Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/146

 138 SHORT NOTICES January The weakness of political authority in the fourth century explains the strenuous efforts made by the church to reach absolute certainty in matters of faith : ' il etait necessaire de donner aux hommes, desesperes par 1'universelle mobilite, quelque chose de solide, de fixe, d'inebranlable a quoi s'accrocher ' (p. 205). In the last chapter we are told that Europe at the present time is threatened with even greater dangers ; governments are unstable, the principles of monarchy and democracy being equally discredited, while the prevalence of ' intellectual anarchy ' makes it impos- sible for the church effectually to counteract disintegrating tendencies. In order to support this interesting thesis Signer Ferrero is led to exaggerate the power possessed by the senate in the first and second centuries ; he even says (p. 22) that from the time of Vespasian it ' governed the empire with an energy and wisdom which challenged comparison with the best times of the Republic '. Again, he scarcely does justice to the emperors of the fourth century when he says that they merely prolonged the agony of the dying empire. His statements of fact are not always to be trusted : thus on p. 27 we are told that, according to ' the historians of antiquity ', Vespasian selected a thousand provincial families, enrolled them in the senatorial and equestrian orders, made them come to Rome, and thus reconstructed the Roman aristocracy. This seems to be derived from the obscure and untrustworthy statement of Aurelius Victor : ' lectis undique optimis viris mille gentes compositae ', which is generally taken to refer to the conferment of patrician not senatorial rank. G. H. S. IN her book The Early History of the Monastery of Cluny (London : Milford, 1920) Miss L. M. Smith gives the results of researches which she began with an excellent article published some years ago in this Review. 1 The conclusions which, following the lead of Sackur, she established on the relations between Gregory VII and Cluny and on the alleged share of Cluny in the origination of the Gregorian tenets, have been carried further by M. Paul Fournier, Mr. R. L. Poole, M. A. Fliche, and other scholars. In the present volume Miss Smith deals with the early charters of Cluny and the lives of the first five abbots. Miss Smith has missed a great opportunity, not so much (as has been rather unfairly stated) from lack of scholarship as from her failure to realize that a very real enthusiasm for her subject did not absolve her from the performance of the technical duties of the historian. As she rightly says, there is a comparatively unworked mine of rich historical material in the documents and hagio- graphical literature which she has used : but it is not sufficient to expose this material ; it must be sifted and tested. Even if we assume that it is all sound, it should be put in its setting. Miss Smith possesses the ability, but apparently has lacked the diligence or imagination to perform this critical work. Her book gives the impression that, after working on it for a long time, she had despaired of finishing it, and finally published it in haste. There is no geographical apparatus the reader is not even told where Cluny and the associated or daughter houses were no criticism of the texts, which are sometimes quoted under such references as ' Bouquet ', no guide to the value of the existing literature, nor to the 1 Ante, xxvi. 20.