This collection of eleven contributions, prefaced by an introduction by the editor, sets out to trace certain aspects of the relationship between Anglo-Saxon England and the city of Rome, roughly between the seventh and the eleventh century (though most studies are clustered between the seventh and ninth centuries). Even as interest in these interconnections and in Wilhelm Levison, their most famous investigator, have increased in recent years, the interdisciplinary group of contributors prove that there is new life to be breathed into the subject. The foci advertised are pilgrimage, art and politics, and while it speaks usefully to all three themes, the collection most successfully handles the third. Not all of the chapters fit comfortably into these geographical and thematic boundaries. Lucia Sinisi surveys the pilgrimage to Mt Gargano in Apulia to venerate Michael the Archangel, though her account relies too heavily on hypothetical reconstructions of, for instance, the experience of a pilgrimage and betrays a tendency to exaggerate the importance of this site (not necessarily shared by her fellow contributors – cf. pp. 69, 142). David A. E. Pelteret similarly does not confine himself to Rome, explaining more generally the logistics involved in undertaking an expedition from England to the Continent. It may not fit comfortably in the volume, but Rory Naismith's welcome examination of numismatic links between England and Rome stands on its own as a rigorously researched catalogue and description of Anglo-Saxon coins discovered in Italy.
Not all of the authors necessarily break new ground, but the work here will prove helpful to anyone approaching these topics, especially for those who do not have access to research done in Italian. Riccardo Santangeli Valenzani traces the institutions created to assist foreigners in the city of Rome, the xenodochia and later scholae peregrinorum, whereas Alan Thacker strolls through the sites that a pilgrim would encounter in Rome in the seventh century. While replete with erudition, Thacker's lengthy chapter would have benefited from tightening his theme and engaging more explicitly with English pilgrims; it is already thirty-three pages in when they make their first appearance. Luisa Izzi calls attention to the often difficult-to-decipher graffiti that Anglo-Saxon pilgrims left behind in the catacombs of Rome.
Some of the most interesting results here limit their focus to good result. Veronica Ortenberg West-Harling offers a detailed art historical discussion on two highlights in Rome, the chapel of John vii in St Peter's and features of the Lateran. Marios Costambeys tackles Alcuin's ambivalent response to Rome: there was a chasm between the idealised Rome of the mind and its dirty politics and unsavoury figures like Leo iii on the ground. Thomas Noble re-examines the brief emergence of Lichfield as an archbishopric, which, among other things, may show that King Offa of Mercia envisioned having a pet bishop who would cement a royal-episcopal alliance of the kind that Charlemagne had already achieved. Francesca Tinti turns her attention to the pallium in late Anglo-Saxon England and the papal demand that English archbishops make the arduous trip in person to fetch this symbol of their office from the altar of St Peter's, however hesitant some of them were to do so. Along with Steven Schoening (consulted for this publication), Tinti is making this previously obscure liturgical vestment a surprisingly fertile new area of research. The aura of Rome generated by Anglo-Saxons persisted in the eleventh century for King Cnut, whose expiatory pilgrimage was a master stroke of public relations, as Elaine Treharne argues.
In the course of a book filled with stimulating insights more than one interpretation may be called into question. Some might object to the selective and somewhat dismissive reference in the introduction to Levison's ‘tendency to see the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon missionaries and their dealings with Rome as the source of salvation from the barbarism exemplified by the Continental pagan Germanic peoples' (pp. 2–3). Yet when Levison spoke in the language of darkness or heathenism, he was speaking in the language of missionaries like Boniface, not expressing his own view. It would be difficult to read contemporaries and not grasp the overriding significance of salvation, which was seen as an act of love for kinsfolk who otherwise would face eternal damnation. The language of ‘barbarism’ is imported from Conrad Leyser's understanding of Levison. Levison himself preferred to speak more optimistically about the common heritage of England and Germany that had been forged in the Middle Ages and persisted in spite of World War II, which was striking given his exile from his homeland because of his Jewish heritage.
The reference in the series of papal biographies the Liber pontificalis to the meeting between Pope Hadrian i and Charlemagne in 774 cannot possibly be the earliest example of the scholae peregrinorum, as Santangeli Valenzani would have it (p. 79). The schola militiae who accompanied the pope had a military function and were intended to impress the king with their readiness for battle in a situation in which Hadrian had little idea of what to expect. The scholae peregrinorum mentioned in a 799 entry were instead meeting a returning pope, a situation in which military preparedness was not at issue.
In the course of his extensive chapter, I found myself agreeing with Thacker more often that not, but not in every instance. Thacker perpetuates the bad press given to the ‘murderous and usurping Phocas' (p. 95) without mentioning the rhetorical praise that Gregory i lavished on him. Pope Damasus (366–84), in his inscription in the fountain of St Peter's, likely intended a double-meaning with the term salus (p. 105): the fountain provided healing, but also salvation. Thacker seems puzzled that popes with Eastern origins might act in the best interests of Rome (pp. 131–2), but it is only natural that people with long ties to the institution of the papacy and the eternal city would see them as their primary loyalties. Sergius i never set foot in Syria, whatever his background.
The other authors might reconsider selected points. Izzi proceeds too confidently from images painted on the walls of the catacombs to the ceremonies like baptism and eucharist that were supposedly performed there (pp. 163–4). Depending on the period under consideration, the worshippers would have had to deal with the inconvenience of travelling through unmaintained catacombs if not the smell of rotting corpses, making it an inhospitable place for either ritual. It is more likely that some ceremonies were held in the barnlike churches built above catacombs. Against Ortenberg West-Harling, the First Roman Ordo contains no reference to the ceremonies for Good Friday; she is perhaps thinking of Ordo Romanus xxiii, but it is strange that the pagination for the former appears in the footnotes (p. 200). Naismith is quick to dismiss the small number of coins discovered from 850–900 as not reflecting the true scale of interaction, but on the same page is ready to argue for increased contact between 900 and 970 when the preservation of coins is higher (p. 222). Further, I am far from convinced, with Treharne, that Cnut was ‘[a]lmost certainly’ evoking the two-swords theory of Pope Gelasius i (p. 357) mediated either through the Carolingians or Ottonians, unless one accepts that this idea was in the ether but not explicitly stated in her sources.
