Festschriften are usually difficult to review, because they are meant to be collections of contributions dedicated to the honoree. The Festschrift in honor of Janos M. Bak is an exceptional case. First, none of the Festschriften reviewed so far for TMR contains more than 25 essays; this one has 66. Second, the appropriate Homeric citation in the title ( Odyssey 1.1) points to the extraordinary complexity of the figure honored in this volume. Janos M. Bak taught for many years at the University of British Columbia; he created a journal ( Journal of Peasant Studies) and founded the international association MAJESTAS for the study of medieval and early modern rulers. Many are familiar with his German dissertation under Percy Ernst Schramm, Koenigtum und Staende in Ungarn im 14.-16. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden, 1973), or have consulted two excellent collections of studies, Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual and Nobility in Central Europe: Kinship, Property and Privilege which he edited and published in 1990 and 1994, respectively. Others may have praised him, along with Gyula Bonis, James R. Sweeney, Pal Engel, Laszlo S. Domonkos, and P. B. Harvey, for the three remarkable volumes of the Laws of Hungary series. But few medievalists would know that Janos M. Bak is also one of the most active Hungarian emigres after 1956. He was one of the founders of the Imre Nagy Institute in Brussels and of the Institute for the Research of the 1956 Revolution in Budapest. Between Coronations and Nobility, Bak edited a volume on libertarian socialist writings in Hungary between 1880 and 1920 (Savage, 1991). The multifarious diversity of Bak's life and work is mirrored by the variety of fields and approaches represented in the nine subdivisions of this book: Personalia, Artes, Rebelliones, Majestas (sic), Hagiographica, Quotidiana, Varia medievalia (sic), Hungarica, and Historiographica. Indeed, "many devices" and full many "ways".
Not surprisingly, the largest number of articles focus on Hungary. The attentive reader will no doubt notice that many essays insist on the contrast between East and West. Remembering his early years and friendship with Bak between 1945 and 1948, Gyorgy Litvan explains their belief in Communism and fascination with Lukacs by their "guilty conscience" about "class" (a concept exceptionally well represented in other papers gathered in this volume). "The barbarism coming from the East to destroy these values and beauties, intellectually inferior as it might [have] be[en]," was still capable of bringing "a healthy freshness and rejuvenation". (8) In a paper significantly entitled "Was there a bourgeoisie in medieval Hungary?" Katalin Szende argues that the process of urbanization in Hungary took place in ways very similar to those in the West. According to Szende, towns in Hungary should be carefully distinguished from those of eastern Europe, including Russia, despite clear evidence of market towns in medieval Hungary and of "western" towns in the East (the Saxon towns of Transylvania, Novgorod, Vicina, etc.). Istvan Petrovics, in a paper on the medieval city of Timisoara, claims that the territory of present-day Hungary was an area "where the political aspirations of eastern and western Christianity, and of the German and Slav peoples clashed." But, of course, medieval Hungary was able to overcome these intrinsic contradictions and to reach a "cultural, religious, and finally economic uniformity on the fringes of Western Europe". (527)
Erno Marosi opens the section entitled "Artes" with a paper on the long version of the so-called Legend of St. Gerhard (pp. 31-37). On the basis of known examples of scenes with Sedes Sapientiae, Marosi argues in favor of a late, most probably early fourteenth-century, date for this text. Nancy van Deusen contrasts the attitude towards music and musical notation in Byzantium and Western Europe (pp. 39-51). Bela Zsolt Szakacs suggests that the Hungarian Angevin Legendary, a fourteenth-century manuscript painted in Bologna or in Hungary, may well have been ordered by the Angevin court for Pope Benedict XII in connection with Angevin policies in Naples (pp. 52-60). Gerhard Jaritz discusses the image of male beauty in late medieval literature and art (pp. 61-77).
