patriarchs in the history of the Church of the east, and many of that Church’sliturgical texts are said to go back to reforms introduced by him. The edition of hisletters runs to nearly 300 pages of Syriac text, but although it was published over acentury ago, the fact that its accompanying translation is in Latin, and that theproposed English translation by P. Scott-Montcrieff never materialised, has meantthat this important resource has not been exploited as much as it deserves. Thepresent work is in fact the first full monograph to be devoted to Isho‘yahb III. Ioan’sstudy, which originated as a Gottingen dissertation, is set out in eight main chapters ;the first four deal with his biography, covering his background, education and earlyyears as a monk of the famous monastery of Beth ‘Abe (in north Iraq), followed byhis ecclesiastical career as, successively, bishop, metropolitan and catholicos. Theprimary subject of the book is thus to be found in the last four chapters ; theseprovide an outline of the Arab conquests in the areas that affected the Church ofthe east, a brief look at the consolidation of the Church in the years following theconquest, the various treaties that later sources retrospectively associate withIsho‘yahb II, Mar’emeh and Isho‘yahb III, and then an extended and valuablechapter specifically on Isho‘yahb III and his specific references to Islam in the courseof his correspondence. The paucity of these references (which explains the struc-ture of the monograph) is to a considerable extent counterbalanced by theirimportance as a contemporary witness of someone for whom the new Arab rule wasaccepted as a given fact that need to be faced in a practical way as being part ofdivine providence, without showing any interest in the content or what theimplications of emergent Islam might be for the Christian communities. Theauthor’s well-informed and critical approach makes this a very useful contribution.

SEBASTIAN BROCKWOLFSON COLLEGE,

OXFORD

Die Fredegar-Chroniken. By Roger Collins. (Monumenta Germaniae Historia. Studienund Texte, 44.) Pp. xv+152. Hanover : Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2007. E20.978 3 7752 5704 6; 0938 6432JEH (61) 2010 ; doi :10.1017/S0022046910001338

The Chronicle by the shadowy figure known as ‘Fredegar ’ is one of the mostimportant and difficult sources for Frankish history. Written at some point in the lastdecades of the seventh century or (less likely) the early years of the eighth, it is ouronly solid bridge across the historiographical void that separates Gregory of Tours(d. 594) from the anonymous Liber historiae francorum (c. 726/7), and was widely copiedin the Carolingian period. But, as Roger Collins argues in this precise and importantbook, the draw of the Chronicle’s unique window onto the seventh century meansthat it remains less than fully understood as a complete work. Much of the work isstitched together from epitomised versions of earlier authorities (including Eusebius-Jerome, Hydatius and Gregory of Tours), which in aggregate constitute an originalnarrative. Debate on this material has been focused above all on structure (fourbooks or five?) and authorship (multiple authors or one?). As Collins demonstrates bymeans of a lucid critical survey of scholarship, the simplest answer – that the seventh-century Chronicle was a single work put together by a single author-compiler – is also

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the most convincing (though the attribution to ‘Fredegar ’ is very late and retainedonly as a convenience). This makes up the bulk of the first half of the book. In thesecond Collins seeks to substantiate the proposition that the text generally referredto as Fredegar’s Chronicle should in fact be treated as two separate works. Somemanuscripts feature later material usually thought of as constituting severalconsecutive ‘continuations ’ of the Chronicle. These are shown by Collins to be mostlikely the work of no more than two authors, one taking the story up to 751 (the coupof Pippin III) and the other – probably written sometime around 780 – finishing in768 (the succession of Charlemagne and Carloman). However, the version of themain Chronicle that accompanies these ‘continuations ’ is sufficiently altered (throughthe omission of some texts and the introduction of others) to constitute, in Collins’sview, a completely new work based on the original. This work, named in onemanuscript asHistoria vel gesta francorum, stresses the historical role of the Franks muchmore than had ‘Fredegar ’, and was probably first conceived in association with theCarolingian takeover of 751. Many of these arguments were trailed by Collinsin earlier articles, and in his short English book Fredegar (Aldershot 1996). Thediscussion found here is much fuller and based on a comprehensive survey ofthe manuscripts, exhaustive descriptions of which are also provided. Underlying thewhole enterprise is a dissatisfaction with the way in which the composite edition of‘Fredegar ’ produced by Bruno Krusch in 1888 influenced subsequent scholarship byflattening out the contours of the text’s evolution. One hopes that Collins will in duecourse replace that edition with a new version of his own.

SIMONMACLEANUNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS

Roma felix. Formation and reflections of medieval Rome. Edited by Eamonn O Carragain,and Carol Neuman de Vegvar. (Church, Faith and Culture in the MedievalWest.) Pp. xiii+353 incl. 63 figs, 3 tables and 2 musical examples.Aldershot–Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007. £60. 978 0 7546 6096 5JEH (61) 2010; doi :10.1017/S0022046910000783

Given its long and rich history as well as its significance as a centre for religiousfaith and practice, the city of Rome has exercised an incomparable fascination onstudents of the medieval west. The current volume, which consists of academicpapers from the Medieval Conference at Kalamazoo, Michigan (2003), theInternational Medieval Congress at Leeds (2003) and the Medieval Academy ofAmerica (2005) is a fine example of this fascination. The book is divided into twoparts. The first is comprised of essays that ‘read’ the liturgical (especiallyprocessional) and artistic ‘ text ’ of the city. The general essays in this section – byAlan Thacker on the Rome of the martyrs, Caroline Goodson on the architecturefor the veneration of the martyrs, and Joseph Dyer on the Great Litany procession –are particularly valuable and represent excellent examples of the state of research.Other essays in this section, like Carol Neuman de Vegvar’s piece on men andwomen in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore articulated by the relation betweenmosaic imagery and liturgical disposition, are fine models of intricate historicalanalysis. Essays in the second part of the book focus mainly on the appreciation ofmedieval Rome from afar – especially from Ireland and England. For some reason,

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