The Catholic Historical Review

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The Catholic Historical Review 87.3 (2001) 496-497

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Book Review

Évangile et évangélisme (XII^e-XIII^e siècle)

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Évangile et évangélisme (XII^e-XIII^e siècle). [Cahiers de Fanjeaux: Collection d'Histoire religieuse du Languedoc au Moyen Âge, 34.] (Toulouse: Éditions Privat. 1999. Pp. 384. 170 F; 24, 91 Euros.)

"If anyone should ask you to what religious order you belong, tell him the order of the gospel, which is the basis of all rules." Thus Stephen of Muret, the leader of the twelfth-century pauperes Christi movement which became the order of Grandmont. It is from sentiments like this, indicative of what M.-D. Chenu called the "evangelical awakening" of the twelfth century, that this collection of essays takes its inspiration.

This is the thirty-fourth volume in an impressive series devoted specifically to the medieval religious history of Languedoc. The essays, all in French, are arranged in three subsections under the titles "Reception: Reading, Hearing, and Seeing the Gospel"; "Images of Evangelism"; and "Evangelism in Institution and Practice" (my translation--more on this issue later). As is clear, the first section addresses "Évangile" and the rest address "évangélisme." The first section on reception of the Gospel includes a brief study of the manuscript evidence for circulation of Gospel texts and an interesting if somewhat disjointed study by Nicole Bériou of the use of the term evangelium. That the term was used to refer to the four canonical narratives of the New Testament is rather clear and not worth the energy the author spends on it; but the analysis of the synonymous use of 'gospel' and 'truth' in the context of medieval preaching is more compelling. Valérie Galent-Fasseur's contribution on the gospels in southern French literature of the period is more an examination of their absence, which is useful, if a bit frustrating.

The second and third sections are beset with a historiographical problem: "Evangelism" is not really a term that is contemporary to the period studied. So the gathering of essays here is predicated upon an anachronistic category (as someone interested in "medieval mysticism," I can hardly object to this in principle), and this category does not receive adequate definition in the introduction and/or any of the contributions. In fact, several of the contributors note the difficulty (see, e.g., Guy Lobrichon's essay). But this is a concern with the organizing principle of the compilation, not with the contributions, which are on the whole quite interesting and good. The essay in Part Two by Jean-Yves Tilliette on the "lexicon of evangelism and systems of value in the twelfth century" is an excellent examination of the concepts of "the primitive church," "apostolic life," and "naked following the naked Christ" in the rhetoric of reform following the Gregorian era. The roundtable discussion documented in Part Three on the question of heresy and the reform movements in post-Gregorian France is interesting, but here in particular I was left wondering if 'reform' was a more accurate and useful category than 'evangelism.' Simon Tugwell's contribution on Dominic's understanding of the evangelical counsels, and on poverty in particular, offers a useful Dominican counterpart to all the work that has been done by Lambert and others on Franciscan poverty. Guy Lobrichon offers an intriguing inquiry into clerical strategies of "evangelizing the laity." [End Page 496]

The collection as a whole is rather user-friendly, since the editors have included both a name and subject index and an index to twelfth- and thirteenth-century works and manuscripts cited in the volume. There are also concise abstracts of each contribution listed in the back of the book. In an apparent attempt to make this work more accessible to Anglophone readers, the editors of this volume have included an English translation of the abstracts and of the Table of Contents. But the most egregious flaw of this otherwise-handsome book is the rough and inaccurate translation into English. For example, "La circulation des Evangiles" is rendered an ambiguous "Gospel spreading." St. Louis...