Calendar of the Letters of Arnaud Aubert, Camerarius Apostolicus, 1361-1371 by Daniel Williman (review)

92BOOK REVIEWS Calendar of the Letters ofArnaud Aubert, Camerarius Apostolicus, 13611371 . By Daniel WiUiman. [Subsidia Mediaevalia, 20.] (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 1992. Pp. xii, 525. »4950.) Arnaud Aubert had a glittering career at the papal court in Avignon. It helped that he was the nephew of Pope Innocent VI. It was under his uncle that he rose to become archbishop ofAuch and papal chamberlain, the latter an office which Williman fairly describes as "first in discretionary powers" among the functions to which exalted curiáis might aspire. But Arnaud had clearly made the office his own in more ways than one since he was continued in its tenure by his uncle's successors, Urban V and Gregory XI. Moreover, he held this pivotal office at a crucial period in its development. Clearly, records of Aubert's activity as chamberlain would be of some interest to historians. We owe to the work under review notice that such records have survived. The principal object of this work is to present a calendar of 878 documents constituting the surviving record of the administrative and judicial activity of Arnaud as papal chamberlainfrom 1 361 to 1 371. The nature ofthese important documents had not been previously recognized; WiUiman is in some sense their discoverer. He has culled them from a variety of registers in the rich series preserved in the Vatican Archives. In this work, he presents calendars, or full English summaries, of aU the documents and prints mose ofthem which he finds particularly interesting in their original Latin. The calendars are preceded by a magisterial introduction which Uluminatingly places Arnaud Aubert and the documents within the web of familial and institutional relations at the Court of Avignon. The documents are made even more readily accessible by an abundance of careful indices. A slight objection may be raised to the use of the term 'letters' to describe the contents of the Calendar. A more neutral term like 'acts' might more fairly have described the range of material presented here, which includes notarial instruments and other legal documents which do not readUy fit under the rubric of 'letters.' The chamberlain's office was concerned pre-eminently with financial matters, and so these acts concern primarily the raising and allocation of funds. But these documents, and their calendars, are far from arid. Amid expected attempts to coUect provisions, spoUs, and taxes of various sorts, one also finds high pohtics and the practice of loyalty toward friends and subordinates . These documents are quite as vivid and interesting as any in the papal registers and are somewhat less formulaic, even though they may have played a role in the establishment of cameral forms for the rest of the fourteenth century and beyond. WiUiman has done a great service by providing us with a thoroughly reliable and easUy consultable edition of these documents. The staff of the Department of Publications of the Pontifical Institute has served him weU in the production of a most handsome and carefully edited volume. A stronger objection may be raised to the choice to present the documents BOOK REVIEWS93 in chronological order rather than to respect the sequence in which the documents were enregistered in their various registers. It is hard to see what particular advantage there is to a chronological arrangement. Hardly any reader is likely to approach the Calendar with the desire to read aU the entries in chronological sequence. More typicaUy, one uses this type ofwork to trace some person in whose career one is interested or in pursuit of some specific subject; such investigations are not particularly assisted by arranging the material chronologicaUy. Whatever advantage may accrue from such a choice of arrangement, the cost ought not to have been the impossibUity for the reader of easily re-establishing the structure of the registers themselves and the relationship in which these documents stand to each other within the actual registers. Scholars with an interest in such matters wUl not be greatly aided by WUliman's work. Despite mese (slight) criticisms, WUliman's generous work should prove a precious addition to the wealth of calendars ofpapal registers that do so much to facUitate the study of the Avignon Papacy...