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Popes and Princes, 1417–1517: Politics and Polity in the Late Medieval church . By John A. F. Thomson. Boston: George Allen & Unwin, 1980. xvii + 252 pp. $19.50.

Thomson points out that the councils sought the support of the secular princes, while the popes made concordats with them, which implied treating them as equals. Since the popes portrayed conciliarism as a threat to all monarchical power, popes and princes formed a common cause. How this happened and its effects are the meat of this book. Chapter one presents the initial conflict between papal and conciliar authority and shows that after 1460 princes used conciliarism as a political weapon. Chapter two places the rise of nationalism and the idea of sovereignty in this context. The relative disadvantage of the papacy appears in its administrative and political problems: the position of cardinals, their royal nomination, and the increasing Italianization of the cardinalate and the papacy are stressed. The financial problems of the papacy and attempted solutions seem modern: decreasing revenues and attempts at monopoly. Abuse of indulgences is traced to Boniface IX, while the Netherlands used indulgences for dikes. Alexander VI comes off as a reformer in balancing the budget by fiscal restraint and cuts. Yet the curial bureaucracy grew, and courts became hopelessly slow as thoroughness rather than speed was stressed, since anything less opened the door to endless appeals—a quite modern judicial complaint! Chapter five has a good discussion of the problems faced by reformers of that and any era. Political problems—North Italy, Naples, and the Turks—are given their due.