„Quod est in actis, non est in mundo": Päpstliche Benefizialpolitik im sacrum imperium des 14. Jahrhunderts (review)

Papal politics regarding benefices has been in the focus of medieval scholarship ever since the opening of the Vatican Archives. Since then many volumes of editions and registers of papal documents have been published by Austrian, Belgian, Czeck, Danish, French, and German research institutions mostly in Rome. The best overview may be found in the late Leonard E. Boyle's A Survey of the Vatican Archives and of Its Medieval Holdings(Toronto, 2001) and in the bibliography by Olivier Poncet ( Les entreprises éditoriales liées aux archives du Saint Siège, Paris, 2003). On the basis of Vatican registers Erdmann gives a well-organized overview of the system of papal politics regarding benefices for the period between 1294 and 1378, the beginning of the Great Schism. Within this period Pope John XXII (1316–34) increased papal intervention massively. Erdmann, within the territory of sacrum imperium,looks at all bishoprics, Benedictine monasteries ( Reichsabteien), as well as at the maior benefices in cathedral and collegiate churches. The ambitious goals defined in the introduction are not always met by the author in his PhD dissertation at the University of Mainz (see, for example, some justified criticisms by Karl Borchardt in his review that appeared in Deutsches Archiv64 [2008], pp. 285–87), but Erdmann gives a very welcome, methodological example of how to proceed in similar research for other European countries in the fourteenth century. Many of his results are condensed in some seventy-five statistical graphs. The popes intervened in 181 out of 389 nominations for an episcopal see, 162 times with success. Papal intervention on the occasion of 1308 vacancies concerning the 212 Benedictine monasteries studied by Erdmann occurred much less frequently; only in forty-two cases did the popes put their candidate in charge. As to the cathedral and collegiate churches, some 42 percent of altogether 2228 appointments to a benefice were successfully met through papal intervention. A summary of the study in Italian is printed on page 279.The book has a well-done index of persons and places as well as a systematic index. The author, who died from brain cancer a year after publishing this book, has presented a major contribution to the intricate subject of politics regarding benefices handled by the Avignonese papacy.