ofLadies, Greene includes Pizan'spoems related to the debate. Shealso includes one of Gerson'ssermons in which he demonstrateshis ability to write a sophisticatedallegory in opposition to thethemes of The Rose. Greene arguesthat Gerson is the most talentedwriter of the group.

The Romance of the Rose continuesto overshadow this fascinatingmedieval debate about its merits.Greene's edition will bringthe debate to a wider, French­speaking audience and will openup continued scholarly work.In December 2006, Routledgepublished Debating the Romande la Rose, edited by ChristineMcWebb. This critical anthologywith translations into Englishcontains many of the same lettersand documents as Greene'sedition. The appearance of thesetwo books in the same year speaksto the importance of this earlyexample of literary criticism.

Elizabeth A. HubbleUniversity of Montana

Paula M. Rieder. On thePurification of Women:Churching in NorthernFrance, 1100-1500. (TheNew Middle Ages.) PalgraveMacmillan, 2006. Pp. 257.

,~ he ritual of churching, the~ t liturgical ceremony which

concluded the "lying-in"month that followed the birthof a child has, as Paula Riedernotes in the introduction to herbook, received very little scholarlyattention. On thePurification ofWomen is, therefore, an extremelywelcome addition to studieson the history of lay women'slives in the later Middle Ages.Although Rieder admits thather original idea, to examine theritual in the early and high MiddleAges, was hampered by "thin ornonexistent" material (7), shehas identified a rich collectionof archival sources for twelfth-to fifteenth-century France,especially for Normandy wherethe custom of churching wasparticularly popular. The studythus offers a "full picture of theliturgical and social celebrationsof churching in France [...]in the fifteenth century" (7),directly complementing the moreabundant studies of the post­Reformation rite.

Previous analyses of churchinghave focused either on the

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historical and liturgical aspectsof the rite or on the purification­versus-celebration debate thatcharacterized the ceremony inthe post-Reformation period .Studying English practicesin particular, scholars likeWilliam Coster have interpretedchurching as evidence of thelow status of women within aChristian, patriarchal, society. 1 Bylooking back at the history anddevelopment of churching, Riederdemonstrates how such debatescame about. Most importantly,she shows that the ritual cannotbe reduced to binary oppositionsor simply to the subjugation ofwomen. Rieder explores churchingas a site where power is contestednot only between men andwomen, but also between womenand the celibate clergy.

Rieder's text begins withan analysis of the origins ofchurching in France before thetwelfth century. She addresses thetendency of existing scholarshipto explain churching as a simplecontinuation of the Jewishpurification rites contained inthe Bible or as a custom derivingfrom celebration of the Virgin'spurification at Candlemas.Examining many different sources,particularly evidence from synodalstatutes and penitentials, Riederargues instead that" [t]he originsof churching in medieval France

were [...] the result of manyfactors: ideas and attitudes aboutsexuality developed in the first fivecenturies of Christianity, perhapsindigenous Germanic customsmarried to the beliefs of Christianmissionaries, adaptations of theMosaic purity codes, and theinvisible efforts of women"(37). The second chapterdeals with the redefinition ofchurching by French ecclesiasticsbetween the thirteenth andfifteenth centuries. Duringthis period the focus of theceremony was the recognitionof a woman's status as wife andmother rather than purificationper se. This is interesting fordemonstrating not only thevalue that the church placedupon marriage and legitimacy,but also how churching wasused to marginalize, or reinforcethe marginalization of, thosewomen who did not conformto sanctioned marriage. Riedershows that the value attachedto churching by society and bymothers themselves led unmarriedwomen to seek out the rite, eitherby asking for special permissionor by traveling to another parishwhere they were not known.

In the third chapter, Riedershows that although the Churchmade churching a privilege of thelegitimately married woman, thelanguage of churching continued

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to emphasize the superiorityof the clergy's celibacy. Thisimplies that churching playedan important part not only inmaintaining the role of womenin late medieval society, but alsothe role of the clergy. Chapter 4explores how the priest's offeringof his stole to lead the woman intothe church (in order not to touchher) maintained his physical andspiritual superiority. The differentpollutions that churching wasthought to cleanse-blood, semen,sin of lust-reveal the closerelationship between scripturaland medical understandings ofbodily fluids and women's bodies.For the clergy, churching wasassociated with sexual pollutionand bodily impurity. Churchingoffered "a solution, temporary andincomplete, to the problem ofwomen's bodies and, at the sametime, [reaffirmed] the divine planfor the salvation of humanity inboth body and soul" (79).

Rieder goes on to explore indepth the multiple meaningsthat churching engendered fromthe point of view of the differentparticipants in the ceremonybesides the clergy. Particularlyinteresting is how churchingappears to have reinforcedtraditional gender roles at thesame time that its subersiveaspects potentially empoweredthe women who participated in it.

