The Lateran Church in Rome and the Ark of the Covenant: Housing the Holy Relics of Jerusalem. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion. By Eivor Andersen Oftestad,. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2019. xv + 257 pp. $120.00 cloth.

The Lateran Church in Rome and the Ark of the Covenant: Housing the Holy Relics of Jerusalem. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion. By Eivor Andersen Oftestad. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2019. xv + 257 pp. $120.00 cloth.

At first glance, Eivor Andersen Oftestad's The Lateran Church in Rome and the Ark of the Covenant seems to offer a relatively tailored study of a particular medieval text—the Descriptio Lateranensis ecclesiae (which describes the sacred precincts of the Roman Basilica of St. John in Lateran)—and a particular holy object—the Ark of the Covenant (ostensibly housed at the Lateran church from around the turn of the twelfth century until Pope Benedict XIV removed the discredited relic in the eighteenth century). In part, her book focuses carefully on the origins, recensions, and manuscript tradition of the Descriptio Lateranensis ecclesiae, dated by Oftestad to the period just after the First Crusade rather than within the traditionally agreed upon range of between 1073 and 1118. The Descriptio Lateranensis ecclesiae, in turn, provides important evidence for the fact that the regular canons at the Lateran claimed to possess the Ark of the Covenant, among other biblical relics. According to Oftestad, this assertion legitimated the Lateran church's status as the physical successor to the destroyed Jewish temple in Jerusalem. In the appendices, Oftestad's book displays its scholarly rigor, including a list of manuscripts containing references to the Descriptio Lateranensis ecclesiae, a stemma of the text and analysis...