Essays on the Reconstruction of Medieval History ed. by Vaclav Mudroch, G.S. Couse (review)

between the naturally fluent and the erudite, the loquacious and the eloquent , the use in argument of reason or of authority. Preferences begin to take shape: for Jerome and Augustine (in that order) over other patristic writers and for all the Fathers of the Church over the schoolmen. Valla is revered in spite of the criticisms levelled against him even by Erasmus's friends. Less skeptical than he was to become later, he believes he was cured of a fever by 5t Genevieve, and the editor comments that some time later he even 'fulfilled a vow made at this time by writing a poem in her honour.' The first visit to England and the meeting with Colet and More is one of the highlights of the book. There is something thrilling about even the formal addresses: To John Colet ... from John Colet ... Erasmus to his friend Thomas More. These are the letters that stir the blood and whet the appetite for Volume II, which covers a still more interesting period, comprising the second and longer visit to England, the work with More on Lucian, the deepening friendship with More and Colet, the visit to italy, the writing of the Praise and the EtIchiridiotI. One small postscript: Money looms large in Erasmus's correspondence - his lack of it, his loss of it, his desperate need for it, and his spending of it when, occasionally, he does have it. So it is fitting that in this first volume there should be, as a special feature, a glossary on 'Money and Coinage of the Age of Erasmus' by Professor John H. Munro, of the Department of Political Economy, University of Toronto. The thirtyseven pages of this glossary, giving explanatory notes and tables of comparison for the coinage of England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and italy, are invaluable to those who care to know the buying power of money in Erasmus's day. All in all, this is a book to delight the booklover : of significant substance, delightful translation and editing, and beautiful to behold. (SISTER GERALDINE THOMPSON) Vaclav Mudroch and G.S. Couse, editors, Essays on the Reconstruction of Medieval History. McGill-Queen's University Press, xiv, 170, $15.00 This collection of eight essays originated in a series of public lectures on 'The Medieval World' presented at Carleton University in the winter of 1965. They were last revised in 1968 and a series of misadventures, including the untimely death of the initiator of the project, Vaclav Mudroch, delayed their publication until last year. Despite this unpromising circumstance, the collection is remarkably fresh and interesting as an extended, well-informed commentary on the state of the question in most spheres of medieval studies. The first essay, by Norman Cantor, discusses the interpretation of medieval history in the changing understanding of the historical 'period' 50 designated. He traces the roots of our periodization of history in medieval Christian historiography and develops an interesting criticism of the traditional divisions into 'early,' 'high,' and 'late' Middle Ages, while suggesting a revision that would more properly relate political, economic, and intellectual developments to one another. The next essay, by Giles Constable, emerges naturally from this introduction, and after a remarkably informative survey of the attitudes of historians to monasticism , concludes with consideration of three particular issues illustrating the present state of critical reflection: the problem of the relation between the Rule of St Benedict and 'Benedictinism'; the character of reformed monasticism in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and the origins and character of the Cistercian order. Three other essays in the volume Robert Folz's discussion of 'Charlemagne and His Empire,' Sylvia Thrupp's 'Medieval Economic Achievement in Perspective,' and Bertie Wilkinson's 'The Historian and the Late Middle Ages in England' also review modern historical writing to indicate the direction of scholarship. W.T.H. Jackson discusses 'The Changing Face of Medieval Literature' to introduce another discipline. He indicates the movement away from the philological and linguistic preoccupations of nineteenth-century scholarship , and at the same time, points out some of the dangers latent in more recent techniques of allegorical interpretation and the study of topoi. Armand Maurer traces the history of 'Medieval Philosophy and Its...