In this powerfully argued work, Kirsi Salonen and Jussi Hanska debunk two interconnected and enduring myths concerning the later Middle Ages. First, that on the eve of the Reformation, Roman church leaders were unconcerned with the quality of clerics who greedily put together as many fat, income-laden benefices as they could find. And second, that the priesthood in Italy during the same era was overrun with unqualified, unsuitable characters who bought their way into this spiritual duty through ordinations at the Roman curia, over the objections of their local bishops.

Salonen and Hanska rightly point out that these myths may have found their way into scholarly literature, but that they are the essence of a Chaucerian and Protestant stereotype of no real use in understanding late medieval history. In their book, these two historians utilize Vatican records—mainly from the Apostolic Penitentiary and the Camera apostolica—to investigate the relative value of this stereotype as it might apply to the pontificates of Pius II (1458–1564) and Paul II (1464–1471). What they have found, as one might expect anytime historians dig below the surface and investigate firmly entrenched commonplaces, is that a far more complicated reality lies behind fifteenth century ordination practices in the Roman church. To begin with, characterizing the relevant documentation as vast represents a considerable understatement. One must first understand canon law and the meticulous regulations it imposes on who could become a member of the clergy. Gender, age, legitimate birth, physical condition, preparation, reputation, and income-bearing titles were all relevant to candidacy. Still more canonical regulations related to the ordination process itself. Such canonical regulations, however, are just the tip of a large documentary iceberg.

Salonen wrote the section of this book analyzing the flood of requests to the Roman curia for dispensations from one or another of the regulations on qualification, especially those related to legitimacy of birth and physical condition. The Apostolic Chancery and the Datary could grant dispensations, but the Penitentiary was the main curial office of appeal. The summaries of incoming and approved supplications coming to the Penitentiary alone, and just during the pontificate of Pius II, fill six thick registers. The canon law and curial records reveal that the regulations were well known throughout Europe, and applied. The petitions, moreover, show that while the Penitentiary was the office to approach for dispensations, and ones not given in a discriminatory manner—say mainly to the children of clerics, for instance—they were not by any means automatic. Instead, applications and graces granted varied for practical reasons, including local benefice structures and the relative availability of candidates for the number of benefices that needed to be filled. Petitions were more likely to be made and granted for dispensation on rules for legitimate birth, for instance, in dioceses with large numbers of vacancies, as was the case in the valley regions of German rivers like the Rhine, Mosel, and Main. And in the end, local bishops doing the ordaining always decided whether or not the grace granted by the Penitentiary was valid or not. All in all, Salonen's analysis represents a most helpful addition to studies by Ludwig Schmugge and his colleagues beginning in the mid-1990s.

Hanska wrote the section on ordination procedures and practices in the Roman curia during the pontificate of Paul II. He utilized the formidable but incomplete Libri formatarum series in the Vatican archives, while still more documentation is available in the Roman Archivio di Stato. Hanska applied these documents to evaluate the charges issued by historians like Denys Hay, Francis Rapp, and others, that the records of curial ordinations were disorderly, that examinations of candidates in this period—if they even occurred—were superficial, and that the few rigorous Italian bishops in this era could not have an effect upon the sea of unqualified clerics unleashed by greedy curialists that allowed anyone to buy a priesthood. Hanska found nothing but misleading oversimplifications in these charges, and it could be argued that part 2 of this book is essentially an extended refutation. Employees of the Camera apostolica, like so many curialists before and after, were meticulous record keepers. Examinations did in fact occur during Paul's reign, and it was then customary for them to take place over the course of three days. The 537 priests ordained at the curia while Paul was pope could hardly have made an enormous impact—for good or for ill—on a land employing some 20,000 priests, especially when one considers that only about twenty-two percent of those ordained in Paul's curia were even Italian. While Hanska's evidence provides plenty of reason to reject the simplifications of Hay and Rapp, it is also clear that the curial records tell part, but not the whole of the story. Hanska properly qualified his counter-arguments, insisting that the records imply there were at least some other ordinations that went unrecorded in the Libri formatarum, the numbers of which are impossible to determine on the basis of these sources alone.

As with most scholarly monographs, readers will sometimes find real brilliance here, and at other times be left desiring more. Salonen and Hanska deftly combine statistical analysis—having digitized elements contained in their evidence and provided it in tables—with anecdotal detail from narrative portions of the documents. The result is readable and most persuasive. Their conclusion, however, seems more a summary of the contents than the holistic view they promise in the introduction. This may be a function of their plans for future research, since what can be revealed from these documents is less than the full picture some may require before abandoning the stereotype once and for all. Buon lavoro to them both.