Medieval exegesis (review)

254 Reviews The third section investigates the economic effects of the crusades in the eastern Mediterranean. Olivia Remie Constable studies the terminology for 'merchant hostelries' to show the changing commercial infrastructure for long distance trade in the Near East as European traders increased. Angeliki E. Laiou (with Cecile Morrisson) then argues that the crusades and the crusader states played a greater role in Byzantine Mediterranean trade than previously thought. David Jacoby investigates the economic changes in Latin Romania after the Fourth Crusade. H e identifies a redirection away from Constantinople and towards the west, facilitated by the rise of Venice as an economic and political power. Finally, the fourth section examines the artistic and architectural impact of the crusades in Byzantine and Islamic regions. Oleg Grabar's essay on the crusades and Islamic art is fairly general, while Charalambos Bouras argues that Frankish architecture generally left little influence on Byzantine architecture, although the Morea was a notable exception. This emphasis on the Morea continues in Sharon E. J. Gerstel's essay on the influence ofthe Frankish conquest on the monumental art ofthe Morea. Like many other scholars at present, Gerstel sees the Morea as a particularly rich site for artistic symbiosis between Latins and Greeks. In conclusion, these -essays are generally quite specific studies which rarely stray from their chosen subject matter. They add to our body of case studies and, indeed, they will most likely be read and appreciated as discrete case studies. Notwithstanding the historiographical study of western scholarship at the beginning, the volume rarely ventures into the wider area of consequences or broader historiographical trends. Elizabeth Freeman School ofHistory and Classics University of Tasmania Lubac, Henri de, Medieval exegesis (Ressourcement: retrieval & renewal in Catholic thought), Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1998-2000; paper; vols. 1-2; RRP US$45.00 per volume; ISBN 0802841457 (v.i), 0802841465 (v.2). The most characteristic feature of the study of the Bible in the medieval We was an emphasis on the mystical and spiritual interpretation of the sacred text. Almost all medieval authors accepted the premise that there were multiple levels ofmeaning in the Bible, and that the literal or historical sense was only a startingpoint in Biblical interpretation. Words, objects, events, actions - all had a set of Reviews 255 deeper symbolic meanings arising from the divine origin ofthe Scriptures. These meanings were to be found particularly in the Old Testament, where they prefigured the life and teachings of Christ and the establishment of the Church. Most of the Western commentators on the Bible, over more than ten centuries, took this as their guiding principle and devoted many thousands of pages to the careful delineation of different types ofmeaning - the literal, the allegorical, and the moral in particular. There is an obvious gulfbetween this and modern textual criticism of the Bible. Beryl Smalley, in her standard work on The Study ofthe Bible in the Middle Ages, is representative of much modern scholarship. In her view, there was no Biblical scholarship 'in the strict sense' before the thirteenth century. Medieval monastic writers 'subordinated scholarship to mysticism and propaganda', and preferred 'subjective modes of interpretation' to 'objective' textual criticism. She describes the spiritual interpretation as 'fanciful' and 'extravagant', and reserves her approval for those writers w h o focused closely on the literal meaning of the text in something approaching the modern sense. More sympathetic modern scholars - among them Bischoff, McNally and Spicq - have also tended to focus on the development of the historical, critical sense in medieval Biblical scholarship. Henri de Lubac's massive work, which originally appeared in French between 1959 and 1963, had a very different purpose. Rather than writing off medieval exegesis as bizarre, senseless and strange, de Lubac aimed to 'appreciate the past on its own terms' and to provide 'an historical and literal study of the ancient commentators on Scripture'. His motive for doing this was essentially a theological one; as a member of the ressourcement movement of the 1930s and 1940s, he was strongly committed to a return to the patristic and medieval sources of Catholic theology, in order to draw out their meaning for the contemporary world. De Lubac was an important figure in the twentieth...