The Catholic Historical Review

BOOK REVIEWS83 the Benedictine Rule" on Clare (p. 21). More disturbingly, Peterson's desire to depict Clare as a strong, independent figure at times leads her to extrapolate from the sources much too eagerly. For example, the acts of canonization certainly show that Clare led a penitential life before meeting Francis, but do they really speak of a Beguine-like community "coming together frequently for common spiritual exercises" (p. 92)? Also, a critical chapter has Clare professing "private vows" ofpoverty and virginity before meeting Francis (pp. 101—106). The sources certainly show that Clare committed herself to celibacy while in her family home, but her own sister clearly testified that Clare's decision to sell her inheritance was only after Francis had convinced her to do so, a reference which the author skips over (p. 102). There is no "edge of humor" in the fact that Francis preached to a religious Clare (p. 105), for as she herself might express it, she was not yet converted to the poor Christ. It is, after all, misleading to assert that "Clare's sainthood is valid in her own right without a Francis of Assist" (p. 2). Clare may well have become a saint without him, but it would not have been through what she came to prize as her path to holiness. But even if the reader is forced to disagree with some of Peterson's conclusions, the work is well written and thoughtful, providing an important new perspective on this great spiritual figure. Dominic V. Monti, O.F.M. Washington Theological Union A Moral Art: Grammar, Society, and Culture in Trecento Florence. By Paul F. Gehl. (Ithaca, New York. Cornell University Press. 1993. Pp. x, 310.«38.95.) In an excellent study of grammatical instruction in Florence in the fourteenth century, Paul Gehl has demonstrated the conservative nature of that century's grammatical instruction. He has also shown that the teachers of reading and the slightly more advanced teachers of grammar had blanched out most ofthe classical mythology and morally controversial classical authors that were part ofthe traditional medieval curriculum. Grammatical instruction in Florence remained infused with a moralism that derived from its monastic origins but was made even more rigid under the influences of a conservative merchant community and mendicant ideology. Gehl has compiled a census of manuscripts of texts used by grammarians in Tuscany in the fourteenth century mat serves as the evidential spine of the book. Through a statistical, codicological, and textual analysis, as well as use of other traditional sources, Gehl has shown the nature of schooling in Florence , including which texts were employed and in what sequence, and the purposes that the texts served for the grammarians. One gains the sense that he has recaptured the actual social process of the education of the seven-totwelve -year old boys of Florence. Gehl calls his works "a case study of edu- 84BOOK REVIEWS cational conservatism in action" (p. 1 ). The study ofgrammarwas conservative in several ways. First, despite the aforementioned deletions, the curriculum remained the inherited system of the high Middle Ages with the same texts at the core. Thus, the Florentine child progressed from a prayer book for learning the alphabet followed by a short grammatical text (Donatus or Donadello ) that was first memorized and then on to one or more late classical or medieval moralizing poems (Epigrammata of Prosper of Aquitaine, Fables versified of Aesop, Dittochaeon of Prudentius, Disticha of Cato). Attesting to this conservatism is the fact that only one of the texts used in the Florentine curriculum was written after 1210. Secondly, at all stages instruction and the texts were permeated with Christian doctrine and traditional moralism. Through grammatical instruction and its texts the individual became involved in the monastic project of rejecting the world, and through the acquisition of a learned language he prepared a self dedicated to God. Moreover, the methods of instruction remained the same repetition and memorizing found in the earlier period. It should be evident that Gehl's grammarians were not humanists. But this book aids in understanding how in the fifteenth century a more classical curriculum triumphed. It demonstrates that the fourteenth-century grammarians failed to reform...