Madness in Medieval Law and Custom ed. by Wendy J. Turner (review)

REVIEWS 267 also its meaning as well. Finally, the subject matter of this book is the aristocracy (both ecclesiastical and lay), and almost nothing is said of other strata of society. This oversight is likely an artifact of the sources, though one wonders whether Livingstone’s argument for companionate marriages could be made even more compelling if other echelons were considered. Naturally, these final two points are to lament a book Livingstone did not write; taken as whole, the book she did write is a very good one indeed. J. MICHAEL COLVIN, History, University of Southern California Madness in Medieval Law and Custom, ed. Wendy J. Turner (Leiden: Brill 2010) x + 252 pp. This compilation of eight essays is an important addition to the literature on madness in the Middle Ages, particularly as it pertains to the treatment of mental impairments in the legal traditions of Europe. The collection is rather uneven in terms of organization, contextualization in the wider scholarly conversation , geographical and temporal coverage, and authorship. Nonetheless, it contains useful discussions of medieval mental afflictions as well as considerations of how they were understood, explained, and contained in contexts ranging from the everyday lives of ordinary people to the administrative work of bishops and the workings of the corporate crown. It also has the merit of consistently questioning the application of modern terminologies and pathologies to the past while avoiding an overly positivist approach. Wendy J. Turner’s introduction explains that this work grew out of three years’ worth of conference panels on madness. Unsurprisingly, then, it reads like a conversation among its contributors. While this is one of the book’s major points of strength, with crosscurrents occurring in many of its essays, there are places in which the conversation becomes repetitive and diffuse. Even if each essay needs to stand on its own for those who will not read the entire volume , a firmer hand in winnowing out reiterations (perhaps replacing them with footnoted references to earlier occurrences of similar content) would have been beneficial. Additionally, a number of the essays could have been improved by a clearer sense of focus. Turner’s introduction lays out the basics of the terminology used in the collection, a survey of the literature on madness and the law, the overall structure of the anthology, and brief characterizations of each essay. In describing how the book as a whole hangs together, she notes that the first five papers “deal with the legal standing and treatment of the mentally disabled in England, France, and Byzantium.” The last five papers “look more specifically at the image of the mentally afflicted as a symbol of appropriate or inappropriate emotion within society, on the part of royalty, and as a symbol of a sinner or an innocent within ecclesiastical literature,” with the fourth and fifth essays partaking in both discussions (12). The first essay, Turner’s own “Town and Country: A Comparison of the Treatment of the Mentally Disabled in Late Medieval English Common Law and Chartered Boroughs,” describes developments in the practice of wardship for the mentally impaired. On the whole, mentally disabled people without an inheritance remained in the care of their families throughout the period, but the situation for propertied people in this category was different. Prior to the midthirteenth century, she explains, the sources tell us that such wardships had led REVIEWS 268 to a situation in which “heirs ... had been mistreated or disenfranchised,” prompting the crown—and, later, chartered cities, towns, and boroughs—to assert the right to appoint guardians who were less likely to profit from the misfortunes of their charges. About a century later, however, a proliferation of wills in urban areas would enable family members to “exclude mentally disabled heirs or ... name specific persons as guardians of mentally incapacitated heirs” (19). Turner notes that, as a result, there sometimes was confusion as to who was responsible for a ward or conflict over who should profit from such wardships—including quarrels between the king and the officials in charge of chartered areas. Margaret Trenchard-Smith’s “Insanity, Exculpation and Disempowerment in Byzantine Law” examines the legal sources and systems available in the eastern Roman Empire, giving careful...