Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/438

 430 REVIEWS OF BOOKS July We have laid stress upon the value of these rolls for the study of borough organization and borough law because the editor is less interested in these general aspects of his documents * than in their contributions to local history and antiquities. Legal technicalities, too, are a severe test of a translator, and while Mr. Jeayes' version of rolls which are partly in bad condition is in the main quite adequate, there are indications here and there that he is not so familiar with this class of document as with charters. A freer quotation of the original Latin where any doubt could arise would have been desirable, and, as such cases are not numerous, would not have addedlseriously to the length of the volume. The facsimile of part of the first roll is useful as showing that when the translation has ' fined 6eZ.' or other sum, it is an amercement and not the medieval fine that is in question. JAMES TAIT. Le Cardinal Nicolas de Cues (1401-64). Par EDMOND VANSTEENBERGHE. (Paris : Champ'ion, 1920.) DR. EDMOND VANSTEENBERGHE'S monograph on the great fifteenth- century philosopher and publicist, Nicholas of Cusa, is obviously the fruit of immense industry. The only competent critic of it would be a man who had made a study of the documents as thorough as the author's own ; and in all probability no such man exists. Students alike of history and of philosophy are much indebted to Dr. Vansteenberghe for bringing together within a small compass the ascertainable facts about one of the most interesting figures in the history of European thought. The book is divided into two sections, one dealing with its hero as a man of action, the other dealing with him as a man of thought. We read of his childhood in the village by the Moselle from which he takes his usual designation ; and of his student days at Heidelberg and Padua. We find him while still a young man winning a high reputation as a canonist and dealing in his first work, the treatise De Concordantia Catholica, with the burning question of the relative rights of councils and popes. Here he appears as a decided supporter of the conciliar party. The truly general council, representing the universal church, is superior to the pope. He offers a number of suggestions for the reform of the ecclesiastical constitution, the most interesting of which is a plan for the election of the cardinals by the metropolitans with the consent of the bishops, thus providing the pope with a permanent body of advisers representative of the church universal. He would have kings summon national, the emperor general councils, for the correction of abuses in the church ; and is ready with proposals for fixing the mode of electing the emperor, and also for a division of the empire into districts for judicial purposes. These last anticipated the measure carried out under Maximilian I after Nicholas's death. Afterwards, however, Nicholas passed from the conciliar to the pontifical party. His biographer is compelled to admit that he never arrived at a position which isolated the papal authority from that of the 1 The importance attached in the introduction to the description of a leading citizen in the roll of 1311 as ' being in the king's service ', vanishes when it is recognized that in this and other cases it was an essoin or excuse for absence at a court.