Content area
Full Text
doi:10.I017/S0009640709990151 Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion. By Derek A. Rivard. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009. xii + 332 pp. $39.95 paper.
Medieval religious practice featured numerous blessing ceremonies that sought to protect people and property from malign elements in the natural and supernatural worlds. Present-day Christians within the Catholic tradition still continue mis practice, although it is probably used rather less frequently now than it was in the Middle Ages. Derek Rivard 's study of medieval blessings seeks to discover how these rituals contributed to the formation of the medieval religious mentalité.
Modem scholars often describe medieval blessings as quasi-magical ceremonies that ordinary people treasured in the hope that they would inspire God to come to their aid in difficult circumstances - and, Rivard adds, to placate and petition a deity that they feared might be "somewhat capricious" (60). Popular demand for blessings of various kinds, according to the conventional view among historians, essentially constrained members of the clerical elite to fashion rituals that would furnish the laity with the reassurance, solace, and comfort they desired. Rivard, like some other recent scholars, questions the usefulness and adequacy of what he calls "this simplistic bipolarity." He argues instead that the dynamics of the relationship between "official" and "unofficial" views on blessings...