Medieval cats (review)

306 Short notices sufficiendy on the way in which the originaltitleand text focussed on the relevance of its subject's life and work to wide audiences today. As Halkin stresses in this most mature work, Erasmus offered his contemporaries the chance for 'inward change', a return to a religion of love and demand for total committal of self, holding nothing back. Such a sophisticated treatment moves us far beyond such descriptions of him as 'finicky, peevish, spiteful, in his early years sycophantic to a nauseating degree', as one 1960s critic held. For, of course, 'Erasmus always returned to essentials, to inward religion, and to die Gospel'. This presentation of 'the Erasmian message ... of critical Christianity' is the Halkin achievement, as he shows how Erasmus combined 'an unceasing appeal to personal prayer' with merciless satire of dubious pilgrimages, relics, and imprudent vows. His very lively 'extentialist' view of religion clearly confused and frightened many of his contemporaries, whereas it now speaks most immediately to us; for example, as in his concepts of die emancipation of women, of the marriage state for ill-suited clerics, of possible divorce, and of various other practical reforms, alongside his more mystical philosophy of Christ. In short, Halkin maintains diat die satirist and reformer Erasmus is at one with the spiritual man, a passionate being whose life had a fundamental unity and speaks very clearly to our 'civilization in peril'. Certainly his European temper, reforming zeal, Christian humanism, and critical Christianity alike make him perhaps the most perdurable in his appeal of all the Reformation humanists. J. S. Ryan Department of English University of N e w England Herbert, Susan, Medieval cats, London, Thames and Hudson, 1995; clodi; 31 plates; R.R.P. AUS$29.99. Susan Herbert's five books are elegant variations on a single joke. And, it is a good joke. A painter by training, she produces exquisite picture books which insert cats into familiar artistic contexts. This volume lovingly recreates the art of medieval manuscripts, principally from die fifteenth century and featuring prominently die Limbourg brodiers' Tres riche heures de Jean de France, due de Berry. Short notices 307 I especially enjoyed 'St John on Pattnos' and 'Moses and the burning bush', complete with Yahweh as a cat, and the delightful domestic scene 'Attending at a birth'. There is no text in this book apart from a witty onepage preface which reports the 'sensational discovery' by a group of workmen in 1991 of the paintings. This postmodern jokiness, familiar to all through Umberto Eco's The name ofthe rose and sundry other works, has not yet lost its charm. The astounding conclusion reached, 'that some of the greatest masterpieces of miniature painting and illumination hadfirstbeen sketched with cats as stand-ins for the characters in thefinalpaintings . . . [leading] to a complete reassessment of the role of the cat in medieval life' (p. 5) has one chuckling. For cat lovers of all ages. Carole Cusack School of Studies in Religion University of Sydney Lambert, Malcolm, Medieval heresy: popular movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, Oxford and Cambridge Mass., Blackwell, 1992; 2nd ed. paper; pp. xv, 449, 12 maps, 11 illustrations; R.R.P. AUS$49.95. Malcolm Lambertfirstpublished his survey of medieval heresy in 1977. This second edition is still the best guide to all the many varieties of heterodox belief in the Middle Ages. Once more Lambert summarizes scholarship, from the very old to the very new, not only in the Anglophone world but also in countries as obvious as France and as neglected as Croatia. In his long, but never gratuitous, footnotes he gives succindy what he thinks is the good and the bad of almost two hundred years of research into unorthodoxy and persecution. H e also takes account of the importance that anthropology and other disciplines have had on how we now view medieval heretics. This was far from obvious fifteen years ago. The bibliography, though idiosyncratic and somewhat limited, remains the most convenient starting point for student and teacher alike if coming to the study of medieval heresy for thefirsttime. Lambert now begins his survey with the elevendi-century heretics at Orleans, running through the Cathars and...