Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000 - c. 1500 (Europa Sacra, 24) 9782503585291, 2503585299

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Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500

EUROPA SACRA Volume 24 Editorial Board under the auspices of Monash University General Editor Peter Howard, Australian Catholic University Editorial Board Megan Cassidy-Welch, University of Queensland David Garrioch, Monash University Thomas Izbicki, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey Carolyn James, Monash University Constant J. Mews, Monash University M. Michele Mulchahey, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto Adriano Prosperi, Scuola Normale di Pisa Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500

Edited by Thomas W. Smith

F

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Cover image: ‘Ecclesia’, London, British Library, MS Egerton 2781, fol. 17r. Second quarter of the fourteenth century. © The  British Library Board.

© 2020, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2020/0095/2 ISBN 978-2-503-58529-1 eISBN 978-2-503-58530-7 DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.117828 ISSN 2030-3068 eISSN 2406-5838 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper.

For Barbara Bombi and Emilia Jamroziak, two inspirational scholars of the medieval Church

Contents

Acknowledgements 11 Abbreviations 13 List of Illustrations

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Introduction Thomas W. Smith

17 Part I Concepts of Papal Authority

Privilegium Romanae Ecclesiae: The Language of Papal Authority over the Church in the Eleventh Century I. S. Robinson

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Papal Authority and Power during the Minority of Emperor Frederick II Benedict Wiedemann 67 The Medieval Papacy and the Concepts of ‘Anti-Judaism’ and ‘Anti-Semitism’ Rebecca Rist 79 The Place of the Papacy in Four Illuminated Histories from Thirteenth-Century England Laura Cleaver

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Part II Representatives of Papal Authority The Interface between Papal Authority and Heresy: The Legates of Honorius III in Languedoc, 1216–1227 Thomas W. Smith

135

Papal Legates in Thirteenth-Century Hungary: Authority, Power, Reality Gábor Barabás 145

8

co n te n ts

Pope Alexander IV, King Henry III, and the Imperial Succession: Master Rostand’s Role in the Sicilian Business, 1255–1258 Philippa J. Mesiano

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Cardinal Gerard of Parma as Co-Ruler in the Kingdom of Sicily, 1285–1289 Jean Dunbabin 171 Part III The Papacy and the East The Power of Tradition: The Papacy and the Churches of the East, c. 1100–1300 † Bernard Hamilton

183

Politics and Power in Latin Efforts at Church Union, 1300–1360 James Hill

193

Modifications to Papal Trade Licences at the Avignon Curia Mike Carr

205

Part IV Cultures of Ecclesiastical Authority and Power The Late Medieval Papal Chapel: A Culture of Power and Authority Matthew Ross

219

Dress to Impress: Jacques de Vitry’s Clothing and Episcopal Self-Fashioning Jan Vandeburie 233 Imaging Power: Gender, Power, and Authority in Florentine Piety Catherine Lawless

253

Royal Women, the Franciscan Order, and Ecclesiastical Authority in Late Medieval Bohemia and the Polish Duchies Kirsty Day

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co nt e nt s

Part V Ecclesiastical Communities and Collective Authority and Power Shall the First Be Last? Order and Disorder amongst Henry II’s Bishops Nicholas Vincent 287 Eustathios’s Life of a Married Priest and the Struggle for Authority in Twelfth-Century Byzantium Maroula Perisanidi

317

The Bishop, the Convent, and the Community: The Attempt to Enclose the Nuns of S. Giustina, Lucca, 1301–1302 Christine Meek

329

Archbishop Walter Reynolds, the Clerical gravamina, and Parliamentary Petitions from the Clergy in the Early Fourteenth Century Matthew Phillips 341 The Power of the Cardinals: Decision-Making at the Papal Curia in Avignon Melanie Brunner 355 Negotiation and Conflict: The Templars’ and Hospitallers’ Relations with Diocesan Bishops in Britain and Ireland Helen J. Nicholson

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Hospitaller and Teutonic Order Lordships in Germany Karl Borchardt

391

Index 407

9

Acknowledgements

It is only proper to begin the acknowledgements for this book by thanking Matthew Ross and the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), University of London. The seed of the idea for the present volume was planted with a conference that Matthew and I organized during our tenures as, respectively, Thornley and Scouloudi Junior Research Fellows (2012–13): ‘Power Manifest: Structures and Concepts of Ecclesiastical Authority, c. 1100–c. 1500’, generously hosted by the IHR in the magnificent Senate Room of Senate House in Bloomsbury, London, on 20 June 2013.1 Matthew and I remain very grateful to the IHR and its director in 2013, Miles Taylor, the Royal Historical Society, Ashgate Publishing (especially John Smedley), Royal Holloway, University of London, and University College, London, for generous financial support which subsidized postgraduate attendance, and to the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (especially Bernard Hamilton, the president of the society at the time), which kindly sponsored and promoted the event. It has been a long road transforming the germ of the conference idea into the present book, and I am indebted to Matthew, with whom I first planned the book, to the earliest contributors for their patience, and to the later authors for their enthusiasm in accepting commissions to write chapters. My thanks to the series editors of Europa Sacra, especially Megan Cassidy-Welch, Guy Carney and the staff at Brepols, Deborah A. Oosterhouse (for her expert copy editing), Brenda Bolton, and the peer reviewer, who have been fulsomely supportive of the present work and have given generously of their time in order to help develop it. My thanks also to the Leverhulme Trust and the University of Leeds for the award of an Early Career Fellowship (2017–20), which allowed me time to work on the book. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the personal debts I owe to families Smith and Lanz, who graciously put me up (and put up with me) in Rotherfield and Emmendingen (twice) during the long weeks of editing. This book is dedicated to two inspirational scholars of the medieval Church with gratitude and respect. Thomas William Smith Emmendingen, Baden-Württemberg, 3 April 2019



1 The original conference website can be accessed at and a post-conference report can be found in M. Ross and T. Smith, ‘The Rise of Ecclesiastical Authority’, Past and Future: The Magazine of the Institute of Historical Research, 14 (2013), 12, , [last accessed 20 January 2019].

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It is a source of great sadness that Professor Bernard Hamilton passed away just before this volume — of which he was an unfailingly kind and patient supporter, as was his way — went to press. Renowned for his generous, warm-hearted encouragement and support of students and early career researchers, Bernard had a profound impact on the fields of Church history and crusade studies; he will be sorely missed. TWS 29 May 2019

Abbreviations

ASV BAV BL CH CICO Fontes CM Councils & Synods CPR CPReg CYS DBI EHR Foedera Hierarchia JEH JK, JE, JL

JMH LCH Liber Censuum Mansi

Vatican City, Archivio Segreto Vaticano Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana London, British Library Cartulaire général de l’Ordre des Hospitaliers de S. Jean de Jérusalem (1100–1310), ed. by J. Delaville Le Roulx, 4 vols (Paris, 1894–1906) Corpus Iuris Canonici Orientalis, Fontes Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. by H. R. Luard, 7 vols, RS, 57 (London, 1872–83) Councils and Synods, with other Documents relating to the English Church, ed. by F. M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney, 2 vols (Oxford, 1964) Calendar of Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III (1216–1272) Preserved in the Public Records Office, ed. by H. C. Maxwell Lyte, 6 vols (London, 1891–1913) Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, 1198–1513, ed. by W. H. Bliss, C. Johnson, and J. A. Twemlow, 19 vols in 20 (London and Dublin, 1893–1998) Canterbury and York Society Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, [last accessed 3 January 2019] English Historical Review Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae et cujuscunque generis acta publica, ed. by T. Rymer, rev. by A. Clarke and F. Holbrooke, 4 vols in 7 (London, 1816–39) Hierarchia catholica medii aevi, ed. by C. Eubel, vol. i (Münster, 1913) Journal of Ecclesiastical History Regesta pontificum romanorum ab condita ecclesia ad annum post Christum natum MCXCVIII, ed. by P. Jaffé, 2nd edn, ed. by F. Kaltenbrunner [JK: an.?–590], P. Ewald [JE: an. 590–882], S. Loewenfeld [JL: an. 882–1198], 2 vols (Leipzig, 1885–88) Journal of Medieval History The Letters and Charters of Henry II, King of England (1154–1189), ed. by N. Vincent and others 8 vols (Oxford, 2020) Le Liber Censuum de l’église romaine, ed. by P. Fabre and L. Duchesne, 3 vols (Paris, 1889–1952) Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. by J. D. Mansi, cont. by I. B. Martin and L. Petit, 53 vols (Florence–Venice, 1759–98; Paris, 1901–27)

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a bbr e v i atio ns

MGH MGH Libelli de lite MGH SS MedSt ODNB PG PL Potthast PROME RCA Reg. Suppl. Reg. Vat. Register RI RS TNA

Monumenta Germaniae historica, inde ab anno Christi quintesimo usque ad annum millesimum et quingentesimum (Hanover–Berlin, 1824–) Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum, 3 vols (Hanover, 1891–97) Scriptores (in folio), 32 vols in 34 (Hanover, 1826–1934) Mediaeval Studies Oxford Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to the Year 2000, ed. by H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford, 2004) Patrologiae cursus completus, series Graeca, ed. by J.-P. Migne, 162 vols (Paris, 1857–86) Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina, ed. by J.-P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1841–64) Regesta pontificum romanorum inde ab anno post Christum natum MCXCVIII ad annum MCCCIV, ed. by A. Potthast, 2 vols (Berlin, 1874–75) The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. by C. Given-Wilson and others, 16 vols (Woodbridge, 2005); [last accessed 4 January 2018] I Registri della cancelleria angioina riconstruiti, ed. by R. Filangieri and others, 50 vols to date (Naples 1950–) Vatican City, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Registra Supplicationum Vatican City, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Registra Vaticana Die Register Innocenz’ III., ed. by O. Hageneder and others, 14 vols to date (Vienna, 1964–) Regesta Imperii, [last accessed 3 April 2019] Rolls Series The National Archives, Kew, London

List of Illustrations

Laura Cleaver

Figure 4.1. Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, MS 12017, membrane 11. © National Museums Liverpool (Walker Art Gallery). 113 Figure 4.2. London, British Library, Cotton MS Faustina B VII, fol. 52v. © The British Library Board. 114 Figure 4.3. London, British Library, Cotton Ch. Roll XIV.12. © The British Library Board.117 Figure 4.4. London, British Library, Cotton Ch. Roll XIV.12, membrane 1, dorse (detail). © The British Library Board. 118 Figure 4.5. Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, MS 12017, membrane 13 (detail). © National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery. 121 Figure 4.6. London, British Library, Cotton MS Faustina B VII, fol. 59. © The British Library Board. 123 Figure 4.7. Eton College, MS 96, fol. 12v. Reproduced by permission of the Provost and Fellows of Eton College. 124 Figure 4.8. London, British Library, Cotton Ch. Roll XIV.12. Gregory the Great. © The British Library Board. 126

Jan Vandeburie

Figure 13.1. The episcopal seal of Jacques de Vitry. Public Domain image from Wikimedia Commons. Figure 13.2. Jacques de Vitry presenting a book to the pope, in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66A, fol. 1r. Licensed under a Creative Common Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License and reproduced with the kind permission of Corpus Christi Library. Figure 13.3. A bishop on the illuminated mitre from the Oignies collection. Photo courtesy of the Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois, Trésor d’Oignies. Figure 13.4. The embroidered mitre of Jacques de Vitry (back). Photo courtesy of the Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois, Trésor d’Oignies. Figure 13.5. The illuminated mitre of Jacques de Vitry (front). Photo courtesy of the Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois, Trésor d’Oignies. Figure 13.6. The episcopal crozier of Jacques de Vitry. Photo courtesy of the Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois, Trésor d’Oignies. Figure 13.7. Jacques de Vitry’s portable altar (bottom). Photo courtesy of the Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois, Trésor d’Oignies. Figure 13.8. The illuminated mitre of Jacques de Vitry (back). Photo courtesy of the Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois, Trésor d’Oignies.

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237 237 238 242 245 246 247

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l is t o f i l lus t r at i o n s

Catherine Lawless

Figure 14.1. Bernardo Daddi, Crucifixion with St Clare, a friar and mourners. Limerick, Hunt Museum. Reproduction courtesy of The Hunt Museum, Limerick. Figure 14.2. Bernardo Daddi, The Virgin and Child with SS John Baptist. New York, Metropolitan Museum. Licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0.10). Public Domain Dedication. Figure 14.3. Taddeo Gaddi, The Tree of Life. Florence, Museo dell’Opera di S. Croce (refectory). Image from Wikimedia Commons, Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-SA3.0).

Nicholas Vincent

Table 16.1. Archi/episcopal witnesses in the charters of King Henry II.

254 255 255 295

Karl Borchardt

Table 22.1. Taxes owed by the military religious orders to the empire in Germany. I. Prior of Alamania, Johannitermeister; II. Deutschmeister; A. Hochmeister for Austria; B. Hochmeister for Etsch and Gebürg; C. Hochmeister for Alsace and Burgundy; D. Hochmeister for Koblenz.

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Thomas W. Smith

Introduction

While they often go hand in hand and the distinction between the two is frequently blurred, authority and power are distinct concepts and abilities. This was a problem that the medieval Church tussled with throughout the period c. 1000–c. 1500. As medieval clergy discovered (often at their cost), one could claim authority but be unable to underwrite it with physical power, and, conversely, one could wield brute power with no claim to authority. In the case of the medieval Church, claims of authority, efforts to have that authority recognized, and the struggle to transform it into more tangible forms of power were defining factors of its existence.1 In an effort to further our understanding of these aspects of ecclesiastical history, and to point the way to new avenues of research and new approaches to a traditional topic, the present volume presents a set of interdisciplinary essays which effect a broad temporal, geographical, and thematic sweep of the concept and realities of ecclesiastical authority and power in the High and late Middle Ages. As the studies assembled here demonstrate, claims to authority by members of the Church were often in inverse proportion to their actual power — a problematic paradox which resulted from the uneven and uncertain acceptance of ecclesiastical authority by lay powers and, indeed, fellow members of the ecclesia.



1 The topic is so vast and so integral to the study of medieval ecclesiastical history that it is not possible, nor would it be helpful, to attempt to provide a comprehensive bibliography; instead, the literature cited here aims to point the reader to some of the most recent and relevant work. See, for example, the classic studies: Tierney and Linehan, Authority and Power; Morris, Papal Monarchy; Robinson, The Papacy; Sayers, Innocent III; Bolton, Innocent III. More recently, see Whalen, The Two Powers; Coss and others, Episcopal Power and Local Society; Sisson and Larson, Companion to the Medieval Papacy; Cushing, ‘Papal Authority and its Limitations’; Rennie, ‘The “Injunction of Jeremiah”’; Chapman, Sacred Authority and Temporal Power; Johrendt and Müller, Rom und die Regionen; Burger, Bishops, Clerks, and Diocesan Governance; Eldevik, Episcopal Power and Ecclesiastical Reform; Canning, Ideas of Power; Johrendt and Müller, Römisches Zentrum und kirchliche Peripherie; Bolton and Meek, Aspects of Power and Authority; Ott and Trumbore Jones, The Bishop Reformed; Figueira, Plenitude of Power; Jaritz, Jørgensen, and Salonen, The Long Arm of Papal Authority; Smith, Innocent III and the Crown of Aragon; Miller, The Bishop’s Palace; Bijsterveld, Teunis, and Wareham, Negotiating Secular and Ecclesiastical Power. Thomas W. Smith teaches history at Rugby School. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 17–26 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118955

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The majority of the essays address the theme of authority. They reveal how clerical claims to authority were frequently debated, refined, opposed, and resisted in their expression and implementation because clergy had to negotiate a complex landscape of overlapping and competing claims to spiritual authority in pursuit of their rights. Competition and conflict were essential elements of this endeavour. The arenas in which struggles for authority were waged ranged from the papal, royal, and imperial curiae, through monastic houses (especially their libraries and scriptoria), law courts and parliaments, urban religious communities and devotional networks, to contact and conflict with the laity on the ground in partibus; the weapons deployed included art, manuscripts, dress, letters, petitions, treatises, legal claims, legates, and the physical arms of allied lay powers. The present book shows how the Church asserted its authority most effectively when the actors with which it engaged stood to gain from the acceptance and recognition of that authority, such as petitioners and diplomats dealing at the papal curia, or when the members of the Eastern Churches required political and military support against Muslim aggressors. The same dynamic was at play in most clerical efforts to wield power, which a number of the chapters investigate. While the recognition of ecclesiastical authority was by itself a manifestation of ecclesiastical power, when the Church endeavoured to wield physical power in a more direct fashion, such as the eradication of heresy, the removal of renegade lay powers, or intervention in diplomatic affairs, a prerequisite for success was usually the ability to secure the support of lay powers whose views and aims aligned with those of the Church and who were willing to work towards a common goal (albeit with different motivations). The inherent weakness in ecclesiastical power — that it derived from limited independent temporal resources, namely military force — was exposed whenever the Church was not able to win the backing of a secular potentate who shared its goals and was willing to take action in pursuit of those aims. Thus the Church’s claims to authority were always much stronger than its claims to power, and at the heart of the attempt to transform the former into the latter was the art of persuasion. Indeed, persuasion was the central dynamic at play as medieval popes and clergy attempted to convince others of their authority and translate that into meaningful power, as the chapters of the present volume illustrate. In seeking to identify an epicentre for such a vast theme, it is logical to begin with the high medieval papacy’s attempts to gain acceptance of the idea of the ‘universal Church’: one institution for all of Christendom, often conceptualized as a human body with the papacy as its head (caput) and the rest of the Church as its members. The papacy, as the head of the Church, derived its authority from St Peter, to whom Christ exclaimed in Matthew 16. 18: ‘tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam’ (‘you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church’). With this Petrine authority at its core, the papacy devoted much of its energy to the development and exposition of complex theologies of office, through which it justified its position as the adjudicator of Christendom’s spiritual and temporal affairs — in essence, its right to exercise power. Like the Petrine justification, this authority was drawn predominantly from Scripture, expressed through the biblical quotations and

i nt ro d u ct i o n

allusions which course through the papal letters, the texts of which were dispatched, read, and heard all over Christendom.2 The development of the language of this papal authority in the formative period of the eleventh century is explored by I. S. Robinson in ‘Privilegium Romanae Ecclesiae: The Language of Papal Authority over the Church in the Eleventh Century’, which traces exactly how reforming popes crafted their theologies of authority. As Robinson demonstrates, the popes combined traditional learning, drawing upon and distilling centuries of biblical and legal thought, with radical new ideas about obedience to papal authority, which they injected into this discourse, in their attempts to craft a tool with which to build the universal Church. Benedict Wiedemann takes this further in ‘Papal Authority and Power during the Minority of Emperor Frederick II’ in which he explores the nature of Pope Innocent III’s authority over Sicily at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries during the minority of Frederick II. Wiedemann questions whether Innocent was operating as ‘feudal overlord’ and intervening by right of his authority over an orphaned vassal, or whether the pope in fact derived his authority over Frederick from the last wishes of the boy’s late mother, Empress Constance. The answer, Wiedemann argues, is that the foundation of Innocent’s authority in this matter was in fact situational and dynamic: the pope used both justifications as and when it suited — an argument which complicates the search for over-arching justifications for papal authority. One means of understanding and measuring papal authority and power is to investigate how the papacy defined itself in relation to the ‘Other’ in medieval Christendom.3 In ‘The Medieval Papacy and the Concepts of “Anti-Judaism” and “Anti-Semitism”’, Rebecca Rist continues the exploration of the conceptualization of authority at the papal curia by seeking to discover whether we can consider high medieval popes anti-Judaic or anti-semitic. Rist’s study nuances our understanding of papal authority over Jewish communities and how the papacy defined them, and itself, in its world view. It sheds light on the perceived theological threat that Judaism posed to Christianity and the papacy’s response in its attempts to ensure the unassailable dominance of Christianity in the West. Ultimately, she concludes, we should consider some medieval popes to have been anti-Judaic, but not anti-semitic in the modern sense of the term. While papal letters attest to the deployment of this language of authority, they tell only one side of the story: that is, what the popes wanted their audiences to think. To attempt to measure the impact of their efforts, we must turn to other sources composed outside the curia. One fascinating category of sources for this purpose is the illustrated histories produced throughout the West during the Middle Ages, which provide insights into how the popes and their authority were conceived by the members of the Church. In ‘The Place of the Papacy in Four Illuminated



2 On the use of the Bible in papal letters, see Tessera, ‘Use of the Bible in Twelfth-Century Papal Letters’; Smith, ‘Use of the Bible in the Arengae’; Smith, ‘Preambles to Crusading’; Smith, Curia and Crusade, 213–60. 3 On the high medieval papacy and Jewish communities, see Rist, Popes and Jews.

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Histories from Thirteenth-Century England’, Laura Cleaver explores the imagery, text, and diagrammatic structures used by the makers of four illustrated histories in thirteenth-century England to trace papal authority from Christ and to locate the popes in relation to contemporary secular rulers, providing a window into the reception of ideas about the papacy and its place in the world, both theologically and temporally. Another way of measuring the reach of papal authority is to examine the representatives of the curia sent out into the localities and their reception.4 Though the papacy carefully spun its claims to authority, probably more successfully and industriously than any other medieval institution or ruler, this did not translate ipso facto into power. The struggle to turn a cleverly phrased arenga in a papal document into real, tangible power on the ground in provincia, through papal orders in its letters, through representatives in the form of legates and messengers, or through the hierarchy of the local churches, proved perennial. In ‘The Interface between Papal Authority and Heresy: The Legates of Honorius III in Languedoc, 1216–1227’, Thomas W. Smith assesses the legates deployed by Pope Honorius III to Languedoc in the early thirteenth century. His essay explores the interface between papal authority and heresy and demonstrates how legates a latere struggled to overcome the challenges posed to their office by heretics who neither appreciated the dual identities of legates as cardinals and ‘the pope’ in their provincia nor respected them. In ‘Papal Legates in Thirteenth-Century Hungary: Authority, Power, Reality’, Gábor Barabás furthers this study with an analysis of papal legation in thirteenth-century Hungary. Hungary posed a similar challenge to Languedoc in that papal legates were charged with the eradication of heresy, and there were also pagans whom the papacy wanted to convert. Barabás analyses the efforts of the legates to exert papal authority in their relations with the kings of Hungary and how the legates and their masters carefully negotiated the exercise of authority and power. In ‘Pope Alexander IV, King Henry III, and the Imperial Succession: Master Rostand’s Role in the Sicilian Business, 1255–1258’, Philippa J. Mesiano focuses attention on the practical management of the relationship between the spiritual and secular powers in the role played by Pope Alexander IV’s nuncio, Master Rostand, in the Kingdom of England regarding the ‘Sicilian business’. Mesiano traces how the pope asserted his power and authority in secular affairs through the activities of his envoy, but also draws attention to the pitfalls associated with embedding papal representatives so deeply in the royal household, who could not always be relied upon to pursue the pope’s agenda when it clashed with that of the king. Jean Dunbabin extends this examination of papal representatives in ‘Cardinal Gerard of Parma as Co-ruler in the Kingdom of Sicily, 1285–1289’. Dunbabin demonstrates how Gerard played a crucial role in preventing the collapse of Angevin rule in Sicily through his skill in administration, but how his efforts to push forward a programme of reform hamstrung the government’s power to tax and the papacy’s ultimate goal.



4 On papal legates, see Rennie, Foundations of Medieval Papal Legation; Alberzoni and Zey, Legati e delegati papali; Alberzoni and Montaubin, Legati, delegati e l’impresa d’Oltremare; Smith, Curia and Crusade, 261–95.

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Moving further eastwards in the Mediterranean and into the East,5 in ‘The Power of Tradition: The Papacy and the Churches of the East, c. 1100–1300’, Bernard Hamilton surveys the power of tradition in the papacy’s relations with the Churches of the East from c. 1100 to 1300 in its efforts to seek reunification. Hamilton shows how the papacy enjoyed the great advantage of being recognized by the Separated Eastern Churches as the legitimate successor of St Peter and that this granted primacy over all other Churches, but when the popes realized that the Eastern Churches did not accept supremacy of jurisdiction of Rome, the papacy changed tack and attempted to reconcile the heads of the Churches as the beginning of the process of union. Ultimately, Hamilton suggests, the papacy’s attempts at reunification in this period were poorly timed, coinciding with the waning of Latin power in the Levant. In ‘Politics and Power in Latin Efforts at Church Union, 1300–1360’, James Hill continues this investigation into the fourteenth century using the examples of the Byzantine Empire and the Kingdom of Armenia and reveals how the papacy linked politics and religion in its negotiations with the other Churches. Hill measures the success of these efforts and concludes that discussion over religious union was overshadowed by political considerations — an aspect over which the papacy had only limited power. Mike Carr examines the papacy’s intervention in another aspect of Mediterranean life in ‘Modifications to Papal Trade Licences at the Avignon Curia’, in which he studies modifications to papal trade licences allowing Christian trade with Muslims. It offers a case study of the means available to the papacy in its attempts to impose and maintain some form of power and authority over Latin trade with Muslims in the fourteenth century. Analysis of the modifications to the licences demonstrates that the popes regulated requests for such grants very carefully; the fact that supplicants invested so much time and money in petitioning for these documents reveals that the papacy maintained at least the appearance of authority and power over the trade, even if it could not control the physical passage of materials. The process of crafting the papal claims to authority and attempting to exercise power required the recruitment of some of the greatest minds of the time, and the papacy forged its curia into a nexus of intellectual endeavour, attracting Paris masters, Italian canon lawyers, German scholastici, English prelates, and others, in its efforts to bolster its authority in the face of changing times and threats.6 Two chapters assess these cultures of ecclesiastical authority and power in the thirteenth century. In ‘The Late Medieval Papal Chapel: A Culture of Power and Authority’, Matthew Ross investigates how the late medieval papal chapel operated simultaneously as a node of curial culture and a repository of papal power, blending cultural and musical functions with activity in the legal processes transacted at the curia. The reception and transmission of this culture outside the curia is studied in ‘Dress to Impress: Jacques de Vitry’s Clothing and Episcopal Self-Fashioning’, in which Jan Vandeburie shows how one key thirteenth-century curial figure, Jacques de Vitry, internalized and broadcast papal authority, and his own episcopal authority which derived from



5 See, for instance, Hamilton, Christian World; Carr, Merchant Crusaders. 6 See, for example, Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants; Ross, ‘Papal Chapel’.

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that, on a frontier of Christendom through his choice of clothing. Vandeburie reveals how Jacques carefully fashioned his self-identity in order to meet the challenge of exerting authority in Outremer. Continuing the interdisciplinary study of cultures of authority, and turning from the expression of authority and power by men of the Church to that by women, two further chapters explore new approaches to the topic.7 ‘Imaging Power: Gender, Power, and Authority in Florentine Piety’, by Catherine Lawless, examines how power was imaged in late medieval Florence. In a close reading of two images made by followers of Giotto in the late thirteenth or fourteenth century (a diptych depicting the Crucifixion and the Virgin and Child and a fresco of the Tree of Life), Lawless guides the reader through the networks of gender and power in Florence from which they originated — namely penitent women and their Franciscan advisers — shedding new light on how female piety influenced contemporary devotional practices and the Franciscan Order. Kirsty Day continues the exploration of cultures of female devotion and engagement with the Franciscans in ‘Royal Women, the Franciscan Order, and Ecclesiastical Authority in Late Medieval Bohemia and the Polish Duchies’, in which she examines royal women and the Franciscans in Bohemia and the Polish duchies, problematizing traditional approaches to female ecclesiastical authority and revealing how male clerics shaped female authority along the lines of spiritual programmes set out at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). Day argues against either defining the authority of medieval women religious through acts of disobedience or interpreting them as oppressed subjects and challenges the existence of a singular authoritative Franciscan identity for women. Developing the theme of ecclesiastical communities and collective authority among the members of the Church in a different direction, in ‘Shall the First Be Last? Order and Disorder amongst Henry II’s Bishops’, Nicholas Vincent explores the question of precedence of bishops in the witness lists of charters issued by King Henry II of England. He traces the factors at play in deciding who should come first, such as the date of episcopal consecration, the antiquity of the see, or its wealth, and concludes that while sometimes the order we find in witness lists reflects a certain informality or indifference, at other times political calculation and a very deliberate desire to display precedence influenced their order, which are testament to jostling for position and the attempt to exercise power and authority. In ‘Eustathios’s Life of a Married Priest and the Struggle for Authority in Twelfth-Century Byzantium’, Maroula Perisanidi examines a different struggle for authority: that over clerical marriage in the twelfth-century Church. Through a close analysis of the saint’s life of a married priest written by Eustathios, Bishop of Thessalonike, Perisanidi shows how this was used to create a different model of moral and spiritual authority from that of religious in Byzantium and the secular clergy in Europe. Rather than championing



7 See, for instance, Mooney, Clare of Assisi; Burton, ‘Medieval Nunneries and Male Authority’; Griffiths and Hotchin, Partners in Spirit; Stabler Miller, Beguines of Medieval Paris; Tinkle, Gender and Power; Coakley, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power; Erler and Kowaleski, Gendering the Master Narrative; Mooney, Gendered Voices; Erler and Kowaleski, Women and Power in the Middle Ages.

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celibacy and seclusion, Eustathios’s text propounded a different model of spiritual authority which celebrated the choice of the protagonist to marry and encouraged readers to pursue a more virtuous life following the example of the married priest. In ‘The Bishop, the Convent, and the Community: The Attempt to Enclose the Nuns of S. Giustina, Lucca, 1301–1302’, Christine Meek investigates a case study in the exercise of female power within the Church when the nuns of S. Giustina in Lucca defied attempts by their diocesan bishop to enforce enclosure on their convent at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Through adept use of the Church courts and the construction of arguments revolving around pastoral care and the importance of the convent to the local community, the case of the nuns of S. Giustina demonstrates not only the power of female religious within the structures of the Church, but also the limits of the authority and power of the bishop in attempting to achieve his ends. Turning from regular clergy back to secular, in ‘Archbishop Walter Reynolds, the Clerical gravamina, and Parliamentary Petitions from the Clergy in the Early Fourteenth Century’, Matthew Phillips analyses the attempt to turn collective authority into tangible power in the clerical gravamina, or grievances, submitted by the Church to the English Crown in the early fourteenth century, which sought redress over competing claims to jurisdiction in legal cases between ecclesiastical and secular courts. In ‘The Power of the Cardinals: Decision-Making at the Papal Curia in Avignon’, Melanie Brunner investigates another collective source of authority: the College of Cardinals. Brunner explores in detail exactly how the cardinals at the early fourteenth-century Avignon curia fitted into the power structures of the court, the collective aspects of papal decision-making (such as advising the pope on affairs brought before the curia), and what type of influence they had on papal politics as conduits for information. Brunner demonstrates that despite often being nebulous and informal, the power of the cardinals to influence papal decision-making processes could be decisive, deriving from their access to, control of, and dissemination of information — one of the main currencies of power at the curia. Famously, the religious communities of the military orders — chief among which were the Hospitallers, Templars, and Teutonic Knights — enjoyed the privilege of exemption from episcopal authority and reported only to the papacy, a privilege that reduced the power of the local Church hierarchy and boosted that of the curia.8 Though a great benefit for the orders concerned, the exercise of their rights in this regard was a source of equally great friction between them and their diocesan bishops, who often attempted to impose their authority and power over the orders. In ‘Negotiation and Conflict: The Templars’ and Hospitallers’ Relations with Diocesan Bishops in Britain and Ireland’, Helen J. Nicholson examines the relations of the Templars and the Hospitallers with their diocesan bishops in Britain and Ireland between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Tracing resentment and conflict, she argues that the religious vocation of the orders and the defence of the holy places in Outremer lent them considerable moral authority. This, combined



8 For an introduction to the military orders and the voluminous literature on this topic, see Morton, Medieval Military Orders.

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with their impressive knowledge of the law and connections to the Crown, allowed them to exploit their privileges in the face of episcopal opposition. Yet Nicholson also demonstrates that relations were not always confrontational: where the orders provided effective pastoral care and served their local communities well, they often enjoyed the support of the bishop. In ‘Hospitaller and Teutonic Order Lordships in Germany’, Karl Borchardt expands this exploration to the Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights and their efforts to build and expand territorial lordships in Germany in the High and late Middle Ages. Examining the orders’ privileges and the lawsuits which resulted in the attempts by the knights to press their claims, Borchardt explains why the two orders enjoyed mixed success in defending their possessions and rights. It is hoped that the interdisciplinary fusion of traditional historical methods with gender studies, art history, musicology, and material culture presented here will spark new interest in, and new approaches to, a topic that underpins our understanding of one of the most significant institutions in the medieval world, and about which there is still so much to learn.

Works Cited Secondary Studies Alberzoni, M. P., and P. Montaubin, eds, Legati, delegati e l’impresa d’Oltremare (secoli xii– xiii) / Papal Legates, Delegates and the Crusades (12th–13th Century): Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi Milano, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 9–11 marzo 2011 (Turnhout, 2014) Alberzoni, M. P., and C. Zey, eds, Legati e delegati papali: Profili, ambiti d’azione e tipologie di intervento nei secoli xii–xiii (Milan, 2012) Baldwin, J. W., Masters, Princes, and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and his Circle, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ, 1970) Bijsterveld, A. J. A., H. B. Teunis, and A. Wareham, eds, Negotiating Secular and Ecclesiastical Power: Western Europe in the Central Middle Ages (Turnhout, 1999) Bolton, B., Innocent III: Studies on Papal Authority and Pastoral Care (Aldershot, 1995) Bolton, B., and C. Meek, eds, Aspects of Power and Authority in the Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2007) Burger, M., Bishops, Clerks, and Diocesan Governance in Thirteenth-Century England: Reward and Punishment (Cambridge, 2012) Burton, J., ‘Medieval Nunneries and Male Authority: Female Monasteries in England and Wales’, in Women in the Medieval Monastic World, ed. by J. E. Burton and K. Stöber (Turnhout, 2015), 123–43 Canning, J., Ideas of Power in the Late Middle Ages, 1296–1417 (Cambridge, 2011) Carr, M., Merchant Crusaders in the Aegean, 1292–1352 (Woodbridge, 2015) Chapman, A., Sacred Authority and Temporal Power in the Writings of Bernard of Clairvaux (Turnhout, 2013) Coakley, J. W., Women, Men, and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and their Male Collaborators (New York, 2006)

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Coss, P. R., and others, eds, Episcopal Power and Local Society in Medieval Europe, 900–1400 (Turnhout, 2017) Cushing, K. G., ‘Papal Authority and its Limitations’, in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity, ed. by J. H. Arnold (Oxford, 2014), 515–30 Eldevik, J., Episcopal Power and Ecclesiastical Reform in the German Empire: Tithes, Lordship, and Community, 950–1150 (Cambridge, 2012) Erler, M. C., and M. Kowaleski, eds, Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2003) ———, eds, Women and Power in the Middle Ages (Athens, 1988) Figueira, R. C., ed., Plenitude of Power: The Doctrines and Exercise of Authority in the Middle Ages, Essays in Memory of Robert Louis Benson (Farnham, 2006) Griffiths, F., and J. Hotchin, eds, Partners in Spirit: Women, Men, and Religious Life in Germany, 1100–1500 (Turnhout, 2014) Hamilton, B., The Christian World of the Middle Ages (Stroud, 2003) Jaritz, G., T. Jørgensen, and K. Salonen, eds, The Long Arm of Papal Authority: Late Medieval Christian Peripheries and their Communication with the Holy See (Budapest, 2005) Johrendt, J., and H. Müller, eds, Rom und die Regionen: Studien zur Homogenisierung der lateinischen Kirch im Hochmittelalter (Berlin, 2012) ———, eds, Römisches Zentrum und kirchliche Peripherie: Das universale Papsttum als Bezugspunkt der Kirchen von den Reformpäpsten bis zu Innozenz III. (Berlin, 2008) Miller, M. C., The Bishop’s Palace: Architecture and Authority in Medieval Italy (Ithaca, NY, 2000) Mooney, C., ed., Clare of Assisi and the Thirteenth-Century Church: Religious Women, Rules and Resistance (Philadelphia, PA, 2016) ———, Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and their Interpreters (Philadelphia, PA, 1999) Morris, C., The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford, 1989) Morton, N., The Medieval Military Orders, 1120–1314 (Harlow, 2013) Ott, J. S., and A. Trumbore Jones, eds, The Bishop Reformed: Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages (Farnham, 2007) Rennie, K. R., The Foundations of Medieval Papal Legation (Basingstoke, 2013) ———, ‘The “Injunction of Jeremiah”: Papal Politicking and Power in the Middle Ages’, JMH, 40 (2014), 108–22 Rist, R., Popes and Jews, 1095–1291 (Oxford, 2016) Robinson, I. S., The Papacy, 1073–1198: Continuity and Innovation (Cambridge, 1990) Ross, M., ‘The Papal Chapel 1288–1304: A Study in Institutional and Cultural Change’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University College, London, 2013) Sayers, J. E., Innocent III: Leader of Europe, 1198–1216 (London, 1993) Sisson, K, and A. A. Larson, eds, A Companion to the Medieval Papacy: Growth of an Ideology and Institution (Leiden, 2016) Smith, D. J., Innocent III and the Crown of Aragon: The Limits of Papal Authority (Aldershot, 2004) Smith, T. W., Curia and Crusade: Pope Honorius III and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1216–1227 (Turnhout, 2017)

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———, ‘Preambles to Crusading: The Arengae of Crusade Letters issued by Innocent III and Honorius III’, in Papacy, Crusade, and Christian–Muslim Relations, ed. by J. L. Bird (Amsterdam, 2018), 63–78 ———, ‘The Use of the Bible in the Arengae of Pope Gregory IX’s Crusade Calls’, in The Uses of the Bible in Crusader Sources, ed. by E. Lapina and N. Morton (Leiden, 2017), 206–35 Stabler Miller, T., The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority (Philadelphia, PA, 2014) Tessera, M. R., ‘The Use of the Bible in Twelfth-Century Papal Letters to Outremer’, in The Uses of the Bible in Crusader Sources, ed. by E. Lapina and N. Morton (Leiden, 2017), 179–205 Tierney, B., and P. Linehan, eds, Authority and Power: Studies on Medieval Law and Government Presented to Walter Ullmann on his Seventieth Birthday (Cambridge, 1980) Tinkle, T., Gender and Power in Medieval Exegesis (New York, 2010) Whalen, B. E., The Two Powers: The Papacy, the Empire, and the Struggle for Sovereignty in the Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia, PA, 2019)

Part I

Concepts of Papal Authority

I. S. Robinson

Privilegium Romanae Ecclesiae: The Language of Papal Authority over the Church in the Eleventh Century

Discussions of papal authority in western Europe in the eleventh century take as their starting point the familiar New Testament text Matthew 16. 18, Christ’s words to Peter: ‘You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church’. Eleventh-century authors viewed this text in the light of the interpretations given in authentic papal documents of the fourth and fifth centuries and inauthentic papal documents of the ninth century. The interpretation of the Council of Sardica (343) was that the Bishops of Rome, as Peter’s successors, had been granted by Christ a position of precedence in the judicial system of the Church. The Roman see was the court of appeal for all other bishops, and the judgement of the pope was final.1 Pope Innocent I (402–17) decreed that all ‘the greater cases’ (maiores causae) of ecclesiastical litigation in western Europe must be referred to the Roman see for judgement, since Rome was the mother Church of the West. Moreover Rome’s primacy in the West was not only judicial but also doctrinal: Innocent I required all questions of the faith to be referred to Rome.2 What Innocent I claimed only in the case of the Western Churches, Pope Leo I (440–61) restated as an obligation of all the Churches, Eastern and Western, linking that obligation specifically with the text Matthew 16. 18–19. These prerogatives of the Roman Church comprised a principatus, originally conferred by Christ only on Peter, the prince of the apostles, now exercised by the pope as the vicar of St Peter.3 The claims of Leo I were further elaborated in the 115 forged and 125 falsified papal letters of the ninth-century Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals, which were to exert a strong influence on eleventh-century canonists: The holy Roman and apostolic Church obtained the primacy not from the apostles but from the Lord our Saviour himself, as he himself said to the apostle 1 Hess, The Canons of the Council of Sardica, 109–27. Cf. Klinkenberg, ‘Der römische Primat’, 4: ‘the hour of the birth [of the papal primacy] was the council of Sardica’. 2 Ullmann, Gelasius I., 35–44. 3 Leo I, JK, no. 406: Epistola 9, preface, in PL, liv, 625. Cf. Leo I, JK, no. 403, in PL, liv, 615. See Ullmann, Gelasius I., 71–76. I. S. Robinson is the Lecky Professor of History (emeritus) at Trinity College, Dublin. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 29–65 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118956

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Peter, ‘You are Peter’ et cetera. This apostolic see was, therefore, established as hinge and head of all the churches by the Lord and by no other and, just as the door is ruled by the hinge, so all the churches — as the Lord has ordered it — are ruled by the authority of this holy see. If more difficult cases arise among you, therefore, refer them to the summit of this holy see as if to the head, so that they may be decided by apostolic judgement […]. No one doubts that the apostolic church is the mother of all the churches, from whose rules, it is agreed, you are in no way to deviate.4 Pseudo-Isidore added a further claim to those of Leo I: ‘councils must not be celebrated nor bishops condemned except according to the judgement of the Roman pontiff ’.5 At the beginning of the eleventh century, therefore, there was an abundance of material emphasizing the primacy of the papacy, but contemporary authors did not respond to this material with equal enthusiasm. The most influential of these writers was Bishop Burchard of Worms (1000–25), whose canon law collection, the Decretum, compiled between 1008 and 1012, was widely copied and disseminated throughout the eleventh century and as late as the thirteenth century.6 There is no consensus among historians about Burchard’s attitude towards the papal primacy and no agreement whether he regarded the Roman Church or the episcopate as central to the constitution of the Church. Of the Decretum’s 1784 canons and rubrics (in which Burchard interpreted the canons for his readers) 300 deal with the rights and duties of bishops and fewer than twenty with those of the Roman Church. Burchard’s rubrics include the statement ‘that the bishops are the keys of the Church and have the power to close heaven and open its gates’ and ‘that the Lord chose the bishops to glorify him and that all the princes of the earth ought to obey them and bow their heads’.7 In the Decretum the bishops, often working together with kings and actively involved in secular affairs, assume responsibility for the routine government of the Church. Nor is this surprising, given that Burchard himself was so characteristic a representative of the late Ottonian Church in Germany, trained in the imperial chapel and enjoying the confidence and patronage of Emperor Henry II.8 There are certainly passages in the Decretum in which Burchard showed himself concerned to emphasize

4 Decretales pseudo-Isidorianae, ed. by Hinschius, 83–84 (Ps.-Anacletus, Epistola 3, c. xxx, xxxiv), 136 (Ps.-Calixtus, Epistola 1, c. i, ii). These passages were absorbed into eleventh-century canon law in the reforming The Collection in 74 Titles, trans. by Gilchrist, 2, 4, Diversorum patrum sententie, ed. by Gilchrist, 20–21, and Anselm of Lucca, Collectio canonum i. 2, i. 12, ed. by Thaner. 5 Decretales pseudo-Isidorianae, ed. by Hinschius, 459 (Ps.-Julius, Epistola, c. vi). See Hartmann, Der Primat des römischen Bischofs, 65–66. 6 With eighty-seven extant manuscripts, Burchard’s Decretum was the most frequently copied eleventhcentury canonical collection after the Panormia of Bishop Ivo of Chartres (1094/95). In the twelfth century Burchard’s Decretum was the eleventh-century canonical collection most cited by canonists. See Jasper, ‘Burchards Dekret in der Sicht der Gregorianer’, 167–68, 197–98. 7 Burchard of Worms, Decretum, i. 125, 126 (Ps.-Clement I, Epistola, c. 37). 8 Fuhrmann, Einfluß und Verbreitung, 442; see also 447–50 for the debate on Burchard’s attitude towards the papacy and the episcopate. Cf. Fleckenstein, Die Hofkapelle der deutschen Könige, 88–89; Laudage, Gregorianische Reform und Investiturstreit, 78–80.

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the authority of the episcopate rather than the primacy of the papacy. When, for example, he considered the conduct of those penitents who made the pilgrimage to Rome as an alternative to the penance imposed on them in their home diocese, he concluded that these pilgrims must first confess their sins to their bishop or his delegate ‘because they must be bound or loosed by their own bishop or priest, not by a stranger’.9 Conspicuous by its absence from the Decretum is the subject of the papal exemption of monasteries from the jurisdiction of their diocesan bishop, an intervention which already in Burchard’s lifetime (and increasingly during the course of the century) was of great importance in the development of papal authority. It was a subject that Burchard could have found in one of his principal sources of material, the Collectio Anselmo dedicata; but, ignoring it, he emphasized instead the submission that abbots and monks owed to their diocesan bishop.10 Nevertheless the Leonine and the Pseudo-Isidorean interpretation of the primacy of the Roman Church can be found in Burchard’s Decretum. Burchard’s rubric in Decretum i. 2 identified ‘the privilege committed only to blessed Peter as the vicar of the Lord and the difference in the power [potestas] that the apostles possessed’. He thus interpreted the text Matthew 16. 18 precisely as Pope Leo I had done: the potestas conferred on the pope is different in kind from that of the other bishops since the Roman Church was the supreme judicial tribunal of the Christian world.11 A subsequent rubric reinforces this interpretation: ‘the more difficult cases are to be referred to the apex of the Roman see so that they may be settled by the judgement of the pope [apostolicus], by whose authority all the churches are ruled’.12 A further rubric recording the reverence universally due to the pope — ‘the name of the pope is to be read out in the holy churches’ — would find an echo two generations later in Pope Gregory VII’s famous memorandum on papal authority.13 One of the dozen statements concerning the papacy in the Decretum, however, is quite different in character. The rubric reads: ‘That the Roman pontiff is not to be called chief priest but bishop of the first see’. The canon in question was a decree issued by an African council and referred originally to the status of the Bishop of Carthage in the African Church. Burchard altered the rubric so as to produce a fictitious reference to the pope, which emphasized the limitations of his title.14 While Burchard recognized the extraordinary jurisdictional role of the papacy, as defined by Pope Leo I and Pseudo-Isidore, he was unwilling to accord to the pope such a supremacy as would disturb the constitution of

9 Burchard of Worms, Decretum, ii. 80. See Fournier, ‘Le Décret de Burchard de Worms’, 472. 10 Burchard of Worms, Decretum, viii. 66, 67. See Fournier, ‘Le Décret de Burchard de Worms’, 471, on Burchard and the late ninth-century Italian canonical collection Anselmo dedicata. 11 Burchard of Worms, Decretum i. 2 (the canon is Decretales pseudo-Isidorianae, ed. by Hinschius, 243). See Laudage, Gregorianische Reform und Investiturstreit, 79. 12 Burchard of Worms, Decretum, i. 178. Cf. i. 179: ‘all bishops can, when compelled by circumstances, appeal to the Roman see’. 13 Burchard of Worms, Decretum, ii. 230 [= 234]. Cf. Gregory VII, Register, ii. 55a (Dictatus papae 10), ed. by Caspar, 204. 14 Burchard of Worms, Decretum, i. 3. See Kerner, ‘Studien zum Dekret des Bischofs Burchard von Worms’, i, 62–63; Laudage, Gregorianische Reform und Investiturstreit, 79–80.

