Mithridate/Mithridates by Conrad Gessner (review)

REVIEWS 257 which the authors often question the assumptions and arguments of their fellow contributors (Murray’s and Karras’s essays are the most obvious, but not only, examples). Such references thus pull readers into the ongoing dialogue on medieval gender and Christianity. Moreover, these connections demonstrate how seemingly disparate topics are, in actuality, tightly held together, both historically and methodologically. Thus each essay speaks not only deeply and intelligently but also broadly to questions of gender and Christianity in the Middle Ages. Where the collection may slightly miss the mark is in the stated attempt “to strive for a more generous definition of religious history, which has too often been a history of its most visible participants and dominant discourses” (10). The emphases on towering theological and clerical figures such as Tertullian and Aquinas, on monastic communities popular as relic sites, and on liturgical documents are more suggestive of the prevailing models and arenas of medieval Christianity; the book focuses more on “the most visible participants and dominant discourses” than on the marginal or invisible Christians and their practices. Certainly the volume examines medieval gender and religion in new and exciting ways; it is less obvious if the essays reach the ambitious goals laid out in the introduction. Even so, Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe presents an engaging and exciting contribution to the broad field medieval history, not only to those subfields interested in gender or religion. The authors effectively employ insights from art and architectural history, queer studies, and multiple other disciplines to demonstrate the fully integrated nature of medieval life and the artificial ways in which modern disciplines have so often fragmented our view of the medieval past. It is a work that will challenge scholars as adeptly as it introduces students both to the medieval past and to the terms, categories, and methodologies through which we approach it. DANA POLANICHKA, History, Wheaton College Conrad Gessner, Mithridate/Mithridates, ed. Bernard Colombar and Manfred Peters (Geneva: Librairie Droz 2009) 408 pp. The volume presents a critical edition of Conrad Gessner’s Mithridate, written in Latin, and its French translation. Mithridate is a very important text because it can be considered one of the pioneer works of general linguistics. This volume contains a detailed introduction that presents the author and his book, contextualizing them historically and critically evaluating all the possible sources. Conrad Gessner (1516–1565) was a follower of the Swiss reformer Zwingli; he was of humble origins but was able to become an outstanding scholar and an expert in both botany and zoology. He published several works on natural history, but his best known work is the Bibliotheca Universalis (Zurich 1545), a comprehensive guide to the literature of antiquity and modern times. Mithridate (Zurich 1555) is a fascinating work that attempts to offer information and explain the origin and the derivation of all the known languages of the world. Gessner lists the languages alphabetically, and after having given their geographical location, he provides a word list with their translation in Latin, or a complete translation (the Lord’s Prayer for example), or lists of REVIEWS 258 words of different languages with their correspondent Latin translation. This allows the reader to see similar roots and derivations among the languages. It interesting to observe that Gessner utilizes the methods of taxonomy and cataloguing typical of zoology or botany used in his previous Historia animalium (Zurich 1551). He starts his book with a discussion of the diversity of human languages and offers his critical apparatus, mostly based on the authority of Clement of Alexandria although in the epilogue he expresses gratitude to the French scholar Guillaume Postel and to his own teacher, Theodore Bibliander. He explains why he chooses Mithridates as the title of this book; Mithridates was that famous king of Pontus in northern Asia Minor, who for more than twenty-five years was able to face the Romans, until he was finally defeated by Pompey the Great in 63 BCE. As told in the Elder Pliny’s Natural History, Mithridates was able administer justice in all twenty-two languages spoken by the people who lived in his realm. He was known in the Renaissance and the following...