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BOOK reviews623 preacher. But as the author indirectly intuits, that is not how all sermons worked. Mormando notes that Bernardino's declamations had no apparent effect in either Siena or Florence, sites of the preacher's repeated exhortations. Why? Because, I believe, in the successful contemporary sermon "devotees raised their voices with questions for the preacher, slowly effecting a dialectic of emotion and intellect between them and bringing the church to life. Cries of Amen] and Misericordia), rhythmic and tearful wailing, and agitated but increasingly coordinated bodily movements closed the psychic distance between pulpit and audience. . . ."2 In short, in this excellent book, the question that goes unanswered is: How might his audience "play with" the great preacher, and thus "discount" the effects of his sermons? Richard CTrexler State University ofNew York, Binghamton Concilio epapato nel Rinascimento (1449-1516): Unproblema irrisolto. By Aldo Landi. [Studi Storici.] (Turin: Claudiana Editrice. 1997. Pp. 472, with 70 illustrations apart from the text, of which 15 are in full color, and 32 illustrations in the text. Lire 62.000 paperback.) This is a history of the Council of Pisa-Milan-Asti-Lyons (1511-12) and of all that led up to it since the time of the previous council. Aldo Landi demonstrates that Nicholas Vs victory over conciliarism, as registered in the dissolution of the Council of Basel-Lausanne (1431-1449), was not complete; Europe did not suddenly convert to papalism. If the popes secured the abolition of Basel's legacy by abrogations of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) and of the Acceptance of Mainz (1439) and their replacement by concordats and political agreements negotiated with French and German rulers, many intellectuals still espoused conciliarist ideas, and rulers throughout Europe continued to appeal to councils when in disputes with the popes. Many canonists and theologians held that power in the Church should be exercised collegially, that the pope's power was limited by that of the cardinals (Andrea Barbazza) or bishops (Juan de Segovia). Civil rulers from across Europe so often ignored the prohibition of Pius IFs Execrabilis (1460) against appeals to a council that it is difficult to claim that this decree was received and observed. Papal efforts to reform the Church were so few and ineffective that people looked to councils as the only solution. Scandalous behavior by Renaissance popes, culminating in the bellicose conduct of Julius II (1503-1513), led some reform-minded cardinals supported by the rulers of France and the Empire to convoke a reform council to meet in Pisa in 1 5 1 1 . The first half of Landi's study is a rereading of the history of the Renaissance papacy that highlights conciliarist resistance to its growing power achieved 2R. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (NewYork, 1980), p. 117. 624BOOK REVIEWS through alliances with princes and leadership of the crusade effort. If Landi's style of presentation is reminiscent of the Annales of Cesare Baronio and Oderico Rainaldi with its year-by-year and European-wide narrative, the content of his account resembles the Magdeburg Centuries with its assiduous assembling of the criticisms of heretics and any references to councils. Landi goes beyond the summarizing of the views of conciliarist and papalist theologians and canonists as found in Olivier de la Brosse's Le pape et le concile (1965), Remigius Bäumer's Nachwirkungen des konziliaren Gedankens (1971), and Ulrich Horst's Zwischen Konziliarismus und Reformation (1985) to include writers ignored by them (e.g., Martino Garati da Lodi, Galgano Borghese, Bernard de Rousier, Pedro de Osma, Girolamo Massaino, andVincent Gigault), to look at the views of ordinary lay persons, prophets, and politicians, and to examine carefully the course of events. His perspective is notably Florentine. By lumping together strictly conciliarist ideas with any call for a council, he is able to claim wide support for councils. Given this seemingly remarkable support for a general council, his explanation for the failure of Andrea Zamometic's effort to convene such a council in Basel in 1481 seems inadequate. Did politicians really support a conciliar model of church government, or were calls for a council mostly ploys to extract concessions from the pope? The second half of...

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