Conciliar Decrees Research Articles

Beda Czcigodny o klasztorach mieszanych na Wyspach Brytyjskich (Historia Ecclesiastica, III–IV w.)

The system of double monasteries, or monasteries for both men and women, is as old as that of Christian monasticism itself. The double monastery in its simplest form was that organization said to have been founded in the fourth century by St. Pachomius, an Egyptian monk. This settlement soon became a proper nunnery under the control of the superior of the monks, who delegated elderly men to care for its discipline. Through the ages, double monasteries comprising communities of both men and women dwelling in contiguous establishments, united under the rule of one superior, and using one church in common for their liturgical offices. It’s cannot be stated with any certainty when the system found its way into the West. At the opening of the sixth century, double monasteries existed in Gaul. St. Caesarius of Arles persuaded his sister Caesaria to join him at Arles, to preside over the women who had gathered there to live in monastery under his guidance. Later the system of double monasteries in Gaul was widely propagated by St. Columbanus and his followers. The double monasteries seem always to have flourished wherever the fervor of the Irish missionaries penetrated. In a short time, British Isles were became covered with similar dual establishments, of which Whitby, Coldingham, Ely, Sheppey, Minster, Wimborne, Barking and Kildare are prominent examples. Abbesses ruled these houses.Bede Venerabilis in his work Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, gives much information about double monasteries and the most famous abbesses. Princesses, royal widows, sometimes reigning queens, began to found monasteries, where they lived on terms of equality with the daughters of ceorls and peasants. Bede writes that from the beginning of Christianity in England, the women, and particularly these royal women, were as active and persevering in furthering the Faith, as their men. Hild from Whitby, Aethelthryth (Etheldreda) from Ely, Aethelburh (Ethelburga) from Barking are the most luminous examples of powerful abbesses. A system of double monasteries was always an object of solicitude and strict legislation at the hands of ecclesiastical authority. Many synodal and conciliar decrees recognized its dangers, and ordered the strictest surveillance of all communications passing between monks and nuns. The Norman invasions of the eight and ninth centuries destroyed the double monasteries of British Isles and, when they were restored, it was for one sex only, instead of for a dual community.

«Припадковъ которые бысе пры слоужбе божой могли прытрафити, Розъвезаньє». Об источниках одного сюжета в униатской богослужебной литературе начала XVII в.

The article analyzes the Latin Sources of an admonition “Pripadkov kotorye byse pry slouzhbie bozhoi mogly prytrafiti roz’viezane” (Resolving difficult cases that might happen during worship). Published for the first time as a part of a larger Uniate manual for the priests in Sluzhebnik (Vilno 1617), the given admonition in an edited form became an organic component of the so-called “Izvestie uchitel’noe, kako dolzhenstvuet iereyu i diakonu sluzhenie w tserkvi svyatoi sovershati” (Instructive admonition how a priest and deacon should perform holy service in the church) in the Russian Rituals. As A.V. Petrovskij has already found out, a significant part of the cases analyzed in “Pripadki” that might happen during worship or Communion have parallels in apostolic, patristic, and conciliar decrees, in works of church literature, which have long existed in the Eastern Christian area. The author of the article argues, that the very effort of systematizing those difficult cases, also their analysis in the context of liturgical editions was borrowed by the compilers of “Pripadki” from the Latin tradition. And the main sources were the headings (rubricae) of the post-Tridentine “Missale Romanum” (Rome 1570). “Summa casuum conscientiae” by the Spanish Jesuit, cardinal Francisco de Toledo became another important source for the Uniate compilation: both for “Pripadki”, as for the whole Uniate manual for the priests Vilna 1617. Familiarity of the Uniate compilers with the work of the Spanish Jesuit is also confirmed by the content of another work, namely – an instruction for the priests how to perform the sacraments in “Trebnik” (Vilna 1617–1618). The given fact allows us to consider both admonitions as a part of a broader program for the elaboration of practical manuals for the Uniate clergy at the beginning of the 17th Century. The article also suggests who could be the author of these compilations.

