La Pologne dans l'Eglise médiévale by Jerzy Kloczowski (review)

522 BOOK REVIEWS The final study comprises a selection of notes under the collective title, "Liturgical Books from Late Anglo-Saxon England: A Review of Some Historical Problems."There is hardly room here for a thumbnail sketch of each of the nine problems with which he deals, for each short essay delineates a fresh approach to a topic central to the history of the English liturgy. The topics include: the continuity of liturgical tradition (and lack of it) as evidenced by the liturgical manuscripts from the eighth century to the tenth; the transference of eighthand ninth-century books from northern to southern centers exclusively until about the time of King ^Ethelstan, after which southern books are often seen to be conveyed northwards; the liturgical or quasi-liturgical use of the hagiographical libellus containing a uita and sometimes benedictions and homilies; the contribution of the Celtic (especially Breton) Church to the English Benedictine renewal, as evidenced by a variety of works of canon law, computistics, and hagiography and poetry; the function of documentary materials added to liturgical manuscripts to which a list of Gospel books so augmented is appended ; the presence of Old English in liturgical books as evidence of a trend which accelerated in the eleventh century before the Conquest to provide vernacular equivalencies for Latin texts; the categorization and function of a variety of liturgical books; the production of liturgical manuscripts in both its material and political dimensions; the implications for scribal practice and scriptorial identity of a "liturgical script." This is a most important compendium of English liturgical materials, one that will undoubtedly take its place beside Edmund Bishop's Litúrgica Histórica. Like that work, it will provoke further scholarship on the considerable body of Anglo-Saxon liturgical materials, materials which Dumville shows not merely to illuminate the development of church ritual, but also to corroborate and authenticate the processes of English intellectual and cultural history. Patrick W. Conner West Virginia University La Pologne dans l'Eglise médiévale. By Jerzy Kloczowski. [Collected Studies Series, CS 417.] (Brookfield, Vermont: Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Co. 1993. Pp. x, 321. $94.95.) The author of these collected studies is well known to readers of this journal and to students of ecclesiastical history in general. Jerzy Kloczowski is, among his other appointments, Professor of History of Polish Culture at the Catholic University of Lublin and a long-time Corresponding Fellow of the American Catholic Historical Association. His substantive scholarship, his editorial creativity and industriousness, his methodological innovations, and—especially for many outside Poland—his support ofyounger scholars have marked him as one of the major figures of our profession. BOOK REVIEWS 523 This volume brings together eighteen studies—in French, English, and Italian— published between 1962 and 1988 on the subject of medieval Poland in the context of the larger history of east central Europe. All originally appeared in west European or North American journals and series, in publications in the western languages in Poland, or—in many cases—in conference volumes. To list the individual items included here would do little more than reveal the enormous scope of Professor Kloczowski's interests; instead it is more appropriate to identify some of the themes reflected in these essays and articles. One important topic is the cultural and spiritual integration ofPoland into the Christian civilization of medieval Europe. This is addressed particularly effectively in the first essay, which focuses upon the crucial period of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Another theme is the institutional history of the Church in medieval Poland: the structure of ecclesiastical provinces and the growth of parishes.Yet a third theme, which indeed has been central to Kloczowski's major scholarly contributions in Polish, is the monastic and mendicant movements in Poland. This is addressed in both general studies and in essays focused more specifically on such varied groups as the Canons Regular, the Cistercians, the Carthusians, the Dominicans and Franciscans, and others. Given the important contributions which Professor Kloczowski has made over the years to the cultural and religious geography ofPoland and the region,it is good to have a number ofarticles which provide a summary of his approach, in particular item XI,his geographic...