Notwithstanding the editors’ conjecture that all Cuenca's post-1215 bishops may ‘perhaps’ have complied with IV Lateran's requirement of annual assemblies (p. 7), notice of the thirty-nine synods (eighteen for Cuenca, twenty-one for Toledo) of which texts are recorded here for seventeen and twenty synods respectively, are all of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with nine of the Cuenca synods summoned by just two of its prelates and twelve of Toledo's by just three, and none certainly earlier than 1323 (this on the initiative of an Aragonese archbishop).Footnote ¹ Thereafter it was clerical getting and spending – viz. tithes and clerical concubinage – that provided the recurrent agenda, the ‘severa amonestaçion’ regarding the latter issued at Cuenca in 1404 cutting so little ice that in 1531 the practice was said to be such that ‘the ignorant think it no sin’. Albeit mass was not to be served by the celebrants’ paramours or offspring (Cuenca, 1399) and at Toledo in 1342 such women were ordered to be stripped naked, in 1323 clerici coniugati doubled as butchers there while the laity consoled themselves with bigamy (Toledo, 1480). To prevent ‘anything indecent’ occurring at the altar (beards in the chalice, presumably) priests were to be required to shave at least once a month (Toledo, 1323; Cuenca, 1446). With the Universal Church in schism and its members struggling with the principle of authority, in 1399 and again in 1406 Bishop Juan Cabeza de Vaca (Cow's Head) of Cuenca, and in 1411 his successor, sought their clergy's democratic ‘consent’ to the synod's draft constitutions and responded to a series of ‘suplicas’ for their modification.

Yet again Synodicon Hispanum provides vital evidence of the ecclesiastical realities of this corner of Christian Europe, with the practice of tithing surreptitious cheese-making proving a problem, only the runtiest piglets and scraggiest birds being surrendered to the priest (Cuenca, 1531), and the filthy state of the altar linen and sacred vessels inducing retching (Cuenca, 1446). With fiscal matters in the ascendant, and the detail of taxation of Toledo's archpresbyteries here occupying 28 and 51 pages of the 1379 and 1497 legislation, it was necessary to prevent churches being used for ‘negoçiaçion’ in wine or cannabis rather than prayer or having their walls adorned with unlicensed paintings (Cuenca, 1404; Toledo, 1536) – although it might well have been worse, and in 1531 was, with fornication and adultery as well as sing-songs, the consumption of snacks and guying the Passion complained of. Ditto in churchyards where card-games and quoits vied with wizardry and black magic (Cuenca, 1446; Toledo, 1536). Wholesale ignorance of the fundamentals of the faith was regularly noted. Small wonder therefore that parishes of more than a hundred were thought to be too much for a single minister (Toledo, 1480, 1536). With the indifference of clergy as well as laity to spiritual sanctions, and public penance revealing particulars of sins confessed (Cuenca, 1411, 1413), by the 1530s interdict had lost its edge in the Toledo archdiocese and the absolution of excommunication was entrusted to local priests (Toledo, 1531, 1536). At the same time the consumption of both meat and fish was declared dangerous to physical as well spiritual health and men as well as women were attending services wearing hats.

The need for such regular reiteration of legislation raises the question how far it was finding its mark. Cui bono? However, the libro sinodal issued at Cuenca in 1446, occupying 138 printed pages here, although borrowed from Salamanca, at least indicates awareness of the need for communication. Likewise the requirement to maintain baptismal registers as well as detailed lists of those performing Easter duties (Toledo, 1497, 1536) together with a universal survey of benefice-holders to be brought to the synod and the maintenance of written records of various description including a public notice-board of excommunicate back-sliders (Toledo, 1536). Meanwhile, the religious education of children was (unpropitiously) entrusted to local sacristans and (sign of the times) the printing and publication of books subjected to episcopal censure (Cuenca, 1484, 1531; Toledo, 1536). Glimpses, but surprisingly rather few of them, are caught of Castile's non-Christian presence, prohibiting the preparation of halal meat and regarding ‘schism’ between Old Christians and conversos (Cuenca, 1411; Toledo, 1481). In 1480 and again in 1536 the Mozarabic rite was reported to be in decline at Toledo. Enhanced by admirable apparatus and excellent indices, in all this is a splendid addition to an already distinguished series for which we remain deeply indebted to Antonio García, Francisco Cantelar and their collaborators.