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the Church and affect the status of the rest of the episcopate. The Decretum, reflecting the attitude of the imperial Church at the moment of its compilation, records the tension between the acknowledged tradition of the papal primacy and the limited experience of the papacy in Germany in the opening years of the century.15 This tension was already apparent in the writings of the distinguished scholar who held the office of pope when Burchard became Bishop of Worms: that is, Gerbert, successively monk of Aurillac, master of the cathedral school of Rheims, Abbot of Bobbio, Archbishop of Rheims, Archbishop of Ravenna, Pope Silvester II (999–1003). Historians have long commented on the contrast between his attitude towards papal authority before and after his accession to the papacy. On the crucial text Matthew 16. 19, for example, Gerbert wrote of ‘those keys of the kingdom of heaven, which we all, as priests, have received in the blessed apostle Peter’. Of the text John 21. 15–17, Christ’s command to Peter, ‘Feed my sheep’, Gerbert wrote: ‘not only did the apostle then accept this flock but he also received them together with ourselves and we all receive them with him’. Christ’s commission to Peter was thus shared by Peter’s successor with all the bishops of Christendom.16 Pope Silvester II, however, placed a different emphasis on the text Matthew 16. 19: It is the duty of apostolic supremacy not only to be mindful of sinners but also to raise up the fallen and to provide those who have been deprived of their own ranks with the ornaments of their restored dignity so that the power of [binding and] loosing may be free for Peter and the dignity of Roman glory may shine everywhere.17 In this letter of 999 to Archbishop Arnulf of Rheims the pope linked Matthew 16. 19 unambiguously with the authority of the Roman Church. An earlier encounter of Gerbert with Arnulf of Rheims, at the Council of St-Basle de Verzy in 991, had witnessed a violent attack on the authority of the Roman Church, formulated by the future pope himself. In 991 Gerbert’s claim to the office of Archbishop of Rheims was upheld by the council, and Arnulf was deposed on the grounds of his treachery towards Hugh Capet, King of France.18 Archbishop Arnulf ’s defenders at the council, criticizing the irregularities in the conciliar procedures, declared that any case involving a bishop must be referred to the apostolic see. Gerbert’s champion, Bishop Arnulf of Orléans, replied with a statement prepared by Gerbert himself. The king and the bishops had indeed sought from Rome a decision in this case, but neither letter nor legate had been sent. By remaining silent, the papacy — or at least the current pope — had forfeited its privilege in this instance. The pope could indeed judge ‘concerning the faith and concerning the life, morals, 15 Hauck, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, 441: ‘the significance of the papacy had actually become as slight as it appears in [Burchard’s] work’. 16 Gerbert, Sermo de informatione episcoporum, 169B, 171A. See Congar, L’Ecclésiologie du haut moyen âge, 183–84. 17 Silvester II, JL, no. 3908; PL, cxxxix, 273. 18 Lemarignier, ‘L’Exemption monastique’, 303, 306–07; Congar, L’Ecclésiologie du haut moyen âge, 181–84; Cowdrey, The Cluniacs, 29–30; Carozzi, ‘Gerbert et le concile de St.-Basle’.

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and discipline of priests’, but he could lawfully exercise the rights belonging to the papal office only if he was suitably qualified by his education and personal conduct to hold that office. Thus Leo I, Gregory I, and Gelasius I had lawfully exercised the office of pope because they were distinguished ‘philosophers’, with the necessary qualifications of ‘wisdom’ and ‘eloquence’. Nowadays, however, there were no longer any clergy in Rome qualified to perform the office of pope. The rights of the papacy in the case of Arnulf of Rheims were, therefore, irrelevant. There was moreover a dangerous tendency in the papalist arguments of Archbishop Arnulf ’s supporters. If their ‘new decree of the Roman pontiff ’ was enforced, ‘what was the use of the established laws, when all affairs are to be directed according to the will of one man?’19 For Gerbert’s party at the Council of St-Basle ‘the established laws’ of the Church were the canons of the councils, which now seemed to be challenged by the novel legislative authority attributed to the pope.20 Pope John XV, however, rejected the proceedings of the Council of St-Basle in letters sent to the French bishops.21 Gerbert’s initial reaction was to ask how the judgement of the Roman bishop could be superior to that of God and whether all bishops must sin against God’s law because the pope did so: the pope was after all only a man. ‘The common law of the Catholic Church’ consists of the Gospels, the writings of the apostles and the prophets, the conciliar canons, ‘consecrated by the reverence of the whole world’, and ‘the decrees of the apostolic see that do not disagree with’ the conciliar canons.22 In the same spirit the Council of Chelles (994), declaring the proceedings of St-Basle to be irrevocable, concluded that ‘whatever suggestion is made by the Roman pope contrary to the decrees of the Fathers is to be rendered invalid and worthless’.23 Despite the representations that Gerbert made in Rome (996), however, Pope Gregory V upheld the decision of his predecessor and demanded the restoration of Archbishop Arnulf to Rheims.24 The papal privilege of April 999 restoring to Arnulf the office and insignia of archbishop was issued by Gregory V’s successor, Pope Silvester II — that is, by Gerbert himself. The privilege states that Arnulf had been ‘deprived of the pontifical office through certain aberrations’ but his deposition was invalid because it ‘lacked the approval of Rome’. ‘The gift of Roman piety’ now repaired the damage that he had suffered, ‘for this supreme ability belongs to Peter, which no good fortune of mortal men may equal’.25 The emphasis on papal decrees in Gerbert’s writings concerning the Council of St-Basle gives way in the papal

Acta concilii Remensis ad Sanctum Basolum, 671–72. Klinkenberg, ‘Der römische Primat’, 35–36, 38. Richer of Rheims, Historiae IV, ed. by Latouche, 288. Gerbert, Letter 192, in Lettres de Gerbert, 230–33, addressed to Archbishop Seguin of Sens, who had presided over the Council of St-Basle. 23 Richer of Rheims, Historiae IV, ed. by Latouche, 290. See Lemarignier, ‘L’Exemption monastique’, 306–07; Cowdrey, The Cluniacs, 30–32. 24 Richer of Rheims, Historiae IV, ed. by Latouche, 330 (Gerbert at the Roman synod of 25 May 996); Gregory V, JL, no. 3876; PL, cxxxvii, 913CD (decrees of the Council of Pavia, February 997). See Moehs, Gregorius V, 36–39, 51, 56; Wolter, Die Synoden im Reichsgebiet, 151–53. 25 Silvester II, JL, no. 3908; PL, cxxxix, 273. 19 20 21 22

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letter to ‘the supreme ability’ (facultas) of St Peter — that is, the authority to bind and loose — and its unique restorative power in the Church. Silvester II effectively repudiated the conciliar decision of St-Basle, but he was probably unconscious of any inconsistency in doing so. In 991 the pope could not lawfully intervene in the affairs of Rheims because he lacked the essential qualifications of the true ‘philosopher’ popes like Leo I, Gelasius I, and Gregory I. Since his own accession in 999, however, there actually was a ‘philosopher’ on the throne of St Peter with the ‘wisdom’ and ‘eloquence’ necessary to exercise Peter’s authority.26 The principal supporter of Archbishop Arnulf at the Council of St-Basle — and also the confidant of Pope Gregory V and his assiduous agent in securing the archbishop’s restoration — was Abbo, Abbot of Fleury (c. 987–1004).27 Monastic reformer and canonist, Abbo was the outstanding exponent of papal authority at the beginning of the eleventh century. Alone among his contemporaries, Abbo in his canonical and polemical writings described the authority of the pope in the language of the principatus of Leo I. For example, a letter of 996 declared: since indeed the Roman Church in its excellence over all the churches has this privilege: that, as the holder of the keys of the heavenly kingdom, she possesses the principatus of apostolic supremacy, accordingly that same Roman Church confers authority on all those which are, so to speak, her limbs, which are found throughout the four regions of the whole world.28 The image of the Roman Church as head and the other churches as limbs — an adaptation of St Paul’s conception of body and members (Romans 12. 4–5; Colossians 2. 19) — combined with the idea of the principatus possessed by St Peter, echoed the language of Leo I.29 Abbo emphasized the saint’s role as prince of the apostles (the title first bestowed on him by Leo I), whose unique authority was inherited by all the popes. ‘The authority of the Roman and apostolic see through the favour of Christ the Lord shines brightly throughout the universal Church of the whole world. And no wonder since the pontiffs of that same see are seen to stand in the place of the blessed Peter, who is prince of the whole Church’.30 Abbo packed his conception of the pope’s multifaceted jurisdiction into the title that he gave to Pope Gregory V in his correspondence: ‘the Lord Gregory, ever venerable in Christ, bishop of the holy Roman and apostolic see and for this reason teacher [doctor] of the universal Church’.31

26 Cf. Klinkenberg, ‘Der römische Primat’, 40: ‘At the moment that Gerbert rose to the cathedra of Peter, the deficiency in the person of the pope that he had reprehended in Verzy was set aside, for Gerbert brought with him all the qualifications for the highest office of the Church’. 27 Congar, L’Ecclésiologie du haut moyen âge, 181–82; Moehs, Gregorius V, 21–22, 40, 44–47, 51–52, 55–57; Carozzi, ‘Gerbert et le concile de St.-Basle’, 666–67, 674. 28 Abbo of Fleury, Letter 5, in PL, cxxxix, 423D. 29 For example, Leo I, Sermo 82, in PL, liv, c. 5. See Klinkenberg, ‘Der römische Primat’, 53–54; Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government, 2–9; Ullmann, Gelasius I., 66–77. 30 Abbo of Fleury, Collectio canonum, c. 5, 479AB. Cf. Leo I, Sermo 4, in PL, liv, c. 4 (‘prince of the whole Church’). See Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government, 2–8; Ullmann, Gelasius I., 71–72. 31 Abbo, Letter 1, in PL, cxxxix, 419C.

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Abbo’s writings were dominated by the idea of monastic reform, and he saw the authority of the papacy above all as a means of defending the monasteries against the enemies of reform. His work indeed provides a striking illustration of a central theme of eleventh-century ecclesiastical history: the close connection between monastic reform and the dissemination of ideas of papal supremacy.32 The enemy who presented the most serious threat to reform in Abbo’s own monastery of Fleury was the diocesan, Bishop Arnulf of Orléans, who was also the spokesman of Gerbert’s party whom Abbo opposed at the Council of St-Basle. The defence of his abbey’s freedom against this hostile diocesan and the defence of Archbishop Arnulf of Rheims at St-Basle were two aspects of the same struggle. If a council of bishops could depose an archbishop in open defiance of papal authority, such a council could also cancel the privileges conferred on a monastery by the same papal authority.33 Opposition to the papacy was for Abbo rebellion against Christ himself: ‘if anyone opposes the Roman Church, what else is he doing except withdrawing from her limbs in order to become part of the enemies of Christ?’ This was Abbo’s reaction in 996 to the conduct of the Archbishop of Tours, who challenged the papal privileges of the chapter of St Martin of Tours.34 In his treatise on the relationship of a monastery and its diocesan bishop Abbo warned the diocesan who failed to respect the papal privileges of a religious house: ‘whoever wishes to oppose the apostolic decrees is to be overthrown and left to grieve over his ruin and thenceforth he is to have no place in the priesthood but he is to be banished from the sacred ministry so that thereafter no one is to pay attention to his judgement’.35 Abbo pinned his hopes for his own monastery on ‘the apostolic pen of Roman authority’:36 that is, a papal privilege increasing Fleury’s independence of the Bishop of Orléans, which after two visits to Rome he received in 996 from his friend, Pope Gregory V.37 ‘Since by virtue of the apostolic succession we must devote care to all the churches,’ runs the introductory protocol, the arenga (or preamble) of Gregory V’s privilege for Fleury, ‘so we desire to be mindful of the needs of all in order to acquaint ourselves tirelessly with the individual case of everyone’.38 The arengas of papal letters and privileges of the early eleventh century contain the view of the papal office that the papal government itself chose to disseminate throughout Christendom. These arengas

32 Fournier and Le Bras, Histoire des collections canoniques, 321, 326 (‘For him the ideal would be to see monasteries exempt from episcopal jurisdiction and immediately subject to the Holy See’); Lemarignier, ‘L’Exemption monastique’, 304; Mostert, Political Theology of Abbo of Fleury, 38, 52–54, 57–59, 60, 127–30. 33 Mostert, ‘Die Urkundenfälschungen’, 290–91. 34 Abbo, Letter 5, in PL, cxxxix, 423D. See Cousin, Abbon de Fleury-sur-Loire, 160–61. 35 Abbo, Letter 14, in PL, cxxxix, 449C. 36 Abbo, Letter 15, in PL, cxxxix, 460C. 37 Gregory V, JL, no. 3872; Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye de Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, ed. by Prou and Vidier, no. 71, 185–88; see Mostert, ‘Die Urkundenfälschungen’, 309–18. See also Papstregesten, 911–1024, ed. by Zimmermann = RI, ii.5, ed. by Böhmer, no. 777, 237–38; also Lemarignier, ‘L’Exemption monastique’, 311–12; Cowdrey, The Cluniacs, 32, 71; Mostert, Political Theology of Abbo of Fleury, 38, 58–59. 38 Gregory V, JL, no. 3872; Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye de Saint–Benoît–sur–Loire, ed. by Prou and Vidier, 185; Mostert, ‘Die Urkundenfälschungen’, 309.

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followed long-established formulas, many of them copied in the seventh and early eighth century into the formulary book of the Roman Church known as the Liber Diurnus and serving as models for the notaries of the eleventh-century papal chancery. The theme of the pope’s tireless care for all churches found in Gregory V’s privilege for Fleury is the most frequent subject of medieval papal arengas and is already present in the earliest extant authentic papal letter, dated 385.39 Papal privileges show a considerable continuity throughout the eleventh century. The same arengas can be found verbatim in the privileges of the Crescentian pope John XV, the imperial appointee Gregory V, the Crescentian John XVIII, the Tusculan popes Benedict VIII, John XIX, and Benedict IX — and indeed of the popes of the reforming regime inaugurated in 1046, Clement II, Leo IX, Victor II, Stephen IX, and Alexander II — as in this frequently recurring example: ‘It is fitting that apostolic government should with kindly compassion come to the aid of those who are strong in religious devotion and should confer its approval on a religious vow.’40 Not infrequently the emphasis in the arenga is on the rights of the papacy rather than on papal duties. This is the principal characteristic of the ‘primacy arenga’ (or ‘Petrine arenga’), a statement of papal authority of which the earliest example dates from the pontificate of Sergius I (687–701).41 The resounding primacy arenga of Gregory V’s privilege for the monastery of Sant’ Ambrogio in Milan — which quotes and expands the Petrine commission of Matthew 16. 18 — was borrowed from a letter of Pope Nicholas I to Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, of 862.42 A primacy arenga used in privileges of John XV, Sergius IV, and Benedict VIII speaks of the ‘immense honour’ due to anyone ‘who diligently honoured the vicar of the blessed Peter, prince of the apostles’.43 Some of these early eleventh-century arengas echo the language of Leo I in a manner similar to the writings of Abbo of Fleury. The arenga of a privilege of John XVIII for the church of Paderborn, describing the ‘universal’ government of the apostolic see ‘among the churches of Christ’, concludes that ‘the head can rejoice if he perceives that the members are sound and renewed in strength’.44 An arenga of Sergius IV declares that since ‘the guardianship both of all clergy and all laymen

39 Siricius, JK, no. 3872; PL, xiii, 1132. See Caspar, Geschichte des Papsttums, 261–62; Fichtenau, Arenga, 91–92. 40 John XV, JL, nos 3827, 3834; PL, cxxxvii, 827B, 834B; Gregory V, JL, no. 3886; PL, cxxxvii, 927A; John XVIII, JL, nos 3941, 3955; PL, cxxxix, 1478AB, 1489B; Benedict VIII, JL, nos 4003, 4006, 4037, 4057; PL, cxxxix, 1592D, 1596B, 1625C, 1633D; John XIX, JL, nos 4068, 4076; PL, cxli, 1123B, 1125D; Benedict IX, JL, nos 4108, 4110; PL, cxli, 1344D–1345A, 1347CD. Cf. Clement II, JL, nos 4133, 4146; PL, cxlii, 577BC, 583A; Leo IX, JL, nos 4162, 4166, 4169, 4170, 4212, 4236, 4290, 4291, 4292, 4293, 4294, 4330; PL, cxliii, 597C, 606C, 607D, 609B, 641B, 652C, 701D, 704A, 705A, 717A, 724A, 604D; Victor II, JL, nos 4339, 4364; PL, cxliii, 811D, 824A; Stephen IX, JL, no. 4375; PL, cxliii, 874B; Alexander II, JL, nos 4557, 4594, 4676; PL, cxlvi, 1301B, 1313B, 1357A (Convenit apostolico moderamini). Cf. Fichtenau, Arenga, 117 n. 31. 41 Fichtenau, Arenga, 100. 42 Gregory V, JL, no. 3882; PL, cxxxvii, 920D. Cf. Nicholas I, JE, no. 2691; MGH Epistolae, vi, 447. 43 John XV, JL, no. 3852; PL, cxxxvii, 848B; Sergius IV, JL, no. 3988; PL, cxxxix, 1528A; Benedict VIII, JL, nos 4011, 4032; Iter Italicum, ed. by von Pflugk-Harttung, 186. 44 John XVIII, JL, no. 3947; PL, cxxxix, 1482D–1483A.

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was divinely granted by the Lord to the apostle Peter alone’, the apostolic see must exercise ‘his vicariate in his place in the effective ordering of the world’.45 The arenga of a letter of John XIX to Bishop Gozelin of Mâcon begins with the Pseudo-Isidorean statement that ‘the holy Roman Church, over which we preside by God’s authority, [is] the head and hinge of the other churches’, and the text of the letter describes the pope as Gozelin’s ‘master through the merits of the apostle Peter’.46 This papal letter of 1027 was written to rebuke the Bishop of Mâcon for disregarding the papal privileges granted to the abbey of Cluny. Like Gregory V’s privilege for Fleury, John XIX’s measures in defence of Cluny are a reminder of the importance of papal–monastic relations before the mid-eleventh century. Of the approximately five hundred papal letters and privileges that survive from the period between the later ninth century and the mid-eleventh century, more are concerned with monasteries than with any other subject (210, compared with 120 concerned with bishops and metropolitans).47 It was the monks who were most active in invoking papal authority against their enemies, and it was in defence of monastic rights that the papacy of the late tenth and early eleventh century issued its most striking assertions of papal authority.48 In the earlier Middle Ages monasteries had sought privileges of protection and of immunity from secular burdens from both kings and popes. At the beginning of the eleventh century occasional papal and imperial diplomas speak of monastic protection as a cooperative enterprise. A privilege of Silvester II declares that the abbey of Lorsch was ‘subjected only to the lordship of kings and popes’, and a diploma of Emperor Otto III describes the abbey of Selz as ‘subject only to apostolic liberty and to our majesty for its defence’.49 In the course of the eleventh century, however, and with accelerating speed in the last quarter of the century, the superior attraction of Rome asserted itself and monasteries came to prefer ‘the protection of the apostles [Peter and Paul] and the defence of the Roman pontiff ’.50 Thus the distinguished reformer Abbot William of St-Bénigne, Dijon, was anxious to obtain papal privileges from John XVIII (1006), Benedict VIII (1012–14), and John XIX (1027) for his new foundation of Fruttuaria and secured also papal protection (patrocinium) for his Norman abbey of Fécamp (1017).51 Like Abbo of

45 Sergius IV, JL, no. 3977; PL, cxxxix, 1517C. A version of this arenga is found in Gregory V, JL, no. 3867; PL, cxxxvii, 906B. 46 John XIX, JL, no. 4082; PL, cxli, 1146B, 1146C. 47 Fuhrmann, ‘Pseudoisidor in Rom’, 62–63 and n. 160, analysing the data in JL for the years 882–1047. 48 Lemarignier, ‘L’Exemption monastique’, 326–27; Cowdrey, The Cluniacs, 40: ‘as a direct and express result of its building up, during the tenth and eleventh centuries, of support for the monastic order, and for Cluny above all other monasteries, the papacy itself progressively grew in self-awareness’. 49 Silvester II, JL, no. 3905; Codex Laureshamensis, ed. by Glöckner, no. 73, 356; Otto III, Diploma 79a, b, in MGH Diplomata, ii, 486. The abbey of Selz was conferred by Empress Adelaide ‘on the Roman Church […] in full ownership’. See Szabó-Bechstein, Libertas Ecclesiae, 88–90. 50 Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye de Cluny, ed. by Bernard and Bruel, 125. During the eleventh century privileges of protection are extant for 270 religious houses, of which 155 were granted between 1073 and 1099. See Blumenstock, Der päpstliche Schutz im Mittelalter, 44. 51 Papstregesten, 911–1024, ed. by Zimmermann, nos 1014, 1093; Bulst, Untersuchungen, 118, 120–22, 125, 153; Herrmann, Das Tuskulanerpapsttum, 143–45.

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Fleury, William of Dijon extolled the authority of the Roman Church, addressing the pope as ‘the salt of the earth and the light of the world’. ‘We desire,’ he informed John XIX, ‘that, as befits the universal bishop, you act more vigorously in reproof and in the discipline of the holy and apostolic Church.’52 A small number of favoured monasteries obtained what only the pope could grant: exemption from the jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop. This ‘spiritual exemption’ — the first of the innovations that characterized the development of papal authority in the Western Church during the eleventh century — was closely linked with the aspirations of the abbeys of Fleury and Cluny at the beginning of the century. In 1007 Abbot Gozelin of Fleury (Abbo’s successor) appealed to Rome, according to the terms of Gregory V’s privilege for Fleury, against his diocesan, Bishop Fulk of Orléans, who had tried to force his way into the monastery in defiance of the papal privilege. A subsequent provincial synod in Sens had approved Fulk’s action. Abbot Gozelin had appeared there with the privilege, had disobeyed his diocesan’s command to burn it, and had been excommunicated by Bishop Fulk. The much respected Bishop Fulbert of Chartres had also intervened to urge Gozelin to submit to his diocesan, saying that he could find ‘no law nor any method of reasoning’ that could justify a monastery’s withdrawal from the jurisdiction of its bishop.53 Pope John XVIII responded to the appeal from Fleury by summoning Fulk of Orléans, Archbishop Leoteric of Sens, and Abbot Gozelin to Rome ‘so that the dispute may be ended before the holy see […] and the despiser of St Peter may be visited with a fitting punishment’. The outcome is not known beyond the papal letter to King Robert II of France deploring the failure of ‘certain bishops of your kingdom’ to respect ‘the authority of the apostolic see, which the blessed Peter conferred on his successors in the city of Rome’ and requiring him to ensure their attendance in Rome.54 Better documented is the case of the exemption of Cluny, formulated by Gregory V in 998 and greatly extended by John XIX in his privilege of 1024, which made the abbey, as ‘a son of the holy apostolic see’, subject only to the spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman Church.55 Abbot Odilo of Cluny provoked controversy by his use of the clause in these privileges that permitted him to invite a bishop other than his diocesan to ordain his monks in Cluny. Bishop Gozelin of Mâcon protested against this violation of his rights as diocesan at a council in Anse in 1025, which found in his favour. Abbot Odilo

52 William of Dijon, Letters to John XIX, in Ralph Glaber, Vita sancti Guillelmi abbatis Divionensis, c. 19, in PL, cxlii, 697–720 and Ralph Glaber, Historiae IV, i, ed. by France, Bulst, and Reynolds; see Bulst, Untersuchungen, 251–52. Cf. the letter of William’s successor, Abbot Halinard of St Bénigne, Dijon, to John XIX, in PL, cxli, 1157CD, addressing him as ‘the holy master of the whole world, John, the universal pope […]. The whole world knows well that the pastor of the Roman Church discharges the apostolic vicariate so that what he lays down in the ecclesiastical order remains unalterable, fixed, and inviolable eternally’. 53 Lemarignier, ‘L’Exemption monastique’, 323–24. 54 John XVIII, JL, no. 3958; PL, cxxxix, 1490BC, 1491A. 55 Gregory V, JL, no. 3896; PL, cxxxvii, 932B–935D; John XIX, JL, no. 4065; PL, cxli, 1135D–1137C. See Lemarignier, ‘L’Exemption monastique’, 321–22, 325; Cowdrey, The Cluniacs, 33–34.

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showed the privilege that [the monks] had from the Roman Church, which conferred on them such a liberty that they were not to be subject to the bishop in whose territory they resided [… the bishops of the council], therefore, reading through the decisions of the holy council of Chalcedon and the very many authentic councils, in which it is commanded that abbots and monks in any region whatsoever must be subject to their own bishop […] decreed that a charter that not only did not agree with the canons but even opposed their decisions, was not valid.56 The bishops at the Council of Anse echoed those at Chelles, who had declared the invalidity of ‘whatever suggestion is made by the Roman pope contrary to the decrees of the Fathers’. John XIX responded in 1027 with a defence of Cluny’s exemption in a series of letters that contain the most precise exposition of the papal primacy to be found in papal documents of the first half of the eleventh century.57 The pope was empowered to judge all ecclesiastical affairs, but he himself could never be judged; his pronouncements had the force of law and could never be questioned: The decrees of this holy see must be received with pious faith by the sons of mother Church and so venerated by them as to be accepted by them without any hesitation just as if they are the rules of the canons; since [the Roman Church] has the right to judge in the case of every church and it is not permitted to anyone to chatter about its decree or to judge its judgement. Its judgement ought not to be annulled by anyone, the more so as it is known to be most certainly corroborated by the power and authority of the apostle Peter.58 It was a statement of the primacy impressive enough to be used verbatim by the reforming Pope Alexander II a generation later.59 The French bishops at Vervy, Chelles, Sens, and Anse were unanimous in denying the right of the papacy to amend ‘the canons’, and in his Decretum Bishop Burchard of Worms (who died in the year of the Council of Anse) was equally keen to safeguard episcopal authority against Roman innovation.60 A different attitude is evident in the next significant episcopal pronouncements on papal authority to have survived in sources written beyond the Alps: two texts of the mid-eleventh century contending

56 Council of Anse: Mansi, xix, 423–24. See Lemarignier, ‘L’Exemption monastique’, 325 and n. 1 (on the polemical character of the conciliar acta); Cowdrey, The Cluniacs, 33–34, 40–41. 57 John XIX, JL, no. 4079 (‘to all men of every order and dignity’), in Cowdrey, The Cluniacs, 268–69; JL, no. 4081 (to King Robert II of France); PL, cxli, 1145A–1146A; JL, no. 4082 (to Bishop Gozelin of Mâcon); PL, cxli, 1146BD; JL, no. 4083 (to the metropolitan, Archbishop Burchard II of Lyons); PL, cxli, 1146D–1147B. See Lemarignier, ‘L’Exemption monastique’, 325–27 (‘the Roman primacy is affirmed with a strength and on the basis of texts that already announce the period of the Gregorians’, 326); Cowdrey, The Cluniacs, 35–36, 38–39, 41–42. 58 John XIX, JL, no. 4081; PL, cxli, 1145CD. 59 Alexander II, JL, no. 4525; PL, cxlvi, 1303. See Fuhrmann, ‘Pseudoisidor in Rom’, 65 n. 172. 60 In his determination to reinforce the bishop’s right of visitation and correction in the monasteries of his diocese, Burchard of Worms altered the text of canon 21 of the First Council of Orléans on this subject: Burchard of Worms, Decretum, viii. 67. See Fournier, ‘Le Décret de Burchard de Worms’, 471.

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that the pope can be judged by no earthly tribunal. Both texts are concerned with the ecclesiastical regime of Emperor Henry III and his intervention in Rome in 1046–47. Firstly, the historian Anselm of Liège in his Deeds of the Bishops of Liège (composed between 1052 and 1056), in recording the career of Bishop Wazo of Liège (1042–48), emphasized both his criticisms of the emperor’s conduct in Church affairs and his exalted opinion of the papal office. When in 1046 Henry III sought episcopal support for his decision to depose Archbishop Widger of Ravenna, Wazo advised against deposition. He drew a distinction between the ‘obedience’ owed by bishops to ‘the supreme pontiff ’ and the ‘fidelity’ owed to the secular ruler. Bishops ‘must render an account to you in secular affairs and to [the pope] in those matters that seem to pertain to the divine office’.61 Anselm of Liège portrayed Wazo as a champion of the independence of the Church against an emperor who ‘sought in too carnal, not to say too ostentatious a manner to usurp power over bishops’.62 When on the death of the first German reforming pope, Clement II, in 1047 the emperor sought Wazo’s advice about a successor, he received the reply that the proceedings of the Council of Sutri in December 1046 were contrary to canon law. Gregory VI, who had been deposed by the council, was ‘a supreme pontiff deposed by those who ought not to have deposed him’ and the papacy should now revert to him on Clement II’s death. Wazo had studied ‘the deeds of the Roman pontiffs, their decrees and the authentic canons’, from which he drew the conclusion ‘that the supreme pontiff must be held in the highest honour, whatever his personal conduct might be, and that he must never be judged by any man’. The ‘message, displeasing to the emperor’, that Wazo sent to Henry III was that ‘the sayings and writings of the holy Fathers everywhere assert that the supreme pontiff must be judged by no one except God alone’.63 A similar allusion to this canon law tradition, dating from c. 500 and absorbed into the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals,64 appears in a second mid-century text, the so-called On the Appointment of the Pope (De ordinando pontifice).65 This fragmentary work shares the belief in the independence of the Church that is ascribed by the historian Anselm to Wazo of Liège. ‘That most worthless emperor’ had no right to sit in judgement on the popes in Sutri: ‘The freedom to censure or to judge whether a bishop is not a bishop’ is not permitted ‘to laymen but to those who have authority in ordering the Church, namely bishops and clergy’.66 This similarity in attitude has prompted the suggestion that the De ordinando pontifice was composed in a 61 Anselm, Gesta episcoporum Leodiensium, c. 58, 224. See Anton, Der sogenannte Traktat, 65; SzabóBechstein, Libertas Ecclesiae, 125–26. 62 Anselm, Gesta episcoporum Leodiensium, c. 66, 229. 63 Anselm, Gesta episcoporum Leodiensium, c. 65, 228. See Hoffmann, ‘Von Cluny zum Investiturstreit’, 341–44; Anton, Der sogenannte Traktat, 46–47; Szabó-Bechstein, Libertas Ecclesiae, 125–26. 64 Notably the apocryphal Constitutum Silvestri I, c. 27, in Mansi, ii, 632. Cf. Decretales pseudo-Isidorianae, ed. by Hinschius, 449. See Koeniger, ‘Prima sedes a nemine iudicatur’, 299. 65 This title was chosen by E. Dümmler in his edition of 1891 (MGH Libelli de lite, i, 8–14). In her translation of 1984 I. Schmale-Ott suggested the improved title On the Judgement of the Pope (Quellen zum Investiturstreit, ed. by Schmale-Ott, 46–67). 66 De ordinando pontifice, 12.16, 13.10–12; new edition in Anton, Der sogenannte Traktat, 80, 81–82 (lines 183, 223–26).

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Lotharingian reforming circle associated with Wazo.67 According to the work’s most recent editor, however, the anonymous author was a French bishop, probably from southern France, addressing a group of French bishops on the situation of the papacy after the death of Clement II and the restoration of the deposed Benedict IX by the Romans (8 November 1047).68 Unlike Wazo, the anonymous author did not regard Gregory VI as a legitimate pope because of his simoniacal entry into the papacy. Despite this simony, however, Henry III did not have the authority to depose him: ‘it did not lie within his jurisdiction to attack the supreme pontiff ’.69 For not only was ‘the Roman power set over every church’: it was also accountable only to God. ‘In the Church the people can confess to the priest, the priest to the bishop, the bishop to the supreme and universal pontiff, but the latter can confess only to God, who has reserved him to his own judgement.’70 Like Wazo, the anonymous author had consulted ‘the authentic canons’ — principally the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals — and discovered there the Leonine idea of the primacy of the pope. In the opening years of the ‘German papacy’ inaugurated by the Councils of Sutri and Rome (December 1046), therefore, the most strident defence of the papal primacy came from the critics of Henry III, who regarded his intervention in Rome as unlawful. The contemporary author who later wrote some of the most elaborate accounts of papal authority in the eleventh century, Peter Damian (then prior of the hermitage of Fonte Avellana), did not develop this theme in writings composed before the end of 1049.71 In his letters urging first Gregory VI, then Clement II to reform the churches, Peter Damian did not discuss in detail the authority of their office.72 His most exuberant rhetoric in these years was lavished on the imperial authority of Henry III, whom he applauded as a reformer of the Church. He congratulated Henry on his deposition of Archbishop Widger of Ravenna (against which Wazo of Liège had protested): ‘the Church is taken away from the hands of a violent robber and your well-being is judged to be the salvation of the whole world. Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad, because Christ is known to reign in his king.’73 Of Henry III’s proceedings in Rome in December 1046 (which Wazo of Liège considered unlawful) Peter Damian wrote that it was ‘this great King Henry’ who ‘after God snatched us from the mouth of the insatiable dragon, he who cut off all the heads of the many-headed hydra of simoniacal heresy with the sword of divine virtue’. The reward granted to the emperor by divine Providence was ‘that the holy 67 Notably by Fliche, La Réforme grégorienne, 117–20. For earlier discussions of the De ordinando, see Anton, Der sogenannte Traktat, 10–19; cf. 65–67 on the parallels with Wazo. 68 Anton, Der sogenannte Traktat, 57, 62–63, 69–70. 69 De ordinando pontifice, 10.36–38, 14.7–8; new edn Anton, Der sogenannte Traktat, 78, 83 (lines 109–11, 265). 70 De ordinando pontifice, 9.41–42, 13.38–40; new edn Anton, Der sogenannte Traktat, 76, 82 (lines 66–67, 254–56). 71 The theme receives its first full treatment in Peter Damian’s works in Letter 31, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 286. 72 Peter Damian, Letter 13, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 142–45; Letter 26, 239–42. 73 Peter Damian, Letter 20, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 200–201, quoting Psalm 95. 11. Cf.  Letter 43, 5: ‘Let the piety of the Roman empire shine out’.

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Roman Church is now ordered according to his command and no one may elect a priest to the apostolic see except by his authority’.74 It is in the letters and privileges of the German popes that the inauguration of the new papal regime of 1046 is first presented in terms of the development of papal rather than imperial authority. The diplomas of Clement II and Leo IX include a notable innovation. The privileges conferred on recipients on close terms with the pope — for example, in the case of Clement II, the church of Bamberg and in the case of Leo IX, the religious houses founded by his family — contain a distinctive personal, biographical element.75 In the case of the documents of Clement II this personal element is an allusion to the events of December 1046, which is combined with a reminder of the authority of the papacy. A letter of January 1047 crams into a ‘Petrine arenga’ polemic against the three popes deposed in 1046 and polemic against simony, using the reformers’ favourite scriptural text, John 10. 1. The arenga states that the pope was elected ‘after the expulsion from the apostolic see of those men who did not enter the most sacred sheepfold, commended to Peter, prince of the apostles, by Christ the Lord, through the door but crept in by another way like thieves and robbers’.76 A diploma of 24 September 1047 uses Clement II’s dual role as Bishop of Bamberg and Bishop of Rome in order to represent the relationship of bishopric and papacy as that of ‘daughter’ and ‘mother’ and to emphasize the unique Petrine authority of the Roman Church. She was ‘your [Bamberg’s] mother and the mother of all the churches’, who possessed ‘more honour, more beauty, more strength than the daughter, since to her every knee on earth bows [Philippians 2. 10] and according to her will the door of heaven is opened and closed and the gates of hell do not prevail against her [Matthew 16. 18]’. The diploma also evokes the circumstances of Clement II’s election, which is portrayed as a cure for the ills of the papacy: When that head of the Church, that Roman see was suffering from the disease of heresy and the presence of our most beloved son, the lord Henry, the august emperor, ensured that he drove away this sickness and, after expelling those three men on whom robbery had conferred the title of the papacy [papatus], he wished [… Clement] to be elected and to perform the office of the most high prince of the apostles as [Peter’s] deputy. Thus Clement received ‘from heaven that apostolic authority, which rules over heaven and earth’.77 The use of the term papatus in this text was hailed by Y. M.-J. Congar as evidence of a new outlook on the part of the new papal regime: ‘the appearance of a new word

74 Peter Damian, Letter 40, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 501, 502. 75 Fichtenau, Arenga, 101–02. 76 Clement II, JL, no. 4141; PL, cxlii, 581C. See Gresser, Clemens II., 166. 77 Clement II, JL, no. 4149; Acta pontificum Romanorum inedita, ed. by von Pflugk-Harttung, ii, no. 103, 68. See Gresser, Clemens II., 180–81; Maccarrone, ‘La teologia del primato romano’, 36. Cf. the more conventional primacy arenga of Clement II, JL, no. 4150; ed. by Gresser, Clemens II., 186, celebrating ‘the very strong shield of the apostolic see […] founded on a firm rock, that is Christ’ (Matthew 16. 18).

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is always the sign of the emergence of a new reality’.78 The term had in fact been used as early as the eighth century, coined presumably by analogy with the term episcopatus (‘bishopric’ or ‘episcopal office’) and meaning ‘the office of pope’ and ‘the exercise of papal functions’.79 Twelve years after its appearance in the privilege of Clement II, the term papatus reappears in the oath sworn by the Norman prince Duke Robert Guiscard of Apulia to Pope Nicholas II: ‘I shall help you securely and honourably to hold the Roman papacy and the land of St Peter.’80 The term is next found, again in the form papatus Romanus, in the oath sworn to Pope Alexander II in 1073 by the new Archbishop of Ravenna: ‘I shall be a helper in holding and defending the Roman papacy and the temporalities [regalia] of St Peter, saving my order.’ This oath survives in the canon law collection completed in 1087 by Cardinal Deusdedit, who gave it the descriptive title, ‘The oath of the bishops who are consecrated in the Roman Church and receive the pallium from her’.81 The pallium was the ceremonial garment of an archbishop which, according to tradition, could be obtained only from the pope.82 From the pontificate of Gregory VII onwards prelates receiving the pallium swore an oath similar to that of the Archbishop of Ravenna in 1073, promising to help the pope to retain the papatus Romanus and the papal lands. They also swore that ‘neither by my advice nor by my deed shall [the pope and his successors] lose life or limbs or papatus’.83 In the second half of the eleventh century the papal chancery was using the word papatus, later particularized as papatus Romanus, as a legal term to express the totality of the rights of the pope, as distinct from the material possessions of the Roman Church, the land (or the regalia) of St Peter. By 1076, at the outbreak of the conflict of Gregory VII and King Henry IV of Germany, the term appears in the polemic of the pope’s opponents, the king declaring to the pope: ‘I deny you every right of the papatus that you seemed to possess.’84 A contemporary polemicist summarized the conflict between Gregory VII and Henry IV with these words: ‘The pope seeks to remove the king from the kingship; on the other hand the king rages, seeking to take away the papatus from the pope.’ This author regarded the term papatus as the papal equivalent of the term regnum, meaning not only ‘kingdom’ but also ‘royal authority’.85 As it became current in later eleventh-century western Europe, the term papatus was being used to designate the unique authority of the pope and his supremacy within his own sphere of activity. 78 Congar, ‘Der Platz des Papsttums’, 211. 79 Paul the Deacon (d. 799?), Homiliea de sanctis, in PL, xcv, 1489, had used the term papatus minister, ‘servant of the papacy’, to mean ‘pope’. 80 Oath of Robert Guiscard, 1059: Liber Censuum, i, 422. See Congar, ‘Der Platz des Papsttums’, 211–12. 81 Oath of Wibert of Ravenna: Deusdedit, Collectio canonum, iv. 423, ed. by Wolf von Glanvell, 599. See Gottlob, Der kirchliche Amtseid, 40–44. 82 Von Hacke, Die Palliumverleihungen, 131. 83 Gregory VII, Register, vi. 17a, ed. by Caspar, 428–29 (oath of Patriarch Henry of Aquileia, 1079). 84 Henry IV, Letter 11, in Die Briefe Heinrichs IV., 15. Cf. Letter of the German bishops at the Council of Worms, 1076, ibid., 68. 85 Verses ‘concerning Pope Gregory VII and King Henry IV’ in the Bamberg letter collection, Codex Udalrici: see MGH Libelli de lite, ii, 172. See Congar, ‘Der Platz des Papsttums’, 212–13.

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The determination to express the full range of papal authority in all its impressive detail is evident in the letters and privileges of Leo IX, so much more numerous than those of any preceding eleventh-century pope. As in the ‘biographical arengas’ of Clement II, Leo IX’s diplomas sometimes juxtapose the status of his original bishopric in the German kingdom with that of the Roman Church in order to accentuate the Roman primacy. ‘According to the divine will and not through the claims of our own merits, we have moved from the see of Toul to the first of all the sees, namely the apostolic see.’86 ‘The unchangeable order of eternal Providence promoted our insignificant self from the humble station of the bishopric of Toul to the lofty elevation of the apostolic see.’87 The arenga of a papal letter of 19 October 1049, reporting the proceedings of the Council of Mainz, links this theme with that of the papal responsibility for reforming the Church. ‘Jesus Christ […] has raised our insignificant self, not supported by any merits, to the summit of the apostolic see and has commissioned us to cut off, by means of synodal decrees, whatever is unseemly and also harmful from the body of holy Christendom.’88 In a diploma of 1052 the papal role of reformer is expressed by the Old Testament quotation Jeremiah 1. 10. ‘We have been placed at the summit of the priesthood for this purpose: in order that we may root out and also destroy and build and plant in [God’s] name.’89 Reappearing in a papal document for the first time since the late ninth century, this text was henceforward regularly used by the papal chancery to convey the extent of the pope’s authority, most frequently and resoundingly by Innocent III (1198–1216).90 A recurring theme of Leo IX’s arengas is that the pope is indispensable for the welfare of the whole Church. A diploma for the abbey of Saint-Rémi, Rheims, for example, begins: ‘Lest my negligence may cause me peril and bring about the ruin of the churches, I have resolved to order, rule, and correct in a catholic manner the churches that are subject to our apostleship [apostolatus].’91 This term apostolatus frequently occurs in Leo IX’s diplomas: ‘it is fitting that our apostleship possesses the guardianship of all the churches of God’; ‘responsibility for all the churches belongs to the splendid summit of the apostleship’.92 It is a New Testament term (Acts 1. 25; Romans 1. 5), used as early as the fifth century as an honorific title for the pope, and it was a favourite title of Nicholas I (apostolatus noster).93 In Leo IX’s diplomas apostolatus is used to signify the office and authority inherited by the pope from St Peter, as in this ‘Petrine arenga’ in a privilege of 1052: Because the whole Church was committed by divine generosity to the blessed Peter, prince of the apostles, to rule, to manage, and to defend from all attacks

86 Leo IX, JL, no. 4197; PL, cxliii, 632C. 87 Leo IX, JL, no. 4158; PL, cxliii, 594BC. 88 Leo IX, JL, no. 4188; PL, cxliii, 622A. 89 Leo IX, JL, no. 4276; PL, cxliii, 692B. 90 Congar, ‘Ecce constitui te super gentes et regna’, 678–79, 683–86. 91 Leo IX, JL, no. 4177; PL, cxliii, 617C. 92 Acta pontificum Romanorum inedita, ed. by von Pflugk-Harttung, i, no. 14, 11, no. 23, 18. 93 Congar, L’Ecclésiologie du haut moyen âge, 210, 233.

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by wicked men, so that it may be nourished by his teaching and protected by his guardianship, it is appropriate that we, who in his place administer the supreme office of the apostleship, extend the hand of just protection to the individuals of the Church.94 The double role attributed here to Peter, as teacher and governor of his Church, is reiterated throughout Leo IX’s diplomas.95 He was ‘the celestial key-bearer and the prince of the other apostles’, to whom Christ ‘committed the human race […] to be fed’.96 The allusion here to Christ’s commission to Peter as recorded in John 21. 17 (‘Feed my sheep’) recurs in many diplomas, notably the privilege of 1054 for the basilica of St Peter, Rome. Cast in the form of a prayer, it concludes: ‘Blessed apostle Peter, always remember us and all the sheep whom [Christ] himself committed to you and whom in his mercy he feeds and will still feed to all eternity.’97 The text proclaims the doctrinal primacy of the papacy, which was underpinned by the tradition that Western Christendom had been evangelized by Rome and which found expression in the requirement that all questions concerning the faith should be referred to Rome.98 The most famous statement of this doctrinal primacy produced by the chancery in the pontificate of Leo IX occurs in a letter addressed to Patriarch Michael Cerullarius of Constantinople in 1053. The pope rebuked the patriarch for his criticisms of Latin liturgical practices. These (he argued) were validated by the authority of the pope, whose primacy over all the churches was instituted by Christ, confirmed by the councils of the Church and acknowledged in secular legislation, in the form of the ‘Donation’ of Emperor Constantine I. (This was the first occasion that the forged ‘Donation of Constantine’ was cited in a papal document in defence of the rights of the apostolic see.)99 The text combines the exposition of the Petrine commission of Matthew 16. 18 with that of Luke 22. 32 (‘Strengthen your brethren’): Holy Church is built on a rock […] in such a way that it will by no means be overcome by the gates of hell, that is, the arguments of the heretics, which lead the vainglorious to destruction […]. Surely the fabrications of all the heretics have been rejected and refuted and defeated by the see of the prince of the apostles, namely the Roman Church, both by Peter himself and by his successors and

94 Leo IX, JL, no. 4278; PL, cxliii, 693D. 95 Maccarrone, ‘La teologia del primato romano’, 40. 96 Leo IX, JL, no. 4246; PL, cxliii, 665A. 97 Leo IX, JL, no. 4309; PL, cxliii, 738B. 98 Innocent I, JK, no. 311. On the presence of this tradition in papal circles before 1050, see Peter Damian, Letter 11, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 138–39. Cf. Ryan, St Peter Damiani, 23–24. For the tradition that all the churches of the West were originally instituted by the Roman Church, see Battifol, Cathedra Petri, 47. 99 The letter survives, under the title Libellus (‘little book’), in a collection of thirteen polemical works relating to the schism of 1054. On the context of this polemic against Constantinople, see Petrucci, ‘Rapporti di Leone IX con Constantinopoli’; Maccarrone, ‘La teologia del primato romano’, 42–49; Petrucci, Ecclesiologia e politica di Leone IX, 103–26; Krause, ‘Das Constitutum Constantini’. On the attribution of this letter to Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, see Hoesch, Die kanonischen Quellen, 27.

