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142 Reviews peste, 1348-1797 (Venice, 1979), which is twice cited in a much abbreviated form on p. 114. Following thefirstpart on general descriptions of Venice, the documents cover authority and government law and order, social policy, public and private wealth, religion, the three social orders of nobility, citizenry and workers, charity and the poor, foreign communities within the city (that is, Germans, Greeks, Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews, and Turks) culture, and the visual arts. As summarized by the editors, the collection includes observers' descriptions of Venice, chronicles and diaries, letters, myth-making literature and polemical denunciations, legislation, petitions, minute-books of guilds and hospitals and religious brotherhoods, wills, notarial acts, trial records, and state budgets. Some of m y favourites include: the description of the plague of 1575-77 by Rocco Benedetti, who had to take the bodies of his mother, brother, and nephew to the street and then endure a quarantine at home; the account of an Anabaptist synod at Venice in 1550 by Don Pietro Manelfi, who returned to Catholicism in 1551; the Inquisition's interrogation of Veronese in 1573 concerning his painting of the Last Supper; a summary of the Venetian charitable institutions in 1497 by Battista Sfondrato, the Milanese ambassador in Venice, who admitted his difficulty in understanding the situation; Albrect Durer's comments on Venetian painters, some of w h o m were so antagonistic to Durer that he was advised not to eat or drink with them; and Palma Giovane's recollections of the elderly Titian at work (' . . . in the last stages he painted more with the finger than with the brush'). Disappointing omissions include m y favourite general description of Venice by Arnold von Harff and Pope Pius II's vicious diatribes against the Venetians, although these two documents are already available in English translation. This collection of documents will be invaluable for teachers of early modern Italy. A. Lynn Martin Department of History University of Adelaide Fasolt, Constantin, Council and hierarchy: the political thought of William Durant the younger (Cambridge studies in medieval life and thought), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991; cloth; pp. xx, 416; 2 figures; R.R.P. AUS$130.00. William Durant the younger (1266-1330) was bishop of Mende in the Massif Central and has sometimes been confused with his uncle, William Durant the elder, bishop of Mende before him. This is a serious mistake, not least because although both men wrote on the nature and role of the Papacy, their views were distinctly opposed. The elder was an apologist the younger a critic. More serious has been the conflation of two treatises written by William under Reviews 143 different circumstances. It is as if Marsiglio's Defensor pads and Defensor minor had been shuffled and dealt out under a thirdtitle.It is little wonder that William has too often been thought obscure and incoherent It is part of Fasolt's aim to disengage thetexts,the Tractatus major and the Tractatus Minor, works separated by William's experiences at the Council of Vienne (1311-12). In all, it was a sobering experience for an outspoken and somewhat idealistic critic of the Holy See. Fasolt argues that the works are substantially different in structure and tone, the Tractatus major being a long, dense exhibition of confidence in the power of the law to control and reform the Papacy. Indeed, its purpose was to make the church a republic, a rule-bound entity for the common good of the believers, with the Papacy being accountable to assemblies representing the will of the community. In contrast the minor was shorter, more accessible, and exhibited a greater faith in, and reliance upon, rhetoric. The authority of the law was no longer enough. The work was something of a tactical retreat though the vision remained intact Fasolt maintains that it is important to re-establish the identity of the two texts because of the significance of William's ideas for the later Conciliar Controversy and because they help provide a microcosm of the intricate and shifting relationships between bishops, Papacy, and the French monarch, all with locality. If juggling these themes is not enough, Fasolt has engaged in a process of re...

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