Church Reform and Social Change in Eleventh-Century Italy: Dominic of Sora and His Patrons by John Howe (review)

Church Reform and Social Change in Eleventh-Century Italy: Dominic of Sora and His Patrons. By John Howe. [Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1997. Pp. xxiii, 220. $37.50.) John Howe's study of the hagiographical dossier of Dominic of Sora (d. 1032) is a superb example of how the traditional strengths of medieval studies (close study and comparison of manuscripts, careful genealogical reconstruction) can be felicitously combined with new interpretive approaches. The result is a stimulating exploration of ecclesiastical reform in its social context based on a rigorously researched case study. The book opens with an evocative description of the rugged geographical and social terrain of the Abruzzi, Lazio, and Umbria in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. After describing "Dominic's World," Howe sketches Dominic's career as a monk, a hermit, a reforming priest, a wandering preacher, a founder of churches and monasteries. The most interesting parts of the study are its central chapters analyzing "Dominic's Holiness," his "'Benedictine' Monastic System," and his "Patrons and Followers." Two closing chapters describe and analyze the undoing of the saint's life work and several appendices set out Howe's reconstruction of the hagiographical dossier, the genealogy of the Counts of Marsica, and their patronage relations with Monte Cassino. The author arrives at several important conclusions. Howe's evidence adds to the growing scholarly acknowledgment of well articulated reform ideals in the early eleventh century and to the relative unimportance of the papacy to the early formulation of the reform program."Before there was a center," Howe pithily concludes,"there was reform . . ." (p. 160). Howe's emphasis on the concrete character of Dominic's ecclesiastical work is also salutary. While historical narratives of the reform era continue to stress the rhetoric of the investiture contest, the theoretical foundations of papal authority, monastic spirituality, and the legal formulation of reform principles, Church Reform places the physical aspects of renewing religious life at the heart of its story. Dominic builds churches and monasteries with his own hands, melting lime for mortar and placing stones. He physically traverses a harsh and impoverished landscape, bringing healing and prayer to remote communities. Dominic ministers to sinful elites, instructing them to give their wealth to endow churches and monasteries. As Howe rightly notes, this "grubby accumulation of ecclesiastical property would make possible the intellectual and spiritual achievements of later generations" (p. 160). The concrete quality of Dominic's reform efforts also extends to his charisma. Rather than relying upon standard topoi of holiness and biblical allusions, Dominic's hagiographers locate his sanctity in the minute articulation of specific deeds. Howe's application of the ideas of Brian Stock to the character of Dominic's "Benedictine" monasticism should, moreover, command the interest of scholars in religious studies and historians of monasticism. Dominic's interactions with the monasteries he founded often contradicted the letter and spirit of the Rule, and yet he and his successors clearly considered these houses to be following St. Benedict's precepts. Howe suggests, invoking Stock, that the "the puzzling features of Dominic's 'Benedictinism' can be understood if his system and its counterparts are viewed as manifestations of a largely oral and customary monastic tradition, one for which the Benedictine Rule was the most authoritative supporting document but not an absolute guide" (p. …