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the hearts of the brethren have been strengthened in the faith of Peter, which has hitherto not failed nor will it fail to the end? This exposition is reinforced by a lesson in Church history, which describes how ‘the Roman and apostolic see attacked, crushed and stifled’ the ‘ninety and more heresies from the lands of the East’.100 Leo IX’s diplomas, therefore, describe papal authority in the language used by his fifth-century and ninth-century predecessors and also by his early eleventh-century predecessors. A major innovation of Leo IX’s pontificate, according to the scholarship of the earlier twentieth century, was that it witnessed the reappearance of the ideas and language of the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals in papal documents after an absence of 150 years.101 From this moment Pseudo-Isidore became ‘the favourite author’ of the reformers,102 ‘because they found there the clear and convenient expression of many of the ideas that were dear to them’.103 While the claim that Pseudo-Isidore had been forgotten in Rome since the end of the ninth century was refuted in detail by H. Fuhrmann,104 there is no doubt that in the greatly increased productivity of the papal chancery from 1049 onwards Pseudo-Isidorean material plays a notable role. It is in the letters of Leo IX addressed to prominent churchmen outside Western Christendom that Pseudo-Isidore’s claims for the papacy are most fully exploited. In a letter of 1053 Leo IX congratulated Patriarch Peter III of Antioch on his refusal ‘to deviate from the harmonious decree of the Lord and all the holy Fathers, according to which the holy Roman and apostolic see is inviolably set over all the churches of the whole world as their head and to her are referred the greater and more difficult cases of all the churches to be settled’.105 This same Pseudo-Isidorean version of the judicial primacy claimed by the fifth-century popes appears in Leo IX’s letters of 1053 concerning the African Church.106 The primacy of Carthage in Africa, he informed his African correspondents, was evident from the council of Cyprian, by the synods of Augustine, by all the African councils and ‘what is more important, from the decrees of our venerable predecessors, the Roman bishops’. This ruling was accompanied by a detailed reminder of the papal supremacy over the Church:

100 Leo IX, JL, no. 4302; PL, cxliii, 748BD. 101 Haller, Das Papsttum, 320: ‘No one in Rome had concerned himself with Pseudo-Isidore since the end of the ninth century; no pope had made use of it; it must have been entirely forgotten there. It was the Frenchmen and Lotharingians who came over with Leo IX who first brought it from their homeland and took care that it became known.’ Cf. Fournier and Le Bras, Histoire des collections canoniques, 229; Mikoletzky, ‘Bemerkungen’, 265; Ryan, St Peter Damiani, 12, 165. 102 Pelster, ‘Das Dekret Burkhards von Worms’, 326. 103 Fournier and Le Bras, Histoire des collections canoniques, 229. Cf. Tellenbach, Church, State and Christian Society, 99. 104 Fuhrmann, ‘Pseudoisidor in Rom’. Cf. Fuhrmann, Einfluß und Verbreitung, 340, 346–53. 105 Leo IX, JL, no. 4297; PL, cxliii, 770BC. According to Hoesch, Die kanonischen Quellen, 28, this letter may have been composed by Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida. 106 Decretales pseudo-Isidorianae, ed. by Hinschius, 83, 84, 136. See Hartmann, Der Primat des römischen Bischofs, 59–60; Fuhrmann, ‘Pseudoisidor in Rom’, 58 and n. 135.

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A universal council must not be celebrated and bishops must not be condemned or deposed except according to the judgement of the Roman pontiff […]. If you seek it, you can find what is decreed in the holy canons: that the greater and more difficult cases of all the churches are to be settled through the agency of the holy and princely see of blessed Peter by the latter’s successors, since it was said to him by heaven, Strengthen your brethren (Luke 22. 32) and I shall give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 16. 19).107 The author packed into this passage three major Pseudo-Isidorean claims for the papacy,108 together with the scriptural texts of the Petrine commission. The lengthy exposition of the papal primacy in the letter of 1053 to the Patriarch of Constantinople similarly depends on the ideas and imagery of Pseudo-Isidore: Just as the whole door is governed by the hinge, so the progress of the whole Church is entrusted to Peter and his successors. And just as the immoveable hinge leads the door and leads it back, so Peter and his successors have free judgement concerning the whole Church, since no one must alter their position, because the supreme see is judged by no one.109 These three letters in particular reveal a knowledge of the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals that is certainly more extensive than that of the papal diplomas of the preceding century. Just as Leo IX’s pontificate witnessed a striking increase in the volume of papal letters and privileges — 120 authentic diplomas, compared with the 105 complete authentic diplomas surviving from the Tusculan regime — so also these diplomas of Leo IX presented the authority of the papacy with greater emphasis and exploited the fifth-century and ninth-century sources with more confidence than the papal documents of the earlier eleventh century.110 The increased volume of papal privileges and correspondence reflects not only the unprecedented papal activity outside Rome during Leo IX’s pontificate but also the enthusiastic response throughout western Europe to this increased level of papal activity. This response is captured in a letter of Abbot John of Fécamp to Leo IX, reporting on the legation that he undertook for the pope in southern Italy. ‘The Roman world rejoices,’ he wrote, that Leo had ‘appeared like the morning star, glowing red with pious and fresh devotion, to dispel the mists of changeable error from the heart of mother Church’. He was ‘not content to care only for one people in his own see of the city of Rome

107 Leo IX, JL, no. 4305; PL, cxliii, 730AB (to the African bishops Peter and John); similarly in JL, no. 4304; PL, cxliii, 728CD (to Archbishop Thomas of Carthage). According to Michel, Die Sentenzen des Kardinals Humbert, 186–89, and Hoesch, Die kanonischen Quellen, 28, this letter was composed by Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida. 108 Decretales pseudo-Isidorianae, ed. by Hinschius, 243 (Ps.-Melchiades, Epistola, c. 2), 228 (Ps.Marcellus, Epistola, c. 10), 128 (Ps.-Victor, Epistola, c. 5). See Fuhrmann, ‘Pseudoisidor in Rom’, 57 n. 132. 109 Leo IX, JL, no. 4302; PL, cxliii, 765B; see above, note 100. Cf. Decretales pseudo-Isidorianae, ed. by Hinschius, 84 (Ps.-Anacletus I, Epistola 3, c. 34), 449 (Ps.-Silvester, Epistola 2, c. 2). See Congar, ‘Der Platz des Papsttums’, 199–200 and n. 14. 110 Munier, Le Pape Léon IX, 155.

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or to water only Italy, fertile in fruits, with the showers of the heavenly word, but also travelled around the transalpine churches and surveyed them with synodal enquiry and inveighed against whatever was in disorder and distorted from the rule of rectitude and immediately reproved with ecclesiastical censure and emended and corrected according to the rule of justice’.111 In the opinion of John of Fécamp, it was the personal achievements of Leo IX that had created this enthusiasm for the papacy. ‘Since that golden age in which Leo [I] and Gregory [I], the lights of spiritual doctrine, shone more brightly than glass, [no] pastor in the Roman Church has appeared who was so diligent and vigilant as [Leo IX], the most holy of prelates.’ He was the ‘miraculous pope’, the ‘special prelate of prelates’, the ‘most humane father of the Christian people’.112 This is also the conclusion suggested by the composition during the eleventh century of five biographies of Leo IX (one begun during his lifetime) and four collections of the miracles of Leo IX.113 The scale of the impact of Leo IX’s personality on the Western Church is similarly suggested by the chronicle of Herman, monk of Reichenau. Composed in the imperial abbey of Reichenau, subject to the authority and enjoying the protection of the emperor, originally conceived as an ‘imperial chronicle’, intended to record the deeds of the secular ruler, the chronicle became in the years 1049–54 both more critical of the emperor and increasingly positive towards Leo IX. The pope’s ‘exceeding compassion and accustomed mercy’, his ‘glorious death’ and miracles converted Herman into an admirer of the papal reform movement.114 The intensive exploitation of traditional sources that characterizes the diplomas of Leo IX is apparent also in works composed in the third quarter of the eleventh century that reflect the growing conviction of reformers that ecclesiastical reform depended primarily on the effective exercise of papal authority. This is the principal theme of the two fragments believed by some scholars to be parts of a single work, which they have called Concerning the Holy Roman Church.115 This work has usually been dated to the pontificate of Leo IX and attributed to the papal adviser Humbert, Cardinal-Bishop of Silva Candida.116 Scholarly opinion is not, however, unanimous on 111 John of Fécamp, Letter, in PL, cxliii, 797B, 797C. See Leclercq and Bonnes, Un maître de la vie spirituelle, 18. 112 PL, cxliii, 797B, 797C, 798C. 113 Tritz, ‘Hagiographischen Quellen’. The Lotharingian Life of Leo IX was begun during his pontificate and completed c. 1060: see Robinson, Papal Reform of the Eleventh Century, 26–28. 114 Robinson, Eleventh-Century Germany, 18–19. 115 The work survives only as extracts in the canon law collection of Cardinal Deusdedit, Collectio canonum, i. 306, ed. by Wolf von Glanvell, 177–78, i. 327, 189–92, with the inscription, ‘From the deeds of St Boniface, martyr and archbishop, legate of the Roman Church’. It was edited under the title De sancta Romana ecclesia in Schramm, Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio, 120–36; revised version: Schramm, Kaiser, Könige und Päpste, 150–56. The relevant document by or concerning Boniface of Mainz has not been traced but Schramm, Kaiser, Könige und Päpste, 148 n. 28, noted a reference in Humbert of Silva Candida, Adversus simoniacos libri III, 211, to the ‘special canonical authority reserved to Roman pontiffs over metropolitans […] as whoever seeks, will find in the deeds of the blessed Archbishop Boniface of Mainz’. 116 Schramm, Kaiser, Könige und Päpste, 147–49, 164–70 (stylistic analysis by A. Michel). See also Michel, ‘Humbert von Silva Candida’, 86–92; Ryan, ‘Cardinal Humbert’, 206–07. Haller, Das Papsttum, 581, and Hoesch, Die kanonischen Quellen, 31, concluded that only the first of the two fragments (‘Fragment A’) was the work of Humbert.

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the question of date and authorship.117 All that is certain is that the text must predate 1087, the date of completion of Cardinal Deusdedit’s canon law collection, which contains the unique copy of the fragmentary work. A parallel has been drawn between the opening statement of the work — ‘The holy Roman and apostolic Church [was] made by a privilege of special authority, divinely and humanly, the head of all the churches after Jesus Christ’ — and the allusion to a ‘divine and human privilege’ in Leo IX’s letter of 1053 to the Patriarch of Constantinople, the authorship of which has been ascribed to Cardinal Humbert.118 The ‘human privilege’ mentioned here was the eighth-century forgery, the ‘Donation of Constantine’ (Constitutum Constantini), according to which Emperor Constantine I had conferred on the pope imperial rights in Rome and elsewhere in the West. This forgery is cited extensively in Leo IX’s letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople, the author interpreting the ‘Donation’ as proof of the primacy of the papacy, which he described as ‘the earthly and heavenly empire, or rather the royal priesthood of the holy Roman and apostolic see’.119 There is, therefore, a possible parallel between the fragmentary work and the papal letter of 1053, but the points of contrast between the two texts are perhaps more noteworthy than the verbal resemblances. In fact the closest verbal correspondence is followed immediately by the strongest contrast. Leo IX’s letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople twice states the Pseudo-Isidorean claim that ‘the supreme see is judged by no one’.120 The equivalent passage in Concerning the Holy Roman Church shows a radical departure from the Pseudo-Isidorean formulation: ‘he who shall judge all men must be judged by no one, unless by chance he is discovered to be straying from the faith’.121 This formulation, which envisages the judging of a heretical pope, passed by way of the canonical collections of Deusdedit and Bishop Ivo of Chartres into the Decretum of Master Gratian of Bologna and so entered the mainstream of later medieval canon law.122 It is uncertain whether this reservation clause in Concerning the Holy Roman Church was inspired by the proceedings of the Council of Sutri (1046), in which Gregory VI was judged to be guilty of ‘simoniacal heresy’.123 What is certain is that this reservation clause does not reappear in subsequent eleventh-century references by popes or pro-papal polemicists to the papal immunity from judgement.124 Thus

117 Fuhrmann, Einfluß und Verbreitung, 503–04; Maccarrone, ‘La teologia del primato romano’, 50. 118 De sancta Romana ecclesia, Fragment A, ed. by Schramm, in Kaiser, Könige und Päpste, 151–52. Cf. Leo IX, JL, no. 4302; PL, cxliii, 763B. See Schramm, Kaiser, Könige und Päpste, 145. On the attribution of this papal letter to Humbert, see above, note 99. 119 Leo IX, JL, no. 4302; PL, cxliii, 753B–755D; 752D. See Constitutum Constantini, ed. by Fuhrmann, 15–17. 120 Leo IX, JL, no. 4302; PL, cxliii, 751A, 765B. See above, note 109. 121 Schramm, Kaiser, Könige und Päpste, 152. 122 Deusdedit, Collectio canonum, i. 306; Ivo of Chartres, Decretum, v. 23, 330; Gratian, Decretum, D.40, c. 6. See Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory, 38 and n. 2; Zimmermann, Papstabsetzungen des Mittelalters, 169–70; Schramm, Kaiser, Könige und Päpste, 150. 123 Schramm, Kaiser, Könige und Päpste, 157. 124 A single pro-papal author, Bernold of Constance (of St Blasien), in his polemic De excommunicatis vitandis, c. 56, ed. by Stöckly and Jasper, 177, is found citing the Pseudo-Isidorean text that may be the original source of the reservation clause, Pseudo-Symmachus, Synodus V, in Decretales

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Gregory VII’s memorandum on papal authority, the Dictatus pape (1075), declares that the pope ‘must be judged by no one’ and excludes the possibility of any limitation on this by adding the statements ‘that the Roman Church has never erred nor will it err in perpetuity, as Scripture bears witness’ (an allusion to the text Luke 22. 32, so often cited in the letters of Leo IX) and ‘that the Roman pontiff, if he is canonically ordained, is undoubtedly made a saint by the merits of blessed Peter’.125 Such a reservation clause is, however, to be found in documents of the imperial chancery. The letter of King Henry IV of Germany of 1076 denouncing Gregory VII applies the clause not to the pope but to the king: ‘the tradition of the holy Fathers teaches that [I am] to be judged by God alone and declares that I am not to be deposed for any offence, unless (which heaven forbid!) I turn away from the faith’.126 In the decree of Henry IV’s Council of Brixen (1080), however, the reservation clause is used to justify the condemnation of Gregory VII, who was ‘turning away from the true faith’.127 Concerning the Holy Roman Church differs from the confident exposition of papal authority in the letters of Leo IX in its repeated emphasis on the dangers presented to Christendom by a ‘useless’ pope. The Roman Church ‘exerts influence on the members of the whole of Christendom according to the condition and soundness of its bishop and ruler so that their health corresponds with his and they rejoice in his good health and to no less a degree their weaknesses match his weakness’ and ‘they are brought low by his degradation’. If the pope neglects his own and his brothers’ salvation, he is discovered to be useless and remiss in his works [Ecclesiasticus 4. 34] and moreover inclined to remain silent about what is good, which is all the more detrimental both to him and to all men, he nonetheless leads innumerable crowds of people with him to be the slaves of hell, to be afflicted eternally by many plagues together with him.128 This is an emphasis quite different from the assured reliance on the text Luke 22. 32 in the letters of Leo IX and the undeniably authentic work of Humbert of Silva Candida: that ‘the excellent faith [of the prince of the apostles] has not failed nor will it ever fail’.129 The author of Concerning the Holy Roman Church had no doubt that the apostolic see, ‘the head of all the churches’, enjoyed such authority that ‘all men […] look for some instruction in the holy canons and the ancient principle of the Christian religion rather from the mouth of the governor of [the apostolic see] than from the sacred pages [of Scripture] and from the traditions of the Fathers

pseudo-Isidorianae, ed. by Hinschius, 676, which does not, however, specifically refer to the pope: ‘The sheep cannot accuse their pastor except for heresy.’ Another possible source for the reservation clause is Isidore of Seville, Sententiae, 39.6, in PL, lxxxiii 710: see Zimmermann, Papstabsetzungen des Mittelalters, 170. 125 Gregory VII, Register ii. 55a: Dictatus pape, c. 19, c. 22, c. 23, ed. by Caspar, 206–07. 126 Henry IV, Letter 12, Die Briefe Heinrichs IV., 16. The text uses the formulation of Decretales pseudoIsidorianae, ed. by Hinschius, 676 (the Pseudo-Symmachan synod). 127 Decree of the Council of Brixen, Die Briefe Heinrichs IV., 72. 128 Schramm, Kaiser, Könige und Päpste, 152. 129 Humbert, Adversus simoniacos libri III, ii. 1, 137. Cf. Leo IX, JL, no. 4302; PL, cxliii, 748B.

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[Galatians 1. 14]. They seek to discover only his wish or his prohibition so that they may conform or direct their conduct according to his will.’ Only the pope, according to this author, has sufficient authority to reform the Church. If the pope ‘strives to keep himself blameless in deed and word before God and men, to speak truly, he causes almost the whole world, inspired and excited together with him, to run after God’.130 The author’s twofold preoccupation — the indispensability of the pope for the reform of the Church and the danger to the Church from a defective pope — resembles that of Peter Damian’s letter written in 1045 from the hermitage of Fonte Avellana to the papal chancellor Peter. The letter deplores the lamentable condition of the Roman Church and, referring to the tradition that the rest of Christendom had been evangelized by Rome, concludes: ‘unless the Roman see returns to the condition of rectitude, it is certain that the whole world will continue to be lapsed in its error. And it is necessary that the same [see] that had been the foundation of nascent human salvation should now be the beginning of its renewal’.131 In thus emphasizing ‘the normative role of the Roman church as the custodian of apostolic tradition’,132 Peter Damian’s letter of 1045 assumes a conception of the papal office similar to that of Abbo of Fleury: ‘the Roman Church confers authority on all […] her members, which are found throughout the four regions of the whole world’.133 Unlike Abbo, however, Peter Damian wished for more from the papacy than protection for reforming monasteries. He desired the reform of ‘the whole world’, but he feared that in its present condition the papacy could not achieve this. When Gregory VI became pope in 1045, Peter Damian sent him a joyful letter of congratulation, confident that the work of reform could now begin. ‘Let the golden age of the apostles now be restored and let ecclesiastical discipline flourish once again under the direction of Your Prudence.’134 After the deposition of Gregory VI at the Council of Sutri (1046) Peter Damian admonished his successor, Clement II: ‘of what use is it, my lord, that we say that the apostolic see has returned from the darkness to the light, if we still remain in that darkness?’ When all men are hungering for reform, ‘Almighty God has put you in his place among the people as sustenance’, and the pope should, therefore, ‘strive to restore the righteousness that has been cast down and trampled on and show the discipline of ecclesiastical vigour’.135 The vicissitudes of the papacy in 1045–48, however, seem temporarily to have persuaded Peter Damian (as we have seen) that the emperor would prove a more effective reformer than the short-lived popes.136 It was the initiatives of Leo IX that persuaded Peter Damian, like many other reform-minded intellectuals, that the papacy

130 Schramm, Kaiser, Könige und Päpste, 152. 131 Peter Damian, Letter 11, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 138–39. 132 Ryan, St Peter Damiani, 24, arguing that Peter Damian was influenced by Innocent I, JK, no. 311: see above, note 98. 133 Abbo of Fleury, Letter 5, in PL, cxxxix, 423D. 134 Peter Damian, Letter 13, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 144. See Laqua, ‘“Refloreat disciplina”’. 135 Peter Damian, Letter 26, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 241–42. 136 See above, notes 73, 74.

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had indeed ‘returned to the condition of rectitude’ and could therefore achieve ‘the renewal’ of ‘the whole world’. Hence his letter to Leo IX of 1049 contains his first exposition of the authority by virtue of which the pope will reform the Church. The emphasis is on the obligation, defined by Innocent I, to refer all matters of the faith to Rome: Since the apostolic see is known from the mouth of the Truth himself [Matthew 16. 18] to be the mother of all the churches, it is fitting that if any doubt arises anywhere that seems to be of importance to souls, we have recourse to her as to the mistress and, as it were, to the fountain of heavenly wisdom so that from that one head the light of ecclesiastical discipline may appear, by means of which the darkness of uncertainty may be dispelled and the whole body of the Church may shine with the manifest splendour of truth.137 The writings of Peter Damian, the most prolific author of the eleventh-century reform movement, reveal the development of his conception of papal authority, especially after he entered the service of the Roman Church in 1057, as Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia.138 In the letter that he addressed to his new colleagues on this occasion he wrote that ‘amidst such profound crises that threaten to shipwreck the world, amidst so many whirlpools exposing humankind to damnation, the Roman Church is the one harbour, alone of its kind’. It was precisely for this reason that the Roman Church ‘is resplendent with privileges superior to those of the other churches of the whole world’. The Lateran basilica, where the seven cardinal bishops assisted when the pope celebrated Mass, ‘is thus the mother and the summit and highest peak [apex ac vertex] of all the churches throughout the world’. ‘This church […] has been made the crown and the highest point of the whole Christian religion and is, so to speak, the church of churches and the holy of holies.’ To the cardinal bishops ‘was given by the authority of the apostolic see the duty of correcting […] evils’.139 Just as he urged the cardinal-bishops to perform their duty of correctio, Peter Damian also exhorted the pope to use his unique authority to reform abuses. Thus in 1059 he called on Nicholas II to depose bishops guilty of living in concubinage: ‘My lord, venerable pope, who perform your office in the place of Christ, who have succeeded the supreme Shepherd in the apostolic dignity: do not allow this plague to increase through your inactivity; do not loosen the reins to rampant lust by winking at it and concealing it.’140 One event in particular prompted Peter Damian’s most detailed exposition of the papal primacy: his legation to Milan in November 1059, when he encountered fierce Milanese resistance to papal claims of jurisdiction over the Milanese church. It was

137 Peter Damian, Letter 31, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 286. Cf. Innocent I, JK, no. 311: see above, note 98. 138 Hüls, Kardinäle, Klerus und Kirchen Roms, 100. 139 Peter Damian, Letter 48, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 2, 55, 56, 60. The term apex ac vertex seems to echo the Donation of Constantine. Cf. Constitutum Constantini, c. 13, ed. by Fuhrmann, 84: ‘caput et verticem omnium ecclesiarum in universo orbe terrarum’. See Ryan, St Peter Damiani, 53–54. On the status of the Lateran basilica, see Klewitz, Reformpapsttum und Kardinalkolleg, 20. 140 Peter Damian, Letter 61, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 217.

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in his account of this opposition to Rome that he elaborated the ideas found in the letters of Leo IX. Peter Damian’s legation of 1059 marked a significant stage in the campaign of the reform papacy to impose its authority on the proudly independent metropolitan see of Milan.141 His letter of December 1059, reporting his legation to Archdeacon Hildebrand (later Pope Gregory VII), is one of the most important eleventh-century statements of the authority of the Roman Church. This account was composed as a response to Hildebrand’s request that he prepare a compilatio of excerpts from ‘the decrees and deeds of the Roman pontiffs’ concerning ‘whatever seemed particularly to pertain to the authority of the apostolic see’ and ‘the privilege of the Roman Church’. Hence Peter Damian included in his account the text of the sermon ‘on the prerogative and the principatus of the apostolic see’ that he had preached to the Milanese in November 1059.142 The papal claims were resisted by the Milanese clergy, who encouraged the people to riot, declaring that their loyalty to their own patron saint, Ambrose of Milan, necessitated resistance to any Roman intervention: ‘the Ambrosian church must not be subject to Roman laws and the Roman pontiff possessed no right to judge or to make arrangements in that see’.143 In his sermon Peter Damian responded with the same image used in the letter of Leo IX of 1053 that asked the Patriarch of Constantinople: ‘Is the Roman and apostolic see — which through the Gospel gave birth to the Latin Church in the West — not the mother of the Church of Constantinople in the East?’144 Peter Damian similarly represented Rome and Milan as mother and daughter. Noting that Nazarius, Celsus, Protasius, and Gervasius had been sent from Rome to convert the Milanese, he observed: ‘Since the authors of your salvation sprang from the discipline of the Roman Church, it follows logically, according to the rule of justice, that the Roman Church is the mother, the Ambrosian church is the daughter.’145 The case of Milan was an example of the general principle that Christendom was evangelized by Rome, the only church to have been directly founded by Christ. ‘It was he alone who conferred the rights both to earthly and to heavenly power on the blessed [Peter] bearer of the keys of eternal life, who founded the Roman Church and built it on the rock [Matthew 16. 18] of the faith that was soon to be born.’146 The Milanese claim that loyalty to St Ambrose necessitated opposition to Rome was answered by Peter Damian with the statement that ‘St Ambrose himself declared that he followed in all things his teacher, the holy Roman Church’.147 141 Miccoli, Chiesa gregoriana, 101–60; Cowdrey, ‘The Papacy’; Keller, ‘Pataria und Stadtverfassung’. 142 Peter Damian, Letter 65, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 229, 232–36. On the ‘compilation’ requested from Peter Damian, see Fournier, ‘Un tournant de l’histoire du droit’, 142–43; Fournier and Le Bras, Histoire des collections canoniques; Ryan, St Peter Damiani, 154–57; Fuhrmann, ‘“Quod catholicus non habeatur”’, 270–71; Szabó-Bechstein, Libertas Ecclesiae, 112–13. 143 Peter Damian, Letter 65, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 231. 144 Leo IX, JL, no. 4302; PL, cxliii, 760D–1A. 145 Peter Damian, Letter 65, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 235. 146 Peter Damian, Letter 65, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 233. See above, note 98. 147 Peter Damian, Letter 65, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 235. Ryan, St Peter Damiani, 68, identified Peter Damian’s source as Ambrose, De sacramentis, iii. 1. 5, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 73, 40.

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The most radical argument in Peter Damian’s sermon to the Milanese, however, was that, since the Roman Church uniquely had been directly founded by Christ, ‘he who tries to take away the privilege conferred on the Roman Church by the Supreme Head of all the churches himself, undoubtedly falls into heresy’. Any Milanese who denied the Roman primacy over his church ‘is to be called a heretic’.148 Peter Damian produced a more general formulation of this idea during ‘the schism of Cadalus’ of 1061–64, in which he championed the cause of Pope Alexander II against the antipope Bishop Cadalus of Parma. In a letter of spring 1062 addressed to the antipope he wrote that ‘the sacred canons brand as heretics those who do not agree with the Roman Church’.149 Returning to the attack in a second letter of spring 1062, he applied to Cadalus of Parma the same formula that he had used in his sermon in Milan.150 This idea that opponents of the Roman Church were guilty of heresy recurs in a variety of pro-papal sources composed after the outbreak of the conflict between the pope and King Henry IV of Germany. It appears in a letter of Pope Gregory VII of May 1080 with a precise patristic attribution: ‘As the blessed Ambrose also says, “It is certain that he who does not agree with the Roman Church is a heretic”’.151 This sententia seems to abbreviate and combine the two elements of Peter Damian’s sermon in Milan noted above: Ambrose acknowledging the Roman Church as his teacher, and the claim that denial of the privileged position of that Church was tantamount to heresy. If the sententia did indeed derive from Peter Damian’s letter of 1059 to Hildebrand, it is possible that during Gregory VII’s pontificate that letter was being used in the papal chancery as a compilatio of materials on ‘the authority of the apostolic see’ and ‘the privilege of the Roman Church’ such as Hildebrand had requested.152 The sententia in Gregory VII’s letter of May 1080 or versions similar to it, sometimes with and sometimes without the ascription to Ambrose, circulated in the writings of Gregorian canonists, of historians, and of the pro-papal polemicists of the Investiture Contest.153 The best known version of the ‘heretic text’, however, appears — without the attribution to Ambrose and without the term ‘heretic’ — in Gregory VII’s Register

148 Peter Damian, Letter 65, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 234. See Fuhrmann, ‘“Quod catholicus non habeatur”’, 280–81 and n. 59. 149 Peter Damian, Letter 88, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 521. For the source of this idea, see Ryan, St Peter Damiani, 78–80, and Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 2, 521–22 n. 16. On Peter Damian’s conception of heresy, see Reindel, ‘Neue Literatur zu Petrus Damiani’, 421–22. 150 Peter Damian, Letter 89, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 542. 151 Gregory VII, Register, vii. 24, ed. by Caspar, 504–05 (to Abbot William of Hirsau, approving his action in assuming control of the monastery of Schaffhausen): ‘dicente quoque beato Ambrosio: Ereticum esse constat, qui Romanae ecclesiae non concordat’. 152 For the argument that this idea originated with Peter Damian himself, see Hageneder, ‘Die Häresie des Ungehorsams’, 36–37. But see also Fuhrmann, ‘“Quod catholicus non habeatur”’, 280–81 n. 59. 153 For example, Bernard of Hildesheim, Liber canonum contra Heinricum IV., c. 7, 480; Cardinal-Bishop Odo of Ostia, letter, Hildesheimer Briefe, no. 7, in Briefsammlungen der Zeit Heinrichs IV., 26; Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad amicum VI, 591; Anselm II of Lucca, Sermo, in Pásztor, ‘Motivi dell’ecclesiologia di Anselmo di Lucca’, 99. For a detailed study of the transmission of the ‘heretic text’, see Fuhrmann, ‘“Quod catholicus non habeatur”’, 273–84.

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among the papal letters for March 1075. It is the twenty-sixth of the twenty-seven statements concerning papal authority in the memorandum headed Dictatus pape: ‘That he who does not agree with the Roman Church is not to be regarded as a catholic.’154 For Y. M.-J. Congar this statement was the hallmark of the Gregorian papacy: in the final phase of the development of eleventh-century ideas of papal authority ‘heresy is failure to submit to the Roman see; faith is obedience’.155 It is certainly impossible to overlook the frequency with which the terms obedientia, obedire, and obediens occur in the letters of Gregory VII.156 Obedientia is the theme of the most frequent scriptural quotation or allusion (occurring in twenty-one of the letters — more often than the primacy text, Matthew 16. 18), referring to the disobedience of King Saul: i Samuel 25. 23, ‘Obedience is better than sacrifices and to hearken, than the fat of rams; for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry’.157 In seven instances Gregory VII also quoted the interpretation of i Samuel 25. 23 given by Pope Gregory I in his Moralia: obedience is ‘that alone that possesses the merit of faith; since if a man is without it, he is proved to be unfaithful, even though he seems to be faithful’.158 The emphasis in Gregory the Great’s understanding of obedientia was on the voluntary submission of the human will to the will of God. For Gregory VII, however, obedientia signified the submission of the clergy to papal commands. The text i Samuel 25. 23 was first used in Gregory VII’s letters as a warning to prelates whom the pope suspected of being reluctant to enforce the papal decrees against clerical marriage. In March 1075 the pope informed Bishop Burchard II of Halberstadt and Archbishop Anno II of Cologne that ‘writings on the subject of obedience that may be read everywhere exhort you to accept what we say with brotherly charity’. The papal letters quoted i Samuel 25. 23 and Gregory I’s exposition of the text and commanded the prelates ‘by apostolic authority’ to implement the decrees.159 Bishop Otto of Constance was similarly required to ‘obey [the pope’s] commands and drive out simoniacal heresy and the pollution of lust from the sanctuary of the Lord’.160 When Otto failed to comply, the pope judged that he had incurred ‘the guilt not only of disobedience but also of rebellion, as we have heard that he has openly tolerated in his clergy conduct entirely contrary to our command — or rather, the command of St Peter’. Consequently by his apostolic authority the pope absolved the clergy and people of the diocese of Constance from their duty of obedience to their bishop, ‘as long as he is a rebel against God and the apostolic see’. Gregory VII’s letter ‘to the clergy and laity, greater and lesser, in the diocese of Constance, who love the Christian law’, concludes:

154 Gregory VII, Register, ii. 55a, ed. by Caspar, 207. On the Dictatus pape, see especially Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 502–07; Fuhrmann, ‘Papst Gregor VII.’. 155 Congar, ‘Der Platz des Papsttums’, 202. 156 Gregory VII, Register, ed. by Caspar, 696–97 (Sachregister). 157 Gregory VII, Register, ed. by Caspar, 644 (Quellenverzeichnis); Epistolae Vagantes, ed. by Cowdrey, 169. See also Schneider, Prophetisches Sacerdotium, 118–23. 158 Gregory I, Moralia in Iob, in PL, lxxvi, 765. 159 Gregory VII, Register, ii. 66, ed. by Caspar, 222, ii. 67, 224. 160 Gregory VII, JL, no. 4970; Epistolae Vagantes, ed. by Cowdrey, no. 9, 20.

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How perilous and how far removed from the Christian law it is, not to show obedience to the apostolic see above all, you can recognize from the words of the blessed prophet Samuel, which the most holy Pope Gregory undertook to expound in the last book of the Moralia. In order that you may have ready access to these words, we are sending you a copy of them, so that you may know beyond doubt that we are saying nothing new to you but making known the ancient teaching of the holy Fathers.161 ‘We are saying nothing new’: novam non dicere sed antiquam sanctorum patrum doctrinam propalare is a frequent protestation in Gregorian letters concerning papal authority over the Church. ‘Whenever we make or have made a judgement, we do not offer novelties [nova] or our own opinions but follow and carry into effect those revealed to [the holy Fathers] by the Holy Spirit.’162 ‘We are trying to introduce nothing new, nothing of our own invention […]. In such a case as this we wish to proceed not according to our own will but following the path and the teaching of the orthodox Fathers.’163 ‘Shaken by the peril and the evident ruin of the Lord’s flock, we reverted to the decrees and the teaching of the holy Fathers, instituting nothing new, nothing of our own invention, but we considered that, abandoning error, the one and only rule of Church discipline and the well-trodden path of the saints should be revisited and followed.’164 When including such declarations against novitas, the papal chancery was mindful of the oath taken by a newly elected pope, according to the Liber Diurnus: the pope elect swore ‘to diminish or change nothing of the tradition of my most virtuous predecessors nor to admit any novelty’.165 As numerous as Gregory’s denials of novitas, of course, are the complaints of the critics of ‘the false monk Hildebrand’ concerning his innovations and tyrannical conduct. ‘A new and most unacceptable custom was being introduced into the Church: […] to force subjects to threaten their bishops in the name of obedience and under threat of anathema […] to arm sons against fathers and to destroy reverence and piety.’166 Hildebrand had ‘usurped a new and improper power, so as to destroy the proper rights of the whole brotherhood’ of the episcopate.167 He had ‘taught that [bishops] must be held in contempt’ and ‘unlawfully conferred their authority over priests upon laymen’.168 He had ‘reviled

161 Gregory VII, JL, no. 4971; Epistolae Vagantes, ed. by Cowdrey, no. 10, 24. The version of the last sentence given here is that of the manuscripts of Paul of Bernried, Vita Gregorii VII papae, c. 38, ed. by Watterich, 493: ‘Ut autem ea sint vobis in promptu’. The reading in the 1972 edition of the Epistolae Vagantes is ‘nobis’. 162 Gregory VII, Register, iv. 6, ed. by Caspar, 303–04 (on the posthumous absolution from excommunication of Bishop William of Utrecht). 163 Gregory VII, Register, v. 5, ed. by Caspar, 353 (on the election of the Patriarch of Aquileia). 164 Gregory VII, Register, iii. 10, ed. by Caspar, 266 (on the purpose of the papal synod of Lent 1075). For Gregory VII on ‘novelty’, see Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 517–18. 165 Liber Diurnus, ed. by von Sickel, 92 (Formula 83). 166 Udo, Archbishop of Trier, Letter to Gregory VII, Hildesheimer Briefe, no. 17, in Briefsammlungen der Zeit Heinrichs IV., 39. 167 Letter of the German bishops at the Council of Worms, 1076, Die Briefe Heinrichs IV., 67. 168 Henry IV, Letter 12, in Die Briefe Heinrichs IV., 16.

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the priests of the Lord, the bishops and archbishops, with filthy names’ and ‘thrown into confusion the inmost order of the Church’.169 In fact both tradition and innovation are apparent in Gregory VII’s memorandum on papal authority, the Dictatus pape. On the subject of the judicial primacy of the Roman Church the authentic traditions of the fourth and fifth centuries and the supposedly authentic tradition of Pseudo-Isidore were summarized in three of the statements: ‘That the greater cases [maiores causae] of any church must be referred to [the apostolic see]’ (DP 21); ‘That [the pope’s] judgement must not be retracted by anyone and he alone can retract it’ (DP 18); ‘That no one should dare to condemn anyone appealing to the apostolic see’ (DP 20).170 Other statements of the Dictatus pape, however, directly contradict the canon law of the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals: ‘That the pope can depose those who are absent’ (DP 5); ‘That by [the pope’s] command and permission, subjects are allowed to bring accusations [against superiors]’ (DP 24).171 Pseudo-Isidore had exalted papal authority, imagining a Church ruled from earliest times by the decrees of the popes, but he had done so only in order to protect bishops from their metropolitans and from kings. He had emphasized the right of appeal to Rome and the principle that the maiores causae must be referred to the apostolic see only in order to frustrate any attempts by metropolitans and kings to depose bishops.172 The eleventh-century reformers eagerly seized upon the Pseudo-Isidorean conception of the judicial supremacy of the pope, while simultaneously dismantling the defences with which Pseudo-Isidore had surrounded the bishops.173 In October 1074 Gregory VII had already shown his readiness to act according to the letter of Dictatus pape 24, when he commanded Archbishop Udo of Trier to question the clergy of Toul about the conduct of their bishop, who had been denounced to the pope by the custos of the cathedral of Toul as a simoniac, living in concubinage.174 Udo of Trier found Bishop Pibo of Toul to be innocent of these charges and described the pope’s proceedings in this case as a nova et minima probanda consuetudo.175 The ‘impious novelties’ (profanae novitates) of which the Council of Worms accused Gregory VII in January 1076 included that of having ‘robbed the bishops of every power conferred on them by the grace of the Holy Spirit’ and having ‘given up the control of ecclesiastical affairs to the ravening frenzy of the mob’.176 This accusation was perhaps partly inspired by the widely circulated papal letter of 11 January 1075, 169 Wenrich of Trier, Epistola, MGH Libelli de lite, i, 286, 287. 170 Gregory VII, Register, ii. 55a, ed. by Caspar, 206. 171 Gregory VII, Register, ii. 55a, ed. by Caspar, 203, 207. 172 Fuhrmann, Einfluß und Verbreitung, 41, 134, 146. 173 An early instance of this dismantling appears in Peter Damian, Letter 164, in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Reindel, 4, 169–71, complaining to Pope Alexander II about the judicial immunity of bishops: ‘The statement, “It is not permissible for a son of any church to bring charges against his own bishop […] before a greater church”, is too incongruous and utterly contrary to ecclesiastical discipline’. 174 Gregory VII, Register, ii. 10, ed. by Caspar, 140–41. 175 Udo of Trier, Letter, Hildesheimer Briefe, no. 17, in Briefsammlungen der Zeit Heinrichs IV., 39. 176 Letter of the Council of Worms, 1076, in Die Briefe Heinrichs IV., 66.

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in which Gregory VII warned the Dukes of Swabia, Carinthia, and Bavaria ‘that the people [were] being led astray by [bishops] who despise apostolic commands […] and encourage the wickedness of their subjects by their criminal forbearance’. The pope exhorted the dukes by apostolic authority that — whatever bishops say or not say about it — you should in no way recognize as priests those whom you know either to have been promoted and ordained simoniacally or to be accused of fornication. You are bound by your obedience [to St Peter] to publish and to urge these [commands] both in the king’s court and elsewhere, in the assemblies of the kingdom and, to the utmost of your power, you are to prevent such men from administering the sacred mysteries — even, if necessary, by violence.177 Count Robert I of Flanders and his mother were similarly instructed that priests living in concubinage ‘must be driven out of the sanctuary until they show the worthy results of penitence’. Very many so-called bishops were opposed to righteousness: ‘do not regard such men as bishops but as enemies of Christ and, as they do not trouble to obey the apostolic see, show them no obedience’.178 It was these aspects of the Gregorian reform programme that prompted the historian Sigebert of Gembloux to write that Gregory VII used ‘tyrannical violence’ rather than ‘pious and ecclesiastical admonitions’ to reform the Church.179 Gregory’s reforming methods also inspired the famous harangue of Gottschalk of Aachen (in the name of King Henry IV of Germany): ‘You have taught that [bishops] must be held in contempt and you have unlawfully conferred their authority over priests upon laymen, so that laymen may depose and condemn those to whom they themselves have been committed by the hand of the Lord.’180 Gregory VII had no doubt whatsoever that in urging secular princes to use violence, if necessary, against simoniacs and married priests, he was faithfully carrying out the duties of his exalted office: Since we know that the people are being led astray by [bishops] who despise apostolic commands or rather, the commands of the Holy Spirit […] and encourage the wickedness of their subjects by their criminal forbearance, it is fitting that we — on whom, before all others, falls the care of the Lord’s flock — should guard against these evils by some other method. For it seems to us far better to re-establish God’s righteousness by means of new counsels than to allow the souls of men to perish along with the laws that they have neglected.181

177 Gregory VII, Register, ii. 45, ed. by Caspar, 184. On the circulation of this letter, see Robinson, ‘Dissemination of the Letters of Pope Gregory VII’, 179 n. 17, 190. 178 Gregory VII, Register, iv. 10, ed. by Caspar, 309, iv. 11, 311. 179 Sigebert of Gembloux, Apologia, c. 2, 438. 180 Henry IV, Letter 12, in Die Briefe Heinrichs IV., 16. 181 Gregory VII, Register, ii. 45, ed. by Caspar, 184.

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Nova consilia: it was the pope’s duty to be an innovator, employing new methods when traditional methods proved ineffective. The papal letters indeed reveal Gregory VII claiming the right to resort to ‘new counsels’ immediately after protesting that he was saying ‘nothing new, nothing of our own invention’ but faithfully following the teaching of the Fathers. Thus Archbishop Anno of Cologne was assured by the pope: We do not frame these commands [concerning clerical marriage] according to our own opinion but (compelled by our official duty) we publish the decrees of the ancient Fathers, dictated by the Holy Spirit […]; although it always has been and always will be lawful for this holy Roman Church, when new abuses spring up, to provide new decrees and remedies against them, which no man is permitted to reject as invalid, since they are issued with the judgement of reason and authority.182 Archbishop Werner of Magdeburg received a similar assurance from the pope: ‘We do not place before you our own decrees [on clerical marriage] — although we could freely do so, if need be — but we renew what was set forth by the holy Fathers.’183 In the memorandum Dictatus pape the papal claim to be a legislator for the Church is unambiguous: ‘That [the pope] alone has the right to make new laws according to the needs of the times’.184 This statement has been hailed by scholars as a significant moment in the history of the law in the West, the moment when ‘law shifted from the divine sphere into that of human control’.185 The pontificate of Gregory VII was undoubtedly a period of rapid development in ideas of papal authority over the Church, but Gregory himself was never forgetful of the ancient traditions of the Roman Church. As H. E. J. Cowdrey wrote, Gregory VII’s innovations ‘did not interrupt or stand superior to, but continued and revitalized, the continuum of rightful ecclesiastical authority which arose from the holy scriptures and continued through the deliverances of popes and councils, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, up to the present time’.186 The role of the vicarius Petri in particular was as central to Gregory VII’s conception of papal authority as it was to that of Pope Leo IX. Gregory had long served in St Peter’s ‘special church’ until ‘the care and responsibility for all the churches’ was committed to him.187 Thereafter Gregory ‘identified himself with the apostle, who spoke, legislated, judged, and condemned through his mouth’.188 The closeness of this identification is visible in the vassal oath that he formulated, to be sworn to himself by a potential German king: ‘I shall be faithful […] to the blessed apostle Peter and to his vicar Gregory, who now lives in the flesh.’189

182 Gregory VII, Register, ii. 67, ed. by Caspar, 223–24. 183 Gregory VII, Register, ii. 68, ed. by Caspar, 226. 184 Dictatus pape 7, in Gregory VII, Register, ii. 55a, ed. by Caspar, 203. 185 Klinkenberg, ‘Die Theorie der Veränderbarkeit des Rechtes’, 157. 186 Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 520. 187 Gregory VII, Register, vii. 14a, ed. by Caspar, 483, ix. 35, 622. 188 Fliche, La Réforme grégorienne, ii, 194. See also Erdmann, Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens, 185–211; Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government, 272–99; Ullmann, ‘Romanus pontifex’. 189 Gregory VII, Register, ix. 9, ed. by Caspar, 575–76.

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Gregory’s adherents described how St Peter miraculously intervened to support the pope, as in the case of the simoniac Bishop Henry of Speyer, judged in absentia in the Roman synod of Lent 1075. The chronicler Bernold of St Blasien recorded that ‘on the very same day that his case was being examined in Rome, that is, on 24 February, he became ill in Speyer. Then on 26 February, when he was the subject of a definitive sentence of condemnation by Pope Gregory in the Roman synod, he died a pitiful death.’190 In the course of 1075 Bernold cited this incident in a polemic defending Gregorian reforming decrees and used it as a warning to the pope’s critics. ‘Do not doubt that our pope’s condemnations are equal in their efficacy to that pronounced by the prince of the apostles on Ananias and Sapphira [Acts 5. 1–10].’191 Omnipresent in the letters of Gregory VII, St Peter appears as ‘the heavenly and invincible prince’, to whom God ‘especially committed his sheep and gave the government of the whole Church’, ‘the apostle whom the Lord Jesus Christ […] made prince over the kingdoms of the world’, ‘the common father and lord’. ‘Peter is so called from the immovable rock, which breaks the gates of hell and with its adamantine hardness destroys and scatters whatever opposes it.’192 Gregory VII’s letter of 1083 to ‘all the rulers of the churches and the princes in Flanders’, almost the last letter in the papal register, is a microcosm of the pope’s preoccupation with his authority over the Church. It begins with the most elaborate ‘primacy arenga’ of Gregory’s pontificate: The Lord Jesus Christ appointed blessed Peter as the prince of the apostles, giving him the keys of the kingdom of heaven and the power of binding and loosing in heaven and on earth [Matthew 16. 18]; and on him he also built his Church, entrusting to him his sheep to be fed [ John 21. 17]. From that time that principatus and power has progressed through blessed Peter to all those who have received or who will receive his throne until the end of the world, by divine privilege and by hereditary right. Because of our succession to his see, it is inevitably necessary that we must bring help to all who are oppressed and fight even to the death, if necessary, against the enemies of God in defence of righteousness […] until they are converted. The purpose of this impressive statement of the Petrine primacy was to persuade the bishops and the greater nobility of Flanders to ‘approach, ask, and rebuke’ Count Robert I of Flanders because of his support for the ‘false bishop’ Lambert of Thérouanne, whom the pope had excommunicated. Robert had formerly been in high favour with the pope; now he was ordered to do penance and threatened with excommunication if he failed to do so within forty days of receiving the pope’s message. The letter is full of the language of obedientia and inobedientia. The characteristic

190 Bernold of Constance (of St Blasien), Chronicon, ed. by Robinson, 404. Cf. Gregory VII, Register, ii. 52a, ed. by Caspar, 196. 191 Bernold of Constance (of St Blasien), De incontinentia sacerdotum V, 25–26. 192 Gregory VII, Register, i. 15, ed. by Caspar, 24 (cf. ii. 49, 190), i. 63, 92, ii. 25, 157 (cf. ii. 67, 223), ii. 70, 230.

