This collection of essays in honor of the distinguished medieval historian Marcia Colish reflects both her own scholarly focus on the European Middle Ages and the broad range of her publications, ranging from the late classical and patristic period through the entire Middle Ages and the early Italian Renaissance. Each of the essays pursues in some way one or more of the great variety of themes represented in Professor Colish's research and publication. Thus the scope of this collection is difficult to link to any general theme, except that all of the essays deal with the intellectual history of the Middle Ages. The volume opens with a brief introduction by the three editors, surveying Colish's scholarly work and then briefly describing each of the essays included.
The first chapter, by William J. Courtenay, is historiographical. Though focused on a relatively narrow period, the early and middle decades of the twelfth century, it raises the broadest issues discussed in the collection. Historians have frequently grouped medieval philosophers and theologians into "schools" or intellectual traditions (Augustinian, Victorine, Thomist, Scotist, Ockhamist). Many of these groups bear the name of a great founding figure (Augustine, Hugh of St. Victor, Thomas) and have been assumed to function as a recognizable "school" of thought. Such groupings have long been subject to criticism, but the historical mind loves to classify data, and so contending labels have emerged that attempt to link scholastic authors to some one dominant individual or to membership in a certain religious order or to study in a specific school. Courtenay warns that most such groupings are "modern labels of convenience" created centuries after the fact by historians trying to sort out the diversity of medieval thinkers. The labels would have meant nothing to contemporaries. The major point of this essay is to redirect attention to "the labels actually familiar to some medieval schoolmen." Courtenay investigates the purpose and substance of labels that were actually used at the time. He does not reject the underlying attempt to classify and label, observing that ancient philosophers themselves defined and named such groups: Pythagoreans, Platonists, Aristotelians, and others. From early patristic times, Christian authors employed similar labels, usually with negative implications. This early way of defining "schools" of philosophy carried over into the works of later patristic authors but then waned. From the twelfth century, the practice of identifying contemporary schools of thought re-emerged. A manuscript gloss from about 1150 discusses the ideas of schools such as Albricani (pupils of Alberic of Reims), Montani (pupils from the school on Mont Sainte-Geneviève), and others. Schools named after a teacher are far more common than those named after the place where he taught, since until late in the twelfth century, formal and durable institutional forms had not yet developed. In this early period, the reputation of the individual master was what counted. Labels applied to certain schools of thought from about 1160 may refer back to the more informal preceding generation, when alarm about the growth of heretical groups encouraged the use of group labels, probably to distinguish orthodox groups from heretical ones. Courtenay warns against modern scholars' tendency to think that "studied under" is the equivalent of "thought like"; for example, Abelard studied under William of Champeaux but quickly and publicly rejected his master's teachings. Identification of any person as a member of a school must be based on self-identification or on a shared body of distinctive doctrines, or on the documented opinion of contemporaries. Labels applied to individuals in the early twelfth century may not have had the same meaning they acquired later; "Nominales" for example, had mainly grammatical meaning but had acquired quite different meanings by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In concluding, Courtenay concedes that the idea of specific schools of thought was present during the twelfth century, but he cautions against facile attribution of certain teachings to an individual merely because he had studied under a certain teacher or in a certain school. The essay constitutes a salutary warning to any modern scholar who uses conventional labels without keen awareness that they are largely our own creations and (however useful) need to be applied with caution.
The second essay, by Grover A. Zinn, is addressed to anyone who tries to understand twelfth-century concepts of the spiritual life and to understand the high reputation of Hugh of St. Victor. As a canon of St. Victor in Paris, he responded to questions from fellow-canons about the restlessness of the human soul and the manner in which it could be cured. Hugh attributed spiritual instability to love of the world; the cure was love of God. His influential treatise De archa Noë compares the struggle between love of the world and love of God to the rising waters of the Flood. Noah's Ark symbolizes the soul rising above the chaos of the material world toward the eternal stability of God. Despite Hugh's emphasis on spiritual values, he also concedes that the material world, as a creature of God, is good, provided a person maintains the proper attitude toward it. In his discussion of questions about spiritual life, Hugh described a picture of Noah's Ark, laden with elaborate symbolism and constituting a visual device to assist individual meditation and spiritual transformation. Whether this image actually existed as a drawing or was merely a conceptual picture is not certain, though Zinn thinks it likely that he displayed a real image. His picture of the Ark is also an image of Christ enthroned in majesty. The material world is beneficial because it is a medium for spiritual transformation, not just a temptation to be fled. Zinn briefly describes other tracts by Hugh that also used visual images to describe the ascent of the soul.
