Contraception, a history of its treatment by the Catholic theologians and canonists. By Noonan, John T., Harvard University Press. Oxford University Press, 1965. 64s. LondonGoogle Scholar.

To get some ritual grumbles over first. I am not happy about the translation from the Roman Catechism on p. 361. Tobit, pace p. 81, is translated from the Greek in the Bible de Jerusalem. The author sometimes annoyingly quotes Latin works by English titles only; he uses the Yankee genteelism ‘rooster’ for ‘cock’; and if the Latin of his dedication had a tail, it would wag it. There are other points, and in a work of this size, readers are liable to find topics they would have liked to see more fully treated. But for what my testimony is worth, I should say that my own acquaintance with the subject ‐ far less extensive than the author's ‐ corroborates his findings, and fills me with admiration at the scope of his researches.

Onan's sin becomes ‘res detestabilis’ where the original demands ‘displeased the Lord’. The fervorino uttered by Tobias on his wedding night makes procreation the sole purpose of intercourse, and omits the verse from Genesis that it is not good for man to be alone; the angel Raphael in the same book utters Stoic sentiments to him. (Of course, one could charitably conclude that these convenient variants from the Greek text were all present in the Aramaic MS translated, in one day, by Jerome.)

I abbreviate this tediously gross cosmogony. Noonan also mentions curious non‐generative rites alleged by Augustine to have been performed among the Manichees. For a circumstantial account of these, the historian is indebted to St Ephiphanius.

Augustine says he was taught to use the sterile period by his religious instructors, and the only child his mistress bore him in eleven years was conceived shortly after their liaison began. Incidentally, the Manichees (like others) miscalculated the period, and enjoined abstinence on the days immediately after menstruation. But if Augustine's mistress had a very short cycle ‐ like Bathsheba, cf. 2 Sam. xi and Lev. xv, 19 ‐ the method would work per accident.

Whatever the merits or demerits of Augustine's views, other and more potent influences were at work to ensure their victory over those of the Manichees. Within a lifetime of the Edict of Milan to which Christians owed the toleration of their religion, they had secured the enactment of laws which forbade Manichees to proselytise, confiscated their churches, and prohibited them from inheriting or bequeathing property. The first Manichee martyr died in 385, when his co‐religionists were already reduced to worshipping in the very catacombs which had but recently harboured their persecutors.

Thus, Chaucer's Parson condemns coitus interruptus and pessaries in his sermon, classifying them with abortion as a species of homicide. Dante, on the other hand, does not refer to contraception in the Divine Comedy. I note with regret that Noonan says nothing about the medieval vademecum of eroticism, De Coitu, ascribed by Chaucer to ‘the cursed monk dan Constantyn’, and consulted by an anxious husband in the Merchant's Tale. Does it still exist?

Not surprisingly, there was an Irishman among the rigorists ‐John Sinnigh, alarmingly known as ‘The Virgin Doctor’.

The vigorous fanatic Sixtus V not only made the allegation, but enacted corresponding penalties in Rome for the offence. Gregory XIII discreetly annulled the draconian but unsuccessful measures of his predecessor.

Noonan might have consulted Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes (1721), which suggest that the birth‐rate was already falling in France among the middle classes (see Letter 122). I should add here one valuable point made in this chapter by Noonan: the augustinian traditions which survived in France and the Low Countries were taken to the English‐speaking world by English and American priests who studied on the continent.

The author could have pointed out that the Fleming‐Walloon rivalry in Belgium made population problems especially urgent for a Church whose strength lay with the oppressed Flemings.

The author does not mention the fact that the denunciations were not vehement enough for some people, and that a falsified translation of the encyclical was circulated in English. See the article by D. Cloud in the Clergy Review, June 1962.

The unfortunate timing of the statement (it appeared just after an article in the opposite sense by Archbishop Roberts) has been noticed by a number of writers. But fairly reliable gossip says that the document had been prepared some time before; that attempts were made at the last minute to withdraw it, precisely to avoid embarrassment; but that a quorum of bishops could not be contacted in time to prevent publication. I admit that the protocol involved remains obscure.

P. Galtier, L'Unite du Christ.