Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/282

 274 REVIEWS OF BOOKS April when a nun, after a day in the harvest field, rides home on a farm-horse behind the chaplain. The four secular colleges sadly needed attention. Recent foundations were no better than ancient. Chichele had foimded Higham Ferrers in 1422 ; in 1442 it was full of mutual accusations. Two of the longest visitations are those of Fotheringhay and Irthlingborough ; neither is edifying. In the latter house the bishop orders sconcing in beer for disorderly conduct. One troublesome canon has shielded himself by getting absolution from a papal collector. But the worst of the four is New College at Leicester. It cannot be an accident that no well-conducted college was subjected to examination. The general impression given by all these details of religious life is that it was on a level with the life outside. The age was incapable of self- government and of administration, and as was the state so was the church. Mr. Hamilton Thompson justly points out that the bishops could visit but were powerless to correct the abuses they discovered. That their successors of the Reformation period were equally powerless is generally known. It is a new light upon history that this incompetence, like so much else in the English church, was directly inherited from the middle ages. E. W. Watson. Etvdes et Fantaisies Historiques. Par E. Rodocanachi. 2^ serie. (Paris : Hachette, 1919.) This little volume was recommended to me as excellent for railway journeys, and so it proved. It may be styled an historian's variety entertainment, for there is an article for most moods and most tastes. An amusing chapter on the long conflict between the physicians and druggists in France is followed by a somewhat elaborate account of Italian doctors, quacks, and astrologers who found favour with French society. The author is a well-known authority on Roman medieval history ; he is, there- fore, at home with the legends of Rome, and these find a sequel in those relating to Virgil. These latter are primarily connected with Naples, as the supposed site of his tomb, but they spread to most parts of Europe. Many of them are, of course, familiar to readers of Comparetti's Virgilio nel Medio Evo and of Leland's Virgilius the Sorcerer. These lighter themes are balanced by a stiff monograph on papal finance in the fifteenth century, which deals with the organization and methods of the Apostolic Chamber since the Jubilee of 1450. To this belonged the machinery for receipt and account and for the raising of loans, which usually took the simple form of liquidating one debt by incurring another. The security took the form of the papal jewels and precious stuffs, which acted as a sort of caisse d'epargne, or else of an assignment on the papal taxes, tenths, and indulgences. Alexander VI, a good man of business, forbade thi mortgaging of revenue, but it remained for Clement VII to stabilize finance by raising a large slare capital for the institution of state pawnbroking, which brought in a return of 10 per cent. This expedient was doubtless borrowed from his mother city. Thus Fra Bernardino of Feltre, whom Lorenzo de' Medici had expelled from Florence for