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Developing ideas expolored in anearlier article, Rieder shows thatthe churching ceremony singledout the new mother, brought herinto a privileged position in thechurch sanctuary, and celebratedher survival of a physicallydangerous event.Z

Chapter 6 examines the ritualfrom the point of view of thewomen themselves, exploring thelinks with the Virgin's Purificationin the Temple. Rieder proposesthat the frequency with whichMary is surrounded by otherwomen in Purification scenesin late medieval manuscriptsreveals that the churching wasa "women's event" in whichordinary women were broughtcloser to the Virgin Mary (127).Unfortunately the images ofthe Purification are used in anillustrative capacity without beinganalyzed on their own terms. Forinstance, Rieder notes that "largercrowds [at the Purification] arefound in early printed books ofhours intended for use by thebourgeoisie," but the footnoterefers to the "unusual" imageof the Purification in the 'TresRiches Heures of the Duke ofBerry, which is neither printednor was made for the bourgeoisie.Referencing this image fromsuch a famous manuscript begs aseries of other questions not onlyabout images of churching, but

also about manuscript productionwhich are, granted, not withinthe remit of Rieder's study.Nevertheless, more details on theownership of the manuscriptsdiscussed on pp. 125-127 andreproduction of the Purificationimages under consideration wouldhave been welcome.

The final chapter looks at thecelebratory aspects of churching,notably the feast that followed theceremony, lafeste des relevailles.Rieder shows that whereas thisfeast honored the new mother, itwas also an event where men andwomen shared the same space.It could even become a spacein which a man could celebratehis masculinity: the birth of anheir and the return to sexualrelations with his wife, which thechurching ceremony authorized.Thus late medieval churching andits festivities "offered something toeveryone and, more importantly,helped to create and supportessential social identities and thepatriarchal structure of medievalsociety" (163).

When studying the histories ofwomen, it is always necessaryto negotiate the methodologicaltraps that can befall attempts torecover them, especially where thesubject is so intricately bound upwith the history of the Churchand its laws. An important part

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of the success of Rieder's study isher emphasis on the possibilitiesfor women to take a seeminglyprescriptive ceremony and imbueit with their own meanings. Bydrawing out those moments oftension between men and women,laity and clergy, within the rite,Rieder successfully insists on thealternative meanings of churchingand how attempts to control themeaning of the rite made it astruggle for power. Furthermore,her analysis of alternativemeanings for churching allowsRieder to show not only that somewomen sought out churchingwhere it might otherwise havebeen denied them, but also thatsome mothers may have refusedto be churched altogether. On theone hand then, a picture emergesof late medieval French churchingas a rite in which women wishedto participate, which offered themrecognition of their social roles,provided them with a form ofhealing, and which offered thepossibility of upsetting the socialhierarchy. On the other hand,Rieder shows how myriad othermeanings also emerge regardingthe importance of this ritual forall the participants involved.

Elizabeth L'EstrangeL'Uniuersite de Liege

END NOTES

1. William Coster, "Purity, Profanity,and Puritanism: The Churching ofWomen, 1500-1700," in Womell illtbe Church, ed. W. J. Sheils and DianaWood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), pp.377-387 .2. Paula M. Rieder, "InsecureBorders: Symbols of ClericalPrivilegeand Gender Ambiguity in the Liturgyof Churching," in T he MaterialCulture of Sex) Procreation, andMarriage ill Premodern Europe, ed.Anne L. McClanan and Karen RosoffEncarnacion (New York: Palgrave,2001), pp. 93-113.

Sylvia Huot. PostcolonialFictions in the Romande Perceforest: CulturalIdentities and Hybridities.(Gallica; v. 1.) D. S. Brewer,2007. Pp. 234.

i n the late 1990s, articl es andbooks star ted appearing usingpostcolonial theory to read

medieval texts. The combinationstruck some as anachronistic, andsome asked how useful this trendwas. The insights of the work ofthe last decade answer those criticsand reveal that postcolonial th eoryhas enriched our understandingof medieval chronicles of theCrusades, medieval travel writ ings,and even chivalric romance

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as Sylvia Huot's new bookPostcolonial Fictions in the Raman.de Perceforest demonstrates.

Huot, of Cambridge University,has written a number of articleson Perceforest. Her last book,Madness in Medieval FrenchLiterature (2004), was a broadstudy of madness across OldFrench texts and genres . Hernew book continues her focuson categories of alterity as sheexamines one medieval Frenchwork through the lens ofpostcolonial theory.

Written about 1340, the proseRom an de Perceforest is not well­studied. The lengthy, complexwork comprises six books. Thefirst through fourth books areavailable in modern editions inmulti-volume sets. The fifthand sixth are only available in asixteenth-century edition makingthe work relatively inaccessible .Perceforest was popular in its timeand remained so through theearly modern period as Europeentered the age of discovery andcolonizat ion. Huot's elucidationof the romance's complextangle of themes should inspiremore readers to tackle this vastmedieval romance.

The work tells the story of aforgotten, chivalric, pre-ArthurianBritain rul ed by a dynasty