1There exists only one study dealing briefly with the late medieval clerical ordinations in the Roman curia, namely two pages in Denys Hay’s book The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century. They do not convey a very positive picture, on the contrary. In the first place Hay describes the educational level of the late medieval clergy in the whole of Italy and finds it very low indeed. The reason for such a sorry state of affairs was the bishops, who did not reside in their dioceses and, in general, neglected their duties. Hay then moves on to the curia romana and writes:

“All the problems touched on in the last few pages are found in an aggravated form, in the practice of creating clergy in the curia itself. […] even if every bishop in Italy had been resident and scrupulous in examining ordinands, it would still have been possible for the ambitious and the unscrupulous to obtain orders with a minimum of trouble in the Roman curia […]. With a minimum trouble, certainly but, it should be added, with a maximum of expense—prohibited though it was to charge for the conferment of orders as a clear case of simony. And technically, of course, it was the letters and their registration that were taxed, though many candidates must have associated the orders with payment of cash. […] None of this need necessarily have been corrupting, but contemporaries had no doubt that these ceremonies were a dangerous feature of the contemporary Church. Numbers were often large: 58 received first tonsure on 21 December 1471, when there were also 16 minor orders conferred, and 31 holy orders—105 in all. […] Often these proceedings must have lacked dignity, and usually they must have involved only the most superficial verification of qualification and title. The ill-arranged, not to say slatternly, organisation of the registers themselves confirms that a certain degree of disorderliness pervaded the whole process.”1

2All in all, Hay’s work is a textbook example of the confessional protestant or anti-clerical historiography of the late medieval Church. It is true that since his book came out in 1977, the situation has improved very much and more recent textbooks include much more balanced and reliable view of the late medieval Church. The problem in this particular case is that Hay’s book is still the only existing study of the clerical ordinations in the medieval Roman curia and, indeed, the only existing Church history of fifteenth-century Italy. As such, it remains widely read and extremely influential.

3What has all this got to do with medieval Scandinavians and European elites, one might ask. Some of the men who went to Rome to be ordained were Scandinavians. While reading through the Vatican archives series of the records of these ordinations, the fourteen volumes of Libri formatarum (not formatorum as Hay calls them), I accidentally stumbled on a familiar name. In the fourth volume one reads clearly that on 1 March 1466 a certain Jacobus Uluonis canonicus Upsaliensis diocesis vigore dimissorie ordinarii fuit admissus and ordained to the rank of subdiaconus.2 After a short check it turned out that this person was indeed Jakob Ulvsson, the future Archbishop of Uppsala (1469–1514).

4The fact that he had received his clerical ordination in Rome is well-known to Swedish historians, so it was not an important discovery as such. But what was strange was how a person like Jakob Ulvsson who had received his baccalaureatus in artibus from the university of Rostock in 1459, who had studied in Paris in 1460–61, and who was then proctor for the Swedish Church at the Roman curia, fits into the picture painted above by Denys Hay. Jakob Ulvsson certainly was not an ignorant swindler who could not take his examination from his own ordinarius, and in fact it is explicitly mentioned in the ordination list that he had permission from his ordinarius to be promoted. Therefore, he was definitely not forced to go to Rome to buy his orders (for that is the picture painted by Hay). In reality, he originated from the lower Swedish nobility and had a far better education than average priests at the time.

5This leaves an open question: who were the people ordained in the Roman curia? According to Denys Hay they were unworthy swindlers coming from all over Europe, and especially from various dioceses of Italy, to buy their way into the priesthood thanks to the “most superficial verification of the qualification and title.” This however, considering the appearance of people like Jakob Ulvsson among the ordained, is certainly not the only possible hypothesis. Could it in fact be possible that the people ordained at the Camera apostolica were members of the European elites rather than low life characters? The aim of this paper is to find out who were the people ordained in the Roman curia.

Problems with sources and their representativeness

6The problem with this question, interesting as it may be, is that it is rather difficult to answer. The Libri formatarum series covers nearly eighty years of ordinations, and includes literally thousands of names. Checking all of them against all the other surviving sources to establish who they were is not a task for an individual historian, but for a larger group scholars. Even if one only concentrated on the pontificate of Paul II (1464–71) during which Jakob Ulvsson was ordained, there would still be too many people to identify.

