This book deals with the intellectual resistance confronting the papacy during its stay in Avignon (1309–77). Two motives for such a resistance were conflated: first, the criticism of growing papal power vis-à-vis secular princes; second, the idea that the natural seat of the papacy was Rome, while Avignon was seen as an exile. Unn Falkeid has chosen an array of figures to explore the testimonies of intellectual critics of the papacy: the poets Dante and Petrarch, the political philosophers William of Ockham and Marsilius of Padua, and the saintly mystics Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena. Although the papacy had successfully used reform ideas in the preceding quarter millennium, since Pope Gregory VII (1073–85), to exalt its position, its secular power reached new heights during the Avignon papacy.

Dante, in his De monarchia (On monarchy, ca. 1313), rejected the notion that the empire derived its political authority from the papacy (chapter 1). Both Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham, who spoke out against the extent of papal power, were branded as heretics and lived under the protection of Louis IV the Bavarian, Holy Roman emperor. Marsilius developed a secular concept of the state and argued in his Defensor pacis (Defender of the peace) that the powers of the church hierarchy must be limited (chapter 2). William, in his Breviloquium de principatu tyrannico (Short discourse on tyrannical government), defended the poverty of Franciscans and argued against papal absolutism (chapter 3). Petrarch, on the other hand, evoked nostalgia of ancient Rome and deplored its abandonment by the popes. After all, wrote Petrarch, Rome was “the capital of the world, the queen of the cities, the seat of the empire, the citadel of the Catholic faith, and the source of all remarkable models of virtue” (97). I found Falkeid's treatment of these thinkers solid and careful, despite the occasional Latin mistake in the main text.

One of the main aims of this book is to try and rehabilitate Catherine of Siena and Birgitta of Sweden as political theorists. As women, they were excluded from institutions such as the universities and the ranks of the clergy. Falkeid's sections on Birgitta and Catherine (chapters 5–6) give us some fascinating glimpses of how they cloaked their political ideas in spiritual and mystical discourses, and how, using this method, they applied considerable pressure on public opinion. Birgitta's Revelaciones insistently called for both a renewal of the church and a return of the papacy to Rome. Catherine, in her Dialogo della divina provvidenza, employed the concept of the mystical body of the church to sound an emphatic call for ecclesiastical reform.

Falkeid cautions her readers that one should not apply a too narrow definition of what a political thinker is. Because such misguided categories were used by previous scholars, Catherine and Birgitta were “more or less wiped out of the historical-political scenery.” Restricted definitions of this type may even have limited “our understanding of a whole period” (8). If this was indeed the case, then it would perhaps have been fruitful and exciting to write an entire book on Catherine and Birgitta, rather than trying to tease new insights also out of the relatively well-known texts of Dante, Petrarch, William of Ockham, and Marsilius of Padua. A separate book-length study of the two highly important female writers might be a welcome and worthwhile sequel.

Books in the I Tatti series are beautifully presented, but the endnotes that they contain are more cumbersome to consult than footnotes. On the upside, this volume, in contrast to some other titles in the series (such as that by Gary Ianziti on Bruni), has a helpful bibliography of primary sources and secondary literature.