Welsh Journals

a translation by W. A. Pantin of a fairly lengthy passage from the Compendiloquium: why not one of her own? It is after all the only substantial quotation directly in John's own words that she gives. On p. 85 she refers to praesides provinciarum: is there any connection with the Roman law officials of the same name? On pp. 122-23 she discusses at length the possible sources of John's designation of man as a social and political animal. His comment that 'homo est animal sociale primo de animalibus' raises the question of whether he was familiar with Albert the Great's treatment of man as a social and political animal in his Quaestiones de animalibus, 1, qu. 8. It would also be helpful to the reader to know just how long these works by John are. Communiloquium is described as 'vast', but how long is that? After all, to judge by the checklist, all these writings (plus his Ordinarium vitae religiosae) appear to be bound together in the one volume of the Venice, 1496, edition. Overall, the exempla are what is fascinating about these works: they exert a curious charm on the reader and appear far more interesting in themselves than as any reflection they may offer of John's own ideas. As Dr. Swanson warns us, we should not criticise him for the apparent ordinariness of his views in these writings. He was setting out to provide for preachers tools that were both authoritative and elementary and, above all, supremely useful; therein lay their great success. Their importance for us lies in what they reveal about the mentality of a thirteenth-century friar and his audience. John showed considerable powers of understanding and mind in these works, but evidence of his true intellectual worth should, one suspects, be sought in his other writings. J. P. CANNING Bangor CASTLES IN WALES AND THE MARCHES. ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF D. J. CATHCART KING. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1987. Pp. xx, 248. £ 35.00. An engaging brief memoir by J. C. Perks sets the tone for a volume marked both by the great warmth with which the authors acknowledge the late D. J. Cathcart King's major contribution to the study of medieval castles, and the breadth of interest which his work has stimulated among his peers. In a review of work on earthwork castles, C. J. Spurgeon confirms the preponderance of mottes over ringworks in the first phase of Norman penetration with a narrower majority in subsequent phases, and suggests the particular importance of geological factors in explaining their distribution: mottes almost invariably sited on glacial drift or alluvium, ringworks on the shallow soils over limestone. Recent archaeological and numismatic studies in Glamorgan are particularly instructive, and entirely justify a reappraisal of a historical interpretation which was always somewhat wary of the chronicle reference to the building of Cardiff by William I in 1081. Derek Renn combines a close look at the Norman features of Ludlow castle with a re-examination of the historical sources to