English Episcopal Acta ed. by Philippa M. Hoskin, Volume 13: Worcester 1218-1268 (review)

750BOOK REVIEWS 208). Although the pope takes Baldwin, the new Latin emperor, under his protection (#152-153) and strives to explain to the crusading host the providential significance both of their conquest of Constantinople and of the return of its church to Roman obedience (#154, 203), he nevertheless invalidates the crusader-Venetian treaty regarding the division of spoils as defective (#205206 ) and reprimands his own crusade legates for abandoning their mission in the Holy Land without permission in order to travel to the imperial city (#223). At least two dozen letters illuminate other activities of Innocent's legates (e.g., #76, 124, 135, 210); see the fine short example of a legatine general mandate (#157). A like number of letters (e.g., #28, 34, 72, 215) indicates how his delegate judges adjudicated disputes over land, churches, ecclesiastical elections, prebends, and matrimony. Students of canon law will be interested in the letter beginning "Novit Ule" (#43), where the pope justifies his intervention "ratione peccati" between Philip II and John Lackland, and in a directive (#200) where the pope entrusts the great Huguccio with the investigation and, if appropriate, consecration of a patriarch-elect. The seven indices include tables of incipits of letters, of exact or paraphrased biblical quotations, of decretals sorted by decretal collection, a register of recipients , an index ofproper names, and appended corrections or additions. The editors complete the volume with six color photographs of interesting folios. Robert C. Figueira Lander University English EpiscopalActa,Volume 13: Worcester 1218-1268. Edited by Philippa M. Hoskin. (New York: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press. 1997. Pp. liv, 192. $40.00.) In this volume Dr. Hoskin provides historians access to the surviving acta of three Worcester bishops, William of Blois (1218-1236), Walter de Cantilupe (1236- 1266), and Nicholas of Ely (1266-1268). Following the general approach ofher predecessors in this series, she gives a briefbiography of each ofthe bishops , discusses their households and officials, and elaborates on the formal structure ofthe documents. Four pages ofplates follow. Most valuable perhaps ofthe four appendices are the three bishops' itineraries. Dr. Hoskin prints all the extant acta in full except for five printed in earlier volumes of the Acta series and three "reflecting Walter de Cantilupe's political interests, where there is already a standard text"(p. liv). This nearly complete inclusiveness makes Hoskin's work particularly useful since the documents never before printed even in calendared form (slightly more than halfofthe 162 acta) survive in various repositories, while the printed versions come from a multitude of sources from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. BOOK REVIEWS751 Dr. Hoskin has maintained the high professional standards of her predecessors although a few errors have slipped by. In the introduction, for example, the editor erroneously states that Walter's counterseal reads"qvem tenet tronvs . . ." even though several of her notes to the documents render the seal as "qvem tenet hie tronvs ..." The editor has occasionally erred in rendering the Latin; read page 126, lines 13-14, as "auctoritate nostra dispensata . . . beneficia . . . non usque negligantur," not"auctoritate nostra dispenses . . . beneficia . . . usque negligatur." The summary for #48 should indicate the addition of three chaplains , six clerks, and five lay brothers, not three clerks and five lay "bretheren" [sic] . The two indices while extremely detailed could have been improved in a few subject headings like "vicar(age)"where at least five references were missed. My chief criticism of this important work is that Dr. Hoskin could have improved some ofthe summaries without drastically increasing the length and expense of the book. In an era when fewer students know Latin, it would have been useful to have noted, for example, (#2) that Bishop William had not paid the exchequer five and a half of the required knights' fees, and his justification of his failure; (#21) that the"sisters" of Maiden Bradley hospital were lepers;that both #38 and #39 record the case of a man excommunicated for refusing to accept his lawful wife (only the summary for #39 makes the issue clear); (#111) that men from the Hereford diocese could beg in the Worcester diocese for aid to rebuild their cathedral church, but they must not preach...