Luciano Perelli. Il movimento popolare nell'ultimo secolo della Repubblica by Luciano PerelliReview by: Susan TreggiariThe American Historical Review, Vol. 88, No. 5 (Dec., 1983), pp. 1254-1255Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1904913 .

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1254 Reviews of Books

generically of' very humble standing, and, justifiably arguing that to identif'y social status a network of' f'actors must be considered, finds that the typical Paulinist was (like Paul) an artisan, but that commu- nity members as a whole-"independent women with moderate wealth, Jews with wealth in a pagan society, f'reedmen with skill and money but stigma- tized by origin, and so on" (p. 191)-were marked by status inconsistency.

'The communities that brought such people to- gether were influenced by comparable, pre-existing f'orms (the private household, collegia, synagogue, and school); but their group boundaries were estab- lished through new, symbolic language patterns (of' belonging, internally; of' separateness, externally) and distinctive institutions (f'or example, common meals) that supplied internal cohesion. Group soli- darity was advanced f'urther through the new struc- tures of' leadership, which, although fluid, depend- ed on the paternalism of' Paul himself' and the practical success as meanis of' social control of' such devices as the authoritative letter and personal visit. Ritual, especially baptism (an act of' initiation not its prelude) and the eucharist, compounded cohesion and the communities' unity one with another; yet the Pauline cells were not rigidly exclusive, and in preserving links with the wider society f'rom which they sprang, remained flexible and tension-riddeni. In examining the social f'orce of' Paulinism, Meeks posits, finally, correlations between Christiani mono- theism and the unity of' the Pauline groupings; between their members' conception of' a personal God and the intimacy of' their household congrega- tions; between their eschatological change and social transf'ormation; between the paradox of' jesus' death and exaltation and the groups' inner contra- dictions.

Paulinism appealed to social misfits. ['hat is the basic proposition. It depends above all on the bio- graphical register of' thirty adherents compiled in chapter 2, a rather vulnerable evidential base. And it raises the unanswered question of' why, if' true, many other members of' the common species were not swif'tly subsumed by the new doctrine. While, theref'ore, Meeks has given an admirable account of' the emergence of' Paulinism, he tends to exaggerate the immediate social significance of' his subject, not least because his theories involve an overdose of' self: f'ulfilling prophecy.

KEITliH R. BRADLEY

UiaversitT of' Vidtona

LUCIANO PERELLI. 1 inovimento popolare niell ultimo secolo della Repubblica. (Historica, Politica, Philosophica, il Pensiero Antico, Studi e 'Festi, num- ber 11.) Furin: G. B. Paravia. 1982. Pp. 257. L. 18,000.

"Noo, there are three reasons f'or taking the part o' the people: the first is, when general leeberty an' public happiness are conformable to your ain parteecular f'eelings o' the moral and poleetical f'etness o' things; the second is, when they happen to be, as it were, in a state of exceetability, an' ye think ye can get a gude price for your commodity, by Hingin' in a leetle seasoning o' pheelanthorpy an' republican speerit; the third is, when ye think ye can bully the menestry into gieing ye a place or a pansion to hau'd your din." So Mr. Mac Laurel in Peacock's Headlong Hall (1815) in words which, with minor revision, might be applied to the politicians whom the Romans of' the late Republic called populares. Luciano Perelli takes his definition f'rom the celebrated and admittedly tendentious speech in which Cicero def'ended Sestius: popular&'i politicians are (to quote his translation) "coloro che volevano che f'ossero gradite alla moltitudine le cose che f'acevano e dicevano" (p. 26). 'fheir opponents, the self-styled optimates, wanted, according to Cicero, to do what the best citizens would approve. 'This does not mean that Rome had a two-party system in the late Republic, as Mommsen thought. Nor does the interplay of' ambition and alliance within the gov- erning class provide a sufficient explaniation f'or political aims and events. 'There were causes and grievances of' a variety of groups outside the oligar- chy that provided popularis leaders-who themselves came f'rom the senatorial aristocracy or, if' new men, f'rom wealthy equestrian f'amilies (p. 13)-with moti- vation and support. It is Perelli's particular aim to define the intended beneficiaries of' the bills pro- posed by populares, usually as tribunes, within the period 133-44 B.C. Movimeento describes both the demands of' the populus and the sporadic efforts of' populares to meet them.

