustin de Cantorbéry et les Églises de Gaule sous l'impulsion de Grégoire le Grand Actes du Colloque d'Arles de 1998 (review)

Christophe de Dreuille, editor. L'Église et la mission au VI^e siècle: La mission d'Augustin de Cantorbéry et les Églises de Gaule sous l'impulsion de Grégoire le Grand Actes du Colloque d'Arles de 1998. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2000. Pp. xii + 424. 183FF.

This volume contains the proceedings of a conference held in Arles in November 1998 to commemorate the fourteenth centenary (plus one year) of Augustine's consecration as archbishop of Canterbury at the hands of Virgilius, the bishop of Arles, acting as the vicar of Pope Gregory the Great. Paying homage to each of these three figures, the fifteen lectures printed here are arranged in three groups under the headings of "Saint Gregory the Great and the Evangelization of England," "Saint Augustine of Canterbury and the English Church," and "Saint Virgilius and the Gaulish Churches in the VI^e Century." Lectures given in French are accompanied by English abstracts, and those in English are provided with full French translations. In addition, the volume includes the editor's introduction, a homily preached by the late Basil Cardinal Hume, a commendatory letter from Pope John Paul II, an account of Augustine's mission by Jean-Maurice Rouquette, a memoir of the thirteenth centenary celebration held in 1897, and a French translation of some of Gregory's letters related to the English mission and the Church in Gaul.

Readers familiar with recent scholarship on Gregory the Great and the mission of Augustine will not find much new information or interpretation in the volume's first two sections, but there are three notable exceptions. Bruno Judic skillfully analyzes Gregory's letters to ecclesiastics and prominent laity in Gaul, concluding that the pope's advocacy for monasticism had a profound and continuing influence in Provence. Richard Gameson describes the cultural impact of Augustine's mission on the attainments of English kingship, architecture, language, and book production as "characterised by isolated 'high points'--sometimes very high, but isolated nonetheless" (139). Ian Wood applies (and then deconstructs) the Weberian categories of "bureaucracy" and "charisma" in order to argue that the apparent contrast in Bede's descriptions of the Roman and Irish missions to England does not indicate a difference in their missionary methods so much as variance in the nature of his sources. Both Augustine and Aidan were charismatic wonderworkers, but the papal letters constituting Bede's primary source of information about the Canterbury mission simply did not record the kind of miraculous feats found in the hagiographic traditions derived from Iona and Lindisfarne.

Some of the most interesting contributions to this volume appear in the third section, devoted to the topography, prosopography, and artistic production of the church in Gaul. There are few explicit references to Augustine or his mission here, but scholars of early English church history should find themselves stimulated to imagine how Augustine's contact with the church in Arles influenced his self-understanding as a missionary, monk, bishop, metropolitan, and recipient of that coveted badge of papal approbation known as the "pallium." The topography of sixth-century Arles as described by Jean-Maurice Rouquette reveals a city rich in ecclesiastical architecture, with a thriving monastic life for both men and women, abounding in cemeteries and funerary churches. The material and literary remains in nearby regions are surveyed in Jean Guyon's lecture on the church in Provence, and Guy Barruol's on the church in Laguedoc; both are accompanied by maps, line drawings, and black-and-white plates. Beginning with Gregory of Tour's notice that Vigilius was an abbot of Autun...