A paróquia tridentina e sua implantação no Brasil colonial

The reform of the Church was all imposed on the revitalization of the “local churches”. For this reason, old methods were resumed, such as the pastoral visit and the diocesan synod, in view of the moralization of the clergy. In 1564, Pope Pius IV confirmed the Tridentine conciliar decrees by the bull Benedictus Deo and, in the same year, the Portuguese King, D. Sebastião, through his cardinal, D. Henrique, ordered “to give all the favor and help [...] for the execution of the decrees of the council ”. Gradually, the Portuguese archbishops and bishops began calling for synod meetings. All obeyed Session XXV, of the Council of Trent, which exhorted the congregants of the churches to observe everything that had been made available, making, for this, a profession of faith. For Brazil, the First Constitutions of the Archbishopric of Bahia (1707) were made, as a great gap in relation to the Portuguese counterparts - of the Metropolis and domains -, and, mainly, as for the Council of Trent. The purpose of thisarticle is to present the application of the Council of Trent, through the guidelines of the First Constitutions of the Archbishopric of Bahia, in some parishes of old villages in the gold region of Minas Gerais in the 18th century: Guarapiranga, Catas Altas and Antônio Pereira.

Usury and Restitution in Late Medieval Episcopal Statutes: A Case Study in the Local Reception of Conciliar Decrees

Usury and Restitution in Late Medieval Episcopal Statutes:A Case Study in the Local Reception of Conciliar Decrees Rowan Dorin and Raffaella Bianchi Riva Sometime before 1282, the archbishop of Cologne Siegfried II von Westerburg promulgated a set of synodal statutes for his diocese.1 Among the eighteen articles was one 'On Manifest Usurers', which began by spelling out the canonical sanctions against manifest usurers as set forth at the Third Lateran Council in 1179, accompanied by a succinct definition of what made a usurer 'manifest'. The article then turned to the matter of usurious restitution, insisting that the decree (constitutio) issued by Pope Gregory X at the Second Council of Lyon be observed.2 Rather than paraphrase its provisions, the article quoted verbatim nearly the entire decree, from its opening words (Quamquam usurarii…) to its penultimate phrase. Manifest usurers were thus to be denied church burial unless they had made full restitution of their usurious gains, or else provided an appropriate security (cautio). Clerics who violated this prohibition were to be suspended from office, and they were likewise barred from hearing confession or granting absolution to usurers who had failed to make appropriate satisfaction for their wrongdoing. Absent from Siegfried's statutes, however, was any mention of the Lyonese decree's dramatic concluding sanction, which nullified ipso iure the testament of any manifest usurer who failed to adhere to its [End Page 309] specified restitution procedures. Whatever the reason for this omission, it meant that Quamquam usurarii as it was enshrined in the synodal statutes of Cologne differed in an important respect from the decree's text as codified and commented in learned contexts.3 In itself, this discrepancy might not seem especially noteworthy. After all, bishops who sought to integrate the church's general law into their local legislation faced the dual challenge of streamlining it to align with local priorities and simplifying it to make it accessible to local audiences.4 The Cologne case was somewhat unusual, however, inasmuch as its drafters did not merely simplify the text of the conciliar decree. Instead, they selectively excised a passage from what was otherwise a faithful recopying of its text. Moreover, this excision reflected a broader pattern in the local reception of Quamquam usurarii during the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. While roughly one hundred surviving diocesan statutes and provincial canons issued in this period betray the influence of the Lyonese decree, only thirty of these explicitly transmit its testamentary nullification clause.5 Other elements of Quamquam usurarii fared even worse in terms of their local dissemination: the Cologne statute was among a mere handful to reference the decree's provision concerning the liability of those tasked with estimating the amount to be restituted.6 Even more striking is the fact that most late medieval prelates ignored Quamquam usurarii entirely when [End Page 310] drawing up anti-usury statutes for their dioceses and provinces. Although the conciliar fathers who had gathered at Lyon in 1274 had furnished clerics with new weapons to fight the scourge of Christian moneylending, few bishops chose to brandish them within their local legislative traditions. While much has been written concerning the church's teachings on usury and their impact on medieval economic practices, the enforcement of the canonical sanctions against usurers has proven a more elusive target.7 Only rarely do the surviving records of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries reveal bishops and local clergy across Latin Christendom taking direct measures against accused Christian usurers, whether by imposing excommunication, ordering exhumation, or distributing restituted sums.8 In part, this reflects the widespread loss of medieval ecclesiastical court records, and likewise of the sorts of fiscal accounts that might show restitution efforts at work. There are certainly exceptions: narrative accounts of bishops and preachers rousing townsfolk against local moneylenders; lists of notorious [End Page 311] usurers whose names were posted on the doors of their parish churches; disputes over the boundaries of secular and ecclesiastical jurisdiction concerning usurers and their activities; and other scattered sources. But it is hard to determine to what extent these signal unusual bursts of ecclesiastical zeal (as the laments of rigorist observers might suggest), and to what extent they instead...