The section on "Rebellions" begins with John Carmi Parsons's essay on "violence and the queen's body" (pp. 81-90). Parsons compares and contrasts two key episodes, the riot of the poor and lepers of Senlis (1184), in which Isabelle of Hainaut played a central role, and that of Eleanor Plantagenet persuading her husband, Rainald II of Gueldres, not to repudiate her. He concludes that the "queen is linked bodily to a perceived 'right order' in the realm, albeit in ways potentially and violently inimical to male authority". (87) In a paper examining the evidence of the Henrykow Book, Piotr Gorecki considers the role of violence as a social phenomenon in late thirteenth and early fourteenth-century Silesia (pp. 91-104). He argues that violent acts were "events within the broader cycle of conflict and coexistence." Gorecki rejects Stephen White's warning that historians treating violence as a social phenomenon tend to reproduce the past bias of the authors of the written sources (depending on the perspective of the victim, the perpetrator, or the ruler). He demonstrates that within the history of the estate of the Cistercian monastery at Henrykow violence did indeed occur when participants in a conflict used allies, "friends" or neighbors, and the "law" to inflict injury on their adversaries. Hanna Zaremska discusses the evidence of Jewish law in fifteenth- century Cracow (pp. 105-114), and emphasizes the role of royal authority in granting privileges to the communitas Iudaeorum and the use of Christian law by Jewish communities to their own advantage. One of the most interesting papers of this section is Gabor Klaniczay's on the image of rebellious peasants in fifteenth- and early sixteenth- century Hungary (pp. 115-127). Following an earlier suggestion by Jeno Szucs, Klaniczay emphasizes the role of Franciscan extremist preaching in Dozsa's peasant war of 1514. The messianic crusader ideology promoted by Pelbart of Timisoara and Oswald of Lasko may have well been behind the demands for social justice so prominent in Dozsa's "proclamation" of Cegled. It remains unclear, however, whether the rebellious peasants of 1437 who forced upon the nobility of Transylvania the treaty of Cluj-Manastur really viewed themselves as a universitas of Hungarian and Romanian regnicolae. More likely, notaries involved in negotiations between peasants and nobles articulated the former's demands in ways that were legally recognizable to the latter. Indeed, the early fifteenth century also witnessed the rise of the universitas of the Saxon cities which gave its German name to the province (Siebenburgen). Ferdinand Seibt posits utopian ideas in sixteenth-century Central Europe in the context of the Reformation (pp. 128-135). Seibt maintains that one reason for the fascination of the Communist historiography of Central Europe with Michael Gaismayr was that the leader of the 1525 revolt of the Tyrolean farmers also authored a constitution for a future agrarian state, in which trade was to become a state institution geared toward the equal distribution of goods. Seibt also maintains that communities of Moravian Taufgesinnten may have been responsible for Comenius' concept of "kindergarten" and religiously informed education. (133)
Bernhard Schimmmelpfennig opens the section entitled "Maiestas" with a paper on a twelfth-century altar relief in Santa Maria in Aracoeli (Rome) (pp. 139-147). He argues that a Greek monastery may have existed on the Capitol, just north of the church. This monastery may have contained a manuscript of John Malalas with the legend of the ara coeli erected by Augustus after consulting the oracle of Pythia (later replaced by Sibyl). A Latin translation of this legend, perhaps dating back to the eighth century, may have been the version behind the scene depicted in the altar relief. Rome is also the focus of Marianne Saghy's paper on Constantius II's aduentus of 357 (pp. 148-159). While other authors examined Ammianus' account as a source for the ceremonial aspects of the imperial aduentus, Saghy is interested in the Christian background of the episode, in which the exile of Pope Liberius played a crucial role. Liberius' return to Rome was celebrated like an imperial aduentus, but this was only the result of his submission to the emperor. Saghy thus suggests that fifth-century historians misrepresented the events of 357, because of their concern with downplaying the bishop's surrender to the Arian creed and the relevance of imperial arbitration. Hanna Kassis's paper on the Jewish and Christian collaborators of Caliph Al-Hakam II of Cordoba (961-976), is an unsuccessful attempt, at least to this reviewer, to apply Karl Popper's concept of "open society" to the Muslim-Christian- Jewish relations under the first caliph of Cordoba. Leaving aside the questionable evidence of the much later Kitab al- Fisal and Ibn Hayyan's al-Muqtabas, the reader will find the treatment of Hasdai's correspondence with the qagan of the Khazars truly frustrating, particularly in the light of Golb and Pritsak's analysis of the Reply.