Saints and their miracles in late antique Gaul (review)

292 Reviews family organization can be found only by searching under titles such as 'religious life', or 'spiritual jurisdiction'. A chapter explicitly considering the relationship of the Church to the social structures of family and gender would immeasurably enrich the analysis. To criticize so encyclopaedic a work on these grounds is not to deny its value. It is undoubtedly a splendid resource. Perhaps the fact that it leaves us questioning the best ways to approach the study of society and Christianity in the later Middle Ages should be counted as a virtue rather than a fault. Philippa C. Maddern Department of History University of Western Australia Van Dam, Raymond, Saints and their miracles in late antique Gaul, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993; cloth and paper; pp. xi, 349; 1 map; R.R.P. US$49.50 (cloth), $16.95 (paper). Of the works of that most prolific of early medieval writers, Gregory of Tours, only his Histories has been readily available in English translation until recently. The appearance of translations of Gregory's Life of the fathers, Glory of the confessors, and Glory of the martyrs, the latter two translated by Van D a m , has helped to remedy this lack. This new book completes the translation of Gregory's hagiographical works with his Suffering and miracles of the martyr St Julian (VJ) and Miracles of the bishop St Martin (VM). Van D a m also translates Venantius Fortunatus's Miracles of St Hilary, an unattributed Passio of St Julian and Sermo on St Martin, and the inscriptions from the Martinellus manuscripts. Providing these translations is the first goal of this book and it is these which will give it an extremely long and useful 'shelf-life'. They comprise only the second half of the book, however. In four preceding chapters Van D a m seeks ' . . . to provide some orientation to the usefulness and implications of Gregory's and Fortunatus's miracle stories' (p. 5), employing studies within the field, especially by Peter Brown, as well as comparative studies. In the discussion of saints, cults, miracles, and pilgrimage a great deal is written about Gregory of Tours by a person who knows his works extremely well. W h e n reading Brown, one was conscious that he, probably unlike oneself, had read all of Gregory's at that time mostly untranslated works. Reviews 293 Van Dam's enjoinder that: 'It is therefore most important that m o d e m historians not overestimate the episcopal authority of Gregory at Tours (or of other bishops elsewhere in Gaul), and that they recognize the difficult and ongoing process whereby bishops first established and then constandy struggled to maintain their authority' (pp. 71-2) corroborates Brown's brilliant Stenton Lecture: Relics and social status in the age of Gregory of Tours. Yet Van D a m makes the supporting evidence more accessible, explaining how Gregory obtained the bishopric for which he was not an obvious choice and demonstrating the limits of his power within the province of Tours. Van D a m also goes beyond Brown to point out that saints' cults could rise and fall in popularity and that historians should not overestimate the posthumous influence of St Martin of Tours in sixthcentury Gaul either. A full discussion is offered of bodily miracles, analysed in terms of 'the interplay between body and community', 'the proper location and distribution of power in society', and 'the theological significance of illness and healing' (p. 85). Basically, physical and spiritual health were seen as one in the sources under consideration. Note, however, that, for all of Gregory's exhortations that healing should be sought from the saints rather than doctors, he had a doctor, and eventellsus his name: Armentarius (VM, 2.1). There are quite a few vignettes of Gregory's health included in the translations, for example 'My own headache' (VJ, 25) in which Gregory soaked his head in the holy well of St Ferreolus and got better. However, can the literary aspect of such miracles be dismissed to the extent that it seems to be by Van Dam. As G. M . Cook pointed out in her excellent introduction to the Life of St Epiphanius...