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CHOICE Review

Scholars who know Brundage's many articles on the medieval canon law regarding sexual practices will welcome this major work. Except for the "triumph of monogamy" in the early Middle Ages, the church has failed to eradicate unwanted sexual activities by law. Yet, Brundage argues, medieval canonists passed on to secular governments of the modern West not only their judgment of many individual sexual practices, but also the general notion that public authority may appropriately legislate in the area of sexuality. By examining the lawyers' varied discussions on marriage, adultery, divorce and remarriage, clerical sexuality, homosexuality, concubinage, prostitution, masturbation, and incest, Brundage traces the development of three basic approaches: sex-for-procreation, sex-as-defilement, and (the minority voice) sex-as-intimacy. Brundage presents the results of his original researches (Chapters 6 through 9, spanning the classical age of canon law c. 1140-1348) together with a survey, based on secondary studies, of the legal treatment of sex from antiquity through the Counter-Reformation. At times tendentious, Brundage succeeds in making first-rate scholarship available to a wide audience. His findings will be helpful to professionals in nonhistorical fields and must be acknowledged by present-day controversialists on feminism, marriage and family life, homosexuality, and contraception. A must for theological and many social science collections serving upper-division undergraduates and above. Appropriate for major public libraries. -L. K. Barker, Mississippi State University