Medieval Academy of America

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): James F. Powers
Source: Speculum, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Oct., 1991), pp. 916-918
Published by: Medieval Academy of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2864677 .
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916 Reviews

Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis. Thus we have here complete descriptions

of all the known manuscripts and their contents, initia of sermons and their location
in all these manuscripts, and various related indices and appendices.
The first collection is Maurice de Sully's Sermonesad populum for Sundays and feast
days. Dated by Longere to the decade 1160-71, these texts correspond to numbers
1-71 in Johannes Schneyer's list of Maurice's sermons and attest to the bishop's
sensitivity to the need for instruction to the faithful and his own pastoral activity. The
forty known manuscripts which reproduce all or portions of this sermon collection
for the liturgical year are here organized in eight groups. The absence of attributions
creates problems of identification, requiring the meticulous and expert hand which
Longere brings to his material. Nine of the manuscripts, for example, bear Maurice's
name at the beginning of the collection, and while several manuscripts mention his
name or office in the explicit, only two manuscripts give Maurice de Sully's name in
both incipit and explicit.
The second collection attributed to Maurice de Sully is a series of twenty sermons,
apparently addressed to a clerical audience of priests or students. Designated as the
Pseudo-Maurice, these sermons correspond to numbers 72-91 in the Schneyer list
and, as Longere emphasizes, do not at all resemble the bishop's popular sermons.
The manuscripts are also less widely diffused than the ad populum series. Moreover,
these Pseudo-Maurice sermons have more elaborate contents: learned scriptural ref-
erences and Old Testament allegories that are suggestive of clerical audiences. Since
Maurice de Sully left no theological writings, such as biblical commentaries or quaes-
tiones, which might facilitate comparison with these twenty sermons and settle the
issue of his authorship, perhaps the lexicographical analysis which will accompany
Longere's forthcoming edition will establish the authenticity and correct attribution
of these sermons to the bishop of Paris. In the interim, the term Pseudo-Maurice is
useful to distinguish this collection from the ad populum series.
An interesting point that Longere takes note of, and which is well documented in
this volume, is the issue of which other preachers figure prominently in the manu-
scripts along with Maurice de Sully. His sermons survive in manuscripts which also
include sermons of such preachers as Geoffroy Babion, Peter Comestor, Geoffroy of
Troyes, and Stephen Langton. The evidence thus supports Maurice de Sully's role as
one of the important twelfth-century preachers in Paris who laid the foundations for,
and anticipated the emphasis given to, preaching at the Fourth Lateran Council in
1215, an effort which was then taken up by the preaching orders in the course of the
thirteenth century.
PHYLLISB. ROBERTS,College of Staten Island and Graduate Center, C.U.N.Y.

FERNANDO L6PEZ ALSINA,La ciudad de Santiago de Compostelaen la alta edad media.

