In this stimulating monograph, Lorenzo Tanzini rejects the notion that the late medieval Christian Church was defined by decadence and corruption. Instead, he identifies law and judicial institutions as key forces in ecclesiastical development during the fourteenth century. Tanzini's exploration of episcopal authority, clerical culture, and lay-clerical relations in the later Middle Ages bears careful attention. Through his analysis, he challenges historians to pay as much attention to the routine, mundane nature of episcopal judicial work as they do the colorful, dramatic records that it produced.
Fittingly for a project that prioritizes documents, chapter 1 begins with the archives. Here we find a learned discussion of Tuscan ecclesiastical archives, the structure and function of court records, and the history of legal developments in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Tanzini's comments about the importance of narrative to court records are emblematic of the critical approach to sources he takes throughout the book. He argues that the events recounted in court records are not simply factual descriptions. Instead, the use of narration in those records played an essential role in determining the outcomes of cases.
Chapter 2 focuses on officials who worked within ecclesiastical courts, including the significant figure of the episcopal vicarius, whose role within the judicial life of the diocese grew during this period. Within this discussion of officials Tanzini reexamines Robert Brentano's description of the Italian “notarial Church” whose structure was defined by the culture of the notaries who often worked for ecclesiastical authorities. Instead, Tanzini argues, bishops availed themselves of notaries while retaining firm control over the documentation produced by those notaries.
Chapter 3 turns to the clergy, whose activities were judged by bishops or their delegates in the episcopal courts. The lengthy discussion here reflects the fact that governance of the clergy was the principal concern of bishops in this period. The chapter examines how bishops’ concerns were variously articulated in synodal legislation, pastoral visitations, and records from episcopal tribunals. Tanzini argues that the concerns expressed in the latter records were those of the episcopal curia, and they include clerics involved in violent or criminal acts, those who claimed the wrong status or lacked training, and those involved in sexual relationships. Tanzini further cautions against a straightforward reading of court cases as a window onto clerical culture, arguing that individual accusations against clerics (e.g., for concubinage) need to be understood as articulations of conflictual relations between clerics and laity and not simply as moral critiques of clergy themselves.
Chapters 4 and 5 consider the relations among bishops, clergy, and the laity during the demographic and social changes of the fourteenth century. In chapter 4, Tanzini argues that looking at the clergy through the records of episcopal courts allows for a better understanding of the relationship between clerics and the communities they served. He views the lay community as active agents within episcopal tribunals, arguing that the level of lay engagement with this body was a distinguishing feature of the Church on the Italian peninsula.
Tanzini also traces the effects of demographic crisis on the clergy, identifying a growing clerical proletariat at work in the parishes of the region, including a sizeable group of foreign-born clerics who served parishes across the region. Chapter 5 focuses on appearances of laypeople within the episcopal courts, particularly regarding civil matters such as inheritance and credit. This chapter also contains a brief and ultimately unsatisfying exploration of women's appearances in these records, in a section titled “Marriage and the World of Women” (“il mondo femminile”). The discussion in this section elides women's participation in other aspects of the lay community (such as their participation in credit transactions). Further, it suggests that marriage and family were a concern for only women. The section would have been strengthened with further reference to more of the many recent studies that examine women's roles within the institutions of medieval Christianity.
Tanzini's book makes a noteworthy contribution to the fields of legal and ecclesiastical history. His refusal to simply mine archival records for colorful stories is particularly noteworthy. I would recommend the book to any graduate student planning archival work, as well as to all scholars of legal and ecclesiastical history.
