The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness and Honour by Markku Peltonen (review)

REVIEWS 257 between the secular and liturgical, Elaine Block discusses the incongruous decorations of choir stalls. While the carvings on the stalls sometimes represented and supported the liturgy, there also appear decorations of licentious or derogatory subjects. These dissolute themes, Block argues, emphasized the role of monks as intercessors who saved parishioners from hell and the evils represented . The more political aspect of liturgical art and the patron is dealt with by Lisa Victoria Ciresi and Alyce Jordan. More specifically, these are evaluations of the para-liturgical at the service of political propaganda. Ciresi examines the decorative program of the Shrine of the Three Kings, or Dreikönigschrein, a thirteenth-century German reliquary. The Last Judgment is portrayed in the upper registers, and the Baptism and the Adoration of the Magi in the bottom registers. The shrine’s major patron, Otto IV of Brunswick, is figured in various parts of the processions. An investigation of these previously disparate seeming zones reveals the shrine as a work of political propaganda promoting the piety of Otto’s rule. Ciresi further considers the multiple layers of meanings associated with the reliquary within the context of its setting. Along the same lines, Jordan analyzes the liturgical performance and its symbolic analogy in the monumental Gothic structure of Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. She proposes that this sacred space was also a site that commemorated the canonization of Louis IX through parts of its extensive stained glass programs. This space of liturgical performance thus became a multivalent symbol of the French monarchy’s sacral kingship. William Diebold contributes an examination into the typological and theological interrelationship of two very well known ivory panels of Moses Receiving the Law and the Apostle Thomas Probing Christ’s Side, both in the Staatliche Museen in Berlin. He argues that their iconographic program is a variant in the expressive parallels of the Old and New Testaments. The last portion of Diebold’s study focuses on the nationalistic influences which may have biased art historians and their study of the iconography of the panels. Such a challenging investigation brings the relevance of the study of medieval art into the arena of modern historiography in a bold and unexpected manner. As a whole, this collection of excellent essays further refines the use of the word liturgy, which refers to such a broad association of things. As some of these articles have shown, even the general exclusion of private devotional works must be questioned. Categorizations notwithstanding, it is difficult from our modern perspective to understand the extent to which religious belief permeated and structured the life of the medieval person. This work provides a valuable reference and a framework for further study, presenting readers with a series of challenging and stimulating questions. LISA TOM, Art History, UCLA Markku Peltonen, The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness and Honour (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 2003) x + 355 pp. Markku Peltonen examines ideas about courtesy, civility and politeness as a context for dueling. The duel of honor was a peculiar social institution of early modern Europe characterized by three aspects: it was a private or secret fight, REVIEWS 258 caused by an insult, and organized by a challenge to prove one’s sense of honor (not to overcome one’s opponent). It ultimately originated from medieval forms of single combat but was essentially a Renaissance creation: in Italy medieval forms of single combat were refashioned into the duel of honor, replacing the vendetta. A notion of honor underlay the duel, and required new behavior. The duel of honor was thus an integral part of the Renaissance ideology of courtesy and civility created within the new court culture with its emphasis on manners. Scholars have seen dueling as a medieval institution transformed or revived by Elizabethan chivalry, as the outcome of notions of honor that also brought about a new “civil” society, or as a channel for martial tendencies during peacetime . Peltonen rejects these interpretations, arguing that the duel of honor was distinct from medieval institutions and was actually the product of an imported ideology, Italian courtesy. He examines Italian courtesy manuals such as those by Castiglione, Guazzo, and Della Casa. The culture...