In this well-researched and carefully structured study, submitted as a doctoral dissertation at KU Leuven under the supervision of Wouter Druwé and Wim François, Silva offers a biography of Petrus Peckius (1529–1589) and situates his work within the context of the second half of the sixteenth century. Peckius served as a professor at the University of Leuven at a time when humanism was gradually gaining ground, the Catholic Church was responding to Protestantism through the Council of Trent, and the Low Countries were convulsed by the Iconoclastic Fury of 1566 and 1567. Against this background, Silva pursues two overarching questions: To what extent was Peckius’s work shaped by contemporary events? And to what extent did he incorporate the Tridentine decrees into his work (xxxix), or at least take account of the “spirit” of Trent (li)?
The latter question was particularly sensitive, because Pope Pius IV, in his bull Benedictus Deus, had claimed exclusive authority to interpret the conciliar decrees. Benedictus Deus thus posed fundamental challenges for university teachers, who were forbidden to interpret Trent. Silva is therefore justified in identifying a lacuna in the scholarship and seeking to fill it when she examines how a university such as Leuven dealt with this issue (xxxii).
Silva divides the book into three major parts. After an introduction (pp. xvii–li), three chapters present Peckius and his work (3–59). Chapters 4–9 (61–196) examine the “reparation of churches,” where, against the background of the Iconoclastic Fury, Silva expects historical resonances in Peckius’s work (xliii, 63). Chapters 10–12 (197–416) turn to clerical discipline, one of the central themes of Trent; here Silva focuses on clerical celibacy (chapter 11) and the clergy’s obligation of residence (chapter 12). The book concludes with an instructive conclusion (417–443).
Peckius left behind ten books, devoted primarily to Roman and canon law (59). Among his unpublished works are lecture notes from courses he taught on the Liber Sextus (44). For Silva, Peckius’s role as a teacher is central: “this study seeks to track and map the sources brought to the classroom” (46). Silva’s source analysis shows that Peckius cited Panormitanus more frequently than any other jurist (55), while the Council of Trent is mentioned seventy-two times in the manuscripts (56).
To reconstruct Peckius’s treatment of the “reparation of churches” in the first part, Silva examines a 1573 published work as well as a set of lecture notes, datable to 1577 (79). Silva’s central finding is striking: the Tridentine decrees do not stand at the center of Peckius’s treatment, nor did he organize his teaching around them (190). Peckius makes only limited reference to Trent (189), invoking it occasionally to support existing canon-law positions (e.g., 110). The Iconoclastic Fury appears to have had no discernible influence on his work (186).
Silva’s analysis in the second part is based on student lecture notes and two works by Peckius, one of which predated the Tridentine decrees. Peckius understood clerics as gemmae (199), who, in a “climate of instability” (204), had to distinguish themselves through exemplary conduct. Yet here too Peckius apparently confined himself to citing Trent (e.g., 207, 257). At times, however, he abbreviated the quotations, from which Silva concludes that he may, in a certain sense, have interpreted them, or else have presupposed them as familiar (401). Only rarely did Peckius venture a cautious interpretation, as when applying the prohibition on hunting for clerics only to unlawful hunting (434). Although broadly in line with Trent on clerics’ obligation of residence, he defended Leuven’s right of nomination; here, his loyalty to the university outweighed his fidelity to Trent (408). With regard to celibacy, Peckius incorporated local law into his analysis (272–273) and took a clear position against clerical concubinage (308). In this respect too, he was aligned with Trent.
In her concluding reflections, Silva presents Peckius as a mediator between the mos gallicus and the mos italicus (420), but not as a representative of the usus modernus (429). Here, however, Silva’s discussion is rather compressed and presupposes considerable prior knowledge of these categories. Peckius emerges as a figure deeply engaged with the questions of his time and as a supporter of Catholic reform (429). It is particularly interesting that he did not regard Trent as a “superior” norm (436), but repeatedly embedded it in his lectures within the traditions of canonistic learning (435). Silva thus challenges the thesis that Trent brought about a complete rupture in the scholarly treatment of canon law (436). Peckius, for his part, sought above all to render canon law applicable to legal practice (442–443).
Overall, Silva succeeds in presenting Peckius’s work in an almost compellingly narrative manner. As the study unfolds, the reader repeatedly has the impression of looking over Peckius’s shoulder at his desk, and of being invited to think through the practices and intellectual world of an early modern professor. Anyone familiar with the labor involved in deciphering the often-cryptic legal abbreviations in canonistic works will appreciate the extraordinary amount of work and diligence that has gone into this study. This also makes it easy to overlook the fact that the secondary literature Silva draws upon for some of the topics discussed by Peckius, especially the pollution of a church or clerical celibacy, remains somewhat thin.
Finally, the book may encourage further reflection on the question of whether there existed, within the Catholic Church, a “paradigma tridentino” (P. Prodi, Il paradigma tridentino. Un’epoca della storia della Chiesa, 2010), a concept called into question by recent studies (e.g., B. Emich, “Vom Konzil zum Gründungsmythos: Wie der ‘Geist von Trient’ auf den Begriff gebracht wurde,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 107 (2016), 355–368). Peckius’s practical handling of Trent, as reconstructed by Silva, may point in this direction.
