The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley ed. by Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood (review)

186 BOOK REVIEWS afforded by the passage of seven to fifteen centuries, where more remains to be done. However, their unfortunate cosmologizing of the revelation is not of interest merely to antiquarians, for it also pervades contemporary theology: the cosmological mentality flourishes yet, among liberals as among traditionalists, and is easily detectible in their common refusal of sacramental realism on grounds which finally repeat a Platonic dualism. This recurrent failure of the Catholic nerve, this loss of Catholic historical consciousness, is manifest in the rejection, commonplace again today, of the sacramental and eschatological significance of our sexual differentiation . One can understand this as a relic of Platonic pessimism in a Pseudo-Dionysius or a Gregory of Nyssa; it is a little harder to condone in those who would now propose it as a basis for the revision of the sacrament of orders. This second volume of The Glory of The Lord is a worthy sequel to the first; it continues the reader's engagement at once with a theological project of the highest importance and with a theological culture simply unavailable in English apart from this translation of the masterwork of a very great scholar, one who has been accurately described as the most cultured theologian now living. To share at whatever level the fruits of his profound meditation upon the Catholic tradition is to enter more deeply into the history of the faith; this passage, as Cardinal Newman assures us, is into the faith itself. No better guide than The Glory of the Lord exists. Marquette University Milwaukee, Wisconsin DONALD J. KEEFE, S.J. The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley. Edited by KATHERINE WALSH and DIANA WooD. Studies in Church History, Subsidia 4. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985. Pp. 338. $45.00. When Beryl Smalley, as quite a young scholar, decided to launch an investigation into the vast tradition of medieval commentary on the Bible, all of her tutors and colleagues advised against it. Medieval exegesis seemed unsophisticated, even "wrong·" from the point of view of biblical scholarship, and historically insignificant with regard to the "real " contributions of medieval learning in fields such as philosophy and law. Yet Smalley held to the position that any genre of writing produced in such profusion could not possibly be wrong or insignificant; rather, the problem lay in the inability of modern scholars creatively to reimagine what role the commentaries, homilies, catenae, and scholia so beloved of medi- BOOK REVIEWS 187 eval authors actually played in their intellectual lives. The best-known result of this stubborn curiosity is her magnum opus, The Study of the Bible in the Middle .Ages, first published in 1941, with second and third editions appearing in 1952 and 1983. This book changed forever the boundaries of medieval intellectual history, and, as this memorial volume of essays amply demonstrates, made Beryl Smalley the intellectual mentor of two generations of scholars. R. W. Southern's introductory essay points out that Smalley's work has had a greater impact on some areas of medieval studies than on others. So, for example, the biblical imagery surrounding the reign of Charles the Bald is well-recognized, while many problems associated with the exegesis of the high medieval schools remain pretty much as Smalley left them. It is striking that, although the ess-ays cover topics in medieval exegesis from Bede to Wycliffe, not one addresses the issue of the Glossa ordinaria. Smalley's first ground-breaking articles showed the Glossa to be a product of the twelfth-century school of Laon, not, as previously assumed, of the Carolingian author Walafrid Strabo. Nearly half a century later, there is still no critical edition of even one version of one part of the Glossa ordinaria. Perhaps this indicates that few scholars, now as then, are willing to undertake painfully detailed manuscript work. The Bible in the Medieval World thus does not fully represent Smalley's work, although it does contain articles on some of her favorite figures and movements: Peter Comester, Peter the Chanter, the Franciscans, Jewish/ Christian intellectual contacts, the Wycliffites. Besides the Glossa, however , the volume also is notably lacking in any consideration of the School of Saint...