Rome and the North: The Early Reception of Gregory the Great in Germanic Europe. Edited by Rolf H. Bremmer, Jr., Kees Dekker, and David F. Johnson. Mediaevalia Groningana, New Series, 4. Leuven: Peeters, 2001. Pp. xvi + 308. $55.

The profound and varied influence of Pope Gregory the Great on European history and culture has long been recognized, as has the far-reaching importance of the mission he sent (perhaps prompted by the Franks) to Christianize the Anglo- Saxons in 597. But while this mission faltered in the decades following his death and had to be reinvigorated from Rome 70 years later, Gregory's influence would live on among the English, and eventually their continental Germanic cousins, through his writings. Surprisingly, amidst the mass of scholarship both on Gregory himself and on the vernacular literature that emerged from the conversion of the "North, " prior to the present volume there has been no individual or collective effort to assess Gregory's impact on the literary culture of the peoples whose conversion he initiated.

E. Gordon Whatley
Queens College and the Graduate Center,
City University of New York