Studien zu den Quellen der frühmittelalterlichen Bussbücher by Ludger Körntgen (review)

318BOOK REVIEWS as did the Africans (p. l49;Ep. 22*, 7; 11 Divjak).Yet again, in the case ofAntony of Fussala,Augustine's disreputable protégé, Merdinger notes that "the Africans co-operated fuUy with the pope from the moment that Antony turned to him" (p. 160). AureUus of Macomades, the primate of Numidia, could have ended the case at the synod of GUva Ln 422, but did not: "no one seemed to think that Antony was doing anything illegal by appealing to Rome so late. . . . The evidence suggests that throughout Antony of Fussala's case the Africans can turn to Rome for help, and this is what is most important" (pp. 164, 182). Merdinger, foUowing the conclusions of Charles Munier, considers that it was not untU the Council of Carthage of 424 that the African bishops, outraged by the further appeals to Rome of Apiarius of Sicca Veneria, appealed to the Nicene canons to forbid episcopal appeals to Rome, as weU as those of inferior orders. The twentieth Council of Carthage of 525 repeated the prohibition of 424: Ut nullus ad Romanam ecclesiam audeat appellare (CCSL 149, 266). In her conclusions Merdinger considers that the earliest traditions of Tertullian , Cyprian, and Optatus Uved on in fifth-century Africa: independence, combined with an increasing reUance on the ApostoUc See up to a certain point. She sees the Apiarius case as "a water-shed in African-Roman relations" (p. 206), and here the canons of Nicaea provided an impressive defense against Roman intervention. At the same time, this did not lead to any break in communion with Rome. Merdinger's final paragraph (apart from an epilogue) can hardly be bettered as a summary of her argument: The Africans emerged from round two of the Apiarius affair as the defenders of Nicaea and a vocal critic of the papacy. From the Divjak letters, it is clear that they were at the same time becoming increasingly dependent on the papacy for judicial decisions and advice. The very principles which they had once used to combat heretics and schismatics—apostolic tradition and unity with the source—now bound them to the great church at Rome, more tightly sometimes than they wished. Gerald Bonner Durham, England Medieval Studien zu den Quellen der frühmittelalterlichen Bussbücher. By Ludger Körntgen. [QueUen und Forschungen zum Recht im Mittelalter, Band 7.] (Sigmaringen:Jan Thorbecke Verlag. 1993. Pp. xxiü, 292. DM 98,-.) Since the middle of the nineteenth century the study of early medieval penitentials has, on the whole,been in a state of disarray. The editions ofpenitentials in Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ire- BOOK REVIEWS319 land1 and in Wasserschleben's2 and Schmltz's3 volumes, excellent as they were for the nineteenth century, at times gave different names for the same penitential , presented only partial texts of some penitentials,and were based on what is now known to have been an inadequate number of manuscripts. The two major exceptions to the confusion Ln the editing of the penitentials were in FLnsterwalder 's edition of the Cañones Theodori in 19294 and Bieler's exceUent edition of the Irish penitentials in 1963.5 In 1978 Vogel pubUshed a useful introduction to the penitentials as a whole in the series Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental, but much of the confusion of the past remained, so much so that a few years later in the same series A.J. Frantzen made an attempt, not always successful, to clear up matters.6 In the late 1970's the situation regarding the large number ofcontinental penitentials began to change. Raymund Kottje,who would pubUsh his fundamental study of the penitentials of HaUtgar of Cambrai and Rabanus Maurus Ln 1980,7 first announced the establishment of a major program, sponsored by the Volkswagen Stiftung, to study and edit the Continental penitentials.8 The first volume to emerge from this program has now appeared in the Corpus Christianorum series, Paenitentialia minora Franciae et Italiae saeculi VIII-IX? During his work both at Augsburg and Bonn Kottje involved a number of his students, including Frantzen, who used material gathered in Augsburg for his own studies, and the author of...