Las imágenes sagradas en Bizancio (siglos VI-VIII). Teología e iconografía entre mito y realidad.

The focus of this paper is double: an overview of the theological discussion from the Council of Chalcedon to the Council of Nicaea II about the status of the sacred images in Christianity, and a global inquiry around the iconography proofs in monumental art before the so called “Iconoclastic controversy” (726/730-843). The interconnection through theological speculations, conciliar decrees, mosaics and frescoes in the apse or on the floors of the churches, aims at restoring the complexity of the role and diffusion of the sacred images between the 6th and 8th centuries in the Byzantine Empire. A detailed presentation of the respective Christological positions of iconomachs and iconophiles and an overview of the main iconographical subjects preserved in the churches will help to overcome some myths that historiography has consigned to history and to achieve a more faithful approach to historical realities.

A Reforma e a religiosidade feminina em Goa entre 1721 e 1739

The present study aims to characterise Catholic Reformation in the Santa Monica Convent (1721-1739), a community of nuns under the aegis of the Hermits of Saint Augustine friars, focusing on their statutes, daily life, rituals, and rules, and to assess how mental prayer and perfective life were routinely questioned. The troubled relationships between the nuns and the Archbishop, D. Frei Inacio de Santa Teresa, during the whole period of his governance, are analysed. Several questions are enunciated, regarding vocation, discipline, and the vision of a Jacobean bishop. The statutes of the Real Convento de Santa Monica comprised the community’s discipline, but were they complied with? To model behaviours can be regarded as a long-ranged or as a short-ranged historical phenomenon? Disciplining was a personal or a group act of will? Did conciliar decrees overcome private interests?

Archiepiscopal and Papal Involvement in Episcopal Elections: The Origins and Reception of Lateran IV cc. 23–24 from the Third Lateran Council to the Liber Sextus

Abstract Constitutions 23 and 24 of the Fourth Lateran Council dealt with episcopal elections, providing the proper timeframe and three possible electoral procedures, respectively. Although the former stipulated that an electoral body’s proximate superior was to gain the potestas eligendi and thus make an appointment if the electoral body failed to elect within the specified three months, the latter constitution was far less explicit about to whom the power to elect devolved if an electoral body did not follow proper procedure. The former constitution also failed to identify clearly which office constituted the ‘proximate superior’. Both constitutions were based in some sense on recent conciliar decrees (from the Third Lateran Council) or pre-1215 decretals issued from Innocent III’s curia. Since both constitutions lacked certain points of legal precision, several more decretals and conciliar decrees were needed in the thirteenth century before it was fully and clearly decided when the power to elect devolved to the metropolitan and when it devolved to the pope. A constitution by Boniface VIII in the Liber Sextus finally resolved the matter. This essay traces this development.

