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228 Reviews Parergon 21.1 (2004) (especially perhaps the holy transvestites) are more likely to have provided idealised rather than realistic exemplars for medieval women. And who were these women who read and were influenced by female hagiography? Tracy assumes a degree of sureness about the audience of these vitae that many scholars would not feel confident to claim. Surely, too, these texts were read by men and by both men and women alongside male saints’ lives within the Gilte Legende, and carried meaning besides the gendered, though Tracy does not investigate or even acknowledge these matters. These omissions make the interpretative apparatus accompanying the translated texts very slanted, if nevertheless tightly focussed for the student reader pursuing feminist literary history. The annotated ‘Select bibliography’ following the essay is an appealing and useful part of the volume, listing manuscript sources and relevant reference works on medieval hagiography. Like the rest of the book, this part appears to have been aimed at the student or non-specialist scholar, though, given this orientation, some entries remain opaque and provide little assistance for the uninitiated. For example, Sparks’ Apocryphal Old Testament is described as ‘a comprehensive edition of the texts of the Old Testament Apocrypha’ (p.129) without explaining what this group of texts is, and the Acta sanctorum is described as ‘an extensive collection of hagiography in Latin detailing “the Acts of the Saints”’ (p. 129), without any reference to the compilational nature of many of these texts and their variable sources. Despite some omissions and the highly selective nature of this collection, this volume is valuable in that it provides to the non-reader of Middle English access to an important and understudied vernacular collection of hagiography as well as a specific reading of that material. Antonina Harbus Department of English University of Sydney Verhulst, Adriaan, The Carolingian Economy (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002; paperback; pp. 160; RRP£13.95; ISBN 0521004748. In the year 776 a man named Godebert bequeathed seventeen saltpans to the abbey of Lorsch, in Zeeland. In 821 the Emperor Louis the Pious adjudicated Reviews 229 Parergon 21.1 (2004) on a dispute between salt traders and producers from the Loire estuary, the outcome of which is unknown to us. From such scraps of evidence as these Professor Verhulst constructs a picture of the importance of the salt industry during the Carolingian period, identifying centres of activity not only in Zeeland and on the Atlantic coast, but also at the mouths of the Rhône and the Po. Indeed, one of the overriding impressions from Verhulst’s brief and effective summary of the Carolingian economy is the very paucity of evidence available to scholars wishing to assess the topic. Even by the standards of wider medieval research, ingenuity and imagination in the use of evidence appear to be just as important as disciplined archival activity for those working in this area. From the outset, the author emphasizes the specific nature of his mandate: to consider the functioning of the economy in those parts of Europe under Carolingian rule from c. 750 to c. 900. Areas outside the Empire (England, Scandinavia, Byzantium) are included only when their activities affected the Empire itself through trade or warfare. As part of a ‘textbook’ series, the work aims to provide an introduction to the topic for newcomers, while still making an original contribution to its field. The discussion is clearly and elegantly structured, taking into account factors such as demography, agricultural and craft production, trade, and monetary systems. Each chapter balances an overview of major themes with consideration of the relevant scholarly tradition. In a succinct concluding section, Verhulst argues that the eighth and ninth centuries witnessed a broad economic expansion, punctuated by several decades of stagnation from c. 830 to c. 850. Arriving at this point of view is no easy task. Naturally, surviving documents such as manorial or monastic inventories and polyptychs (the latter containing useful information on rents, services, and tenant obligations) are employed when possible. Elsewhere, conclusions must be based on archaeological findings, coinage, the development of place names, and even pollen analysis. Problems of evidence continually appear. Knowledge of glass production is based...

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