Medieval
The "discourse" in Jesse M. Gellrich's title refers to
what he calls "the two tongues of oral and written" (p.
25). These, he states, are ordinarily "conflicting forces"
(p. 20); in the Middle Ages, however, their real conflict
was "occluded" (a word that appears many times in
this book) by a theory of "mental language and its
expression in speaking and writing" that does not
"entertain the possibility of an opposition or conflict
between spoken and written" (p. 21). This theory
produced "the mythology of the 'lettered voice'" (p.
25), a myth that gave rise to "a discourse which resists
and even denies the significance of" the natural opposition of the oral and the written (p. 119). This
medieval "discourse," because it is based on the denial
of a presumed fact (namely, that oral and written
phenomena are completely different and in conflict), is
fundamentally false ("occluded"), and this basic misapprehension, maintained by Augustinian theology
and the discipline of medieval rhetoric, lies at the
heart of the confusions and nostalgias of fourteenthcentury society.
Language is for Gellrich just another word for
power, and this is where the "dominion" of his title
comes in. Oral and written languages are said by some
modern language theorists to have "domains"; the
word "domain" is a linguistic cousin to the word
"dominion"; and therefore "domain" (as in "location")
de constructs into the notion of "dominion" (as in
"rule"). This is why political power struggles, such as
those of monarch and magnates in the reign of Richard
II, are "metalinguistically" the unacknowledged, unnoticed, but still extant conflicts between the oral and
written domains of discourse. As Gellrich says of
Richard and his courtiers: "if they remain judged by
th[eir] historical blindness, they should be exonerated
by it, too, once we acknowledge the occlusion at the
core of medieval literacy which led them into it in the
first place" (p. 189). An unkind reader will ask at this
point whose historical blindness is really on display.
The book's title is misleadingly broad, for its subject
matter is entirely English. Gellrich traces the conflicts
of oral and written discourse, unrecognized by the
actors, in chapters on William of Ockham, John Wyclif, the chroniclers of Edward III and his son Edward,
the Black Prince, selected events from the reign of
Richard II, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and
Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale." There is little
specific analysis of evidence and no matters new to
scholarship; the texts are rigorously fitted to the
theory. What seems most at stake for Gellrich is to
keep intact the dominion of his strong version of a
universal account of human history as an opposition
between orality and writing, even when such conflict
appears, on the evidence adduced here, to be nonexistent.
Readers who are keen on watching a scholar
pristinely ride his theory around the obstacle course of
often treacherous and unyielding evidence may be rapt
by this performance. Those whose intellectual instincts
lie with the less pure, and who are troubled when what
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1195
seems to be contradictory evidence is explained away
as mere historical false consciousness, may choose to
spend their time with another book: perhaps the
ideologically weak, but to my mind intellectually more
compelling, analyses of Brian Stock (The Implications
of Literacy [1983] and Listening for the Text [1990]) or
Michael Clanchy (From Memory to Written Record [rev.
1993]).
MARY CARRUTHERS
New York University
BERNARD S. BACHRACH. The Anatomy of a Little War: A
Diplomatic and Military History of the Gundovald Affair
(568-586). (History and Welfare.) Boulder, Colo.:
Westview. 1994. Pp. xx, 283. $49.85.
The Gundovald affair is one of the best known and
most complex episodes in the history of sixth-century
Gaul. In this book, Bernard S. Bachrach offers a more
detailed reconstruction and interpretation than any
previously attempted. Like others he locates the episode firmly within the foreign policy of the Byzantine
emperors Justin II, Tiberius II, and Maurice, all of
whom exploited Gundovald, a supposed son of the
Merovingian king Chlothar I. The narrative of the
affair is anything but simple: numerous parties with
conflicting interests were involved. Our chief source,
Gregory of Tours, tells the tale obliquely, in part at
least out of a desire to protect certain protagonists.
Although Bachrach identifies the evidential problems,
he does not make the tale any more intelligible in the
telling. Instead he opens up possibility after possibility.
Some of his hypotheses are plausible or at least
thought-provoking; others have less merit.
Unfortunately, it is not always easy to tell from
Bachrach's account what is firmly based on the sources
and what is not. For example, his reconstruction of the
early history of Gundovald, supposedly kept at Sigibert's court as co-ruler, has no evidential support at
all: the sources say only that he was tonsured and sent
to Cologne. The chronology of Gundovald's escape to
Italy is pure guesswork. More significantly, Bachrach
claims that the so-called Nogent Accords, which are
central to his interpretation, included plans for Gundovald; but there is nothing to suggest that the agreement made between Chilperic and the advisers of
Childebert at Nogent ever mentioned the prince.
Gregory of Tours refers simply to a planned deposition
of Guntram, and the intended division of his kingdom
between Chilperic and Childebert. There is no reason
to connect this with Fredegar's statement that bishops
Syagrius of Autun and Flavius of Chalon plotted to
depose Guntram and elevate Gundovald in his place.
As for the notion that Gundovald was meant to have
the old Burgundian kingdom, this is contradicted by
the fact that some of that kingdom (i.e. Viviers and
Avignon) belonged to Austrasia. Nor is there any
evidence that Chilperic planned to murder Guntram in
collaboration with the Byzantines.