Archiepiscopal and Papal Involvement in Episcopal Elections: The Origins and Reception of Lateran IV cc. 23–24 from the Third Lateran Council to the Liber Sextus

AbstractConstitutions 23 and 24 of the Fourth Lateran Council dealt with episcopal elections, providing the proper timeframe and three possible electoral procedures, respectively. Although the former stipulated that an electoral body’s proximate superior was to gain the potestas eligendi and thus make an appointment if the electoral body failed to elect within the specified three months, the latter constitution was far less explicit about to whom the power to elect devolved if an electoral body did not follow proper procedure. The former constitution also failed to identify clearly which office constituted the ‘proximate superior’. Both constitutions were based in some sense on recent conciliar decrees (from the Third Lateran Council) or pre-1215 decretals issued from Innocent III’s curia. Since both constitutions lacked certain points of legal precision, several more decretals and conciliar decrees were needed in the thirteenth century before it was fully and clearly decided when the power to elect devolved to the metropolitan and when it devolved to the pope. A constitution by Boniface VIII in the Liber Sextus finally resolved the matter. This essay traces this development.

Canon Law, Religion, and Politics: Liber Amicorum Robert Somerville ed. by Uta-Renate Blumenthal, Anders Winroth, and Peter Landau (review)

Reviewed by: Canon Law, Religion, and Politics: Liber Amicorum Robert Somerville ed. by Uta-Renate Blumenthal, Anders Winroth, and Peter Landau Stanley Chodorow Canon Law, Religion, and Politics: Liber Amicorum Robert Somerville. Edited by Uta-Renate Blumenthal, Anders Winroth, and Peter Landau. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2012. Pp. xix, 320. $69.95. ISBN 978-0-8132-1975-2.) Robert Somerville has spent his career tracing the gossamer threads connecting the surviving sources of medieval canon law, especially in the transmission of conciliar decrees. The work is delicate and often tentative, but Somerville has tried to give us some confidence in our knowledge. Many of those who have contributed essays to this volume honoring Somerville have used the occasion to take up shards of the medieval legal tradition and try their hand at what might be called the Somerville project. The book is a very fitting tribute to Somerville’s style and practice. [End Page 356] Somerville’s work has focused on the late-eleventh and early-twelfth centuries when the Church asserted and ultimately established its independent role in the politics of Europe. Conciliar legislation continued to regulate the life of the Church, but from this point on it also played a major role in the growth of secular institutions and in the political arena. The book is divided into three sections—Canon Law, Religion, and Politics—corresponding to the book’s title. The first section, “Canon Law,” consists of nine essays. With two exceptions, all of these pieces deal with the period that has been the focus of Somerville’s research. Bruce Brasington summarizes and edits a summula on excommunication and anathema from early in the second half of the twelfth century, and Peter Landau argues the case that the famous Ulpianus de edendo originated in Durham in the 1150s and was the first ordo iusticiarius in what became a library of such works. However, what distinguish nearly all of these essays are the knotty problems of transmission, dating, and geographical origin of the works tackled by the authors and their cautious, tentative conclusions. These are true essays, probing and testing the arguments for claims, and providing unfinished building blocks for a history of law. They will be of great value to those studying the history of particular works or traditions but not to those who seek sound foundations for works on general subjects. The second section, “Religion,” consists of two essays on theological works, Charles Shrader on the Eucharistic treatises of Heriger of Lobbes (c. 940–1007) and Martin Brett on the De corpore et sanguine Domini of Ernulf of Canterbury (1039/40–1124). Brett’s article includes an edition of the text. In the editors’ view, theology and canon law were separate subjects, although, as James Brundage notes in his essay in the third section of the book (p. 277), until the late-twelfth century practitioners did not regard canon law and theology as distinct fields of study. Nearly all of the essays in the third section, “Politics,” are by Somerville’s contemporaries—Detlev Jasper, Edward Peters, Giles Constable, Kenneth Pennington, Charles Donahue Jr., and James Brundage. Their essays tend to be more definitive than those in the earlier sections, in the sense that the authors draw conclusions from their research. Yet, several emulate Somerville in taking on topics about which conclusions are elusive. Jasper’s study of the transmission of historical examples of deposition and excommunication of emperors collected by papal partisans during the Investiture Conflict draws the tentative conclusion that a manuscript of St. Gall (Stiftsbibliothek 676) contains a version derived from two earlier lists, and Jasper edits the text from that manuscript. Pennington takes up a question raised by Somerville about a decree of the Second Lateran Council that prohibited monks and canons regular to study Roman law. He answers some, but not all, of the questions posed by Somerville in that study. Constable also deals with a subject close to Somerville: the evidence for Pope Urban II’s preaching of the first crusade. Most of the essays in the third section are contributions related to their authors’ longtime research and are useful additions to the puzzle of medieval legal...

