Statuti e costituzioni medievali del Capitolo Lateranense (review)

Two articles on the medieval Lateran chapter that appeared in 2006 in French and German respectively are here united in an Italian translation by Anna Maria Voci. Louis Duval-Arnould edited the statutes for San Giovanni in Laterano issued by Pope Gregory XI (1369–73), and Jochen Johrendt, inspired by Duval-Arnould to fill the remaining thirteenth-century gap, published critical editions of the papal statutes for the chapter by Pope Gregory IX (1228) and Pope Nicholas IV (1290).¹ Although much of the general history of the Lateran chapter is unfortunately still unknown, the texts here combined in an Italian translation form important stepping stones to a better understanding of the role of San Giovanni in Laterano during the Middle Ages. The most influential change in the composition of the chapter occurred in 1298/99 under Pope Boniface VIII, who replaced the regular Lateran canons following the Rule of St. Augustine with secular canons. Boniface VIII, however, never issued statutes strictly speaking, but instead regulated the life of the newly constituted chapter in a series of important letters and extremely generous privileges. It is a major plus for the book that Duval-Arnould also edited twenty-three of these together with a complementary letter of Pope Benedict XI of April 1304 (pp. 63–110). Without texts illuminating the change-over from regular to secular canons c. 1300, the relationship between the critically edited constitutions and statutes of the thirteenth- and fourteenth centuries would have been difficult to understand and to appreciate. Still an open question, however, is the institutional history of the chapter in the later eleventh- and early-twelfth centuries. It seems unlikely that the privilege issued for the chapter by Pope Alexander II in 1061, a deperditum, already stipulated the later Rule of St. Augustine as regulation for the life of the reformed canons as Johrendt accepts on the basis of later privileges (p. 23). It would probably be better—sources on this question are very scarce—to look to the Aachen Rule as altered by Pope Gregory VII as inspiration for the canons of San Frediano of Lucca who were charged by Alexander II with the reform of the Lateran chapter.²

Johrendt’s discussion focuses with precision on the thirteenth century. He provides critical editions of the documents of Pope Gregory IX (February 3, 1228) and Pope Nicholas IV (May 7, 1290) in favor of the chapter and illuminates with great care the changes that they illustrate. The privilege of Gregory IX is a “statute” in line with the confirmations of rights and properties granted by the papacy since its earliest days, but especially since the eleventh century. In contrast to the mixture of regulations for the internal life of the chapter and confirmation of property rights found here, the bull of 1290 granted by Nicholas IV is a document that exclusively deals with the internal life of the regular canons. Both illustrate very well the evolution of “statutes” as a category of primary sources (p. 25). The same could be said of the youngest document in the volume—the constitutions of Pope Gregory XI. This pontiff, the former Cardinal Roger de Beaufort, was a great benefactor of the Lateran basilica as well as its chapter, confirming, for example, in a constitution of 1372 the primacy of the basilica over all the churches of the world, not excluding St. Peter’s (p. 113n). His bull, the Lateranensis capituli constitutiones a Gregorio PP. XI edictae, issued May 1, 1373, at Avignon (pp. 149–72), replaced the statutes of Pope Nicholas IV. These naturally no longer suited a chapter that now was formed exclusively by secular canons, who had relied so far on unwritten consuetudines (p. 114).

The reader will be grateful for the edition, not least for the complete description and the detailed commentary on the content of the regulations...