Willemien Otten opens her essay on Peter Abelard by comparing the intellectual challenge of teaching in the contemporary university to Abelard's focus on language as "the common currency of all the humanities," so that classroom performance (that is, communication) is more important than choice of theology as the goal of teaching. Abelard is creating a new way of doing theology "in which teaching and performance converged" in a way typical of early scholasticism. While exegesis of Scripture was still important, his interest in language and communication was far more prominent. Otten defines the thesis of her essay as demonstrating that Abelard's manner and style of teaching theology made him both heir and critic of Augustine's theology. The doctrine of the Incarnation was fundamental to the theology of both Augustine and Abelard, but Abelard approached theology as a teacher; he loved teaching, while Augustine did not. Unlike any earlier Church Father, Augustine was converted to Christianity by silently reading a text (the famous tolle lege of the Confessions) rather than by hearing the Gospel preached. The Bible is redeemed speech, the voice of God expressed in writing. Only through signs (including written words) can humans approach God. The influence of Augustine's meditative reading grew throughout the earlier Middle Ages and is best expressed in the Didiscalion of Hugh of St. Victor. As for Abelard, we know little of the contents of his teaching, except that teaching both in logic and in exegesis and theology was "the one constant factor" in his career. His Historia calamitatum shows that emphasis on logic, which led to his youthful conflict with established masters of theology, was the dominant force in his teaching. His activity was central to a general revolution in teaching, a shift from collecting and expounding authorities to the dominance of critical reasoning over the emerging scholastic philosophy and theology.
The publications of Marcia Colish frequently deal with language. Appropriately, therefore, this collection includes an essay by Mary J. Sirridge, who concentrates on a particular problem in Latin grammar, the vocative verb: iste vocatur Socrates / "he is called Socrates," which attracted considerable attention from medieval scholars, chiefly those who produced commentaries on Priscian, the most influential Latin grammarian of the late classical period. There was general agreement that the vocative verb involved declaring the name of someone. But the relationship of this form to other Latin sentences of apparently similar construction or meaning puzzled medieval grammarians and philosophers of language. Various commentators set to work to extract a consistent theory of vocative verbs from Priscian's rather inconsistent and incomplete discussions. Sirridge analyzes two thirteenth-century commentaries, those by Jordanus and Robert Kilwardby, but shows that earlier commentators in the mid-twelfth century had already proposed other explanations; her examples include Petrus Helias, Robert of Paris, and Robert Blund.
M.B. Pranger explores medieval speculation about the devil in the light of an awkward bipolarity in patristic and scholastic anthropology. The epistles of Paul and the works of the greatest Latin Church Father, Augustine, view human nature as integral and undivided. Augustine's discovery of Platonic philosophy enabled him to reject Manichean dualism and conclude that evil is not a separate entity expressed in the material world but rather a form of non-being, a mere falling away from the perfection of God's creation. Anselm of Canterbury, one of the founding figures of scholastic philosophy, was a supporter of Augustine's conclusion. Yet the almost universal belief in the devil as the embodiment of evil implied a bipolar reality, in which the good world that God created is opposed by the devil. Thus human sin conceived as a mere falling away from the good might alternatively be conceived as human yielding to temptation by the devil. In such a scenario, the world is dual, bipolar, rather than unitary; and sin involves the acceptance of an alternate reality: evil becomes a real entity, not just a falling away from the good. Any theologian who wanted to follow Augustine's vision of a unitary world had to explain the reality of evil. Pranger turns to a less sophisticated but equally authoritative patristic author, Gregory the Great, to investigate how many theologians might embrace a less Augustinian view, in which body and the lure of the material world lead humanity to sin while asceticism and rejection of material goods lead to good and ultimately to salvation. Gregory himself was keenly aware of the presence of the devil, busily misleading man into sin and perdition. In an effort to make this issue more comprehensible, Pranger introduces a short story by the German author Heinrich von Kleist that suggests a way of understanding Pope Gregory's stories of miracles and the appearance of demons and angels. Hence Gregory's belief in the reality of evil may represent not an expression of post-Roman barbarism but a shrewd and effective way to draw wisdom from stories of diabolical visitations.