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texts i Samuel 25. 23 and Gregory I’s exposition in Moralia xxxv. 28 are each quoted twice, and ten further scriptural texts and five further passages from the writings of Gregory I appear. The recipients of the letter were commanded by the pope ‘on behalf of blessed Peter, the prince of the apostles’ per veram oboedientiam to overcome Count Robert’s inoboedientia, and they were reminded that ‘by obeying as [they] ought to do, they were providing for their own salvation’.193 There is no stronger illustration of Y. M.-J. Congar’s observation about Gregorian ecclesiology, ‘to obey God means to obey the Church and that in turn means to obey the pope and vice versa’.194 According to Gregory VII’s conception of his principatus, obedience to the Roman Church was to be regarded as the criterion of the orthodoxy of the faithful and of the legitimacy of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.195

Works Cited Primary Sources Abbo of Fleury, Collectio canonum, in PL, cxxxix, 473–508 Acta concilii Remensis ad Sanctum Basolum, in MGH SS, iii, 658–86 Acta pontificum Romanorum inedita, ed. by J. von Pflugk-Harttung, 3 vols (Tübingen, 1881–88) Anselm, Gesta episcoporum Leodiensium, MGH SS, vii, 199–234 Anselm of Lucca, Collectio canonum, ed. by F. Thaner, in Anselmi Lucensis Collectio canonum, una cum collectione minore (Innsbruck, 1906–1915) Bernard of Hildesheim, Liber canonum contra Heinricum IV., in MGH Libelli de lite, i, 471–516 Bernold of Constance (of St Blasien), Chronicon, ed. by I. S. Robinson, in Die Chroniken Bertholds von Reichenau und Bernolds von Konstanz, 1054–1100, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, n.s., xiv (Hanover, 2003), 383–540 ———, De excommunicatis vitandis, de reconciliatione lapsorum et de fontibus iuris ecclesiastici, ed. by D. Stöckly and D. Jasper (Hanover, 2000) ———, De incontinentia sacerdotum V, in MGH Libelli de lite, ii, 4–26 Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad amicum VI, in MGH Libelli de lite, i, 568–620 Die Briefe Heinrichs IV., MGH Deutsches Mittelalter, vol. i (Leipzig, 1937) Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by K. Reindel, MGH Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit, iv.1–4 (Hanover, 1983) Briefsammlungen der Zeit Heinrichs IV., ed. by C. Erdmann and N. Fickermann, MGH Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit, v (Hanover, 1950) Burchard of Worms, Decretum, in PL, cxl, 337–1058

193 Gregory VII, Register, ix. 35, ed. by Caspar, 622–27. See Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 345–48. 194 Congar, ‘Der Platz des Papsttums’, 215. 195 See in particular the study of Gregory VII’s sacramental theology in Miccoli, Chiesa gregoriana, 169–201.

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Codex Laureshamensis, ed. by K. Glöckner, vol. i (Darmstadt, 1929) The Collection in 74 Titles: A Canon Law Manual of the Gregorian Reform, trans. by J. T. Gilchrist (Toronto, 1980) Das Constitutum Constantini, ed. by H. Fuhrmann, MGH Fontes iuris Germanici antiqui, x (Hanover, 1968) De ordinando pontifice, in MGH Libelli de lite, i, 8–14 Decretales pseudo-Isidorianae et capitula Angilramni, ed. by P. Hinschius (Leipzig, 1863) Deusdedit, Collectio canonum, in Die Kanonessammlung des Kardinals Deusdedit, ed. by V. Wolf von Glanvell (Paderborn, 1905) Diversorum patrum sententie sive Collectio in LXXIV titulos digesta, ed. by J. T. Gilchrist (Vatican City, 1973) Gerbert, Lettres de Gerbert (983–997), ed. by J. Havet (Paris, 1889) ———, Sermo de informatione episcoporum, in PL, cxxxix, 169–77 Gratian, Decretum, in Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. by E. Friedberg, vol. i (Leipzig, 1879) Gregory VII, The Epistolae Vagantes, ed. by H. E. J. Cowdrey (Oxford, 1972) ———, Das Register Gregors VII., ed. by E. Caspar (Berlin, 1955) Humbert of Silva Candida, Adversus simoniacos libri III, in MGH Libelli de lite, i, 95–253 Iter Italicum, ed. by J. von Pflugk-Harttung (Stuttgart, 1883) Ivo of Chartres, Decretum, in PL, clxi, 47–1036 Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum: Ex unico codice Vaticano, ed. by T. von Sickel (Vienna, 1889) Otto III, Diplomata, MGH Diplomata: Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser, ii.2 (Hanover, 1893) Papstregesten, 911–1024, ed. by H. Zimmermann = RI, ii.5, ed. by J. F. Böhmer, 2nd edn (Vienna, 1998) Paul of Bernried, Vita Gregorii VII papae, in Pontificum Romanorum Vitae, ed. by J. M. Watterich, vol. i (Leipzig, 1862) Quellen zum Investiturstreit, ed. by I. Schmale-Ott, vol. ii (Darmstadt, 1984) Ralph Glaber, Historiae, in Rodolfus Glaber, Opera, ed. by J. France, N. Bulst, and P. Reynolds (Oxford, 1989), 2–252 ———, Vita sancti Guillelmi abbatis Divionensis, in PL, cxlii, 701–20 Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye de Cluny, ed. by A. Bernard and A. Bruel, vol. i (Paris, 1876) Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye de Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, ed. by M. Prou and A. Vidier (Paris, 1900) Richer of Rheims, Historiae IV, ed. by R. Latouche (Paris, 1937) Robinson, I. S., Eleventh-Century Germany: The Swabian Chronicles (Manchester, 2008) ———, The Papal Reform of the Eleventh Century: Lives of Pope Leo IX and Pope Gregory VII (Manchester, 2004) Sigebert of Gembloux, Apologia contra eos qui calumniantur missas coniugatorum sacerdotum, in MGH Libelli de lite, ii, 437–48 Wenrich of Trier, Epistola, in MGH Libelli de lite, i, 280–99

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Secondary Studies Anton, H. H., Der sogenannte Traktat ‘De ordinando pontifice’: Ein Rechtsgutachten in Zusammenhang mit der Synode von Sutri (1046) (Bonn, 1982) Battifol, P., Cathedra Petri (Paris, 1938) Blumenstock, A., Der päpstliche Schutz im Mittelalter (Innsbruck, 1890) Bulst, N., Untersuchungen zu den Klosterreformen Wilhelms von Dijon (962–1031) (Bonn, 1973) Carozzi, C., ‘Gerbert et le concile de St.-Basle’, in Gerberto: Scienza, storia e mito (Bobbio, 1985), 661–76 Caspar, E., Geschichte des Papsttums von den Anfängen bis zur Höhe der Weltherrschaft, vol. i (Tübingen, 1930) Congar, Y. M.-J., ‘Ecce constitui te super gentes et regna ( Jér. 1.10) in Geschichte und Gegenwart’, in Theologie in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Michael Schmaus zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. by J. Auer and H. Volk (Munich, 1957), 671–96 ———, L’Ecclésiologie du haut moyen âge (Paris, 1968) ———, ‘Der Platz des Papsttums in der Kirchenfrömmigkeit der Reformer des 11. Jahrhunderts’, in Sentire Ecclesiam: Das Bewußtsein von der Kirche als gestaltende Kraft der Frömmigkeit, ed. by J. Daniélou and H. Vorgrimler (Freiburg, 1961), 196–217 Cousin, P., Abbon de Fleury-sur-Loire: Un savant, un pasteur, un martyr à la fin du xe siècle (Paris, 1954) Cowdrey, H. E. J., The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform (Oxford, 1970) ———, ‘The Papacy, the Patarenes and the Church of Milan’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 18 (1968), 25–48 ———, Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085 (Oxford, 1998) Erdmann, C., Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens (Stuttgart, 1935) Fichtenau, H., Arenga: Spätantike und Mittelalter im Spiegel von Urkundenformeln (Graz, 1957) Fleckenstein, J., Die Hofkapelle der deutschen Könige, vol. ii (Stuttgart, 1966) Fliche, A., La Réforme grégorienne, vol. i (Louvain, 1924) Fournier, P., ‘Le Décret de Burchard de Worms: Ses caractères, ses influences’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 12 (1911), 451–73 and 670–701 ———, ‘Un tournant de l’histoire du droit (1060–1140)’, Nouvelle Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 41 (1917), 129–80 Fournier, P., and G. Le Bras, Histoire des collections canoniques en Occident depuis les Fausses Décrétales jusqu’au Décret de Gratien, vol. i (Paris, 1931) Fuhrmann, H., Einfluß und Verbreitung der pseudoisidorischen Fälschungen, vol. ii (Stuttgart, 1973) ———, ‘Papst Gregor VII. und das Kirchenrecht: Zum Problem der Dictatus Papae’, Studi Gregoriani, 13 (1989), 123–49 ———, ‘Pseudoisidor in Rom vom Ende der Karolingerzeit bis zum Reformpapsttum’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 78 (1967), 15–66 ———, ‘“Quod catholicus non habeatur, qui non concordat Romanae ecclesiae”: Randnotizen zum Dictatus Papae’, in Festschrift für Helmut Beumann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by K.-U. Jäschke and R. Wenskus (Sigmaringen, 1977), 263–87

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Gottlob, T., Der kirchliche Amtseid der Bischöfe (Bonn, 1936) Gresser, G., Clemens II.: Der erste deutsche Reformpapst (Paderborn, 2007) Hageneder, O., ‘Die Häresie des Ungehorsams und das Entstehen des hierokratischen Papsttums’, Römische historische Mitteilungen, 20 (1978), 29–47 Haller, J., Das Papsttum: Idee und Wirklichkeit, vol. ii (Urach, 1951) Hartmann, G., Der Primat des römischen Bischofs bei Pseudo-Isidor (Stuttgart, 1930) Hauck, A., Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, vol. iii, 8th edn (Berlin, 1954) Herrmann, K.-J., Das Tuskulanerpapsttum (1012–1046) (Stuttgart, 1973) Hess, H., The Canons of the Council of Sardica a.d. 343 (Oxford, 1958) Hoesch, H., Die kanonischen Quellen im Werk Humberts von Moyenmoutier: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der vorgregorianischen Reform (Cologne, 1970) Hoffmann, H., ‘Von Cluny zum Investiturstreit’, in Cluny: Beiträge zu Gestalt und Wirkung der Cluniazensischen Reform, ed. by H. Richter (Darmstadt, 1975), 319–70 Hüls, R., Kardinäle, Klerus und Kirchen Roms, 1049–1130 (Tübingen, 1977) Jasper, D., ‘Burchards Dekret in der Sicht der Gregorianer’, in Bischof Burchard von Worms, 1000–1025, ed. by W. Hartmann (Mainz, 2000), 167–98 Keller, H., ‘Pataria und Stadtverfassung, Stadtgemeinde und Reform: Mailand im “Investiturstreit”’, in Investiturstreit und Reichsverfassung, ed. by J. Fleckenstein (Sigmaringen, 1973), 321–50 Kerner, M., ‘Studien zum Dekret des Bischofs Burchard von Worms’, 2 vols (unpublished doctoral thesis Technische Hochschule, Aachen, 1969) Klewitz, H.-W., Reformpapsttum und Kardinalkolleg (Darmstadt, 1957) Klinkenberg, H. M., ‘Der römische Primat im 10. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift der SavignyStiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung, 41 (1955), 1–57 ———, ‘Die Theorie der Veränderbarkeit des Rechtes im frühen und hohen Mittelalter’, in Lex et Sacramentum im Mittelalter, ed. by P. Wilpert (Berlin, 1969), 157–88 Koeniger, A. M., ‘Prima sedes a nemine iudicatur’, in Beiträge zur Geschichte des christlichen Altertums: Festgabe für A. Ehrhardt (Bonn, 1922), 273–300 Krause, H.-G., ‘Das Constitutum Constantini im Schisma von 1054’, in Aus Kirche und Reich: Festschrift Friedrich Kempf, ed. by H. Mordek (Sigmaringen, 1983), 131–58 Laqua, H. P., ‘“Refloreat disciplina”: Ein Erneuerungsmotiv bei Petrus Damiani’, in San Pier Damiano nel IX centenario della morte (1072–1972), vol. ii (Cesena, 1972), 279–90 Laudage, J., Gregorianische Reform und Investiturstreit (Darmstadt, 1993) Leclercq, J., and J.-P. Bonnes, Un maître de la vie spirituelle au xie siècle: Jean de Fécamp (Paris, 1946) Lemarignier, J. F., ‘L’Exemption monastique et les origines de la réforme grégorienne’, in À Cluny: Congrès scientifique (Dijon, 1950), 288–340 Maccarrone, M., ‘La teologia del primato romano del secolo xi’, in Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche della ‘societas christiana’ dei secoli xi–xii: Atti della Settimana di studio: La Mendola, vol. i (Milan, 1974), 21–122 Miccoli, G., Chiesa gregoriana: ricerche sulla riforma del secolo xi (Florence, 1966) Michel, A., ‘Humbert von Silva Candida bei Gratian, eine Zusammenfassung’, Studia Gratiana, 1 (1953), 85–117 ———, Die Sentenzen des Kardinals Humbert: Das erste Rechtsbuch der päpstlichen Reform (Leipzig, 1943)

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Mikoletzky, H. L., ‘Bemerkungen zu einer Vorgeschichte des Investiturstreites’, Studi Gregoriani, 3 (1948), 233–85 Moehs, T. E., Gregorius V, 996–999: A Biographical Study (Stuttgart, 1972) Mostert, M., The Political Theology of Abbo of Fleury (Hilversum, 1987) ———, ‘Die Urkundenfälschungen Abbos von Fleury’, in Fälschungen im Mittelalter, vol. iv (Hanover, 1988), 287–318 Munier, C., Le Pape Léon IX et la Réforme de l’Eglise, 1002–1054 (Strasbourg, 2002) Pásztor, E., ‘Motivi dell’ecclesiologia di Anselmo di Lucca: In margine a un sermone inedito’, Bullettino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano, 77 (1965), 45–104 Pelster, F., ‘Das Dekret Burkhards von Worms in einer Redaktion aus Beginn der Gregorianischen Reform’, Studi Gregoriani, 1 (1947), 321–51 Petrucci, E., Ecclesiologia e politica di Leone IX (Rome, 1977), 103–26 ———, ‘Rapporti di Leone IX con Constantinopoli’, Studi Medievali, ser. 3, 14 (1973), 808–24 Reindel, K., ‘Neue Literatur zu Petrus Damiani’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 32 (1976), 405–43 Robinson, I. S., ‘The Dissemination of the Letters of Pope Gregory VII during the Investiture Contest’, JEH, 34 (1983), 175–93 Ryan, J. J., ‘Cardinal Humbert, De sancta Romana ecclesia: Relics of Roman-Byzantine Relations, 1053/54’, MedSt, 20 (1958), 206–38 ———, St Peter Damiani and his Canonical Sources (Toronto, 1956) Schneider, C., Prophetisches Sacerdotium und heilsgeschichtliches Regnum im Dialog, 1073–1077 (Munich, 1972) Schramm, P. E., Kaiser, Könige und Päpste: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, vol. iv.1 (Stuttgart, 1970) ———, Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio, vol. ii (Leipzig, 1929) Szabó-Bechstein, B., Libertas Ecclesiae: Ein Schlüsselbegriff des Investiturstreits und seine Vorgeschichte, 4.–11. Jahrhundert (Rome, 1985) Tellenbach, G., Church, State and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest (Oxford, 1959) Tierney, B., Foundations of the Conciliar Theory (Cambridge, 1955) Tritz, H., ‘Die hagiographischen Quellen zur Geschichte Papst Leos IX.’, Studi Gregoriani, 4 (1952), 191–353 Ullmann, W., Gelasius I. (492–496): Das Papsttum an der Wende der Spätantike zum Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 1981) ———, The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages, 3rd edn (London, 1970) ———, ‘Romanus pontifex indubitanter effectus sanctus: Dictatus Papae 23 in Retrospect and Prospect’, Studi Gregoriani, 6 (1959–61), 229–64 Von Hacke, C. B., Die Palliumverleihungen bis 1143: Eine diplomatisch-historische Untersuchung (Marburg, 1898) Wolter, H., Die Synoden im Reichsgebiet und in Reichsitalien von 916 bis 1056 (Paderborn, 1988) Zimmermann, H., Papstabsetzungen des Mittelalters (Graz, 1968)

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Papal Authority and Power during the Minority of Emperor Frederick II

In 1198 Frederick II acceded to the throne of Sicily. As a minor — he was not quite four — he required regents, guardians, and counsellors to rule for him. Famously, the regent of the Kingdom of Sicily during Frederick’s ten-year minority was none other than Pope Innocent III (1198–1216), commonly regarded as one of the most capable men to inherit the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and certainly one whose pontificate has been seen as a turning point in papal historiography. Frederick was the son of Emperor Henry VI and Queen Constance. Constance had inherited the Kingdom of Sicily after the death of her nephew, King William II. Following the intervening usurpation of Tancred of Lecce and his son, William III, Henry and Constance took possession of the kingdom in 1194. Their rule was brief. Henry died in 1197, and Frederick was crowned shortly afterwards, while Constance ruled for him. Constance died in November 1198 having given Pope Innocent the ‘balium regni et tutela regis’ (regency of the kingdom and guardianship of the king) and appointed familiares to govern for her son.1 From the perspective of this volume’s theme, two questions present themselves vis-à-vis Innocent’s guardianship of Frederick: How much power did the pope have in the royal government, and what was the basis for Innocent’s authority in the kingdom? Both of these questions have received attention, and there are ‘common-knowledge’ answers to both; one I will here challenge; the other I will not. Innocent had limited power. That is the consensus of many historians. I do not intend to question that view; it seems broadly correct. What was the basis of papal authority during the minority? That is a different matter. In 1198, shortly before her death, Constance, Frederick’s mother, nominated the pope as guardian to her son. But this was not the basis of Innocent’s authority, according to several recent historians of Staufen Sicily. Innocent, as feudal lord of the Kingdom of Sicily — a role supposedly

1 Abulafia, Frederick II, 89–93; Stürner, Friedrich II., 86; Matthew, Norman Kingdom of Sicily, 285–306; Loud, Latin Church, 172–79. Benedict Wiedemann is a Junior Research Fellow in Medieval History at Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 67–77 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118957

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held by the popes since at least 1130 — had an automatic right to act as guardian of a minor king. David Abulafia claimed that ‘Innocent […] hardly needed to be appointed his [Frederick’s] guardian; it was his feudal duty, as suzerain of the king of Sicily, to protect his ward’.2 Theo Kölzer believed ‘L’affidamento del balium al papa […] equivaleva unicamente a una conferma formale in quanto come feudatario del regno di Sicilia gli spettava comunque il diritto feudale di tutela’.3 Donald Matthew commented, ‘Innocent behaved as though he owed his role less to Constance’s trust in him as pope, than to his rights as feudal sovereign of the kingdom’.4 And R. I. Moore, when discussing Innocent’s political ambitions, implicitly drew the same connection: ‘Constance reaffirmed that Sicily was a papal fief. When she died in November 1198, Innocent accordingly assumed the guardianship of Frederick and the regency of Sicily’.5 The root of this belief seems to be a paper authored by the great Michele Maccarrone. Maccarrone noticed that two letters of Pope Innocent from 1207 stated that he undertook the regency ‘not so much from maternal disposition, as by right of kingship’.6 Maccarrone linked this claim with a feudal right of guardianship and cited François-Louis Ganshof ’s classic Qu’est-ce que la Féodalité? (translated into English as Feudalism) for further reading on this supposed universal norm.7 As Graham Loud noted, however, the letters Maccarrone examined were from the very final years of Innocent’s regency only.8 Did papal letters consistently justify the pope’s authority through his feudal lordship? As this chapter will show below, the justification for Innocent’s guardianship of Frederick varied significantly over the period. Different legitimations for the papal guardianship were used when they seemed more effective. The relationship between the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the papacy goes back deep into the eleventh century. In 1059 the Norman rulers of Capua and Apulia received papal confirmation of their governance from the pope. In 1128 Duke Roger of Sicily took control of Apulia and, again, received papal confirmation. In 1130 one of the two newly elected popes (Anacletus II) raised Roger to kingship: he would henceforth be ‘King of Sicily, of the duchy of Apulia and the principality of Capua’. In 1139 Pope Innocent II was forced to confirm this grant, even though Anacletus II had been his rival for the papacy. In 1156 a comprehensive agreement was arrived at between King William I (Roger’s son) and Pope Adrian IV. When, in 1159, a new papal

2 Abulafia, Frederick II, 93; also Abulafia, ‘Kingdom of Sicily’, 500. 3 Kölzer, ‘Un regno in fase di transizione’, 199–200. 4 Matthew, Norman Kingdom of Sicily, 298. 5 Moore, War on Heresy, 235. 6 PL, ccxv, 1081–82; Register, ix, no. 247, 424–25, no. 249, 427–29; Potthast, no. 2992. 7 Maccarrone, ‘Papato e regno di Sicilia’, 104. Ganshof ’s (admittedly learned) summary of feudalism has rather gone out of fashion since Susan Reynolds’s criticisms in Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals. 8 Loud, Latin Church, 178: ‘Innocent acted as the nominal regent for the infant king, as the empress had requested in her will, and (so he was later to claim) in accordance with his position as the kingdom’s overlord’.

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schism broke out, William I would be one of strongest backers of Pope Alexander III, the eventual ‘winner’.9 Conventionally this relationship — between pope and secular ruler — has been called ‘feudal’. This is an unhelpful appellation. From a practical point of view, Loud has emphasized that feudal principles, feudal bonds, whatever one wants to call them, were never the basis of action on the part of either the pope or the Norman rulers.10 Feudal norms (duties that lords owed to vassals or vice versa) did not motivate these temporal and spiritual lords. But even in a theoretical sense, it is difficult to call the Norman–papal relationship ‘feudal’. Ganshof might have believed that the ceremony of homage was the quintessential feudal ritual, and that ‘use of this ritual to create a relationship other than that of lord and vassal appears to be late in origin’, but recent historians have not been so sure.11 Now the plurality of homage is emphasized: in 1210 Afonso of Portugal, son and heir of King Sancho I, and several Portuguese noblemen performed homage to King Sancho when the king dictated his will ‘in order that I will fulfil and attend to all these [the clauses of Sancho’s will]’.12 This use of homage was perhaps a development of the twelfth-century practice where Iberian kings had done homage to each other to confirm that they would abide by agreements and treaties made between them.13 Across Europe men who had been in conflict performed homage to restore amity; the heirs of kings did homage to other kings to show that the former had been recognized as heir to their fathers by the latter; and men did homage to newly acceded rulers to confirm that they recognized the legitimacy of the new ruler against other claimants.14 The fact that the Norman rulers occasionally did homage to the pope was not then, in itself, evidence of a normative relationship of lord and vassal. Even if it were the case that the Norman–papal relationship could be described as ‘feudal’ (and it is not), this would not necessarily mean anything for us. The widespread acceptance of Susan Reynolds’s criticisms of feudalism has meant that we cannot see lord–vassal relationships as a near-universal European phenomenon containing similar norms everywhere. Just because a man is called the vassallus or fidelis of another — or his land the feudum of a lord — does not mean that the lord had an automatic right to be guardian of his son or daughter. Wardship is not a universal ‘feudal incident’. Unless we can find specific mentions of such a right in the sources, we cannot simply assume that what we see is an application of a feudal right of wardship. This brings us neatly to the sources themselves. This analysis will focus on the pope’s letters to ascertain what the papal chancery thought the basis of the pope’s authority was. These letters mainly survive in Innocent’s registers. The very fact that 9 Loud, Latin Church, 136–67. 10 Loud, Latin Church, 180; Roger II and the Creation of the Kingdom of Sicily, trans. by Loud, 15. 11 Ganshof, Feudalism, 74. See also Bloch, Feudal Society, i, 161 n. 2. 12 Documentos de D. Sancho I, ed. by de Azevedo, de Jesus da Costa, and Pereira, no. 194, 297–301. 13 Wiedemann, ‘Kingdom of Portugal’, 438–39. Cf. Dendorfer, ‘Das Wormser Konkordat’, 320–21, for a similar practice in the eleventh- and twelfth-century Reich. 14 Hyams, ‘Homage and Feudalism’; Van Eickels, ‘L’Hommage des rois anglais’.

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their means of transmission is registered copies, rather than original engrossments, makes them better testaments to authority than to power. When a letter survives in the papal registers but not elsewhere, we can know nothing about its practical enforcement: Was it actually delivered to its addressee? Did its addressee or executor put it into effect? Was it ignored? Was it challenged? Was it enforced with no problems? We have no idea.15 Sometimes when a papal letter is transmitted down to us through a source external to the curia, we can get information, or have a guess, about what happened to the letter once it left the curia. If the text is transmitted by a chronicle we can guess that the letter was proclaimed and fairly well known; if the original survives in the archive of the person who requested it (rather than the person to whom it was addressed) then we might question whether it was delivered to the addressee.16 Registered copies tell us nothing about how papal letters were received and what effect they had. We can learn little about real papal ‘power’ from letters unless we know something of their Nachleben. Authority, however, is quite different. Papal letters often began with justifications for papal solicitude — whether in general or in particular cases — and so we can learn about the theoretical underpinnings of papal authority from registered letters. The best contemporary narrative source for Frederick’s minority is, interestingly, a papal source: the Gesta Innocentii Tertii, a biography of Pope Innocent III’s first ten years or so written by a curial insider.17 It was this author who began the long-lasting historiographical tradition of bemoaning the weakness of Pope Innocent’s regency. The Gesta recounted the problematic legation of Cardinal Gerard to the Kingdom of Sicily during Frederick II’s minority. It was Walter, the Sicilian chancellor, who in 1204 requested that Innocent send a legate to Sicily, and Cardinal Gerard then ‘began, as regent [balius], to transact the business of the king and the kingdom’. But the royal familiares almost immediately began to neglect his orders, and so he left.18 The same thing had happened at the beginning of Frederick’s reign in 1199. Innocent had sent Gregory, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria in Portico, to administer the kingdom, but the royal administrators had ‘disdained to have a superior [and] were not well inclined toward him’ so ‘within a short time he returned to the Apostolic See’.19 Historians have mainly followed the judgements of our anonymous curialist:20 ‘he [Walter of Palear, the Sicilian chancellor] brushed aside the claims of a papal legate who came to Palermo to present his master’s views’;21 ‘the papal legate, Gregory[’s]

15 Cheney, ‘Letters of Pope Innocent III’, 28–31, 42. On executors, see Smith, ‘Papal Executors’. 16 Cheney, ‘Letters of Pope Innocent III’, 31; Nielsen, ‘Struggling for Ecclesiastical Independence’, 220; Wiedemann, ‘Papal Overlordship’, 194–95. 17 Edited in ‘The Gesta Innocentii III’, ed. by Gress-Wright (hereafter Gesta). English translation in Deeds of Pope Innocent III, trans. by Powell (hereafter Deeds). On the authorship question, see Barone, ‘I Gesta Innocentii III’,18–21; Gesta, 112*–114*; Powell, ‘Innocent III and Petrus Beneventanus’. 18 Deeds, 47–48; Gesta, 51. 19 Deeds, 22–23; Gesta, 20. 20 Stürner and Kölzer seem to hold the weakness of Innocent’s legates at least partially responsible: Stürner, Friedrich II., 87; Kölzer, ‘Un regno in fase di transizione’, 202. 21 Abulafia, Frederick II, 95–96.

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[…] reception was not favourable to the successful carrying out of his mission. Walter of Palear […] was but little disposed to yield to the legate’;22 ‘the Pope was to find many occasions for dissatisfaction as the result of the Chancellor’s unwillingness to subject himself to the will of the papal legates’.23 Friedrich Baethgen, in his 1914 study of Pope Innocent’s regency, drew attention to the pope’s own letters, which complained that the familiares were ignoring his instructions.24 Perhaps the most damning conclusion comes from Abulafia: ‘Innocent was an inappropriate, even incompetent, protector of his ward’s just rights’.25 So the pope’s power was not impressive. But, as I began by saying, this essay looks at the basis for his authority, not the strength of his power. Prior to Constance’s death in November 1198, papal letters to the queen focused on the love which previous kings had shown to the apostolic see and the special grace and solicitude which the papacy owed to the rulers of Sicily in return.26 It was also mentioned that Innocent should show special grace to Constance because ‘the kingdom pertains to the right and property of the Roman Church and persists in its fidelity and remains in its unity’.27 Innocent further explained that ‘we especially love that kingdom amongst all the world as a special patrimony of the Church’ — ‘tanquam Ecclesiae patrimonium speciale’.28 When Constance died in 1198, she requested in her final testament that the pope should act as guardian for Frederick. This maternal injunction was placed front and centre in the papal correspondence of early 1199 which followed Constance’s death: Beyond the general debt of the pastoral office through which we are held to consider solicitously all the faithful of Christ and each province in which the name of Christian is honoured, that token of love and grace (which our predecessors in past times held concerning the Kingdom of Sicily) and the sincerity of faith and devotion (which that kingdom and its princes always showed to the apostolic see) induce us to provide especially for that kingdom. [And] now a more powerful and more urgent cause overtakes those, because Constance left the tutelage of […] Frederick and the regency of the kingdom to us and she ordered us to be made secure in both by all.29 We can see here that the maternal request for the pope to guard Frederick was used together with the more general relationship between papacy and kingdom and the papal duty to care for all personae miserabiles: widows and orphans. The clearest

22 Van Cleve, Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, 41. 23 Van Cleve, Markward of Anweiler, 124. 24 Baethgen, Die Regentschaft Papst Innozenz III., 19–21. 25 Abulafia, Frederick II, 97. Loud, however, paints a somewhat less negative picture: Loud, Latin Church, 178–79. 26 Register, i, nos 410–11, 613–18; ‘Das Briefbuch des Thomas von Gaeta’, ed. by Kehr, nos 13–14, at 57–61; PL, ccxiv, 387–89; Die Urkunden der Kaiserin Konstanze, ed. by Kölzer, no. 65, 203–05. 27 Register, i, no. 412, 618–20; PL, ccxiv, 389–90. 28 Register, i, no. 413, 620–22; PL, ccxiv, 390–91. 29 PL, ccxiv, 519–20; Register, i, nos 570–71, 829–31; Potthast, no. 613.

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exposition of these various reasons for papal solicitude comes from an 1199 letter of Innocent III, warning the people of Gaeta to remain loyal to Frederick: Many reasons induce us to provide for the king and Kingdom of Sicily, namely: the general, the special, and the singular. The general, because, from the apostolic office which has been imposed on us, we are held to be debtors to the wise and the unwise, according to the apostle [Romans 1. 14]. The special, because the Kingdom of Sicily is known to pertain to the right and property of the Apostolic See [ad ius et proprietatem Apostolice Sedis … pertinere]. The singular, because our most beloved son in Christ, Frederick, illustrious King of Sicily, was especially left to apostolic tutelage [specialiter fuit apostolice tutele relictus] by his mother and father.30 However, papal letters were not consistent. In 1199 the maternal injunction was normally placed above the other two possible reasons (the general papal duty of care and the papacy’s long-term relationship with the Kingdom of Sicily), as it was in the first letter quoted above.31 But, in late 1200, Innocent sent a missive condemning Markward von Anweiler throughout Apulia and declared: We, therefore, knowing the Kingdom of Sicily pertains to the right and property of the apostolic see, and attending because […] Constance left the tutelage of […] Frederick and the regency of the kingdom to us by [her] testament, and because in any case the regency comes to us from the approved custom of the kingdom [ex approbata … regni consuetudine] which is maintained through the law.32 This letter claimed that the regency should belong to Innocent irrespective of Constance’s wishes, because of the ‘custom of the kingdom’. Could Innocent here have been suggesting that it was tradition for the pope to be guardian for a minor King of Sicily? If so, it was a tradition without precedent. It is also a regrettable fact that it is not always clear that papal letters which reference ‘royal custom’ had a specific custom in mind. In 1218 a letter of Pope Honorius III confirmed that Ferdinand III of Castile was heir to the Kingdom of León, having been adopted by Alfonso IX of León as part of the treaty of Cabreros ‘according to the customs of the kingdom’. But ‘nobody knows what customs of the kingdom the pope was referring to’.33 Ferdinand was, in fact, Alfonso IX’s son, but the marriage between Alfonso and Ferdinand’s mother, Berenguela, had been annulled by the pope.34 Thus the ‘customary adoption’ was a nice way for the pope to accept Ferdinand’s succession without accepting

30 ‘Das Briefbuch des Thomas von Gaeta’, ed. by Kehr, no. 7, 46. 31 PL, ccxiv, 513–14, 517, 518–19, 519–20. PL, ccxiv, 510–13, 514–16, 716–18, 740, are perhaps more equivocal. For more recent editions of all these letters, see Register, i, no. 555, 806–09, no. 558, 814–15, nos 570–71, 829–31, no. 554, 802–06, no. 556, 809–11; Register, ii, no. 158, 306–11, no. 183, 349–50. In Potthast these letters are, respectively, nos 615, 553, 613, 577, 616 (all January–February 1199), 818 (August 1199), 843 (October 1199). 32 PL, ccxiv, 901–03; Potthast, no. 1162. 33 Martínez, Alfonso X, the Learned, 28. 34 Shadis, Berenguela of Castile, 67–70, 83–84, 211 n. 65.

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the legitimacy of his parents’ marriage. Whether there was any concrete custom on which this was based was beside the point: a justification was needed, and this vague reference sufficed. Ferdinand’s succession had been agreed in the treaty of Cabreros by Alfonso IX, and so such an arrangement must, in the eyes of the papal curia, have abided by the customs of the kingdom, in general. If something abided by local customs, it meant that it was not unacceptable, not that there was necessarily a specific precedent or custom. As Maccarrone and others have noticed, in two letters of early 1207 Innocent again claimed a ‘right’ to take the guardianship of Frederick above and beyond Constance’s commission: your detention thus saddened us and your liberation pleased us since, beyond the reason of the regency — which we undertook to execute not so much from maternal disposition, as by right of kingship [non tam ex dispositione materna, quam iure regni] — we are especially held to favour you in your right as a pupil, since, as the voice of the prophet says to us, thou wilt be an helper to the orphan; thou shouldst not avert thine eyes [Psalm 9. 35], therefore we are not able to abandon your defence and tutelage.35 This letter, and the papal letter of 1200 which referred to the custom of the kingdom, suggest that some sort of intrinsic right — ius regni or consuetudo regni — was a better justification for Innocent’s guardianship of Frederick than Constance’s dying wishes.36 The ius regni in the 1207 letters was identified by Maccarrone as a feudal right of wardship; Innocent thus undertook to execute the regency not so much by maternal disposition, as by feudal right. But this supposed reference to a feudal right — if that is what we choose to understand by ius regni — appears rarely, and not always as the main justification in papal letters. This leads us to the second difference between the 1207 letter which refers to a ius regni and the earlier letters: the general justification was being placed above the special and the singular. The pope’s duty to care for all wards and orphans was said to be more important than Innocent’s guardianship of Frederick specifically (irrespective of whether that guardianship came from ius regni or materna dispositio). There was a clear conflict between the dismissal of maternal disposition in the 1207 letters, and the papal letters from 1199 which actually emphasized it.

35 PL, ccxv, 1081–82; Register, ix, no. 247, 424–25, no. 249, 427–29; Potthast, no. 2992. 36 When appointing Cardinal Cinthius of San Lorenzo in Lucina as legate to Sicily in December 1199, Innocent had explained that ‘beyond the debt of the pastoral office, the provision of [the kingdom] is known to pertain especially to us by right of lordship and reason of the regency [iure dominii et ratione balii]’: PL, ccxiv, 805–07; Register, ii, no. 236, 451–56. This letter did refer to a right of lordship, akin to the ius regni perhaps, but did not link it specifically to the pope’s guardianship of Frederick — our focus here; the wardship and ius dominii were both being used in the letter appointing Cinthius merely as justifications for providing for the kingdom generally.

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The final letter of interest to us comes from after Frederick came of age in 1208. A letter from Innocent to Otto of Brunswick (10 March 1209) began: Because our most beloved son in Christ Frederick, illustrious King of Sicily, was left to apostolic care and tutelage as much by maternal final direction as by paternal, and he holds and recognizes all the Kingdom of Sicily from the Roman Church, then as he is to us, so should a vassal be bound to a lord, by reason of fidelity, and as we are to him, so should a lord be to a vassal, by reason of legality. Whence above [super] these [reasons] which are known to pertain to that kingdom, we neither want to nor should we take away our aid or favour from him, because, according to the apostle, we should be debtors in justice to all [Romans 1. 14].37 True, this letter did seem to imply that Frederick was a vassal of the pope, but in fact Innocent was using analogy: Frederick and the pope were like a vassal and a lord because of the existing relationship between Sicily and the papacy, and because Frederick had been left to Innocent’s care by his parents. Innocent was again clear, however, as he had been in 1207, that the best justification for his interference was the general papal duty of care to all, not any specific commission. So, why did Innocent emphasize Constance’s testament in 1199, but in late 1200 claim that the regency would come to him ‘in any case’ according to the custom of the kingdom? And why did Innocent switch from specific and singular justifications — justifications which related to Frederick personally or to the Kingdom of Sicily — to general ones in 1207 and 1209? Why should the pope’s duty to care for widows and orphans, or to be ‘debtors to all’, have become more important then? The most plausible explanation is the changing situation in south Italy and Sicily during Frederick’s minority. If we assume that the changes in legitimation were considered strategies by the papal curia, on the part of either the pope or the notaries who drafted papal letters, then the first — emphasizing the custom of the kingdom above Constance’s testament — must have been a response to the claims of Markward von Anweiler. Markward claimed that he was regent of Sicily on the wishes of the late emperor, Henry VI, Frederick’s father.38 The claim was believed: when the German princes declared in favour of Philip of Swabia’s claim to the imperial throne in May 1199, they asked the pope to show ‘apostolic benevolence and favour’ to Markward, procurator regni Sicilie.39 According to Richard of San Germano, in 1198 Markward demanded that that the Abbot of Cassino ‘swear the regency of the kingdom [ballium regni] to him [Markward], which he had claimed the emperor had left to him’.40 In 1199 Markward and Innocent had entered negotiations which came to nothing. During those negotiations, Innocent had specifically instructed Markward to cease calling himself balius regni, but when the negotiations fell apart 37 Regestum Innocentii III, ed. by Kempf, no. 188, 398–99; PL, ccxvi, 1168; Potthast, no. 3688. 38 Deeds, 22; Ryccardi Chronica, ed. by Pertz, 19; Van Cleve, Markward of Anweiler, 96–107; Abulafia, Frederick II, 94–101; Rist, Papacy and Crusading in Europe, 171–78. 39 MGH Constitutiones, ii, no. 3, 3–4; Regestum Innocentii III, ed. by Kempf, no. 14, 33–38; Van Cleve, Markward of Anweiler, 95 and n. 40 Ryccardi Chronica, ed. by Pertz, 19, cf. 21–22; Van Cleve, Markward of Anweiler, 20 n. 98.

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towards the end of the year, Markward had no reason to do so.41 Indeed, according to the Gesta, when negotiations collapsed, Markward began claiming that the pope had actually recognized his claim to be regent.42 In 1199 Innocent had claimed the regency primarily ex testamento imperatricis: on the wishes of Empress Constance. But Markward claimed the regency ex testamento imperatoris. In 1200 therefore, after the failure of negotiations with Markward, and the added confusion of Markward’s claim that he had been recognized as balius by Innocent, the papal chancery began to emphasize that the regency was the pope’s irrespective of the wishes of either Constance or — implicitly — Henry VI: ‘in any case the regency comes to us from the approved custom of the kingdom’. This switch apparently continued even after Markward’s death in 1202: in 1207 the pope continued to place the ‘right’ of the kingdom above Constance’s testament, but now he also placed the general duty of the pope above both. The papal chancery might already have had in mind that Frederick was approaching fourteen, the age of majority. The end of Innocent’s regency in 1208 would force the papal chancery to find justifications for its authority in Sicily other than Constance’s testament. After all, Innocent could not continue to justify his solicitude for Frederick with reference to Constance’s wishes after Frederick had come of age; so in 1209 the chancery placed the general duty of care front and centre. We should note how the pope’s general duty of care was expressed in these letters: from the Psalmist, ‘thou wilt be a helper to the orphan’; and through St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (1. 14), ‘To the Greeks and to the barbarians, to the wise and to the unwise, I am a debtor’. The authority of the thirteenth-century papacy has often been discussed in grand terms: the plenitude of power, the ‘Petrine Commission’, and the Vicariate of Christ. The biblical passages which underscore that authority were far-reaching: ‘know you not that we shall judge angels? How much more things of this world?’ (i Corinthians 6. 3); ‘Lo, I have set thee this day over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root up, and pull down, and to waste, and to destroy, and to build, and to plant’ ( Jeremiah 1. 10); thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven. (Matthew 16. 18–19)43 But justifying the pope’s authority as a ‘debtor to all’ was a much humbler claim. This ‘Injunction of Paul’ was modest and did not exalt the pope. He was a debtor, obliged to help Frederick and all Christians, even the lowest. Perhaps that was appropriate to the servus servorum Dei.

41 Deeds, 26–27; PL, ccxiv, 716–19; Register, ii, nos 158–59, 306–12; Van Cleve, Markward of Anweiler, 108–23. 42 Deeds, 27. 43 Rennie, ‘The “Injunction of Jeremiah”’, 120–22; Morris, Papal Monarchy, 430–33.

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When papal notaries came to draft letters, or when the pope came to dictate them, the justification for papal authority was dependent on the circumstances prevailing at that moment. Looking for one overriding relationship which justified Innocent’s guardianship across the entire period 1198–1208 is not helpful because papal letters were not consistent. Some of that inconsistency came from changes in what the most effective source of papal authority was thought to be. When Markward claimed the regency ex testamento imperatoris, it was not so good to claim the regency ex testamento imperatricis; once Frederick had achieved his majority, who cared whether his mother had appointed the pope as his regent while he was underage? It is possible that the petitions received by the curia influenced the justifications found in papal letters too: if different petitioners based their requests on different sources of papal authority then that might lead to inconsistency. Papal authority during the minority of Frederick II had a range of possible justifications. They did not, however, all command equal respect all the time. They were, though, always available, for when they became relevant again.

