Review

Textbooks, Readers, and References

Memory in the Middle Ages is currently a hot topic among medievalists, but it can also be a very confusing subject with many meanings. When scholars discuss medieval memories they are often referring to the way information, eventually committed to writing, was originally transmitted. This transmission can include oral tradition, a realm of inquiry notoriously difficult to document. Alternately, "medieval memory" also includes memoria--rituals and practices of commemorating the dead--from the almost constant prayers appropriate for family, to the construction of sepulchers, to the various other ways generations properly remember the deceased. Medieval Memories: Men, Women and the Past, 700-1300 steers a clear course through this multifaceted issue, and offers within its eight essays a sampling of scholarship that showcases the various ways that research on memory can be approached.	1
Part of the strength of the book lies in the introduction, written by editor Elisabeth van Houts. Medieval Memories is part of the "Women and Men in History" series that strives to present a more gender-balanced perspective on important historical topics. Van Houts, fresh from her 1999 publication of Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, is the ideal choice to provide a simple and relevant introduction to this topic, and she does not disappoint. She clearly explains the relationship between monks (authors of chronicles) and women (keepers of oral tradition) in family memoraliztion processes, and provides other essential background for the essays that follow, including a brief historiography of the most influential writings on the subject. Most importantly, she provides a discussion of why memory is particularly important for study of the place of women in the medieval world at the same time that she introduces the difficulties of finding female voices in the available sources.	2
The essays that follow span a wide range of geography and time without losing focus or seeming strained. The authors represent many different types of sources, from the miracle collections of Normandy to memorial artwork of Spain. Chapter one, by Matthew Innes, deals with the familial obligations of aristocratic memory, especially as represented in Dhuoda's Manual of the mid ninth-century. Patricia Skinner brings a new perspective to the importance of reputation in medieval Italy in chapter two, and examines how social memory affected women in particular, while in chapter three Kathleen Quirk analyses miracle collections for gender roles and questions the importance of their particular method of transmission. Next, Judith Everard focuses on legal history by looking at how memory functioned as an important component of oral testimony in Brittany. Testimony is also a focus in chapter five, where Carl Watkins examines medieval authors' criteria of reliability in twelfth and thirteenth-century chronicles. In chapter six, Renée Nip looks for gendered memories in a selection of works from medieval Flanders, and in chapter seven Fiona Griffiths pursues a medieval abbesses' worldview contained in the early thirteenth-century encyclopedic, Hortus Deliciarum. Rose Walker's essay concludes the book by utilizing visual sources that show the influence of women's roles in eleventh and twelfth-century Spanish death rituals associated with the creation of aristocratic family memorials.	3
Because this collection of essays is priced at just under twenty dollars, it is perfectly tailored to fit in the budget of students without causing much complaint. Further, the content ensures that this is indeed the target audience. Information is clearly presented throughout the book, and the essays are undauntingly short with few notes throughout, yet the book still provides enough information to stimulate in-class debate. For teachers of medieval history the format also provides a quick and useful way to become familiar with a rather complex topic, and suggests ways to present it to students as well. The work ends with a bibliography for further study that again shows the various categories into which research in medieval memory can be divided, and an index, which while useful, tends to focus on important names more than themes. Medieval Memories is a sure bid for use in the undergraduate classroom, but anybody wishing in-depth knowledge would do well to read the more seminal works in the field such as Patrick Geary's Phantoms of Remembrance (1994), Jean-Claude Schmitt's Ghosts in the Middle Ages (1998), and Van Houts' own Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe (1999).	4
University of Southern California Stacy Kerr

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