7From this table it is quite obvious that the number of persons ordained at the Camera apostolica was simply too high to be analysed thoroughly within the limits of this paper. Therefore, and keeping in mind the theme of Nordic elites, it is only fair to limit the analysis to a sample based around Jakob Ulvsson and the ordinations he was part of. Jakob was present in three public ordinations organised by the Camera apostolica, namely on 1 March 1466 at the sacristy of Saint Peter’s (sacristia basilice principis apostolorum), on 22 March 1466 at the same place, and finally on 15 April 1466 at the chapel of Sancta sanctorum in Lateran. The ordinations were held in the most important church of Christendom and in a very famous chapel next to the Lateran basilica, not exactly a setting for “proceedings lacking dignity.” If we count all the people that were ordained on these three occasions, we obtain 122 names. Ten were members of religious orders and will not be dealt with here as it is extremely difficult to trace them since their dioceses of origin were not recorded in Libri formatarum, unlike those of the secular clergy. Furthermore, the ordinations of members of the religious orders did not follow the same rules and requirements as those of the secular clergy. Thus, excluding them leaves us with 112 persons from 75 different dioceses. These are the people that are called in the title of this paper the ‘class of 1466’. Two thirds of them came from France, Germany or Spain. Hence, it is clear that Denys Hay was right in saying that they came from all over Europe.

8This number is sufficiently small that it can be studied within the limits of this paper. However, even if the number of persons is manageable, finding information about them still requires extensive research. The most obvious sources for such information are the existing publication series of the papal registers and letters. This is problematic, however, since we are dealing with the late fifteenth century, which means that only the German, English and Polish series include volumes covering the pontificate of Paul II, while the French series stops at the fourteenth century.3

9Since there are many register volumes from the pontificate of Paul II, it would have been too difficult to go to the original manuscripts.4 Furthermore, to find all the relevant information on the careers of those ordained during Paul II’s pontificate, it would also be necessary to read through the registers of his predecessor Pius II (1458–64) and his immediate successors, Sixtus IV (1471–84), Innocent VIII (1484–92) and Alexander VI which would, of course, be absolutely impossible.

10In practice this means that we only have information about those persons who are mentioned in the published sources, and the information provided by the Libri formatarum themselves. Furthermore, there are some indications that allow us to make plausible assumptions on the title and profession of some of those ordained. Nevertheless, it should be stated immediately that due the above-mentioned problems any conclusions drawn from this paper should be considered tentative at the best, and consequently treated with extreme caution.

Statistical overview of the sample

11Let us start the analysis of the sample by looking at the statistical information. Firstly, there is the question of what orders were bestowed on these persons.

12From the table 2, several interesting things can be observed. Firstly, more than one fourth of the sample only took the prima tonsura. Those persons were generally referred to as scolares. At first sight we could assume that these scolares were students of the Roman university Studium urbis. This would be natural since it was common custom that the students of medieval universities took lower orders and became members of the clergy.

13Unfortunately, there are no registers of students from the fifteenth-century Roman universities, and therefore one cannot establish for certain whether these scolares were or were not university students.5 One can only say that it is logical and is highly likely that at least some of them were. At the same time, however, we must realise that the word scolaris in this context does not necessarily mean student, because elsewhere in the Libri formatarum there are recorded cases of persons who already had university degrees and were taking their prima tonsura and who were also referred to as scolares. For example, a certain Johannes Derdinger from the diocese of Würzburg was tonsured on 19 January 1468. This Johannes was not an academic novice, but a doctor in decretis, yet he was referred to as a scolaris. Similarly, a certain Ludovicus de Balnia, a scolaris from the diocese of Besançon, was tonsured at the general ordination on 22 September 1470. He was recorded with the further title of doctor utriusque iuris.6

14Another interesting detail is that nearly two thirds of the people ordained at the Camera apostolica were not ordained to the priesthood itself. This is very significant because canon law stipulated that anyone ordained within the Roman curia needed to have papal dispensation if he wanted to obtain the rest of the orders in his home diocese, or anywhere else in partibus.