A chapter by Jason Taliadoros focuses on a dispute in the field of Christology among twelfth-century theologians that posed the risk of heresy. Ever since early patristic times, theologians had debated on the relation between the human nature and the divine nature of Christ. The twelfth century marks a great step toward the professionalization of theology. One of the major figures in this maturation was Peter Lombard, whose Book of Sentences became the fundamental scholastic textbook for the study of theology. Taliadoros focuses attention on early scholastic efforts to understand the nature of the hypostatic union, the union of divinity and humanity in Christ. Three rival views of that union emerged. Of most interest to Taliadoros is the position known as nihilianism, which contended that when humanity and divinity were joined at the Incarnation, the Son of God, insofar as he was man, was "nothing" (nihil) rather than "something" (aliquid). Taliadoros disagrees with Colish's conclusion that Lombard was not a nihilianist. In his Sentences Lombard clearly described each of the three rival positions on the relation of Christ's humanity and divinity but did not endorse any one of them. Although Lombard was condemned in one papal decree as a supporter of nihilianism, the accusation did not stick. Pope Alexander III, perhaps wiser than his theologians, ordered that such vain issues not be debated. Nevertheless, he did declare that Christ insofar as he was man was "something," not "nothing." The issue continued to be debated, and Taliadoros after analyzing the clashing opinions of some of Lombard's pupils, notably Bandinus and the English theologian Vacarius, concludes that even though Lombard merely described the three opposing opinions and did not endorse the nihilianist one, Vacarius in attacking an unnamed "B" as a nihilianist was aiming at Bandinus, whose Sentences do endorse that position and are so verbally close to Lombard that the theologian John Eck, who in 1517 rediscovered Bandinus' work, questioned which of the two discussions, that of Lombard or that of Bandinus, was the original and which was the plagiarism.
The essay "Fake Fathers" by Gary Macy deals with a problem of scholarship that has concerned modern classicists and medievalists but not medieval authors themselves, few of whom subjected manuscripts to critical evaluation. The problem is that many supposedly authoritative classical and patristic texts were falsely attributed to a respected authority, sometimes in error, sometimes deliberately forged. Macy begins with the great collection of canon law made in the twelfth century by the monk Gratian, the Decretum. It became the standard authority for teaching in faculties of canon law. Gratian himself had no legislative authority. His Decretum was a collection of the opinions of others: popes, councils, and patristic authors. As a collector, he and his continuators carefully specified the source for each document. But, Macy notes, Gratian sometimes accepted forgeries or misattributed works to influential authors and thus also attributed authoritative standing to false documents. On some points of law, there were so many genuine authorities available that the inclusion of false texts made little difference. But Macy notes one specific legal issue on which many of the texts were either forgeries or misattributions. This issue was the status of women in the church, specifically the texts that declared women ineligible to serve at the altar and in other respects made them legally inferior to men. Many of these documents were forgeries, notably the works of an unidentified author known as Ambrosiaster, which were attributed to either Ambrose or Augustine. Thus many of the laws that limited women to subordinate, inferior status in the church rested on flimsy foundations and established principles that were not reflected in the genuine works of the two great Latin Fathers. Macy provides a detailed analysis of the rule forbidding women to serve at the altar, showing that the authorities found in the Decretum were either forgeries or had been so corrupted by scribal errors that they appeared to support views not found in the original. One text forbidding women to teach men and laypersons to teach clerics is presented as a decree of the Fourth Council of Carthage, an assembly that never existed. That rule was patched together from two passages in the greatest medieval collection of forged legal documents, the pseudo-Isidorean Decretals, which Gratian had incorporated without suspecting that it was full of forgeries. Macy continues with other forgeries demeaning and subjugating women that Gratian accepted without question. He does not claim that these forgeries were the sole cause of the restrictions imposed on women by the canon law, but the inauthentic documents in Gratian's Decretum were "at least one factor" in the process.
