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The Age of Abbot Desiderius. Montecassino, the Papacy and the Normans in the eleventh and twelfth centuries . By H. E. J. Cowdrey, Pp. xli + 300. Clarendon Press, 1983. £22.50.

The Age of Abbot Desiderius. Montecassino, the Papacy and the Normans in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. By H. E.J. Cowdrey, Pp. xli + 300. Clarendon Press, 1983. £22.50. This volume contains a study of the relationship of the reform papacy with the monastic world and, in particular, the contributions that Montecassino made to the success of the reform programme. The author offers a concise but accurate account of the opinions previously stated on this subject by various authors, including Tosti, Hirsch Palmarocchi, Fliche, Dormeier, Gregoire and other past commentators. The first of the four main chapters that comprise this work (the fifth, 'After 1087', does not add much to the objectives of this study) is useful and informative. For example, pp. 19-27 contain a good summary of the literary and scientific contributions of Montecassino during its Golden Age. Readers will find updated listings of sources, commentaries and recent critical appraisals of all the authors mentioned. Provocative is the author's insistence on the lack of outstanding contributions by the Cassinese community to the new liturgical, spiritual and devotional trends and the fact that Montecassino did not produce saints in the number that Cluny did (p. 30). Desiderius himself is presented as a good example of the lack of men of extraordinary spirituality at Montecassino (p. 31). His Dialogi 'present a sensible moderate rather than an outstanding heroic level of sensitivity and observance' (p. 32). The author continues in this vein with comments such as the following: 'There is nothing to suggest. . . that Montecassino monastic life rose often above a moderate level of devotion and seemliness' (p. 33), and the abbey offers a 'picture of conventional worthiness'.