Rome and the African Church in the Time of Augustine.
Review Author[s|:
Jeremy DuQuesnay Adams
Speculum, Vol. 73, No. 3 (Jul., 1998), 871-872.
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Tue Oct $ 17:36:39 2004Reviews 871
ritual murder of Christian children, and desceration of the host. The clergy he sees as
particularly active in fomenting such fears and hatred,
‘One of the most interesting chapters isthe last on economic activity. There is, of course,
‘much here on moneylending and patterns of moneylending, Thus, for example, monasteries
borrowed heavily from Alsatian Jews until about 1350, and similarly the nobility until
about 1400. Mentgen evidently wishes to refute an observation I made in print in 1989)
about the relative decline of Jewish moneylending thereafter, but Ido not find the anecdotal
evidence he offers convincing. On the other hand, his remarks on the simple necessity to
‘charge high interest rates are very much to che point, even if chey had the sad consequence
of reinforcing Christian perceptions and anger, Perhaps the most interesting material inthis
‘chapter concerns Jewish work in the nonfinancial sector, particularly as physicians, wine-
growers, and traders in grain, wood, and wine. Alsatian Jews were hardly unique in that
respect, however, and here Mentgen builds on recent work by Monika Richarz, Ariel Toaff,
tnd Michael Toch. The effect of this research is to underscore similarities rather than
differences between Christians and Jews in the world of work.
[At the end of the volume are ten maps, seven depicting Jewish settlements in Alsace
between 1250 and 1520, three recording persecutions and expulsions down to 1522. They
‘complete a rich work from which many different kinds of historians can derive much profit.
LawneNce G. DUGGAN, University of Delaware
J-E, Menpincer, Rome and the African Church in the Time of Augustine. New Haven,
Conn, and London: Yale University Press, 1997. Pp. xvi, 267; 1 map. $40,
This is mot quite the sort of book one expects from the Yale University Press, but it i
genuinely inceresting and useful nonetheless. Its core i a careful analysis of several disputes
‘concerning, appellate jurisdiction—one of them heretofore unknown—which affected the
development of the canon law of the African and Roman churches in the late fourth and
early fifth centuries. The author's most striking contribution is her recasting of a century
and a half of previous scholarship, from Karl Hefele to Charles Pieri and Charles Munier,
in light of the two dozen newly discovered leters of St. Augustine published by Johannes
Divjak inthe Corpus Scriptorum Fcclesiasticorum Latinorum (vol. 88) in 1981 and redited
by the Bibliotheque Augustinienne with a French translation and commentary in 1987.
‘The minutely derailed core argument (chaps. 8-11) is preceded by a careful, chough
looser, presentation (chaps. 6 and 7) of African canon law regarding appeals, culminating
in a series of canons dating from 393, the year of the first of a seties of councils that,
according to Merdinger, were central to the reform strategy of Aurelius of Carthage and
his friend and collaborator Augustine of Hippos the last of those councils met at Hippo in
427, three years before Augustine's death. This exposition of institutional context is
wrapped in two further layers of contextual preparation constituting part 1 of this ewo-
part, fourlayered book: chapters 2-5 on relevant aspects of the eclesiology of Tertullian,
Cyprian, and Optatus of Milevis; and the rwenty-five-page frst chapter, aptly entitled “The
Rise of Christianity in the Roman World,” from Jesus to the pontificate of Leo the Great.
At various points the author invites the reader to more intimate, more emotive connection
‘with the largely abstract and technical subject matter by novelistic evocations ofthe North
African landscape through which council-bound bishops made their arduous way—Mer-
dinger appeals to Frederic van der Meer's venerable Augustine the Bishop as warrant for
these exercises in the creative imagination,
‘This last feature may alienate scholarly readers of traditionalist temper, though I do not
think it should. I did wonder about trees standing “burnished with scarlet and gold, au-
tumn’s fair gift to a weary world... in the hill country above Hippo” (p. 208): my pied:872, Reviews
noir friends who once knew that coast failed to recollect any such arboreal display, bur the
sure touch ofthe rest of these descriptive flashes makes one suspect that the author has
traveled in those parts in any case, that sympathetic imaging detracts in no way from the
analytical severity of Merdinger’s central argument. I was temporarily upset t0 read of
Origen only that he was “a brilliant but controversial third-century theologian” (p. 19)—
the book's sole reference to that towering figure. Upon reflection, however, I concluded
that the opening chapter is in its own modest way a remarkable achievement, effectively
informing many of this book’s potential readers about matters today’s undergraduate stu
dents are infact (alas! likely not to know. So much do I esteem the scholarship of part 2
of this book and the pedagogic utility of part 1 that I am assigning it for the next term's
senior/graduate seminar on The City of God, which is nicely set in one interesting dimen-
sion of context by Merdinger's discussion of the coneciliar narrative,
The four cases of appellate dispute that are the point of this book are those of Augustine’
outrageous protégé Antony (sometimes Antoninus) of Fussala, the locally popular but im:
properly translated Mauretanian bishop Honorius—entirely unknown before the three
Divjak lerers reporting his case—and the ever-controversial Apiarius of Sicea Veneria, the
disposition of whose first case “severely rest{ed] the bond of unity that linked the two
‘greatest churches in the West,” Rome and Carthage (p. 111); his second appeal produced
yet further damage. Apiarius has been a favorite of Protestant controversalists since the
sixteenth century, bur Merdinger makes a good case for dissenting from current assessments
of the affair (*Catholic” and “neutral” as well as “Protestant,” if such labels stil apply) on,
the basis of what we have now learned about the other two cases. Her argumentation seems
to this reviewer entirely exemplary in logic, precision, and density of evidence citation and
in academic courtesy of a high order. This is an attractive book,
JJeReMy DuQUESNAY ADAMS, Southern Methodist University
Gapmietta Monern, Gli antipodi: Aoventure letteravie di un mito scientfco, (Nuovi
Saggi, 115.) Parma: Pratiche, 1994. Paper. Pp. 183; black-and-white illustrations.
122,000,
Gabriella Morett’s study of the development ofthe notion ofthe antipodes isa clear and
concise account of the various arguments entertained by Europeans about the remorest of
their counterparts from antiquity through the early modern period. Presented for the most
part in brief sections ordered in chronological and thematic fashion, Gli antipodi docu-
‘ments the conflicts between, and occasional convergences of, scientific, popular, theological,
and literary impressions of life, oF the absence thereof, somewhere on the other side of the
carth, The word dvrinous itself, Moretti shows, was subject to considerable confusion, for
“those whose feet are opposed to ours” might refer to those who inhabit ou meridian but
‘on the other side of the globe, or perhaps to those who live on our meridian in the other
hemisphere, or again to those tuly remote peoples in diametrical opposition t0 us.
‘As Morettis survey suggests, resistance t0 the idea of the antipodes was not necessarily
linked with either the blind fantasies of the vulgar imagination or the doctrinal difficulties
posed by the existence of men neither sired by Adam nor saved by Christ. Thus while those
two impulses find a nice illustration in the well-known remarks of the church father Lac-
tantius—in whose view the precarious and inverted spectacle of the antipodes would con-
stitute a much greater wonder than the Hanging Gardens of Babylon—the opposition of
the Epicurean Lucretius was no less important. While Lactantius’s objections became a
byword for poor science throughout the early modern period, therefore, they were in some
sense complemented by the resistance of the Epicureans, that most scientifically advanced