Edward M. Peters discusses a relatively minor figure of the twelfth century, Gervase of Tilbury, a well-educated English lay scholar and author of the Otia imperialia, "an interesting farrago of wonders and high-end folklore" that also dealt with matters that an emperor and his court ought to know. Gervase, who spent much of his life on the Continent, dedicated the Otia to the Emperor Otto IV about 1215. Born into an English family with close links to the higher nobility, he pursued a career of service to episcopal, noble, and royal patrons in France, Italy, and Germany. He was a highly regarded, devout, and well-informed Christian layman with excellent connections to powerful people who found his company entertaining and his administrative services useful. Otia imperialia includes an extensive account of the Creation and Old Testament historical narrative, including many descriptions of the Holy Land. Part Three contains the collection of marvels that was probably the central reason for writing the book. Peters is particularly interested in how Gervase discusses religious misconduct from the viewpoint of a learned and well-informed layman rather than a cleric. His book is full of references to devotional literature and shows an earnest attempt to understand reports of marvels within the limitations of human understanding of nature. His Preface deals with the proper relations between spiritual and temporal authority with a traditional Gelasian dualism that must have been welcome at the imperial court in the age of Pope Innocent III. Despite his piety and general conformity to church authority, Gervase demonstrates a measure of skepticism in the marvelous stories that he narrates and is especially doubtful when people claim the authority of visions and messages received from the dead. Although he felt quite free to discuss matters of doctrine, he was hostile to heretics and strongly endorsed the killing of Albigensian heretics. Peters demonstrates that many of Gervase's stories were useful in the instruction of simple folk who could not be reached by theological indoctrination but could grasp the point of an apt story.
A final group of chapters focuses on a somewhat later period. Arjo Vanderjagt discusses the rise of Italianate humanism in the Netherlands as reflected in the correspondence between Rudolph Agricola, the first intellectually significant northern humanist, and two friends, Alexander Hegius, headmaster of an influential school at Deventer, and Jacobus Barbiranus, choirmaster at Antwerp. Erasmus of Rotterdam, the greatest figure of humanism in northern Europe, honored both Hegius (as the headmaster of the school where he received his first foundation in Latin) and Rudolph Agricola, the brilliant humanist who studied law and humanistic subjects during many years of residence in Italy. Vanderjagt describes an early period when the liveliest center of Italianate influence in the Low Countries was a small group who met in a Cistercian abbey at Aduard. This group came under the influence of Agricola, who had recently returned from Italy and worked as city clerk in the near-by town of Groningen. Agricola also visited the school of Hegius at Deventer, where the young Erasmus heard him lecture and drew inspiration from his brief contact with the great scholar. After he left the Netherlands for the court of the Elector Palatine in 1482, Agricola maintained contact with his friends in the Netherlands until his premature death in 1485. He had met Barbiranus at Antwerp and corresponded with him after settling in Heidelberg. In 1482 in a letter to Barbiranus he outlined his ideas on what constituted a good schoolmaster; he soon expanded these ideas into a small treatise on education, De formando studio. Vanderjagt's essay also analyzes twentieth-century Dutch scholarship on these early humanists, showing that Dutch historians in the early twentieth century, having come from backgrounds in theology, paid little attention to the literary and philological interests of Agricola and his friends. These scholars of the early twentieth century, though productive in many respects, were interested in discovering links between early humanists like Agricola and religious renewal among Dutch followers of the Modern Devotion and in highlighting developments that pointed toward the reform ideas of Erasmus and Luther. This excessive emphasis on religious issues after about 1950 gave way to the more comprehensive outlook of scholars like Josef IJsewijn of Leuven, Agostino Sottili of Turin, and Fokke Akkerman of Groningen, who revealed the almost-forgotten literary and linguistic interests of Agricola and his friends.
