The Catholic Historical Review

BOOK REVIEWS Medieval The Decline and Fall ofMedieval Sicily: Politics, Religion, and Economy in the Reign of Frederick III, 1296-1337. By Clifford R. Backman. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1995. Pp. xxi, 352. $59.95.) After a long period of scholarly neglect, Sicily in the late medieval ages has in recent years begun again to attract attention, notably in Henri Bresc's Un monde méditerranéen: économie et société en Sicile, 1300-1450 (1986), and Stephan Epstein's An Island for Itself: Economic Development and Social Change in Late Medieval Sicily (1992). Clifford Backman's monograph on the reign of Frederick III is a valuable and thought-provoking addition to this growing corpus of research. Frederick led Sicily to victory in its exhausting struggle for independence from the Angevin kings of Naples. He was a charismatic ruler of some ability, and in the decade following the treaty of CaltabeUotta (1302) the Sicilians experienced enough constructive political change and economic vitality to foster hopes of long-term stability and prosperity. But by the time Frederick died the rural and urban economy was in disarray, centraUzed government was not far from collapse, and social life was undermined by violence, corruption, and intense particularism. Backman argues that no single cause accounts for Frederick's overall failure as a ruler. The king's various foreign policy involvements, from 1312 onwards, proved to be both misguided and ruinously expensive. But this was less important than the sharp divergence between the economic interests of the coastal cities and those of the rural hinterland, and resistance to the court's attempts to create a coherent political community in the island. So structurally embedded were these features that Backman comes close to a determinist view of Sicily's fate: "The odds against Vespers-era Sicily succeeding and prospering had been against it all along." In his treatment of religious life in Sicily Professor Backman focuses principally on the decade or so of reconstruction following 1302. These were remarkable years. Not only were churches rebuilt and purloined endowments returned, but under the influence of Arnau de Vilanova Frederick became convinced of his duty to raise religious and moral standards in his realm. His Ordinationes generales of 1309/10 were shot through with Vilanova's ideaUstic views, and the royal reforms attracted the admiration of Ramon Lull, who spent 86 BOOK REVIEWS87 a year at Frederick's court in 1313-14. For a brief period it even proved possible to invest Frederick with a quasi-messianic role as the leader of a crusade to the east, or the sponsor of a mission to Tunisia. Royal evangelism and rampant anticlericalism, the legacy of years of continual interdict during the War of the Vespers, made Sicily a natural refuge for the Spiritual Franciscans. This caused another breach with the papacy whenJohn XXII turned against the Spirituals in 1317. The island was again placed under interdict, and the economic troubles and baronial brigandage of the 1320's and 1330's made the Church as impoverished , harassed, and unpopular as it had ever been. This book's title is melodramatic and misleading, but its other faults are few. Clifford Backman guides his readers with authority through notoriously complex themes, and his lively prose style disguises an impressive depth of scholarship . He has written an admirable first book, and while his arguments are unlikely to be accepted in full, his study will be required reading in its field. Norman Housley University ofLeicester A Short Discourse on the Tyrannical Government: Over Things Divine and Human, butEspecially over the Empire and Those Subject to the Empire, Usurped by Some Who Are Called Highest Pontiffs. By William of Ockham . Edited by Arthur Stephen McGrade; translated by John KilcuUen. [Cambridge Texts in the History of PoUtical Thought.] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1992. Pp. xxxiv, 215. $4995 cloth; $1595 paperback .) A Letter to the Friars Minor and OtherWritings. ByWilliam of Ockham. Edited by Arthur Stephen McGrade and John Kilcullen; translated by John KiIcullen . [Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought.] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1995. Pp. xl, 390. $64.95 cloth; $24.95 paperback .) These volumes present a translation of Ockham's Breviolquium or...