Runaway Religious in Medieval England c.1240-1540 (review)

206 Reviews unconvincingly—as a counter-example against the prevailing view. But the psychological argument about Ademar is sustained, and remains outstanding. For the careful attention he has shown to manuscriptal/revisional differences, Landes should earn the respect of every medievalist. He sets a wonderful methodological example, even though he never indicates any comparable manuscriptal puzzles elsewhere—as with Luitprando di Cremona, for one example—to show how other scholars have been applying similar artfulness to non-Aquitainean materials. I a m thinking particularly of P. Chiesa ed., Luitprando di Cremona e il Codice di Frisinga Clm 6388 (Corpus Christianorum: Autographa Medii Aevi 1, Turnholt, 1994), esp. pp. 73-9. Landes' discussions of his own predecessors' methods, however, those of Louis Sallet and James Grier for two, are excellent. For all Landes reveals concerning one particular liturgy, he tells us very little about the much more mainstream. For those of us who occasionally sing the ninth century Veni Creatus Spiritus in church, w e might have valued, for it, and for other 'centre-pieces' of the liturgy, some useful commentary or overview. In terms of the debate on the millennium, indeed, the Veni concludes with those significant lines, popularly translated: 'that through the Ages all along, this may be our endless song'. But, if w e are not told this by Landes, that people were singing themselves out of an apocalyptic mentality, we do learn from him that chronicling during the tenth century involved one mode of discourse useful in dampening wild anxiety—engendering projections about the near future. That is something for us to ponder in our context. But there is plenty more in Landes' wonderful book which is useful for assessing our own condition. Garry Trompf School of Studies in Religion University of Sydney Logan, F. Donald, Runaway Religious in Medieval England c. 1240-1540 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 4th series), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996; cloth; pp. xii, 301; 1 figure, 2 plates, 2 tables; R.R.P. AU$95.00. 'To drag up stories of human failure and misery merely as entertaining anecdotes or, worse, to satisfy prurient interests is not particularly historical: i t runs the real danger of distorting and, perhaps, misrepresenting the past.' (p. xv) Reviews 207 Professor F. Donald Logan's latest work on apostasy could not be described as a mere collection of scandalous stories reflecting human misery and failure, although the reader may disagree with Logan's prefatory implication that the past might ever be represented without some 'distortion'. Rather, Logan provides the reader of his Runaway Religious in Medieval England c.l240-1540 with new and fascinating material detailing the specific socio-legal repercussions for those religious who, despite making the formal profession, found life within the enclosure of a monastery, convent or priory impossible to bear. Readers of Runaway Religious will recognise the meticulous uncovering of English writs and the meanings that may be drawn from them that characterised Logan's previous work on excommunication and the secular arm in medieval England. Runaway Religious is divided into six chapters, and includes a number of useful appendices. Logan opens the book with a resume of how religious profession was undertaken during the medieval period, and then describes both legal and religious meanings of apostasy. The following chapter deals with the legal alternatives to apostasy open to disaffected religious, such as a request for transfer from his or her religious house, while the third chapter concentrates on the numbers of apostates recorded for the 300 years explored in Logan's book, together with possible reasons for the runaways' discontent. The fourth section details the secular legal procedures of recovering apostates, while the penultimate chapter attends to the return and reconciliation of apostates within their abandoned milieu. The book closes with a detailed study of the 1530s. The appendices include an example of monastic petition for the issue of the writ De Apostata Capiendo, an example of that writ, a list of cases indicating religious use of the secular arm independent of royal writ, the Compendium Compertorum of 1535-6 and its list of disaffected religious, and, most interestingly, a register of apostates according to their religious affiliation...