heretical sects which preached the same ideals of asceticism and anticlericalism as the Waldensians (lumped together with the Cathari under the misnomer Albigensianism by Dahmus). Without this background it is hard to understand the role played by all these groups in the religious and political movements that led to Wyclif, Hus and Luther. Other issues neglected or ignored are the monastic reforms of the earlier Middle Ages usually linked with Cluny, the rule and program of Pope Gregory VII, the investiture struggle and the spectacular growth of the papacy or papal monarchy with its supernational institutional ramifications. The reader of the "life" of Frederick II is left guessing as to the nature of the papal power to which the emperor eventually succumbed. To return to the ques tion of choice of personalities for his book-if Dahmus wanted to write a coherent story he might have done well to replace Justinian and Harun al-Rashid with one or two of the earlier German kings, perhaps Otto I, Henry IV or Frederick Barbarossa. Scattered pages treat of papal history (pp. noff., 193L, 212L, 236ff., 329ff.), but if the author expected the reader to gather loose ends he should at least have appended an index to his book! Another deficiency is the absence of a bibliography of primary sources and reference books used in his work. Without it the general reader is left to his own devices as to further readings and the medievalist is left in the air as to evidence for statements and quotations. Thus, referring to the English chronicler Matthew Paris, Dahmus styles Frederick II "Wanderer in [of] the world" (pp. 191, 239). The only passage in the chronicle that might warrant this translation is the often quoted stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis, the "stunned admiration of the world and a strange trans former." Could it be that Dahmus, using a German translation of the passage, read Verwandler as Wanderer? There is no way of checking.
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