The medieval roots of Renaissance Neoplatonism and their influence on Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus) provide the subject for Nancy Van Deusen's chapter. It has long been obvious that the fourth-century Latin translation of part of Plato's Timaeus by Chalcidius was one of the few first-hand contacts that medieval scholars had with the genuine Plato. Aside from discussions about Plato in classical authors such as Cicero and Augustine, the predominant and usually the sole contact that medieval philosophers had with the real Plato was Chalcidius' Latin Timaeus, usually accompanied by the translator's commentary. This work was found in nearly every major medieval library. The fifteenth-century German polymath, philosopher, church reformer, and cardinal Nicholas of Cusa owned a copy, now in the British Library. Chalcidius' translation is a good example of how a translation of Plato from Greek to Latin shaped medieval understanding of Plato, principally through its choice of Latin terms. The crucial Greek term in the Timaeus is hyle, material reality, which implied materia or substantia (or, as Van Deusen suggests, "stuff"). Chalcidius decided that hyle should be translated silva, or forest, a term that implies an opaque thicket, a maze. Chalcidius' term, with its heavy (and rather un-Platonic) material connotations, implied a composite of dense matter that delimited the unbounded vivifying force of the universe, anima (soul). It is best exemplified by sound, which is simultaneously material and unseen. This approach to a union of the seen and the unseen substance implied attributing meaningful status to the discipline of music since music "deals with the unseen yet substantial materia of sound, time, and motion." The Latin term granted equal materiality to the seen and the unseen. This is reflected in the Genesis commentary of Cusanus. Cusanus quotes the Timaeus in his work on Genesis and would have understood the implications of Chalcidius' use of the Latin silva for the Greek hyle. He shows that the Absolute (which is also the Eternal) is known to us in its opposite, "that which is diverse, composite, contracted, general, special" and (citing the Timaeus) observes that humans can see many things that participate in the Absolute. The Absolute encompasses the properties inherent within materia / substantia. Cusanus applies terms that had long been employed in the discipline of music. Yet the Absolute remains ineffable and for this reason (according to Van Deusen) he avoids using Chalcidius' term silva. Chalcidius' translation follows Plato in his praise of seeing but then adds praise of the sense of hearing before explicitly justifying his term silva because that term also implies unseen materia / substantia that makes the Absolute accessible through human hearing. In Genesis, Moses had made the Absolute available through figura. Chalcidius here used the term absolutum instead of silva, but the term functions in the same way, through the use of figures to gain access to the inaccessible. Figura could be exemplified by musical notation that differentiates individual tones from the mass of sound. Cusanus' reference to music in his commentary De Genesi is based on his belief that the musical reference can make his explanation plain. Music provides the concepts of perfection, mode, and limitless material (materia) already present before the world began. This concept of pre-existent materia is also present in the work of the greatest composer of Cusanus' time, Guillaume Dufay, who uses pre-existing music as the basis for the great masses on which his fame rested. Cusanus suggests that the divine mode can be expressed only by varying assemblages or combinations of sounds. Hence music provides an analogy to the notion of the absolute as limitless inexpressibility that is nevertheless available to the sense of hearing. The inaudible is made known through the audible.
E. Ann Matter notes that when medieval authors referred to classical antiquity, they were often drawing not on the authors of the Golden Age but on encyclopedic writers of the late classical period who summarized the knowledge of earlier centuries. Marcia Colish called these authors the "transmitters." Some of them (Martianus Capella, Boethius, and Isidore of Seville) were conscious transmitters, deliberately writing to preserve for their own troubled times the knowledge of a better age that was in danger of being lost. Other "transmitters" had no such aim but wrote books of contemporary usefulness that exerted cultural influence throughout the Middle Ages: major late-classical grammarians like Donatus and Priscian, and commentators on major authors of the Roman Golden Age. Macrobius, a fifth-century commentator on Cicero and Vergil, is an example of such inadvertent transmitters. Matter investigates the influence of Macrobius on an early Italian humanist, Alberto Alfieri, who lived, taught, and wrote at Milan, Genoa, and the Genoese colony of Caffa in the Crimea in the early fifteenth century. Macrobius was a major influence on medieval intellectual life because of his compilation of ancient sources in his Saturnalia, and even more because of his commentary on Cicero's Somnium Scipionis. These works are especially important because of Macrobius' philosophical bias in favor of Neoplatonism. His Commentary had special impact on conceptions of Neoplatonism because it was an important component of the standard school curriculum. Although his interpretations now appear to contain strange misinterpretations of Cicero's Somnium and even worse ones of Plato himself, his commentary gained a strong position in the schools of the Carolingian age and among the twelfth-century Platonists and even affected early Renaissance thinkers. Nearly everything now known about him comes from his Ogdoas, a collection of imaginary dialogues between recently deceased members of two prominent families of northern Italy, the Visconti and the Adorno. These dialogues are "a curious combination of several classical and medieval literary genres": the journey to the heavens or afterworld, speculative cosmology, and "the hortatory and educational tradition of the "mirror of princes." Although all of those who speak in the text are dead, there is much attention to recent politics as well as discussion of the cosmic spheres in which the souls of the deceased speakers dwell. There is also much attention to numerology, especially the number eight, the source of the name Ogdoas. Eight is the number of spheres in the Pythagorean philosophy and in some forms of pagan Hellenism and early Christian Gnosticism. In addition, a connection between the number eight and the diatonic scale of musical theory was associated both with Pythagoras and with several ancient systems of mysticism. The Greek Corpus Hermeticum attributed to the divine Hermes Trismegistus had been known to early Christians. It represents a parallel text to many of the cosmological ideas of the Ogdoas. If Alfieri knew it, he must have known Greek, a rarity in his generation. Far more certain is the influence of Macrobius. The information about the heavenly spheres in one of Alfieri's dialogues comes straight out of Macrobius; the Neoplatonizing distortion of the cosmology of Cicero's Somnium Scipionis comes from Macrobius' commentary on that work. The representation of the condition of souls after death is not Ciceronian but Christian, syncretistically mixing together references to Greek deities and to Christ. Underlying Alfieri's presentation of the life of the dead rulers who conduct the imaginary discourses is the goal of showing how a virtuous prince lives and rules.