Poverty of the Church—Poverty of Culture: A Contribution of Giuseppe Dossetti to Vatican II

Giuseppe Dossetti was an important figure not only in Italian politics, in the reform of historical studies, and in the history of new monasticism, but also at Vatican II. One topic in particular—poverty—was at the core of his contribution to the activity of Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro, archbishop of Bologna, at the council. The article analyzes these contributions based on the private papers of Lercaro and Dossetti. It highlights the meaning of poverty, which was scarcely received in the conciliar decrees and about which post-Vatican II magisterial teaching has been virtually silent, until the election of Pope Francis.

Illegitimate birth and the English clergy, 1198-1348

This article studies illegitimacy, which was a canonical impediment to ordination, within the English clergy between 1198 and 1348. Scholarship on illegitimacy in the clergy has previously relied on canon law, conciliar decrees, and dispensations preserved in papal registers. Using these sources, historians have concluded that the papacy tightly controlled illegitimate men's access to orders, that the burdens of obtaining dispensations for illegitimacy (the defectus natalium) could pose substantial obstacles to a man's clerical career, and that priests' sons made up a significant percentage of the illegitimate clergy. This article, which draws on the large and previously untapped body of dispensations surviving in English episcopal registers to supplement the papal sources, reaches different conclusions. It argues that the great majority of illegitimate clerics in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century English clergy were the sons of unmarried lay parents. It further argues that dispensations were more readily accessible than has previously been suggested, and emphasises the importance of local branches of the ecclesiastical hierarchy to an individual's efforts to attain a dispensation to enter holy orders.

The Palladium and the Pentateuch: Towards a Sacred Topography of the Later Roman Empire

H ISTORIANS OF RELIGION IN LATE ANTIQUITY tend to adopt one of two perspectives. Either we seek to understand Christianization, a process ultimately reducible to acts of individual choice whose aggregate effects can be described in purely demographic terms, or we investigate the demise of paganism, a set of discrete rituals and practices, some of which survived in Christian Europe, robbed of their religious significance through cult acts and conciliar decrees. Understood in these terms, the Christianization of the Roman empire passed a milestone in the early fifth century, the last age attesting a senator who publicly professed paganism. Similarly, paganism was either dying from the moment of its conception, as its constituent practices fell into abeyance, or it survives to this day.1 The self-understandings of these religions, developed in fractious dialogue with each other, thus yield incompatible narratives and inconsistent periodizations. Assuming rather than interrogating the ontological integrity of their taxonomies, historiography grounded in these perspectives can be erudite but it cannot explain anything.2 If we are now to forge histories of religious change in late antiquity that do more than count Christian conversions or pagan survivals, we must avoid conceptual categories derived from the failed apologetics and willfil misconstruals of pagan-Christian dialogue. We must also shun easy reliance on the distorted and misleading claims to novelty of Christian hagiography, a modern counterpart to the faith that late-antique ecclesiastical historians placed in Providence. We should have asked long ago whether the transfer of charisma from one individual to another did in fact constitute a change in the locus of the sacred. Insofar as that transfer did not require contemporaries to reconceptualize the holiness of individuals or the nature of divine immanence, the answer is no. Change in the religious mentality of late-antique Europe should instead be charted first at an epistemological level, one prior, as it were, to religious or doctrinal commitment. This essay adumbrates such an approach by juxtaposing and conjoining two famous problems: the surge in antiquarianism in the west in the early fifth century and the contest for supremacy between Rome and Constantinople. Scholars have tended to assume that Christians and pagans thought about the sacralization of landscape in very different ways: insofar as paganism consisted of rites bereft of theological significance, pagans (it is assumed) sacralized space through ritual

