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Reviews of Books
forms such as the libri memoriales and necrologies that
associated the dead with a specific liturgical community. As McLaughlin points out, such commemorative
texts mentioned by name only certain dead, invariably
members of monastic and clerical communities, and
their familiares. But this association between an individual and a specific community also characterized
prayers for the laity in general and those people not
mentioned by name, the humble and the poor.
McLaughlin describes how the parish system was
articulated as the framework not only for the life but
also the death of the common people. But although
she promises to do so, she never explores what these
people actually thought ahout the prayers the parish
priest said for them. Given the limitations of her
sources (which she recognizes), such a promise would
indeed be hard to fulfill. But she might have discussed
beliefs about the dead and their fate condemned as
superstitious practices by clerical authors. Here we
might have caught a glimpse (however distorted) of
what the nonaristocratic laity thought or believed.
McLaughlin's discussion of the ties between the
powerful members of lay society, the aristocrats, and
specific liturgical communitics is much marc successful; indeed, it is the most interesting and textured part
of this book. She shows quite convincingly that nobles
did not give donations to get prayers. Rather, by acting
as donors, nobles established themselves in a relationship of gift-giving with the great monasteries and
cathedral communities. The nobles made gifts for the
sake of the relationship, not for the sake of the gift
(prayers) these communities of intercessors would give
in exchange. Here, as McLaughlin recognizes, her
findings complement those of historians such as Constance Bouchard, Barbara Rosenwein, and Stephen
White working in related areas.
In the final section of the book McLaughlin turns to
the "ideology" of prayers for the dead. She chooses this
term partly to emphasize the divergence between
theology and more widespread beliefs. Although theological writings explained that the soul would be
judged on its individual merits, other sorts of texts
focused on the power of such intercessors as saints,
secular clerics, and monks to rescue even sinful souls.
She finds in this ideological emphasis on intercessors
further evidence of the associative quality of prayer for
the dead. Somewhat surprisingly, given the work of
scholars such as Patrick Corbet (Les saints ottoniens:
saintete dynastiqne, saintete royale, et saintete feminine
autour l'an mil [1986]) on the image of women as
intercessors, McLaughlin does not consider here the
issue of gender, nor does she elsewhere in the book.
She never raises, for example, the pertinent question
of whether male and female intercessors were accorded equal powers and roles.
The elision of gender is even more surprising in a
discussion of ideology, given that both relate to the
construction of power. Indeed, McLaughlin states that
she uses the term ideology because formulations of the
intercessor's power projected various forms of earthly
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
power and authority. But this very issue-the relationship between prayers for the dead and the articulation
of power-is treated with too much reticence both
here and throughout this study. This book is in some
ways an analysis of the perspective of the elites, social
and ecclesiastical, on the development of a set of
practices that enhanced their own power, but
McLaughlin does not fully engage with this issue.
McLaughlin's argument about association is persuasive. But, as she herself admits, such association was
voluntary on the part of the secular and ecclesiastical
aristocracy, although it was obligatory on the part of
the humiles. Did not such association thus have a
different significance and function according to one's
social status and relationship to power? McLaughlin
needs to address this and other questions more directly
to make the full implications of her intriguing argument evident.
AMY G. REMENSNYDER
Brown University
RALPH V. TURNER. King John. (The Medieval World.)
New York: Longman. 1994. Pp. xii, 306.
Ralph V. Turner's book is an updated survey of the
perennially famous and infamous Lackland that focuses on the major topical aspects of the king before
and after his accession. Turner examines his youth and
pre-1199 career, his trans-Channel Angevin state,
financial needs and strategies, the loss of Normandy,
relations with the church, and the baronial rebellion
and Magna Carta. In support of these topics are
discussions of aristocratic family sociology, customs of
inheritance, the changing nature of feudalism, governmental machinery, curial personalities, political analysis, and competing notions of kingship. The work's
strength derives in part from the author's diminution
of the images of John created by biased medieval
chroniclers, from its selective infusions of recent 10hannine scholarship, and from Turner's own judgments on the sources for the reign; in part by various
apt comparisons drawn between the king and his
Angevin predecessors, Henry II and Richard I, and his
continental overlord and nemesis, Philip II of France.
What emerges is a portrait of John that should change
a number of the more popularly held views of the king,
such as his military lethargy, responsibility for the loss
of Normandy, and impiety. Turner's King John does
not attempt to exorcise the king's demons and faults; it
makes them more understandable. The plotting count
of Mortain and ever-mistrustful king were in some
measure products of both Lackland's insecure youth
and of models of disloyalty provided by members of his
own family; the king's murder of his nephew Arthur of
Brittany, by a combination of the boy's treasonous
behavior and John's own insecurity. Turner makes
sense of a monarch who could preside over a judicial
system that by the standards of his day dispensed
justice to commoners and could be manipulated to
dominate tenants-in-chief. Turner also rightly makes
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Medieval
John's royal predecessors share some of the responsibility for the rebellion that culminated in Magna Carta.
