La Parrocchia nel Medio Evo: Economia, Scambi, Solidarietà ed. by Agostino Paravicini Bagliani and Véronique Pasche (review)

794book reviews problematic part of the book for this reviewer. Flood argues—as he did in earlier works like Francis ofAssist and the Franciscan Movement (1989)—that the Franciscan movement was born as a socio-economic alternative to the nascent capitalism of Assisi. The impUcations of this perspective become apparent when he considers ideals like poverty and the imitation of Christ, elements most scholars imagine were basic to Francis' project. In Flood's view, they entered the picture more or less as tactical maneuvers countering Assisi's attempt to marginalize the movement that challenged and judged its values. "Franciscan poverty, then, began as a defensive maneuver to deal with Assisi's ostracism." Or, in the case of imitating Christ, Instead of quietly and humbly accepting their lot, the brothers outmaneuvered Assisi. (As in economics, so now with society, they were breaking the monopoly of those in power to define what is real.) . . . They swept the imputation of insignificance aside by drawing Jesus into the excluded group. Flood presents the late thirteenth-century spiritual leader Petrus Iohannis OUvi as a major hero of the movement; yet—despite Flood's impressive record of scholarship on OUvi—his description of the latter's dUficulties with the order seems remarkably generic. He devotes some space to OUvi's argument for poverty in the eighth of the Questions on Evangelical Perfection and implies that an explanation of OUvi's troubles can be found there; yet question eight does not directly address the issue of ususpauper as a part ofthe vow, and that is the issue that divided OUvi from his confreres. Flood makes no effort to examine question nine or the Treatise on Usus Pauper, both of which deal explicitly with the ususpauper controversy and offer a better sense ofwhat OUvi at least thought the argument was about. In every other respect, however, the achievement is a major one. Scholars should be grateful to these two scholars for editing a massive work like Nicholaus' chronicle and to the Franciscan Institute for daring to pubUsh it despite the current tight market for scholarly works. David Burr Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg La Parrocchia nel Medio Evo: Economía, Scambi, Solidarietà. Edited by Agostino Paravicini Bagliani and Véronique Pasche. [Italia Sacra: Studi e documenti di storia ecclesiastica,Vol. 53] (Rome: Herder Editrice e Librer ía. 1995. Pp. xxvU, 325. Lire 1 12.000 paperback.) This volume presents papers from a seminar organized to broaden consideration ofexchange within the parish to include spiritual as weU as material transactions . The selections certainly achieve this goal, but the chronological and geographical emphases of the volume are not well indicated in its title. Most of book reviews795 the contributions focus on the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and, although published in Italy, French parishes dominate the coUection. So too do the dead. More than anything, this volume reveals the centraUty of death in the economic and spiritual exchanges ofthe late medieval parish. Contributions illumine the roles of burial fees in the parish economy (Delmaire.pp. 27-41, and Le Bourgeois-Viron,pp. 42-59), of endowed commemorative Masses in the parish liturgy (Staub, pp. 231-254, and Lemaitre, pp. 255-278), of private funerary chapels in the division of space within the parish church itseU (Hubert , pp. 209-227), and of funerary repasts in the sustenance of the parish's poor (Dubuis, pp. 279-303). Jacques ChUfoleau's broad, synthetic essay, "L'Économie paroissiale en Provence" (pp. 61-117), integrates these themes with the more narrowly economic concerns of earUer work. Distinguishing three "moments" (before 1260, 1260-1340, after 1340) in the history of parochial exchanges in Provence, he focuses on the middle period and its "recomposition assez complète de toute l'économie paroissiale, qui tient en grande partie aux transformations du système bénéficiai mais qui a aussi des impUcations et des présupposés de nature strictement reUgieuse" (p. 66). Chtffoleau masterfully shows how changes in the economic support of the parish, particularly the increasingly important role of commemorative prayer for the dead, affected the clergy's relationship with the laity and set the stage for the great reform movements of the sixteenth century...