Wallfahrt und Alltag in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit: Internationales Round-Table-Gespräch, Krems an der Donau, 8. Oktober 1990 (review)

84BOOK REVIEWS cational conservatism in action" (p. 1 ). The study ofgrammarwas conservative in several ways. First, despite the aforementioned deletions, the curriculum remained the inherited system of the high Middle Ages with the same texts at the core. Thus, the Florentine child progressed from a prayer book for learning the alphabet followed by a short grammatical text (Donatus or Donadello ) that was first memorized and then on to one or more late classical or medieval moralizing poems (Epigrammata of Prosper of Aquitaine, Fables versified of Aesop, Dittochaeon of Prudentius, Disticha of Cato). Attesting to this conservatism is the fact that only one of the texts used in the Florentine curriculum was written after 1210. Secondly, at all stages instruction and the texts were permeated with Christian doctrine and traditional moralism. Through grammatical instruction and its texts the individual became involved in the monastic project of rejecting the world, and through the acquisition of a learned language he prepared a self dedicated to God. Moreover, the methods of instruction remained the same repetition and memorizing found in the earlier period. It should be evident that Gehl's grammarians were not humanists. But this book aids in understanding how in the fifteenth century a more classical curriculum triumphed. It demonstrates that the fourteenth-century grammarians failed to reform their curriculum and instruction to incorporate or address the burgeoning vernacular culture or restructure moralism to meet the aspirations of a civic merchant society. Dependent on their students' parents for fees and with the modest incomes and social status of the other artisans, not to mention scarcely higher educational training, the Florentine teachers of reading and grammar were ill-equipped to restructure education in Florence. In the fourteenth century the more radical and esteemed grammarians were to be found in university and provincial towns. Gehl implies thereby that Renaissance classical education found its roots outside ofFlorence or in efforts to resolve the contradictions inherent in Trecento Florentine culture. James R. Banker North Carolina State University Wallfahrt und Alltag in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit: Internationales Round-Table-Gespräch, Krems an der Donau, 8. Oktober 1990. [Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Sitzungberichte, 592. Band; Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, Nr. 14.] (Vienna: Verlag der ÖsterreichischenAkademie der Wissenschaften. 1992. Pp. 351. Paper.) This collection of essays takes as its general topic the religious mentality of the common people in medieval and early modern Europe. The particular BOOK REVIEWS85 interests of its editors, Gerhard Jaritz and Barbara Schuh, however, provide a more specific focus: the pervasiveness of pilgrimage practices and beliefs in the everyday life of ordinary laymen. Recent publications by Jaritz (Zwischen Augenblick und Ewigkeit: Einführung in die Alltagsgeschichte des Mittelalters , 1989), Alf Lüdke, (ed., Alltagsgeschichte: Zur Rekonstruktion historischer Erfahrung und Lehensweise, 1989), and Hans-Werner Goetz (Leben imMittelalter, 1986; English translation, 1993) have sought to direct attention to "everyday life" as a useful category ofhistorical research, and this approach provides the volume's underlying conceptual framework. The choice of pilgrimage as the subject matter, on the other hand, reflects Barbara Schuh's interest in saints' cults and popular religious mentality, and her essay on what is 'everyday' and 'unusual' in German miracle reports provides a suggestive model for how to analyze such sources. Following in the footsteps of Ronald Finucane (Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England, 1977) and Pierre-André Sigal (L'Homme et le miracle dans la France médi évale, 1985), she uses quantitative techniques to separate practices and perceptions that were repetitive, habitual, and routine—and therefore 'everyday '—from those that were truly out of the ordinary. Four other essays also make some use of miracle reports as sources for the popular culture of medieval pilgrimage. Ronald Finucane revisits the cult of Thomas Cantilupe, which he discussed inMiracles andPilgrims, to investigate more fully how knowledge about the saint's cult was disseminated to peasant communities at a distance from the shrine in Hereford. Harry Kühnel, who wrote the volume's preface, and Constanze Hofmann-Rendtel both discuss the use of textual or visual "advertising" to promote pilgrimage shrines and compete for pilgrims' offerings. Maria Wittmer...