From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 by Rachel Fulton (review)

REVIEWS 253 fact that Scandinavia is somehow reduced to Denmark, it is also strange to refer “the general reader” to Barbara Rosenwein’s medieval textbook (379 n. 71)— not to diminish its excellent quality—rather than a specific monograph on the Gregorian reform and the ensuing crisis, when the point is so crucial to their argument. Reference to Eric Christiansen’s Northern Crusades is equally missing . In conclusion, the authors define Scandinavian involvement in Europe through political interferences, military conquests and settlements. (393) In this respect, integration at levels other than politico-religious, be they cultural or social, is not considered. All in all, despite an attempt to unify the narrative, the book lacks consistency . Three themes are intertwined. The first is the story of the political, territorial and military feuds between Scandinavian states, and the British and north Atlantic Isles (chaps. 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10). Such a focus often keeps the study at a factual level, away from social, economical or cultural undercurrents. In these chapters, the very clear but linear accounts come at the expense of a more original discussion. The second theme focuses specifically on navigation, which made the Vikings so efficient in achieving their goals. Chapters 5 and 11 offer an interesting, in-depth and up-to-date presentation that contrasts with the linear narrative. They are strangely situated, however, one in the middle, the other before the concluding chapter, and break the flow of the text. The third aspect, the role of Christianity among Scandinavians, particularly the Danes, emerges recurrently in the book to find a conclusion in the last chapter, but is often lost in the detailed political and territorial discussions that take the most part of the book. In the end, we have a well-illustrated and informed presentation of Viking history in the British Isles, the Irish Sea, and the North Atlantic, useful for students of these regions, Scotland in particular. The authors’ insistence on northern Europe reminds us of the importance a geographical area often neglected in general medieval histories. This emphasis is detrimental to other regions of Europe, however, where Vikings were also active and influent. With this in mind, unfortunately, Viking Empires does not overtake Peter Sawyer ’s Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, as an introduction to the Viking age in Europe. ANNE-LAURANCE CAUDANO, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto Rachel Fulton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200, new paperback edition (New York: Columbia University Press 2005) 676 pp. It is a familiar story to medievalists as well as other scholars of religion and art: sometime in the high Middle Ages, Christians’ devotion to the Son of God shifted from focusing on Christ the King to the suffering Jesus. Thus there proliferated pietas, crucifixes bearing the tortured body of Jesus, and various forms of imitatio Christ. What remains less known is the story behind this transition—the how and why. In her award-winning From Judgment to Passion (2002), now in paperback, Rachel Fulton attempts and succeeds in answering these questions in a beautifully-woven piece of intellectual and religious history, a story of medieval devotion and theological inquiry from the ninth to twelfth centuries. The book is divided into two parts. The first, Christus Patiens, examines the REVIEWS 254 revision of Christian history on account of the disappointed reaction to the millenium’s silent, uneventful passage. Chapter 1 examines the Carolingian effort to convert the Saxons from paganism to Christianity. Fulton undertakes a close analysis of both the Saxon Gospel (the Heliand) and Paschachius Radbertus ’s treatise on the Eucharist and argues convincingly for a connection between Radbertus’s treatise and the problems of educating the Saxons about the Eucharist. The Carolingian understanding of Christ emerges—he is Christ the judge, one who evokes awe. The book moves forward into the early eleventh century, the period in which medieval scholarship has located the shift in devotion to Christ and Mary. With her second chapter, “Apocalypse, Reform and the Suffering Savior,” Fulton begins to answer the when, how, and why of this transition. Agreeing on the date (the eleventh century), she connects the devotional shift to...