Welsh Journals

Atlantic was a sea of 'fortunate islands' helped to overcome technological and psychological barriers. The Atlantic peoples of the 'modem world' drew heavily on the expertise, capital and leadership of the 'medieval' world of the Mediterranean. The title of the book is slightly misleading. As Phillips points out, the expansion of the medieval world in terms of permanent settlement was largely confined to what is known as Europe today; footholds-and toeholds-in North America, Greenland and the Holy Land did not survive. The emphasis is, in fact, on European exploration, and ideas about the wider world, and these themes are treated both chronologically and analytically. The reader may be slightly disappointed by the balance of the coverage. Space devoted to the origins and course of the crusades could have been devoted to the discoveries and observations of the crusaders and their followers; what impact did the passages in Joinville's chronicles on Egypt and the Middle East have in the West, for example? The remarkable missionary activity of the thirteenth century is described, but why are the contemporary accounts-often the work of Italian Franciscans-not quoted more extensively? Should not the 'navigational revolution' of the thirteenth century and the high profile of the Genoese in exploration have received more attention? The reader is also teased with old and new problems. How genuine is the Vinland Map? Were the Genoese Vivaldi brothers trying to anticipate de Gama or Columbus when they sailed west through the Straits of Gibraltar in 1291? Were Bristol fishermen and merchants at all familiar with the coasts of Newfoundland in the fifteenth century? Why would a sixteenth-century Venetian, Nicolo Zeno, give two of his ancestors the company of Henry, earl of Orkney, on their alleged voyages to Greenland and Nova Scotia in the late fourteenth century? However, as these questions show, Phillips's book is full of fascinating detail, as well as being clear, wide-ranging and equipped with a useful bibliography. Another of its strengths is to show that the fantastical view of the wider world, as revealed by such sources as the Travels of Sir John Mandeville, is not only not the whole picture, but-more positively-illustrates the geographical curiosity of the Middle Ages. Had Phillips's accessible and useful contribution appeared slightly earlier, it might have helped discourage the dean and chapter of Hereford Cathedral from banking on a general ignorance of both the extent of medieval man's knowledge of the outside world, and the full value and significance of the Hereford Mappa Mundi. JOHN E. LAW Swansea RICHARD III: A STUDY OF SERVICE. By Rosemary Horrox. Cambridge University Press, 1989. Pp. x, 358. £ 30.00. For the last fifteen years since the completion of her Cambridge thesis on Richard UTs patronage, historians have known of Rosemary Horrox's formidable mastery of the