Konrad von Urach (†1227): Zähringer, Zisterzienser, Kardinallegat (review)

BOOK REVIEWS751 Dr. Hoskin has maintained the high professional standards of her predecessors although a few errors have slipped by. In the introduction, for example, the editor erroneously states that Walter's counterseal reads"qvem tenet tronvs . . ." even though several of her notes to the documents render the seal as "qvem tenet hie tronvs ..." The editor has occasionally erred in rendering the Latin; read page 126, lines 13-14, as "auctoritate nostra dispensata . . . beneficia . . . non usque negligantur," not"auctoritate nostra dispenses . . . beneficia . . . usque negligatur." The summary for #48 should indicate the addition of three chaplains , six clerks, and five lay brothers, not three clerks and five lay "bretheren" [sic] . The two indices while extremely detailed could have been improved in a few subject headings like "vicar(age)"where at least five references were missed. My chief criticism of this important work is that Dr. Hoskin could have improved some ofthe summaries without drastically increasing the length and expense of the book. In an era when fewer students know Latin, it would have been useful to have noted, for example, (#2) that Bishop William had not paid the exchequer five and a half of the required knights' fees, and his justification of his failure; (#21) that the"sisters" of Maiden Bradley hospital were lepers;that both #38 and #39 record the case of a man excommunicated for refusing to accept his lawful wife (only the summary for #39 makes the issue clear); (#111) that men from the Hereford diocese could beg in the Worcester diocese for aid to rebuild their cathedral church, but they must not preach. But these minor criticisms notwithstanding, this is a valuable book for the church historian, and Dr. Hoskin has edited the acta dealing with appropriations of religious properties, institutions of vicars and rectors, significations of excommunications, indulgences, settlements of controversies between ecclesiastical personages or congregations, grants, documents relevant to the struggle between Henry III and his baronial opponents, burial rights, and hospitals skillfully , particularly in the dating of the documents. John W Dahmus Stephen F.Austin State University Nacogdoches, Texas Konrad von Urach (f1227): Zähringer, Zisterzienser, Kardinallegat. By Falko Neininger. [Quellen und Forschungen aus dem Gebiet der Geschichte, Neue Folge,Heft 17.] (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. 1994. Pp. 618. Paperback) The detailed biography of this influential German Cistercian and cardinal seeks to gauge his role in politics and in ecclesiastical life during the first decades of the thirteenth century. A son to Count Egino IV of Urach as well as a scion of the princely Zähringen family through his mother Agnes (daughter of Duke Berthold FV of Zähringen), Konrad was born c. 1 180 into fortunate circumstances . He entered the clerical career "fast-track" as soon as he reached his 752BOOK REVIEWS majority, first becoming a Liège cathedral canon, then (1 199) a Cistercian monk at Villers in Brabant, and eventually being elected abbot of this monastery in 1208/09 at the age (roughly) of 30. Five years later (1213/14) he was elected abbot of Clairvaux, and two years after that (1216/17) he was elected abbot of Citeaux, the mother-house of the order. In 1219 Pope Honorius III named Konrad cardinal-bishop of Porto and Sta. Rufina and utilized him subsequently in two extended missions as papal legate: he represented papal interests in southern France during the middle period of the Albigensian crusade, and he toured imperial territories north of the Alps in support ofthe preparations for Emperor Frederick II's proposed crusade to Latin Outremer. Upon Honorius's death Konrad declined to be chosen his successor and made way for Hugolino of Ostia's election as Gregory IX. Konrad himself did not survive Honorius long; probably among the first crusaders to leave Brindisi after the outbreak of pestilence there, he soon became another victim of the epidemic that postponed Frederick's promised departure and triggered the emperor's first struggle with Pope Gregory. Neininger is certainly correct in noting the untimely loss of a prelate whose experience and prestige could have mediated between these two formidable opponents in service to greater goals, namely, the crusade in particular and papal-imperial co-operation in general. In his introduction...