Julian M. Luxford, Ed.: Studies in Carthusian Monasticism in the Late Middle Ages

JULIAN M. LUXFORD, ED. Studies in Carthusian Monasticism in the Late Middle Ages. Medieval Church Studies 14. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008. xvi + 367 pp., 45 Figures, 1 Table. Of all the religious orders, the Carthusians and the Birgittines have provided most material for manuscript and early print scholars over the past thirty-five years, triggered in the 1980s by James Hogg and Michael Sargent for the former and, arguably, Jan Rhodes for the latter. Since then several scholars have focused on the transmission and circulation of texts by both orders, separately and in collaboration. In particular, the 2001 edition of the Syon library catalogue with the appended Carthusian booklists (Vincent Gillespie and Ian Doyle) has encouraged valuable Birgittine scholarship such as Syon Abbey and its Books and Saint Birgitta, Syon and Vadstena (reviewed JEBS 14, 2011). However, until now there has been no comparable single Englishlanguage book collecting the researches of a variety of scholars of the Carthusians. Julian Luxford's edition is therefore very welcome. It brings together a variety of scholars, including Hogg, Sargent and Doyle, although contributions are otherwise by historians and art-historians rather than book-history or literary scholars, explicable by the facts that Luxford himself is an art historian and that the volume had its origins in 2004 IMC sessions organized by the eminent monastic and church historian Joan Greatrex. JEBS readers may detect less interest in (perhaps less knowledge of) the contributions of scholars in the field of English literature. volume is divided into three parts, Historical Perspectives, Texts and Devotion, Art and Architecture. In his Introduction, Luxford provides a lively personal overview of the historiography of Carthusian scholarship. Due credit is given to Barrie Dobson for his long-term interest in the English Carthusians, which gave rise to three important Ph.D. theses by his students, Carol Rowntree, Neil Beckett, and Andrew Wines. However, Luxford regrets the lack of English-language material on the Carthusians and of detailed knowledge of the (admittedly small and relatively insignificant) English province. To remedy this (in as far as it is remediable), he introduces a mix of older and younger scholars who focus largely on England (only five of the fourteen chapters are Continental) in the burgeoning fourteenth to early sixteenth centuries of Carthusian growth. Among numerous neglected or under-researched topics (he admits that availability of evidence will always impose limitations), Luxford argues that art and architecture have been most overlooked (no fewer than forty-five figures aim to remedy this, although they are generally small, black-and-white, and poorly reproduced--fig. 17 is particularly appalling, even as an impression of a woodcut). book as a whole is furnished with an Index which includes the manuscripts under their location (New Haven, Oxford, etc.)--a separate index would have been welcome. James Hogg is well qualified to begin the volume with Life in an English Charterhouse in the Fifteenth Century: Discipline and Daily Affairs, his research based on the Chartae of the Carthusian General Chapter. Of particular interest are the extraordinary happenings at London and Sheen in the early sixteenth century and the 1519 inventory of items taken by Dom Thomas Golwynne from London to Mount Grace in 1519 (copied from E. M. Thompson, with no mention of Ian Doyle's editing of the books in this list). article is furnished with five appendices (two of them providing an overview of, and extracts from, the Chartae). Next, Andrew Wines is the foremost expert on the London charterhouse, and as such he questions received knowledge of The Founders of the London Charterhouse. Rather than Northburgh and Manny as the founders (see the Survey of London volume reviewed here), he provides convincing evidence for the importance of the first prior, John Luscote, and the merchants and former mayors, William Walworth, John Lovekyn, and Adam Fraunceys. …

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