Let me start by stating that this is an important book for the history of medieval life and spirituality, even though I have some strong criticisms. Lauren Mancia sets out to examine the writings of John of Fécamp, an eleventh-century abbot whose Confessio theologica first came to view in modern times in the 1930s, thanks to the attention of André Wilmart to texts that otherwise had been buried in late medieval versions. John lived from about 990 to 1078. He was born in Ravenna and then came with his teacher, William of Volpiano, to the important monastery of Saint-Bénigne of Dijon and then to Fécamp on the coast of Normandy, where he was prior under William between 1023 and 1028. During these years he wrote the first draft of what became the Confessio theologica, which he revised during his long tenure as abbot of Fécamp from 1028 and until his death in 1078.
It is commendable that Lauren Mancia has brought attention to John, who since the studies of Wilmart, Jean Leclercq and Jean-Paul Bonnes has been overshadowed by interest in Anselm, prior and then abbot of Bec, not far from Fécamp. In a visit a few years ago to Fécamp's abbey church, I looked in vain for some monument or memorial to John. Only the first abbot, William of Volpiano, is remembered in a tombstone, while John has been relegated to near oblivion. In an article comparing the spirituality of John with that of Anselm, I tried a few years ago to see if Anselm picked up on John's mode of expression. I failed to find any connection, and Mancia might have dwelt more on the enigma that Anselm could have known John and have drawn on his writings but apparently did not.
Her thesis is that John "provides us with an unparalleled case study of the earliest moments of affective devotion in the eleventh-century monastic context" (3). She looks not only at John's central work, the Confessio theologica, but also library lists, charters, letters and other written sources available from Fécamp. With this collection of spiritual writings and charters, she is able to present an entire monastic landscape and to investigate the interior life of John and his monks as well as his exterior connections with lay society.
Lauren Mancia promises in her introduction to provide "a study of the earliest manifestations of affective piety" (3), but unfortunately she never quite defines this central term. At the same time she freely uses the adjective "emotional," as in the title of her book. The term seems to overlap in her analysis with the concept of affectivity, limiting greatly the range of "emotions" to positive manifestations of human attachment. In spite of the fact that medieval scholars in recent years have begun to sketch the range of the more modern term "emotions" in medieval life, I find it difficult to accept that a monastic way of life can be fully characterized as emotional. Surely John and his contemporaries were seeking an integration of emotion with reason, and their quest cannot be limited to the term "emotional." It is only in a footnote to the Introduction that the author admits that the word "is really an invention of the nineteenth century." She claims to be using "emotional" "to fit into the wider scholarly discourse of the history of emotions" (17, n55). I am not convinced that this discourse is helpful for understanding the content of the inner life for medieval monks, and I wonder why the term "spirituality" has taken a back seat to the emotional. Granted that the term "spirituality" is also an invention of the nineteenth century, but it stands for a cultural integrity that "emotional" does not.
Chapter 1, "Reforming the Reader's Interior: Defining Emotional Reform and Affectivity in John of Fécamp's Confessio theologica" is the book's central statement, interpreting the work "as a book for monks." Mancia shows that the second recension of the work was probably intended to make it available to persons outside the monastey, especially women from the noble class (21). I wish the author had given more attention to the question of the various versions of the Confessio, how they developed, and at the same time I sorely miss an old-fashioned review of the contents of the work, section by section. Mancia's translations of relevant sections of the Confessio reveals an ability for converting the Latin into an attractive English, but as a reader I kept wondering when she was going to give me an overview of the whole work, how it is constructed and argued, with what novel or traditional approaches and vocabulary, and precisely what changed from one version to the next.
In this chapter she succeeds in showing how the Confessio could have been used in the monastery, but when she describes "The use of feeling, emotion and affectus in John's devotional programme," she does not distinguish among these seemingly similar but in reality different terms. They were forged in the nineteenth century by the nascent discipline of human psychology. It would have been more economical and less confusing to use the medieval monastic term affectus and to have defined it more carefully.
Mancia shows how John makes use of Hannah in the Old Testament and Mary Magdalene in the New "as vehicles carrying the devotee towards a greater goal" (34). In analyses of this type she succeeds in showing the importance of John of Fécamp's spiritual program, even though I have srong reservations about her claim that John sought "the reform of the inner emotion of its readers' prayer." Such a statement has no meaning in a medieval context, for monks did not seek what we would called emotional experiences. At the same time, however, I welcome Mancia's point that the spirituality usually associated with late medieval figures is already to be found in the eleventh century. John had had the disadvantage of being eclipsed by Anselm, and certainly R. W. Southern's magisterial treatment of Anselm's life and thought, especially its first version from the 1960s, has meant that John remained in the shadows. Also Anselm's prayers and meditations were superbly translated by Benedicta Ward, while John has not received the English translation that he deserves.
In the study of medieval monastic literature and its evolution within a tradition, context is the key to understanding both novelty and continuity in a text. The second chapter, dealing with "tradition and innovation in John's Confessio theologica" would seem at first glance to offer a much-needed analysis of the content of this central work of monastic spirituality. But the chapter fails to give a full review of the Confessio in terms of its content and development. Instead Mancia provides a careful review of the sources used by John, especially the Psalms, and she asks what could have been formative in John's novitiate in Ravenna. The section on the possible influence of William of Volpiano is groundbreaking, while John's use of Augustine's Confessions is not surprising but Mancia explains how John made the work "universally applicable, eliminating autobiographical details."
Chapter 3 concerns how John's "devotional method" would have been used inside the monastery of Fécamp. Here are presented the Confessio theologica's "prescriptions for emotional devotion" (83). Why does this troublesome and ambivalent adjective have to be added? Surely the subject is the devotion of the monks as part of their spirituality. Once the author gets beyond this vocabulary, she provides an excellent review of how devotion was practiced in John's time, following the restrictive approach of "Harming to help, thus providing warnings of the punishment to come for those who did not conform to the Rule of Saint Benedict. Moving outside the monastery, chapter 4 shows how John's "devotional principles" were applied in lay society. The palace of the dukes of Normandy was located right across the street from the monastery. Its ruin remains today as a reminder of the close link between monks and lay aristocrats. Mancia is at her best in demonstrating how monastery and ducal palace influenced each other.
In chapter 5 Lauren Mancia deals with John's medieval legacy, "the monastic roots of affective piety" (154). Here she has a term that covers the full extent of John's impact. She shows great skill in tracing his influence, even though she has to admit that Anselm does not seem to have been John's direct inheritor (161). But in also making use of pictorial sources and especially of the cult of the Precious Blood that grew up at Fécamp, the author succeeds in showing that John's "devotional programme" reached far beyond his monastery.
In her conclusion the author claims to have "recast early medieval monks as instrumental players in the story of affective piety" (193). She returns to a point that has been indicated since the early pages of the book, that "affective piety" is not limited "to the highly emotional and experiential late medieval devotion to the humanity of Jesus and the sorrow of Mary" (193). The eleventh century and its monastic forms of affectivity are given much-needed recognition. Lauren Mancia has succeeded in giving John the place he deserves in the history of medieval spirituality. She has made him visible and contributed to our understanding of medieval culture. If only she had avoided general catch-all words like emotions and had spent more space in a careful review of the contents of John's seminal work, she would have given her readers a much richer experience. In a French translation of the Confession théologique, the editor Philippe de Vial sums up the work in a simple statement that would have been useful for Lauren Mancia: "La Confession théologique est en son entier une prière ininterrompue." This continuous prayer can elude the reader when contemporary language is used to describe it.