Page:Englishhistorica36londuoft.djvu/253

 1921 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 245 printed when Count Cipolla died in November 1916. The work was then taken on by Dr. Buzzi, whose name is associated with Cipolla's in the title of the second volume, and who is alone responsible for the third. Cipolla's reputation as an editor of mediaeval texts had been established for very many years. Buzzi, on the other hand, was a brilliant young scholar who was cut off in September 1918, barely six months after he had completed this book, at the age of thirty-three. 1 had been attracted by the remarkable promise which he showed from the time when he published his first essay in 1912, and his premature death is a heavy loss to Italian historical scholarship. The chartulary before us is compiled in the first place from the collection of Bobbio muniments preserved in originals or transcripts in the archives of state at Turin. These are supple mented by texts of varying value found in the Vatican, at Milan, Modena, and other places. It is to be regretted that Signor Buzzi was not allowed to make full use of the Bobbio documents preserved in the Doria-Pamphili collection at Rome (iii. 54 seq.), but he was enabled to print from it a large part of a diploma of Lewis II of 865, which had escaped Count Cipolla, and which is of importance as furnishing the model on which several later forgeries were based. The number of documents here printed is 313, but ^this total includes not a few which are known only from citations. Some of them, such as the surveys of the monastic lands in 862 and 883 (i. 184- 217), and of the end of the twelfth century (ii. 269-83), run to great length. The editorial work is done with elaborate care. The texts are described and collated, and the diplomatic characteristics of such documents as are found in originals are minutely analysed. The fault of these prefatory notices is their extreme diffuseness. In dealing with doubtful documents, Count Cipolla sets out impartially the arguments for and against them, but does not often commit himself to a definite judgement. Here his colleague parts company with him, and in the third volume arrives at positive conclusions on the whole subject, which he states with great ability, but, it must be confessed, with much prolixity and a considerable amount of repetition. The reader who seeks in these volumes for new light on the Irish beginnings of the monastery of Bobbio will be disappointed. He will find little more than the well-known inscription of St. Cumian (i. 118-23) and the ninth-century elegiac lamentum printed already by Mai and Traube. For the library he will still have recourse to Muratori and Traube, to Cipolla's Codici Bobbiesi, and not least to Rudolf Beer's masterly essay. The main interest of the present collection, apart from its local value, is centred in the disputes which arose as to the privileges of the house and in the series of forgeries which were constructed in order to enlarge its claims. Under the Lombards and Carolingians Bobbio ranked strictly as a royal foundation, and the abbacy was often conferred on ministers of state, who might hold bishoprics as well. But the monastery was ecclesias- tically subject to the bishop of Piacenza, and early in the tenth century the monks resolved to assert their independence of him. For this purpose they set to work to produce evidence to prove that their house was immediately subject to the Holy See. Signor Buzzi (ii. 66) holds that they forged sixteen papal bulls and royal and imperial diplomas, and among