The Diocese of Barcelona during the Black Death: The Register "Notule Communium" 15 (1348-1349) by Richard Francis Gyug (review)

90BOOK REVIEWS tamina or model letter collections; (2) the ars epistolandi, the art of letterwriting of the Renaissance humanists (fourteenth to seventeentii century); and (3) the related art of ars arengandi or the art of secular oratory for judicial, political, academic, and social purposes, together widi model speech collections or arenge. Compared with the first two categories, the number of manuscripts in the third is relatively small, because this genre of rhetoric was largely limited to the central and northern Italian communes. I particularly wish to acknowledge Professor Polak's wisdom in including Renaissance material in his census of manuscripts. Scholars have come to see that there was no sharp break between medieval and Renaissance letter-writing as was formerly believed and that in the area of official correspondence medieval formulae appear to have persisted down to the end of die fifteendi century. Professor Polak's census will be of special importance in the study ofdie stylistic developments in this latter category ofletter in the early modern period. When completed, these volumes wiU be the indispensable guides to mat which in many areas ofWestern Europe provided the fundamental orientation for the study of rhetoric in the Middle Ages. Even where Cicero's De inventione and the Pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium were taught as well, their lessons were used selectively according to the needs of the medieval arts. Professor Polak's census in its finished form will document almost twenty-five hundred manuscripts written from die twelfth to the seventeen century in an area running from England to the present-day Czech Republic. This volume and its two companions will be of lasting benefit to medieval and Renaissance scholarship. Ronald G. Witt Duke University The Diocese of Barcelona during the Black Death: The Register "Notule Communium" 15 (1348—1349). By Richard Francis Gyug. [Subsidia Mediaevalia , 22.] (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 1994. Pp. x, 526. $94.50.) Studies that bring medieval documents to the scholarly public are always welcome, and diis calendar of documents from the exceptionally rich Barcelona diocesan archives, second in the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies ' series of the episcopal communia or general registers, records the activities of the diocesan curia during the worst of the Black Death. Although many scholars of church history may not realize it, Barcelona's diocesan archives provide a truly amazing array of documents, many in series which continued uninterrupted for centuries. If diese could be made generally available for study, scholars, especiaUy social historians, could learn a great deal BOOK REVIEWS91 about diocesan life and administration, and diis knowledge would enhance our understanding of the medieval church in general. Unfortunately, very few documents have been published, and much of the secondary literature is not readily available in North America. The fact that eleven years have elapsed since die first volume of this series of registers appeared gives a clue about likelihood ofa flood of these archival records in print. Nonetheless, even tastes from this important archive provide welcome additions for study. The book is divided into three sections. The introduction contains a brief history of the Diocese of Barcelona, with special attention given to die functioning of the episcopal curia. Dr. Gyug explains die registration ofdocuments and their survival up to the present time. This particular set of registers primarily records the filling of benefices, and the curia was especially active in this area as a result of the Black Death, which hit Barcelona as it did much of die rest of Western Europe, causing die deadi of perhaps one-diird of its population. Clerics were certainly not immune to its force, and many of them died, leaving an increased workload for the diocesan staff, which may itself have been reduced for die same reason. Documents relating to benefices are not the only type of document to appear, and the otiier types are simUar to those published by Professor J. N. HiUgardi and GiuUo SUano in Communia 14. Many ofthese documents would normally have been registered in coUation registers, but diese two series were conflated during the plague and for several years following it. Part One contains the calendar of documents, where Dr. Gyug summarizes the contents of each entry. Most...