Af'ter an interesting survey of' modern analyses and a useful but selective discussion of' the contem- porary and later ancient sources (he gives thorough consideration to Cicero's set-pieces in the speeches and philosophical works but little attention to the letters; discusses Sallust but no other late republican author, not even Caelius; concentrates oni imperial historiographers and omits Horace and Vergil), Perelli in the second part and kernel of' the book (pp. 73-227) attempts a "'Traccia per la storia del movimento popolare." His narrative is lucid and his opinions judicious, but the scope of' his work com- pels him to send his reader to other scholars on many topics (living conditions of' the poor [p. 20], political vocabulary [p. 12], the collegia [p. 212]) and to concentrate his attention on the major leaders f'rom the Gracchi to Caesar, to the neglect of' new men and those who retire or change sides after their tribunate. 'Fhe specialist will want to consult Perelli on particular points and, thanks to indexes of' ancient and modern authors, can readily find his

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Medieval 1255

balanced and occasionally scathing comments on his predecessors. The less-specialized reader will still need to go for a more comprehensive and original account to Peter Brunt's Social conflicts in the Roman Republic (197 1).

In his conclusions, Perelli briefly sketches the groups who benefited from popularis legislation, the rural and city plebs, soldiers and veterans, Italians, equites (pp. 229-43). This chapter whets one's appe- tite for a more thorough exploration of a shorter period, for instance 70-50 B.C., which might com- bine the findings and advances in understanding achieved in the last century of modern scholarship, for example description of the mentalites and tradi- tions of the masses as well as living conditions and sporadic crises, classification of legislation, pros- opography of popularis legislators and their few recorded nonsenatorial supporters. That, since it would be necessary also to discuss popularis measures introduced by optimates and senatorial reaction to popularis measures, would amount to an analysis of the politics of the whole period. But the material for such a synthesis is to hand, thanks to the labors of scholars whose points of view differ widely from each others' and from Perelli's-Brunt, Gruen, Lintott, and Wiseman spring immediately to mind. Perelli's admiration for the programmatic article of Feliciano Serrao, "I partiti politici nella repubblica romana," in Ricerche ... C. Barbagallo (1970), as well as his own preliminary chapter and conclusions, suggests the hope that he may go on from histoire evenementielle. to a deeper analysis.

SUSAN TREGGIARI

Stanford University

MEDIEVAL

DONALD WEINSTEIN and RUDOLPH M. BELL. Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000- 1700. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1982. Pp. xii, 314. $25.00.

The blessed Henry Suso once meditated on the symbolism of an apple in order to spur himself on to the imitation of Christ; now he is in an Apple-a fruit, that is, of the genus computer, which can accommodate millions of bytes. Although Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell have placed Suso there along with 863 other Christian saints who lived between 1000 and 1700 in order to pursue a macroscopic analysis of the interaction between saints and society, their study is not, as we might first expect, an assemblage of annotated tables. Quite to the contrary, the authors are just as committed to the literate analysis and exposition of their findings as any nonquantifier might be; indeed, they write

with great vividness and psychological penetration, integrate evocative contemporary works of art into their text, and even offer many arguments that do not rest on statistics at all. Ironically the result is that a troglodyte like the present reviewer occasionally wishes for less qualitative psychologizing rather than more.

The first half of Saints and Society attempts to draw conclusions about family history and personality development primarily from the qualitative inter- pretation of hagiographic narratives. Among the most prominent arguments that Weinstein and Bell advance in this regard are (1) that between 1200 and 1500 affective families were the norm, (2) that dur- ing the same period and beyond adolescence was recognized as "a distinct life stage," and (3) that medieval adults often underwent dramatic conver- sion experiences. Unfortunately, however, although any one of these propositions may well be true, the first and third can hardly be proven by reference to highly formulaic literary evidence unless a program is found for distinguishing reality from topoi. For example, did the thirteenth-century queen of Po- land really nurse her child or was she merely said to have done so because the hagiographer wished to draw a comparison between her saintlike infant and Nicholas of Bari, who suckled from his mother's breast? As for adolescence, even if it is true that many saints opted for ascetcism during their teen- age years and came into conflict with their parents in so doing, it does not necessarily follow that the Middle Ages knew "adolescence" as a stage of personality development.

On the other hand, the treatment of society's perceptions of sainthood in the book's second half finds the authors on much firmer terrain. Quantify- ing their hagiographic evidence to determine when and where saints coming from one or another social background and belonging to one or another cleri- cal order or the laity were perceived to have been endowed with one or another saintlike characteris- tic, Weinstein and Bell conclude convincingly that the "years from about 1200 to about 1540 . . . emerge as a coherent period in the history of Catholic piety" because "this was the period when conversion [became] a conscious choice, . . . when the female contemplative came into her own, when the saint's favored place [became] the town ... [and] when lay people actively joined the pursuit of spiri- tual perfection" (p. 102). Among numerous impres- sive statistics supporting this interpretation are the doubling of female saints from the twelfth to the thirteenth century and the increase of laypeople and tertiaries among saints in the same hundred years by a factor of over 50 percent. Because the authors go very far toward explaining such phenomena rather than merely recording them, the result is highly recommended reading for all students of

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