Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/161

 1920 SHORT NOTICES 153 from that of the dean, and varying arrangements were made for the maintenance of the canons.^ The assignment of particular revenues to individual canons, which was such a common practice in England, doubtless hindered the development of a great office on the German plan. Dr. Vigener shows in his introduction that the provost was not regarded as essential even in Mainz. There, as elsewhere, the dean, although he gave him precedence, succeeded in depriving him of all superior influence ; and in 1326 the archbishop tried in vain to abolish his office on the ground of his excessive wealth. The lands, revenues, jurisdiction, tithes, and other dues at the disposal of the provost were so great that with reasonably good management they brought him in a handsome surplus. The office in conse- quence was much desired, and was frequently granted as a papal provision. During the residence of the popes at Avignon the provost of Mainz was generally a Frenchman and frequently an absentee. In 1363 the office was granted by Urban V to Raymond of Canilhac, cardinal bishop of Palestrina, who already held many German benefices. Between the summer of 1364 and the spring of 1368 the cardinal received 8,000 gulden from Germany, and the greater part of this large sum came from the prepositura of Mainz. Dr. Vigener has published from the papal archives the careful inquiry into the rights and revenues of the office, made in 1364 and completed in 1366 by Raymond's vicar, Bertrand of Macello ; also balance sheets of Bertrand's accounts for 1364-7. The documents are not quite complete, but they are models of their kind, and give a clear impression of the economy of the provost's great establishment in Mainz and of his villages and vineyards on the middle Rhine and lower Main. The introduction contains a brief account of the provost's office, biographies of the cardinal and his substitute (whose career in Germany was varied and responsible), a critical description of the manuscripts, and a summary of the contents of the documents. Geographical and technical difficulties are explained in the notes and glossary. F. M. P. In The People^ s Faith in the Time of Wyclif (Cambridge : University Press, 1919) Mr. B. L. Manning has collected a great deal of information about the popular beliefs of Wyclif 's time, and has arranged ib clearly and attractively. He confesses that he has selected his topics, and there- fore it would be unfair to criticize him for his omissions ; but it would have been well if he had balanced the stress which he justly lays upon the prominence of the Passion and other central points of the Christian faith in the teaching of the time with an estimate of the prevalence of the cult of saints. That side of religion in the fourteenth century is unfortu- nately ignored. Mr. Manning has read the publications of the Early English Text Society with much diUgence ; but some caution is necessary in their ' In St. Paul's, for example, the canons were paid partly by the warden of the brewery, partly by a Camerarius appointed by the chapter from among their number to collect payments made ' ad cameram ' (Hale, Domesday of St. Paurs, p. cxxix). There was a preposilus canonicorum at Lincoln, from whom a newly admitted canon received his commurui in the chapter- house, and who was responsible for certain payments ; but he was not one of the great officials of the church (Bradshaw and Wordsworth, Lincoln Cathedral Statutes,!. 215, 284:, 285).