Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/123

 Gidraud : Questions d' Histoire Chretiemie 113 in the manner of Duris of Sanios), Xavy and City from Epos to History, a very pretty edifice which, however, rests on sand so long as the gen- eral and exclusive prevalence of the three Doric and the four Ionic tribes is not proved (cf. Wilamowitz, Sitzungshcrichlc dcr Bed. Akad., 1906, p. 71), the Olympic Games (a graphic and fascinating description). The disquisition on the Oath seems to the reviewer a solid contribution to Greek public law. W. S. Ferguson. Questions d'Histoirc et d'Arclicologic Chrcticnnc. Par Je. Gui- R.Aun. (Paris: Victor LecofTre. 1906. Pp. 304.) Under this rather pretentious title M. Guiraud publishes eight essays of very unequal length and merit, and with no discoverable principle of unity except, perhaps, a permeating gratulatory sense of the infalli- bility of the Roman Church. The questions d'archeologie reduce them- selves actually to a paneg}-ric on the great " founder of Christian archae- ology," de Rossi, and an essay on " L'Esprit de la Liturgie Catholique." The former is an appreciative but entirely obvious review of some of de Rossi's chief discoveries in Roman archaeology: there is not a sign of a critical discussion of a question d'archeologie. The latter is simply a review of Dom Fernand Cabral's Le Lizre de la Prierc Antique (Paris, 1900). It fares somewhat better with the questions d'histoirc, which include essays on the morals and the liturgy of the Cathari, on the repression of heresy in the Middle Ages, on St. Peter's visit to Rome, on Roman relics in the ninth century, and on St. Dominic's independence of St. Francis in the cult of poverty. Here again it is difificult to discover any question in most of the essays. The one on St. Peter at Rome, for example, simply restates the testimony of the fathers from Clement of Rome down to Hippolytus, concluding with the rather humorous con- fession that the pages are a work of supererogation, since the fact of Peter's Roman residence " n'est plus conteste que par quelques retarda- taires du protestantisme et du vieux-catholicisme." The phrase is sug- gestive of the tenor of the whole book: it could enlighten only " re- tardataires ". The essay on " Les Reliques Romaines au IXf^ Siecle ", which by its title might lead one to expect some ^iscussion of questions d'archeologie, is simply, the amusing story of deacon Deusdona, the Roman agent for supplying ultramontane monasteries with saints' bones, translated from the Monumenta Germaniae (Script., XV., p. 240 et scqq.). The author devotes but twelve pages to the interesting question (raised by Sabatier) of the dependence of St. Dominic on St. Francis in his ideas of poverty. He dismisses the enumeration of the goods of the Dominicans in the bull Religiosam Vitam (March, 1218) as simply some tithes given by the Church to " the poor " of the monastery of Prouille. But in these few pages the author gives us only an abstract of the argu- ments already furnished to historical scholars in the lamented Balme's Cartulairc de St. Dominique.