Entering a Clerical Career at the Roman Curia, 1458–1471. By Kirsi Salonen and Jussi Hanska. Church, Faith, and Culture in the Medieval West. Surrey, U.K.: Ashgate, 2013. xii + 298 pp. $134.00 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Entering a Clerical Career at the Roman Curia, 1458-1471 . By Kirsi Salonen and Jussi Hanska . Church, Faith, and Culture in the Medieval West. Surrey, U.K. : Ashgate , 2013. xii + 298 pp. $134.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesIn this powerfully argued work, Kirsi Salonen and Jussi Hanska debunk two interconnected and enduring myths concerning the later Middle Ages. First, that on the eve of the Reformation, Roman church leaders were unconcerned with the quality of clerics who greedily put together as many fat, income-laden benefices as they could find. And second, that the priesthood in Italy during the same era was overrun with unqualified, unsuitable characters who bought their way into this spiritual duty through ordinations at the Roman curia, over the objections of their local bishops.Salonen and Hanska rightly point out that these myths may have found their way into scholarly literature, but that they are the essence of a Chaucerian and Protestant stereotype of no real use in understanding late medieval history. In their book, these two historians utilize Vatican records--mainly from the Apostolic Penitentiary and the Camera apostolica --to investigate the relative value of this stereotype as it might apply to the pontificates of Pius II (1458-1564) and Paul II (1464-1471). What they have found, as one might expect anytime historians dig below the surface and investigate firmly entrenched commonplaces, is that a far more complicated reality lies behind fifteenth century ordination practices in the Roman church. To begin with, characterizing the relevant documentation as vast represents a considerable understatement. One must first understand canon law and the meticulous regulations it imposes on who could become a member of the clergy. Gender, age, legitimate birth, physical condition, preparation, reputation, and income-bearing titles were all relevant to candidacy. Still more canonical regulations related to the ordination process itself. Such canonical regulations, however, are just the tip of a large documentary iceberg.Salonen wrote the section of this book analyzing the flood of requests to the Roman curia for dispensations from one or another of the regulations on qualification, especially those related to legitimacy of birth and physical condition. The Apostolic Chancery and the Datary could grant dispensations, but the Penitentiary was the main curial office of appeal. The summaries of incoming and approved supplications coming to the Penitentiary alone, and just during the pontificate of Pius II, fill six thick registers. The canon law and curial records reveal that the regulations were well known throughout Europe, and applied. The petitions, moreover, show that while the Penitentiary was the office to approach for dispensations, and ones not given in a discriminatory manner--say mainly to the children of clerics, for instance--they were not by any means automatic. Instead, applications and graces granted varied for practical reasons, including local benefice structures and the relative availability of candidates for the number of benefices that needed to be filled. …