The Preacher's Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy (review)

242 Reviews forwards to emerging scholarship inspired by a revived interest in the performance aspects of these plays. The author is admirably placed to comment both retrospectively and proleptically on early drama studies. The book records not only the journey of the broad scholarship of the field but also the author's o w n academic and personal journey, as is indicated in the Preface that acknowledges a debt to the author's origins as a native of the region surrounding Cheshire. Recycling the Cycle reflects David Mills's generosity as a teacher and his proficiency as a researcher in being approachable and detailed, informative and discursive. This is a book that will supply the needs of both beginning scholars and specialists in the field. It avoids generalisation while remaining an accessible overview of the state of play in medieval drama studies. It presents archival material until now unavailable in published sources. The chapters are arranged in a coherent sequence. The endnotes are brief and to the point, supplemented by a comprehensive Bibliography that is an invaluable resource for new scholars. The Chester Cycle is revealed as a unique rather than a representative specimen of early English civic drama yet this discovery in no w a y detracts from the broader relevance of the analysis. The study seeks at all times to expand the horizons of scholarship in this field and to beckon the future while drawing strength from the past. Denise Ryan Department of English and Theatre Studie Australian National Universit M o r m a n d o , Franco, The Preacher's Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1999; cloth; pp. xvi, 364; R.R.P. US$29.00. Franco Mormando's spiky new interpretation of Bernardino of Siena (13 1444) is the first full-length study of the influential Franciscan preacher in English since Iris Origo's The World of San Bernardino (1962), and the two books present a considerable contrast, as even their titles suggest. In the Marchesa Origo's polite, benevolent and sometimes mildly amused account of Bernardino, almost all the nastier aspects of the friar's thought tend to Reviews 243 be swept under the elegant carpet. Mormando, though, zeroes in on three of the most ideologically complex targets of Bernardino's early fifteenthcentury preaching: witches, homosexuals and Jews—all mentioned only briefly or ignored by Origo. Through a close re-reading of the (admittedly sometimes patchy and second-hand) records of Bernardino's sermons, Mormando assesses the evidence on each of these topics in turn, concluding that the friar was an eloquent mouthpiece for conservative attitudes, and occasionally directly responsible for stirring segments of his audience to righteous action against representatives of the so-called 'social underworld' of the day, particularly alleged witches and sodomites. The Sienese government's plea to Perugia in M a y 1425, that Bernardino's engagement in Siena be extended due to huge public demand (Mormando, p. 5), indicates his charismatic appeal, comparable to that of modern demagogues and media stars, and reminds us of the extraordinary pervasiveness, popularity and power of preaching at the time. This book usefully complements several other recent studies of Italian Renaissance preaching, such as Peter Howard's Beyond the Written Word: Preaching and Theology in the Florence ofArchbishop Antoninus 14271459 (1995). It also intersects suggestively with various interpretations of aspects of the Renaissance 'Other', such as Michael Rocke's Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence (1996 Rocke includes a short account of Bernardino's Florentine sermons on sodomy, culminating with the extraordinary proto-Savonarolan 'bonfire of the vanities' which he conducted outside Santa Croce in April 1424, and Rocke and M o r m a n d o agree that Bernardino's preaching w a s probably a major stimulus to the subsequent formation of the infamous Florentine Office of the Night in 1432 (active until 1502). M o r m a n d o notes (pp. 156-57) that strict penal reforms were instituted in Perugia immediately and explicitly following Bernardino's anti-sodomy preaching there in 1425, and emphasises the fact that sodomy, as...