Like any widely used technical term in the social sciences, agency has several meanings. Agency can be considered from the perspective of external events: the ability to have an effect, to change outcomes, or control a situation to some extent. This definition is sometimes all that is needed for a political or economic reading of why historical events, social structures, and institutions developed as they did. In this sense we can talk meaningfully about non-human agency--the agency of objects, animals, or environment, for example. Sometimes, agency is understood more subjectively: it focuses on the agent as a being with an intention. A medieval wife who drags her feet or who liberally interprets her husband’s instructions has a different kind of agency from one who willingly obeys with the intention to inhabit the role of pious wife. A merchant who chooses to record his achievements for the benefit of his children engages in this more subjective agency, too. What is important in this understanding is not so much the change wrought on events--this might be negligible--but the extent to which the people involved feel that they have chosen their actions and have been able to carry them out. This version of agency opens a space for discussing a wider range of individuals, because those who do not have power can still choose how to act. It is also more helpful in explaining why individuals act as they do: emotion, ideas and values are important variables.

In Human Agency in Medieval Society, Epurescu-Pascovici is interested in the second of these two meanings. The author makes the case for understanding agency as “individuals’ creativity in appropriating and transforming received ideas and practices” (3), in a bid to enrich our understanding of medieval history beyond reductive analyses of structure and power. Thus, this study consists of several studies of medieval ego-documents intended to recapture the subjective sense of agency experienced by their authors. Epurescu-Pascovici teases out in a number of different contexts how these authors conceived of their own choices and made their decisions to act. The result is a rich and rewarding exploration of medieval subjectivity in an unusually broad source-base.

“Ego-documents” are interpreted broadly, as “any text in which the ‘ego’ surfaces significantly” (4): on these grounds there are chapters on Galbert of Bruges and Salimbene, who both included events from their own lives in their chronicles; the twelfth- and thirteenth-century cartularies of the seigneurie of Picquigny near Amiens; livres de raison and ricordanzi;and the conduct books, Le chemin de povreté et de richesse, and Le mesnagier de Paris. A different kind of ego is on display in the different sections of the book. The chapter on chronicles is a discussion about the authors’ sense of their own influence on events at the expense of divine providence. Both Galbert and Salimbene describe events that are often associated with God’s intervention in medieval histories: an assassination and civil unrest in Bruges in the case of Galbert, and Salimbene’s conversion to religious life. Epurescu-Pascovici shows how both accounts in fact assign more importance to human decisions and actions in explaining the outcome of events. The second chapter, on the other hand, approaches agency from a different angle. Charters from one seigneurial family show the gradual and piecemeal way in which the seigneuriemaintained power. Here, the documents are used to highlight agency in the sense of strategic decision-making.

At the heart of the book is a study of two genres of personal account book: the livres de raison from Southern France and ricordanzi of Florentine merchants. These chapters bring out the composite nature of these personal books. In some ways, the personal accounts show the same kind of strategic personal decision-making that was seen in the cartulary. In addition to this, though, Epurescu-Pascovici shows how these books were a locus of self-formation, with aspects of personal religion and lists of personal achievements. The final chapter stretches the definition of ego-document the furthest, since it looks at books of conduct. This is the first chapter to make a point about gender and agency: Bruyant in Le chemin de povreté et de richesse and the husband in Le mesnagier de Paris paint a picture of the individual male agent who can control his environment with practical reason. Interestingly, it is in trying to control another figure’s agency--laborers for Bruyant and a wife for the mesnagier--that authorial doubts about the sufficiency of individual agency emerge.

This book serves as an excellent guide to the world of medieval ego-documents. The detailed close readings and explanations of these rich sources provide an overview of the concerns, conventions, and dynamics of these various forms of life-writings. It would be excellent to see the approach extended to an even wider range of ego-documents: the final chapter makes interesting points about gender and agency, and it would be great to see how these themes play out in the many ego-documents written by medieval women in this period. Epurescu-Pascovici points out the importance of this approach for understanding subaltern agency, yet almost all of the chapters concern the writings of relatively well-to-do lords and merchants: I would like to see what he would make of sources that concern even more subaltern groups than these. The book also mentions, but does not fully develop, the issue of collective action. This is a shame, because often the argument turns on an opposition between “individual” and “structure”: a fuller discussion of people acting as groups would allow for a more nuanced discussion of the territory between these two extremes, and also allow for a fuller theoretical investigation of how individual agents interact with and use larger structures. The book therefore sets out a scholarly agenda that is both important and which has lots of mileage in it: it should have an important impact on the field.