[1] Kassis claims that Hasdai "had the necessary leverage to approach the authorities of Constantinople regarding the well-being" of the Jewish community "living uncomfortably at the time under Byzantine rule," but no evidence exists of persecutions against Jews under Constantine VII, Romanus II, or Nicephorus II Phocas. In a short paper on Gottfried of Strasbourg's Tristan, Maria Dobozy attempts to rehabilitate King Mark as a good ruler (pp. 167-175). To Dobozy, "Mark's court makes possible the existence of Tristan and Isolde's ideal love," but the entire society, including the ruler, is eventually destroyed by the very love it nurtures. Mark's failure, therefore, is a direct consequence of the destabilization of the court brought by Tristan and Isolde. By contrast, Richard A. Jackson's essay focuses not on rupture, but on continuity, in his case of French coronation ceremonies in fourteenth and late fifteenth century (pp. 176-186). He presents a persuasive analysis of the livre bleu and livre rouge, two coronation manuscripts in the Cathedral of Reims. The livre bleu had a strong influence on the ordines composed for the coronation of Charles V (1364) and Louis XI (1461), while the liturgy of Charles VIII's coronation ceremony (1484) was drawn primarily from the livre rouge. It was the enormous authority of the latter that secured the remarkable continuity of the coronation ceremony between the late fifteenth century and the early modern period. Anna Brzezinska concentrates on female control of dynastic policies in sixteenth-century Poland (pp. 187-194). She finds that some royal women were persuaded or constrained into unwanted marriages, as their fathers or guardians overruled their objections because of political needs. However, there were several other cases (Elisabeth, daughter of Casimir IV Jagiellon, Catherine, and Anne, daughters of Sigismund I) in which rulers granted their female relatives freedom to reject marital offers. Queens often acted in the background, shielded by the authority of their husbands, in order to influence dynastic policies. This is particularly clear in the case of Bona Sforza (1494-1557), Anne and Catherine's mother. Perhaps the most interesting part of Brzezinska's analysis is that referring to marital plans involving some of Poland's neighbors. Elisabeth of Habsburg (1436?-1505), King Casimir IV's wife, is known to have rejected offers from Matthias Corvinus to marry her daughter, Elisabeth. According to the chronicle of Joachim Bielski, the mother viewed King Matthias not just as an usurper of her own hereditary rights to the Hungarian throne, but also as "a peasant, a Crow [an allusion to the heraldic symbol of the Hunyadi family], a Vlach, and a dog." This is indeed an interesting detail in the light of the much discussed topic of the Hunyadi ascendancy and the political controversy surrounding the statue of King Matthias in Cluj-Napoca (Romania). Perhaps less surprising may appear Elisabeth's rejection of another Romanian candidate, Prince Bogdan III of Moldavia (1504-1517), Stephen the Great's son and successor. Although the queen used Bogdan's Orthodox faith as sufficient reason for her decision, it appears that Polish- Moldavian negotiations continued after her death, as Bogdan promised to return Polish territories previously conquered by Stephen and, moreover, to convert to the Catholic faith in order to obtain papal support to his claim. In the end, negotiations failed, Bogdan never converted, and Elisabeth, King Casimir IV's daughter, never left for Moldavia.
The section on hagiography opens with Istvan Perczel's essay on the Life of St. Anthony by St. Athanasius (pp. 197-213). Perczel demonstrates that if we accept Athanasius as the author of the Life, we should also acknowledge the fact that the chief representative of Nicaean Orthodoxy was deeply sympathetic with Origenism, most probably with its milder and less speculative form presented in the seven letters traditionally ascribed to St. Anthony. Ihor Sevcenko examines the passage in the Life of Constantine-Cyril, the apostle of the Slavs, in which the hero is said to have been appointed bibliotikar in the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople (pp. 214-221). Since a bibliothecarius was an important official of the pope, Sevcenko suggests that the author of the Life may have written for or have even been one of those "Greeks who were in Rome," and whom Pope Hadrian II asked to "gather with candles and to chant over" Cyril's body in 869. A role similar to that of Cyril and Methodius is ascribed by Anna Kuznetsova to St. Stephen of Perm, the Russian missionary saint par excellence (pp. 222- 229). Like Cyril and Methodius, Stephen invented an alphabet to help him convert the Permians. Unlike them, however, Stephen's translation of the Gospels into Komi made extensive use of names of native deities, instead of introducing calques from Greek or Russian. Thus "Jen" became the word for God and "Kul," previously the evil spirit of the Zyrians, came to mean "Devil." The Life of St. Stephen is thus a unique example of tactics employed by missionaries to confront, transform, and incorporate elements of pagan belief. Ryszard Grzesik focuses on another missionary, St. Adalbert, bishop of Prague (pp. 230-240). He argues that Adalbert established earlier contacts with the Hungarians, most probably in connection with his conflict with the Premyslids and alliance with the rival Slavnik clan. Adalbert's first mission to Hungary, dating back to 996, resulted in the foundation of a monastery at Mons ferreus (Pecsvarad) and the confirmation of Stephen, Duke Geza's son. Adalbert's influence on Stephen was later translated into the dedication of the Esztergom cathedral to the martyr-bishop. Neven Budak examines the development and spread of the cult of St. Bartholomew in early medieval Croatia (pp. 241-249). He demonstrates that, under royal patronage, the cult of the apostle was introduced in the ninth century most probably from the Lombard duchy of Benevento. Mary Beth L. Davis presents a persuasive and informative analysis of the Book of Margery Kempe(pp. 250-265). Margery is depicted as experiencing direct guidance from Christ, an experience often accompanied by noisy displays of weeping, sobbing, and shouting, whenever she is reminded of Christ's suffering. Davis argues that Margery's "verbal activities" form a pattern of behavior reflecting instruction by Christ in the seven spiritual works of mercy (teaching, counseling, chastising, comforting, suffering patiently, forgiving, and praying for enemies).
