The Virtues of Economy: Governance, Power, and Piety in Late Medieval Rome by James A. Palmer

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Virtues of Economy: Governance, Power, and Piety in Late Medieval Rome by James A. Palmer Marie D’Aguanno Ito The Virtues of Economy: Governance, Power, and Piety in Late Medieval Rome. By James A. Palmer. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019. Pp. xi, 258. $53.95. ISBN: 9781501742378). Rome during the fourteenth-century Avignon papacy has been viewed as a “sleepy half-ruined medieval city” (p. 1) without the vibrancy, power, and character that the pope’s presence conveyed. James Palmer’s book, The Virtues of Economy, revisits Rome during this period and portrays a remarkably different picture. Palmer examines a world of “baronial” families, non-noble elites, and mercantile groups that thrived and shaped a communal society politically, spiritually, and materially. Those with wealth contributed to the greater good through actions such as bequests and the establishment of private chapels, linking civic virtue with spirituality, or the purchase of sanctity following a life in the rough world of wealth acquisition. Alternatives to these power bases could be found in female populations of widows, daughters, holy persons, and religious communities, who were among the recipients of material benefits, but who held strong spiritual leverage. Even widespread societal violence was tempered by elaborate peacemaking rituals. In observing the “politics of the everyday” (p. 2), Palmer shows that a diverse spiritually or religiously oriented lay culture, which prevailed during the papacy’s absence, “paved the way” (p. 2) for the pope’s return and rulership by a single figure. Palmer approaches his subject through quotidian sources, private contracts, transaction and marriage records, and wills, for example, to garner a picture of Roman life apart from the papacy. He relies on notarial documents, which he notes have been virtually untapped. The sources inherently provide a perspective that could not have been achieved through institutionally oriented documents. Palmer’s work is divided into three parts with six core chapters. The first part provides a valuable overview of late medieval Rome, and its physical, political, societal, and spiritual composition, including the striving for legitimacy by non-ecclesiastical ruling groups. The second part examines a “spiritual economy” (passim) based in materiality, namely wills, testaments, and the dedication of private chapels, with numerous examples from the period. The third section considers female life, particularly certain leading female religious figures and their communities, but also women of questionable repute. It also considers institutionalized violence and ritualized peacemaking, including arbiters, confessions, penance, and verbal declarations of family and family-like bonds. Ultimately for Palmer, the “spiritual economy” extended into the public good and good governance, presumably by spreading material and civic benefits that supported the general welfare and a stable society. Rome’s communal period, with its mixed noble and non-noble aristocracy, commercial interests, personal and civic expressions of virtue or piety based in material wealth, honor violence and peacemaking, issues of women, and the ultimate transition to a singular ruler (in Rome’s case the pope), appear not unlike other Italian cities of the period. Palmer establishes and explores the various sectors and roles in the type of detail that notarial documents provide. Daily life emerges. [End Page 810] Roman individuals become animated in their worldly actions, counterbalanced by their striving for a greater good, or civic virtue and good governance. Forms of spirituality permeate the actions of even the roughest characters. A lay spiritual society essentially carries on apart from the pope and ecclesiastical hierarchy. Palmer uses alternative definitions of terms, however. “Economy,” employed in the title and variously throughout, as in “spiritual economy” or “economy of violence” (passim), differs from its traditional meaning, focusing instead on governance or management. “Virtue” also assumes political, social, and business meanings beyond its moral or religious denotation. Yet, Palmer reveals that the pope’s absence during the fourteenth century did not render Rome empty or chaotic. What he demonstrates is an active and relatively orderly lay society with an intertwined spiritual and material base that maintained Rome’s religious legacy during the papacy’s absence, and which provided a solid foundation for the pope’s successful return. Marie D’Aguanno Ito George Mason University Copyright © 2022 The Catholic University of America Press