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Reviews 261 Parergon 20.1 (2003) period’s theology – a method shared by Anselm and Roscelin alike. In any collection of essays of this kind, some degree of overlap and repetition is inevitable. This is the case especially in the second half of the volume, where the central problems of early nominalism are considered from several angles. Perhaps also inevitable in such a collection is a lack of thematic unity; while the second half of the volume focuses consistently on Roscelin’s theology, there is less thematic coherence in the organisation of the first five essays. Nevertheless, the whole collection provides nuanced glimpses into various aspects of twelfth-century thought, careful analyses of a range of theological texts, and, cumulatively, a significant reappraisal of early nominalism. The book’s greatest merit consists in its editions (in most cases, critical editions) of previously unpublished texts: a fragment of Guibert of Nogent’s Monodiae (Ch. 3, pp. 123-4); a series of epitaphs on Abelard and Heloise (Ch. 5, pp. 61-7); the early draft of Anselm’s De incarnatione verbi (Ch. 6, pp. 825 ); the anonymous, possibly Anselmian, dialogue on the incarnation (Ch. 6, pp. 86-98); and two short theological works, possibly by Roscelin: a tract on the similarities and differences between creatures and the creator (Ch. 9, p. 359), and the rationalistic treatise De unitate et trinitate divina (Ch. 10, pp. 88-90). This collection of texts alone makes Reason and Belief a useful resource for those working on the period. Benjamin Myers School of Humanities James Cook University Ozment, Steven, Ancestors: The Loving Family in Old Europe, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2001; paper; pp. 162; 10 b/w illustrations; RRP US$14.95; ISBN 0674004841. In this evocatively titled work, Stephen Ozment is inspired by the desire to advance understanding of family life in the past as a basis for weathering what he terms ‘the family crisis’ of the present. He argues that people need good historical studies, because knowledge of the past helps people make sense of the family problems of ‘modern society’(pp. 2, 4, 11). Ozment’s purpose is polemical: only if people realise that the family in the past was a loving bedrock can ‘a modern age faced with a family crisis ... draw their truest knowledge of self and the 262 Reviews Parergon 20.1 (2003) courage to soldier on’ (pp. 111–2). For me, the book’s problems begin with the assumption that it is possible to talk about ‘the modern family’ and ‘the family’ in what he terms ‘Old Europe’. There is no one family, as Ozment assumes from Cambridge, Mass.; even within the USA there is an infinite variety of family forms. People’s ideas about who their family is differ markedly. Ozment attempts to define ‘the modern family’ as characterised by four features: the separation of home and workplace, the departure of servants from the family and a new prominence of the nuclear family, the family’s withdrawal from public life, and a growing recognition of spousal equality (pp. 3-4). He thus assumes a heterosexual couple and their children, yet, as we know, even in heterosexual families there are variations in form. Remarriages and step-relationships create complex bonds between individual family members. Furthermore, there are families of single parents and their children, lesbian and gay couples and children. Family may be those who take some responsibility for each other over their lifetimes. The book begins with a brief account of the main issues raised by the historians who wrote of the history of the family in the 1960s and 1970s, many of whom hailed ‘a brighter family history’ in the sixteenth century (p. 43). Yet this seems curiously dated. Twenty years ago, a book attacking de Mause’s 1974 characterisation of the history of childhood as ‘a nightmare from which we have only just begun to awaken’ by an extensive discussion of infanticide (criminal behaviour of a few, typical of every era), swaddling (a reasonable practice which may have helped calm infants) and wet nursing (popular among only a small minority of the upper classes) may have been a timely intervention in the debate about whether parents...

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