Cary J. Nederman's contribution discusses a direct challenge to Aristotle's widely endorsed condemnation of greed and avarice on the part of a ruler. Both Aristotle and Christian authors regarded avarice as dangerous to the ruler and to those whom he ruled. But by the twelfth century, actual practice was far from this ideal. The rapid growth of commerce changed the social reality, and moral theory was slow to catch up. Nederman identifies two examples of a drastic change in moral advice for rulers: the humanist Poggio Bracciolini's dialogue De avaritia (c. 1428-29) and Machiavelli's far more famous Il Principe / The Prince. In Bruni's dialogue, one of the characters, Antonio Loschi, upholds greed as positively beneficial to a ruler and his subjects. Machiavelli's famous Prince takes the same position: a self-made ruler must be miserly in order to preserve his rule. These opinions are generally regarded as striking innovations, but Nederman suggests that fourteenth-century theories of monarchy written by Nicole Oresme and Christine Pizan expressed ideas about princely behavior that Poggio and Machiavelli merely developed further. Poggio's dialogue marshals evidence that greed and self-interested behavior were characteristic of many successful princes and merely reflect human nature. Money is the medium that facilitates commercial exchanges, and anyone who opposes the desire for money is contradicting the natural order. Thus the dialogue's "Loschi" concludes that avarice is the foundation of community, and public officials ought to promote it rather than condemn it. He also praises rulers who are avaricious, for such rulers will promote the wealth of the whole community. A wise ruler knows that the wealthier his subjects are, the better off he will be. Machiavelli in his far more famous work takes much the same view. Desire for wealth is part of human nature, though he takes this opinion as something obvious, not needing extensive proof. It has been usual for people to expect rulers to be generous rather than miserly, but a wise prince will realize that if he lavishes his resources on pursuit of popularity, he will impoverish and hence weaken himself. It is better to be thought miserly. Nederman then turns back to two significant authors of the fourteenth century, Nicole Oresme and Christine de Pizan. Oresme was much interested in economic issues, as reflected in his treatise on money, De moneta. Aristotle and most scholastic authorities minimized the value of acquiring monetary wealth, but Oresme argued that money is useful in the exchanges of commerce and hence that use of money is a good in itself. De moneta shows none of the hostility to commerce found in much scholastic literature. Oresme still expects the ruler to uphold sound moral principles, but he approaches the moral issue in terms of the economic consequences of the ruler's actions. Christine de Pizan, born in Italy but a resident of France, also expressed in her political treatises the belief that the material prosperity of the citizens is one of the main purposes of any political community. Such wealth ought not to be spent on luxurious living. The state should shape taxation policy to discourage conspicuous consumption. Nevertheless, the accumulation of wealth by the various social orders is a worthy pursuit. Christine pays great attention to the lives of merchants, artisans, and laborers. The ruler has the duty to make sure that the economic condition of the realm is upheld. The king must be aware how his own policies affect economic welfare. Christine concedes that the king must be able to levy taxes, but she complains about the inequities of taxes that exempt the rich and burden the poor. Her idea that princely virtue included conscious promotion of the economic welfare of the people is in no sense unusual in her century. Similar concerns appear in the works of Marsilio of Padua and the English lawyer John Fortescue. None of these writers would say flatly that avarice was a virtue, but they did agree that the pursuit of worldly riches was a worthy goal for both citizens and rulers. When Poggio and Machiavelli suggested that greed is inherently good, they were going beyond late-medieval opinions but were not breaking radically with their medieval predecessors.
