In this excellent study of the Sacred Roman Rota, “the highest ecclesiastical tribunal in the Latin church” (1), Salonen has presented an in-depth analysis of an unprecedentedly generous sample of the case records from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. These records from registers known as the Manualia Actorum are the day-to-day notations about the progress of each case brought before the individual auditors, or judges, in this court. In contrast to earlier assumptions, Salonen's study shows that on the eve of the Reformation, the Rota worked diligently and well, efficiently following complex procedural rules designed to arrive at the truth of a situation.

The book is divided into two sections. After a brief but comprehensive review of the rather sparse scholarly literature on her topic, in part 1, Salonen discusses the organizational structure of the papal justice system and its personnel, as well as the history of the Rota and the many stages of the Rota process. Chapter 6 is an analysis of entries in the Manualia to look at both yearly and weekly cycles of activities taking place in the court. These activities were mostly appeals cases from throughout Latin Christendom, and a few non-ecclesiastical concerns from the Papal States, where the Rota functioned as a court of first instance. Salonen has used the quotidian records to piece together stories about the various people involved in Rota cases. One man, Johannes de Ceretanis, had a long and varied career as an auditor, temporarily leaving Rome from time to time to attend his episcopal consecration and then to tend to the needs of his diocese in Nocera. A short-term replacement auditor was found to cover these absences. In the year leading up to Johannes's death in 1492, the Manualia also recorded a number of prolonged absences due to what proved to be his final illness. Such details provide a personal connection with this vast bureaucracy and allow the reader to see how the men of the Rota functioned in their daily lives. Chapter 7 is devoted to the case of Henricus Meyer, who was hoping to acquire two lucrative appointments in the diocese of Turku, Finland in 1489. In the end, Meyer seems to have been unsuccessful largely because Sten Sture, the Swedish nobleman who enjoyed the right of patronage over one of these appointments, chose to ignore the proceedings. Salonen concludes that such local authorities were sometimes powerful enough to simply ignore the demands of the court and handle the situation according to their own best interests. As long as they had not explicitly violated canon law, the Rota seems not to have had any recourse if a litigant chose not to respond.

Part 2 presents in-depth quantitative analysis of the Manualia sample for a number of different variables. A full 80 percent of the cases had to do with disputes about ecclesiastical benefices (income opportunities). Most of the remaining cases were about other property disputes (20 percent). Unlike the dockets of modern papal courts, only 1 percent of the late fourteenth-century cases involved marriage. The Rota processes had a wide sphere of influence, although litigants who had curial connections in Rome were in the majority and only a small percentage of the cases heard had to do with situations from the periphery of European Christendom: about 97 percent concerned Italians, Germans, Spaniards, or Frenchmen. Along with the difficulties presented by long distances, Salonen notes that local relations with Rome influenced the volume of business directed toward the Rota. For example, she quite plausibly cites the fourteenth-century statutes of provisors (stating that popes are not permitted to appoint to English benefices) and praemunire (prohibiting appeals to the papal court) as the reasons for the very low number of cases sent to the Rota from England. Finally, Salonen looks at the common accusation that the Rota's processes went on for a very long period of time. Surprisingly, she found that about 70 percent of the cases did not proceed to completion. Indeed, of all the cases that were begun in her sample, at least half of them were ended within a month and only 14 percent continued for more than a year. This may have been due to the expense of continuing or to the realization by one of the opposing parties that their case would prove to be futile.

Kirsi Salonen is an excellent scholar, knowledgeable and insightful. Her most enviable talent is the ability to provide the reader with a very clear picture of an unfamiliar and complex subject. Salonen uses examples drawn from the case files of the papal appeals court of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries to paint detailed images of the court, its personnel, and the litigants hoping for its justice. Careful, in-depth descriptions of individual cases, as well as broad overviews of quantitative data, lead the reader to trust in her final evaluation: the Roman Rota was a functioning court, with mostly hardworking, dedicated men trying to get the job done as best they could. She has made the Rota come alive for the reader by introducing us to men like Bernardus Mumne, who noted on Wednesday October 26, 1474 that, although the Rota did meet, he had nothing to do that day (71).