Robert Curry

Clare of Assisi and the Thirteenth-Century Church: Religious Women, Rules, and Resistance by Catherine M. Mooney (review)

forms of magic seem to be used by saga heroes for positive ends. Meylan suggests magic could be seen as a desirable means to power, albeit within a pagan context, in texts like Hávamál, and is redefined as an íþrótt (skill) free of religious connotations in texts like Ynglinga saga and Ǫrvar-Odds saga, in the latter of which it sits comfortably beside explicitly Christian behaviour. Here the argument begins to emerge that ‘the foregrounding of magic used to create a new, desirable socio-political order at the expense of powerful leaders [...] may reflect the preoccupations of [...] the text-producing elite, faced with a social order that did not satisfy them [...] and which did not allow them access to [...] means such as military force to do something about it’ (p. 122). The scene thus set, Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the key hypothesis that magic gave ‘disenfranchised Icelanders’ (p. 123) a way of dealing with Norwegian kings. Chapter 5 examines Snorra Edda, Egils saga, and Þorleifs þáttr jarlsskálds. Meylan suggests these texts create circumstances where magic is acceptable — outside Iceland, for one, and when ‘the king stops behaving according to custom and law’ (p. 154). Chapter 6 analyses the L-version of the saga of native Icelandic St Jón, who resurrects a man wrongfully hanged by the Norwegian king. Meylan draws compelling parallels between the depiction of the miracle in Jóns saga and depictions of magic elsewhere. This book is a welcome addition to scholarship of early Scandinavian magic for its focus on understanding textual sources in their thirteenthand fourteenth-century context rather than trying to uncover actual practices. The first part of the book, Chapters 1 to 4, is perhaps more successful than the second, where I find the argument somewhat overstated. The premise of widely-held ‘Icelandic interests’ (p. 166) could be further interrogated, and the notion that the Icelandic elite rewrote magic as a source of power ‘in order to convince themselves that, should they choose to do something about it, they had the means at their disposal’ (p. 193) feels unsatisfactory: it seems a lot of effort to go to for something that could not be actually acted upon. Nonetheless, the book is filled with interesting close analyses and solid scholarship that should prove useful to historians of religion and textual scholars alike. haNNah burrows, University of Aberdeen

Monasteries on the Borders of Medieval Europe: Conflict and Cultural Interaction ed. by Emilia Jamroziak and Karen Stöber (review)

Review(s) of: Monasteries on the borders of Medieval Europe: Conflict and cultural interaction, by Jamroziak, Emilia and Karen Stober, eds, (Medieval Church Studies, 28), Turnhout, Brepols, 2013, hardback, pp. x, 274, 9 b/w illustrations, 8 b/w line art, R.R.P. 80.00 ISBN 9782503545356.

Survival and Success on Medieval Borders: Cistercian Houses in Medieval Scotland and Pomerania from the Twelfth to the Late Fourteenth Century by Emilia Jamroziak (review)

Review(s) of: Survival and success on medieval borders: Cistercian houses in medieval Scotland and Pomerania from the twelfth to the late fourteenth century, by Jamroziak, Emilia, (Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 24), Turnhout, Brepols, 2011, cloth, pp. 215, 2 b/w tables, 5 b/w line art, R.R.P. 95.00, ISBN 9782503533070.