One of the pleasures of good collections is that they introduce us to fascinating topics, problems, and sources of which hyper-specialization leaves us unaware. By such a measure, this festschrift in honor of the late Richard Sullivan is a considerable success. It is further a success in the way the eleven contributors hold to two relatively consistent themes, both inspired by Sullivan's own work: the threads of continuity mediated by chains of reading and discipleship, and the engagement of the regular orders with the world. In one of the best studies in the collection, Darlene Brooks Hedstrom offers a wonderful discussion of early Egyptian monasticism that corrects familiar Latin and Greek mythologies of the Desert Fathers by examining Coptic sources and archaeology on early monastic communities in Upper Egypt. Her account gives much-needed specificity to some accepted generalizations (such as the interaction of early holy men with the world) while completely transforming my understanding of others (thus, the diverse terms for groups of holy men—monachoi being the least common—and the internal sociability implied by the arrangement of cells and areas reserved for prayer). In another excellent article, Martin Claussen resumes an important part of his recent book on Chrodegang of Metz in a well-argued and ecclesiologically profound comparison of Luke's Acts with Chrodegang's surprisingly similar treatment of unity, commonality, and above all property. Though Claussen does not raise the possibility, one wonders whether Chrodegang was not providing New Testament justification for the kinds of usufructuary property grants to churches that became common at just this time. Further afield, the article should also be of considerable interest to scholars of Franciscan property debates. David Blanks returns us to the register of Jacques Fournier not to study Cathars but to unearth traces of knowing disbelief or skepticism among the peasants of the diocese of Pamiers. The fact that medieval unbelief is so notoriously difficult to substantiate makes his numerous examples all the more welcome. (I do wonder, however, if Blanks's peasants were not much more aware of church teaching than he thinks and if he has not taken descriptions of ignorant and lazy clergy too much at face value.) Other contributions are almost as good and will repay thoughtful reading. Though technically a discussion of Paschasius Radbertus's thoughts on the exile of Adalard and Wala (his masters and predecessors as abbot of Corbie), Steven Stofferahn's article is valuable as an overview of the development of lèse majesté within Carolingian politics, and even more so as a convincing illustration of the way powerful nobles co-opted a royalist complex of ideas like maiestas to criticize royal policies.

Daniel Callahan gives us a much more specific understanding of the mindset that informed Ademar of Chabannes's late writings as he prepared for his own pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1033. Callahan successfully brings to the fore the growing importance not just of pilgrimage but of Jerusalem and the legend of Charlemagne, while incidentally giving firmer grounding for proponents of the prevalence of millenarianism about 1033. Michael Frasetto also discusses Ademar, in this case his treatment of the Eucharist. Though his evidence for Ademar's direct dependence on Paschasius and Ratramnus is not fully convincing, it remains suggestive. In any event, the article provides a very useful bridge between the better known Eucharistic discussions that preceded and followed Ademar. It further supports the likelihood that, as later, the doctrine of the Real Presence was asserted all the more forcefully because of the fear of challenges by heretics and Jews. Edith Dolnikowski examines three of Wycliffe's Latin sermons on Advent, culling from them important transitional discussions of the problem of divine foreknowledge and free will. Her more explicit point is to argue for the self-consciousness with which Wycliffe straddled the worlds of academic learning and pastoral care, while holding pastoral care as the primary goal and Scripture as fundamental to both. Finally, John Contreni discusses the underappreciated Heiric of Auxerre and his Miracula sancti Germani, a text more often plundered than read. What emerges from Contreni's thorough study is the commitment of Heiric's Carolingian monasticism to society as a whole, that is, its commitment to the church as a community comprising both clergy and laity. Less successful are articles by Constance Bouchard and Amy Livingstone. Bouchard argues that the principle of “feudal hierarchy” in particular, and of hierarchy in general, did not emerge under the Carolingians or under Cluny, but rather in the Reform papacy of the Investiture Controversy, to be then taken over by the Cistercians, from whom it was borrowed by secular rulers (kings but also dukes and counts). Unfortunately, Bouchard's discussions of Carolingian and Cluniac historiography seem to set up a straw man (as shown, not least, by her own footnotes), while her characterization of the early Cistercian Carta Caritatis as imbued with hierarchical principles seems, at least to me, to seriously misrepresent the text. In arguing that eleventh- and twelfth-century monks continued to maintain close ties with their families in the world, Livingstone also seems to have set up a straw man to oppose. In addition, she makes many of her arguments about “monks” on the basis of evidence about secular cathedral canons (while calling the latter “monks”), and her explanation for the growing practice within monasteries by which all monks' kin were commemorated on a single day seems to misrepresent actual monastic liturgical practices by asserting, without demonstration, that the innovation was correcting proliferating commemoration by individual monks. Rather, the explanation for the new practice is probably to be found in the spread of the feast of All Souls (raising the possibility of grouping “All Kin” together) and, even more, in the growing desire of monastic reformers to present traditional Black Monks as separate from the world.