Polemic is a powerful weapon in the hands of those who know how to apply it, as words hardly become blunt and can cause deep wounds. This was also understood by the reformers in their journalistic battle against papal Rome, which they characterised as a contemporary Babel. But they had probably never dared to hope that they would also shape modern historical narrative. Even today it is a commonplace to paint the condition of the Church in the fifteenth century in dark colours and to depict the Lutheran Reformation as their logical and long overdue consequence.

There is a huge amount of sources that support this view. Just read the treatises originating from the Councils of Constance and Basle, the pre-reformatory gravamina or the countless writings of the reformers. But many historians save themselves the trouble of checking the described nuisances against reality, as sources cannot be mistaken. Thus it is often forgotten that caricatures are easy to recognise by contemporaries, as they judge them in accordance with their environment. But historians are often taken in by them, as they are hardly able to escape the suggestion of polemic distortion without the corrective of their own perception. To elude this danger, they would need different sources that give an account of the same occurrences, but from a different perspective.

There is, however, no lack of such additional sources. Just think of the administrative records of the late medieval Church that are extant in quantity in English and Italian archives, but especially in the Archivio Segreto Vaticano. Attention could also be paid to late medieval canon law, which is much more elaborate than the Extravagantes communes or the Bullarium Romanum might suggest.

These two young Finnish colleagues have chosen, so to speak, a middle course in order to trace the reality of that time, by using Pius ii's constitution Cum ex sacrorum of 17 November 1461 as a starting point for their research. In this Constitution, the pope forbade anybody to be ordained without a dispensation outside the stated ordination days, and stipulated that the mandatory age for ordination had to be observed unconditionally. In the first part of the book, Salonen investigates those who requested a dispensation from the Apostolic Penitentiary during the pontificate of Pius ii because of illegitimacy, minority or offences against the regulations of canon law in order to be able to be ordained. In the shorter second part, Hanska analyses the ordination registers of the Apostolic Chamber under Pope Paul ii. Both meticulously explain the statutory prescriptions, the competence and the function of the respective offices as well as the procedure that had to be observed by the petitioners, and provide relevant source quotations in Latin with an English translation.

In a methodically correct way, Salonen differentiates between the 2,773 clerics who just wanted to be dispensed from a defect of birth and the 449 who petitioned for a dispensation de uberiori, by means of which they would be able to hold several benefices after the dispensation from their defect of birth, therefore becoming pluralists. She looks into the different reasons for this measure and provides explanations for the phenomenon that are worth considering. Under Pius ii, 1,184 young clergymen asked for absolution or dispensation with regard to ordination. It is astonishing that under Pius ii, only 79 petitions mention corporal defects like a mutilated hand or blindness in one eye, while at least 178 petitioners applied for absolution because they had been ordained without a littera dimissoria and had thereby violated the regulations of canon law. In only 4 per cent of the cases studied was cheating in ordination the reason for belatedly addressing the pope, while 6 per cent of the supplicants had been ordained by a false title in order to join the clergy. In the case of more serious offences against the legal norms, the Penitentiary punished the petitioners thoroughly, for example by suspending them from service at the altar or by requiring them to fast every Wednesday for a whole year.

The curial ordination registers (Libri formatarum) that commence under Martin v, but are lost for the pontificates of Calixtus iii and Pius ii, have been given scant attention so far. A systematic analysis of Paul ii's two registers reveals a picture that is considerably different from the one that was popular so far. General ordinations were carried out on four to six Saturdays in the year, usually at St Peter's basilica. A total of eight bishops shared this task, but two of them, the former minor penitentiary Johannes, bishop of Città di Castello, who was also regens in the Penitentiary under Pius ii, and Jacobus, bishop of Cervia and later of Sant'Angelo dei Lombardi, took care of thirty-six out of the forty-two verifiable general ordinations. Thus, they used the ordinations as an additional source of income, as their sees were not very lucrative. As Jacobus lived near the church San Bartolomeo on the Tiber Island, he frequently used it for ordinations. He consecrated altogether more than 430 candidates, after their qualifications had been examined. But the Curia also provided the opportunity to receive ordinations extra tempora. These were performed by many different bishops, but most of the candidates (more than 400) were consecrated by Jacobus. Contrary to previous assumptions, candidates for ordination at the Curia were not good-for-nothings who did not stand a chance of being ordained at home and therefore went to the Roman Curia. Pretty often they were familiars of cardinals or prelates, or students in Italy or even Rome, who could not afford to travel home for ordination because they had obtained a benefice with pastoral care. Finally it should be noted that quite a lot of bishops resided at the Curia instead of in their sees, or organised ordinations very rarely, so that clerics were forced to make their way to Rome.

The picture that is drawn by Salonen and Hanska shows that the people in charge at the papal Curia took their duties very seriously, just as the young clergymen at the beginning of their careers strove to meet the legal norms. Naturally, the sources do not reveal the intrinsic motivation of the candidates. We merely know that they were willing to cover hundreds of miles to reach their goal – a benefice to earn a living. The proportion of black sheep was certainly no higher than it is today. The reformers' polemic enthusiasm was more likely ignited by the hollow clattering of the bureaucratic behaviour within the Church, as it threatened to drown out anything else. May both authors provide us with more such high-quality studies. An index of persons and places concludes this sound book.