Brief surveys such as this are by definition selective
and understandably treat subjects briefly. But this said,
one might look for more attention to the one-time
count of Mortain and the king's well-documented
relationships with his first and ultimately ex-wife Isabelle, heiress to the fabulously rich earldom of Gloucester. Her treatment by Henry II, then by John as wife,
ex-wife, and royal ward, and then commodity for sale,
encompasses a variety of personal and governmental
aspects of John. Isabelle is the example par excellence
of the royal wardship and marriage prerogatives. And
the king's treatment of Isabelle's second husband
Geoffrey de Mandeville, following the carl's failure to
keep up his payments for the right to marry her, helps
to explain Geoffrey's membership in the baronial party
oppusing Juhn in 1215. But this is a bouk schulars will
read to enjoy a review of their positions about John,
and it is a most valuable introduction to the general
reader to a monarch whose reign was crucial in the
development of England.
ROBERT
B.
PATTERSON
University of South Carolina
History, Prophecy, and the
Stars: The Christian Astrology of Pierre d'Ailly, 13501420. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1994. Pp.
xii, 233. $35.00.
LAURA ACKERMAN SMOLLER.
Almost the whule uf Pierre d'Ailly's adult life coincided with the great schism that shook the Catholic
church between 1378 and 1417. He was twenty-eight
years old when it began and sixty-seven when it ended,
just three years prior to his death in 1420. The schism
that divided the Western church for some thirty-nine
years was primarily a struggle between rival popes
elected by rival colleges of Cardinals. This calamitous
event led many-especially d'Ailly-to ponder its significance for the church, the fate of the human race,
and the future of the world.
D' Ailly was both a scholar and a public servant. He
became a master of arts in 1367 and then taught in the
faculty of arts, even as he matriculated toward the
doctorate in theology, which he received in 1381. In
the course of his career, d'Ailly was a productive
author, although not an original one. His productivity,
Laura Ackerman Smoller argues, profited enormously
from "generous liftings from earlier writers" (p. 10).
His prolific output is also a measure of his deep
concern over the great schism. As he sought to explain
this disturbing event he found it necessary to grapple
with a series of interrelated subjects that immersed
him in astrology, prophecy, revelation, theology, the
apocalypse, and the history of the world. In her
sophisticated and important study, Smoller shows how
d' Ailly used these subjects to interpret the meaning of
the great schism and, ultimately, the fate of the world.
Smaller interweaves d'Ailly's evolving interpretations of the great schism with his use of astrology,
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
prophecy, revelation, and history. In the years before
1400, d'Ailly interpreted the schism apocalyptically, as
a sign of the coming of the Antichrist and the Last
Judgment, thereby fulfilling predictions found in the
Bible and made by numerous theologians and church
fathers. The schism was thus a prelude to the end of
the world. After 1400, however, d'Ailly altered his
beliefs and concluded that if the schism could be
ended, the apocalypse could be avoided. Astrology
played a crucial role in causing this dramatic turnaround.
By 1410, d'Ailly abandoned his early hesitation
about the efficacy of astrology and came to accept it as
a rational science capable of providing accurate predictions of the future. Between 1410 and 1414, d'Ailly
wrote a number of astrological treatises. Although
revelation could foretell what significant events might
occur in the future, it did not say when those events
would come to pass. Astrology was fully capable of
providing that information. On the eve of the Council
of Constance in 1414, d' Ailly predicted, on astrological
grounds, that the Antichrist would not arrive until
1789. Since the Antichrist was not due until 1789,
d'Ailly was convinced that the Council would end the
schism, as it did. Christianity and the Western church
still had a future.
What makes Smaller's book unusual is the interweaving of astrology, on the one hand, and apocalyptic
visions and pronouncements derived from the Bible
and church theologians, on the other hand. At first
glance, une would expect that traditional orthodoxy
would have kept these two radically different approaches to the world distinct. D' Ailly, however,
brought them all together. Smoller has presented a
fine descriptive and analytic account of why and how
he did it.
EDWARD GRANT
Indiana University,
Bloomington
CHRISTOPHER DYER. Everyday Life in Medieval England.
Rio Grande, Ohio: Hambledon Press. 1994. Pp. xvi,
336.
This volume consists of fifteen articles, all originally
published between 1982 and 1992 in English or French
journals. Christopher Dyer describes the subject matter as the "history of 'everyday life,' " adding that this
involves a "descriptive type of writing in which all
aspects of past existence-villages and towns, houses,
work, clothes, food, customs-are recorded." The articles actually go beyond this, dealing with the social
structures and economies that underlie and support
the material culture. Indeed, they constitute a valiant
attempt at a histoire totale of late-medieval English
peasant society.
Taken together, these essays form a history of the
peasant classes that made up at least three-quarters of
the total population of England. Dyer's geographical
focus is on the West Midlands, but his coverage
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1996