15In practice this meant that for anyone who wanted to become a priest, but did not want to be examined by his own ordinary, it would have been only sensible policy to get all the orders while in Rome. Obtaining a dispensation for ordination in partibus would have required extra money and, what is even worse, it would have meant that the person in question would still have to be examined by his own bishop. This is evident from the dimissorial letters given by the Camera apostolica for those who wanted to be further ordained in partibus. As it happens there is a person in our sample who received such a letter. Thomas Machlar was ordained to four minor orders on 22 March 1466. Two years and four months later, on 15 July 1468, he received a dimissorial letter allowing him to be ordained by his own ordinary bishop or any other catholic bishop found in the diocese of Liège to sub-deacon, deacon and the priesthood, as long as he was found to be sufficiently educated and having the necessary titulus.7 Therefore, it is evident that the majority of those who were ordained in Rome did not go there to avoid their own bishop’s examinations.

16It is very plausible that those who were not ordained to the priesthood either did not intend to move away from Rome or did not think that they would ever need the higher orders, the latter being true for the curial civil servants, who did not need to be priests. Therefore it is tempting to assume that at least some of those who only took lower orders were in fact curial civil servants or familiars of the pope or other high prelates residing at the curia.

17Thus, on the basis of statistical analysis of the ordination records, a possible hypothesis is that the majority of those ordained at the Roman curia were in fact curials (civil servants, proctors, notaries, familiars, etc.) and other people who had valid reasons to stay in Rome for extended periods, such as the students of the Studium urbis.

Individuals identified from other sources

18Trying to verify this hypothesis brings us back to the second problem with the sources, namely how to find further information about these 112 persons.

19Thorough examination of the Libri formatarum themselves and other readily available sources provided further information concerning the education, profession or social standing of fifteen individuals, representing roughly 13% of the cases.8 Before presenting some of them in more detail, let us look at what kind of people these candidates for clerical promotion were.

20Firstly, we see that 4 of them had received a university education, though one of them, Jakob Ulvsson himself, is not mentioned as having a degree in the Libri formatarum. It seems obvious that university degrees were mentioned only sporadically since 4 out of 112 would have been only 3.5% which is far too low a figure to be credible. It is well-known that the percentage of university trained priests was reasonably high during the latter half of the fifteenth century. For example, between 1451 and 1475 roughly 40% of the parish priests of Brabant had received a university education.9 Similar figures could be presented from other regions of Europe too.

21Secondly, there were 5 members of the upper clergy, namely canons and archdeacons from different dioceses, i. e. 4.5% of all those ordained. Furthermore, there were the familiars of the pope and cardinals, and other curial civil servants. Taken together, this represents just over 6% of the people ordained together with Jakob Ulvsson.

22Jakob himself is a good example of the high church officer with a university degree who came to take his orders from the Camera apostolica. We know that Jakob Ulvsson originated from the lower Swedish nobility. On 26 August 1457 he was enrolled at the University of Rostock in Germany, where he took his baccalaureatus in artibus some time during the winter of 1458–59. In 1460 he moved to Paris to study, during which time he was made Canon of the archdiocese of Uppsala, in Sweden. In 1465 we find Jakob in Rome where he was working as the proctor for the Swedish Church and Crown. During this period, as we have seen, he took his ordines maiores at the Camera apostolica. In 1469 he was made Archbishop of Uppsala and the primas of the whole of Sweden. Jakob died in spring 1521.10

23An equally good example of the familiars of the pope or cardinals is the case of Alexander Rate from the diocese of St Andrews in Scotland. The first thing we know about him is that on 17 December 1464 Alexander Rate, a cleric at the time, received the canonry and prebend of Monydi in the church of Dunkeld, worth nine pounds sterling. The bull was given to him gratis pro familiari as he was a member of the papal household.11 Over the next few years a steady flow of benefices, ever bigger and more important, found their way into Alexander’s hands. At some point in between collecting them he had himself ordained ad subdiaconatus on 22 March 1466 and ad diaconatus on 5 April 1466.12 Alexander did not leave the curia after the death of Paul II. We know that on 31 October 1475, Alexander Rate, archdeacon of Aberdeen and a familiar of the pope, received the right to visit churches, monasteries and other ecclesiastical places within the limits of the said archdeaconry and to receive procurations, etc. for life.13 Soon after this Alexander died, for his name appears for the last time in a document giving away the benefices, “void by death, outwith the Curia, of late Alexander Rath, formerly archdeacon”.14 With all his benefices and papal favours, Alexander is the stereotypical example of the late fifteenth-century benefice hunter, well-known from the satirical literature of the time.