Works Cited Primary Sources ‘Das Briefbuch des Thomas von Gaeta, Justitiars Friedrichs II’, ed. by P. Kehr, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 8 (1905), 1–76 The Deeds of Pope Innocent III, trans. by J. M. Powell (Washington, DC, 2004) Documentos de D. Sancho I (1174–1211), ed. by R. de Azevedo, A. de Jesus da Costa, and M. R. Pereira (Coimbra, 1979) ‘The Gesta Innocentii III: Text, Introduction and Commentary’, ed. by D. R. Gress-Wright (unpublished doctoral thesis, Bryn Mawr College, 1981) MGH Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum, 8 vols (Hanover–Leipzig, 1893–1927) Regestum Innocentii III papae super negotio Romani imperii, ed. by F. Kempf (Rome, 1947) Roger II and the Creation of the Kingdom of Sicily, trans. by G. A. Loud (Manchester, 2012) Ryccardi de Sancto Germano Notarii Chronica, ed. by G. Pertz (Hanover, 1864) Die Urkunden der Kaiserin Konstanze, ed. by T. Kölzer, MGH Diplomata regum et imperatorum Germaniae, xi.3 (Hanover, 1990) Secondary Studies Abulafia, D., Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor (Oxford, 1988) ———, ‘The Kingdom of Sicily under the Hohenstaufen and Angevins’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. v, c. 1198–c. 1300, ed. by D. Abulafia (Cambridge, 1999), 498–522 Baethgen, F., Die Regentschaft Papst Innozenz III. im Königreich Sizilien (Heidelberg, 1914) Barone, G., ‘I Gesta Innocentii III: politica e cultura a Roma all’inizio del Duecento’, in Studi sul Medioevo per Girolamo Arnaldi, ed. by G. Barone, S. Gasparri, and L. Capo (Rome, 2001), 1–23

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Bloch, M., Feudal Society, trans. by L. A. Manyon, 2nd edn, 2 vols (London, 1971) Cheney, C., ‘The Letters of Pope Innocent III’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 35 (1952– 53), 23–43; repr. in Cheney, Medieval Texts and Studies (Oxford, 1973), 16–38 Dendorfer, J., ‘Das Wormser Konkordat: Ein Schritt auf dem Weg zur Feudalisierung der Reichsverfassung?’, in Das Lehnswesen im Hochmittelalter: Forschungskonstrukte – Quellenbefunde – Deutungsrelevanz, ed. by J. Dendorfer and R. Deutinger (Ostfildern, 2010), 299–328 Ganshof, F.-L., Feudalism, trans. by P. Grierson, 3rd edn (New York, 1964) Hyams, P., ‘Homage and Feudalism: A Judicious Separation’, in Die Gegenwart des Feudalismus, ed. by N. Fryde, P. Monnet, and O.-G. Oexle (Göttingen, 2002), 13–50 Kölzer, T., ‘Un regno in fase di transizione: la Sicilia durante la minorità de Federico II’, in Federico II e la città italiane, ed. by P. Toubert and A. Paravicini Bagliani (Palermo, 1994), 196–211 Loud, G., The Latin Church in Norman Italy (Cambridge, 2007) Maccarrone, M., ‘Papato e regno di Sicilia nel primo anno di pontificato di Innocenzo III’, in Potere, società e popolo tra età normanna et età sveva: Atti delle 5e giornate normannosveve. Bari – Conversano, 26–28 ottobre 1981 (Bari, 1983), 75–108 Martínez, H. S., Alfonso X, the Learned: A Biography, trans. by O. Cisneros (Leiden, 2010) Matthew, D., The Norman Kingdom of Sicily (Cambridge, 1992) Moore, R. I., The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe (London, 2012) Morris, C., The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford, 1989) Nielsen, T. K., ‘Struggling for Ecclesiastical Independence in the North’, in Pope Innocent II (1130–43): The World vs the City, ed. by J. Doran and D. J. Smith (Abingdon, 2016), 205–25 Powell, J. M., ‘Innocent III and Petrus Beneventanus: Reconstructing a Career at the Papal Curia’, in Pope Innocent III and his World, ed. by J. C. Moore (Aldershot, 1999), 51–62 Rennie, K. R., ‘The “Injunction of Jeremiah”: Papal Politicking and Power in the Middle Ages’, JMH, 40 (2014), 108–22 Reynolds, S., Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994) Rist, R., The Papacy and Crusading in Europe, 1198–1245 (London, 2009) Shadis, M., Berenguela of Castile (1180–1246) and Political Women in the High Middle Ages (Basingstoke, 2009) Smith, T. W., ‘Papal Executors and the Veracity of Petitions from Thirteenth-Century England’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 110 (2015), 662–83 Stürner, W., Friedrich II., vol. i: Die Königsherrschaft in Sizilien und Deutschland, 1194–1220 (Darmstadt, 1992) Van Cleve, T. C., The Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen: Immutator mundi (Oxford, 1972) ———, Markward of Anweiler and the Sicilian Regency (Princeton, 1937) Van Eickels, K., ‘L’Hommage des rois anglais et de leurs héritiers aux rois français au xiie siècle: Subordination imposée ou reconnaissance souhaitée?’, in Plantagenêts et Capétians: Confrontations et héritages, ed. by M. Aurell and N.-Y. Tonnerre (Turnhout, 2006), 377–85 Wiedemann, B. G. E., ‘The Kingdom of Portugal, Homage and Papal “Fiefdom” in the Second Half of the Twelfth Century’, JMH, 41 (2015), 432–45 ———, ‘Papal Overlordship and Protectio of the King, c. 1000–1300’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University College, London, 2017)

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Rebecca Rist

The Medieval Papacy and the Concepts of ‘Anti-Judaism’ and ‘Anti-Semitism’

Were medieval popes during the period we call the High Middle Ages — the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries — anti-Judaic or anti-semitic, neither, or both?1 To answer this question we have first to examine what we mean by these terms and their historiography. We must therefore start with an examination of how different recent historians have used the terms ‘anti-Judaism’ and ‘anti-semitism’ and in particular what they believe are the differences between them. Medieval historians frequently use the term ‘anti-Judaism’. This may suggest either (1) being against the religion of Judaism or (2) being against something less tangible which includes, but also goes beyond, dislike of the religion and is perhaps better described as being ‘anti-Jewish’. In his monograph Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism, Robert Chazan wants to abandon altogether the term ‘anti-Judaism’ which he regards as ‘too flaccid’ — presumably meaning it is too apologetic and lacking force or vigour — and because ‘it obscures the inevitable continuity that exists between the religious vision of Judaism and the people who espoused that vision’.2 The point he is making is that the term ‘anti-Judaism’ is problematic because it may be used to refer both to abstract criticism of the religion (‘the religious vision of Judaism’), which I would term ‘anti-Judaic’, and also to frustration with Jews themselves (‘the people who espoused that vision’), which I would term ‘anti-Jewish’.3 Hence, ‘anti-Judaism’ or ‘anti-Judaic’ is opposition to the Jewish religion, whereas to be ‘anti-Jewish’ is to be against the people qua the fact that they are the people of that religion.

1 This is a question touched on in my recent book, Rist, Popes and Jews, but which I am grateful for the opportunity to develop further here. Historians debate whether to write ‘anti-semitism’ or ‘antisemitism’, for example Gavin Langmuir who refuses to hyphenate the word; see Langmuir, Toward a Definition, 16. For simplicity and consistency I use ‘anti-Judaism’ and ‘anti-semitism’ throughout. 2 Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes, 129. 3 Since the word ‘espoused’ suggests a choice, whereas in fact Jews regard themselves as Jews whether or not they actually practise their religion, the phrase ‘the people who profess [my italics] that vision’ (that is, assent to it) may be more appropriate.

Rebecca Rist is Professor in Medieval History at the University of Reading. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 79–107 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118958

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Let us turn to the related problem of defining the term ‘anti-semitism’. In 1990 Gavin Langmuir published two books: History, Religion and Antisemitism and Toward a Definition of Antisemitism. In the former he argued that the difference between anti-Judaism and anti-semitism is that ‘anti-Judaism is a nonrational reaction to overcome nonrational doubts, while antisemitism is an irrational reaction to repressed doubts’.4 By ‘nonrational’ Langmuir meant something that could not be shown to be rational.5 For Langmuir the actions of eleventh-century crusaders who perpetrated mob violence against Jewish communities in the Rhineland during the First and Second Crusades were nonrational reactions based on three specific nonrational doubts, that is, doubts dependent on falsehood: first, the belief that Jews did not correctly understand their own Scripture; second, that they were Christ-killers; and third, that the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem which led to the diaspora was God’s punishment for deicide.6 By contrast, Langmuir argued, the concept of ‘antisemitism’ did not appear until the twelfth century.7 For Langmuir examples of antisemitism included charges of ritual murder, Host desecration, blood libel, ritual cannibalism, and well poisoning which at various times and places were levelled against Jews.8 According to Langmuir these charges were the opposite of rational. Rather they were fantastical reactions with no basis in reality which sprang from Christian doubts about their own faith.9 They were pure fantasy — hence irrational. Langmuir reiterated these arguments in Toward a Definition of Antisemitism in which he examined popular ideas about the difference between anti-Judaism and anti-semitism. According to these ideas, ‘anti-Judaism’ referred to the negative attitudes of Christians towards Jews which arose because the latter did not believe in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, they arose over an issue of faith. By contrast he found that in popular discourse ‘anti-semitism’ tended to refer to rather imprecise negative attitudes towards Jews which stemmed, not from disbelief in Jesus’s divinity, but from less tangible and more irrational sources.10 Hence people often used the term ‘anti-semitism’ to refer to any hostility which went further than their Christianity necessitated. Langmuir found such a distinction unconvincing, since he claimed that anti-semitism was founded not on religious beliefs, but on examples of sociological and psychological prejudice against Jews.11 He argued that he could not find examples of such irrational beliefs in the ancient world of the first centuries after Christ’s death.12 Rather, he claimed, we find an ‘ethnocentric hostility’ to different minority groups,

4 Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 276. 5 Rist, Popes and Jews, xiii. 6 Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 285. 7 Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 297. 8 Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 297–301. 9 Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 302–03. 10 Langmuir, Toward a Definition, 4. 11 Langmuir, Toward a Definition, 5. 12 Langmuir, Toward a Definition, 6–7. For the position of Jews in the ancient world, see Schürer, History of the Jewish People.

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for example Epicureans, or Christians, who, we know from writers such as Melito of Sardis, refused to believe in the Roman gods of the empire and refused to assimilate to the state religion.13 Jews were just another such minority group; that meant that for Langmuir the pre-Christian world was not anti-semitic. However, his claim that there were no irrational beliefs about Jews in the ancient world has been undermined by historians such as Robert Chazan who have argued that irrational ideas about Jews, for example that they worshipped an ass’s head, did exist before the twelfth century.14 In contrast to his views about the ancient world, Langmuir argued that he could detect anti-semitism resulting from a fundamental change in the mentality of medieval Christians from the twelfth century onwards.15 There is much to be commended in Langmuir’s description of the medieval world. He is right to emphasize that, according to contemporary chronicles, crusaders disliked Jews because they believed that the latter had killed Christ: crusaders could not understand why they were making the long and treacherous journey overseas to kill Muslim infidels when there were Jewish infidels — much worse because they were Christ-killers — in their midst.16 He is also correct in emphasizing that libels against Jews — blood libel, Host desecration, ritual murder, ritual cannibalism, and well poisoning — began to appear in chronicles from the twelfth century onwards, at a period when certain Christian beliefs such as devotion to the Eucharist and the cult of the Virgin Mary were being further developed.17 Yet other aspects of Langmuir’s definition of anti-semitism are less convincing. He claimed that the change from anti-Judaism to anti-semitism occurred at a time when Christians were increasingly doubting aspects of their faith, doubts which they feared but were unable to articulate consciously.18 Yet, despite the evident presence of heretics in Christian society, we have no clear evidence to show that the majority of Christians were increasingly doubting their faith. Furthermore, he argued, this supposed doubt in their own faith led Christians to project their own fears onto Jews who became a convenient scapegoat.19 In particular, Langmuir argued that there were conflicts between the rational, empirical experience of medieval Christians who tasted the bread and wine and

13 Christian difficulties in the Roman Empire are recorded by Melito of Sardis and John Chrysostom, for example. Some aspects of the attitudes John Chrysostom displays, it could be argued, are anti-semitic. 14 Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes, 131. 15 Langmuir, Toward a Definition, 6–7. For the change in the twelfth century, see also Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 297. 16 Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 291–93; Abulafia, Christian–Jewish Relations, 140; Cohen, ‘Anti-Jewish Violence’, 111. 17 Abulafia, Christian–Jewish Relations, 171, 174. 18 Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 302–03; Langmuir, Toward a Definition, 9. See also Abulafia, Christian–Jewish Relations, 172, 174. 19 Possibly rumours that Jews had murdered their own children rather than be forcibly baptized by crusaders during the period of the First and Second Crusade added to Christian fears — although this cannot be proven; see Abulafia, Christian–Jewish Relations, 174–75, 189.

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their belief that these truly were the body and blood of Christ.20 Yet he presented no evidence to support this assertion. He also argued that just as the Host desecration charge reassured Christians that Jews believed in Christ’s real presence in the consecrated Host, and for this reason tortured it, so Jews knew that they really had crucified the Messiah — which is why they recrucified him by the ritual murder of innocent children.21 Yet again he seems to be begging the question because he has no evidence that either the majority of Christians needed reassuring that the bread and wine were the body and blood of Christ, nor that Host desecration charges reassured Christians of Jews’ belief in the real presence. Robert Stacey has also argued that Langmuir’s definition of ‘anti-semitism’ is not persuasive. Langmuir supposed that the deicide charge was anti-Judaic because it was dependent on some aspect of Jewish belief which may have been true at least of some Jews at some time.22 By contrast he argued that ritual murder and Host desecration are anti-semitic because they contain ‘no kernel of truth’.23 Yet, as Stacey pointed out, although it is extremely unlikely that acts of ritual murder and Host desecration actually happened, there is a faint possibility that they might have. It is theoretically possible that anti-Christian aggression by Jews took on this form, not only because Jews disliked the Christological nature of Christian theology, but also by way of reacting to the bad treatment they often endured in medieval society more generally.24 Indeed, both Stacey and Chazan have taken issue with Langmuir’s definition of anti-semitism, arguing that his idea of irrationality — fundamental to his concept of anti-semitism — is too narrow. Langmuir restricted his definition to ideas about Jews ‘that could be demonstrated at the time to be empirically false’.25 Yet, as both Chazan and Stacey have pointed out, it cannot be proven that charges such as ritual murder must necessarily always be false.26 In other words, however far-fetched ritual murder allegations against Jews may seem, contemporaries recorded them — as at the English royal court in 1255 — and they could not be proven by contemporaries to be untrue.27 Hence, although Chazan agreed with Langmuir that the twelfth century was crucially important for a change of attitudes, he did not link this specifically to irrationality. Rather, he argued that from the twelfth century onwards ideas of Jewish harmfulness derived from ‘their moneylending activities, their blasphemous abuse of

20 Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 13; Stacey, ‘History, Religion and Medieval Antisemitism’, 98. 21 Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 13–14; Stacey, ‘History, Religion and Medieval Antisemitism’, 98. 22 Stacey, ‘History, Religion and Medieval Antisemitism’, 99. 23 Langmuir, Toward a Definition, 11; Stacey, ‘History, Religion and Medieval Antisemitism’, 99. 24 Stacey, ‘History, Religion and Medieval Antisemitism’, 99. 25 Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 265; Stacey, ‘History, Religion and Medieval Antisemitism’, 99; Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes, 131. 26 Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes, 131; Stacey, ‘History, Religion and Medieval Antisemitism’, 99. 27 Stacey, ‘History, Religion and Medieval Antisemitism’, 99; Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes, 131.

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Christian symbols, and their murder of Christian neighbours’: ideas which became increasingly important to medieval society and have lasted into modernity.28 Chazan therefore saw anti-semitism as a modern notion which had evolved through several stages, including a crucial one in northern Europe in the mid-twelfth century.29 He argued that the roots of anti-semitism should therefore be defined, not in terms of ‘irrationality’, but in terms of the extent to which Jews were increasingly viewed with hatred as cruel and harmful.30 These roots of anti-semitism are therefore ‘factual’ rather than ‘racial’. As Steven McMichael summarized in his review of Chazan’s Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism, ‘Chazan holds that the roots of antisemitism are to be found in the perceptions of Jewish hatred and harm (anti-Christian violence by Jews) on Christians and Christendom’.31 According to McMichael, Chazan also found ‘Langmuir’s definition of irrationality […] too confining and too heavily focussed on the cognitive aspect of anti-semitic assertions and on religious doubt’.32 This brings us back to the issue of religious belief and doubt which we have already touched on. From the fourth century onwards, the Church was grappling with how to explain the real presence in the Eucharist.33 After deliberation, Constitution 1 of Lateran IV in 1215 formalized the doctrine of transubstantiation and stated definitively that the bread and wine at the moment of consecration becomes the body and blood of Christ.34 This was not a sudden decision made by Innocent III and senior prelates at the Lateran basilica, but the conclusion of decades, indeed centuries, of thought and discussion. Yet as Langmuir rightly points out, this was a time when the Eucharist was becoming more and more important in Christian culture.35 It was also a time when there was a renewed emphasis on Christ’s Passion, his sufferings and death on the cross. This is very obvious during the High Middle Ages: in depictions of the Passion in art and in devotion to his relics; and the true blood and the crown of thorns, for example, were housed by Louis IX of France in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Much less convincing, however, is Langmuir’s argument that attitudes which could be regarded as both anti-Judaic and anti-semitic arose at a time when the Church was grappling with such theological statements. He claimed that such attitudes — in particular those he considered anti-semitic — arose as a reaction to doubts about such theological developments.36 He suggested that Christians were conflicted about their faith — between rational and empirical thought which did not allow them to accept,

28 Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes, 133; McMichael, ‘Review of Robert Chazan’. 29 Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes, 139. 30 Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes, 131. 31 McMichael, ‘Review of Robert Chazan’. 32 McMichael, ‘Review of Robert Chazan’. 33 Abulafia, Christian–Jewish Relations, 174. See, for example, the ninth-century work of Gottschalk of Orbais, ‘De corpore et sanguine domini’ discussed in Boersma and Lavering, Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology, 189. 34 Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, xx. 35 Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 299. 36 Langmuir, Toward a Definition, 9.

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for example, that the Eucharist was the body and blood of Christ — and new irrational ideas in which their faith required them to believe.37 Hence, according to Langmuir, since Christians could not reconcile these two opposing forces, they attempted to cover up their doubts and defend their beliefs by imagining that Jews by their own actions unwittingly revealed the truth of Christian beliefs.38 Christians imagined that Jews were trying to persecute and damage the consecrated Host because they knew that it really was Christ’s body and blood. Fantasies about ritual cannibalism which appeared in Germany in the twelfth century, and even more the idea that Jews deliberately attacked Jesus by harming the consecrated Host which emerged in the late thirteenth century, began when Christians were increasingly taught the doctrine of transubstantiation and the feast of Corpus Christi was becoming an important marker in the Church’s year.39 For Langmuir, Christians so feared their own doubts about beliefs which went to the very heart of what it meant to be Catholic — doubts they could not rid themselves of or even acknowledge — that they imagined fantastical, highly implausible, ideas of Host desecration.40 Yet Langmuir provides little evidence for any of these ideas, which, as we have seen, have been challenged, in particular by Robert Chazan. Chazan argues that Langmuir’s definition of irrationality is too narrowly focused on the idea of Christian religious doubt, and that although this may have played a part in arousing anti-Jewish feeling, it was not crucial to its development.41 Indeed, Langmuir’s argument that it was specifically Christians’ doubts about their faith that led them to scapegoat Jews is extremely problematic. It is not very probable that Christian doubt about beliefs such as the Crucifixion or the Eucharist engendered anti-semitism; rather, at a time when devotion to the Eucharist was increasing, popular dislike of Jews as Christkillers might have led them to fantasize that they were deliberately trying to harm the consecrated Host or that they were deliberately harming Christian children as they had crucified Christ.42 That would explain examples of ritual murder and Host desecration which were blamed on the Jews such as the ritual murder of William of Norwich in 1144 or the charge of Host desecration against Jews in Paris in 1290. This is not, of course, to imply that Christians had no doubts about their theology, but that they were not as pronounced or evidenced as Langmuir has suggested, and that they did not necessarily lead to anti-semitism.43 Indeed, critics of Langmuir have pointed out a number of flaws in his arguments. They have demonstrated that we can find examples of irrational (in Langmuir’s sense) views of Jews before the middle of the twelfth century, and that there is no substantial evidence that cases of blood libel, Host desecration, and ritual murder arose from popular doubt about the Eucharist. Indeed, as we have seen, the evidence would

37 Langmuir, Toward a Definition, 13. 38 Langmuir, Toward a Definition, 13. 39 Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 299–300; Rubin, Corpus Christi, 164–212. 40 Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 303. 41 Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes, 133; McMichael, ‘Review of Robert Chazan’. 42 Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes, 133. 43 Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes, 133.

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seem to point rather in the opposite direction: first because we have plentiful sources showing that the High Middle Ages was a period of great love for and devotion to the Eucharist; second because the doctrine of transubstantiation was the culmination of thought about the Eucharist developed over many centuries and finally articulated at Lateran IV, rather than something the Church suddenly decreed out of the blue. Nevertheless, despite these significant flaws in his argument, Langmuir’s more general claim that ‘hostility to Jews was transformed during the high middle ages such that historical links exist between that period and the Holocaust which do not exist between the first century and the Holocaust’ is useful.44 It is rather that aspects of his thesis are problematic. Hence historians have come to different conclusions about anti-semitism. Stacey, for example, states: Antisemitism is the creation of the high middle ages. Although the deicide charge went back to the books of the Christian Bible, it achieved an entirely new degree of importance in Christian religiosity from the late eleventh century on. The other fantasies of modern antisemitism emerged during the subsequent two-and-a-half centuries.45 So Stacey agreed with Langmuir that ‘antisemitism is the distinctive creation of the high middle ages, and that anti-Judaism is […] something else that existed prior to it, and that arose historically with Christianity’.46 We may in passing question whether Stacey has exaggerated the importance of the deicide charge in the eleventh century through his use of the word ‘entirely’. Yet what is crucial is that he disagrees with Langmuir about the ‘distinctions Langmuir offers to categorize these two phenomena’: in other words about the concept of irrationality Langmuir uses to explain the difference between ‘anti-Judaism’ and ‘anti-semitism’.47 In contrast to Stacey, however, for Chazan the evolution of what he deliberately called ‘modern [my italics] antisemitism’ occurred through a number of stages and that ‘one of the most influential of these stages took place in mid-twelfth-century northern Europe’.48 Certainly it seems reasonable to conclude that we must consider other stages: factors which were present in embryonic form during the High Middle Ages but had not yet been fully developed and which we would need to add to the equation to understand what we today refer to as anti-semitism. Langmuir’s thesis is problematic because it did not discuss in sufficient depth the importance of later centuries for the development of anti-semitism. Hence we need to look further forward. It is in the late Middle Ages, for example, where we find the propagation of a further chimerical fantasy, the odious image of the Judensau (the idea of Jews in obscene contact with a large female pig, an unclean animal in Judaism), which began to appear in Germany and other European countries in the thirteenth century. There is also the fulminating 44 For this summary of Langmuir’s position, see Stacey, ‘History, Religion and Medieval Antisemitism’, 100. 45 Stacey, ‘History, Religion and Medieval Antisemitism’, 100. 46 Stacey, ‘History, Religion and Medieval Antisemitism’, 100. 47 Stacey, ‘History, Religion and Medieval Antisemitism’, 100. 48 Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes, 139.

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and polemical rhetoric of Martin Luther against the Jews, and the treatment of the Conversos in Spain in the fifteenth century — Jews who had converted to Christianity but were still persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition because of their Jewish origins. We also need to understand the influence of eighteenth-century ideas during the Enlightenment, not least in Voltaire, a major figure in the development of eighteenth-century thought, who disliked the Jewish Old Testament God and in whose writings we find extremely derogatory language implied about Jews, whom he regarded as a trivial people.49 Historians have argued that a new version of anti-semitic thought grew out of the Enlightenment as part of a hostility with anti-Christian roots.50 Furthermore, we need to consider Charles Darwin and the onset of racial theses and eugenics in the nineteenth century to understand the concept of anti-semitism in terms of race as well as religion.51 We need to understand the influence of the nineteenth-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.52 And the role played by the Nazis in taking advantage of such theories as the religious beliefs of so many Christians influenced by theologians such as Luther. Then there are political events such as the Dreyfus affair which engendered numerous anti-semitic demonstrations which affected the Jewish communities of central and western Europe.53 All these factors need to be taken into consideration when understanding the development of the modern concept of anti-semitism. So during the High Middle Ages should we describe the papacy as either anti-Judaic or anti-semitic or both or neither? This debate has already been aired with regard to one major figure who was so influential on popes and so important for the development of the papacy in the twelfth century: Bernard of Clairvaux. In his seminal article ‘The Attitude of St Bernard of Clairvaux toward the Jews’, David Berger pointed out that Bernard was strongly opposed to the destruction of Jewish communities which recurred on the eve of the First and Second Crusades.54 Citing evidence, however, from the De Consideratione, his letters, and his sermons, he also argued that Bernard was a spokesman for anti-Jewish stereotypes and prejudices and that the sentiments expressed in these works contributed to Christian violence against Jews.55 Although Bernard held that Jews should not be massacred by crusaders but must rather be protected,56 he also accepted the standard medieval position that they were guilty of the Crucifixion, which implied that they should be punished by the diaspora and confined to servitude until A Remnant were saved at the Final Judgement.57 Hence, Bernard appears anti-Judaic according to the definition of anti-Judaism held by Langmuir and endorsed by Chazan and Stacey; he disliked Jews as Christ-killers,

49 Schur, ‘Voltaire and the Jews’, esp. 9, 11. 50 For example, Schur, ‘Voltaire and the Jews’, 6. 51 Rist, Augustine Deformed, 298–303. 52 Irwin, Development of Ethics, 337–38. 53 Schur, ‘Voltaire and the Jews’, 20. 54 Berger, ‘Attitude of St Bernard of Clairvaux’. 55 Berger, ‘Attitude of St Bernard of Clairvaux’, 108. 56 Berger, ‘Attitude of St Bernard of Clairvaux’, 95. 57 Berger, ‘Attitude of St Bernard of Clairvaux’, 96–97.

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for what Langmuir described as non-rational reasons.58 Furthermore, although he showed himself at times favourably disposed towards Jews in his knowledge of their customs and in his mildness towards what he saw as their ignorance, nevertheless, according to Berger (though not all historians agree with him) his sermons and letters display what can be called anti-semitism.59 This is manifested in his frequent reference to Jewish perfidia, and hence to supposed traits of hypocrisy (as well as envy) and to supposed greed in economic matters.60 It is also shown in his use of Jews as a standard of comparison for various forms of heresy and sin, and in his dismay that someone of a Jewish family, the antipope Anacletus II, should dare to aspire to the papal office.61 Hence he seems to have been party to strong stereotyping of Jews, including reference to their origins, that suggests a racial element which we might today consider as either pointing towards anti-semitism or actually anti-semitic. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that Bernard would have believed fantastical and irrational ideas of Jews as ritual murderers or Host desecrators — Langmuir’s definition of what made medieval Christians anti-semitic. Following Chazan and Stacey it therefore seems that we can see the seeds of anti-semitism in Bernard’s work, but we cannot ascribe to him anything like full-blown modern anti-semitism. What about the attitudes of medieval popes? In order to answer this question we need first to examine the language they used to describe Jews and Judaism during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, since particular themes recur.62 One of the most frequent themes to be found is that of Jewish ‘perfidy’ (perfidia). The Latin noun perfidia and the adjective perfidus had a long history of associations which dated back to the ancient world, having been originally applied to enemies of the Roman state and especially Hannibal.63 The first pope to have used the word perfidia to refer to Jews appears to be Damasus I (366–84). It was repeated by Leo I (440–61), who stated that the Jews’ rejection of Jesus had caused the destruction of the Temple and their dispersion. The word is also commonly found in the correspondence of Gregory the Great, for example in a letter of 599 in which he praised the Visigothic king of Spain for refusing a bribe from Jews who wished to mitigate a law against their perfidia.64 It is this language of the popes in the specific context of the High Middle Ages to which we now turn.

58 Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 276. 59 Berger, ‘Attitude of St Bernard of Clairvaux’, 99, 100. 60 Berger, ‘Attitude of St Bernard of Clairvaux’, 100, 102, 103. 61 Berger, ‘Attitude of St Bernard of Clairvaux’, 104; Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 139, in PL, clxxxii, 294: ‘Ut enim constat Judaicam sobolem sedem Petri in Christi occupasse injuriam’ (‘As it is generally agreed that it is to the injury of Christ that a Jewish offspring [sobolem] has occupied the seat of Peter’). It might be possible to translate sobolem as ‘race’. Berger, ‘Attitude of St Bernard of Clairvaux’, 106. 62 The section on ‘Language’ in the present chapter draws extensively on material from Rist, Popes and Jews, 252–56. 63 See the use of the term perfidia and perfidus to refer to Hannibal as an enemy of the people in Lewis and Short, Oxford Latin Dictionary. 64 Gregory I, ‘Explere verbis’ (August 599), in Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 21–22, esp. 21: ‘contra Iudaeorum perfidiam’.

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Language We find similar language in twelfth-century papal correspondence. Echoing the rhetoric of Bernard of Clairvaux, Innocent II described the usurpation of the papal throne by Anacletus II, an antipope of Jewish descent, as ‘an insane Jewish perfidy’; Alexander III also used the word Jewish ‘perfidy’ and ordered stringent precautions against its contagion.65 The theme persists in thirteenth-century papal correspondence.66 So, for example, the beginning of Innocent III’s reissue of the ‘Constitutio pro Iudaeis’ begins ‘Licet perfidia Judeorum sit multipliciter improbanda’, which translates as ‘Although the Jewish perfidy is in every way worthy of condemnation’.67 Gregory IX frequently referred to Jewish ‘perfidy’,68 to the ‘depravity of the Jewish error’,69 and to Jews who remained ‘obstinate in their perfidy’.70 There is also similar language in Innocent IV’s correspondence,71 for example a letter of 1244 to the King of France which made reference to ‘the wicked perfidy of the Jews, from whose hearts, because of the immensity of their crimes, our Redeemer has not removed the veil but allows them still to remain in that blindness which partly obtains in Israel’.72 Here we also see the theme of Jewish blindness (caecitas). The idea is that Jewish blindness is partial, not complete, since Jews did accept the Old Testament, but did not accept the New. And again, in a letter of 1267 to archbishops and bishops in the counties of Poitiers,

65 Innocent II, ‘Apostolicae sedis consueta’ (6 October 1131), PL, clxxix, 102–04. See Newman, Jewish Influence, 251–52; Stroll, The Jewish Pope, 163. The phrase used by Alexander III was ‘Iudaismi perfidiam’. See Alexander III, ‘Quia super his’ (1159–79), in Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 50. See Dobson, The Jews of Medieval York, 19. 66 For example, Honorius III, ‘Sedes Apostolica pia’ (26 August 1220), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 152–54; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 108–09; Gregory IX, ‘Sufficere debuerat perfidie’ (5/4 March 1233), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 198–200; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 141–43; Innocent IV, ‘Impia Judeorum perfidia’ (9 May 1244), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 250–52; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 180–82. 67 Innocent III, ‘Licet perfidia Judeorum’ (15 September 1199), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 92; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 74. 68 Gregory IX, ‘Etsi Judeorum sit’ (6 April 1233), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 200–202; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 143–45. 69 Gregory IX, ‘Sua nobis Newronius’ (9 May 1235), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 220; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 155–56, esp. 155: ‘de Judaice pravitatis errore’. 70 Gregory IX, ‘Si vera sunt’ (20 June 1239), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 242; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 174: ‘qua Judeos in sua perfidia retinet obstinatos’. 71 For example, Innocent IV, ‘Ex parte Judeorum’ (12 June 1247), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 268; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 193–94. 72 Innocent IV, ‘Impia Judeorum perfidia’ (9 May 1244), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 250; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 180: ‘Impia Judeorum perfidia, de quorum cordibus propter immensitatem eorum scelerum Redemptor noster velamen non abstulit, sed in cecitate, que contingit ex parte, in Israel adhuc manere permittit’; Grayzel’s translation, ‘The wicked perfidy of the Jews, from whose hearts our Redeemer has not removed the veil of blindness because of the enormity of their crime, but has so far permitted to remain in blindness, such as in a measure covers Israel’, is not quite accurate here.

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Toulouse, and Provence, Clement IV employed the phrase ‘damnable perfidy of the Jews’ (‘dampnabili perfidia Judaeorum’) about Jews who flouted canonical regulations which stipulated how they should be treated in Christian society.73 Nevertheless, despite the frequency of such language, it is difficult to determine exactly what popes envisaged by perfidia and perfidus. Perhaps these words meant simply ‘unbelief ’ and ‘unbelieving’ and had no particularly negative colouring; we know that papal descriptions of Muslims as well as Jews as perfidi suggest that the word was a standard epithet for ‘unbelieving’ non-Christians.74 Or perhaps in certain texts — depending on the context — the meaning was both more complex and more negative.75 One possibility is that in papal correspondence the noun perfidia carried stronger negative undertones than its related adjective perfidus. Yet even this is unclear. We have noted how in the ancient world the word was used to describe enemies of the Roman people. Possibly there was a subtle but definite development in language which meant that the meaning of the word perfidia gradually changed from that of ‘unbeliever and disbelief, along with treachery’, to ‘intentional and malevolent infidelity […] and treachery’.76 Or perhaps, despite the increasing papal concern about the supposed danger to Christian souls from all social intercourse with Jews — a theme which was given formal expression in Canon 27 of the Third Lateran Council of 1179 — nevertheless the word perfidia lacked the negative force of the modern translation ‘treachery’; rather it implied a mixture of ideas of ‘distortion of faith’ and ‘a deliberate denial of Jesus’.77 In which case it was primarily a theological term. Hence, we see that, although such language appears to us very harsh, it was in fact a commonplace in medieval rhetoric, not unique to papal correspondence, and not necessarily deliberately abusive.78 Indeed we know that Jews were frequently described as ‘perfidious’ in language based on the Good Friday liturgy of the Roman rite.79 This contained a prayer that the ‘perfidious Jews’ might come to acknowledge Christ: O omnipotent eternal God, you who do not reject even the Jewish perfidy, hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people, so that, by the 73 Clement IV, ‘Dampnabili perfidia Judaeorum’ (23 December 1267), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 106–10; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 239–40. 74 For example, Innocent III, ‘Quia maior nunc’ (22 April 1213), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 136; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 97. 75 There is a huge amount of secondary material on the meaning of perfidia with respect to the Jews. See, for example, Osterreicher, ‘Pro perfidis Judaeis’; Blumenkranz, ‘Perfidia’; Dobson, The Jews of Medieval York, 20. 76 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, 9; Champagne, ‘The Relationship between the Papacy and the Jews’, 81. 77 Dobson, The Jews of Medieval York, 19; The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 92 n. 2. 78 For example, Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, 47. 79 The phrases are ‘Judei perfidi’ (‘perfidious Jews’) or ‘perfidia Judeorum’ (‘the perfidy of the Jews’). See Innocent III, ‘Etsi Judeos quos’ (15 July 1205), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 114–16; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 86–88; Innocent III, ‘Licet perfidia Judeorum’, in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 92–94; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 74–75.

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acknowledged light of your truth, which is Christ, they may be rescued from their darkness. Through the same Lord. Amen.80 We also know that the decision not to kneel at this prayer had been introduced into the Roman liturgy by Gallo-Frankish reformers, possibly in the eighth and certainly in the ninth century.81 In this case the original meaning of the word ‘perfidy’ seems to be simply ‘unbelief ’. Popes not only referred to Jewish blindness (‘Judaic[a]e caecitas’), but also to Jewish obduracy (contumacia or more frequently duritia).82 As we have noted, caecitia signified the Augustinian idea of the spiritual blindness of Jews.83 Hence, for example, Gregory IX ruled in a letter of 1229 to the Bishop of Strasbourg that in the case of a man ‘saved from the error of the Jewish blindness and brought to the true light of Christ’ who subsequently wanted his son also to be brought up in the Catholic faith rather than in the faith of his Jewish wife, the boy should be assigned to his father.84 We should note that the reference to ‘error’ here was not suggested to be deliberate or wilful, but simply referred to the man’s previous Jewish faith. Innocent IV similarly used phrases such as the ‘shadows of Jewish blindness’,85 and the ‘blindness of Jewish error’.86 Or Clement IV, in a letter of 1267 to John de Salins, Count of Burgundy, complained that the count harboured Jews in his lands who after baptism had reverted to ‘the old and corrupt Jewish blindness’.87 In a similar way, reissues of the ‘Constitutio pro Iudaeis’ emphasized Jewish duritia to explain the Jews’ obstinacy in refusing to accept Christianity: although they prefer to remain hardened in their obstinacy rather than acknowledge the prophetic words and the eternal secrets of their own scriptures, that they might thus arrive at the understanding of Christianity and Salvation.88 80 Jungman, Mass of the Roman Rite, 244: ‘Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui etiam Judaicam perfidiam a tua misericordia non repellis: exaudi preces nostras, quas pro illius populi obcaecatione deferimus; ut, agnita veritatis tuae luce, quae Christus est, a suis tenebris eruantur. Per eumdem Dominum. Amen.’ 81 Klauser, Short History of the Western Liturgy, 81; Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens, 92; Osterreicher, ‘Pro perfidis Judaeis’, 90–95. 82 For example, Innocent III, ‘Quanto populus Judaice’ (5 December 1199), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 96–98; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 77. 83 St Augustine, ‘Contra Iudaeos’, in Fathers of the Church, trans. by Wilcox, ed. by Deferrari, 392, 398, 403, 405, 406, 411, 413. See Stow, Alienated Minority, 19–20. See also Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews. 84 Gregory IX, ‘Ex litteris tuis’ (16 May 1229), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 180–82, esp. 180; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 128–29, esp. 128: ‘quidam videlicet de Judaice cecitatis errore ad Christum lumen verum (et viam veritatis) adductus’. 85 Innocent IV, ‘Cum a nobis’ (21 April 1250), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 284; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 201–02, esp. 201: ‘de Judaice cecitatis tenebris’. 86 Innocent IV, ‘Sicut dilecta in’ (15 July 1250), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 286–88, esp. 286; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 203–04, esp. 203: ‘de Judaice cecitatis errore’. 87 Clement IV, ‘Professionis Christianae’ (17 August 1267), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 104–06, esp. 105; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 237–38, esp. 238: ‘caecitatis iudaicae veterem et corruptam’ and ‘herbam mortiferam’. 88 Innocent III, ‘Licet perfidia Judeorum’, in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 92; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 74: ‘licet in sua magis velint duritia perdurare, quam prophetarum verba, et suarum scriptuarum arcana cognoscere, atque ad Christiane fidei et salutis

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Indeed, this metaphor suggested not just ‘obstinacy’ but — as in the case of heretics — a spiritual ‘hardness of heart’. The implication was therefore that Jews deliberately refused to recognize Jesus as Christ and accept his teachings as revealed in the New Testament. Nicholas III, in a letter ‘Vineam sorec’ of 1278 to the prior of the Dominicans in Lombardy which urged him to organize missionary sermons, referred in graphic language to the Jews as a stubborn and hard-hearted people who merited their punishment. Indeed, he believed it was his duty as pope to make Jews see the light of truth, and he emphasized that if ‘like deaf adders’ they did not listen to the friars’ preaching, they should be reported so that he himself might deal with those who remained obstinate.89 Hence the use of the words duritia and caecitia in papal correspondence indicated a refusal — incomprehensible to Christians — to acknowledge Christ as the Messiah who had been prophesied in the Old Testament. Yet this language must be understood in the context of its time. When one considers that Jews were frequently described by Christian writers and polemicists such as Peter the Venerable or Raymond Lull in such terms, papal correspondence does not stand out as particularly harsh or condemnatory. When medieval popes referred to Jews as ‘blind’, ‘stubborn’, or ‘hard of heart’ they were explaining in simple terms what they believed to be the correct Christian theological attitude. That does not mean that there was no element of ‘anti-Jewishness’ in their pronouncements; that may have been there consciously or unconsciously, varying from one pope to another. Nevertheless, these popes never employed images in their correspondence such as the Judensau, which, as we have already noted, was to become such a popular and notorious symbol in the late Middle Ages.90 If, then, there was an element of ‘anti-Jewishness’ in their utterances, can these popes be described as either anti-Judaic or anti-semitic? Let us return to Langmuir’s definition of anti-Judaism. Langmuir notes that historians of Christian–Jewish relations have described anti-Judaism as referring: to the kind of negative attitude that adherents of one religion have often manifested toward religions they do not accept. Christian anti-Judaism thus referred to the attitudes of rejection, whether mild or intense, that those who believed in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth displayed towards Jews and Judaism because Jews refused to believe in that divinity.91 notitiam pervenire licet in sua magis velint duritia perdurare quam vaticinia prophetarum et legis archana cognoscere, atque ad Christiane fidei notitiam pervenire’. See also, for example, the phrase in the following letters: Honorius III, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ (7 November 1217), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 144; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 102; Gregory IX, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ (3 May 1235), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 218; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 154–55; Innocent IV, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ (22 October 1246), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 260–62; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 189; Innocent IV, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ (9 July / June 1247), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 274; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 192–93. 89 Nicholas IV, ‘Vineam sorec velut’ (4 August 1278), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 142–45, esp. 144; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 249–52, esp. 251: ‘veluti aspis surda’. 90 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, 47. 91 Langmuir, Toward a Definition, 4.

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Langmuir seems basically to accept this definition of anti-Judaism. And, as we have seen, according to him, the three non-rational reactions to Jewish disbelief which made up anti-Judaism were ‘belief in the deficiency of Jewish understanding; the deicide accusation; and the belief that historical events demonstrated that God was punishing the Jews for their deicide’.92 He then argued that ‘anti-Judaism’ referred to religious hostility directed at those identified as Jews and became an important precondition for European anti-semitism.93 Yet, if we refer to the concept of anti-Judaism described by Langmuir — the attitudes of rejection, whether mild or intense, that those who believed in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth displayed towards Jews and Judaism because Jews refused to believe in that divinity — where do the popes of the High Middle Ages stand? Their use of the three terms discussed above (perfidia, duritia, and caecitia) shows that their rhetoric was indeed anti-Judaic. Beliefs in the deficiency of Jewish understanding were summed up by the ideas of duritia and caecitia — stubborn refusal to accept the truth of Jesus as the Messiah and their blindness to revealed Scripture. Less secure, as we have shown above, was Christian belief in the deicide accusation — that Jews deliberately killed Jesus knowing that he was the Messiah — which may or may not have been manifested in their use of the words perfidia and perfidus. We also find in some popes’ correspondence the belief that historical events demonstrated that God was punishing the Jews for their deicide. This seems particularly clear in two letters of Innocent III. In a letter of 1205, ‘Etsi Judeos’, he wrote: ‘While Christian piety accepts the Jews who, by their own guilt, are consigned to perpetual servitude because they crucified the Lord’.94 And even more striking is his letter of 1208, ‘Ut esset Cain’: The Lord made Cain a wanderer and a fugitive over the earth, but set a mark upon him, making his head to shake, lest any finding him should slay him. Thus the Jews, against whom the blood of Jesus Christ calls out, although they ought not to be killed, lest the Christian people forget the Divine Law, yet as wanderers ought they to remain upon the earth, until their countenance be filled with shame and they seek the name of Jesus Christ, the Lord.95 This letter drew on the Old Testament motif that ‘the elder shall serve the younger’ from Genesis 25. 19–34. However, it is also striking for another reason. By referring to the ‘mark of Cain’ (Genesis 4. 15), was the pope making a deliberate reference to

92 Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 285, 287–93. 93 Langmuir, Toward a Definition, 5, 7. By contrast, as we have seen, Stacey is unhappy with the distinction made between ‘anti-Judaism’ and ‘anti-semitism’ since he is not convinced by ‘the differing psychosocial origins Langmuir discerns between anti-Judaism and antisemitism’. Furthermore, he is also unconvinced that even if both phenomenon do have different origins this is ‘sufficient to establish a difference in nature between two phenomena’. See Stacey, ‘History, Religion and Medieval Antisemitism’, 98. 94 Innocent III, ‘Etsi Judeos quos’ (15 July 1205), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 114; Apostolic See and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 86. 95 Innocent III, ‘Ut esset Cain’ (17 January 1208), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 126; Apostolic See and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 92-93.

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the Jewish race?96 Certainly the analogy between Cain and the Jewish people was not original to Innocent III; it had been used by Peter the Venerable in a letter to the King of France in c. 1146.97 We know that Peter the Venerable wrote particularly strong polemics against Jews, declaring that all Jewish wealth was the product of money-lending and therefore of theft; that implied that their property should be confiscated and the proceeds put towards financing crusades.98 And in the letter of Innocent III we see language being employed by a pope, and/or his notaries, which suggested not just ‘anti-Judaism’ as described by Langmuir, but possibly, through its oblique reference to the Jewish race, a more modern idea of anti-semitism.

Papal Ambiguity Yet is this enough to suggest that Innocent III — or indeed any other pope of the period — was ‘anti-semitic’? If we take Langmuir’s definition of anti-semitism as ‘an irrational reaction to repressed rational doubts’ which manifested itself in chimerical and fantastical ideas of ritual murder, blood libel, Host desecration, cannibalism, and well poisoning, were the popes guilty of believing such ideas? When Jewish communities appealed for statements of papal protection against such libels, popes duly expressed their disbelief and displeasure, albeit with more or less enthusiasm.99 Yet there was no fixed papal position. We know, for example, from one letter, ‘Etsi non displiceat’ of 1205, that Innocent III was inclined to believe reports that the mysterious murder in 1204 of a scholar who had been found dead in a latrine in the town of Sens might have been perpetrated by Jews. But there is nothing in his letter to suggest that he supposed the case to be one of ritual murder.100 By contrast, he does seem to have believed a tale of Host desecration by a Christian woman in Sens who it was reported had come under the malign influence of a Jewish family and lost her faith. This eventually resulted in the conversion of the whole family to Christianity, after a purported miracle in which they discovered that their Parisian coins had miraculously changed into communion wafers.101 Another reported incident involved Boniface VIII, who at Easter 1290 was asked to pronounce regarding a story of Host desecration in Paris. An impoverished Christian widow had supposedly helped a Jew to beat, boil, stab, and torture the communion

96 For Innocent III’s idea that Jews were a marked people, see Unterseher, ‘Mark of Cain’, 121; there are also references to the ‘mark of Cain’ in Antiquity; see The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 99–121; Blanchetière, ‘Threefold Christian Anti-Judaism’, 204. 97 The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 126 n. 3. 98 Peter the Venerable, Letters, 327–30; Stacey, ‘Crusades, Martyrdom and the Jews’, 241. 99 This section on ‘Papal Ambiguity’ in the present chapter draws extensively on material from Rist, Popes and Jews, 88–90. 100 Innocent III, ‘Etsi non displiceat’ (16 January 1205), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 104–08; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 82–84. 101 Innocent III, ‘Operante illo qui’ (10/8 June 1213), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 136–38; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 98–99.

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Host which purportedly bled miraculously and then ‘resurrected’ itself, thereby proving that it truly was the embodiment of Christ.102 Not only does Boniface appear to have believed the story, but following the confiscation of the house of the Jew in question, he even granted the original petitioner, a certain Raynerius Flamingi, the authority to build a chapel on the site where the Host was said to have been boiled, but where, in another miraculous turn of events, the boiling water had turned to blood.103 As a result a cult soon developed around the miraculous Host in the parish church of Saint-Jean-en-Grève where the ‘holy knife’ was kept.104 In contrast to Boniface, however, Innocent IV and, later, Gregory X went out of their way to refute such reports and charges. In his letters ‘Divina justitia nequaquam’, ‘Si diligenter attenderet’, and ‘Lachrymabilem Judeorum Alemannie’, Innocent emphasized that he would not be fulfilling his papal duty if he did not insist on protection for Jews against such accusations.105 He complained bitterly at charges of ritual murder, in this case that of a little girl, made at Valréas in 1247. The Jews of the province of Vienne were so concerned about this charge that they had petitioned the curia for a special letter of protection: If the Christian religion were to give careful heed and rightly analyse by use of reason, how inhuman it is and how discordant with piety for it to afflict with many kinds of molestations, and to smite with all sorts of grave injuries, the remnant of the Jews, to whom, left as witnesses of his saving passion and of his victorious death, the benignity of the Saviour promised the favour of salvation, it would not only draw back its hands from harming them, but as a show of piety and for the sake of the reverence of Christ, it would, at least, extend the sole of human kindness to those whom it holds, as it were, in tribute.106 Innocent realized that the accusations at Valréas not only were false but were an easy way for malevolent Christians to extort money and seize property from Jewish 102 Enders, ‘Dramatic Rumors and Truthful Appearances’, 16. 103 Boniface VIII, ‘Petitio dilecti filii’ (17 July 1295), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 196–99; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 283–84. See Stow, ‘The Church and the Jews’, 39–40; Rubin, ‘Desecration of the Host’, 365. 104 Rubin, ‘Desecration of the Host’, 365. 105 Innocent IV, ‘Divina justitia nequaquam’ (28 May 1247), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 262–64; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 191–92; ‘Si diligenter attenderet’ (28 May 1247), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 264–66; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 190–91; ‘Lachrymabilem Judeorum Alemannie’ (5 July 1247), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 268–70; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 194–95; ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 274; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 192–93. 106 Innocent IV, ‘Si diligenter attenderet’ (28 May 1247), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 264; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 190: ‘Si diligenter attenderet religio Christiana et recte discuteret examine rationis quam inhumanum sit et dissonum pietati ut reliquias Judeorum, quibus Salvatoris benignitas sue salutifere passionis mortisque victricis relictis testibus salutis gratiam repromisit, variis affligat molestiis vel diversis gravaminum conterat nocumentis, non solum ab ipsorum injuria manus retraheret, verum etiam eis, quos habet quasi tributarios, saltem pietatis obtentu et ob Christi reverentiam, humanitatis solatia exhiberet’.