Janet Nelson's interesting analysis of the eleventh-century Casus Sancti Galli opens the section entitled "Quotidiana." Nelson argues that the jolly stories of Ekkehard depicted the Festive Season as a time for inversions and transgressions. The regulatory function of games and feasts thus became a reminder of the need to contain jollity by rules and license by restraint. Two other papers in this section deal with parades and festive entries. Giedre Mickunaite discusses the military demonstration performed in 1411 by Wladyslaw Jagiellon and Grand Duke Vytautas on the anniversary of the battle of Grunwald (pp. 277-280), while Anu Mand focuses on the representation of power during fifteenth and sixteenth-century, festive entries into Reval of the master of the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order (pp. 281-294). Two other papers on beer (pp. 294-302) and housing in eighteenth-century Hungarian cities (pp. 326-330) by Richard W. Unger and Vera Bacskai, respectively, represent the recent interest in Central and East European medieval studies for Alltagsleben. Ludolf Kuchenbuch's paper on tallies (pp. 303-325) is yet another example. Kuchenbuch is interested in the use of tallies as an interface between oral and written culture, and he appropriately labels these instruments "holzerne Alltagsschlussel." Through the examination of four surviving specimens ranging in date from 1294 to 1939, of documentary sources, and of two representations of tallies in a mid- fourteenth-century illuminated manuscript and in fifteenth- century stained-glass scenes in the cathedral in Doorninck, Kuchenbuch draws a fascinating account of the multiple use of these mnemonic devices in medieval society. His conclusions rely heavily on the poor French summary of an article published in 1950 by the Romanian medievalist (and not ethnographer, as Kuchenbuch has it!) Petre P. Panaitescu. Unfortunately, not having access to the original text, Kuchenbuch misunderstood some of Panaitescu's ideas. For example, the Romanian medievalist's citations from Nicolaus Olahus and Antonio Bonfini refer not to tallies, but to a script (known as rovasiras) employed by Szeklers in medieval Transylvania (pp. 309 and 312).
