Christian Missionary Activity in the Early Middle Ages By Richard E. Sullivan. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 419 issue in the debate about human rights. The American Bill ofRights equivocates in exactly the same fashion as the 1983 Code when it specifies the "subject" of its rights. Some clauses use the word "person," others "citizen." Do the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights only apply to those who have entered our country by legal means? Or do they apply to all persons residing in the territory governed by the Constitution? Our courts have not seen the equivocation and have most often opted for the former meaning of "person" while remaining blind and oblivious to the latter. The hallmark of Gaudemet's work has been an attention to detail that illuminates large issues. The essays in this book continue that great intellectual tradition. Kenneth Pennington Syracuse University ChristianMissionaryActivity in theEarlyMiddleAges. By Richard E. Sullivan. [Variorum Collected Studies Series, CS 431.] (Brookfield, Vermont: Variorum , Ashgate Publishing Company. 1994. Pp. x, 265.) The missionary work of the early Church certainly has not gone unnoticed as a topic worthy of investigation; indeed the lives and activities of some key figures, such as Saint Gregory the Great and St. Boniface, have been of especial interest, particularly in the role each is considered to have played in the formation of the theological underpinnings of the medieval western Church. Nonetheless, this collection of, admittedly, older articles should still claim a place on the bookshelf ofany scholar of the medieval Church or of the culture of the Carolingian world; the comprehensive depth of the articles and their wealth of textual scholarship make for compelling reading, and their examination of, particularly, the methodologies of conversion within the early medieval Church affords the reader an opportunity to explore some ofthe seminal work in the field. First, a caveat: These six articles are, indeed,familiar—but not antiquated. The earliest does date from some forty-two years ago, and the most recent, from sixteen years ago. There is a single-page bibliography of more "contemporary " (1967?) work in the area of conversion and missionary studies; however , it does not seem very inclusive of works concerned exclusively with missionary studies. Yet, like others in the Variorum series, this collection of essays serves like a personal Festschrift to the career of Richard E. Sullivan, and one cannot help but be grateful that such cogent work has been gathered into one volume for easy availability. As Richard Sullivan indicates in the preface to the text, when he first embarked upon his own scholarly study of the conversion of the Graeco-Roman culture from a pagan to the Christian system of belief, historians at that time 420 BOOK REVIEWS generally considered the expansion of Christianity among the western nations (in particular) during the early Middle Ages to have been, as it were, foreordained , in fact, well-nigh divined. There could be no doubt for such historians, but that the success of Christianity had been assured because its champions enjoyed a superior morality, manifested by their political victories, economic resources, and cultural wealth. However, through thoughtful analysis of records and documents dating from A.D. 500 to 900, Dr. Sullivan determined that the conversion of the ancient world to Christianity was not as elementary as had been previously thought, and that any "success" was due as much to the individual vigor and enthusiastic adaptability of each missionary monk as to any predetermination of historical processes. Each article thoroughly emphasizes the bold initiative that was missionary work, and the final article, "The Medieval Monk as Frontiersman," serves well as an articulate counterpoint to all others. Although the article discusses monasticism in general, and not merely in its evangelical function, it does assert that the point (literally and figuratively) at which the Christian monk met the pagan native was as unknown and quixotic a "frontier society" (VI, 36) as any other; indeed, such an environment and circumstance demanded of the monks so prodigious a reserve of self-reliance and spontaneity, that only the most resolute and innovative would be able to survive. Article II, "The Carolingian and the Pagan," article HI, "The Papacy and Missionary Activity in the Early Middle Ages," and article V, "Early Medieval Missionary Activity: A Comparative Study of...