De Sion exibit lex et verbum domini de Hierusalem: Essays on Medieval Law, Liturgy, and Literature in Honour of Amnon Linder (review)

Reviews 207 Revolution, of Calderon's most famous play of peasant honour, El alcalde de Zalamea. Helgerson proceeds to examine the development of French drama in the age ofDiderot, in its various responses to the example ofMoliere; he focuses particularly on the treatment of the male bourgeoisfigure.Helgerson illustrates that i t was not merely that the bourgeois male evolved from fool to hero, but, more to the point, that he could be the model adopted by a new breed of selfconscious artists in their role as spokesmen for a universal subject or citizen. Helgerson shows that, in aesthetic terms, this universality underpinned the writers' decision to tame the narrative extremism of preceding drama, in order to create a domestic drama of the everyday. Helgerson's take on the issue of domesticity is remarkably fresh perhaps for the author's arguably brave decision to postpone, until his intriguing epilogue, the issue ofthe place of w o m e n as subjects and the inherent analogies between aristocratic and (patriarchal) burgher/bourgeois concepts of femininity and home. He justifies his elision, by arguing that 'it was precisely when domestic drama, painting and fiction became conscious of themselves as the platform for a reforming and eventually even for a revolutionary political force that they shied away from their identification with women' (p. 191). Confronted with such a tantalizing coda, I wished this book could be more expansive, perhaps an unjust expectation to have of a study that covers and carries, with such erudition and elegance - as much material as it does. One other minor inconvenience is that, while the subject index is extremely helpful, the reader is forced to comb through it for secondary references in the absence of a bibliography. Ivan Canadas University ofHallym Chunchon, South Korea Hen, Yitzhak, ed., De Sion exibit lex et verbum domini de Hierusalem: Essays on Medieval Law, Liturgy, and Literature in Honour of Amnon Linder (Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 1), Turnhout, Brepols, 2001; cloth; pp. viii, 214; R R P EUR50.00; ISBN 2503510914. In common with almost all Festschriften, this volume comprises a brief eulogistic preface by the editor (who sets the tone by comparing A m n o n Linder to Alcuin ofYork), followed by a number of essays (13 in this case) by various 208 Reviews scholars (all disciples, as it would seem, of the dedicatee) together with a definitive list of his published writings. To review the entire range of such a collection in the small compass available here is difficult: while the focus or epicentre, as it were, is the interface between Christians and Jews in late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the collection spreads itself much more widely than that and the essays range far in time and space. In general the sequence is chronological, the first paper opening with an examination of Egeria's pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 381-4, and the last dealing with a curious incident that took place in Notre-Dame de Paris in 1493. But law, liturgy, and the relationship between Christians and Jews provide the collection with an interesting if elusive thematic bedrock. It must be said that the standard is by no means even. It is not mere quibbling to say that a writer such as Michael Goodich ('Liturgy and the Foundation of Cults in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries') who can say of a priest that he 'performed' or 'conducted' the mass (pp. 155-6), or indeed that he recited it, does not inspire in one much confidence that he recognizes the importance of correct technical terminology in Church practice. If he can write thus loosely about something as central as the Mass, what might he not be capable of? Goodich's heedlessness of appropriate terminology and usage in writing of ecclesiastical matters is worrying. O n the other hand, two articles strike this reviewer as outstanding. Joseph Ziegler's 'Text and Context: O n the Rise of Physiognomic Thought in the Later Middle Ages' is a brilliant and lucid review of the influence of this extraordinary psychological pseudo-science as a necessary classifying tool to 'enable people to pass an immediate judgment...