Church and society in late medieval England (review)

290 Reviews violence, including rape, against women, may not appear to be proven conclusively. However, the male texts which have been examined posit a close relationship between intellectual and sexual domination, and portray women as inviting sexual advances no matter what diey say and as generally complicit after rape, which strengthens Solterer's contention. Christine's invocation of the 'wise female' models of die classical Cumaean Sibyl and the biblical Sophia offers a way in which a woman desiring to criticize male culture may do so widiout herself becoming a victim of the male perspective, and being ignored. The audiority of the female voice is examined in Chapter Seven, 'A libelous affair', with regard to La Response des dames faicte a maistre Alain, attributed to 'Jeanne, Katherine, and Marie' (p. 179). Alain Chartier defended his poem Belle Dame sans merci by saying it was fiction. The women responded that fictions could still be libellous. Thefinalfemale figure considered, Clotilde de Surville, may or may not have existed, and die conclusion seems to be that asfictionshave reality, so she has significance, wheUier she is a literary hoax or not. This book is interesting and the argument is judicious and well supported by the evidence. If it has a fault, it is diat it is written in a certain type of late twentieth-century academic language which occasionally has the reader begging for plain English. But Solterer's point is precisely that there are fashions in language; aldiough, one might be concerned as to whatrealityis created by such language. Carole M . Cusack School of Studies in Religion University of Sydney Swanson, R. N., Church and society in late medieval England, Oxford and Cambridge Mass., Basil Blackwell, 1993; paperback; pp. xii, 434; R.R.P. AUS$49.95 [distributed in Australia by Allen & Unwin]. Swanson begins his preface by deconstructing his own title. Even to identify 'church' and 'society' separately in medieval Europe is, he admits, anachronistic. Christendom was usually thought to comprise society. His task therefore becomes to describe this ambivalent culture, and to analyse the relationships between strictly ecclesiastical institutional structures and those of the wider Christian world. Reviews 291 Describe them he does. His plan is imaginatively detailed, and the scale ofresearchimpressive. The book teems with information from national, regional, local, and individual perspectives, and encompasses almost the whole social hierarchy. Readers will find illuminating accounts of the structure and bureaucracy of the English Church, its legal rights and responsibilities, and its economic role as consumer, entrepreneur, and producer. O n a more individual level, Swanson uncovers fascinating material on, for example, career prospects of late-medieval ordinands, cases in local church courts, and even the threatened strike action of an underpaid curate. In sum, the book is a wonderful compendium of late-medieval English ecclesiology and piety. The preface aside, historiographical issues are rarely raised in this work. Yet it prompts us to rethink both 'Church' and 'society'. One of its strengths is its consistent refusal to treat the medieval English Church as primarily a spiritual institution, whose economic identity was homogeneous and hardly worth special mention. Commendably, Swanson does not limit his discussion to landholding, adding instead an exhaustive consideration of the 'knock-on' effects of ecclesiastical economics. These included employing labour, providing a market for high-quality goods and services, and allowing profitable opportunities for small-scale lay capitalists to lease property and farm churchtithes.Viewed in this light, earlier research on the economic importance of the Church begins to look narrow. Yet Swanson's implicit definitions of 'society' are themselves arguable. He is happiest when delineating society's economic face. Its other aspects render him less comfortable. A n unremittingly circumspect approach to the history of mentalites tends to leave his section on piety stranded at the point of inconclusive generality. Evidence for individual and collective beliefs is admittedly difficult. Yet, surely more could have been made of the many classes of material which begin to survive in reasonable quantity from just this period: books of hours, private devotional manuals, pilgrim's souvenirs, churchwardens' accounts, commonplace books, and so forth. Even odder is the sense that important social structures have been invisibly subsumed under the book's organization...