These volumes represent the continuation of a first volume devoted to the supplications (or petitions) from the University of Paris to the pope of the years 1316–49, by William J. Courtenay alone. The practice by which universities submitted rolls of petitions (or rotuli) to the pope requesting preferment to ecclesiastical benefices expanded greatly in the course of the fourteenth century. The volumes under review document the process clearly. They provide ample evidence of the favoured status that universities, and above all the University of Paris, enjoyed in the receipt of papal provisions. The volumes are a major source for relations between the University of Paris and the papacy and above all for the careers of the individual masters who requested benefices (and more rarely other favours) from the pope. The biographical value of the petitions is enhanced by the details given of the supplicants' academic studies and careers. Franciscus Robini de Sancto Michaele, for instance, claimed to have lectured in arts for almost fifteen years and in philosophy for almost eight (vol. iii/2, 577). The editors have painstakingly identified the supplicants in the footnotes, often with reference to other petitions that they submitted to the pope. Many prominent figures appear as petitioners in these volumes, for instance Pierre d'Ailly, Jean Gerson and Gerard Groote. There are many interesting details concerning university history. Thus, Armandus Mayrani is described as ‘solus … Parisius actu regens de tota lingua occitana’ (ii.69),

The principal source of the publication is the Registers of Supplications in the Vatican Archives, into which the rotuli were copied. The editors have included petitions submitted separately from the rotuli by Parisian scholars and letters issued in response to both the rotuli and the individual petitions, which were copied into the Avignon Registers, also in the Vatican Archives. The existence of these letters has enabled the editors to reconstruct some rotuli that are no longer survive. Thus, volume ii begins with provisions issued in response to a rotulus submitted to Innocent vi in 1353. The popularity of the system of provisions, reflected in the sheer number of provisions requested and obtained, created many difficulties for the petitioners. Such was the competition for vacant benefices among them that often they had no hope of obtaining what they desired – a circumstance to which they alluded again and again in requesting modifications to the graces that they had earlier been granted (known as reformationes gratiarum). The growth in the number of provisions under Clement vii of Avignon, evident in volume iii of the present collection, made these difficulties worse. Devices that gave petitioners advantages over their competitors – for instance, backdating of graces and the anteferri-clause – were now deployed with increasing frequency, but their very frequency made them less effective.

It is surprising to read in the introduction to volume iii (pp. 3–4) that the existence of a series of registers of common letters of Clement vii's adversary, Urban vi, is ‘conjectural’. There is ample evidence that such a series once existed, above all in the form of registration marks which appear on the dorse of original papal letters dating from throughout this pontificate. It is perhaps also worth mentioning that Urban vi was aware of a problem which has rightly exercised the editors: whether all those named in the rotuli were entitled to be included in them, that is, whether they had a real connection with the university submitting the petitions. Urban laid down rules concerning who might qualify for graces in university rotuli (see Bullarium siue collectio diuersarum constitutionum, ed. L. Cherubini, Rome 1586, 46–7). The effects of the Great Schism are frequently evident in volume iii, with references to benefices vacated because their holders were adherents of Urban vi, and petitioners stressing their efforts for Clement vii or the sufferings that they had endured as a result of their support for him. The Carmelite Jean Golein referred to his past and future work in the Clementist cause in requesting that he should be allowed to receive a bequest from Petronilla de Cerpoion despite his vow of poverty (iii/1, 113).

Even though these massive volumes are very welcome, they display a number of features which do not make them easy to use. In order to save space, many words are abbreviated (for example, cap. for capellanus, capell. for capella, capellan. for capellania), but the abbreviations have not been implemented consistently (e.g., ii. 331 l. 3, dign. should stand for dignitas but it actually stands for dignemini). The summary of the letters' contents often omits the verb of the dispositio. The effect can be seen by comparing the text of the petition for Johannes de Cloetinghe (ii. 528) with its less abbreviated appearance in Suppliques d'Innocent VI, ed. U. Berlière (Rome–Brussels–Paris, 1911), no. 796. These and other omissions can make the sense difficult to follow. The petition on behalf of Jacobus Divitis de Parisius (ii. 69–70), for instance, is incomprehensible, although here it would be of some help to amend ‘a sed. apost. eius dispositio quomodolibet devota’ to ‘ad sedis apostolice dispositionem quomodolibet devoluta’. A further problem is the large number of errors of transcription, already noted in the case of volume i (see this Journal lv.775–7, which supplements the corrigenda listed in volume iii/2, 979). While many are self-evident (‘in rotulus’, ‘pro dictam universitatem’, ‘sub expectationem’, etc.), many more would require considerable time and ingenuity, or even access to the manuscripts themselves, to unravel. There is no space in this review to list the errors. The reader will need to use the volumes with some caution.