Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/598

 590 REVIEWS OF BOOKS October so veteran a scholar as M. Flach. But truth makes it necessary to write what one thinks. In concluding, however, it is important to emphasize the large mass of valuable information which M. Flach has collected as to the genesis of those great local states of France, which, whether we call them feudal or ' ethnic ', played a great part, each within its limits, in putting an end to the period of confusion which M. Flach so minutely studied. The share of these ' provincial nationalities ' in building up French nationality has been often obscured by the tendency of historians, until quite recent times, to look upon them as so many obstacles to the centralizing policy of the kings of Paris, whose exploits have bulked too large in the general history of the development of the French people. The internal consolidation of Flanders and Normandy, Brittany and Burgundy, Aquitaine and Provence, is a very integral and very significant side of French history. Without it there would have been no chance of real French unity or nationality. We, therefore, owe a great debt of gratitude to the scholar who has done so much to set this process in clear relief. But the real value of M. Flach's new volume lies in the abundant details he gives of these ' provincial ' developments. It is not in his gallant, but seldom successful, efforts to make these local groups fit into his juridical and patriotic, but essentially imhistorical, theories of how ancient France came into existence. Yet even these theories have their value as a protest against the equally unhistorical doctrine of the extreme Germanists and extreme feudalists. T. F. Tout. Ansdms von Laon Systematische Sentenzen. Edited by F. P. Bliemetz- RiEDER. {Beitrdge zur Geschickte der Philosophie des Mittelalters ; Texte und Untersuchungen. Band xviii. Heft 2.) I. Teil, Texte. (Miinster in Westfalen : Aschendorff, 1919.) This, the editio princeps of the Sententie of Anselm of Laon, is a welcome addition to our knowledge of the theological literature of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Dr. Bliemetzrieder, professor of ecclesiastical history at Graz, to whom we are indebted for it, has printed, along with the Sententie proper, an anonymous treatise, entitled Sententie diuine pagine, which precedes it in certain manuscripts and is believed by the editor to be an earlier work by the same author. The present fasciculus contains only the text of these with an account of the manuscripts ; the Untersuchungen are to follow. The great eminence of Anselm of Laon among the teachers of his time is well known to all students of the history of the period. Dr. Bliemetzrieder, mindful of the influence exerted by this distinguished Frenchman over the contemporary culture of Germany, invokes, in a touching passage of his preface, the spirit of Anselm to ' intercede with the Lord of nations ' on behalf of reconciliation and peace between the two peoples sundered by ' the most terrible of all wars '. We must await the appearance of the second part for a discussion of the historical position and importance of the author. For the present I will confine my remarks to a few points which have attracted my atten-