Studies in Medieval Significs and the Philology of Culture by Friedrich Ohly, Sensus Spiritualis (review)

REVIEWS 275 spirituality all the way to John Donne. Ritual and Rood is very well written. Its problems are largely structural. The book really seems to be about the Ruthwell Cross, with interesting essays added at the beginning and the end. Even though Ó Carragáin’s conjectures about the Ruthwell Cross may not be conclusive, they are worth considering. This book is helpful for those with a serious interest in liturgy and early Christian art. Ó Carragáin’s work could be considered a study in art history, liturgy, or theology, and even poetry. He recognizes what many scholars have forgotten, that these categories cannot be separated for most of the history of the church. Ó Carragáin’s methodology and his systematic and comprehensive approach are exemplary. BENJAMIN DE LEE, History, UCLA Friedrich Ohly, Sensus Spiritualis. Studies in Medieval Significs and the Philology of Culture, ed. Samuel P. Jaffe, trans. Kenneth J. Northcott (Chicago : University of Chicago Press 2005) 424 pp., ill. This volume contains a significant selection of Friederic Ohly’s essays translated into English. Friederic Ohly (1914–1996) is recognized as a major contributor to medieval studies, and his observations and thoughts were and still are very influential among medieval and Renaissance scholars. He is well known for his hermeneutic method, applied to words and images. His philology opened new possibilities for studying written and visual documents and materials within what Ohly defined as humanum, a term chosen to render concrete his theoretical method of investigation. In fact his philological-historical inquiry is located within the complex context and metacontext of human production, where textual, disciplinary, and cultural details are always deeply connected. The essays collected in this volume share a focus on the role of nature to medieval thinkers: nature was thought to be a diaphanous screen that receives God’s sacred mysteries, both obscuring and illuminating them, and from this derives the medieval conception of allegory. The first essay, “On The Spiritual Sense of the Word in the Middle Ages,” deals with the relationship between words and images in connection with their multiple levels of meaning. The focus is the allegorical production, both written and visual, which theoretically contains the basic elements of spirituality in the Middle Ages. The second essay, “Typology as a Form of Historical Thought,” is dedicated to methodological issues important to medieval studies. The focus is the investigation of medieval methods of organizing knowledge as a typical medieval form of thought. The third essay, “The Problem of Medieval Significs and Hugh of Folieto’s ‘Dove Miniature,’” although dealing with the allegorical or metaphorical ways of organizing a message in medieval artistic and literary productions, is a more specific study: Ohly’s interpretation of miniatures applied to the works of Hugh of Fouilloy (Hugo de Folieto), in particular De rota verae religionis (concerning the Wheel of the True Religion). The fourth essay, “The Cathedral as Temporal Space: On the Duomo of Siena,” is dedicated to the symbolism of the cathedral of Siena. The fifth essay, “‘Dew and Pearl’: A lecture,” deals with the figures of Dew and Pearl used as metaphors in medieval poetry and painting. This essay investigates also how Christian allegories were applied to classical myth. The fifth essay, “Poetry as the Necessary Fruit of a REVIEWS 276 Suffering,” focuses on how different emotional components are inherent in poetic production and changed over time. The seventh essay, “A Philologist’s Remarks on Memoria,” deals with memory, a very broad and important motif of artistic and literary production. Particular attention is given to poetry considered as a vessel for remembering the history of human feeling, experiences, and expectations. The book ends with an essay by the editor Samuel P. Jaffe that illustrates Ohly’s system of thought and his humanum philological method of investigation. The essays contained in the book are very rich with references and cross-references, but are sometimes difficult to follow. The volume, however , is valuable resource for scholars of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. ROSSELLA PESCATORI, Italian, UCLA Kate van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 2005) xiv + 322 pp., 30 color plates, 18 musical examples. Music has...