Folia Theologica et Canonica 7. 29/21 (2018)

Recensions

330

RECENSIONS

of epochs - based on the most important great ages of the canonical legislation. The editors payed attention during the selection of authors to the research fields of the certain canon law history experts. Thanks to this well organized process the composed volume shows a unified concept on suitability for priesthood. The chapters are well proportioned. The reader can find easily the same questions and the accurate contemporary answer for them within every chapter and every epoch. The same Italian terminology facilitates to understand the developing process - with several constant, clear and stable criteria from the time of the New Testament - of the discipline on conditions of receiving the Holy Orders throughout the centuries.

Bernard Ardura, O.Praem., President of the Pontifical Commission for History in the Presentation of this volume (pp. v-vi) emphasizes the most important question of every epoch of Church history regarding suitability for priesthood: personal faith of the applicant and the serious consideration of his vocation. Card. Beniamino Stella, Prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, points out in the Preface why essential the personal call from Christ, the recognition of this calling to become a priest and the importance of the Church's authority to select those who are ready to fulfill this particular sacred vocation within the Church and for the salvation of souls (pp. vii-xi). The editors (Nicolas Alvarez de las Asturias, Giuliano Brugnotto, Simona Paolini OFM) summarize in the Introduction those fundamental principles which construct the essence in every epoch of the ecclesiastical history to select those who are “worthy” for the sacred service (xiii-xv).

The volume is distributed into nine chapters in order to enlighten the entire panorama of the suitability for Holy Orders since the foundation by Jesus Christ until the last regulation on the priestly formation. The very first period covers the New Testament’ teaching until the end of the Roman time (by Szabolcs Anzelm Szuromi, O.Praem., pp. 1-16). It continued with the age of declining of the Roman Empire, invasion of new nations and their conversion to Christianity (by Card. Peter Erdő, pp. 17-34). Nicolas Álvarez de las Asturias and Marcos Torres summarize the discipline to become a priest in the Third Chapter on the basis of the great reform epochs until the beginning of the 12,h century, with particular attention to the crystallization process of the Gregorian reform (pp. 35-54). Joaquin Sedano gives a detailed overview on the discipline contained in the Decretum Gratiani and its clear explanation on the different conditions to receive the sacred service (pp. 55-74). Chapter V - written by Jürgen Jamin and Simona Paolini - makes a successive attempt to collect the significant principles from the different medieval decretals and present a well balanced picture on that canonical discipline (75-94). After these periods Thierry Sol is the one who summarizes the transformation of the former canonical regulation on suitability for priesthood into a precisely institutionalized system of conditions and requirements by the legislation of the Council of Trent (95-130). This deve