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communities; they also provided an opportunity to scapegoat an ‘Other’ in their midst. Two months later, when he reissued ‘Sicut Iudaeis’ for the second time in July 1247, Innocent added a paragraph to it denouncing the blood libel charge and threatening deprivation of honour and office and excommunication against anyone who flouted his decree.107 Gregory X’s letter ‘Tenorem litterarum quas’ of 1274 later reissued Innocent’s ‘Lachrymabilem Judeorum Alemannie’ of 1247 on behalf of Jewish communities in Germany and reiterated that such accusations of ritual murder were false; this, Gregory stated, was not least because Jews were expressly forbidden in Jewish law from consuming any blood, let alone that of humans.108 Nevertheless, despite such papal interventions in response to allegations, we know Jews became an increasingly common target for such charges. Accusations of ritual murder, blood libel, and Host desecration emerged in the context of the association of Jews with the Crucifixion, with blood, and with popular representations particularly of the cruel male Jew. All this was at a time of a growing iconography and literature about the Christ Child, the occasional inevitably unexplained deaths of children, and an increased circulation of popular literature, especially by Benedictine houses. Popes might continue to reject such accusations, but to stamp them out they would have had to have intervened, not just by emphasizing protection of Jews in response to petitions and appeals and reissuing the ‘Constitutio pro Iudaeis’, but by pursuing a much more active ‘policy’. They did not do so because, beset with so many other religious, social, and political issues to attend to, the plight of Jewish communities was of relatively little concern.109 Indeed, even had popes taken a much more proactive stance, their ability to prevent or control such charges from far-away Rome remained very limited.

Papal Attitudes to Forced and Voluntary Conversion Yet another way to examine whether the popes of our period could be considered anti-semitic in the modern sense of the word — which contains a racial element — is to consider this question: If a Jew became a Christian, and there was no reason to doubt his conversion was not sincere, would popes still have been bothered about him? If they were, then the question is why, because here (perhaps) a racist element might be present. We therefore need to examine the attitudes of popes to converted Jews.110

107 For Innocent IV’s first reissue of ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, see Innocent IV, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 260–62; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 189. For his second reissue and the additional paragraph denouncing the blood libel charge, see Innocent IV, ‘Sicut Iudaeis’, in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 274; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 192–93; MacLehose, ‘A Tender Age’, 113. 108 Gregory X, ‘Tenorem litterarum quas’ (7 July 1274), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 123–26; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 245–46. 109 The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 82. 110 This section on ‘Papal Attitudes to Forced and Voluntary Conversion’ in the present chapter draws extensively on material from Rist, Popes and Jews, 208–13.

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In general, popes did everything they could to ensure that Jewish converts did not return to Judaism.111 Nevertheless, throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries they regularly reissued the ‘Constitutio pro Iudaeis’ which declared that Jews must not be coerced into baptism. Indeed as early as the sixth century Gregory I had ordered the Bishops of Arles and Marseilles to desist from baptizing by force.112 However, he had also declared that Jews in Sicily be offered the inducement of a reduction of their land taxes if they would accept baptism,113 and he had ordered the Bishop of Naples to ensure that pagan slaves of Jews who declared a willingness to be baptized be set free.114 He therefore trod a middle ground, wielding both carrot and stick, and subsequent popes followed his lead. So, for example, when ordering his newly appointed Archbishop of Mainz as papal vicar in Germany to preach Christianity, Leo VII (936–39) emphasized that if Jews refused to be baptized he should expel them, but also that he should not resort to converting them by force.115 Alexander II (1061–73) similarly insisted that the conversion of Jews must not be obtained by violence,116 while Clement III (1097–1100) took pains to prevent Jewish converts reverting to Judaism.117 From the late eleventh century onwards, following the First Crusade, the baptism of Jews, including Jewish children, became an important issue for theologians and canon lawyers.118 For Jews, a convert remained legally Jewish even if he converted, but generally rabbis liked apostates who returned to Judaism to confess and repent before re-entry into the community; if they had been forcibly converted the rabbis were more lenient.119 Similarly, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries popes issued further letters in response to queries about the protection of Jews from forced baptism. This was a difficult issue for the pope as it was his duty to encourage voluntary baptism as much as possible and to give converts every incentive to convert. As we would expect from such a well-trained legal mind, Alexander III, responding to petitioning, issued certain letters in which he attempted to tread the fine line. Few Jews voluntarily converted to Christianity, just as few Christians converted to Judaism.120 Attempting to encourage voluntary Jewish conversion, in 1169 he wrote to the Archbishop of Rheims to ensure that a pledge which had been made to a certain Petrus, a Jewish convert who had been

111 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, 345–48. 112 Gregory I, ‘Scribendi ad fraternitatem’ ( June 591), in Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 4–5. 113 Gregory I, ‘De Manichaeis qui’ (October 594), in Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 11–12. 114 Gregory I, ‘Fraternitati vestrae ante’ (April 596), in Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 12–13. 115 Leo VII, ‘Fraternitiatis amore’ (937–39), in Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 32–33. 116 Alexander II, ‘Licet ex devotionis’ (1065), in Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 37. 117 Clement III, ‘Quod contra Ecclesiae’ (1097–98), in Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 42. 118 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, 253–57. 119 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, 349. 120 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, 286.

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promised a prebend in the archbishop’s office, was honoured.121 Sometime between 1173 and 1174 he ordered the Bishop of Tournai to install a certain Milo, another Jewish convert, in the chapter and to grant him a prebend once it became vacant,122 and he rebuked the chapter and dean of Tournai who had refused the man’s installation.123 As another incentive to convert he ordered the Archbishop of Spain to correct the situation whereby the moveable property of converts was confiscated and their real estate allowed to pass to Jewish relatives.124 Furthermore, it was during his pontificate that the Third Lateran Council decreed: If any by the inspiration of God are converted to the Christian faith, they are in no way to be excluded from their possessions, since the condition of converts ought to be better than before their conversion. If this is not done, we enjoin on the princes and rulers of these places, under penalty of excommunication, the duty to restore fully to these converts the share of their inheritance and goods.125 The whole issue of conversion, baptism, and the status of converts became a subject of papal interest once again at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Constitution 70 of the council expressly stipulated that Jewish converts to the faith should not continue to practise their old rites: Certain people who have come voluntarily to the waters of sacred baptism, as we learnt, do not wholly cast off the old person in order to put on the new more perfectly. For, in keeping remnants of their former rite, they upset the decorum of the Christian religion by such a mixing. Since it is written, cursed is he who enters the land by two paths, and a garment that is woven from linen and wool together should not be put on, we therefore decree that such people shall be wholly prevented by the prelates of churches from observing their old rite, so that those who freely offer themselves to the Christian religion may be kept to its observance by a salutary and necessary coercion. For it is a lesser evil not to know the Lord’s way than to go back on it having known it.126

121 Alexander III, ‘Veniens ad nos Petrus’ (7 March 1169), in Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 52. 122 Alexander III, ‘Eam te’ (1173–74), in Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 54–55. 123 Alexander III, ‘Si qua in’ (1173–74), in Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 55–57. 124 Alexander III, ‘Ad audientiam apostolatus’ (25 January, before 1179), in Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 57–58. 125 Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, 224: ‘Si qui praeterea Deo inspirante ad fidem se converterint christianam, a possessionibus suis nullatenus excludantur, cum melioris conditionis conversos ad fidem esse oporteat quam, antequam fidem acceperunt, habebantur. Si autem secus factum fuerit, principibus vel potestatibus eorumdem locorum sub poena excommunicationis iniungimus, ut portionem hereditatis et bonorum suorum ex integro eis faciant exhiberi’. See Slater and Rosser, The Church in the Medieval Town, 50. 126 Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, 267: ‘Quidam, sicut accepimus, qui ad sacri undam baptismatis voluntarii accesserunt, veterem hominem omnino non exuunt, ut novum perfectius induant, cum proris ritus reliquias retinentes, christianae religionis decorem tali commixtione confundant. Cum autem scriptum sit: maledictus homo qui terram duabus viis ingreditur, et indui vestis non debeat lino lanaque contexta, statuimus, ut tales per praelatos ecclesiarum ab observantia

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In response to this decree and often with the backing of the Crown, friars began to set up ‘Houses of Converts’ throughout Europe. Thus, for example, in 1232 King Henry III of England established the first Domus conversorum where converts from Judaism could be instructed in Christianity and shielded from attempts by fellow Jews to persuade them to return to Judaism.127 The acceptance of Jews into such ‘Houses of Converts’ or indeed into other religious houses seems to have been an extension of the traditional practice of admitting into monasteries not just lay brothers, but also all those who converted (conversi).128 Unsurprisingly, Innocent III was particularly interested in encouraging Jewish conversion and in response to petitions issued detailed letters to different parts of Europe. Hence, for example, in 1199 he instructed the Bishop of Autun to ensure the poverty of a Jewish convert was allayed so that he and his daughter might have sufficient food and clothing.129 That same year he also insisted that Jewish converts in Leicester — he had one such particularly in mind — should be provided with life’s necessities.130 In a letter of 1206 to the clergy of Barcelona he ordered that they baptize any Jew or Muslim who should request it and prevent any Christian who tried to hinder this or to demand a price from the Church as a reward for the convert.131 In a letter of 1213 to the Archbishop of Sens he ruled that a certain Jew, along with his family who had converted following a miraculous experience, should be provided with life’s necessities lest he regret his conversion.132 By contrast, his letter ‘Maiores ecclesie’ advocated making it much harder for someone to be released from forced baptism, which was to be allowed only if it was clear that there had been actual physical resistance.133 A later ruling of the English Crown of 1236 stated that the offspring of mixed-religion couples should be allowed to choose which religion they wished to follow. Nevertheless thirteenth-century legislation reveals that there was more preoccupation with potential ‘impurities’ derived from contact with those who remained true to their Jewish faith than with what happened to those who were baptized.134

127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134

veteris ritus omnimodo compescantur, ut quos christianae religioni liberae voluntatis arbitrium obtulit, salutiferae coactionis necessitas in eius observatione conservet; cum minus malum existat, viam Domini non agnoscere, quam post agnitam retroire’. Slater and Rosser, The Church in the Medieval Town, 50–51; Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, 275. Slater and Rosser, The Church in the Medieval Town, 51. Innocent III, ‘Ad provisionem P.’ (5 November 1199), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 94–96; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 76. Innocent III, ‘Quanto populus Judaice’ (5 December 1199), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 96–98; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 77. Innocent III, ‘Orta tempestate in’ (26 August 1206), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 118; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 88–89. Innocent III, ‘Operante illo qui’ (10/8 June 1213), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 136–38; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 98–99. Innocent III, ‘Maiores ecclesie causas’ (September–October 1201), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 100–102; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 80–81. See Slater and Rosser, The Church in the Medieval Town, 51. Slater and Rosser, The Church in the Medieval Town, 51.

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Innocent III’s successors continued to issue letters about conversion. Hence, for example, Honorius III ruled that a family of Jewish converts in the diocese of Bonn be supported by papal authority. They were not to be disturbed concerning the income of the prebend they had received, until the archbishop and chapter could provide for the family as had been established by Innocent III.135 Gregory IX also issued letters on the subject. Writing to prelates in Mainz in 1234 he ordered them to ensure that a certain Jewish convert who had subsequently become a canon be provided with an annual income until he could receive a benefice of equal or greater value.136 He also confirmed that this convert and his household must be allowed to enjoy the income from the prebend during his lifetime.137 Eventually he granted the convert the living of a vicarage,138 and insisted he be given his legal rights.139 He emphasized that no Jew might buy or retain in his service either a baptized slave or one who desired baptism,140 and he took action to ensure that Jewish converts would never regret adopting the Christian faith.141 He even wrote personally to converts to assure them that, although they were now Christians, they might retain whatever possessions they had legally acquired while still Jews.142 Innocent IV continued his predecessor’s ‘traditional’ line. In 1244 he informed the Abbot of St Denis that he had received a complaint that certain prelates, contrary to the apostolic see, had dared to excommunicate and place under interdict the abbot and convent of Cluny along with its monks and churches and to seize their property.143 He claimed that these prelates, citing apostolic letters, had even gone so far as to compel the said abbot and convent to make provision not only for certain clergy and laymen, but for Jewish converts; he expressed his disapproval of what had taken place in no uncertain terms. Nevertheless, writing in 1245 to the Archbishop of Tarragona, Innocent confirmed decrees of James I of Aragon which ruled that any Jew or Muslim wishing to be baptized should be allowed to do so freely and without losing any

135 Honorius III, ‘Cum olim venerabilis’ (15 April 1221), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 164–66; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 115–16. 136 Gregory IX, ‘Apostolice Sedis benignitas’ (3 July 1234), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 212; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 150. 137 Gregory IX, ‘Constitutis apud Sedem’ (20 October 1234), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 212–14; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 150–52. 138 Gregory IX, ‘Apostolice Sedis benignitas’ (27 July 1235), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 220; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 156; Gregory IX, ‘Cum sicut asseris’ (18 May 1239), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 238; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 170–71. 139 Gregory IX, ‘Dilectus filius W.’ (13 December 1235), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 222; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 157–58. 140 Gregory IX, ‘Nulli Judeo baptizatum’ (1227–34), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 216; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 125. 141 Gregory IX, ‘Sua nobis Newronius’ (9 May 1235), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 220; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 155–56. 142 Gregory IX, ‘Etsi universis qui’ (5 May 1236), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 222–24; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 159–60. 143 Innocent IV, ‘Ad audientiam nostram’ (29 January 1244), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 248; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 179–80.

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property or goods as a result.144 Hence the children and relatives of a convert could not claim his property while he was alive and after his death only what they would have been reasonably able to claim if he had died while still a Jew or pagan. In 1250 he confirmed for the children of a French convert that Philip II Augustus of France had freed their father from all tolls, taxes, and exactions because of his conversion.145 He also ordered the administrator of the diocese of Paris to ensure the children’s protection.146 That year he insisted on the provision of maintenance for a woman from Rheims who had converted,147 and decreed that a certain cleric, who was also a convert, should be provided with an ecclesiastical benefice.148 Such papal concern for the practical as well as spiritual well-being of Jewish converts continued during the second half of the thirteenth century. In 1255 Alexander IV wrote to all converts who lived in Paris. This was in answer to their complaints that certain clergy who were supposed to provide them with the necessities of life had acted in a hostile manner towards them, compelling them to attend courts in far-flung places. He granted them relief and suggested that if summoned they should appear before the court of the Bishop of Paris.149 He also granted Louis IX of France the right to apply to pious uses — one of which may have been the maintenance of converts — property which had been received from various sources and where the owners could not be identified.150 In 1264 Urban IV ordered the Archbishop of Tournai to ensure that the stipend of a certain convert be doubled,151 and that at least during a brief period of religious instruction, Jewish and also Muslim converts should be maintained in monasteries.152 Later, in 1267, Clement IV urged the Count of Burgundy to take strong action against those converts who, following baptism, reverted to Judaism.153 Yet like his predecessor Innocent III, despite the frequently harsh rhetoric of his correspondence, he continued to insist on the Church’s traditional teaching that Jews must not be forcibly baptized, but instead be shown Christian humanity. He urged that just as Jews were forbidden to dare to seduce the unthinking from the truth of Christianity 144 Innocent IV, ‘Ea que ad’ (20 August 1245), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 254–56; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 183–85. 145 Innocent IV, ‘Cum a nobis’ (21 April 1250), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 284; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 201–02. 146 Innocent IV, ‘Cum sicut petitio’ (21 April 1250), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 284; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 202. 147 Innocent IV, ‘Sicut dilecta in’ (15 July 1250), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 286–88; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 203–04. 148 Innocent IV, ‘Pro dilecto filio’ (13 November 1250), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 288–90; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 204–05. 149 Alexander IV, ‘Ex parte vestra’ (9 December 1255), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 57–58; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 212. 150 Alexander IV, ‘Sic ille Lucifer’ (11 April 1258), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 60–62. 151 Urban IV, ‘Lecta nobis’ (7 July 1264), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 82–83. 152 Urban IV, ‘Nonnulli sicut accepimus’ (26 July 1264), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 83–84; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 224. 153 Clement IV, ‘Professionis Christianae’ (17 August 1267), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 104–06; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 237–38.

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into the errors of Judaism, so they must not be compelled against their will to accept the Christian faith.154 Around a decade later, in 1278, Nicholas III called on the Dominicans to preach to Jews in order that they might be reborn through baptism; and he insisted that they approach secular rulers and prelates of the territories where they preached to ensure that converts, like prodigal sons, be treated with generosity. Indeed, he stressed that they must be granted favours and that neither their persons nor their property should suffer harm from either Jews or Christians.155 Likewise, Martin IV and Nicholas IV addressed the issue of conversion in their correspondence. In 1284 Martin intervened in a dispute between the prelates of the Kingdom of Portugal and their king. He expressed concern that when Jews or Muslims accepted baptism the king confiscated their property, and that when Muslim slaves belonging to Jews agreed to baptism they were forced back into their former state of servitude.156 Following a riot in the county of La Marche in France, in which a number of Jews had undergone baptism in fear of their lives, in 1288 Nicholas IV issued a stern letter to inquisitors who had captured and imprisoned converts who had reverted to Judaism and who persisted in refusing to return to Christianity. He argued that, despite the circumstances of their baptism, these Jews could not be considered ‘strictly forced’ (‘precise coacti’) because, out of fear, they had consented to their infant children being baptized. He concluded definitively that such apostates must be treated like heretics.157 By contrast, in 1291 he instructed the Bishop of Beauvais to ensure proper provision for Jewish converts.158 Hence our evidence suggests that popes were not worried by the presence of converted Jews in Christian society; in fact they went out of their way to ensure that 154 Clement IV, ‘Cum de tam’ (no date), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 113–15. 155 Nicholas III, ‘Vineam sorec velut’ (4 August 1278), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 142–45; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 249–52. 156 Martin IV, ‘Isti sunt articuli’ (1 April 1284), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 152–54; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 257–59. 157 Nicholas IV, ‘Sicut nobis significare’ (7 May 1288), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 165–67; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 266. For the Latin phrase ‘precise coacti’, see Nicholas IV, ‘Sicut nobis significare’, in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 165; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 266. 158 Nicholas IV (1291), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 191 and n. 1. A short description of the letter is all that survives. Such letters continued into the fourteenth century. For example, in 1320 John XXII ordered every rector and official of the Comtat Venaissin and of the other counties and territories belonging to the apostolic see to ensure that no converts were harmed in their property and goods which they had at the time of their conversion or might obtain in the future, nor permit such harm to be caused them by others, but that they be well disposed towards them and protect them so that they should not be impoverished, which would make them return to their former faith: John XXII, ‘Dignum arbitrantes’ (22 and 31 July 1320), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 315; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 320. He also wrote in 1320 to the rectors and officials of the Comtat Venaissin and of other countries and territories which were dependent upon the bishopric of Avignon either spiritually or temporally with the same message, but with particular reference to a certain Peter Arnaldi of Sarrians who was a recent convert to Catholicism: John XXII, ‘Dignum arbitrantes/arbitramur’ (31 July 1320), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 316; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 320–21. Furthermore in 1322 in a letter to the Bishop of Viterbo he empowered him to grant a forty-day indulgence to Christians who gave of

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they were provided for and protected. Let us now return to our different historians’ definitions of anti-semitism to see how the papal evidence chimes with their definitions of anti-Judaism and anti-semitism. According to Langmuir’s definition of ‘anti-semitic’ it could be argued that some popes were ‘anti-semitic’ as well as ‘anti-Judaic’, since some popes — such as Innocent III — did seem to believe popular, fantastical charges against Jews. By contrast, how do papal letters sit with the definitions of ‘anti-semitism’ held by Stacey and Chazan? As we have seen, Stacey agreed with Langmuir’s idea that anti-semitism is not the creation of the modern era.159 Chazan’s position was further apart from Langmuir’s in that he restricted his use of the term ‘anti-semitism’ to the modern phenomenon.160 Nevertheless, he also believed that during the High Middle Ages there was an increase in the idea of direct Jewish harmfulness which was a contributory factor in the development of anti-semitism.161 Hence he saw the seeds of anti-semitism as rooted in medieval ideas of Jewish harm developing during this period.162 In other words we are moving towards anti-semitism but have not yet arrived. Therefore one could argue that anti-semitism is not the creation of any particular era, but rather that the fantastical accusations we find in the High Middle Ages are one step on the road to anti-semitism.

Papal Attitudes to the Talmud So were popes in the High Middle Ages ‘anti-Judaic’ and/or ‘anti-semitic’? It is difficult for us to know whether medieval popes, like other medieval people, would — and indeed could — have distinguished between ‘anti-Judaism’, that is, being opposed to the religion, and ‘anti-semitism’, which must include a peculiar and distinctive visceral antipathy to the people as a race. Yet, as we have seen, popes showed in their correspondence that they believed Jews were blind and stubborn because they did not accept the truth of Christianity. So they were opposed to Judaism if it in any way prevented Jews from their eventual conversion to Christianity at the end of days. This became particularly obvious when during his pontificate Gregory IX was made aware of the Talmud.163 In 1239 he ordered the Bishop of Paris to receive his letters, which had been forwarded by the Jewish convert Nicholas Donin, detailing information he had received about certain Jewish books, including the Talmud; he was

their substance to the support of certain Jews who had been converted by a citizen of the town called Fardus Hugolini and to repentant women: John XXII, ‘Inter opera laudanda’ (4 July 1322), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, ii, 326; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 334–35. 159 Stacey, ‘History, Religion and Medieval Antisemitism’. 98. 160 Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes, 129. 161 Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes, 133. 162 McMichael, ‘Review of Robert Chazan’. McMichael is, however, not quite right in the review in saying that Chazan makes ‘a substantial connection between antisemitism of the Middle Ages and the modern period’ since, as I note above, Chazan does not want to use the term ‘anti-semitism’ at all about the Middle Ages. 163 What follows draws heavily on Rist, Popes and Jews, 196–97.

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to transmit them to the archbishops and kings of France, England, Aragon, Navarre, Castile, León, and Portugal.164 That same year Gregory sent more letters to all the archbishops of France and England, Castile and León informing them of how he had heard that the Jews had a book called the Talmud whose size far exceeded that of the Bible and which contained abusive and unspeakable material.165 He ordered that all such books be seized on the coming first Saturday of Lent while the Jews were at synagogue and were to be held and guarded by the friars; indeed he emphasized that there must be no hesitation in excommunicating those who refused to give the books up.166 The same year he similarly ordered the King of Portugal to seize ‘all the books belonging to the Jews’ again when they congregated in their synagogues on the first Saturday of Lent, and cited the Talmud as the most important reason why the Jews ‘remain obstinate in their perfidy’.167 Employing this same language of ‘perfidy’ he instructed the Bishop of Paris, the Prior of the Dominicans, and the Minister of the Franciscans in Paris to ensure that the secular arm forced Jews in France, England, Aragon, Navarre, Castile, León, and Portugal to consign their books to the flames.168 So, although, like his eleventh- and twelfth-century predecessors and his thirteenth-century successors, Gregory IX could not read Hebrew and relied on converts such as Donin to inform him of its content, he regarded the Talmud as especially pernicious because he believed it encouraged Jews to remain hard of heart, contained blasphemies, sought to rival the unique authority of Scripture, and even encouraged Jews to ignore the Old Testament itself.169 The last point is particularly important. According to the traditional teaching of the Church, at least since St Augustine, Jews, because they upheld the Old Testament, were allowed to live unharmed in Christian society as witnesses to the truth of the New. Gregory firmly believed that the force of this role would be diminished by Jewish compliance with Talmudic regulations.170 He therefore ruled that Jews who followed the teachings of the Talmud were heretics

164 Gregory IX, ‘Fraternitati tue presentium’ (9 June 1239), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 238–40; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 171–72; see also ‘Si vera sunt’ (9 June 1239), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 240–42; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 172–73. There is a vast amount of secondary literature on popes and the Talmud which cannot be discussed here; for example, Cohen, The Friars and the Jews, 60–76; Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 319–30; Pakter, Medieval Canon Law, 70–73. 165 For very recent secondary literature on the details of the trial of the Talmud, see Chazan, ‘Hebrew Report of the Trial of the Talmud’, 89–93; Galinsky, ‘Different Hebrew Versions of the “Talmud Trial”’; Capelli, ‘Rashi nella controversia parigina sul Talmud’, 441–48. 166 Gregory IX, ‘Si vera sunt’, in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 240–42; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 172–73. 167 Gregory IX, ‘Si vera sunt’ (20 June 1239), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 242; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 173: ‘universos libros Judeorum’; ‘in sua perfidia retinet obstinatos’. 168 Gregory IX, ‘Si vera sunt’ (20 June 1239), in The Church and the Jews, ed. by Grayzel, i, 242; Apostolic Church and the Jews, ed. by Simonsohn, 174. 169 Pakter, Medieval Canon Law, 72; Judaism on Trial, ed. and trans. by Maccoby, 19. 170 For a discussion of the condemnation of the Talmud, see Cohen, The Friars and the Jews, 60–76; Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 319–25.

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who offended against Jewish Law and that he had authority to call for the book to be burnt as heretical. Thus when popes of the High Middle Ages made ‘pro-Judaic’ or ‘pro-Jewish’ statements, for example, in issuing letters of protection, it was because they saw the New Testament as springing from the Old Testament and because they hoped that Judaism as expressed in the Old Testament would one day lead the Jews to Christianity. They were not interested in the positive value of rabbinical Judaism since the time of Jesus. Gregory and his papal successors viewed the Talmud as dangerous not only because it allegedly contained blasphemies and abuses, but because it provided Jews with an alternative to the New Testament which would lead them away from acceptance of Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. Gregory therefore called for the Disputation of Paris in 1240 which led to copies of the Talmud being burned in France. Hence the answer to our earlier question is yes, these popes can be described as ‘anti-Judaic’ (or ‘anti-Jewish’) in that they did not accept the validity of the Jewish faith on its own terms.

Conclusion So according to the varying definitions of the historians we have examined, it would appear that at least some popes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries espoused a position that was either ‘anti-semitic’ (Langmuir and, with qualifications, Stacey) or sowed the seeds for future ‘anti-semitism’ (Chazan). Yet I have argued that there is a danger in Langmuir’s position since he does not give enough prominence to the idea of race. Hence, although he is right to see a change in the twelfth century with the growth of fantastical and irrational ideas about Jews, he is wrong on two counts: first to suggest that such irrational ideas had not existed in the pre-Christian ancient world, and second to suggest that once they emerged in the medieval world we should use the term ‘anti-semitism’ in the modern sense. Rather we should see a process of gradual development of new ideas from the twelfth century onwards, which, combined with negative ideas about Jews that already existed, were necessary for the (eventual) emergence of twentieth-century anti-semitism. Thus we see the development of stages in the history of a move from anti-Judaism (meaning being against the Jewish religion) to anti-semitism. The latter term has a racial as well as religious emphasis, and indeed may be purely a term of racial opprobrium without any obvious connection to religion. We know, for example, that in the twentieth century the Nazis used anti-semitic propaganda which, although built on anti-religious sentiment, seems to have had no explicitly religious overtones. In the Middle Ages the first stage included claims that Jews did not correctly understand their own Scripture, that they were Christ-killers, and that the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem which resulted in the diaspora was God’s punishment for deicide. But from the twelfth century onwards, we find particular libels against Jews emerging: of blood libel, Host desecration, ritual murder, ritual cannibalism, and well poisoning. These are important stages on the road to anti-semitism. Yet the position of medieval Christians, including popes, towards Jews was still far away from what we call anti-semitism today.

the medieval papacy and the concepts of ‘anti-judaism’ and ‘anti-semitism’

By contrast, were popes of the High Middle Ages guilty rather of ‘anti-Judaism’, that is, were they ‘anti-Judaic’? The answer is yes, in the sense that they believed that the Jewish religion was inadequate and that it needed to be fulfilled by Christianity. Yet there seems to be a problem with the use of the word ‘anti’ in this context. After all, consider the contrary: if a Jew claimed that Christianity is inadequate, would this necessarily mean that he would be against it, that is, felt antipathy towards the Christian religion? This brings us to the related question of whether these popes were ‘anti-Jewish’. Certainly they believed the Jewish religion was inadequate — in other words, that it needed to be fulfilled in Christianity. Yet is this enough to use the term ‘anti-Jewish’? Nevertheless, even if a claim that the inadequacy of Judaism is not in itself enough to make the popes of the High Middle Ages either ‘anti-Judaic’ or ‘anti-Jewish’, there are other more obvious ways in which they seem to satisfy both descriptions. Some of these popes displayed, to varying degrees, emotive hostility to Jews which at times spilled over into frustration and anger. In this sense some — but not all — popes of the High Middle Ages may also be considered ‘anti-Jewish’. However, as we have seen, it is only when we add a racial component that we arrive at the full blown modern meaning of the term ‘anti-semitism’. So were popes of the High Middle Ages ‘anti-semitic’? In their belief in fantastical ideas about Jews and in their references to the ‘Jewish perfidy’ and the ‘mark of Cain’, it seems that at least some popes also tended towards beliefs about Jews which contained not only anti-Jewish religious ideas but also a racial element, paving the way for our modern notion of ‘anti-semitism’. Yet we have seen that if a Jew became a Christian, and there was no reason to doubt his/her conversion was sincere, popes were not bothered about him/her. Indeed our evidence suggests that in general popes were not worried by the presence of converted Jews in Christian society. In conclusion, the popes of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries may be described as ‘anti-Judaic’, even at times ‘anti-Jewish’, but not ‘anti-semitic’ according to the modern meaning of the term.

Works Cited Primary Sources The Apostolic Church and the Jews: Documents, 492–1404, ed. by S. Simonsohn (Toronto, 1988) The Church and the Jews in the Thirteenth Century: A Study of their Relations during the Years 1198–1254 (1314) based on the Papal Letters and the Conciliar Decrees of the Period, ed. by S. Grayzel, 2 vols (New York, 1966–89) Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by N. Tanner, vol. i (London, 1990) The Fathers of the Church, trans. by C. T. Wilcox, ed. by R. J. Deferrari, vol. xxvii (New York, 1955) Judaism on Trial: Jewish–Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages, ed. and trans. by H. Maccoby (Rutherford, 1982) Peter the Venerable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. by G. Constable, vol. i (Cambridge, MA, 1967)

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Secondary Studies Abulafia, A. S., Christian–Jewish Relations, 1000–1300: Jews in the Service of Medieval Christendom (Harlow, 2011) Berger, D., ‘The Attitude of St Bernard of Clairvaux toward the Jews’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 40 (1972), 89–108 Blanchetière, F., ‘The Threefold Christian Anti-Judaism’, in Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Judaism and Christianity, ed. by G. N. Stanton and G. G. Stroumsa (Cambridge, 1998), 185–210 Blumenkranz, B., Juifs et Chrétiens dans le Monde Occidental, 430–1096 (Paris, 1960) ———, ‘Perfidia’, Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Bulletin du Cange), 22 (1952), 157–70 Boersma, H., and M. Lavering, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology (Oxford, 2015) Capelli, P., ‘Rashi nella controversia parigina sul Talmud del 1240’, in Ricercare la Sapienza di Tutti Gli Antichi: Miscellanea in onore di Gian Luigi Prato, ed. by M. Milani and M. Zappella (Bologna, 2013), 441–48 Champagne, M. T., ‘The Relationship between the Papacy and the Jews in TwelfthCentury Rome: Papal Attitudes toward Biblical Judaism and Contemporary European Jewry’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Louisiana State University, 2005) Chazan, R., ‘The Hebrew Report of the Trial of the Talmud: Information and Consolidation’, in Le Brulement du Talmud à Paris, 1242–1244, ed. by G. Dahan (Paris, 1999), 79–93 ———, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism (Los Angeles, CA, 1997) Cohen, J., The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, NY, 1982) ———, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley, CA, 1999) Cohen, M., ‘Anti-Jewish Violence and the Place of the Jews in Christendom and in Islam: A Paradigm’, in Religious Violence between Christians and Jews: Medieval Roots, Modern Perspectives, ed. by A. S. Abulafia (Basingstoke, 2002), 107–37 Dobson, R., The Jews of Medieval York and the Massacre of 1190 (York, 1974) Enders, J., ‘Dramatic Rumors and Truthful Appearances: The Medieval Myth of Ritual Murder by Proxy’, in Rumor Mills: The Social Impact of Rumor and Legend, ed. by G. A. Fine, V. Campion-Vincent, and C. Heath (New Brunswick, NJ, 2004), 15–29 Fredriksen, P., Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defence of Jews and Judaism (New York, 2008) Galinsky, J., ‘The Different Hebrew Versions of the “Talmud Trial” of 1240 in Paris’, in New Perspectives on Jewish–Christian Relations, ed. by E. Carlebach and J. Schachter (Leiden, 2012), 109–40 Irwin, T., The Development of Ethics, vol. iii: From Kant to Rawls (Oxford, 2009) Jungman, J., The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development (London, 1959) Klauser, T., A Short History of the Western Liturgy: An Account and Some Reflections, 2nd edn (London, 1979) Langmuir, G., History, Religion and Antisemitism (Berkeley, CA, 1990) ———, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley, CA, 1990) Lewis, C. T., and C. Short, The Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1879)

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MacLehose, W., ‘A Tender Age’: Cultural Anxieties over the Child in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (New York, 2008) McMichael, S., ‘Review of Robert Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism’, The Medieval Review (1998), , [last accessed 7 January 2019] Newman, L. I., Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements (New York, 1925) Osterreicher, J., ‘Pro perfidis Judaeis’, Theological Studies, 8 (1947), 80–96 Pakter, W., Medieval Canon Law and the Jews (Ebelsbach am Main, 1988) Rist, J., Augustine Deformed: Love, Sin and Freedom in the Western Moral Tradition (Cambridge, 2014) Rist, R., Popes and Jews, 1095–1291 (Oxford, 2016) Rubin, M., Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991) ———, ‘Desecration of the Host: The Birth of an Accusation’, in Medieval Religion: New Approaches, ed. by C. Hoffmann Berman (New York, 2008), 363–76 Schur, M., ‘Voltaire and the Jews’, 23 pages, , [last accessed 7 January 2019] Schürer, E., The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 bc–ad 135), rev. and ed. by G. Vermes and F. Millar, vol. i (London, 2015) Simonsohn, S., The Apostolic See and the Jews: History (Toronto, 1991) Slater, T. R., and G. Rosser, eds, The Church in the Medieval Town (Aldershot, 1998) Stacey, R., ‘Crusades, Martyrdom and the Jews of Norman England 1096–1190’, in Juden und Christen zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge, ed. by A. Haverkamp (Sigmaringen, 1999), 233–51 Stacey, R. C., ‘History, Religion and Medieval Antisemitism: A Response to Gavin Langmuir’, Religious Studies Review, 20 (1994), 95–101 Stow, K., Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe (Cambridge, MA, 1992) ———, ‘The Church and the Jews: St Paul to Pius IX’, in Popes, Church and Jews in the Middle Ages: Confrontation and Response, ed. by K. Stow (Aldershot, 2007), 1–70 Stroll, M., The Jewish Pope: Ideology and Politics in the Papal Schism of 1130 (Leiden, 1987) Unterseher, L. A., ‘The Mark of Cain and the Jews: Augustine’s Theology of Jews’, Augustinian Studies, 33 (2002), 99–121

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The Place of the Papacy in Four Illuminated Histories from Thirteenth-Century England

The power and authority of the papacy became a subject of acute political and social importance in England in the early thirteenth century. In 1208 Pope Innocent III placed the kingdom under interdict, following King John’s refusal to accept the election of Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest office in the English Church. The interdict involved the entire population, as the clergy were forbidden from providing any sacraments except the baptism of infants and the confession of the dying.1 Roger of Wendover, writing at St Albans, claimed the dead were buried at crossroads and in ditches, like dogs, without prayers or the ministrations of priests.2 The dispute between Innocent and John escalated, and in 1209 the pope excommunicated the king. In 1213 John finally admitted defeat and submitted himself and his kingdom to the pope, becoming the pope’s tributary. According to Roger of Wendover’s successor, Matthew Paris, the subsequent lifting of the interdict came as a relief, prompting great rejoicing throughout the kingdom. However, Matthew added a drawing of a charter with the rubric carta detestabilis to the margin of the text describing John’s submission, expressing what he saw as the humiliation of the king and kingdom.3 Although the pope was the head of the Church, and bestowed crowns on the Holy Roman Emperors and some kings, including sending a crown for John as ruler of Ireland, John’s agreement to pay an annual tribute and do homage

I am grateful to Thomas Smith for the invitation to contribute to this volume and comments on an early draft. I also thank Helen Conrad O’Briain for her feedback on a draft of this text. 1 Roger de Wendover, Flowers of History, ed. by Hewlett, ii, 46; Selected Letters, ed. by Cheney and Semple, 105; Church, ‘King John’s Books’. I am grateful to Stephen Church for discussion of the interdict and John’s relationship with the papacy. 2 ‘corpora quoque defunctorum de civitatibus et villis efferebantur et more canum in biviis at fossatis sine orationibus et sacerdotum ministerio sepeliebantur’: Roger de Wendover, Flowers of History, ed. by Hewlett, ii, 46. 3 CM, ii, 544, 576; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 16, fol. 35v. Laura Cleaver is Ussher Lecturer in Medieval Art at Trinity College, Dublin. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 109–131 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118959

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to the papacy for England and Ireland was a significant change to the traditional relationship between the King of England and the pope.4 Matthew Paris’s works are the best-known illuminated histories from thirteenth-century England, and popes are among the subjects represented in their margins, either as figures or with symbols of the papal mitre and crozier. However, this essay focuses on four less well-known illuminated histories featuring the papacy produced in England in the half century after the interdict. These histories are now BL, Cotton MS Faustina B VII; Cotton Ch. Roll XIV.12; Eton College, MS 96; and Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, MS 12017. The works combine imagery and text within diagrammatic structures that set out European powers, and they all seem to have been begun with the intention of charting history from creation until the makers’ own time. Although the papacy is not the main subject of these histories, they shed light on some attitudes to papal power in the context of universal history in thirteenth-century England. This essay is thus concerned with the reception and reinterpretation of ideas about the papacy. In these schemas, imagery is used to emphasize the continuity of papal power from its establishment by Christ, to situate the papacy in relation to other European powers, and to draw attention to figures of particular importance in the history of Christianity in England. However, the creators of all four manuscripts made different choices in their presentations of papal history, demonstrating a range of attitudes towards both the papacy and individual popes.

The Manuscripts The histories considered here differ in form and content, but for the period from creation to Christ all four use a very popular diagram attributed to Peter of Poitiers, which circulated throughout Europe in both rolls and codices from the late twelfth century.5 In Peter of Poitiers’s schema the ancestry of Christ is the central line of the diagram, running down the middle of the page or roll, with other figures arranged around this central stem, providing a chronological framework as well as setting out relationships described in the Bible. Although Christ’s line indicates biological descent, other lines represent the succession of holders of offices, including kings and emperors, using information provided by the Bible, but also creating a framework that could be continued beyond the biblical narrative. Two of the histories (BL, Cotton Ch. Roll XIV.12 and Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, MS 12017) are on rolls, which allow the diagram to expand without breaks but are challenging to manipulate, and two (BL, Cotton MS Faustina B VII and Eton College, MS 96) are in codices, with the lines running vertically down each page.



4 For the crown sent by the pope for Ireland, see Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. by Stubbs, ii, 306–07. 5 On Peter of Poitiers, see, amongst others, Moore, Works of Peter of Poitiers; Hilpert, ‘Geistliche Bildung und Laienbildung’; Monroe, ‘Thirteenth- and Early Fourteenth-Century Illustrated Genealogical Manuscripts’; Panayotova, ‘Peter of Poitiers’s Compendium’.

T he Place o f the Papacy

One of the challenges with genealogies was knowing when to stop. All the manuscripts are now incomplete, and at least one of the rolls was never finished, while the codices may have been designed with the potential for their continuation. Cotton Ch. Roll XIV.12 is nearly sixteen metres long (with sections missing), and its history stretches from creation to the reign of William Rufus, but the work is clearly incomplete.6 It can be dated on stylistic grounds to the thirteenth century, and an Easter Table on the dorse ends in 1233, though its exact date of production remains unclear.7 The second roll, Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, MS 12017, has been broken up and the last membranes lost, such that the history breaks off in the reigns of Pope John IX (898–900) and Emperor Berengarius (d. 924). Unlike the other three continuations of the diagram, which all adapt the lines and circles used for the earlier portion of the history, the Liverpool roll uses a chronicle of popes and emperors in two columns. Versions of this chronicle circulated relatively widely, and other surviving copies continued the history into the thirteenth century.8 This, together with the style of the Liverpool roll, makes it likely that the roll was created in the second quarter of the thirteenth century. Like many of the manuscripts owned by Sir Robert Cotton (d. 1631), Cotton MS Faustina B VII now contains a collection of material taken from different volumes.9 It includes a diagram in ‘genealogical’ form on folios 44–70 that begins with creation and ends with King John and Pope Innocent III, and which was continued by a later hand to folio 71v. The text for Innocent III includes a reference to his death in 1216, indicating that it was finished after that date, but there is a change of hand at the start of the passage concerning the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, and this together with the lack of reference to John’s death (which also occurred in 1216) suggests that most of the diagram was executed during John’s reign.10 Two folios that featured the reigns of Stephen and Henry II have been removed, damage perhaps done at the Reformation because they also contained an image of Thomas Becket. Happily, the missing content can be reconstructed, in part, from a second copy of this diagram, now London, College of Arms, MS 10, although the College of Arms volume never received illustrations and the layout of the two diagrams is not identical.11 Both manuscripts are similar in size, measuring 25.8 × 17.5 and 26.7 × 18 cm.12 In contrast, Eton College, MS 96 is a large volume (at 47 × 34 cm) of twenty-three leaves, from which a further six folios have been lost, and it contains different additions to Peter

6 See Monroe, ‘Thirteenth- and Early Fourteenth-Century Illustrated Genealogical Manuscripts’, 226–27, 517–19; Cleaver, ‘Past, Present and Future’; Cleaver, ‘From Codex to Roll’. 7 Monroe, ‘Thirteenth- and Early Fourteenth-Century Illustrated Genealogical Manuscripts’, 518; Cleaver, ‘Past, Present and Future’. 8 Gilberti Chronicon Pontificum, ed. by Holder-Egger, 117–40. 9 See Worm, ‘England’s Place within Salvation History’. 10 Worm, ‘England’s Place within Salvation History’. 11 Monroe, ‘Thirteenth- and Early Fourteenth-Century Illustrated Genealogical Manuscripts’, 222–25; for arguments about the dating of these manuscripts, see Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts, 102; Robinson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts, 27. 12 Monroe, ‘Thirteenth- and Early Fourteenth-Century Illustrated Genealogical Manuscripts’, 222, 513, 520; Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, i, 91–92.

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of Poitiers’s work. The Eton schema concludes with Pope Innocent IV, suggesting that the volume was produced between 1245 and c. 1254, though once again the final folio appears to be unfinished.

The Origins of Papal Power In extending Peter of Poitiers’s genealogical diagram, the makers of these thirteenth-century histories identified the Apostle Peter as Christ’s successor and the foundation of the papacy, which then provided a continuous line from the period of biblical history to the present. The disciples, including Peter, were usually included in copies of Peter of Poitiers’s diagram, where they were often placed adjacent to Christ, and were a logical starting point for a development of the diagram. In the twelfth century Hugh of Saint Victor had suggested a similar organization in his description of a diagram associated with Noah’s Ark, with the papacy then serving as the backbone of history in the ‘era of grace’.13 The page that would have shown the transition from Christ to Peter in the Eton manuscript is lost; however, in the three other diagrams Peter is placed directly below Christ, though not connected to him by a line, providing a visual link between the Gospel narrative and subsequent events. The transition from Christ to Peter was most challenging on the Liverpool roll, as the latter part of this history did not continue the system of lines and circles associated with the genealogy, but instead adopted a two-column format with popes on the left and emperors on the right. The designer inserted a visual bridge between the two sections of the history, using a smaller piece of parchment than the other membranes, on which he painted images of Christ surrounded by the disciples on the left, and Emperor Octavian on the right (Figure 4.1). Christ and Octavian are given similar poses and have very similar drapery. Peter (whose pose also resembles Christ’s) is identified by his usual attribute of keys and is seated at Christ’s right hand. Paul, carrying the sword with which he was martyred, sits on Christ’s left. Above the images are rubrics, in which Octavian is described as the ruler of the whole world.14 The importance of Rome for both the empire and Christianity was described by Matthew Paris, who identified Rome as the chief city of the world and explained that the city had been sanctified by the blood of Peter and Paul, converting it from the capital of all error to the capital of Christianity.15 Beneath the figures on the Liverpool roll, at the start of the next piece of parchment, another rubric describes the text that follows as a ‘catalogue’ or ‘chronicle’ of all the popes and Roman emperors,

13 Hugh of Saint-Victor, De Archa Noe, ed. by Sicard, 130; Sicard, Diagrammes médiévaux et exégèse visuelle; Carruthers, Craft of Thought, 243–46; Worm, ‘Visualising the Order of History’, 248. 14 The rubrics read ‘Dominus noster Ihesus Christus cum discipulis suis …’ and ‘Octavianus Augustus tocius orbus monarchorum’. The latter has been reinforced by a later hand. 15 ‘Li seint apostle deu seint pere e seint pol la cunvertirent a la loi Ihesu Crist e la sacrerent de lur seint sane. E si cum ele estoit avant chef de tute mescreance e d’errur si vout deus kele fust chef de la crestiente’: Cambridge, Corpus Christ College, MS 26, fol. iii; Lewis, Art of Matthew Paris, 344–45.

