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126 Reviews both, while the rustic 'Hay the Gye' and the lordly 'grandpose' dl swim equdly in these lexicd waters. Not everything is so intriguing. Ten pages of 'is' testify to a computer memory better accessed randomly, and it seems perverse to have respected every unedited variant spelling, so we can read of Against, Agaynst, Ageynst, Ageynste, Agennst and Agenst a process surely, as Skelton also says, Agen dl reason. All concordances have technicd mists like that, though not all as pervasive as these occasionally are on quite occasiond words. But only one compldnt of substance is not bad going for a reference book, one of size, precision, great utility and what seems aratherreasonable price. More on late medievd language is looked for, with loquicious wamblyng from the versyng boxes of Otago. Stephen Knight Department of EngUsh University of Melbourne F u h r m a n n , H., Germany in the High Middle Ages, c. 1050-1200, trans. T. Reuter, Cambridge, C.U.P., 1986; pp.vii, 209; paperback, R.R.P. A U S $25.00. Fuhrmann's volume is eminently worth translating and Reuter has done English-reading students of medievd German history a notable, and for the most part very well executed, service. The book must be recommended as the obvious textbook on its subject superseding and eschewing the excessively specdative, if more dramatic, 'over-interpretations' of previous writers in English such as Geoffrey Barraclough and Peter Munz. It yet retdns a sense of the major dramas enlivening German history in the period: the evolving forms of centralised governmentd strategies, the tensions between elective and hereditary kingship, between Church and State, between Welf and Hohenstaufen, the 'misfiring' of German leadership in Europe (to quote from R.W. Southern's Making of the Middle Ages). These large themes, which make Germany very much the focus for any modem student of European history in the period, are presented in a broad context with surprisingly deft references to parallel developments and contrasts in areas beyond the German Empire proper: England, Spain, southern Itdy, Scandinavia, Byzantium, and the Slavic East. There is unusually effective attention to the development of cultural forms (knightly chivalry and scholasticism, for example), general notions of time and space, and appropriate background materid in the areas of economic development and geography, transport and communications, the physicd conditions of living, and much more. The whole account, compact as it is, benefits greatly from a wedth of Reviews 111 smdl detdl on unexpected but illuminating topics and there are welcome and lucid explanations of difficult concepts and institutions. The impact of the Investiture controversy on subsequent German constitutiond development is central for Fuhrmann as it was for Barraclough and is for such writers as Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: the formation of the western legal tradition, Cambridge, Mass., 1983. In line with earlier writers, Fuhrmann sees the Investiture contest as the point of transition from one form of statecraft 'the impend church system of the Ottonians and Salians', to a more m o d e m one: the territorid principdity marked by a separation of church and state and by the incorporation of feudd ties. This may, however, still be an over-interpretation, as recent English writers (Gillingham, Reuter, etc.) suggest Fuhrmann's work is presented in some respects as a summary textbook to accompany the study of German literature or European history in general. It ends prosdcdly and the deletion of the origind 22 page bibliography of German research literature, mentioned and cited from time to time in thetextbut with no bibliographicd notes, makes it difficult to extend and deepen Fuhrmann's presentation. Reuter's substituted, shorter, bibliography of works in English is certainly well conceived and useful for both student and teacher dike but it is no substitute as far as serious research is concerned. This is in some ways a pity for Fuhrmann writes with a thorough knowledge of the primary and secondary literature and his careful concentration on the essentid features of his story stimdates the reader to follow up his observations and succinct dlusions. His discussions of the nature and problems of the pre-investiture controversy monarchy is the best I have...

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