Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire: La Renaissance de l'Abbaye de Fleury, 1850-1994 by Alphonse de Saint Vincent, O.S.B. (review)

266 BOOK REVIEWS As a survey of nineteenth-century British religion it is masterful, covering not only institutional religion but also those vaguer areas of folk religion that developed into a kind of diffusive Christianity. So diffusive, indeed, did religion become from the latter decades of the nineteenth century that it is sometimes hard to see why it should be called religion at all. Dr. Wolffe increasingly —and perhaps too frequently—is driven to that dubious concept, "quasi religion." The development of British and Irish politics and nationalism are mapped on to this survey. The now well-explored relationship between the Church of England, Englishness, and the making of Britain is discussed alongside the paradox of what the Church of England meant in Wales or Scotland, and in what senses to be Protestant was more important than to be Church of England. The argument is then advanced to consider the unifying and "quasi-religious" role of monarchy in the forging of identity, and the meaning of England's British Empire, made by willing Scots, Irish, andWelsh as well as Englishmen. The twentieth century is dominated by considerations of war. World War I was fought with certainty in the name of Christianity, as churchmen rushed to bless the righteous cause. Nationhood, religion, and war were then caught up in war memorials and the elevation of the dead to martyr status. Though World War II might seem better to be regarded as a crusade of the righteous,yet a salutary realization that Naziism was born of the alliance of "quasi" religious zeal and political ideology led the churches to pull back from too close a linking of religion with narrow nationalism. The book accordingly closes in 1945, though American historians might feel there is still scope for a study of the strengths and dangers of religious nationalism and Manifest Destiny in their own history since 1945. This is a stimulating and readable book which will both inform and provoke any who wish to consider in historical perspective those powerful religious currents which underlie so much that the modern age takes for granted as political and secular in nature. Edward Royle University ofYork, England Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire: La Renaissance de l'Abbaye de Fleury 1850-1994. By Alphonse de Saint Vincent, O.S.B. [Bibliothèque Beauchesne: Religions, Soci été, Politique, 24.] (Paris: Beauchesne. 1994. Pp. 335. FF 150.) Important questions about the nineteenth-century revival of monasticism in France have yet to be fully answered. Was it a surviving tradition reasserting itself ? If so, was this surviving monasticism the same genre of social phenomenon as medieval monasticism? Or were, for example, the Jesuits under the Old Regime and then the University the real successors of Cluny and Cîteaux at their height? In France, probably more than elsewhere, continuity of buildings BOOK REVIEWS 267 and garb assured the appearance of institutional continuity. But the survivalrevival question, complicated by our questions about social and political significance ,perdures. Such questions must be dealt with, ifwe are to get beyond pure chronicle, however valuable and necessary a well shaped chronicle might be. Alphonse de Saint Vincent, following in the tradition of Louis Soltner on Solesmes and Denis Huerre on Pierre-qui-Vire, has produced an erudite and readable account of the re-establishment of the monastic life in the ancient abbey of Fleury at St.-Benoît-sur-Loire. He has given us a well shaped chronicle of parish life and Benedictine presence at St.-Benoît-sur-Loire since the Revolution . More importantly, he has illuminated the relationship of St. Benoît-surLoire with the Benedictine revival in Europe, with the political fortunes of French Catholicism, and with French national life. His choice ofprimary source documents for the book's appendix is astute, helpful, and should be used by readers as they make their way through the text. The Revolution and the Terror destroyed Fleury. Summing up these sad events, the author begins his chronicle in earnest in 1849, when Félix Dupanloup was named Bishop of Orléans. Then he narrates the roles of Dom Eldrad de Fazy, reorganizer ofmonasticism at the ancient abbey ofSubiaco,FatherJeanBaptiste Muard, founder of Pierre-qui...