Howe calls upon a truly impressive array of evidence and scholarship from the fields of history, literature, liturgical studies, art and architectural history, and theological studies in support of his argument, and scholars will profit immensely from perusing his footnotes. The book is loaded with important insights and asides.... Most importantly, Howe's work lands another hammer blow on the older, ... Read moreconfessionally-driven, top-down paradigm of church reform... and does so in a style that is self-consciously accessible to specialist and non-specialist readers.
SPECULUM
In this deeply learned and handsomely illuminated book, John Howe boldly reinserts the role played by church reform into the story of the formation of Europe during the fraught centuries around the millennium. He magnificently brings to life the creativity of an era too often overshadowed by the glories of the Carolingian and twelfth-century 'renaissances' that came before and after it. Like the gold and jewels that gleam on a medieval psalter, the work is studded with elegant evocations of the rich spirituality and dazzling material culture of Europe around the year 1000: its books, liturgy, statuary art, reliquaries, manuscripts, castles, and the `white mantel' of its churches. Before the Gregorian Reform is a mature work of scholarship written by a leading scholar of church history at the top of his craft.
Hans J. Hummer, Wayne State University, author of Politics and Power in Early Medieval Europe Before the Gregorian Reform is wide-ranging, thoughtful, and thought-provoking, written in a clear and indeed engaging way: I have found this book very stimulating, and have learned a great deal.
G. A. Loud, University of Leeds, author of The Latin Church in Norman Italy An extensively researched, engagingly written, and nicely illustrated book.... Howe draws upon his own impressive research to demonstrate the numerous contacts between the Roman and Greek churches.
American Historical Review
There is much of use here: the stress on the physical, acoustic and aesthetic aspects of developments in the tenth and early eleventh centuries is welcome, and these sections bring together a wide range of recent literature. Mediterranean areas, especially Italy, receive due attention... the emphasis on Byzantine ideas is refreshing.
Journal of Ecclesiastical History
Builds on a good deal of recent research which emphasises the deep roots of later developments, and draws attention to the diversity and vitality of religious life at this time.... He succeeds in evoking interest in the tenth-century Church.
English Historical Review
A comprehensive and accessible survey of two hundred years of church history.... A richly textured and arresting image of a world rooted in its Carolingian past yet foundational to the expansionist and ecumenical church of the later Middle Ages.... Indispensible to any medieval history syllabus.
H-Soz-Kult
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