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BOOK REVIEWS639 although the preserved texts are, of course, heavily edited versions in which the Christian always wins. The absence of anti-Muslim polemic before ca. 750 is perfectly understandable in Arab-held areas (it was too dangerous). It is another matter to explain why none was produced at Constantinople before the ninth century. Olster has raised some interesting questions. Much more spadework of an old-fashioned philological kind is needed, however, before we can come up with convincing answers. Cyril Mango Exeter College, Oxford Vie chrétienne et culture dans l'Espagne du VU' au Xe siècles. By Manuel C. Díaz y Diaz. [Variorum Collected Studies Series.] (Brookfield, Vermont: Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Company. 1992. Pp. x, 292.) Among specialists in late antique and early medieval Spain, the author of this collection of articles is without equal in his knowledge of the Latin literature and manuscripts originating in the Iberianpeninsula. He is the author of the standard handbook, Index scriptorum latinorum medii aevi hispanorum , with its list of late antique and medieval Latin works written in Spain, together with manuscripts in which they appear, and such fundamental manuscript studies as Libros y librerías en la Rioja Altomedieval. The collection of essays under review, written in Spanish, French, and English, represents a small but important selection of his work dealing with Christian life and literature in the Visigothic and early Mozarabic periods in Spain. Three of the articles in English were translated for inclusion in the now defunct periodical, Classical Folio, an enterprise fostered by the late Jesuit scholar, Joseph M.-F. Marique, to provide those without Spanish with the works of such eminent scholars as Diaz. The articles in the collection are grouped mainly around three themes: liturgical, monastic, and miscellaneous. The liturgical articles can be subdivided into those on the Old Spanish or Mozarabic liturgy and those on the ancient Spanish passionaria and the festival orationale. Diaz's treatment of the Latin and literary aspects ofliturgical texts is ofparticular interest because few specialists in medieval liturgy consider their subject in this way. Noteworthy is his conclusion that the literary complexity of the liturgical texts suggests that they were intended to be understood and appreciated not so much by the 'people' as by an elite clerical class. Among the articles on monasticism, perhaps the most important are those on the manuscript tradition of the Regula Isidori. Here Diaz outlines the various early and interpolated forms of the Regula and their use and transmission outside of Spain, especially by the Visigothic counsellor of Louis the Pious, Benedict of Aniane, whose renowned manuscript from Trier is now 640BOOK REVIEWS kept in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich. Further, Diaz deals with the interesting problem to what extent the survival of the rule was actual or literary as new monastic rules, such as the Benedictine, came to the Iberian peninsula. In his treatment of the manuscripts of the Regula, Díaz noted a lost Lerins manuscript mentioned by Mabillon, whose supposed origins in Lerins and more likely in Narbonne Diaz examines in another article in the collection. Among the articles on miscellaneous subjects is one repeatedly cited for its information on the circulation of manuscripts and Spanish texts from the eighth through the eleventh centuries both within and outside the Iberian peninsula. Especially enlightening is the treatment of the social, economic, and political contexts explaining why and how the manuscripts circulated. The conclusions of this long article, first published in the Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale, have been confirmed frequentiy by subsequent discoveries since its appearance in 1969. Many of these are cited in the supplemental notes after the articles and at the end of the collection, and to these can be added several others. For example, Diaz's treatment of Lucca as a center for early manuscripts written in Visigothic script, such as the renowned Lucca Biblioteca capitolare 490 with its text of the canon law Epitome hispánica, has recently been confirmed by this reviewer in several discoveries in that Italian city: folios of a great Visigothic pandect Bible in three columns of the ninth or early tenth century, and a folio of a large Visigothic codex of...

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