The Register of John Kirkby, Bishop of Carlisle, 1332-1352, and the Register of John Ross, Bishop of Carlisle, 1325-1332 ed. by R. L. Storey (review)

BOOK REVIEWS89 the notoriously corrupt printed editions but has based his translation on manuscript sources. Altogether, these volumes constitute a fine achievement. AU students of medieval history and the history of poktical thought should be grateful for them. Brian TiERNEY Cornell University The Register ofJohn Kirkby, Bishop ofCarlisle, 1332-1352, and the Register ofJohn Ross, Bishop ofCarlisle, 1325-1332. Edited by R. L. Storey. 2 vols. [Canterbury and York Society, Vols. LXXLX, LXXXI.] (Rochester, New York: The Boydell Press. 1993, 1995. Pp. xvi, 176; $59.00; $53.00.) The edition of any medieval bishop's register is a welcome contribution. The documents recorded therein not only teU—to the extent that the registrar was a diligent scribe—what the bishop did pastoraUy and administratively, but they also reveal numerous facets of medieval church and society in and beyond a particular diocese. These two volumes are all the more welcome to students of EngUsh church history because CarUsle has fewer extant medieval registers than most EngUsh dioceses and only one of these—John Halton's (12921324 )—has been edited previously. Professor Storey's task was a formidable one: the first volume provides detailed summaries of 841 entries in the Kirkby register and the Ross fragment. Most of these are formulaic and represent the usual run of episcopal business: memoranda, correspondence, institutions to benefices, and ordinations. But the editor's EngUsh summaries contain aU the essential information along with copious notes and internal cross-reference making them aU the more valuable as historical information. Invariably, some of these entries are more interesting or historicaUy significant than others. The editor thus devotes most of the second volume to the fuU transcription sixty-one entries in their original Latin or French. He includes important administrative records such as financial surveys of episcopal properties, correspondence with royal and ecclesiastical lords, and the business of the courts. There are also records here that evoke a less official world in fourteenth-century CarUsle: accounts of the intermittent Anglo-Scottish wars, piety and devotion, and, on one occasion, a lost-and-found notice for a prayer book a cleric dropped riding between Moorland and Penrith. Valuable indexes of persons, places, and subjects fiU out this second volume. This is an important contribution to the source materials for later medieval EngUsh church history not merely for the contents which the editor makes accessible , but because the project was in no sense an easy task. The composite manuscript in which this register is located was so eccentrically constructed and paginated as to make an orderly chronological summary a daunting effort. In his introduction, Professor Storey summarizes the paleographical and diplo- 90BOOK REVIEWS matic chaUenge of this register with impressive detail. While essential for understanding the register proper, this introduction is meant for scholars who have consulted these manuscript materials firsthand and is not as accessible to a less experienced reader. In fact, if anything is lacking at aU in this impressive work, it is the broader historical context for the very detail that makes it so rich. Where it was usual for the older Canterbury and York Society volumes to provide an historical introduction for their subjects and pay less attention to the manuscript registers themselves, Professor Storey excels in the opposite direction . StUl, there is no lack of references whereby the earnest reader can gather such information,and,against the larger contribution ofthis work,this is a small matter. WniiAM J. Dohar, C.S.C. University ofNotre Dame The Black Death and Pastoral Leadership: The Diocese of Hereford in the Fourteenth Century. By WilUam J. Dohar. [Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia : University ofPennsylvania Press. 1995. Pp. xvi, 198. $32.95.) The diocese of Hereford is a sufficiently compact area to entice a close examination of the impact of the Black Death upon the Church, not least because its episcopal records and the findings of a visitation carried out in 1397 have long been in print. In this book Dr. Dohar makes good use of these records as weU as others to chart the progress ofthe plague visitation of 1348 through the area and to monitor its effects upon the parish clergy and the response of the bishops. His sketches of...