Statuta ecclesiae antiqua and the Gallic councils in the Hibernensis

Early conciliar decrees were read in Ireland and in Irish centres on the Continent. The compilers of the Collectio canonum Hibernensis (or Hibernensis) had access to both the Gallic and Spanish traditions of the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua (a small book of ordination rites and clerical discipline). The B recension of the Hibernensis is less accurate in quoting the Statuta text than is the A recension. A distinct Breton family of Hibernensis manuscripts emerges again from details of the Statuta quotations. The quotations are important evidence for ordination rites in the early Irish church. The Cologne manuscript of the Hibernensis uses far more Gallic canons than do the other manuscripts of the Hibernensis.

Priscillian and Nicolaitism

AbstractPriscillian was censured of both doctrinal heresy and sexual immorality by his accusers. On the question of his alleged sexual exploits, this issue merits a closer look than has been previously done by modern researchers. Some scholars believe the conciliar decrees of the Iberian Peninsula regarding relations between men and women are a response, directly and indirectly, to illicit relations in Priscillianist circles.1 It is further argued that these decrees reflect an episcopal attempt to bring women into greater submission to men within and outside of Priscillianist groups.2 There has been, moreover, some discord among some researchers as to whether Priscillian was ever accused of Nicolaitism.3 There are, however, other pressing questions that I will explore in this article that will shed light on these concerns in Priscillian scholarship. Specifically, my agenda is: (a) to identify precisely in the anti-Priscillian literature which writers were responsible for accusing Priscillian and his followers of sexual immorality; (b) In the same vein, to engage any evidence which identifies whether Nicolaitism was ever attributed to Priscillianists; and (c), Lastly, to distinguish between rumor based misinformation about sexual libertarianism as opposed to what was actually decreed officially in conciliar legislation.

Il concilio di Trento e il moderno ed. by Paolo Prodi and Wolfgang Reinhard

II concilio di Trento e il moderno. Edited by Paolo Prodi and Wolfgang Reinhard. [Annali dell'Istituto storico italo-germanico, Quaderno 45.] (Bologna: Societa editrice il Mulino. 1996. Pp. 575. Lire 58.000.) This volume presents the atti of a week of study and discussions held to celebrate the 450th anniversary of the opening of the Council of Trent. Twin introductions by the organizers (Paolo Prodi and Wolfgang Reinhard) reveal the focus of meetings that week: the history of the Council against the backdrop of contemporary politics and law on one hand, and against the backdrop of modernizing religious persons and institutions on the other. In his introduction, Prodi explained that the organizers hoped to move forward the study of the long-range significance of the Council in relation to the birth of modern western political culture. From firm conviction that the old controversy concerning Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and Catholic Reform has been overcome, he argues nicely for a more complex picture of the Council and the forces behind it by pointing out the research-including his own-that illustrates the impact of the modern state upon the Church. It is no longer possible to maintain that the Council was a simple battle between reformers hoping to purify the Church and conservatives attempting to defend traditional ecclesiastical prerogatives against the reformers. Rapport between the papacy and other sovereigns allowed the formation of an equilibrium, albeit one retaining areas of potential conflict, that was epitomized, for Prodi, in the distinction between doctrine and statements of positive law in conciliar decrees. Reinhard's essay on Trent and the modernization of the Church as a social institution begins with far less optimism, asserting that Catholics today still see that Council as either an assertion of authentic orthodoxy or as a ruinous victory of conservatism and reaction. He maintains that Trent was characterized by defensiveness and reaction to Protestantism while arguing that the Council still contributed to both the relative and the absolute modernization of the Church. The published results of the week of study Prodi and Reinhard envisioned should provide the grist for much discussion in graduate seminars on the political, social, and religious history of early-modern Europe. What follows in the volume are essays that, in the main, present the state of current scholarship on a set of topics permitting reconsideration of the connection between the Council and emerging modernity. Some, like Konrad Repgen's essay on the religious law of the Holy Roman Empire, Umberto Mazzone's on the bureaucratic structure of Trent, Peter Burschel's on the modernity of post-Tridentine models of sanctity, plus those by Volker Reinhardt and Carlo Poni on scientific thought in the era of Trent, do little for me other than raise problems. Their suggestions concerning modern political, religious, and intellectual commitments demonstrate the reason for my lingering doubt about the very intent of the conference itself. …

