Clement V by Sophia Menache (review)

BOOK REVIEWS453 Clement V. Sophia Menache. [Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Fourth Series, 36] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1998. Pp. xiv, 351. $69.95.) Clement V (1305-1314), formerly Bertrand de Got, archbishop of Bordeaux, the Gascon whose sojourn in Languedoc proved to be a stage in the settlement of the papacy at Avignon, has been one of the most maligned of popes. Many decades of intellectual energy have now been devoted to the dramatic episopes of his career—including the trial of the Templars, the aborted posthumous trial of Boniface VIII, and the Council of Vienne—and a book which brings together this scholarship is certainly to be welcomed. Professor Menache argues convincingly that when judged according to the political realities of his day, Clement emerges as a determined leader with diplomatic skills. His aim was a united West and a new Crusade. In its overall perceptions this is a book that carries weight, and its extensive bibliography and detailed referencing will be a boon for future scholars. It is not, however, the polished and fully authoritative book we might have hoped for. Some sections of the book are rather baffling, and readers for the Press and its copy-editors could have saved the author from producing many unclear passages . When she writes in the introduction, "Special emphasis was placed on the different sources . . ." (p. 3), she means "has been placed" by the author herself . Should Bertrand de Got's "services in the papal curia" (p. 15) in fact read "services for the papal curia"? What is meant by the statement that Raimond de Got died "only in 1323" (p. 2In) and that the "status enjoyed by England and France . . . acted to replace former conflicts with mutual co-operation" (p. 36)? French readers will understand more readily than English the "relatively low assistance " (p. 283) at the Council ofVienne. Some of her generalizations are hard to grasp: "Yet, it was very difficult, if not impossible, to find a via media between the interests of the universal Church and of the emerging state, on the one hand, and those of the papacy, the monarchy, and the 'national' Churches, on the other" (p. 36). Occasionally generalizations seem to be, in any case, highly dubious: for example, commenting on contemporary attitudes toward the pope, she writes: "... the equation that identified hostile political tendencies with heresy was justified by the contemporary trend in canon law, which considered any attack on the Church and its privileges to be heresy" (p. 142). Where is the evidence for this "trend in canon law"? The obscurities are not simply to do with oddities of expression. For example , the context of the terms of the decree Etsi in temporalium,which is given no date (p. 37), is hard to comprehend. Indeed, much of the important analysis relating to papal provisions and ecclesiastical taxation, in England and France, is quite difficult to unravel. While the translation of Clement's letter summoning the archbishop of Canterbury to the papal curia (p. 59) is unascribed, abundant referencing is, in general, provided throughout the book, and readers would be well advised to check references frequently. We read on page 69 that "of nearly 3,000 incumbents in the diocese of Durham, there were about forty for- 454BOOK REVIEWS eigners"; only by checking the secondary source does it become clear that these are the incumbents identified in the diocese of Durham for the whole of the later Middle Ages. And statements are occasionally more than just a little deceptive : Béraud de Got's mission to France did not take place "at the same time" as Bertrand de Got's mission to England (p. 8); and the De Tallagio Non Concedendo , probably of 1297, did not "essentially consist of a reissue of Magna Carta" (p. 251). Had she been able to use Jean Coste's recent Boniface VIII en procès (École française de Rome, 1995) she would have been saved (p. 195) from the old error of getting the 1310 sets of depositions of witnesses against Boniface in the wrong order. One of the striking aspects of Professor Menache's portrayal of papal influence during this period is...