The section entitled "Varia medievalia" (sic) opens with a paper by Aaron Gurevich on gift giving in medieval Scandinavia (pp. 333-339). Gurevich's attempt to explain the development of "seigniorial-feudal relations" by means of Mauss's concept of gift is far from convincing. This is in fact a slightly modified version of his article published in 1968 in Scandinavica. As a consequence, Gurevich relied almost exclusively upon the "classical" works of Mauss and Polanyi, without acknowledging the remarkable achievements of the post- Maussian anthropology of gift-giving or archaeological approaches to this topic.[2] The interested reader will no doubt find better guidance in Irmgard Gephart's recent analysis of gift-giving in the Niebelungenlied and in Parzival.[3] By contrast, Susan Reynolds's paper on "Carolingian elopements" (pp. 340-346) is an interesting examination of three cases in which young daughters of kings or other great men chose vassals, but not counts. "Counts were more likely to be busy and preoccupied," while "if a vassal was ambitious he could decide that it was good policy to chat up his lord's daughter." (343) Balazs Nagy discusses transcontinental trade from East-Central to Western Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (pp. 347-356). Nagy observes that merchants in East-Central Europe were interested in procuring industrial goods, particularly cloth, of western provenance in exchange for gold and silver. With a relatively strong purchasing power, local industries were thus left without demand, which in time led to economic stagnation. Following Jeno Szucs, Nagy contends that the pattern of trade in the 1300s and 1400s was replaced after 1500 by primarily agricultural products exported from East Central Europe to the West. In her essay on the image of Greeks in late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century crusade proposals (pp. 357-371), Felicitas Schmieder emphasizes that most, if not all, projects reveal a fundamental distrust towards Byzantines, because of them being "schismatic." Only the conquest of the Empire, as a prerequisite of the conquest of the Holy Land, and the forceful "Romanization" of the East could change Greeks from enemies into reliable allies. Gyorgy Gereby discusses Duns Scotus' contribution to the medieval debate on the eternity of the world (pp. 372-383). He persuasively shows that, while siding with and improving on the position of Thomas Aquinas, Scotus endorsed William de la Mare's interpretation, which was also the "official" Franciscan view on Thomas's ideas. Henrik Birnbaum offers an interesting and much needed survey of vernacular languages used in East Central Europe during the Middle Ages (pp. 384-396). He observes that the earliest recorded specimens of Hungarian and Polish are place names and personal names recorded in Latin documents and chronicles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Among East Romance languages, Dalmatian survived well into the fifteenth century in Dubrovnik and until the nineteenth century on the island of Krk. As Birnbaum explains, the earliest continuous text in Romanian is a letter of 1521 from a merchant in Campulung to the merchants of Kronstadt/Brasov. However, the earliest recorded specimens of Romanian, are--not unlike the situation in Hungary and Poland--names and even words in documents and chronicles written in Old Church Slavonic before the early sixteenth century.[4] Paul Szarmach's paper on Alcuin's De ratione animae(pp. 397-408), the only one dealing with manuscripts, closes the section. The author's goal is to offer a textual preface to Alcuin's treatise, "a key text in the transmission of ideas about the soul and about the operations of the mind". (401)
By far the largest and richest of the whole Festschrift, the section entitled "Hungarica" opens with Pal Engel's paper on inheritance patterns in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Hungary (pp. 411-421). Engel shows that during the 1300s there were two main, if competing, systems for regulating inheritance. One was based on the actual division of estates with corresponding villages, the other consisted of the division of peasant households (as units of taxation) without physical separation of property. Engel associates the transition from one system to another with Louis I's reform of 1343, by which royal grants of land were restricted only to persons mentioned in royal charters. He suggests that the response of the noble clans was to shift the emphasis from individual to family ownership. Equally interesting in this regard is Martyn Rady's essay on the so-called "filial quarter" and female inheritance in medieval Hungarian law (pp. 422-431). Rady argues that avicitas and the kin were not as powerful a force in determining porperty relations as one would think. The study of female inheritance shows that, although the clan retained its legal existence, it was superseded as a social agent by the family. The study of the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century "filial quarter" reveals a process by which the family pitted its rights against the principle of "ancestry" and the collective right of collateral heirs. Two other papers in this section deal concentrate on nobility. In connection with archaeological excavations in Pomaz, Gabor Viragos gives a brief history of the Cyko family associated with the manorial site on the Klissza hill (pp. 539-549), while Szabolcs de Vajay examines the family connections of Bernardin of Frankopan, King Matthias' ambassador to Naples in 1476 (pp. 550-557).
