The German Episcopacy and the Implementation of the Decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council, 1216-1245: Watchmen on the Tower by Paul B. Pixton

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 545 The German Episcopacy and the Implementation of the Decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council, 1216-1245: Watchmen on the Tower. By Paul B. Pixton. [Studies in the History of Christian Thought, Volume LXIV] (Leiden : EJ. Brill. 1995. Pp. xv, 543. $135.00.) The Fourth Lateranum was the most important medieval council. Its seventy canons on such subjects as transubstantiation, the Jews, marriage, and auricular confession have shaped Western culture. The conciliar decrees were to be executed by annual provincial and diocesan synods, episcopal visitations, and triennial general chapters of regulars. Paul B. Pixton examines the implementation of its edicts in Germany before the First Council of Lyons (1245). Innocent Ill's reform program built on a tradition of synodal activity, but ecclesiastical discipline had broken down after the double election of 1 198. The success of Innocent 's plans depended on the zeal of individual prelates like Archbishops Dietrich II ofTrier and Eberhard II of Salzburg and after 1224 on the leadership of the legate, Cardinal Conrad of Porto. Pixton concludes that this reform effort failed for a number of reasons: the impossibility of reforming society through legislation, the renewal of the papal-imperial conflict, and the contradiction between the council's emphasis on episcopal authority and Roman appellate jurisdiction . This book will be a reference work for any English-speaking scholar who is interested in the thirteenth-century German Church. Nevertheless, I was disappointed. First, anyone who attempts to synthesize what happened in six ecclesiastical provinces will make mistakes that a specialist is likely to spot. Let me cite a few of Pixton's factual errors about Salzburg. Reichenhall is in Bavaria, not Tyrol; Gerhoch of Reichersberg was a provost, not an abbot; St.Victor is the Cistercian abbey ofViktring (pp. 27-31); Eberhard II was a noble, not a ministerial, whereas Rüdiger of Radeck, the first bishop of Chiemsee, was an archiépiscopal ministerial, not a noble (p. 199); the bishopric ofVienna was established in 1469, not in the late thirteenth century f. 217); St. Lambrecht is in Styria, not Carinthia (p. 231); and Archbishop-Elect Philip was a Spanheimer, not an Ortenburg (p. 453). None of this is very significant , and I suspect that there are fewer mistakes in the treatment of Mainz and Trier where Pixton is more at home, but some caution is in order. Second, Pixton presents the information "in a chronological fashion in order to reveal relationships between diocesan and provincial synods of specific regions of Germany, and also to suggest the response to papal, legatine, and archiépiscopal stimuli" (p. 436). The result is an old-fashioned book that reminded me of the nineteenth-centuryJahrbücherfür deutsche Geschichte, including massive Latin quotations from chronicles and papal charters; indeed he relies heavily on Eduard Winkelmann's biographies of Philip of Swabia, Otto IV, and Frederick II in that series. Much ofthe secondary literature is equally dated. For example, Pixton cites an 1880 book about Archbishop Conrad of Mainz and Salzburg (p. 27) rather than Siglinde Oehring's 1973 monograph or an 1899 article on the election ofBishop Conrad ofHildesheim rather than Irene Crusius's 1984 piece (p. 304). Furthermore, the footnotes are hard to use because there 546 BOOK REVIEWS is only a partial bibliography and no indication in subsequent references to the first complete citation; see, for instance, the references to my own book on the friars (pp. 205, 457). This positivist approach makes it extremely difficult to follow a specific story; e.g., to learn about the cause célèbre of the 1220's, the heresy trial in Hildesheim of Henry Minnecke, the reader must turn to pages 304-305 and 330-331 . The subheadings are oflittle help;for instance,the eightpage section labeled,"The Condemnation of Henry Minnecke," starts with a single paragraph on this topic and then shifts in the next paragraph to marriage negotiations in Toul. I tended to lose sight of the forest. Finally, Pixton's presentation ofInnocent's reform program is too limited. The pope also sought to incorporate the new religious currents represented by SS. Francis and Dominic into the Church; thus the rapid spread of the mendicants should...