Papal Reform and Canon Law in the 11th and 12th Centuries by Uta-Renate Blumenthal (review)

BOOK REVIEWS103 came from a variety of groups, including merchants, moneylenders, minor nobles , furriers, and other artisans. Orviétans proved largely tolerant of local Cathars. A Dominican inquisition foundered for lack of local support in 1239, and during the 1240's several Cathars held civic offices. A more thorough Franciscan inquisition in 1267-68 marked the end of toleration and the beginning of the end of Orviétan Catharism. Lansing devotes much attention to the place of Catharism in the spirituality of thirteenth-century Italy. Catharism was not an isolated, fringe phenomenon; rather "... Cathar beliefs existed within a general climate of religious skepticism in thirteenth-century towns" (p. 83). Many people venerated both Cathar and Catholic holy persons, and some Cathars went to confession and took communion in Catholic churches. For many, theological subtleties counted for less than devotion and reverence for ascetic individuals. Some Cathars, to be sure, challenged Catholic dogma. Pointed divergences came over issues surrounding gender (a creation of Satan or the evil god), marriage (not a sacrament for Cathars), and the bodies of the dead (denial of miracles associated with a holy person's remains). This book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Italian Catharism. Lansing's examination of Catharism in Orvieto provides a valuable study of heresy in a specific, local context. Her discussion of Cathar beliefs provides several worthwhile insights into the spiritual landscape of thirteenthcentury Italy. Some shortcomings mar the book. Lansing's discussion of the Orviétan inquisition would have benefited from a more thorough grounding in canon law. The book's subtitle overstates the work's actual coverage. It has little to say about Lombardy or other areas in northern Italy. More attention to those regions would have enriched the analysis of Cathar thought. These points notwithstanding, the book remains a worthy addition to scholarship on Catharism and medieval Italy. Peter D. Diehl Western Washington University Papal Reform and Canon Law in the IV and 12'" Centuries. By Uta-Renate Blumenthal. [Variorum Collected Studies Series CS 618.] (Brookfield, Vermont : Ashgate Publishing Company. 1998. Pp. xii, 334. $9995.) This recent volume in the "Variorum Collected Studies Series" brings together eighteen essays written by the distinguished historian of medieval canon law, Professor Uta-Renate Blumenthal of the Catholic University ofAmerica . Focusing on the eleventh and twelfth centuries, her period of specialization , these are based on extensive manuscript research and offer the reader insights into jurisprudence, theology, and political theory and practice. The papacy 's increasingly centralized, normalized control of the law is the connecting theme. 104BOOK REVIEWS The essays may be divided, roughly, into four groups. The first treats the transmission of non-conciliar, non papal-texts. These detailed studies shed light on key events in the ecclesiastical reform movement from the pontificate of Leo LX to that of Honorius III. Key moments in the reform, as well as in the crisis of church and state that ensued under Gregory VII, are treated in essays such as "Canossa and Royal Ideology in 1077 Two Unknown Manuscripts of De penitentia regis Salomonis" a brief, but detailed, study of a pro-imperialist treatise written shortly after Henry's submission to Gregory VII. Professor Blumenthal provides a provisional edition of the text with full apparatus. A bishop's engagement with canon law is examined in "An Episcopal Handbook from Twelfth-Century Southern Italy: Codex Rome, Bibl. Vallicelliana F. 54/??." Her analysis of the collection's formal sources, among them the Collectio of Cardinal Deusdedit, Ivo of Chartres' Decretum, and the (likely pseudo-Ivonian) Collectio Tripartita, demonstrates both the influence of these canonical collections in southern Italy and how they were exploited by a skillful compiler to meet the needs of a bishop concerned principally with administrative and jurisdictional matters. Here is an excellent illustration of canon law in action on the diocesan level. A second group of essays treats conciliar canons and papal decretals. From the pontificate of Leo G? ("Ein neuer Text für das Reimser Konzil Leos G?. [1049]") to "Opposition to Pope Paschal II: Some Comments on the Lateran Council of 1112," Professor Blumenthal considers the interaction of pope and council as witnessed by the transmission of conciliar canons. Paschal II...