Accounts and Accountability in Late Medieval Europe: Records, Procedures, and Socio-Political Impact ed. by Ionut Epurescu-Pascovici

Abstract

Reviewed by: Accounts and Accountability in Late Medieval Europe: Records, Procedures, and Socio-Political Impact ed. by Ionut Epurescu-Pascovici Sybil Jack Epurescu-Pascovici, Ionut, ed., Accounts and Accountability in Late Medieval Europe: Records, Procedures, and Socio-Political Impact (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 50), Turnhout, Brepols, 2020; hardback; pp. viii, 303; 5 b/w illustrations, 14 b/w tables; R.R.P. €80.00; ISBN 9782503588537. It has become fashionable to publish collections of papers by different authors loosely linked to a topic that is important in many different historical areas and structures. This has the advantage of identifying practices that would be clarified by comparison. Accounting procedure is a topic which has only recently started to receive the attention it merits, and this volume illustrates the range of aspects that need further attention. Each chapter is dense and carefully expounded and must be read slowly if its full significance is to be appreciated. Unfortunately, however, the chapters lack a common approach, although some similar conclusions do emerge. By the later Middle Ages, efficient accounts were critical to the imposition of royal power in any area. The ruler of any state in the Middle Ages could only control the use of its resources if there was appropriate material that established where and how such resources were raised, transferred, and expended. Without accurate fiscal accounts the development of effective resource organization, government control, and the relationship of offices in different parts of the administrative structure from the later Middle Ages onwards could not have been established. The ability to record the complicated management of the transfer of funds for a range of government purposes, so that the responsibility for their right employment could be proved, distinguished the powerful monarch from the ineffective. It reflected the degree to which the ruler was able to control the deputies below him or her—an issue critically examined, for instance, in Silvestri's chapter on Sicily. Internal maintenance of clear financial records, however, came faster in some places than others. This volume would have benefited from a short introductory study that drew together the common features of the accounts in the places involved, the form they took for the political and economic problems they shared, and the ways in which the practices were developed and transferred across the Continent. The mixture of accounting practices used from one place and from one time to another illustrated in these chapters reflects the very various structures of government across Europe in dissimilar states and in different centuries. If they mostly shared a wish to have [End Page 209] the finances managed by officials who eliminated corruption and aimed to treat of all members involved in running the state fairly, the structures developed to achieve this varied considerably. As it is, each chapter, all of which are based on recent significant research, has a distinct specific focus. They cover aspects of states geographically scattered across Europe, from England to Transylvania, and topics that vary from military needs (Roberto Biolzi) to ecclesiastical functions, with little to serve as a unifying approach. They make little reference to one another or to other papers relevant to the debate. It is hard to recommend the best order in which to read them. The basic form of the accounting records studied is probably most clearly seen in Ekaterina Nosova's examination of codicology. One or two of the chapters, particularly Esther Tello Hernández's chapter on Aragon, make some of the common elements in the enforcement of royal power clearer and so make a good starting point on management and on how the accounts were an instrument of power. The skills necessary to creating and maintaining standard records, even the ability to use different scripts to different purposes, required a considerable level of training. Rulers were heavily dependent on the ethical attitudes, the skills and capacity, and the devotion of professional accounting officials, which is the focus of other chapters. The cultural expectations of the central administration and the relationship of this central administration to local social structures was vital, as is demonstrated in Alessandro Silvestri's chapter. Each of the chapters has its own interest. My preference for Dean A. Irwin...