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doi:10.l017/S000964071000171X The Gift of Tongues: Women's Xenoglossia in the Later Middle Ages. By Christine F. Cooper-Rompato. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. x +217 pp. $75.00 cloth.
The instantaneous ability to communicate in a language one does not know is called xenoglossia. Christine F. Cooper-Ròmpato's volume provides the "first book-length study of medieval accounts of xenoglossia" from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries (2). The first two chapters significantly complement previous scholarship on this phenomenon in Early Christianity and modernity. These chapters are grounded in "medieval vitae, canonization records and miracle accounts, with a particular focus on the lives of women" (2). The final two chapters of the book attempt to identify xenoglossia in a few works of Middle English literature, the "autohagiography" of Margery Kempe and three of the Canterbwy Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.
The book's admirable first half is essential for further work on medieval accounts of xenoglossia. Expanding the list of medieval holy men and women reputed to be xenoglossic from the representative dozen studied by Stanley Burgess ("Medieval Examples of Charismatic Piety in the Roman Catholic Church," in Perspectives on the New Pentecostalism, ed. Russell P. Spittler [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1976], 14-26), Cooper-Rompato identifies a dozen more male saints and nine more women ( 1 2). All but two are members of religious orders. Cooper-Rompato competently translates pertinent texts. Her excellent index will facilitate research on individuals. She prescinds from whether the events described actually occurred,...