Jozsef Laszlovszky's paper on field systems in medieval Hungary is an excellent survey of archaeological and ethnographic studies on medieval ownership, estates and cultivation systems (pp. 432-444). Laszlovszky points to a major breakthrough in the archaeological research of isolated farmsteads ( tanya), long believed to be an indication of remarkable continuity in settlement patterns throughout the entire medieval period, from the tenth to the sixteenth century. In fact, dispersed small settlements of the modern period, instead of being remnants of an ancient pattern, proved to be the result of a spatial organization process following the Ottoman conquest of Hungary in the aftermath of Mohacs (1526). In her paper on the rise of medieval towns, Katalin Szende argues persuasively that the urban development in Hungary was not a simple process of imitation of West European patterns, but a local, specific phenomenon, which opposed privileged royal towns to a large group of market towns. Despite their minor and subordinate role in medieval Hungary, Szende atempts to describe a process of active adaptation of urban communities to a "system of dynamic interactions". (455) Istvan Petrovics's essay on Timisoara attempts to do just that, namely to describe the growth of a royal seat on the southern frontier of fourteenth- to sixteenth-century Hungary (pp. 527-538). Petrovics's paper, a shorter version of which was presented in 1997 at the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, is at times contradictory. Contradictions mainly result from Petrovics's obstinate focus on the ethnic, rather than the social and economic history of the city. He claims that "until the early sixteenth century the inhabitants of Temesvar [Timisoara] were preponderantly Hungarians until the early sixteenth century." (532) He also argues that large numbers of Romanians and Serbs arrived in the region only after "the brutal Ottoman onslaughts" in the aftermath of Mohacs, i.e., in the early sixteenth century. (534) Nevertheless, he maintains that Romanians appear in charters as early as the first half of the fourteenth century. (532) We are even told about Paul Kinizsi, "who played an outstanding role in the defense of the southern parts of Hungary" during King Matthias' reign. Petrovics apparently ignores the fact that Paul was one of those Romanian kenezii mentioned by Hungarian charters in the hinterland of Timisoara.[5] More important, Petrovics does not seem to see any problem with using the evidence of Stephen Werboczy's sixteenth-century Tripartitum for reconstructing the urban structure of late fourteenth-century cities in Hungary. (529) Herwig Wolfram's esssay examines Emperor Conrad II's attitude towards Hungary (pp. 460-469). The growing tensions between King Stephen of Hungary and Emperor Conrad were associated with the latter's hostility towards Venice, at a time when the former's daughter had married the Venitian doge. Laszlo Veszpremy discusses the traditions associated with King Ladislas I's alleged participation in the First Crusade (pp. 470-477). He shows that these traditions emerged at the time King Bela III was confronted with the Third and the plans for the Fourth Crusade.
Two papers by Laszlo Koszta and Zsolt Hunyadi, respectively, deal with the evidence pertaining to the organization of cathedral chapters (pp. 478-491) and so-called "places of authentication" established by Hospitallers in medieval Hungary (pp. 507-519). As Koszta points out, Passau was a unique ecclesiastical center in that the bishopric was not associated with any monastic site. Passau, however, played a major role in the early conversion of Hungary, and Koszta suggests therefore that the secular clergy may have played a much more important role in this process than believed until now. James Ross Sweeney focuses on relations between the Hungarian and the papal courts during King Imre's conflict with his younger brother Andrew (pp. 492-498). In exchange for accepting papal authority in the terms set by Innocent III, the Hungarian king, while expressing his loyalty to the Apostolic See, required the pope to show him papal dilectio. Far from subordination, Hungarian relations with the papacy may be viewed as a good example of mutual advantage. In a parallel paper, Damir Karbic discusses the position of Croatia within the Hungarian kingdom during the Angevin restoration of royal authority between 1345 and 1361 (pp. 520-526). During the last decade of the Arpadian dynasty, the local ruler adopted the title of banus Croatorum. Despite the Angevin reform of the governmental system, Louis I seems to have been willing to recognize the individuality of the Croatian kingdom while appointing John Csuz as vicebanus Croatorum. Thus, the royal administration apparently accepted the local arrangements and incorporated them into the newly established system. Marianne Birnbaum presents the so-called "hood from the mantle of BÈla IV" preserved in the Trogir cathedral (Croatia) and discusses the circumstances in which the Hungarian king found shelter on the Dalmatian coast, following the military disaster at Muhi in 1241 (pp. 499-502). Sergei Ivanov analyzes a passage from a mid-fifteenth-century Greek manuscript, most probably written in Philadelphia (Alasehir), which contains a unique reference to Hungarians, also called "Gepids" (pp. 503- 506). The section closes with four other papers by Andras Kubinyi (on Istvan Werboczy's political activities before Mohacs), Marcell Sebok (on Sebastian Thokoly's views of Protestant-Catholic relations), Eva H. Balazs (on the library of a late eighteenth-century Hungarian noble from Slovakia), and Bela Kiraly (on the armed engagement that took place in 1956 between the Hungarian National Guard and Soviet troops).
