Or Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged!
I like the idea of them releasing the minutes, but I think that they are sorely screwing up by not making a version available that 99% of the public can afford.
Why would 99% of the population be interested in the records of an internal investigation of a trial of a medieval monastic order? It’s going to be something of interest to historians, but probably not many other people.
Given that The Da Vinci Code and it’s ilk have all been huge best sellers, with many people convinced that it’s “all true!” I’d think that there’d be a market out there for a significant number of people to buy it. Whether any of them would actually read it, is another matter. And quite frankly, why should historians and academics have to shell out $8K for the book? Kind of puts an unnecessary strain on their research dollars, don’t you think?
I bet they’d read it if it started; “Renowned Pope Clement V staggered through the vaulted archway of the Vatican gallery.”
An affordable edition of this would lead me to a dilemma. It sounds as though it would be an interesting read, and would maybe resolve some questions, but if the Vatican publishes it they would be receiving profit from it and that would be the deal breaker for me.
You could always read a library copy or buy it used.
Those would be my only options
It’s in Latin. I doubt its going to be a bestseller.
And in anycase, I’m pretty sure its well out of copyright (and I doubt court records are copyrightable in the first place), so there’s nothing to stop a scholar from buying the Vatican version, translating it and then publishing a gajillion copies in a non-dead language.
Cool. Iway eadray Atinlay.
True, but if they were published at a “normal” price (or slightly higher at a small university press, for example, since it’s unlikely Random House would want to pick the Latin version up), then you could purchase several copies of the work, assign Latin scholars certain sections to translate, and have the work out in English (or Italian, French, etc., etc., etc.) much faster than just having one scholar working on the translation.
Or you could just buy one copy at the current price and get a grad-student to make some photocopies to distribute to your scholar buddies.
Do they trust grad students with that kind of things these days? 