Mind Matters: Studies of Medieval and Early Modern Intellectual History in Honour of Marcia Colish (review)

In this volume, the editors have brought together thirteen essays from a number of different disciplines, each of which draws on the driving interest that has guided Marcia Colish's career: the transmission, development, and appropriation of classical ideas throughout the Middle Ages and into the sixteenth century. Despite the diverse concerns of the essays, from epistemological (William J. Courtenay), to philological (Mary Sirridge), theological (M. B. Pranger), and social (Cary J. Nederman), each contribution finds its place in relation to Colish's work, and each finds its complement elsewhere in the book. In practical terms, every study included in the volume addresses 'utterly basic topics of far-reaching importance' (p. 4) for its respective audience - primarily scholars of late medieval European thought.

The rope that is threaded throughout this volume so effectively is the constant reminder of the pervasive influence of classical and early Christian ideas in medieval thought. Ambrose, Aristotle, Augustine, Plato, Pythagoras, and, in late antiquity, Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, and Priscian constantly raise their heads, reminding the reader of their ongoing legacy. This focus on the transmission of ideas allows one to draw connections between the different essays. Courtenay's consideration of twelfth-century schools of thought, partly through the lens of Peter Abelard and his students, thus relates easily to Willemien Otten's exploration of Abelard's teaching practices as a means for transforming human speech into redeemed speech. Likewise, Nancy Van Deusen's treatment of Chalcidius' translation of the Greek word hyle in the fourth century links to Grover A. Zinn's discussion of the Latin materia at the turn of the twelfth century.

All these essays have repercussions for how one ought to read medieval texts. Questions concerning schools of thought, the meaning and use of particular words, and understandings of good and evil, for example, all bear directly on how the authors of these texts understood and interacted with the world around them. As Courtenay and Arjo Vanderjagt point out, much modern scholarship concerning the period still displays anachronistic understandings of its subject. By investigating the motivations and ideas underpinning medieval texts, the collected essays in this volume challenge these anachronistic readings and encourage modern scholars to consider their subjects from a more nuanced point of view. That, I would argue, is the main strength of this collection. A brief discussion of two of the essays will provide an idea of what is in store for the interested reader.

Gary Macy's contribution, 'Fake Fathers: Pseudonymous Sources and Forgeries as the Foundation for Canonical Teaching on Women in the Middle Ages', provides an interesting contrast to the rest of this volume. In the spirit of Anthony Grafton's Forgers and Critics (Princeton, 1990), Macy explores the impact that spurious works had on late medieval, Early Modern and even modern thought through Gratian's Decretum, a corpus of canon law compiled in the twelfth century. Through incisive and illuminating consideration of various passages in the Decretum and its sources, Macy shows how opinions of the church fathers were appropriated, misconstrued and blatantly distorted. The ultimate effect was the exacerbation of misogynistic attitudes in the church and 'the gradual exclusion of and growing subservience of women within religious life in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries'. Macy summarizes: 'The transmission of inauthentic tradition through forgery and misidentification is as much a part of the story of the appropriation (and misappropriation) of classical sources as is the transmission of the authentic tradition' (p. 170).

Nederman's discussion concerns 'avarice as a princely virtue' in the generations of scholars preceding Poggio Bracciolini and Niccolò Machiavelli. Nederman explores the work of Nicole Oresme and Christine de Pizan to show that writers in the fourteenth century, though perhaps not blatantly extolling avarice as a virtue, certainly believed in the...