The Richness and Diversity of the Past

Amy Welborn reviews Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes 1125-1325 by Augustine Thompson, OP.

• "Most of all what strikes me, as it does any time I read good history, is the richness and diversity of our past. There are no easy answers in the present, no golden age in the past to which we can appeal, no set of procedures, rituals and rites that are purer than any others, that are the magic bullet for our own problems. Nor can we rest easy in the diversity, which is the other temptation. Liturgical innovations in the present are often positioned up against the past, and justified in that context - there's a reason that histories of the liturgy are multi-volume. A lot has happened, a lot has changed - it is that old conversation, filled with tension, about what is "organic" in liturgical development and what isn't.
  
  We need to keep reading our history so we divest ourselves of nostalgia, and at the same time anchor ourselves more strongly in what is legitimate and work hard to discern what is not."