In general, Bachrach sees policies where Gregory of
OCTOBER
1996
1196
Reviews of Books
Tours appears to be describing plots and unofficial
schemes. If everything was as official as he suggests,
one wonders why Childebert had to be enlightened by
his uncle about the policies of his own kingdom. As for
the plot to murder Chilperic, Bachrach associates so
many people with it that one is left to ask, who was not
involved? The greatest concession to conspiracy theory
comes, however, when Bachrach argues that the Byzantine secret service must have murdered Cleph, because there is no evidence that it did, and the lack of
evidence is the sign of a successful secret service (pp.
27 and 191, n. 143). Bachrach overinterprets his evidence throughout, discovering grand schemes at every
opportunity. In so doing, however, he makes the
inconsistencies less intelligible.
The dust jacket of this book describes it as meticulous and imaginative. It is certainly imaginative. Unfortunately it is not meticulous. Footnotes (e.g. n. 112
on p. 208), fallaciously ascribe ideas to modern authors. Other footnotes are repetitive (e.g. nn. 71 and
73 on p. 220) and suggest that the book was put
together in too much of a rush. Some points are not
thought through. We are told that Guntram was
regarded as central to any Italian policy, because he
controlled the Alpine passes (pp. 39, 41); only later is
the accessibility of the Brenner and other eastern
passes to the Austrasian kingdom recognized (pp. 85
and 224-25, n. 99). Such weaknesses are a great pity.
Bachrach does have interesting suggestions to make,
and his observations on the sophistication of Merovingian warfare are important. Nevertheless, since it
requires a detailed knowledge of the sources to determine what among his arguments is reliable, what
plausible and what improbable or downright inaccurate, this is not a book that can safely be put into the
hands of a student.
LN. WOOD
University of Leeds
STEPHEN P. BENSCH. Barcelona and Its Rulers, 10961291. (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought,
fourth series, number 26.) New York: Cambridge
University Press. 1995. Pp. xviii, 457. $64.95.
This book covers the centuries that saw the transformation of Barcelona from a small settlement of about
1,500 people on the frontier between Christian and
Muslim Spain into a major Mediterranean trading city
with a population of some 40,000. Stephen P. Bensch
corrects the usual Italian focus of urban history. He
shows that the close and generally harmonious relations between the counts of Barcelona (from 1137 also
rulers of Aragon) and their city should not be seen as
a deviation from the Italian pattern but as a development of crucial importance for the thirteenth and later
centuries. In Barcelona, the involvement of burghers
in city administration worked together with the growth
of comital authority. Bensch does not gloss over the
obstacles the count-kings encountered along the way,
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
especially in the 1040s, when the traditional order
inherited from Carolingian times almost broke down.
The economic development of Barcelona was as
troubled as its political history. Earlier studies-one
thinks especially of those by Pierre Bonnassie and Jose
E. Ruiz Domenec-illuminated the eleventh century.
Pursuing his research beyond 1100, Bensch is able to
show that during the first half of the twelfth century
Barcelona underwent a prolonged economic crisis.
A central theme of the book is the rise of the urban
patriciate that was to dominate Barcelona down to the
eighteenth century. The origins of this group are not
easy to determine but it seems that most of the families
who eventually constituted the patriciate rose to power
after 1140 from relatively humble origins. Bensch
argues persuasively for "substantial genealogical continuity between [these] twelfth-century prohoms' (probi
homines) and the members of the magistracy established in 1249-1274 (p. 179). Once in power, patricians
often continued to trade, and they were not strangers
to aristocratic culture. Ramon Lull (1232-1316) was
not the only patrician familiar with arms and with
troubadour poetry. Patricians took care to work with
the royal authorities. In the thirteenth century, Barcelona "continued to function as a political organ within
the enlarged body of the Crown of Aragon, not an
independent merchant-republic" such as Genoa or
Venice (p. 325).
It is impossible to comment here on all aspects of
this book. At times one may feel lost in the accumulation of facts based on the thousands of documents
consulted in Barcelona archives. Their significance is
well brought out, however, by case studies of individuals and families, such as Bernat Ramon "the Rich"
and his descendants (pp. 152-159); the Adarr6s, who
rose through their manipulation of credit transactions
(pp. 203-206); or Guillem Durfort, who "catapulted to
the upper reaches of urban society" (p. 211) through
the control he established over the finances of King
Pere I (1196-1213). The last case is typical of the way
Barcelona's patricians grew in importance through
their association with the reigning dynasty as it created
a Catalan navy, protected shipping, and proceeded to
conquer Majorca and then (in 1282) Sicily. Bensch's
study of the expansion of Barcelona's trade through
the Mediterranean completes a study that explores in
a new and original way the internal history of a major
European city.
J. N. HILLGARTH
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
MATTHIAS THUMSER. Rom und der romische Adel in der
spiiten Stauferzeit. (Bibliothek des Deutschen historischen instituts in Rom, number 81.) Tiibingen: Max
Niemeyer. 1995. Pp. x, 425.
In keeping with the high standards of the Deutschen
Historischen Instituts in Rom, Matthias Thumser has
produced a fine piece of work. Noting the discovery of
new sources and the development of new methodology
OCTOBER 1996