The last section, "Historiographica," opens with Elizabeth A. R. Brown's essay on the dismantling of the legend of the Trojan origin of the French (pp. 613-633). Brown shows that in France the eventual demise of the myth took place under the influence of German humanists of the early sixteenth century. Neithard Bulst examines the political use of historiography, particularly of the Grandes Chroniques, in fourteenth- century France (pp. 634-640). Takeshi Hido discusses the historiography of Henry IV's reign (1399-1413)(pp. 641-653), while Jan M. Piskorski reviews the historiography and the current state of research of the so-called "east colonization" (pp. 654-667). Laszlo Peter summarizes Charles A. Macartney's contribution to the study of early medieval Hungarian history (pp. 685-689) and Gottfried Schramm shares memories of both contacts with Hungarian historians and his early interest in the late medieval and early modern history of Hungary (pp. 680- 684). Two other papers by Leslie S. Domonkos and George Schopflin, respectively, deal with the survival of medieval traditions at early American colleges to ca. 1800 (pp. 668-679) and the concept of Englishness between class and ethnicity (pp. 690-691).
The volume is remarkably well edited, with just a few minor errors. The names of the emperors Trajan and Maurice appear as "Traian" and "Mauritius," while Clovis' name is rendered as "Chlovis," perhaps a reminiscence of "Chlodoweg". At times, the editors seem to have tacitly agreed to let authors indulge in the practice of re-naming, which forms an important component of current nationalist policies in Eastern Europe. We are told, for example, that although the name Grunwald is of Polish origin, the battle really took place at Zalgiris (p. 279 with n. 2). Names of persons "of Lithuanian origin" appear in their Lithuanian form, with the King of Poland (formerly Grand Duke of Lithuania) as Ladislas Jogaila, rather than Wladyslaw Jagiellon. In a paper written in German, Bistrita/Bestercze is said to be in "Romania," although the German name for that country is Rumanien. (561) Istvan Petrovics carefully lists both Romanian and Hungarian names for cities in Transylvania, now within Romanian frontiers. He even lists Turnu Severin as Drobeta, although the ancient name was never used during the Middle Ages and was attached to the current name only as a result of the fiercely nationalistic policies of the Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. But for some unknown reason, Petrovics keeps referring to the city at the center of his paper as Temesvar and systematically avoids mentioning its current name, Timisoara. He seems to share an odd practice with many Hungarian historians and archaeologists, who use pre- Trianon, Hungarian place- and river names that nobody would find on any current map of modern Europe. It remains unclear, at least to the present reviewer, why would anybody need to have the "Lower Danube" and "Sava" followed by italicized "Al- Duna" and "Szava" in parentheses.
NOTES
1. Norman Gold and Omeljan Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century (Ithaca, 1982). For a recent reassessment of this issue, see Jonathan Shepard, "The Khazars' formal adoption of Judaism and Byzantium's northern policy," Oxford Slavonic Papers 31 (1998), 11-34.
2. Post-Maussian anthropology: James G. Carrier, "Gift in theory and practice in Melanesia: a note on the centrality of gift exchange," Ethnology; Marilyn Strathern, "Qualified value: the perspective of gift exchange," in C. Humphrey and S. Hugh-Jones (eds.), Barter, Exchange, and Value. An Anthropological Approach (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 169-91; Maurice Godelier, "L'enigme du don," Social Anthropology 3 (1995), no.1, 15-47 and no. 2, 95-114; Andre Petitat, "Don: espace imaginaire normatif et secret des acteurs," Anthropologie et societe 19 (1995), nos. 1-2, 17-44. Archaeology: Elisabeth Vestergaard, "Gift-giving, hoarding, and outdoings," in Ross Samson (ed.), Social Approaches to Viking Studies (Glasgow, 1991), pp. 97-104; Lotte Hedeager, "Warrior-economy and trading economy in Viking-age Scandinavia," Journal of European Archaeology 2 (1994), no. 1, 130-48; Matthias Hardt, "Silbergeschirr als Gabe," Ethnographisch-archaologische Zeitschrift 38 (1996), 431-44.
3. Geben und Nehmen im "Niebelungenlied" und in Wolframs "Parzival" (Bonn, 1994).
4. See Gheorghe Mihaila, Dictionar al limbii romane vechi (sfirsitul secolului X-inceputul secolului XVI) (Bucharest, 1974).
5. See Ioan Hategan, Pavel Chinezul (Timisoara, 1994). For the Romanian kenezii, see also Radu Popa, La inceputurile Evului Mediu romanesc. Tara Hategului (Bucharest, 1988).