24Not all the men identified, however, were as successful as Jakob Ulvsson and Alexander Rate. For example, there is the case of the Polish curial civil servant Stanislaus Nicolai de Przelanck. In the Libri formatarum Stanislaus is mentioned twice. On 21 December 1465 he received his prima tonsura during the ordines generales celebrated in the sacristy of St. Peter’s. In that context he was referred to as a scolaris Gneznensis diocesis. On 1 March 1466 he was ordained to the four minor orders, again at the sacristy of St. Peter’s basilica. In both cases no further information on his status is provided. However, some information is available from other Vatican sources, which have a few entries under his name. The first document is dated 1 April 1465. There he is referred to as a pauper clericus Gneznensis diocesis presens in curia. This means that we know for certain that Stanislaus resided in Rome between 1 April 1465 and 1 March 1466. It is very likely that he stayed there afterwards. The rest of the documents are records of different benefices being handed over to him, some of them quite valuable. For example, on 13 June 1471 he received a benefice worth fourteen silver marks. On 26 May 1480 he promised to pay his obligationes for the canonicatus et prebende ecclesie Beate Marie Sandomiriensis in the diocese of Krakow that had come into his possession due the fact that its former holder had been elected bishop of Krakow. Even in this late document Stanislaus is still referred to as a clericus meaning that he had not taken ordines maiores.15

25Stanislaus’extended stay in Rome, the series of documents indicating his working there, and the fact that he remained a simple cleric instead of being ordained to the priesthood despite all his benefices, indicate that he was a career civil servant working at the Roman curia and reasonably successful one at that.

26Interestingly, those persons that have been identified from other sources were curial civil servants, members of the higher clergy and university recruits. None of them was poor or unsuccessful in terms of his career. However, since it was only possible to identify fifteen persons or just over 13% of our sample with reasonably certainty, one must ask whether these persons can be considered as representative of the others, or whether they were easily identified just because they represent the upper strata of the clergy? What is the right argumentum ex silentio concerning the rest of our sample?

The rest of the sample

27Before trying to say something about those persons who were not identified, it is necessary to consider the few cases where some information was available, but where sure identification was not possible. Firstly, there is the case of Stefanus Morelli, a parish priest from the diocese of Besançon in France. He was ordained as deacon in December 1465 and into priesthood in March 1466. No further information on him is provided by the Libri formatarum.

28However, during the pontificate of Sixtus IV we find the name of Stefanus Morelli again at the Roman curia. He is referred to as decretorum doctor, familiaris summi pontificis, notarius, cubicularius, secretarius apostolicus, and de nobili genere ex utroque parente procreatus. In 1479 he was made datarius, in 1480 secretus reffendarius, and finally in 1483 he took over the French see of Maurienne.16 We cannot be absolutely sure, however, that it was the same Stefanus Morelli.

29Another interesting case is that of Petrus Alfonsi de Tauro, a parish priest from the Spanish diocese of Zamora. We have no information concerning his social status or education, but in the list of those ordained his name is followed by the formula: ad commendationem ipsius domini cardinalis fuit admissus.17 It is likely that the ipsius cardinalis refers to Marco Barbo, nephew of Paul II and cardinal of San Marco, on whose orders the ordination was carried out. As Petrus Alfonsi was only admitted on the recommendation of the cardinal, it is likely that he was the cardinal’s familiarius or else well-known to him.

30Even if we accept that Stefanus Morelli and Petrus Alfonsi belonged to the same group of curials as the other 15 persons identified, it still leaves us with 95 ordained individuals that we know only from pages of the Libri formatarum. Who were they and would it be possible to say anything more about them?

The unidentified persons in the sample

31It must be recognised that it is impossible to get any direct information about the remaining 95 persons in our sample; however, it is still possible to make certain assumptions. These assumptions, and it must kept in mind that that is exactly what they are—just assumptions—, are based on the length of their stay in Rome. In the case of those persons who took their orders on different ordination days it is possible to know at least what time they spent in the eternal city. A long stay in the city suggests that the person was not in Rome merely for the pilgrimage or just for the clerical ordination, or any other short-term business, but rather for professional purposes.