T he Place o f the Papacy

Figure 4.1. Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, MS 12017, membrane 11. © National Museums Liverpool (Walker Art Gallery).

with the lengths of their reigns and notable facts.16 The organization of the images with Christ and the popes on the left gives them primacy (as readers read from left to right), though the rubric below claims that the text will identify the popes who sat under the emperors. Christ is described as ‘high priest’, summa pontifex, and is the first figure described in the list of popes, which then continues with Peter, identifying Christ as the originator of the papacy. This combination of figures resonates with claims made by thirteenth-century popes about the origins of their power. For example, when Innocent III threatened to excommunicate John in 1209 he did so ‘on behalf of God Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit and of SS Peter and Paul his apostles, whose authority, though unworthily, we hold’.17

16 ‘Catalogus sive cronica omnium pontificum et imperatorum Romanorum ubi anni mense et dies eorum ponuntur et notabilia facta eorum et distinguitur quis papa sub quo imperatore sedit’. See also Gilberti Chronicon Pontificum, ed. by Holder-Egger, 122. 17 Selected Letters, ed. by Cheney and Semple, 113.

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Figure 4.2. London, British Library, Cotton MS Faustina B VII, fol. 52v. © The British Library Board.

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In Cotton MS Faustina B VII the relationship between Christ and Peter is less immediately obvious, as the image of the crucifixion on folio 51v is followed by a diagram of Christ’s extended family on folio 52. Nevertheless, Peter is the next figure to be given an image and is represented in a quatrefoil like that framing the crucifixion (Figure 4.2). Moreover, Peter is placed at the start of the line that extends down the central axis of folio 52v, the position that had been occupied by Christ’s ancestral line on earlier folios.18 In this image Peter again carries keys, but here he is shown dressed in liturgical vestments, including the pallium.19 The image is accompanied by two passages of text, both of which begin with Peter’s name. The first is short, describing the length of his papacy and aligning it to the reigns of contemporary emperors.20 The second passage is much longer and gives more detail about the establishment of the papacy.21 It claims that Peter ordained Linus and Cletus (who would become his successors) as bishops, notes his contribution to canonical writing, and describes his martyrdom. In the latter text Peter is associated both with his contemporaries, as the text notes that he was martyred with Paul, and his successors, as he is presented as having anointed the next two popes. Similarly, the image of Peter is aligned with roundels with the names of some of the disciples and connected by lines to roundels for Linus and Cletus below. Thus in this diagram Peter’s actions, as well as his commission, are presented as essential for the establishment of the papacy. The compiler of the text in the Cotton Faustina volume explicitly acknowledged Eusebius’s chronicle, the ‘Gesta pontificum’ (now known as the Liber pontificalis), and the Decretals as his sources, indicating that the diagram’s originality lay not in its text, but rather — as is also the case in the Liverpool and Cotton rolls — in the

18 Worm, ‘England’s Place within Salvation History’. 19 See Pomarici, ‘Papal Imagery and Propaganda’, 85–87. 20 ‘Petrus in anno VI post passionem domini, primo anno Gaii cathedram Antiochene ecclesie VIII kalends martii tenet per annos VII. Qui in exordio regni Claudii Romam venit et fidem Christi docuit, ceperuntque Christiam Rome nutriri’. 21 ‘Petrus apostolus natione Galileus cum primus [sic] Antiochenam fundasset ecclesiam, Romam mittitur, ubi evangelium predicans XXV annis, mensibus quinque, dies XIII episcopus sedit teste Eusebio. Hic secundum gesta pontificum ordinavit duos episcopos, Linum et Cletum, qui presentialiter omne ministerium sacerdotale in urbe Roma populo supervenientium exhiberent. Petrus vero ad orationem et predicationem populum erudiens vacabat. Leo etiam secundus successor, Agathonis pape in sua decretali epistola sic. Si autem Petrus princeps apostolorum adiutores sibi asciuit Linum et Cletum, non tamen pontificii potestatem aut solvendi vel ligandi normam eis tradidit, sed Clementi successori suo sedem apostolicam post eum et potestatem pontificalem tradente sibi beato Petro apostolo tenere promeruit. Linus vero et Cletus ministrabant exteriora, princeps autem apostolorum verbo et orationi insistebat. Linum nanque et Cletum nichil umquam legimus ex pontificali ministerio potestative egisse, sed quantum eis a beato Petro precipiebatur. Tantum solummodo agebant. Hic etiam Petrus scripsit duas epistolas que canonice nominantur, et evangelium Marci, quia Marcus auditor eius et interpres fuit et filius de baptismo. Hic martyrio cum Paulo coronatur XXVIII [sic] anno post annum passionis, id est ultimo anno Neronis teste Cassiodoro senatore. Qui sepultus est via aurelia in templo Apollinis iuxta locum ubi crucifixus est iuxta palatinum Neronis rufus[?] iuxta tentorium triumphale tertio kalends Iulii’; see , [last accessed 1 September 2017]; Liber Pontificalis, ed. by Duschesne, 118.

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selection, organization, and illustration of the material.22 The first section of this composite manuscript (fols 1–17) also contains a history of the popes that seems to have originally concluded with Innocent III’s successor, Honorius III (1216–27), together with lists of the apostles, English bishops, dioceses, and material about Rome. This part of the volume bears stylistic similarities to the genealogy, and the appearance of the same material in the College of Arms manuscript raises the possibility that these two sections of Cotton MS Faustina B VII were originally part of the same manuscript.23 If these texts were copied together in the manuscript from which the Cotton Faustina diagram was taken, this further underlines the process of selection that informed the creation of the diagram, as the list of popes at the start of the manuscript provides a different (and very short) account of Peter, simply giving the length of his papacy and date of his death.24 This is a reminder that by the thirteenth century those wanting to write about the past potentially had a very large number of sources about the papacy to draw upon. The papacy was therefore hard to ignore, but the abundance of sources allowed authors to select material to suit their conceptions of the relationships between European powers. The designer of the Liverpool roll chose a text that focused on the popes and emperors, and the creator of the diagram in Cotton MS Faustina B VII opted to place the papacy at the centre of history, organizing other lines, and the accompanying text, in relation to it. The line of the papacy is also central in the Cotton Roll. Peter is represented immediately beneath the crucifixion, again aligned with the other disciples, and at the start of a line of popes that continues down the middle of the roll (Figure 4.3). In this case, the connection to Christ’s genealogy is stressed by the continuation of two pairs of lines that frame the roundels containing the popes, creating a central column free from text that appears to run behind the image of the Crucifixion. The popes are also given larger roundels than most of the kings and emperors, further indicating their relative importance. In this diagram, the image of Peter is accompanied by a very short textual description that correlates his reign with those of contemporary emperors, which may derive from a source that listed their relative chronology.25 Here the imagery and structure of the diagram, rather than the text, call attention to the importance of the papacy, which is once again rooted in Peter’s relationship with Christ.

22 For the rolls, see Cleaver, ‘From Codex to Roll’; on papal histories, see Noble, ‘Narratives of Papal History’. 23 Worm, ‘England’s Place within Salvation History’. 24 ‘Petrus sedit annos XXV, menses II, dies octo, et passus est cum Paulo III kl. Iulii, feria II’. 25 ‘Petrus apostolus sedit an[?] episcopatum ecclesie princeps annis IIII. Idem episcopus Antiochenus annis VII. Idem papa annos XXV et menses VIII. Papa ce[?] cepit anno domini XLVI. Sedit imperium tenente Tyberio annis V. Post Gaio annis III, mensibus X, diebus III. Post Claudio annis XIIII, mensibus VII, diebus XXVIII. Post Nerone annis XIII, mensibus VII, diebus XXVIII. A quo martyrium supersit’.

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Figure 4.3. London, British Library, Cotton Ch. Roll XIV.12. © The British Library Board.

Peter appears for a second time on the Cotton Roll in a remarkable diagram on the dorse, where once again he serves as a link between God and the Church (Figure 4.4).26 Here Peter (placed just to the left of centre and flanked by Paul) receives a giant key from the Holy Spirit, who emerges from God’s mouth and carries a balance in his beak. Around the balance is written ‘the judgement of the Church is the judgement of God who is the judge’.27 The key also contains a short text, which begins by linking keys to the ‘gates of judgement’.28 The association of keys with Peter and judgement is derived from Matthew 16. 19 in which Christ tells Peter ‘I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever thou shalt

26 A second copy of this diagram survives in the Capitulary Library at Vercelli. I am very grateful to Jennifer Shurville for drawing my attention to that collection and look forward to reading her dissertation on those diagrams. 27 ‘Judicium ecclesie est iudicium dei qui est iudex’. 28 ‘Claves id est portas iudicia’.

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Figure 4.4. London, British Library, Cotton Ch. Roll XIV.12, membrane 1, dorse (detail). © The British Library Board.

bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven’. The key motif recurs in Revelation 1. 18 where the figure like the Son of Man in John’s vision declares ‘behold I am living forever and ever, and have the keys of death and of hell’. Unfortunately the roll is damaged at this point, but Peter, flanked by Paul, is also positioned at the top of a diagram of the different types of clergy, who are shown welcoming people into the Church through baptism on the left and casting them out through excommunication on the right. In addition, opposite Peter and also reaching towards the key is a figure wearing a crown. The associated inscriptions are damaged and hard to read but appear to designate the imperial crown and identify its wearer as the head of the Church militant.29 The diagram thus links the activities of the terrestrial Church with the Final Judgement, rooting the authority of the papacy, and by extension the Church, in Christ’s words to Peter.

29 ‘Capud ecclesie militantis. Corona imperialis …’; see also Sisson, ‘Popes over Princes’; Larson, ‘Popes and Canon Law’, 148.

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In addition to Christ’s role in establishing the papacy, vestments were used in some thirteenth-century diagrams to suggest that the papacy had a precedent in, though not an exact equivalency with, Old Testament priests. Such typological readings were common by the thirteenth century. In the twelfth century Bernard of Clairvaux provided a list of biblical parallels in his advice to Pope Eugenius III, declaring him to be the high priest, the Supreme Pontiff. You are the prince of bishops, you are the heir of the Apostles; in primacy you are Abel, in governing Noah, in patriarchate you are Abraham, in orders you are Melchisedech, in dignity you are Aaron, in authority you are Moses, in judgement you are Samuel, in power you are Peter, by anointing you are Christ.30 In Cotton MS Faustina B VII Aaron is shown (on fol. 47) wearing the same triangular mitre worn by the popes, though not the other vestments.31 Similarly, in the Cotton Roll some of the Old Testament priests are shown wearing mitres, though these are of different form to the pointed mitres worn by the later popes. In the Eton manuscript, the Old Testament priests are also given a range of headgear, including mitres. This treatment of the Old Testament priesthood was not unique to versions of Peter of Poitiers’s genealogy that extended the diagram into the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, the extended diagrams gave artists the chance to create a visual link between the papacy and its biblical precursors. The users of these schemas were thus prompted to think of the papacy as founded by Christ, and as an extension of biblical priesthood.

The Papacy and Other Powers The organization of the lines for different offices allowed the designers of the diagrams to place different emphasis on the importance of the papacy and its relationship with other powers. On the front of the Cotton Roll, as in Cotton MS Faustina B VII, the centrality of the line of popes means that, at first glance at least, all human history post-Christ is defined in relation to the papacy. Yet on closer scrutiny, the maker of the Cotton Roll often struggled to fit his text around the imagery, so the reader must sometimes hunt for the passage about a particular pope. The content of the text, which usually relates the reigns of popes to those of emperors, underlines the choice to place the popes in the centre, with the emperors (who for the biblical period had also appeared in Peter of Poitiers’s diagram) relegated to the right edge. In this diagram, unlike in Peter of Poitiers’s genealogy, the line of the kings of Britain also begins during the biblical section of the roll, and after Christ it is taken over to the far left (Figure 4.3). The kings of Britain balance the emperors but have priority, placed on Christ’s right and the reader’s left. Yet the faces on both sides of the central

30 Bernard of Clairvaux, Five Books, ed. by Anderson and Kennan, 66; Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘De Consideratione’, 751. 31 See also Pomarici, ‘Papal Imagery and Propaganda’, 109.

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line of popes tend to look towards the middle, apparently directing their attention to the papacy, while most of the popes stare straight out at the viewer, making the papacy visually dominant among the other European power structures. In Cotton MS Faustina B VII, where the popes are also central, the line for the kings of Britain was not taken back into the era of biblical history, but instead began with Lucius, who was widely identified as the first Christian ruler of Britain, in the time of Pope Eleutherius.32 The accompanying text stresses the relationship between Lucius and the pope, and the figure of Lucius is shown looking across the page towards the roundel with the pope’s name, again emphasizing the importance of the papacy for this conception of European history.33 The circles with the figures’ names are connected by red lines. Similarly, when Alfred is introduced (on fol. 63) as the king of all England, complete with an image, he is linked to the line for the Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Leo IV, and the accompanying text describes Alfred’s journey to Rome where he was anointed by the pope and accepted as his son.34 However, Eleutherius is also linked to the circle for Emperor Marcus Aurelius, creating a visual balance between Lucius and the emperor around the central power of the papacy. In this manuscript, therefore, the power of the king of Britain is repeatedly tied to that of the pope, and the papacy appears both to unite and balance the secular European powers. In contrast to the two diagrams constructed around a central papal line, the Liverpool roll’s two columns suggest equivalency between the power of the popes and emperors. Moreover, the use of imagery within this schema implies relationships between the selected popes and emperors, beginning with Pope Sylvester and Emperor Constantine (Figure 4.5). The two men are shown seated on similar thrones and carrying scrolls, but the figures are turned to face one another. Although each figure has attributes relevant to their office, with the pope wearing a mitre and carrying a crozier, while the emperor has a crown and sceptre, the symmetry of the poses suggests an equivalence of status. The texts that accompany the two figures both refer to the baptism of Constantine by Sylvester.35 Yet whilst this event demonstrates Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and provides a point of unity between pope and emperor, the decision to represent these figures seems to have been driven primarily by interest in Constantine, not Sylvester. That Constantine’s reign was a significant point in history is emphasized by the green line that runs across the column above his entry, where 32 See, for example, Lewis, Art of Matthew Paris, 44. 33 ‘Iste Lucius illustris rex britonum audita fama christianitatis, epistolas misit pape Eleutherio petens ut ab eo christianitatem acciperet’. See also Historia regum Britannie, ed. by Wright, 63–64. 34 ‘magno nobilium numero constipatum Romam honorifice transmisit. In quo Leo papa tempus et etatem regnandi regie unctionis sacramento perveniens cum in regem benedixit et in filium sibimet accipiens consecravit’. 35 ‘Silvester, Natione Romanus, sedit annis XXIII, mensibus X, diebus XI et cessavit post mortem eius episcopalis cathedra diebus XV. Hic constituit Baptizavit Constantinum qui statim a lepra mundavit’. ‘Constantinus sub Eusebio papa et Melchade et Silvestro imperavit annis XXX, mensibus decem, diebus XI. Iste devictis Maxentio et Sicinio et Severo imperatoribus a Silvestro papa causa mundandi a lepra baptizatus est et mundatus unde omnes imperiales dignitates ei concessit et ipse Constantinopolim transit’.

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Figure 4.5. Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, MS 12017, membrane 13 (detail). © National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery.

a rubric explains that Constantine was the first of the ‘Greek’ emperors.36 Similarly, in Cotton MS Faustina B VII, fol. 56, Constantine is emphasized with an image, but although the emperor is linked to Sylvester (via a roundel for the First Council of Nicea) and the accompanying text (derived from Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum) notes that he was baptized by Sylvester, the pope is not represented with an image.37 In both cases the emperor’s historical importance was linked to his connection to the pope, but the Liverpool roll was unusual in stressing the relationship between the two men through imagery that presented them as equals. The potential for imagery to suggest relationships between individuals was also exploited by the makers of Cotton MS Faustina B VII and Eton College, MS 96. In the Cotton volume, Pope Gregory the Great appears to be in conversation with Augustine, who was sent by Gregory to convert the British and became Archbishop of Canterbury (Figure 4.6). The two figures look towards one another, 36 ‘Hic transit imperium ad Grecos’. 37 ‘Constantinus flos Britannie regnavit XXX annis et X mensibus; Hic genere et patria Britannicus, ante quem nec post similis est egressus de Britannia, duxit exercitum a Britannia et Gallia in Italiam. Maximianus enim Maxentium filium suum Augustum Rome constituerat. Contra quem Constantinus adhuc infidelis tendens, vidit angelum dei ostendentem sibi signum crucis, hortantemque se ut crederet. Credidit ille statim maxentium que deus flumine submersit. Constantinus igitur potitus imperio, Maximinum sub lege belli superavit, solus regnum mundi tenuit et a vulnere lepre ut scripta tradunt per sanctum Silvestrum in baptismate mundatus, fecit Rome ubi in baptizatus est basilicam Iohannis baptiste que vocatur Constantiniana. Huius mater Helena qui sancta dicitur Britannie nobilis alumpna, Lundoniam muro qui adhuc superest cinxisse fertur, et Colcestriam mensibus adornasse. Sed inter alia multa Ierosolim instauravit, mundatamque ydolis basilicis pluribus adornavit. Obiit antem Constantinus piussimus princeps anno etatis LXVI imperii autem XXXI die XXV mensis maii’. Cf. Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. by Greenway, 60.

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and the angle of the pope’s fingers in the gesture of blessing also leads the eye towards Augustine. A rubric between the two introduces the establishment of the archbishopric and notes that the archbishops receive the pallium from the pope, indicating that their power derives from his.38 As in the Liverpool roll, the similarities between the figures, which include the design of the face and mitre (which are almost mirror images), and the crozier, reinforce the link between the two men, but in this case the larger image of Gregory ensures that he remains the dominant figure. Throughout the Cotton Faustina diagram, the problem of overlapping reigns is resolved through the use of connecting lines, which meet at a small circle between the main vertical lines, for example indicating that one ruler or prelate’s reign spanned that of several popes. Thus Gregory the Great is linked to Augustine and to the latter’s successors Laurence and Mellitus. Gregory had died before Mellitus became archbishop, but Mellitus was part of the mission sent to England by Gregory, although this does not appear to be acknowledged in the accompanying text. Similarly, Gregory and the three subsequent popes are connected to Emperor Focas (Phocas), representing a series of short papal reigns. However, the importance of the papacy over and above other rulers is suggested not only by the centrality of the line of popes, but also by the use of three coloured circles for each roundel, where other powers only have two. In contrast to the Cotton Faustina manuscript and the Cotton Roll, in the Eton manuscript the line of popes is not at the centre of the diagram. Instead, in the period after the biblical history, the powers included change as the history progresses. As in the Cotton Roll, in the Eton manuscript the line of the kings of Britain begins in the biblical era (on fol. 3v), where the kings are placed on the far left. Here Brutus is identified as the first king and as the founder of London (which therefore predates the foundation of Rome), and his son Locrinus is described as having lived in the time of the prophet Samuel. However, immediately after the biblical narrative the emperors are given central place with the popes on the left and the kings of Britain on the right (from fol. 10). On folio 10v the Bishops (subsequently Patriarchs) of Jerusalem are added on the far left. The kings of France are positioned on the far right, and by folio 20 the line for the kings of England is roughly in the middle of the page. Other figures are organized around the lines, either in isolated roundels or as larger drawings without frames. The shifting lines seem to have caused confusion for the artist on folio 21. No popes appear on this page, but the first two emperors, who are now on the leftmost line, were depicted with mitres. On the whole, the artist of the Eton manuscript does not seem to have been particularly interested in the papacy or ecclesiastical power. Although he used a range of different mitre designs, varied the gestures made by the figures, and occasionally introduced a cross-headed staff (or ferula), only Alexander I is obviously singled

38 ‘Linee que ex transverso ponuntur inter summos pontifices et archiepiscopos Cantuarienses tant a quibus apostolicis archiepiscopis pallia sua susceperunt’.

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Figure 4.6. London, British Library, Cotton MS Faustina B VII, fol. 59. © The British Library Board.

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Figure 4.7. Eton College, MS 96, fol. 12v. Reproduced by permission of the Provost and Fellows of Eton College.

out for special attention in the imagery (depicted with an aspergillum and box in connection with his liturgical reforms), and there is no line for the Archbishops of Canterbury. Moreover, the chronological arrangement rapidly breaks down, such that although the entry for Pope Marcellinus on folio 12 refers to his death under Diocletian, that emperor’s roundel is on the following page. In the same way, Pope Innocent III appears on the page after King John, despite references to the interdict in the text accompanying the roundels for both figures. Instead, John is shown (on fol. 23v) glaring at Louis VIII, who invaded England at the end of John’s reign. Although the designer may have been struggling with the alignment of the different figures, like the maker of the Liverpool roll, he seems also to have prioritized some relationships over others. The decision by the artist of the Eton manuscript to show almost all the figures in profile or three-quarter pose creates an overall impression of interaction between the figures. Moreover, despite the overall lack of chronological precision in regard to the papacy, the artist seems sometimes to have exploited the potential to suggest interactions between individuals. On folio 12v Pope Sylvester is aligned with Emperor Constantine, and the pope appears to be looking at the emperor (Figure 4.7). Although Constantine is looking away from the pope, his hand extends behind the framing roundel, gesturing towards the pope and the figure of Saint Nicholas, who is placed between the lines. The accompanying text notes that Sylvester baptized Constantine and that the First Council of Nicea, which was attended by Nicholas,

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was in Sylvester’s time.39 Similarly, on folio 16v roundels for the first four Archbishops of Canterbury are placed near Gregory the Great, who is described as having sent Augustine to convert the English to Christianity. Overall, however, the position of the popes on the left of the diagram creates the impression that they are looking on as events happen in the middle of the page. For the maker of this manuscript, working at least a generation after the creator of the Cotton Faustina volume, the papacy no longer seemed central in European politics.

The Office and the Individual Despite occasional attempts to suggest interaction between contemporary figures, in the Eton manuscript, where every pope is represented by a drawing of a head, the overall impression is of uniformity, stressing the importance of the office. The same is true of the Cotton Roll, which although incomplete, seems to have been planned with the intention of including images in all the roundels for the popes. In both cases, the same formula of bust images wearing mitres is occasionally enlivened by changes in colour or orientation, but without the text most of these figures would be indistinguishable from one another. However, one pope in the Cotton Roll was selected for particular emphasis and given a larger roundel. The image of Pope Gregory the Great also departs from the usual formula of a forward-facing bust image, instead using the very common iconography of Gregory being observed in the act of writing while inspired by the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove (Figure 4.8). Unfortunately, the accompanying passage of text about Gregory is partially obscured by a large stain. Like most of the entries about popes on the roll, it begins with the length of Gregory’s reign and the contemporary emperors.40 It also makes reference to Augustine, who is represented nearby at the start of the line for the Archbishops of Canterbury. Although the imagery does not explicitly relate to Augustine’s mission to England, Gregory is described in the text around the roundel as ‘doctor and apostle of the English’.41 It thus seems very likely that Gregory was selected for particular attention because of his importance to the English Church. Gregory the Great was also chosen as a subject for imagery in Cotton MS Faustina B VII, where he is shown in conversation with Augustine (Figure 4.6), and in the Liverpool roll. In both cases Gregory is one of only three popes represented, although the lost end of the Liverpool roll probably included additional imagery. The desire to include an image of Gregory the Great appears to have created a problem for the designer of the Liverpool roll, as neither of the contemporary emperors was described 39 ‘Iste Silvester natione romanus sedit annis XXIII. Hic Constantinum imperatorem baptizavit et privilegia romane ecclesie mervit et usum dalmatice instituit. Huius tempore synodus Nicena celebratur presente imperatore Constantino in quo Arrius heresiarcha a CCCtis et XVIII episcopis dampnatus est. // In hoc concilio iam senex consedit beatus Nicholas’. 40 ‘Gregorius primus doctor cepit anno domini DXCI sedit annis XIII, mensibus VI, diebus X. Imperante Mauritio. Post Foca annis VII. Cessavit episcopatus mensibus V diebus XVI’. 41 ‘Gregorius primus doctor et anglorum apostolus’.

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Figure 4.8. London, British Library, Cotton Ch. Roll XIV.12. Gregory the Great. © The British Library Board.

in the text as having a direct connection to Gregory. Despite the description of Emperor Focas giving the Pantheon to Pope Boniface, the maker of the roll therefore opted to depict Focas’s successor, Heraclius, who was credited with rescuing the population of Jerusalem and the True Cross following the devastation of Jerusalem by Cosdroes, King of Persia.42 Heraclius is aligned with Gregory, and the two men are shown seated on very similar thrones, once again implying an equivalence of power, but Heraclius is turned towards Gregory, suggesting that the latter is the more significant figure here. The text accompanying Gregory again notes that he sent Augustine to convert the English, in an addition that I have not found in other copies of the text; thus Gregory’s reputation as a heroic figure for the English Church seems to have prompted the maker of the roll to place additional emphasis on him. The final pairing of pope and emperor to receive images on the surviving section of the Liverpool roll is Pope Leo III and Emperor Charlemagne. As with Constantine,

42 See Cleaver, ‘From Codex to Roll’, 86–87.

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Charlemagne is identified as the start of a new dynasty, with the transfer of the empire to the Franks.43 Once again the frontal poses and very similar thrones suggest an equivalence of status between pope and emperor, and the text identifies them as contemporaries, noting that Charlemagne was made emperor in Rome. Yet whilst the use of images focuses attention on specific individuals within the lists of popes and emperors, the repeated iconography of the enthroned figures from Christ and Octavian to Leo and Charlemagne also emphasizes the continuity of power. It is unfortunate that the end of the roll is missing, with the loss of the final pope and emperor. An English audience’s interest in the history of the emperors might have been piqued in this period by the marriage of Henry III’s sister Isabella to Emperor Frederick II in 1235, an event also depicted and described at length by Matthew Paris, or Richard of Cornwall’s election as emperor in 1256/57.44 However, without the end of the roll this must remain conjecture. The three popes depicted in Cotton MS Faustina B VII (Peter, Gregory the Great, and Innocent III) again stress the continuity of papal power from Peter to Innocent III, showing all three as bearded figures sitting on thrones and wearing very similar vestments, including the pallium. In this case, however, the artist used different coloured vestments to introduce variation, showing Peter in blue and green, Gregory in grey and yellow, and Innocent in orange and green. Innocent III is an unusual choice for particular emphasis in the context of this group of histories, although both the rolls now finish before Innocent’s time. The decision to include the image of Innocent emphasizes that the construction of this history was rooted in contemporary concerns. Most of the text on the page with the image of Innocent is the entry for King John, but this account discusses the interdict at length. Strikingly, the text makes reference to earlier connections between popes and England, claiming that such a thing had not happened in all the time since Gregory the Great had sent Augustine to convert the English, or even since Lucius had become the first Christian king in England in the time of Pope Eleucherius.45 Moreover, King John is described as giving his kingdom to God, the Apostle Peter, and Pope Innocent.46 There is thus a strong correlation between the individuals mentioned in this text and those represented with images within the larger diagram. It is unclear whether the figures were selected for imagery because of their appearance in this text, or whether the widespread identification of figures such as Peter, Gregory, Augustine, and Lucius as particularly significant for the history of the Church in England led to their emphasis in both text and imagery. Nevertheless, the combination of text and imagery in this diagram serves as a reminder that by the thirteenth century the history of the papacy was constructed in light of both existing sources and traditions, and current 43 ‘Hic transit imperium ad Francos’. 44 On Anglo-German relations in this period, see Weiler, Henry III of England and the Staufen Empire. 45 ‘Interdictum ad illud quod novum et /in auditum\ in Anglia sint a tempore beati Gregorii pape, qui per beatum Augustinum anglos ad fidem Christi convertit vel a tempore regum Lucii qui primus de regibus britonum per papa Eleutherium Christianus effectus est’. 46 ‘Deo et beato Petro apostolo dominoque pape Innocentio regnum Anglie et regnum Hibernie’; see also CM, ii, 545.

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events. The past informed the understanding of the present just as the concerns of the present shaped the study and use of earlier sources about the papacy. Within this process, imagery provided a valuable tool to emphasize individuals within the larger history and to suggest connections between individuals within larger frameworks. The investment of time and resources in the design and illustration of these histories raises the question of their envisaged uses and users. None of these manuscripts was primarily intended for the study of papal history. Instead all the diagrams attempt to show relationships between different powers over time. Like Peter of Poitiers’s genealogy, source texts were reworked to focus on people, who were positioned in relation to one another in a roughly chronological arrangement. Within these schemas imagery served to put faces to names, emphasizing some or all of those selected for inclusion within these accounts of the past. The main function of these manuscripts seems thus to have been to provide a clear account of a long and complex history. The use of repeated liturgical dress perhaps also helped contemporary churchmen to position themselves within these conceptions of history. Unfortunately, the original makers and users of these histories remain elusive. References to Brecon and Battle Abbey (of which Brecon was a dependency) in the Cotton Roll might suggest that the roll was made at and for one of those sites. On the basis of the text in Eton College, MS 96, Neil Ker suggested that the manuscript might be connected with Glastonbury, and this manuscript or one like it is recorded at Worcester Cathedral in a seventeenth-century library catalogue.47 The places of origin of the Liverpool roll and Cotton Faustina manuscript remain obscure. However, all these manuscripts were visually impressive objects requiring a significant investment of skill and resources. They may have been intended to make history memorable, through the drama of their unfurling, in the case of the rolls, as well as through their structure and decoration. The enormous scale of the Cotton Roll mitigates against its use as a memory aid, but in the case of the other manuscripts, the structure and decoration help to impose a framework onto past events and identify key individuals and relationships within them, helping the viewer to fix particular points and construct history around them.

Conclusion Although none of the manuscripts considered here was primarily a history of the papacy, they all shed light on conceptualizations of the papacy as part of European power structures. All four histories include the papacy as an important office stretching back in an unbroken line to the time of Christ. Yet each history gives a slightly different account of the papacy and of the popes who held the office. The four different schemes were created from a large body of source material and demonstrate

47 Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Wigorniensis, ed. by Atkins and Ker, 59; Ker, Medieval Manuscripts, ii, 707–08; Monroe, ‘Thirteenth- and Early Fourteenth-Century Illustrated Genealogical Manuscripts’, 236.

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the importance of selection in the construction of histories. By the thirteenth century the origin of papal power in Christ’s commission to Peter and the related motif of his keys were ubiquitous in medieval texts and images, and in these works Peter provided a crucial link between biblical history and the subsequent narrative. Moreover the use of repeated visual motifs emphasized the power and status inherited by Peter’s successors. In three of the manuscripts, the papacy was extremely important in the construction of larger power structures: placed centrally in the Cotton Roll and Cotton MS Faustina B VII, and juxtaposed with the emperors in the Liverpool roll. At the same time, in all four histories imagery was used to suggest relationships between individuals, sometimes at the expense of strict chronological accuracy, and to identify some people as particularly significant. These choices seem to have been inspired both by the source material available to the makers of the manuscripts and by contemporary concerns. In a universe created by God, the crafters of histories sought patterns that might help them understand current events as part of a divine plan. For the maker of Cotton MS Faustina B VII, the interdict prompted a comparison with earlier, happier contacts between England and the papacy. A generation later, the creator of the Eton manuscript relegated the papacy to the sidelines of history in order to focus on the relationships between the kings of England and France, and the Holy Roman emperors. As a group, therefore, the diagrams demonstrate both an interest in and a sophisticated, selective use of papal history as the makers of these exceptional survivals sought to make sense of the world in which they lived in the half century after the interdict of 1208.

Works Cited Manuscripts BL, Cotton MS Faustina B VII BL, Cotton Ch. Roll XIV.12 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 16 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 26 Eton College, MS 96 Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, MS 12017 London, College of Arms, MS 10 Primary Sources Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘De Consideratione Libri Quinque ad Eugenium Tertium’, PL, clxxxii, 727–808 ———, Five Books on Consideration, ed. by J. D. Anderson and E. T. Kennan (Athens, OH, 1976) Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Wigorniensis, ed. by I. Atkins and N. R. Ker (Cambridge, 1944)

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Gilberti Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatorum Romanorum, ed. by O. Holder-Egger, in MGH SS, xxiv, 117–40 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. by D. Greenway (Oxford, 1996) The Historia regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth, vol. ii, The First Variant Version, a Critical Edition, ed. by N. Wright (Woodbridge, 1988) Hugh of Saint-Victor, De Archa Noe: Libellus de Formatione Arche, ed. by P. Sicard (Turnhout, 2001) Le Liber Pontificalis : Texte, introduction et commentaire, ed. by L. Duschesne, vol. i (Paris, 1886) Roger de Wendover, The Flowers of History, ed. by H. G. Hewlett, 3 vols, RS, 84 (London, 1886–89) Roger of Howden, Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Houedene, ed. by W. Stubbs, 4 vols, RS, 51 (London, 1868–71) Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III Concerning England, ed. by C. R. Cheney and W. H. Semple (London, 1953) Secondary Studies Carruthers, M., The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge, 1998) Church, S., ‘King John’s Books, Master Richard Marsh, and the Interdict Proclaimed in 1208 on England and Wales’, in Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World: Manuscripts, Makers and Readers, c. 1066–c. 1250, ed. by L. Cleaver and A. Worm (York, 2018), 149–66 Cleaver, L., ‘From Codex to Roll: Illustrating History in the Anglo-Norman World in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 36 (2014), 69–89 ———, ‘Past, Present and Future for Thirteenth-Century Wales: Two Diagrams in British Library Cotton Roll XIV.12’, Electronic British Library Journal, 2013, Article 13, 1–26 Hilpert, H. E., ‘Geistliche Bildung und Laienbildung: Zur Überlieferung der Schulschrift Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi (Compendium veteris testament) des Petrus von Poitiers (1205) in England’, JMH, 11 (1985), 315–32 Ker, N. R., Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, 5 vols (Oxford, 1969–2002) Larson, A. A., ‘Popes and Canon Law’, in A Companion to the Medieval Papacy: Growth of an Ideology and Institution, ed. by K. Sisson and A. A. Larson (Leiden, 2016), 135–57 Lewis, S., The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora (Berkeley, CA, 1987) Monroe, W. H., ‘Thirteenth- and Early Fourteenth-Century Illustrated Genealogical Manuscripts in Roll and Codex: Peter of Poitiers’ Compendium, Universal Histories and Chronicles of the Kings of England’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London, 1989) Moore, P. S., The Works of Peter of Poitiers (Notre Dame, IN, 1936) Morgan, N. J., Early Gothic Manuscripts, 2 vols (London, 1982–88) Noble, T. F. X., ‘Narratives of Papal History’, in A Companion to the Medieval Papacy: Growth of an Ideology and Institution, ed. by K. Sisson and A. A. Larson (Leiden, 2016), 17–36

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Panayotova, S., ‘Peter of Poitiers’s Compendium in Genealogia Christi: The Early English Copies’, in Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages: Studies Presented to Henry MayrHarting, ed. by R. Gameson and H. Leyser (Oxford, 2001), 327–41 Pomarici, F., ‘Papal Imagery and Propaganda: Art, Architecture, and Liturgy’, in A Companion to the Medieval Papacy: Growth of an Ideology and Institution, ed. by K. Sisson and A. A. Larson (Leiden, 2016), 85–120 Robinson, P. R., Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 888–1600 in London Libraries (London, 2003) Sicard, P., Diagrammes médiévaux et exégèse visuelle : Le Libellus de formatione arche de Hughes de Saint-Victor (Paris, 1993) Sisson, K., ‘Popes over Princes: Hierocratic Theory’, in A Companion to the Medieval Papacy: Growth of an Ideology and Institution, ed. by K. Sisson and A. A. Larson (Leiden, 2016), 121–32 Watson, A. G., Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts: The British Library (London, 1979) Weiler, B. K. U., Henry III of England and the Staufen Empire, 1216–1272 (London, 2006) Worm, A., ‘England’s Place within Salvation History: An Extended Version of Peter of Poitiers’ Compendium historiae in London, British Library, Cotton MS Faustina B VII’, in Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World: Manuscripts, Makers and Readers, c. 1066–c. 1250, ed. by L. Cleaver and A. Worm (York, 2018), 29–52 ———, ‘Visualising the Order of History: Hugh of Saint Victor’s Chronicon and Peter of Poitiers’ Compendium Historiae’, in Romanesque and the Past, ed. by R. Plant and J. McNeill (Leeds, 2013), 243–64

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Part II

Representatives of Papal Authority

Thomas W. Smith

The Interface between Papal Authority and Heresy: The Legates of Honorius III in Languedoc, 1216–1227

In the Middle Ages, papal legates were ecclesiastical authority personified. Invested with full power to act as the pope’s representatives in the provinces of Christendom, legates a latere — sent ‘from the side’ of the pope — were said to ‘wear the mask of the pope’ according to Pope Honorius III (1216–27); in other words, the faithful were supposed to treat the legate as if they stood before the pope himself.1 The practice of papal legation was grounded theologically in biblical tradition: the appointment of legates to deal with the pope’s business in partibus was justified by Jethro’s advice to Moses in the Book of Exodus (Exodus 18. 13–26) that he should not judge every small case, which was too large a burden for one person to bear, but divide responsibility among trusted representatives.2 In the person of the legate, then, popes attempted to transform their lofty claims to authority as successors of St Peter into tangible power on the ground. The investigation of the reception and success of Honorius III’s legates in provincia offers one means of testing papal authority and power at the height of the so-called ‘papal monarchy’.3 Arguably the most important political issue to which Honorius III devoted his pontificate was the organization of the crusades, in which legates played a key role, bringing peace I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for an Early Career Fellowship, held at the University of Leeds (2017–20), during which I completed the drafting of this essay. 1 In letters from late December 1217, Honorius wrote that his legate in the south of France, Bertrand, ‘personam et vices nostras in partibus illis gerit’: Reg. Vat. 9, fol. 204v; Regesta Honorii Papae III, ed. by Pressutti, i, no. 946; Reg. Vat. 9, fol. 205r: ‘qui non solum vices, sed et personam nostrum gerit in partibus’; Regesta Honorii Papae III, ed. by Pressutti, i, no. 940. One could translate this instead as ‘bearing the character’ or ‘personality’ of the pope, but ‘wearing the mask’ of the pope arguably conveys better the meaning of Honorius and the concept of papal legation that he was attempting to explain. On papal legates and their powers, see Smith, Curia and Crusade, 263–74. 2 Smith, Curia and Crusade, 249–50. 3 On the ‘papal monarchy’, see the classic study: Morris, Papal Monarchy. On papal legates, see, most recently, Alberzoni and Montaubin, Legati, delegati e l’impresa d’Oltremare; Rennie, Foundations of Medieval Papal Legation; Alberzoni and Zey, Legati e delegati papali. Thomas W. Smith teaches history at Rugby School. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 135–144 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118960

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to the West, recruiting for the expeditions, pursuing papal diplomatic goals, and collecting the crusade tax of a twentieth.4 In most regions of Europe, Honorius’s legates were remarkably successful in pursuing the negotium pacis et fidei — ‘the business of peace and faith’.5 There was one territory, however, in which the authority of these papal representatives was severely tested: Languedoc. In the south of France, the spread of heresy posed a major threat to the authority of the Catholic Church and also sucked recruits and resources away from the crusade to recover the Holy Land.6 In an attempt to suppress this corruption, and as part of the Albigensian Crusade (1209–29), Honorius dispatched legates to work on his behalf to cleanse the region of heresy and to instil the correct doctrine and faith in the clergy and laity of the region. There his legates were confronted with popular support for the heretics and an often hostile clergy; their presence in Languedoc represented an interface between the papacy’s conception of its authority and its fiercest opponents.7 It provides a useful case study in the attempt to measure the extent and limits of papal authority and power, and this short essay demonstrates that, even at the supposed apex of papal rule over Christendom, the writ of the ‘papal monarchy’ did not always run. The heresy which flourished in Languedoc was firmly entrenched by the pontificate of Innocent III (1198–1216) and had been under assault by the forces of the Albigensian Crusade for seven years by the time that Honorius ascended to the papal throne in 1216.8 The prologue to the chronicle of William of Puylaurens records just how bad the problem of heresy had become by the beginning of the thirteenth century: he claimed that, when venturing out in public, clerics often combed over their hair to disguise their tonsures in order to conceal their status as members of the Catholic Church.9 Whether or not this is true, heresy was firmly established in the south of France, and it proved extremely difficult to eradicate. Over the course of his pontificate between 1216 and 1227, Honorius appointed three 4 On Honorius and the crusades, see Smith, Curia and Crusade; Claverie, Honorius III et l’Orient; Skiba, Honorius III. On crusading in other theatres during the pontificate of Honorius, see Chrissis, Crusading in Frankish Greece; Rist, Papacy and Crusading in Europe; and Fonnesberg-Schmidt, The Popes and the Baltic Crusades. 5 Smith, Curia and Crusade, 261–95. 6 For contemporary sources on the danger that heresy posed, see Caesarii Heisterbacensis Dialogus Miraculorum, ed. by Strange, i, 301; Mansi, xxii, 1201; Chronica Albrici Monachi Trium Fontium, ed. by Scheffer-Boichorst, 912. To take but a small sample of the research on heresy in the south of France and the Albigensian Crusade, see Sennis, Cathars in Question; The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade, ed. and trans. by Léglu, Rist, and Taylor; Barber, The Cathars; Moore, War on Heresy; Rist, Papacy and Crusading in Europe; Pegg, A Most Holy War; Taylor, Heresy in Medieval France; Hamilton, ‘The Albigensian Crusade and Heresy’. 7 For an overview of papal legates and the Albigensian Crusade, see Dutton, ‘Aspects of the Institutional History’, 67–135. 8 On Innocent III and the Albigensian Crusade, see Rist, Papacy and Crusading in Europe, 45–80. On the development of nomenclature for the heretics in Languedoc and the term ‘Cathars’, see Pegg, A Most Holy War, 20–26. In this essay, I follow the nomenclature of the papal registers and refer to them simply as ‘heretics’. 9 Chronicle of William of Puylaurens, trans. by Sibly and Sibly, 7–9.

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different legates to the south of France: Bertrand, cardinal-priest of SS Giovanni e Paolo, as legate to Languedoc (1217–19);10 Conrad of Urach, Cardinal-Bishop of Porto e S. Rufina, as legate to France and Languedoc (1220–23);11 and, finally, Roman Frangipani, Cardinal-Deacon of S. Angelo (1225–27),12 to the same provincia. It is important to note that the legates a latere appointed by Honorius were not always present in their areas of legation. Legates would return to the curia during their legation, and as the employment of these three legates shows, there was no seamless overlap between appointments, which resulted in a gap of two years between Conrad and Roman. The deployment of three different legates is testament to the gruelling nature of the legation as one of the leaders of an unpopular holy war in the face of hostility from local co-religionists. It is not surprising that legates dispatched there suffered from a lack of success and a correspondingly high attrition rate. As Richard Spence points out, it was accepted in Gratian’s Decretum that heretics and schismatics could be brought back to Catholic uniformity through the use of armed force.13 In Honorius’s letter to the clergy of Languedoc on 19 January 1217 in which he appointed Bertrand as legate a latere, he authorized the use of force by the crusaders in a passionate justification for the war but was careful to point out that a crusade had not been the first recourse of the papacy. Honorius stated that it was hard work to cleanse the perversity of heresy from Languedoc, and that where lenient treatment had failed, iron and fire were necessary to wound those who had not been healed. The design was to cut away the rotten flesh of Christendom, leaving only the sound, uncorrupted portion.14 Honorius targeted those who had refused papal discipline, and since the old wounds had opened again, he did not want to neglect his responsibility to bring the heretics and their supporters to reckoning, especially when the Fifth Crusade (1217–21) was in its early stages and the outcome was undecided; the heretical infestation in Languedoc was not only a stain on the papacy’s spiritual conscience but also a threat to the success of the renewed effort to recover the holy places, which required recruits and resources.15 The language in which the letter of 19 January was couched made it clear how the defenders of heresy were to be treated. The violent rhetoric can also be read as an attempt to guarantee the papal order towards the end of the letter that the

On Bertrand and his background, see Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalskolleg, 170–71. On Conrad, see Neininger, Konrad von Urach, esp. 157. On Roman, see Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalskolleg, 189–95. Spence, ‘Gregory IX’s attempted Expeditions to the Latin Empire’, 169. Reg. Vat. 9, fol. 74r: ‘Et quoniam in graviori morbo recurrendum est ad validiora remedia et utendum cauterio ubi medicamenta lenia non procedunt, apposita sunt ferrum et ignis vulneribus que dudum sibi appositam fomentorum non senserant medicinam, putridis carnibus ne partem sinceram traherent amputatis, et ossibus etiam firmioribus scilicet que sustinere imbecillium malitiam videbantur in camino tribulationis ut intellectum reciperent ex vexatione discoctis’; Regesta Honorii Papae III, ed. by Pressutti, i, no. 265. 15 On the Fifth Crusade, see Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade; Mylod and others, Fifth Crusade in Context; Smith, Curia and Crusade.

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local clergy receive the legate honourably and faithfully assist him.16 Although the phrasing of the order that the legate be well received was present in all letters announcing the appointment of legates, certainly in the case of Languedoc, this was far from a mere formality. The early legates dispatched by Innocent III had struggled to assert their authority because their wide-ranging powers had caused resentment among the local clergy and nobility, whom the legates should have been able to rely on for support in combating heresy.17 In 1208, a papal legate of Innocent III, Peter of Castelnau, had even been murdered near Saint-Gilles.18 Some parts of southern France could be considered ‘no go’ areas for the representatives of papal authority. As is well known, the main weapons in the arsenal of legates a latere were the sentences of excommunication and interdict. These could usually be relied upon to ensure that the local clergy and laity cooperated with legates. On 27 February 1217, Honorius addressed a letter to the rulers and people of Marseilles, condemning the excessive heresy that teemed in their churches. The pope used Bertrand’s legatine powers as a threat, requiring that the people of Marseilles abide by Church doctrine, otherwise their heedlessness would be corrected and punished in person by Bertrand, who would excommunicate offenders and place Marseilles under interdict.19 That these direct threats from the pope were necessary was evidenced by the refusal of the inhabitants of Avignon, Marseilles, Saint-Gilles, Beaucaire, and Tarascon to obey Bertrand on his arrival in Languedoc.20 Men from these settlements had actively participated in the defence of Beaucaire against the Albigensian Crusade between May and August 1216.21 As a result of this resistance they had been excommunicated and their lands placed under interdict. Sentences of excommunication and interdict, however, could only be effective in territories in which the pope could rely on the support of at least some sections of the clergy and the lay power in order to enforce the punishments. In the south of France, it is clear that the papacy was confronted by a serious threat to its power and authority because it struggled to command such support; vast swathes of the southern French society refused to acknowledge the papacy’s claims to spiritual authority and actively engaged in armed resistance

16 Reg. Vat. 9, fol. 74r: ‘Ideoque universitatem vestram rogando monemus et exhortamur attentius, per apostolica vobis scripta firmiter precipiendo mandantes quatenus ipsum sicut apostolice sedis legatum, immo verius nos in ipso studentes devote recipere ac honorifice pertractare sibique fideliter assistentes ipsius salubria mandata monita et statuta recipiatis humiliter et irrefragabiliter observetis’; Regesta Honorii Papae III, ed. by Pressutti, i, no. 265. 17 Rist, Papacy and Crusading in Europe, 46–54. 18 Pegg, A Most Holy War, 5. 19 Reg. Vat. 9, fol. 74v: ‘Nos enim dilecto filio nostro Bertrando tituli sanctorum Iohannis et Pauli presbytero cardinali apostolice sedis legato nostris damus litteris in mandatis, ut nisi voc preceptis nostris curaveritis obedire, temeritatem vestram pro excommunicationem in personas et interdictum in terram sublato appellationis obstaculo auctore Domino taliter corrigat et castiget, quod vestra correctio aliis similia presumendi audaciam interdicat’; Regesta Honorii Papae III, ed. by Pressutti, i, no. 376. 20 History of the Albigensian Crusade, trans. by Sibly and Sibly, 266–67. 21 Marvin, Occitan War, 244.