Joel Seltzer's concluding essay takes up a problem in the intellectual history of a later period, the redefinition of the medieval cult of saints during the late fourteenth and the fifteenth century by the most conservative group among the divided followers of the Czech religious reformer Jan Hus. After the violence of the Hussite revolution in the 1420s and 1430s, Utraquists (conservative Hussites) and Catholics had tacitly accepted mutual toleration. But the Utraquists in 1471 experienced the loss of the archbishop of Prague, Jan Rokycana, who had led and sheltered them. They then needed to develop religious symbols that defined their identity and strengthened their cause. Unlike the more radical Hussites (the Taborites), who rejected many traditional Catholic practices, including the cult of saints, the Utraquists sought to retain but modify many traditional practices. The Utraquist ecclesiastical calendar was purged of some saints unacceptable to Hussites, especially members or disciples of the mendicant orders; but it preserved most saints' days and established 6 July as a feast dedicated to St. Jan Hus, the martyred founder of their reforms. The accession of the Polish prince Vladislav Jagiello, who had pledged to tolerate the rights of the Utraquist group but ultimately sought to bring about the return of the whole nation to the Roman Catholic Church, created a situation in which the Utraquists struggled to define their movement against both conservative Roman Catholics and the more radical Taborites. While the distribution of communion to the laity in both kinds was the defining practice of all followers of Hus, the recognition and public veneration of a specific group of Hussite saints became an important rallying-point for Utraquists. Seltzer traces this development with the aid of a large collection of urban chronicles, the Old Czech Annals, which date back to the fourteenth century and continued to be compiled into the sixteenth. These texts, written by many hands, were not greatly concerned with high-level theological disputes but were very concerned with matters that helped the Czech-speaking laity define and preserve their identity. They contain the only known Utraquist hagiographies, pious biographies that sought to persuade readers of the sanctity of their subjects' lives. Almost all of the new Hussite saints recorded in the Annals were parish priests, and since even many Utraquists dismissed as mere superstition the stories of Catholic saints who performed miracles, most of the new saints were not miracle-workers. Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague, the two Hussite leaders who were burned at Basel, were accepted as saints, and likewise the many Hussite priests and laymen who were thrown into the abandoned silver mines at Kutná Hora to die during the early phases of the movement. Martyred saints were a link with the early Christian church, and the brave refusal of these executed Hussites to submit to Rome was a source of inspiration. All Hussite saints were martyrs, but not all martyrs were recognized in the Annals as saints. Being a priest was essential. Only priests could consecrate the Eucharistic bread and wine and distribute communion in both species to the laity. Martyred priests had to show patience and fortitude in the face of persecution, and they also had to make public witness to their beliefs. Seltzer presents several examples of priests who were recognized as saints in the Annals: Jan Zelinsky, whose sermons inspired the violent upheaval of the Hussite Revolution; the Polish-born priest Michal Polák, who had been a central figure in the election of Vladislav Jagiello as king, but, after the new king turned against his Utraquist supporters, was condemned because he refused to renounce Utraquist practices, and then held in a filthy dungeon until he died in 1480; and the preacher Jan Bechynka, who died in 1507. Bechynka's biographer firmly declares him to be a martyred saint, he was not executed but died of plague. Yet during his illness he distinguished himself by his brave endurance of his disease and his steadfast loyalty to the Utraquist church. In general, the Old Czech Annalists presented a new concept of saintliness, focused on loyalty to communion in both kinds. The saint must be a priest and must show fortitude, learning, preaching, leadership, and moral rectitude in the face of adversity. The first mention of the feast of Jan Hus in the Annals does not come until 1503, an observance that emphasized fasting and prayer. The next recorded Jan Hus day was very different, a mass celebration in 1517, including bonfires, trumpets, and discharge of cannon. Clearly, this was a celebration of Utraquist victory in the struggle for survival. An even more provocative observance is recorded for 1521. The saint's day had become a forceful reminder of the power and dominance of the Utraquist church at Prague.
The book concludes with brief vitae of the contributors and an index of proper names.