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BOOK REVIEWS321 under the guidance of Swedish scholars, such as L. Hollman, who edited the Revelaciones extravagantes in 1956, and especially Birgir Bergh, who edited Books V-VII between 1967 and 1991, and who is thanked for his assistance in helping Book III to see the Ught of day by A.-M. Jönsson. Only Book II now remains to complete this superb critical edition. Book III is relatively short, consisting of thirty-four revelations, mostly given by the Blessed Virgin through the sponsa (i.e., Birgitta), but also sometimes conveyed by Christ (eight times), God the Father (once), or by various saints. In content, the book can be described as a speculum clericorum, since the revelations are aU intended for various clerics , from popes, cardinals, and bishops, down to more lowly ecclesiastical offices of priests and monks. Both the Dominicans and the Benedictines come in for criticism (see chapters 17-18 and 20-22). The divine warnings that Birgitta conveys are usuaUy harsh, but the call to repentance is tempered by an insistence on the constancy of God's mercy throughout history. In chapter 30, in one of the visionary's more striking similitudines, she says: "God is like a firstrate washerwoman (optima lotrix), who puts a dirty garment amidst the waves so that it can be made cleaner and brighter from the water's motion,whUe carefuUy guarding that the tossing of the waves doesn't drown the garment." In chapter 26 there is also an interesting discussion of the possibility of the salvation of heathens andJews. Birgitta wrote down her revelations in Old Swedish, though only two pages of these survive. (The revelations in Book III stretched out over many years, beginning in Sweden in 1344, and continuing during the 1350's and 1360's in Italy.) The texts were translated into Latin by her confessors, and in 1 370 she commissioned Bishop Alfonso of Jaén to edit the whole in the original seven books of the Revelaciones, also known as the Liber celestis. Subsequent additions and the translation of the Latin back into Old Swedish complicate the history of the text. Further study will be needed to sort out aU the problems, but A.-M. Jönsson's careful scholarship in this volume has made important contributions to the debates, especiaUy in rebutting claims against the priority of the Latin text of Book III (see Excursus A). Bernard McGinn Divinity School University ofChicago Konziliarismus und Polen. Personen, Politik und Programme aus Polen zur Verfassungsfrage der Kirche in der Zeit der mittelalterlichen Reformkonzilien . By Thomas Wünsch. [Konzüiengeschichte, Reihe B: Untersuchungen .] (Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh. 1998. Pp. Lxxxvü, 405. DM 128.) This is an important book by a young German scholar whose career as a student of conciliarism and late medieval political thought is rapidly in the ascendant . Wünsch has taken one of the central questions of late medieval eccle- 322BOOK REVIEWS siastical history—that of the constitution of the Church, in particular its leadership —and examined it in the context of one of the most dynamic and creative centers of inteUectual activity in the concUiar epoch. His focus is upon court, episcopal, and—above aU—university circles in Poland, particularly Krakow, in this period. Though concUiar theory had deep roots in the medieval church, it was the trauma of the schism after 1378 that gave it specific form and expression. Ending the split between Avignon and Rome was one of the aims of the conciliarists , but ultimately—in response to the centralization of the Church under a papal monarchy and the role played by the growing oligarchy of the cardinals —the concUiar movement sought to restructure the fundamental organization of the Church. At Pisa in 1409, in Constance from 1414 to 1418, and particularly at Basel after 1431 efforts were made toward that end. In these, Poland was increasingly involved. Wünsch begins his study with a series of model prosopographical analyses treating the authoritative figures ("Maßgebliche Personen") on the PoUsh scene and the relation of Poland to the schism and each of the reform councUs in historical context. He devotes particular attention to the five authors of concUiar treatises at...

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