The Black Death and Pastoral Leadership: The Diocese of Hereford in the Fourteenth Century by William J. Dohar (review)

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 feet, if anything is lacking at aU in this impressive work, it is the broader historical context for the very detafl 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 . Still, 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 Bishops TrUlek and Lewis Charlton and his assemblage and discussion ofinstitution and ordination figures (which chiefly confirm weUknown trends) are useful, but his considerable knowledge is often betrayed by a lack of penetrating or enterprising research. Although Dr. Dohar repeatedly stresses the importance ofthe social and economic context in which the clergy found themselves, he offers no characterization of the area's social structure or ofits economic basis. Parish churches are numbered but not valued; stiU less are their endowments explored to reveal how poor or rich they were and what proportion of revenue came from the glebe or from tithes and offerings, facts which might determine how they were affected by the changes which ensued from the Plague. We learn that many Uvings were appropriated, but we are told nothing about the nature of the vicarage which was ordained, nor are the dates of appropriation systematically disclosed. As for the parishioners, we are given no clue as to how they earned their Uving or how many of them there were. There are no indications of the pressure or dearth of inhabitants in any single parish except in two instances oftwo churches being united for a lack of, or because of the poverty of, parishioners, but these examples offer no figures. We learn a Uttle from a twenty-year-long lawsuit between a Hereford vicar and the dean and chapter about the burial rights of the latter in the city—120 died in 1348-9, twenty being buried in one day—but no attempt is made to estimate BOOK REVIEWS91 the proportion of survivors. PoU tax records are cited only for the clerical population , not for the laity; no secular records—except for some very limited use of patent and close roUs—are exploited to Ulumine the context in which the clergy worked and the nature of the chaUenge which faced them. Even when using ecclesiastical evidence, Dr. Dohar is not whoUy reassuring: he often assumes that the entry of items (such as Cum ex eo Ucences) in the bishop's register was systematic and consistent, and he confuses mortuary and burial rights. Relying on what is in the bishop's register, he rather too eagerly dismisses the significance of early LoUardy in the area which, as he himself acknowledges, nurtured the young Oldcasde. Sadly, his want of rigor and of precision undermines confidence in his conclusions which are remarkably bland and optimistic . Peter Heath University ofHull Sapientie Immarcessibilis. A Diplomatic and Comparative Study of the Bull ofFoundation ofthe University ofLouvain (December 9, 1425). By Erik Van Mingroot. Documentation by Marc NeUssen. Translation from the Dutch by Angela Fritsen. [MediaevaUa...