Priscillian and Nicolaitism

AbstractPriscillian was censured of both doctrinal heresy and sexual immorality by his accusers. On the question of his alleged sexual exploits, this issue merits a closer look than has been previously done by modern researchers. Some scholars believe the conciliar decrees of the Iberian Peninsula regarding relations between men and women are a response, directly and indirectly, to illicit relations in Priscillianist circles.1 It is further argued that these decrees reflect an episcopal attempt to bring women into greater submission to men within and outside of Priscillianist groups.2 There has been, moreover, some discord among some researchers as to whether Priscillian was ever accused of Nicolaitism.3 There are, however, other pressing questions that I will explore in this article that will shed light on these concerns in Priscillian scholarship. Specifically, my agenda is: (a) to identify precisely in the anti-Priscillian literature which writers were responsible for accusing Priscillian and his followers of sexual immorality; (b) In the same vein, to engage any evidence which identifies whether Nicolaitism was ever attributed to Priscillianists; and (c), Lastly, to distinguish between rumor based misinformation about sexual libertarianism as opposed to what was actually decreed officially in conciliar legislation.

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

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...

Expulsion Italian style: The case of Lucio Ferraris

In 1756, Lucio Ferraris Soler of Alessandria, a member of the Observantine branch of the Franciscan Order and a Lector of the Sancta Rota, published his Bibliotheca can?nica juridico-moralis theologica. In eight, alphabetically arranged volumes, Ferraris brought together canons, papal letters, and conciliar decrees, as well as decisions from cases tried by the Rota and sundry legal opinions. The book is a theoretical and practical legal tour de force.

The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century: a Study of their Relations during the years 1198–1254, based on the Papal Letters and the Conciliar Decrees of the Period, revised ed. By Solomon Grayzel. Pp. x + 378. New York: Hermon Press, 1966. $6.75.

The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century: a Study of their Relations during the years 1198–1254, based on the Papal Letters and the Conciliar Decrees of the Period, revised ed. By Solomon Grayzel. Pp. x + 378. New York: Hermon Press, 1966. $6.75.

Missionary Thinking in the Context of Today

An approach to this theme must be very tentative. Enormous shifts in emphasis and sense of direction are taking place in the Church today and it is not easy to see the effect they can have in fields of thought and action which have of late been less explored. It is strange that one of these should be the missionary field, but it seems true. The Council's preoccupations hitherto have been elsewhere. The outright rejection of the schema on the Missions in the third session was evidence not only of its own inadequacy but also of a possible general consciousness among the Fathers that this crucial subject had not yet been considered by them with requisite seriousness. The great project on The Church in the Modern World’ will obviously also be of the deepest significance for missionary thinking. To attempt any sort of a rounded statement on the subject at the moment would seem then to be out of the question. All one can do is to present some of the intellectual problems behind mission work today and also to gather together what new insights into the meaning and strategy of our work already published conciliar decrees and current theology can offer us.Certainly mission thinking today must undergo a thorough renewal; our work cannot continue to be carried on with the attitudes and methods that have prevailed with relatively slight changes over the last century. Doubtless the need for this renovation has not been recognized as yet sufficiently or at a deep enough level by those engaged in the work.