When completed, these volumes wiU be the indispensable guides to that which in many areas ofWestern Europe provided the fundamental orientation for the study of rhetoric in the Middle Ages. Professor Polak's census will be of special importance in the study ofthe stylistic developments in this latter category ofletter in the early modern period. Scholars have come to see that there was no sharp break between medieval and Renaissance letter-writing as was formerly believed and that in the area of official correspondence medieval formulae appear to have persisted down to the end of the fifteenth century. I particularly wish to acknowledge Professor Polak's wisdom in including Renaissance material in his census of manuscripts. Compared with the first two categories, the number of manuscripts in the third is relatively small, because this genre of rhetoric was largely limited to the central and northern Italian communes. As with the first volume, the manuscript census includes ( 1 ) the ars dictaminis with its treatises, manuals, and die- 90BOOK REVIEWS tamina or model letter collections (2) the ars epistolandi, the art of letterwriting of the Renaissance humanists (fourteenth to seventeenth century) and (3) the related art of ars arengandi or the art of secular oratory for judicial, political, academic, and social purposes, together with model speech collections or arenge. In the cases ofJapan and Greece, however, the information was obtained by correspondence. The present volume, like its predecessor dealing with Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (see ante, LXXX, 139-141), is largely a result of the author's visit to hundreds of libraries in Western Europe and the United States. The results of Professor Polak's research for France, Austria, (West) Germany, and Italy, whose libraries contain the richest coUections of manuscripts on these arts, wiU be pubUshed in a third volume. xvii, 475.) This volume constitutes the second part of a monumental effort to publish organized inventories of the extant manuscript evidence relating to the medieval arts of letter-writing and secular oratory, the ars dictaminis and the ars arengandi.

A Census of Manuscripts Found in Part of Western Europe, Japan, and the United States ofAmerica. WestonJesuit School of Theology Medieval and Renaissance Letter Treatises and Form Letters. It would therefore be helpful to correlate the writings of Teresa and her like with the other evidence and arguments so ably presented in this volume. Teresa herself vigorously espoused this viewpoint, and I do not think it can be attributed to her writings being 'forced' (coacta) from her by her confessors, to use Romeo De Maio's expression quoted by Schutte (p. Central to the new ideal was obedience-to one's superiors, to one's confessor-as the litmus test of sanctity rather than rapture and ecstasy. Teresa of Avila's name occurs often in the volume, but in passing. No one spoke more insistently that the Prince of the Humanists on social virtue as constitutive of what it meant to be a good Christian-or had less to say about mystical experience.

I was struck, moreover, that in effect only Prosperi mentioned Erasmus as pertinent to the evolution of the new ideal. Further comparisons would surely be enlightening. Ofall the authors, onlyJean-Michel Sallmann examined any cases of sanctity supposedly simulated by men. Like any good book, of course, it raised further questions. I cannot recommend this volume highly enough. The cases are consistently fascinating, and they open new vistas into the complicated relationships between confessors and penitents, between inquisitors and the accused, between official definitions and the sensusfidelium. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:īOOK REVIEWS89 scription of how Anna Laminit deceived practically every member of the imperial court until her fraud was uncovered.

Black death medieval manuscripts