La Reforma gregoriana y su proteccion en la cristiandad occidental (Siglos XI-XII)

The thirteen essays in this volume are, like many conference proceedings, somewhat mixed, but there are a number of substantial and interesting contributions (Some indeed are so substantial that they cannot have been given as papers at the conference in their current form). Nine of the essays are in Spanish, two in French and two in Italian. Pride of place must surely be given to a brilliant study by Dominique Iogna Prat examining the representation of ‘the Church' in both iconography and theological tracts and its links with Eucharistic theology, with particular reference to Bruno of Segni and Hugh of St Victor, a tour de force both of learning and clear exposition. Most of the other contributions that will be of interest to readers are likely to be those devoted to Spain during the Gregorian Reform period: the best of which is the longest study in this book, almost a hundred pages, by Carlos Manuel Reglero de la Fuente, on the complex structural changes in the Church in the kingdoms of León and Portugal between the Council of Coyanza in 1055 and the Council of Valladolid a century later, which includes a clear and valuable discussion of the recruitment and appointment of bishops, the role of the papacy in translations and the adjudication of the frequent legal disputes, and the relations of bishops and their chapters—in short, a mini-monograph on the Church in the western half of the peninsula at a crucial formative period. Another lengthy but significant essay is that by Carlos Laliena Corbera on that ever-popular subject of the origins of the Crusade in Spain, which benefits from taking a Spanish rather than papal/crusading perspective—considering the peninsula in its own right rather than as a mere prologue to the main event in the east after 1095. There are also some useful, if more general surveys, for example by Nikolas Jaspert on the development of the Augustinians, Franz Neiske on Cluny and the Gregorian Reform (which puts to rest once and for all the myth that Gregory VII himself was a Cluniac), and an elegant, if unfootnoted, essay by Grado Giovanni Merlo on the emergence of heresy, the last two relatively brief

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