Santiago de Compostela: Ayuntamiento de Santiago de Compostela; Centro de
Estudios Jacobeos; and Museo Nacional de las Peregrinaciones, 1988. Paper. Pp.
412; 15 maps, tables, graphs.
Santiago de Compostela stood at the terminus of a vital route of pilgrimage after the
ninth-century discovery of the alleged body of St. James the Greater. These remains,
along with the cathedral built to protect them, became the source of a cult that drew
pilgrims from much of Europe, starting in the tenth century and reaching an early
crest during the twelfth. The towns along this pilgrimage route from France have
attracted the interest of urban historians, since they were among the first municipal
centers to develop in Christian Iberia, comparable to the settlements evolving in
 Reviews 917
Catalonia. As the Leonese-Castilian Reconquest assured the comparative security of
the route in the wake of its southward push, the interaction of religion, nascent
political development, and pious tourism provoked the emergence of municipal cen-
ters important to the economic and social development of Leon, Castile, and Galicia
in the high Middle Ages. Among these towns, Le6n, administrative center of the
kingdom, has attracted a substantial number of scholarly studies in recent years. The
present work draws our attention to the terminus of the pilgrimage in the far north-
western corner of the peninsula in Galicia, the episcopal city of Santiago de Compos-
tela.
This examination of Santiago de Compostela by Lopez Alsina is less a history of
the town than a close survey of the documents and materials that would enable one
to be written. Since Santiago emerged as a municipal complex in a rural district of
northwestern Galicia, Lopez Alsina also studies the region in which it developed from
the ninth to the mid-twelfth century. As such, Santiago followed the paradigm of an
episcopal center evolving into a medieval town in the high Middle Ages, a network
of parishes interacting with its archdiocese during a nascent stage of European ur-
banism.
Approximately one-third of the work is devoted to an analysis of the written sources,
both documentary and narrative. Lopez Alsina groups the documentary sources he
examines under the title "Corpus documental medieval compostelano," materials
largely drawn from the cathedral archives along with some of the fuller surviving
collections from the churches and monasteries of the region, Santa Maria de Iria and
San Martin Pinario being among the most prominent. Nearly all of this material
predates the growth of a professional notarial class influenced by pontifical and royal
chancery styles, which emerged in Santiago and Galicia in the last half of the twelfth
century. Some of these sources have been explored earlier, notably by the great
historian of Santiago Lopez Ferreiro, along with the French scholar Barrau-Dihigo,
who was in turn critiqued by Claudio Sanchez Albornoz. The problems derive from
the fact that few of the documents from this early period survive in their original
state, having been copied in various periods and gathered into cartularies. Such
collections sometimes serve to substantiate claims for land and authority that have no
basis in historical fact. This pertains especially to the great cartulary, known as Tumbo
A, ordered by the powerful archbishop Diego Gelmirez and begun by the cathedral
treasurer Don Bernardo in 1129, a collection replete with attractive illustrations often
reproduced in works on medieval Spanish art. In evaluating the historical validity of
the bulk of this documentation, the author is inclined to accept it on the basis of
comparisons with other contemporary materials that indicate the expansion of the
holdings and influence of the archdiocese.
Lopez Alsina offers an extended and useful analysis of the most important narrative
source, the twelfth-century Historia Compostelana.In examining its fundamental sec-
tions, the "Gesta Compostelana" (1109-10) and the two subsequent registraof Maestro
Giraldo (1121-24) and Pedro Marcio (1145-49), the author displays an ample aware-
ness of the international scholarship which has studied the Historia to present a
balanced assessment of the usefulness of this extended chronicle. The author also
indicates his awareness of the extensive archaeological excavations between 1946 and
1959, although no analytical effort similar to that extended in behalf of the written
sources is offered here. The final judgment concedes the slanted ecclesiastical and
seigneurial nature of the surviving evidence but argues that we can learn much
regarding the early history of the city from what we have.
The historical narrative proper begins with a discussion of the emergence of the
Santiago legend in the late Visigothic era, starting with the reference in the Breviarium
918 Reviews
Apostolorumthat St. James died in Hispania. It continues through the eighth into the
ninth century, reviewing the discovery of the saint's alleged remains by Teodomiro,
bishop of Iria, near the Church of San Felix de Lovio, and their translation to the
locus sanctus nearby that since has borne the saint's name. We are offered a good
survey of what is already known, not any new discoveries in this material. The Asturian
monarchy keenly supported this divine windfall, offering as it did a site of religious
power and revelation nearly comparable to Rome itself in that it constituted that rare
thing in the West, an apostolic foundation. Once the bishops established themselves
near the tomb, the episcopate soon became identified with Santiago rather than Iria.
By the early tenth century, a new stone cathedral had been started, along with a
baptistry and a small episcopal residence. From this beginning, Lopez Alsina elabo-
rates his model for the growth of the episcopal center.
By combining the archaeological evidence with a close study of the early documents,
we are offered a description of the slow emergence of Santiago from bishop's seat to
medieval town. While this evolution occurred in many places during the tenth and
eleventh centuries in Europe, Santiago's case offers the untypical factors of a strong
royal interest in backing a prestigious bishopric for the special status it reflected upon
the Asturo-Leonese monarchy and the growing eminence of the site as a pilgrimage
center, attracting pilgrims even beyond the Pyrenees. As the southward progress of
Christian conquest over Muslim territories continued, the route to Santiago became
increasingly secure in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Meanwhile the growth of an
ecclesiastical network of dependencies and foundations centering on Santiago took
gradual shape in northwestern Galicia. Accompanying this regional activity, Lopez
Alsina describes the appearance of an urban nucleus and with it the first indication
of a social diversification appropriate to an emerging town, argued here to be forming
from the tenth century onward. Santiago experienced a hiatus in its development
because of its destruction in the Cordoban attack of 997 but was largely restored by
1017, according to documents relating to the royal assembly called for that year in
Leon by Alfonso V and affirmed by afuero granted to the episcopal center in 1019.
Beyond this, the remaining evolution of Santiago down to its elevation to the rank of
archiepiscopal town in the early twelfth century under Archbishop Diego Gelmirez is
only briefly sketched.
The model and its supporting argument are buttressed by an impressive array of
notes, town and regional maps and plans, tables, and graphs, along with a small group
of edited documents. From these materials future scholars in the field have a valuable
starting place for the formulation of a fuller history of early Santiago and its role in
the episcopal type of urban foundation. Lopez Alsina offers here a valuable piece of
seminal research.
JAMES F. POWERS, Holy Cross College

EUNICE DAUTERMANMAGUIRE, HENRY P. MAGUIRE, and MAGGIEJ. DUNCAN-FLOWERS,

Art and Holy Powers in theEarly ChristianHouse. With contributions by Anna Gonosova
and Barbara Oehlschlaeger-Garvey. (Illinois Byzantine Studies, 2.) Urbana and
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Paper. Pp. xii, 251; 8 color plates, 53
black-and-white figures, many black-and-white photographs. $24.95.
In recent years there has been a new-found interest among Byzantine archaeologists
and art historians in what used to be called "minor objects," which is to say the
ordinary bric-a-brac that the Byzantines-used in their houses and on their persons.
Much has survived, especially from Egypt, and it tells us a good deal about Byzantine