32Since the ordines generales were carried out only six times a year, and one could not take all orders during one ordination, the candidates for the priesthood sometimes had to spend quite a long time in the city. This would have been most inconvenient for someone who just wanted to buy orders and move on. Therefore there is a strong likelihood that those persons who stayed for several ordines generales were also more or less permanently resident in Rome. The reason for such residence, one can safely assume, would be working at the Roman curia, belonging to the familia of one of the curials, or studying at the Roman universities. It is also a reasonable assumption that those persons who stayed in the city for an extended time belonged to the same group of clerical elites as the identified persons mentioned above.

33The problem here is to decide what can be considered a long enough period to imply permanent residence in Rome. This is necessarily a value judgement. In table 3 below the remaining 95 persons are divided into three groups, namely those who stayed in Rome less than two months, those who stayed between two and six months, and those who stayed more than six months.

34From the table we can see that 20 persons who are otherwise unknown from other readily available sources spent more than two months in Rome waiting for their ordinations. Eleven of them even stayed more than six months.

35Perhaps it is more enlightening to take one of those twenty persons as a concrete example of what it meant to spend extended periods of time in Rome. Petrus Bertrandi from the diocese of Lyon was ordained to the four minor orders on 21 December 1465 and to the priesthood on 5 April 1466. As he also participated in two ordines generales in March 1466, it is reasonably sure that he spent those four months in Rome, not leaving the city between the different ordination days. In addition to that we know from the Libri formatarum that he was rector sancti Desiderii Floriaci in the said diocese of Lyon in France.18

36Knowing that he spent four months in Rome or knowing that he was a parish priest does not really tell us anything, but when we put this information together we get a completely different picture. Being rector parochialis ecclesiae meant in practice that one was in charge of the cura animarum. To be able to do so, one had to be a priest (presbiter) and to reside in his parish. Yet we know that Petrus was already rector when he took the minor orders despite the fact that he was not able to celebrate mass or distribute sacraments. Moreover, he did not reside in his own parish, but in Rome.

37This suggests that the parish church was given to Petrus, not that he would work as a priest, but as a source of income while staying in Rome. The actual cure of souls was probably carried out by a vicarius hired by Petrus. From this we can conclude that Petrus was staying in Rome for some professional reason, perhaps he was working at the papal curia, perhaps he was a familiar of one of the French cardinals, or maybe he just studied there on the strength of the so-called Cum ex eo dispensation.19 To which of these groups Petrus belonged to remains a mystery; what is clear though is that he certainly was not just passing through as a regular pilgrim.

38Finally, we can put these 20 persons who stayed in Rome for an extended period together with the 17 mentioned previously, who were more or less securely identified from other sources. This makes 37 in all or roughly one third of all those ordained together with Jakob Ulvsson. It is more than likely that they did indeed belong to the clerical elites of the late fifteenth century.

39What can we think of the 75 persons who remain unknown to us and who did not stay in Rome for an extensive period? The only significant information we have is what orders they were promoted to. Nearly half of them (30) took only the first tonsure, and 11 were satisfied with other minor orders. That means that 34 of them took the higher orders, of whom only 14 (or 12.5% of our total sample) were ordained into the priesthood. It is among these 12.5% that one must search for those illiterate rascals and swindlers who bought their way into the priesthood against the will of their own bishops if, indeed, there were any such persons.

Conclusions

40The individual persons that have been identified or the ones we know something about indirectly do not seem to support Denys Hay’s idea of nogood swindlers buying their orders in Rome because they could not persuade their own bishops to promote them. In fact, there is hardly any evidence supporting Hay’s view.

41Following on from all the above we get the impression that a significant percentage of the people who were ordained together with Jakob Ulvsson were indeed members of the fifteenth-century clerical and cultural elites. They were either working at the Roman curia, familiars of the pope or cardinals, or even students at the Roman universities. This is only natural if we consider the setting; those ordines generales in which Jakob Ulvsson participated were carried out in the St. Peter’s basilica and in the Cappella sancta sanctorum in Lateran.

42Despite the fact that two thirds of the persons in our relatively small sample remain anonymous and identification concerning the rest often relies heavily on indirect evidence, it seems reasonable to assume as a working hypothesis that those participating in the clerical ordinations in Rome generally came from the European intellectual and ecclesiastical elites.

Appendix. Status of identified persons ordained together with Jacob Ulvsson