1921 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 439 nostra subter firmavimus '. Besides this, there is the almost invariable mention of the chancellor or notary who ■ recognized ' or composed the act. Above all, there is in the majority of documents a welcome mention of the date, giving in many cases both the day and month after the Roman fashion, as well as the year of our Lord, the regnal year of the sovereign, and in many cases the indiction. In many of these respects these charters are analogous to those of Anglo-Saxon England. The use of seals shows a more developed diplomatic, but contrariwise the rarity of witnessing by the ' signum sanctae crucis ' of the participators takes away one helpful method of fixing an approximate date of undated charters. It is curious that the undated charter becomes the rule in England between the Norman Conquest and the accession of Richard I. Ninth-century Provence was wiser in this respect than eleventh- and twelfth-century England, despite the immense administrative progress made in the interval. On the other hand, the Latin of the Provencal charters is often extremely incorrect, and the long-winded phraseology, the work, one suspects, of the church of Vienne rather than the palatium regis, is often of a distinctly primitive sort. The documents, however, are all of analogous type, and M. Poupardin is right in regarding the style as given by the issuing authority. The charters do not seem to have been composed in the churches in whose favour they were issued. T. F. Tout. Leding. Militcer- og finansforfatning i Norge i celdre tid. By Edvard Bull. (Kristiania : Steenske Forlag, 1920.) In continuation and development of studies in the local administrative history of Norway published in the (Norsk) Historisk Tidsskrift, 1 the author systematically investigates the history of Norwegian taxation for military purposes as one of the most important elements in the formation of the Norwegian state out of the earlier tribal organization. Indeed, as the primary duty, incumbent upon the various districts, of making contributions in kind, that is in men and ships, to the royal expeditions, slowly changes into a money tax levied for the upkeep of a feudal army, society passes from the stage of uniform peasant life to one of marked differences in real property and social rank. The book traces this financial and military process from the oldest sources of Norwegian law, the popular gamle love, through the charters and registers of the later middle ages down to the monarchy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and its attempts, corresponding to the contemporary German Defensionswerke, at retransforming the tax into an actual universal levy. The argument follows everywhere closely the history and characteristic differences of the single Norwegian districts and localities, which are illustrated by special maps printed in the text. But general historical interest is never sacrificed, and the arrangement of chapters is on systematic rather than topographical lines. Foreign, particularly English readers, will perhaps first of all look to the seventh chapter on Fremmed pavirkning, which deals with the analogous institutions of the maritime kingdoms of medieval northern Europe, Sweden, Denmark, and England. 1 Rsekke IV, vol. v.
