Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and Its Commentators, 1298-1545 by Elizabeth Makowski

Abstract

296BOOK REVIEWS The phenomenon represented by Latinate Jewish wills could well be termed "legal code switching," by analogy with "linguistic code switching." In the latter, bilingual persons or those living in multilingual cultures will switch languages in order to enter a symbolic realm consonant with a specific situation or set of conditions . Thus did Catalan-speaking Jews switch to Hebrew or Latin as events required : most men had double personal names: a Catalan name for daily life,which might be a translation of a Hebrew sacred name (e.g.,Vidal/Hayyim). Similarly, by switching from a Jewish to a Christian legal code, the Jew thereby entered a different normative world, in consonance with a set of specific objectives. A documental appendix contains forty-five previously unpublished texts (dated 1260 to 1343), either wills or documents related to their execution, in Latin, with English summaries. Thomas F. Guck Boston University Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and Its Commentators, 12981545 - By Elizabeth Makowski. [Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Canon Law, Volume 5.] (Washington, D.C: The Catholic University of America Press. 1997. Pp. x, 149. $46.95.) When Chaucer's Prioress went off to Canterbury, she violated canon law because in 1298 Pope Boniface VIII had decreed the "strict enclosure of nuns of every order throughout the Latin Church" (p. 1). Canonists commented on the decree throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the Council of Trent re-enacted it. In spite of this continued interest, however, the decree was often ignored in practice. The career of Periculoso thus illustrates the tension between the ideals of the religious life articulated by the reforming papacy and the practical realities of monastic existence. Furthermore, it also sheds light on the way in which female spirituality was understood in the late medieval Church. Boniface was attempting to bring communities of women under tight control, ending the development of "quasi-religious communities of laywomen throughout Christendom" that posed a "potential threat to church discipline" (p. 27). Such groups continued to flourish, however. Periculoso was a major step in differentiating between male and female religious life. Previously, according to Makowski, the regulations for religious life had been similar for monks and nuns. Subsequently, women's religious life was increasingly under the control of men and centered on enclosure. Men's communities , however, were not held to the same standard of enclosure. One unforeseen consequence of this was that this decree, if fully enforced, would have made it almost impossible for abbesses to oversee the operation of the properties upon which the economic well-being of their communities rested, because they could not leave the confines of the cloister. BOOK REVIEWS297 This study provides insight into the way in which the leaders of the late medieval Church dealt with what they saw as the threat that women's spirituality posed to the Church and how to control it. To that extent alone, it is a valuable contribution to scholarship. It also raises some related issues. For example, because the application of Periculoso affected the ability of an abbess to visit the properties owned by the community, it raises questions about the economics of religious life. Just how much did it cost to support a monk or nun? Were there significant differences in the economic bases of male and female communities? As Makowski's discussion of the canonistic commentaries on Periculoso also demonstrates, the later canonists had important things to say. While it may be true that these lawyers were not as creative as those in the classical period of canon law, 1140-1375 (not 1250 as she states, p. 5 n. 10), nevertheless they were quite capable of developing the implications of the work of the classical period to meet the needs of their own day. Study of the canon law flourished in these later centuries as the number of lengthy commentaries and treatises indicates . With the exception of the literature generated by the conciliar movement , however, this later canonistic material has generally been neglected. In her discussion of Periculoso, Makowski follows a path pioneered by Brian Tierney and Kenneth Pennington that is adding to our understanding of the debt that the legal world of the...