The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (review)

Reviews 201 Parergon 20.1 (2003) The study concludes with a very useful checklist of ‘first and significant editions’ of women’s writings and a comprehensive bibliography that includes both manuscript and printed sources. Besides bringing to light many examples of individual writings unfamiliar to the general audience (the short diary of the life and journeys of Marguerite de la Motte Fouqué, Comtesse de Sanzay, for example), Broomhall’s work suggests many research possibilities. Those women writers considered exceptional, like Marguerite de Navarre and Louise Labé, take on a different significance when considered in the contexts recreated here. Tracy Adams French Department University of Auckland Buc, Philippe, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2001; cloth; pp. xi; 272; RRP US$39.50; ISBN 0691016046. This interesting study argues that the concept of ‘ritual,’ derived from socialscientific theory, which has been influential in the analysis of certain political and social events in medieval history, is ultimately an inappropriate designator for what is actually a much less homogeneous category of happenings. Central to this book is a scepticism about the status of knowledge, and a reminder that what contemporary scholars call ‘rituals’ are actually accounts in texts from various genres. From this Buc moves to the assertion that there ‘can only be anthropological readings of … medieval textual practices’ (p. 4), which will be uncontroversial to many circles. The first half of the book consists of analyses of four case studies of medieval ‘rituals’, working backwards from the tenth to the fourth centuries. Chapter One considers Luidprand of Cremona’s role in the writing of Ottonian hegemony, and the existence and status of ‘good rituals’ and ‘bad rituals’. Luidprand’s Antapodosis exalted the Ottonians and blackened the reputations of their rivals (including the Carolingians, the Byzantine emperors, and the families of Berengar II of Friuli and Hugh of Arles). ‘Rituals’ employed by the Ottonians, according to Luidprand, ‘demonstrate the existence of a vertical bond tying these humans to God’ (p. 21). Rituals employed by their rivals are mere manipulations serving factional interests. 202 Reviews Parergon 20.1 (2003) Chapter Two considers one of Luidprand’s villains, King Arnulf of Carinthia, and Bavarian sources including the continuator of the Annals of Fulda, which cover the same events as Luidprand but commend Arnulf, not the Ottonians. Here Buc asserts that ‘struggles within Carolingian political culture occurred more through depictions of ceremonies than through their actual performance’ (p. 58). Other themes explored in this chapter are the ‘liturgification’ of primarily secular activities such as court ceremonial, warfare and leisure sports; and the relation of royal males to females. Chapter Three examines the work of Gregory of Tours and the way in which saints and kings relate to rites in the Merovingian world. Buc notes that ‘Rituals are so present in Gregory of Tours’ works that one might almost fail to see them’ (p. 93). Because Gregory’s relationships with royalty sprang from ‘an ecclesiology inseparable from conflict over political issues’ (p. 95) he is not partisan like Luidprand. Royal rituals are rarely (if ever) wholly positive in his writings. Moreover, there is a distinction between rites performed by saints and those performed by secular leaders: those performed by saints are consensual and unifying, and show no sign of the manipulation and self-interest so likely to enter secular ceremonies. The concluding section of the first half of the book examines accounts of martyrdom in late Roman texts. Martyrdom here is viewed within the broader context of spectacles and games that were an integral part of Roman public life. Buc notes that ‘given its importance for both the civic group and the Christian group, the spectacle of death in a public space could only be contentious’ (p. 135). His argument here is actually crucial for the thrust of the second half of the book: the Christians did not control the fact of the public executions, but they could assert a privileged interpretation, a transcendental meaning ‘of which God denied understanding to their opponents’ (pp. 139-40). Thesecondhalfofthebookisasurvey,fromapproximately1500tothepresent, of the development of social scientific methodologies which Buc sees primarily as secularised theologies. He begins with...