The Patrimony of the Roman Church in the Time of
Gregory the Great. By Edward Spearing. (Cambridge University Press. 13s. net.)—Miss Spearing has done well to edit this scholarly essay by her brother, a young Cambridge historian of great promise who was killed on the Somme. Little has been written in English on the early history of the Temporal Power, which was based on the estates that the Popes acquired not only in Italy but also in Sicily, Africa, and the Balkans. Mr. Spearing's essay, derived mainly from the letters of Gregory the Great, describes the growth of the Patrimony, its management and the expenditure of its revenues, much of which went to charity in Gregory's day. In those anarchical times the Church needed wealth to defend itself from brutal despots, but the Temporal Power is now, of course, an anachronism.
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