In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

book reviews791 beforehand to the future penance. His condition was thereby changed from that of a guUty party to that of a penitent. Canon law, as outlined by JacquesVerger, began to be taught in the universities of the Midi (Toulouse, MontpeUier, Avignon) during the course of the thirteenth century. By the fourteenth it was the discipline that attracted the most students, even U Roman law was more prestigious. The statutes provide a detaUed knowledge of the program of studies: the curricula, the teaching methods , and the examinations.The main text was the Decretals of Gregory LX. In all, there are fourteen essays by thirteen contributors, mostly university professors from the south of France. John E. Lynch The Catholic University ofAmerica Processus Bernardi Delitiosi: The Trial of Fr. Bernard Délicieux, 3 Septembers December 1319- ByAlan Friedlander. [Transactions of the American PhUosophical Society,Vol. 86,Pt. 1.] (PhUadelphia:American PhUosophical Society. 1996. Pp. xn, 393. $30.00.) Prominent in modern accounts of late Languedocian Catharism are the activities of two wandering Cathar perfects, GuiUaume Pages and Bernard Costa, attested in depositions which now survive in a seventeenth-century copy, MS Paris BN Doat 26. In 1319 a Franciscan expressed skepticism about the truth of these depositions and the real existence of the two perfects: in his way, attempting what Robert Lerner achieved on a broader scale in his 'Heresy'ofthe 'Free Spirit' (197'3), where a sect which had been prominent until then in histories of heresy was demonstrated to be a fabrication based on leading questions , torture, and confessing personaUties. The Franciscan was Bernard Délicieux, and he was giving witness during a trial in which he faced four charges: (1) impeding the inquisition, (2) plotting an insurrection against the king of France, (3) plotting the death of the Dominican Pope Benedict XI, and (4) supporting the Spiritual Franciscans.The documents of this trial have now been carefuUy edited by Alan Friedlander, who has also supplied an historical introduction, an appendix of biographical notes on persons mentioned in the trial, and a glossary providing modern identifications of Latin place-names.Testimony to Friedlander's useful edition is that it immediately suggests the need for further publications. First of aU, Friedlander introduces what is at the front of the stage in this edition, the proceedings, the texts, and the outlines of DeUcieux 's life; he has no room to do more. For one intelligible context of DeUcieux 's attack on Dominican inquisitors,earUer southern French Franciscan and Dominican hostility; for a setting of DéUcieux within the context of his order; for an account of Délicieux's curial friends; for the strange lapse of fifteen years between the (aUeged) commission of charges 1-3 and the trial: for these the 792book reviews reader must stiU turn to earlier accounts of Délicieux, such as Yves Dossat's in Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 10 (1975). For further consideration of Arnold of VUlanova , to whom DéUcieux was aUeged to have supplied substances with which to murder Pope Benedict XI, the reader must turn to those who have studied Arnold as a physician (Michael McVaugh) orArnold as Spiritual Franciscan sympathizer (Robert Lerner). Clearly the time is now ripe for a major monograph on Délicieux, preferably written by Friedlander. Secondly, there is the theme which opens this review. Languedocian depositions have long been relatively exempt from the brush which has tarred northern-European trials. "Tarred"? Think only ofthe mad inquisitors Conrad ofMarburg and Robert Le Bougre, the torturedTemplars, and Lerner's Free Spirit suspects. Now, the Languedocian depositions may contain much story-telling and mendacity, as Natalie Davis pointed out in her Annales review of Montaillou. But those who read these southern depositions are impressed by their circumstantiality, lack of heavy leading questions, and deponents' relative freedom, even discursiveness, when replying. So, the standard historians, from Jean Guiraud to Jean Duvernoy and the late Msgr. EUe GrUfe, have contentedly got on with the job ofusing these depositions to reconstruct Languedocian Catharism, and exploiting them to produce pictures of quite remarkable quotidian detaU and color. Perhaps they should not be so confident. Often these depositions pose a subtler problem than the northern ones. Deponents...

pdf

Share