‘In 2014, when the archive of Valladolid cathedral was renovated, we arrived at the doors and found them shut.’ Thus the author of volume iii of the splendid initiative under review (p. 135), reminding his readers that when it comes to Spanish archives some things never change (but doing so in Latin, the lingua franca of this series, which when combined with reference to e-mail sources, as its editors sometimes have occasion to do, may cause just the slightest of frissons).

Throughout the century before 1198 the church of Palencia entertained ambitions of bettering itself at Toledo's expense, but this is not reflected here, partly perhaps because over the centuries not only did the church of Toledo have better title deeds than the other place; it also looked after them better. It was not only at Valladolid that men with bulls in mind found the doors of the place shut fast. Significantly perhaps, of the forty-five papal originals described here, twenty-six are Toledo's and just five Palencia's. Of the total, the principal contributor is Alexander iii, though with particularly interesting material from earlier legatine acta and the five ensuing pontificates of the next seventeen years. Of course, over the centuries Spanish falsifiers have been hard at work on these materials, and from an early date in the case of an Anastasius iv mandate concerning the always fractious church of Valladolid, according to some sharp-eyed editorial observations on the calligraphy of ‘Episcopatus Palentinus’ (no. 50). The privileges of the ‘Capellanes del Número 40’, a body established within Palencia cathedral itself in 1346, commenced as early as the year 745. Had they known that German editors were on the way the fabricators might have spent their energies otherwise: ‘Privilegium variis ex rationibus spurium interpolatum censemus’, the sentence against the Alexander iii privilege at Husillos rings out (p. 102). There was something distinctly fishy in the air of Husillos, as the editor's reference to Innocent iv’s reported indulgence granting 1,400 years of remission of penance suggests. His (the editor's) tendency to stray beyond 1198 is by and large welcome, though in doing so he might have noticed that the text of Gregory ix’s mandate to the bishops of Palencia (and Toledo of course) to provide Lisbon with a bishop is in the papal registers and that, in the matter of papal intervention in Palencia's own affairs, the clearest of signs were provided by Boniface viii’s treatment of Munio of Zamora.

As in volumes i and ii (rev. this Journal lxvii [2016], 181–2), the material here is arranged by reference to the bishopric of Palencia itself and to fifteen other entities within the diocese, mostly monastic. As before, it remains editorial policy to repeat the description of any document for as many individuals or communities as are identified or alluded to therein, which in the case of a provincial council, for example, is of course a considerable number. Thus particulars of the summary of ‘Episcopatus Palentinus’ (no. 85) (a legatine communication of 1172 addressed to the archbishop of Braga, his suffragans ‘omnibusque ecclesiarum praelatis per provinciam eius constitutis’) require repetition in as many as sixteen other places including (just to be on the safe side presumably) the archbishop of Compostela and his suffragans. Likewise those of legatine councils in 1130 and 1143 (Carrión de los Condes no. *6 and Santa María ‘la Mayor’ de Valladolid no. *7), each involving the repetition of material some twenty-five times, with in the former case the need for the commitment of even more space to two of the hapless bystanders only spared because neither ‘Petrus precentor’ nor ‘Herveus archidiaconus’ was identified with any particular location. Similarly, particulars of the summaries attached to all but four of the thirty-two entries under ‘Ecclesia cathedralis s. Antonini’ are repeated: a procrustean procedure which, though it is too late now for reconsideration, the provision of an appropriate index would have rendered unnecessary as well as providing space for rather more generous extracts from the material itself.

The publication of Andreas Holndonner's thesis on the twelfth-century church of Toledo (Kommunikation – Jurisdiktion – Integration: das Papsttum und das Erzbistum Toledo im 12. Jahrhundert [ca. 1085–ca.1185]) came just in time to modify the force of the general editor's comment (p. viii) that the present volume provides the learned public with various documents which ‘hasta el día de hoy ¡permanecen ineditos!’ (p. viii) In the space provided by hard-pruning that proliferation room might have been found for editions of the six items in question (pp. 46, 53–5, 62, 70, with space to spare for a seventh, p. 108, here supplied from F. J. Hernández's Los cartularios de Toledo).

Volume iv of Iberia Pontificia covers five sees of the Compostela province, all of them on the Spanish side of the frontier (the Portuguese sees having been processed by Carl Erdmann in 1927) and with their monastic establishments almost entirely omitted. Here, as in the case of Palencia, a significant part of the energies of the twelfth-century bishops of the province was dedicated to restoring, as imaginatively as possible, the diocesan jurisdiction interrupted by the installation of Islam. No papal originals having survived from the sees of Coria, Ciudad Rodrigo or Plasencia, in a century dominated in its first half by that prince of falsifiers, Archbishop Diego Gelmírez of Compostela, and thereafter by the influence exerted by the Historia Compostellana, the collective work of his research group, this programme applied to those of Ávila and Salamanca in particular. For Ávila the editors take account of seven papal originals in a tally of 127 items qualifying for attention in accordance with the series' procedures, with three more items salvaged from near-contemporary decretal collections (and a half-hearted plea for a fourth: ‘Episcopatus Abulensis’, nos 39, 47, 121, ?126), enriched at one end of the spectrum by such sources as Ávila's seventeenth-century historian, Luis Ariz, of whose fides the best that can be claimed is ‘fortasse non omnino ficta’ and ‘vehementer quidem dubitanda … sed non ubicumque deneganda’ (p. 5, no.*†?1) and confirmed at the other (no. ?113) by recourse to Brepols's electronic archive. Although filters of a very wide mesh are permitted elsewhere, the epithet ‘mendose’ tends to be reserved for more recent publications, for example no. 63. The real eye-opener of this volume is the tally of nineteen bulls secured by Bishop Pedro Suárez of Salamanca, mostly from Alexander iii, and representing a targeting of papal authority in correcting the collective amnesia and mismanagement of the previous four centuries, an episcopal achievement signalled in his time by the late Richard Fletcher and one without any obvious peninsular parallel in the period in question.

With Salamanca under the direction of José Luis Martín, like his colleagues a scholar altogether at home with this material, the latest volume of Iberia Pontificia proceeds with admirable speed towards a destination still invisible at the time of the publication of Erdmann's volume ninety years ago. Though, by contrast with Valladolid's, its doors are now wide open to scholars the shallows and rapids of the church of Toledo's interior may still lie ahead. ‘But westward, look, the land is bright.’