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against the representatives of the papacy. New strategies in the exercise of papal authority were required. The opposition of the citizens of Toulouse to the leader of the Albigensian Crusade, Simon de Montfort, and Bertrand (which culminated in the siege of Toulouse from October 1217) also elicited a letter from Honorius on 27 December 1217. The pope complained about the rebellion against Simon and was affronted even more by the scorn that the citizens showed to the legate, warning that they ought to show respect and devotion to the papal throne. Honorius explained that the legate carried not only the office of the pope, but ‘wore his mask’ as well.22 Two days later, Honorius sent letters to the excommunicated populations of all the settlements placed under interdict in the spirit of ‘sober counsel’. The pope criticized the disruption of the negotium pacis et fidei that Simon de Montfort and Bertrand were attempting to carry out and offered up the prospect of reconciliation if the excommunicates would cooperate with the legate. Honorius advised that the legate was sending reports back to the curia and that the excommunication and interdict could be relaxed without difficulty (‘prefatas sententias sine difficultate relaxet’). As Honorius had explained to the people of Toulouse, the pope clarified that the legate wore the ‘mask’ (persona — which could also be translated as the ‘character’ or ‘personality’, but ‘mask’ perhaps best conveys the meaning of Honorius here) and executed the office of the pope.23 When the men of Languedoc looked Bertrand in the eye, they had to remember that they were, in effect, staring Honorius in the face. By opposing Bertrand, the ‘rebels’ were insulting the pope himself, something which the legate’s opponents might have failed fully to comprehend. This letter suggests that the dual identities of papal legates were not always properly understood by those to whom they were sent. Essentially legates bore their own identity, in the case of Bertrand, as Cardinal-Priest of SS Giovanni e Paolo, but — perhaps unappreciated — they were also the pope. This may have been an unfamiliar concept in Languedoc, one which marked an advance from the traditional offices of envoys and ambassadors as representatives who carried messages but not the full power of office of the figure they represented. It could be that the subtleties of the office of legate a latere were not fully understood in the south of France at this time; it is worth pointing out that the office and powers of legates were not fixed and did develop during the course of the thirteenth century.24 This was the curial reading of the situation in Languedoc, at least, and it was a more comfortable one

22 Reg. Vat. 9, fol. 205r: ‘atque hoc in oculis legati nostri qui non solum vices, sed et personam nostram gerit in partibus illis non veremini attemptare, plane operum exhibitione monstrantes quod qui sic legatum eumdem contempnitis ad nos et ad apostolicam sedem respectum congruum et devotionem debitam non habetis’; Regesta Honorii Papae III, ed. by Pressutti, i, no. 940. 23 Reg. Vat. 9, fol. 204v: ‘Cum vestra non ignoret discretio quantis periculis et dispendiis personarum et rerum negotium pacis et fidei sit in partibus Provincie procuratum, miramur non immerito et movemur, quod illud dicimini perturbare, dilecto filio nobili viro S. comiti Montisfortis immo catholice fidei cuius propugnator existit, ac etiam apostolice sedis legato qui personam et vices nostras in partibus illis gerit, vos pertinaciter opponendo’; Regesta Honorii Papae III, ed. by Pressutti, i, no. 946. 24 Smith, Curia and Crusade, 272–73.

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which interpreted the opposition as the product of misunderstanding rather than conscious and deliberate resistance to papal authority. If we turn from the reception of the legate by the people of Languedoc to the crusader host itself, it would appear from contemporary chronicles that Bertrand had fewer problems exercising the authority of his office. Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay’s history of the Albigensian Crusade records that, at least during the siege of Toulouse, Simon obeyed the legate’s every wish and instruction.25 This seems unlikely given that Simon was undoubtedly the military decision-maker on the crusade. Rather, this statement was probably part of an attempt by Peter to portray Simon as the ideal athlete of Christ following his death during the siege on 25 June 1218. But the chronicle of William of Puylaurens also claims that Simon was subjected to constant criticism from Bertrand at this time, which perhaps hints at Bertrand’s influence in the crusader camp and suggests that the legate’s lack of success among the enemies of the Church was not for want of trying.26 The anonymous successor of William of Tudela who described the siege of Toulouse chose to portray Bertrand as a bloodthirsty warmonger who pushed for all the male inhabitants of the city to be put to death on its capture and was anxious to ensure that no one escaped. When Fouquet, the Bishop of Toulouse, tried to remonstrate with the legate, the Anonymous wrote that Bertrand would not listen, being bent on the total destruction of everything inside the city, extending even to those taking shelter in a church who were within sight of the altar. Prior to an attack Bertrand is depicted rallying the crusaders, and apparently having rethought his previous advice to let no man escape, extends this to the city’s women as well, regardless of the protection of churches, relics, or hospices, exclaiming that judgement had been passed in Rome.27 We should be very wary of taking any of these reports at face value. The remarks of the anonymous continuator of William of Tudela, who was ‘whole-heartedly on the side of the southerners’, aimed to discredit the legitimacy of the crusade by showing the legate to be an unholy man.28 It is unlikely that they reflect the actions of Bertrand or his instructions from the curia. We should also locate these accounts of the legate’s actions in the broader context of the reception of papal legates across the West. Even in territories that were untouched by heresy, local clergy often resented the representatives of papal authority sent from Rome to punish and correct, and gave them correspondingly bad write-ups in their chronicles.29 One thing that all these accounts agree on, though, is that Bertrand played a prominent role in the crusade leadership. That he was recognized by supporters and opponents of the campaign as one of its foremost figures suggests that the legate’s office was supported within the crusader host.

25 History of the Albigensian Crusade, trans. by Sibly and Sibly, 269. 26 Chronicle of William of Puylaurens, trans. by Sibly and Sibly, 61. 27 William of Tudela and an Anonymous Successor, Song of the Cathar Wars, trans. by Shirley, 130–31; Pegg, A Most Holy War, 154. 28 William of Tudela and an Anonymous Successor, Song of the Cathar Wars, trans. by Shirley, 1. 29 Smith, Curia and Crusade, 287.

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It is apparent that the expression of papal authority in Betrand’s letter of appointment and Honorius’s subsequent letters in support of him were not enough to win over the local clergy. This was clearly still a problem in 1221, because, on 3 June of that year, Honorius dispatched a letter on the subject to his new legate, Conrad of Urach, who replaced Bertrand in December 1219. In this letter the pope bitterly bewailed that the bishops, prelates, and other clerics of the region were opposed to the business of the faith, at one time publicly, at another secretly. Determined to punish this wicked dissent, Honorius attempted to break down this opposition through more direct means. He gave Conrad authority to inquire among the clergy there, to correct and punish offenders where he saw fit, requiring a special papal licence only for the deposition of bishops.30 One of the few bastions of support that the pope and his legates could rely on in Languedoc was the city of Narbonne. The Archbishop of Narbonne, Arnald Amalric, was heavily involved in the Albigensian Crusade and had played a frontline role as a legate himself under Innocent III.31 A letter from Conrad to Honorius from 1222 tells of the great service that Arnald rendered the papacy in the Albigensian causa. Among all, Narbonne had stood alone, effectively and faithfully working for the business of peace and faith. It seems that Honorius’s legates enjoyed a special relationship with the Archbishop of Narbonne who, according to Conrad’s letter, worked tirelessly in support of the papal legates and Conrad in particular.32 Such support from local clergy was essential to the successful execution of the legatine mandate, but aside from Narbonne, whose archbishop was a former legate and closely linked with the curia, it was not forthcoming in Languedoc. Since the papacy evidently could not rely upon the members of the Church, Honorius was forced to bolster his influence by seeking assistance from a different source of authority: the French Crown.33 On 4 April 1224, for example, Honorius

30 Reg. Vat. 11, fol. 136v: ‘Non sine amaritudine mentis audivimus et referimus, quod quidam episcopi aliique prelati et ecclesiastici viri adversarii fidei negotio non verentur, hereticis eorumque fautoribus impendendo favorem consilium, et auxilium, nunc publice, nunc occulte quos si sedis apostolice reverentia que tantum pro ipso negotio laboravit ab illorum favore non revocat divinus saltem timor et amor proprie fame ac salutis debuerat revocare. Cum igitur tante perversitatis malitia, et tam malitiosa perversitas remanere non debeat impunita, inquirendi et corrigendi ac puniendi excessus talium tam regularium et exemptorum, quam aliorum quorumlibet prout ipsi negotio videris expedire, privilegio Cisterciensibus, Templariis, Hospitalariis, aut aliis quibuscumque concesso seu appellationis diffugio non obstante libera tibi concedimus auctoritate presentium facultatem, eo dumtaxat excepto ut ad depositionem episcoporum manum sine nostra speciali licentia non extendas, alias eos prout res exegerit, libere puniturus’; Regesta Honorii Papae III, ed. by Pressutti, i, no. 3431. 31 Pegg, A Most Holy War, xviii. 32 Mansi, xxii, 1195: ‘Inter omnes ecclesias sola Narbonensis fidelius, firmius et efficacius negotio fidei et pacis astitit; nulla pericula, nulla dispendia, dum in ipso laboraret negotio, preformidans, sed quibuscumque modis huiusque potuit, verbis er operibus se totam exhausit pro negotio Jesu Christi, et tanquam una de fortioribus basibus ecclesie Romane, onera, pondus, et presuras perserveranter et infatigabiliter supportavit; apostolicam sedem in suis legatis, et specialiter in persona nostra tot honoribus et commoditatibus preveniens, ut credi debeat eam potius Romanam quam Narbonensem’. 33 See Kay, Council of Bourges.

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wrote to Arnald informing him that he had sent Conrad of Urach to the court of King Louis VIII as part of an attempt to use royal power finally to bring the seemingly endless war in Languedoc to a close. Honorius wanted to turn his attention and resources away from the West and direct them towards the recovery of the Holy Land.34 Conrad’s successor as legate, Roman, also continued to foster strong relations with the king as a way to break the deadlock in Languedoc; William of Puylaurens records that Roman enjoyed a very close relationship with Louis VIII and that the legate gave the French king his untiring support.35 This royal support for papal authority came at a price, however, and, as Jonathan Sumption states, Roman worked to annex Languedoc to the royal territories; it is no coincidence that the French Crown emerged from the Albigensian Crusade as the biggest winner.36 In the absence of support from swathes of southern French society, among both its clerical and lay members, the papacy had to rely on the King of France, essentially a foreign power in the region, in order to bring Languedoc to heel. While papal authority was often guaranteed by sympathetic lay powers in the Middle Ages, the way in which the papacy was forced to court the king in order to make headway in the south of France attests to the acute difficulty that the papacy experienced in attempting to exercise its own authority in the region without the backing of the members of the ‘universal’ Church. In conclusion, papal attempts to exercise authority in Languedoc, both through letters and through legates, met with mixed to disappointing results. We can make some observations about legates as representatives of papal authority specifically, as well as papal authority more broadly. The Languedoc legations were incredibly gruelling missions, something which is attested to in the papal registers and by the need for the pope to chivvy along his legates from time to time. The legations in Languedoc reveal the different strategies that Honorius pursued in his attempts to exert papal authority, especially when it was challenged or ignored by local clergy, mixing direct punishment through the legatine powers of excommunication and interdict with more subtle attempts to bring about reconciliation and his efforts to win the support of the French king. They also raise the question of how far awareness of the subtleties of the role of the legate a latere had penetrated into the mindset of those to whom legates were sent. Honorius’s reminders to the people of Languedoc that his legates bore the office and wore the ‘mask’ of the pope suggest that it may not have been universally understood in regions where papal authority was weak that Honorius’s legates a latere were representing the person of the pope himself, and that resistance against the legate was essentially resistance against the pope. More broadly, as a case study of the interface between papal authority and those who did not recognize that authority, the use of legates exposes just how reliant the papacy was on the acceptance of its legitimacy. This was generally not a problem that the popes had to confront within Western Christendom; by the early thirteenth century, the acceptance of the universal

34 Reg. Vat. 12, fol. 178v: ‘ex hoc negotio imminere ac ad Terre Sancte subsidium liberius intendere valeamus’; Regesta Honorii Papae III, ed. by Pressutti, ii, no. 4922. 35 Chronicle of William of Puylaurens, trans. by Sibly and Sibly, 71. 36 Sumption, Albigensian Crusade, 214–15.

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Church with the pope at its head usually went unchallenged. But the widespread resistance that Honorius met with in Languedoc, among members of his own Church, demonstrates that when that legitimacy was entirely rejected by the clergy, the papacy was left somewhat powerless and rendered Honorius even more dependent on the support of the lay power, even at the height of the so-called ‘papal monarchy’.

Works Cited Primary Sources Caesarii Heisterbacensis monachi ordinis Cisterciensis Dialogus Miraculorum, ed. by J. Strange, 2 vols (Cologne, 1851) The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade: A Sourcebook, ed. and trans. by C. Léglu, R. Rist, and C. Taylor (London, 2014) Chronica Albrici Monachi Trium Fontium, ed. by P. Scheffer-Boichorst, in MGH SS, xxiii, 631–950 The Chronicle of William of Puylaurens: The Albigensian Crusade and its Aftermath, trans. by W. A. Sibly and M. D. Sibly (Woodbridge, 2003) The History of the Albigensian Crusade: Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay’s Historia Albigensis, trans. by W. A. Sibly and M. D. Sibly (Woodbridge, 1998) Regesta Honorii Papae III, ed. by P. Pressutti, 2 vols (Rome, 1888–95) William of Tudela and an Anonymous Successor, The Song of the Cathar Wars: A History of the Albigensian Crusade, trans. by J. Shirley (Aldershot, 1996) Secondary Studies Alberzoni, M. P., and P. Montaubin, eds, Legati, delegati e l’impresa d’Oltremare (secoli xii– xiii) / Papal Legates, Delegates and the Crusades (12th–13th Century): Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi Milano, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 9–11 marzo 2011 (Turnhout, 2014) Alberzoni, M. P., and C. Zey, eds, Legati e delegati papali: Profili, ambiti d’azione e tipologie di intervento nei secoli xii–xiii (Milan, 2012) Barber, M., The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Harlow, 2013) Chrissis, N., Crusading in Frankish Greece: A Study of Byzantine-Western Relations and Attitudes, 1204–1282 (Turnhout, 2012) Claverie, P.-V., Honorius III et l’Orient (1216–1227): Étude et publication de sources inédites des Archives vaticanes (ASV) (Leiden, 2013) Dutton, C. M., ‘Aspects of the Institutional History of the Albigensian Crusades, 1198–1229’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 1993) Fonnesberg-Schmidt, I., The Popes and the Baltic Crusades, 1147–1254 (Leiden, 2007) Hamilton, B., ‘The Albigensian Crusade and Heresy’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. v, c. 1198–c. 1300, ed. by D. Abulafia (Cambridge, 1999), 164–81 Kay, R., The Council of Bourges, 1225: A Documentary History (Aldershot, 2002)

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Maleczek, W., Papst und Kardinalskolleg von 1191 bis 1216: Die Kardinäle unter Coelestin III. und Innocenz III. (Vienna, 1984) Marvin, L. W., The Occitan War: A Military and Political History of the Albigensian Crusade, 1209–1218 (Cambridge, 2008) Moore, R. I., The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe (London, 2012) Morris, C., The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford, 1989) Mylod, E. J., G. Perry, T. W. Smith, and J. Vandeburie, eds, The Fifth Crusade in Context: The Crusading Movement in the Early Thirteenth Century (Abingdon, 2017) Neininger, F., Konrad von Urach († 1227): Zähringer, Zisterzienser, Kardinallegat (Paderborn, 1994) Pegg, M. G., A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom (Oxford, 2008) Powell, J. M., Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213–1221 (Philadelphia, PA, 1986) Rennie, K. R., The Foundations of Medieval Papal Legation (Basingstoke, 2013) Rist, R., The Papacy and Crusading in Europe, 1198–1245 (London, 2009) Sennis, A., ed., Cathars in Question (York, 2016) Skiba, V., Honorius III. (1216–1227): Seelsorger und Pragmatiker (Stuttgart, 2016) Smith, T. W., Curia and Crusade: Pope Honorius III and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1216–1227 (Turnhout, 2017) Spence, R., ‘Gregory IX’s Attempted Expeditions to the Latin Empire of Constantinople: The Crusade for the Union of the Latin and Greek Churches’, JMH, 5 (1979), 163–76 Sumption, J., The Albigensian Crusade (London, 1978) Taylor, C., Heresy in Medieval France: Dualism in Aquitaine and the Agenais, 1000–1249 (London, 2005)

Gábor Barabás

Papal Legates in Thirteenth-Century Hungary: Authority, Power, Reality

Throughout the thirteenth century, papal legates intervened in Hungary on numerous occasions and for a multitude of reasons. As the instruments of papal authority, they had to deal with various internal and external conflicts, such as the fight against heresy in the Balkans, foster relations with the neighbouring orthodox churches, and improve the state of the Hungarian clergy. The present study explores the manifestation, deployment, and limitations of papal authority in the person of the legate so as to assess the nature of the papacy’s plenitudo potestatis, or fullness of power, in its relations with the Kings of Hungary in this period.1 Any attempt to shed light on the perception of papal power in thirteenth-century Hungary must begin with an important example from the first half of the century which sheds light on the special relationship between the Kingdom of Hungary and the practice of papal legation. In June 1238, King Béla IV (1235–70) answered the admonitions of Pope Gregory IX (1227–41) concerning the need for a Hungarian campaign to help the Latin Empire of Constantinople.2 Béla stated that he was willing to lead his army south against the Bulgarian and Greek rulers despite his kinship with them, but he requested the office of legation for himself for this endeavour.3 The petition was justified with a reference to the rights of St Stephen (997–1038), the first King of Hungary, who was portrayed as an apostolic legate in his legend written

The research for this chapter was supported by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH NN 109690 and 124763; , [last accessed 20 January 2019]) and the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (BO/00148/17/2). I am grateful to Gergely Kiss, Endre Sashalmi, and Thomas W. Smith for their help and advice. 1 For this notion in canon law, see Watt, Theory of Papal Monarchy, 75–105. For the papal legates as representatives of the popes, see recently Müller, ‘Omnipresent Pope’, 201–10. 2 Potthast, nos 10508, 10535; Les Registres de Grégoire IX, ed. by Auvray, nos 4056, 4155. See Lower, ‘Negotiating Interfaith Relations’, 54–58; Dall’Aglio, ‘Crusading in a Nearer East’, 180–83. 3  Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, ed. by Fejér, iv.1, 112; Regesta regum, ed. by Szentpétery and Borsa, no. 642. See Ruess, Die rechtliche Stellung, 235–36; Szűcs, ‘A kereszténység belső’, 162–63. Gábor Barabás is Assistant Professor in Medieval History at the University of Pécs. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 145–158 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118961

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by Bishop Hartwik at the beginning of the twelfth century.4 Gregory rejected this innovative request, citing the king’s status as a lay person.5 Yet this refusal was not absolute, since Gregory offered Béla the opportunity to choose a prelate from the kingdom, whom Bishop Salvi of Perugia, a papal representative present in Hungary, could provide with the legatine office and authority.6 This generous offer to the king, which broke with the standard practice of the pope selecting his own legates, apparently derived from a concern not to jeopardize the planned campaign (although, as it turned out later, this was in vain).7 Although the Hungarian ruler did not exercise the right offered to him, the formulation of the original petition is noteworthy for following the pattern of the description of the full office of legation (plena legatio) of papal documents. Therefore, the king (or more likely his chancellor) defined exactly the required rights and powers.8 The knowledge of papal legation displayed in Béla’s request was probably drawn from the experience of several earlier papal legations in Hungary. The analysis of the relevant legates must begin with two cardinals who, for different reasons, both found themselves in serious conflict with the Hungarian kings which should be understood as clashes between royal power and papal authority, both with different outcomes. The first legate in question, Leo Branchaleoni, cardinal-priest of S. Cruce in Gerusalemme, was at first welcomed at the court of King Emeric (1196–1204) in 1204, while he was on his way to Kalojan (Kaloyan) of Bulgaria (1197–1207) to manage the ongoing negotiations between Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) and the tsar.9 King Emeric supported the pope’s agenda, and his men accompanied the cardinal from the royal court to the southern border to meet Kalojan’s envoys. Nevertheless, the king attempted to use Leo’s mission to further his own agenda and demanded that the legate convince the Bulgarian tsar to restore Hungarian territories that had been seized. When the cardinal refused, Emeric simply incarcerated him.10 Apparently the circumstances of his imprisonment were not terrible, however.11 Violence against a legate with plenary powers (a legatus a latere) was a crime that was supposed to be punished automatically by excommunication and required an absolution from the

4  Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, ed. by Fejér, iv.1, 113: ‘ut officium legationis non alii, sed nobis, in terra Assani committatur, ut habeamus potestatem limitandi dioceses, distingvendi parochias, et in hac prima institutione potestatem habeamus ibi ponendi episcopos de consilio prelatorum, et virorum religiosorum, quia hec omnia beate memorie antecessori nostro, Stephano, sunt concessa’. For Hartwik’s work, see Thoroczkay, ‘Megjegyzések a Hartvik-féle Szent István-legenda datálásának kérdéséhez’. See Fraknói, Magyarország egyházi és, 62–63. 5  Potthast, no. 10637; Les Registres de Grégoire IX, ed. by Auvray, no. 4482; see Figueira, ‘Canon Law’, 54–55; Weiss, Urkunden der päpstlichen Legaten, 339. 6  Potthast, no. 10638; Les Registres de Grégoire IX, ed. by Auvray, no. 4483. 7 See Barabás, Das Papsttum und Ungarn, 195–204. 8 See Ruess, Die rechtliche Stellung, 231–35; Weiss, Urkunden der päpstlichen Legaten, 339; Szűcs, ‘A kereszténység belső’, 162–63. 9 Moore, Pope Innocent III, 113–14, 123–24; Sweeney, ‘Innocent III, Hungary and the Bulgarian Coronation’, 320–21; Fraknói, Magyarország egyházi és, 39; Ruess, Die rechtliche Stellung, 70. 10 ‘Gesta Innocentii III’, 1054, no. 2514. 11 Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, ed. by Fejér, ii, 432–35; Fraknói, Magyarország egyházi és, 40–41.

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pope himself.12 Somewhat surprisingly, however, Pope Innocent III did not punish the King of Hungary in this way and cast only ‘fatherly’ reproaches towards him.13 Apparently retaining Emeric’s good will was more important for the pope’s diplomatic goals in the region than applying the appropriate punishment. In the end, this soft approach was successful, and the Hungarian king complied with Innocent’s request, setting Cardinal Leo free, who continued his voyage to Bulgaria, where — among other things — as the papal representative he crowned Kalojan.14 This example demonstrates the vulnerable position that papal legates occupied and how the exercise of illicit secular power could be used to circumvent their ecclesiastical authority. If we turn to the other example, almost eight decades later, another papal legate, Bishop Philip of Fermo, confronted King Ladislaus IV (1272–90) with a far more dramatic outcome. The agent of Pope Nicholas III (1277–80), Philip was entrusted with strengthening Hungarian royal power in September 1278, but the bishop did not appraise the state of local affairs well. Philip judged the so-called ‘Cuman situation’ to be the most urgent matter to solve.15 The nomadic, and mostly pagan, Cumans had lived in Hungary for decades, and by the time of Philip’s legation they represented — besides the Church — one of the most important pillars of the king’s power in his struggle with the oligarchs of the realm. Their status as pagans, however, represented a major threat to the ecclesiastical orders, and in his effort to neutralize this threat through conversion, the legate managed to force his will on the king and the general congregation of the kingdom in the summer of 1278. Philip’s draft text concerning the mandatory settlement and conversion of the nomads — today known as the Cuman laws — was confirmed.16 Philip probably did not appreciate that Ladislaus was faced with an almost unsolvable dilemma, since his royal power was based on Cuman military force. The legate did not reconsider his possibilities because of the king’s hesitation or the political situation and used his authority to push through his measures regarding the Cumans. This intransigence resulted in open conflict between the king and the legate in autumn 1279.17 Ladislaus swore an oath on the fulfilment of the provisions in October but later abandoned the cardinal and escaped to the Cumans.18 In turn, Philip excommunicated the sovereign, whereupon the king captured the legate and delivered him over to the nomads.19 For a group of Hungarian barons this action appears to have been the last straw, and they incarcerated Ladislaus in an attempt to rectify the situation.20 This action probably

12 See Schmutz, ‘Medieval Papal Representatives’, 455; Figueira, ‘Canon Law’, 15–22. 13 Potthast, no. 2282; Register, vii, no. 126; Fraknói, Magyarország egyházi és, 40. 14 These positive Bulgarian–papal relations did not last long. See Moore, Pope Innocent III, 128–29; Sweeney, ‘Innocent III, Hungary and the Bulgarian Coronation’, 333–34. 15 See Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, 68–73. 16 Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, 88–93; Zsoldos, ‘Téténytől a Hód-tóig’, 81–82. 17 Fraknói, Magyarország egyházi és, 85; Zsoldos, ‘Téténytől a Hód-tóig’, 83. 18 Fraknói, Magyarország egyházi és, 87. 19 Ottokars Österreichische Reimchronik, ed. by Seemüller, 325–27. See Zsoldos, ‘Téténytől a Hód-tóig’, 84–85. 20 Zsoldos, Az Árpádok és alattvalóik, 82–85.

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secured Philip’s survival, since the Cumans were apparently about to kill him, but thanks to the king’s mediation they set the legate free. Ladislaus was then taken to Buda where he did penance in front of Philip.21 Although Philip did not succeed in solving the problems in the kingdom, the legate left Hungary after long months of struggle in 1281. He was probably disappointed by the failure of the settlement of the Cuman question and the correction of the king’s behaviour.22 It is to be emphasized that the papal legate originally was dispatched to Hungary in order to strengthen royal power by making use of the necessary authority invested in him by the pope, yet the exertion of this authority had the opposite effect, and actually created conflict between king and Church. Nonetheless, it is interesting to compare the activity of Philip with the mission of Leo, whom King Emeric incarcerated without serious consequences at the beginning of the century — even Innocent III let this grievance go unpunished, probably because of the importance of the issue for the pope. The agent of Nicholas III, on the other hand, acted in a very different manner, in accordance with the changed papal attitude to the secular order.23 For Philip it was clear that he was empowered to enforce his will on the Hungarian king and the ecclesiastical and secular elites of the realm. Despite the fact that, in the end, he was not able to realize his goals, his attitude sheds light on the different ways in which legates were deployed, the different personalities of the cardinals, and how the different political contexts altered the exertion of their authority. The cases examined directly above represent the exception rather than the rule to the exertion of papal authority in Hungary, and we must contextualize them with the less controversial legations from the period in order to gain perspective. Archbishop Robert of Esztergom, a native of Liège, entered into conflict with King Andrew II (1205–35) in 1231 over the royal restriction of the Hungarian Church’s rights, especially because of the roles played by Muslims and Jews in the royal administration.24 By this time, the archbishop possessed the full office of legate a latere, which he had received from Gregory IX in 1227, to provide him with the necessary authority in his mission among the pagan Cumans to the south-east of Hungary, outside the Carpathians.25 The geographical limitation of this legation has to be emphasized, since Robert possessed his rights as legate a latere only in the territory of the Cumans.26

21 Ottokars Österreichische Reimchronik, ed. by Seemüller, 328–29. See Zsoldos, ‘Téténytől a Hód-tóig’, 85–86; Kovács, ‘Alter ego domini papae Nicolai III’, 124-25. 22 ‘Chronici Hungarici’, 473: ‘Sed nichil in rege proficiens repatriavit’; see Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, 309. 23 See Watt, Theory of Papal Monarchy, 97–105. 24 Zimmermann, Die päpstliche Legation, 135. 25 Vetera monumenta historica Hungariam sacram illustrantia, ed. by Theiner, i, 154. See Kovács, A kunok története a mongol hódításig, 243–54; Barabás, Das Papsttum und Ungarn, 256–57; Potthast, no. 7984; Les Registres de Grégoire IX, ed. by Auvray, no. 139; Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, ed. by Fejér, iii.2, 111: ‘Et quia magis fructificare poteris si Apostolice Sedis legatione fungaris […] in Cumania et Brodinia terra illi vicina, de cuius gentis conversione speratur […] et de tue caritatis ardore geramus fiduciam pleniorem accedendi ad dictas provincias licentiam tibi concedimus postulatam, devotioni tue super predictis plene legationis officium in eisdem provinciis committentes’. See Figueira, ‘The Medieval Papal Legate’, 76–80. 26 Bárány, ‘II. András balkáni külpolitikája’, 153–54.

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The archbishop and his colleagues achieved success in his mission of conversion: a bishopric was established there with the help of Prince Béla (later King Béla IV) and the Dominican Order.27 Following this legatine success, in March 1231, the pope empowered Robert to take action against the role of non-Christians in the Hungarian royal administration and to use ecclesiastical censures, if necessary, to achieve this.28 The renewal of the so-called Hungarian Golden Bull (of 1222) in 1231, which reinforced the position of the Church, calmed tensions between the legate and the king, but the king sought to remove the problem at source by sending a petition for a new legate to Gregory IX in 1232.29 The pope fulfilled this wish, dispatching Jacob of Pecoraria, Cardinal-Bishop of Preneste, to Hungary. Archbishop Robert also received word of the decision to dispatch a new legate: he was warned not to use his powers of interdict or excommunication in the meantime, effectively withdrawing his authority.30 This found expression in the fact that Robert was addressed merely as legate in Cumania, unlike a year earlier, when his legatine office was added to the archbishop’s title.31 Based on the change it can be assumed that the archbishop tried to make use of his legatine office and associated powers in his quarrel with the king, even though his authority was limited to Cumania, and consequently he was not supposed to use it within the borders of the Hungarian kingdom. Cardinal Jacob of Pecoraria arrived in Hungary in September 1232, but — even though he tried many times — he could not meet Andrew II, who tried to avoid the papal representative, for almost a year.32 In an attempt to force the king to meet the legate, Gregory IX empowered his legate to take action against the king in August 1233.33 This direct papal order was probably meant to bring Andrew to heel. In another, confidential letter to his legate, however, Gregory admonished Jacob not to do everything in his power, but to be gentle in his dealings with the king and not to place Hungary under interdict or to excommunicate the king or his sons.34 Gregory also wrote directly to Andrew II at the same time, but in this letter, Gregory threatened the king in case of further hesitation.35 Legates, then, could be instruments of softer

27 Kovács, A kunok története a mongol hódításig, 243–53, Barabás, Das Papsttum und Ungarn, 257–61; Szovák Kornél, ‘A kun misszió helye és szerepe a magyarországi domonkosok korai történeti hagyományában’, 117–18. 28 Potthast, no. 8671; Les Registres de Grégoire IX, ed. by Auvray, no. 561. 29 Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, 120–21, 153–60; Regesta regum, ed. by Szentpétery and Borsa, no. 485; Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, ed. by Fejér, iii.2, 299. See Kyer, ‘The Papal Legate’, 85–89; Lower, ‘Negotiating Interfaith Relations’, 52–53. 30 Potthast, no. 8975; Les Registres de Grégoire IX, ed. by Auvray, no. 830. See Almási, ‘Egy ciszterci bíboros’, 132–34. 31 Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, ed. by Fejér, iii.2, 302: ‘Archiepiscopo Strigoniensi, in Cumania Apostolicae Sedis legato’. 32  See Almási, ‘Egy ciszterci bíboros’, 134. 33  Potthast, no. 9273; Les Registres de Grégoire IX, ed. by Auvray, no. 1499. 34 Potthast, no. 9274; Les Registres de Grégoire IX, ed. by Auvray, no. 1500. See Almási, ‘Egy ciszterci bíboros’, 135–36. 35  Potthast, no. 9272; Les Registres de Grégoire IX, ed. by Auvray, no. 1498; Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, 74–87.

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papal power who were relied upon to nuance harder statements of papal authority expressed in letters. Jacob finally managed to make contact with the king in August 1233, when the monarch was leading his army towards Galicia. The proctors of the legate — Bishop Bartholomew of Veszprém and Canon Cognoscens of Esztergom, the latter of whom was Jacob’s chaplain — finally caught up with Andrew in the forest of Bereg in eastern Hungary and convinced him to sign the so-called Oath of Bereg.36 It contained strict regulations against the role of the non-Christians in the royal administration and secured the rights of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and exemption from taxation.37 Andrew also took it upon himself to pay compensation for the Church’s losses in the salt trade since 1222.38 A personal meeting between Jacob and the king happened in Esztergom in September, where Andrew issued a transcript of the oath in the form of a royal letter addressed to the cardinal, and his sons had to swear on its content, all submitting themselves to papal authority.39 Thanks to Jacob’s efforts, then, relative peace was restored between the papacy and the Hungarian Crown, but despite this short-term success, the behaviour of Andrew did not change radically. In his letter addressed to Jacob he acknowledged papal authority over the Hungarian Church, but later he avoided paying the promised compensation, and the realm was again laid under interdict in 1234.40 It is worth mentioning that by this time Archbishop Robert was apparently already reconciled with Andrew — at least he refused to put the ordered interdict into effect.41 It is intriguing that a legate with the highest authority (legatus a latere) was sent to Hungary on the king’s request because of his conflict with an archbishop of his realm, who himself was an appointed papal legate. In the end, the former opponents found themselves on the same side, resisting Gregory IX’s request, even though Andrew previously had acknowledged the cardinal-legate’s assertions, and hence the authority of the papacy. For the next conflict between Hungarian kings and the agents of the papal monarchy we have to return to the reign of Ladislaus IV.42 After the departure of Bishop Philip of Fermo the king tried to meet the papacy’s expectations of a Christian ruler for years, but he maintained his connection to the pagan Cumans which proved an

36  Almási, ‘Egy ciszterci bíboros’, 136; Regesta regum, ed. by Szentpétery and Borsa, nos 500, 501. See Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, 158–60; Lower, ‘Negotiating Interfaith Relations’, 53–54. 37 See Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, 158–59; Almási, ‘Egy ciszterci bíboros’, 137; Weisz, ‘Megjegyzések az Árpád-kori sóvámolás és -kereskedelem történetéhez’, 49–50. 38  Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, ed. by Fejér, iii.2, 321. See Koszta, ‘Die Gründung von Zisterzienserklöstern in Ungarn’, 75–76. 39  Regesta regum, ed. by Szentpétery and Borsa, nos 501, 599; Az Árpád-házi hercegek, ed. by Zsoldos, no. 11; Vetera monumenta historica Hungariam sacram illustrantia, ed. by Theiner, i, 199. 40 Regesta regum, ed. by Szentpétery and Borsa, no. 501; Almási, ‘Egy ciszterci bíboros’, 136; Fraknói, Magyarország egyházi és, 58–59. See Potthast, no. 9497; Les Registres de Grégoire IX, ed. by Auvray, no. 2060. 41  Potthast, no. 9998; Les Registres de Grégoire IX, ed. by Auvray, no. 2733; Potthast, no. 9492; Les Registres de Grégoire IX, ed. by Auvray, no. 2036. 42 For the powers and limitations of the papal monarchy in the thirteenth century and its relation to the lay power, see Morris, Papal Monarchy, 426–33, 550–74; Watt, Theory of Papal Monarchy, 97–105.

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enduring point of contention with Rome.43 In May 1290, Pope Nicholas IV (1288–92) empowered the Franciscan Benvenuto, Bishop of Gubbio, to correct the Hungarian king who, according to the papal mandate, gave too much freedom to the Cumans in the realm and had incarcerated his lawful wife, Isabella (Elizabeth), who hailed from the Angevin dynasty of Naples.44 Despite the powers entrusted to him, Benvenuto did not leave Italy, not even after the renewal of his authorization in September, right after the pope had learned the news of Ladislaus’s death.45 The new situation was interpreted by Pope Nicholas as the end of the dynasty, and he claimed the right for the apostolic see to choose the next ruler based on the former promises of Ladislaus given to Philip of Fermo.46 However, the matter needed to be handled delicately because of the situation in Hungary, so the pope reconsidered his options, revoked Benvenuto’s full office of legation in December 1290, and instead authorized a pontifical representative of lower rank, a nuncio, Bishop John of Jesi ( Johannes Ugoccione).47 John had no choice when he arrived in Hungary at the end of 1291 but to modify the papal plan on account of the contemporary political situation. Instead of the Angevins of Naples, the protégés of the pope, the Hungarian elite acknowledged Andrew, the grandson of King Andrew II, as rightful king, who at the time of Ladislaus’s death was present in Vienna as the ‘guest’ of Duke Albert I and was crowned as King Andrew III (1290–1301).48 John must have realized that he was in no position to engage in actions against the new ruler, but he at least tried to secure the right for the pope to deliver judgement in the matter of the line of succession. Yet the nuncio did not succeed and left Hungary after the death of the pope in 1292.49 Thus, the papacy, despite its best efforts and the historical exertion of its influence in Hungary, was not able to make an impact on the succession in the kingdom; instead, the decision concerning the line of succession was made locally. It would be misleading to portray Hungarian–papal relations as being exclusively characterized by conflict, and there are several examples when the kingdom sought the dispatch of legates to act as peacemakers in times of internal and external unrest.50 We find the first papal peace-making mission to Hungary at the very end of the twelfth century, in response to the struggle between King Emeric and his brother, Prince Andrew (later Andrew II).51 Innocent III was motivated to deal with this matter not only out

43 Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, 310–21. 44 Hierarchia, 242; Potthast, nos 23283, 23284, 23329–39, 23345, 23385; Kyer, ‘The Papal Legate’, 39–41. 45 Potthast, nos 23386, 23387, 23388, 23398. 46 Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, ed. by Fejér, vi.1, 83: ‘regnum ipsum ab antiquo etiam ad Romanam ecclesiam pertinere’; Potthast, no. 23515. See Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, 328. 47 Potthast, nos 23502, 23503, 23510, 23513–16, 23542, 23545–48; Hierarchia, 75. See Fraknói, Magyarország egyházi és, 98–99; Kyer, ‘The Papal Legate’, 39–41, 142 ; Kiss, ‘VIII. Bonifác és Magyarország (1290–1303)’, 1356–57. 48 ‘Chronici Hungarici’, 478: ‘legatos unum et alium de latere suo contra regem Andream pro Carolo destinavit’. For the relation of several potentate families of the realm to the Angevins and the popes, see Petrović, ‘Papal Power, Local Communities and Pretenders’, 19–25. 49 Continuatio Florianensis, ed. by Wattenbach, 749; Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, 322–29. 50 Maleczek, ‘Das Frieden stiftende Papsttum’; Kiss, ‘Les Aspects des activités des légats pontificaux en hongrie’, 44–45. 51 See recently with further literature Körmendi, ‘A varasdi jelent kritikája’.

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of his own desire to see peace in Hungary, but also because the conflict represented the greatest obstacle to the Hungarian royal crusade. The father of the siblings, Béla III (1172–96), was the first Hungarian ruler who took the cross, but he did not fulfil the obligation and his younger son inherited it.52 In late 1199, the pope sent Cardinal Gregory (Gregorius de Crescentio) to Hungary to promote the crusade.53 The cardinal-legate probably arrived in the kingdom early in 1200, where his efforts were soon rewarded with a brokered peace.54 The details of this peace are passed onto us in certain narrative sources, although they do not mention Gregory’s exact actions. Gregory’s role in making peace between the two royal brothers is supplied, however, in a papal charter sent to Prince Andrew in 1203 and in the Gesta of Pope Innocent III.55 In the end, the main goal, the Hungarian participation in the Fourth Crusade (1202–04), was not be realized, even though in the peace settlement the siblings bound themselves to take the cross together. Conflict between the royal brothers broke out again later, and the siege of Zara by the crusaders in 1202 made it clear for Innocent III that he would not be able to count on Hungarian participation in the Fourth Crusade.56 Nevertheless, Gregory’s efforts appear to have been well received at the papal curia, since Innocent promoted Gregory to another cardinalate (S. Vitalis) immediately after his return to Rome.57 Almost five decades later, in 1250, Béla IV entered into conflict with the Bohemian heir, later King Ottokar II (1253–78), for the so-called Babenberg inheritance (Austria and Styria). In July 1253, Pope Innocent IV (1243–54) entrusted his penitentiary, a Franciscan monk named Velasco, with the peace negotiations, probably in the role of a nuncio, which led to a truce, and the fighting parties were summoned to Rome for June 1254.58 Before this plan could be realized, however, Innocent entrusted another

52 Béla III bequeathed the obligation of the crusade to his second son, Andrew, a decision later acknowledged by Pope Innocent III (Licet universis: X.III.34.6.). See Sweeney, ‘Magyarország és a’, 119–20; Pósán, ‘A keresztes eszme II. András korában’, 94–95. 53 Potthast, no. 977. According to the records, Archbishop Conrad of Mainz was supposed to help him in this endeavour. Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalkolleg, 91; Catalogus fontium historiae Hungaricae, ed. by Gombos, i, 505, no. 1215; Sweeney, ‘Magyarország és a’, 121. 54 Potthast, no. 966. See Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalkolleg, 91, 339; Zimmermann, Die päpstliche Legation, 204. 55 Chronica regia Coloniensis, ed. by Waitz, 168–69; Catalogus fontium historiae Hungaricae, ed. by Gombos, i, 762, no. 1753, 764, no. 1754, 1957, no. 4164. Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, ed. by Fejér, ii, 413: ‘Compositionem inter te, et carissimum in Christo filium nostrum illustrem regem Ungarie, in dilecti filii G. tituli Sancti Vitalis presbyteri cardinalis, tunc Apostolice Sedis legati, manibus versatam et ab eo postmodum confirmatam’; Register, vi, no. 155 (156). See Potthast, no. 2016; Hageneder, ‘Die Register Innozenz III.’, 98; Catalogus fontium historiae Hungaricae, ed. by Gombos, ii, no. 2514, 1056: ‘Papa per Gregorium S. Maria in Aquiro diaconum cardinalem, quem legatum un Hungaria destinavit, reformavit pacem inter Henricum regem et Andream, fratrem eius, ducem, quorum guerra totum pene regnum Hungariae devestabat’. 56 Runciman, History of the Crusades, 114–15. 57 Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalkolleg, 91. 58 Cardinal Stephan Báncsa was already entrusted with this matter, but he did not engage in any action. Kiss, Dél-Magyarországtól Itáliáig, 41–43; Fraknói, Magyarország egyházi és, 69; Solymosi, ‘Egyházipolitikai viszonyok a pápai hegemónia idején’, 50; Catalogus fontium historiae Hungaricae, ed. by Gombos, i, 162–67, no. 404; Fraknói, Magyarország egyházi és, 69.

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papal delegate with the conflict, the papal chaplain Bernhard, Archbishop-elect of Naples, this time in the role of legate.59 Yet only a few weeks later Innocent repealed the legatine mandate when Béla IV’s emissaries arrived at the papal court and made a promise on behalf of the king to give back the seized territories, if the Bohemian heir would do the same.60 The peace concluded later divided the disputed lands: Styria became the possession of the Hungarian king and Austria that of the Bohemian king. The papacy and its delegates played an important role in bringing about this solution, even if they could not take exclusive credit for the settlement.61 This episode was not the end of Velasco’s role as a papal delegate, however. In 1263, he was sent to Hungary as a peacemaker when Pope Urban IV (1261–64) charged him to bring an end to the conflict between Béla IV and his firstborn son, Stephan, the ‘junior king’.62 By the time of Velasco’s arrival, however, a settlement had already been made between father and son, and the king refused further negotiations. The papal penitentiary could only take the king’s oath on the observance of the treaty and left the realm, after which the war between Béla and Stephan broke out a year later even more intensively.63 As these examples demonstrate, papal representatives were not able in every case to fulfil their task: sometimes events moved too quickly for them to play an active role; at other times the lay powers frustrated their missions. The suspected heresy in Bosnia was also an important issue at the beginning of the thirteenth century in which the papacy intervened through the dispatch of legates. In November 1202, Pope Innocent III entrusted John of Casamari with an investigation to examine if Ban Kulin of Bosnia (1180–1204) and his subjects were true Christians or, in fact, heretics. The issue of this mandate was a response to the request of Kulin, who wanted to cleanse himself from the suspicion of heresy.64 Two charters from April 1203 supply us with information about John’s actions in Bosnia.65 According to them the representatives of the Bosnian Christians (‘priors’) swore an oath in the presence of the legate at Bolino Polje to be faithful to the Roman Church and to follow its liturgy, and at the end of the month another oath was sworn in Hungary in the presence of the king and several local prelates.66 The repetition of the oath-swearing ceremony suggests that the acknowledgement of the papal authority alone was not sufficient and that the Hungarian king’s contribution was essential for both the Bosnians and the papal chaplain. Concerning the meeting and the oath, 59 Potthast, no. 15318. See also nos 15313, 15322, 15328; Hierarchia, 359; Fraknói, Magyarország egyházi és, 69. 60 Potthast, no. 15460. 61 Fraknói, Magyarország egyházi és, 69–70. 62 For the conflict, see Zsoldos, ‘Az ifjabb király’. 63 Zsoldos, ‘Az ifjabb király’, 250–54. 64 See Majnarić, ‘Papinski kapelan Ivan’, 4; Lorenz, ‘Bogomilen, Katharer und bosnische “Christen”’, 109–15; Barabás, ‘Heretics, Pirates, and Legates’, 40–43; Majnarić, ‘Giovanni de Casamaris’. 65 Register, vi, no. 141. See Majnarić, ‘Papinski kapelan Ivan’, 8–12. 66 Runciman, The Medieval Manichee, 104; Basler, ‘Ungarn und das bosnische Bistum’, 12–13; Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans, 47; Majnarić, ‘Papinski kapelan Ivan’, 8–12; Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, ed. by Smičiklas, iii, 24; Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, ed. by Fejér, ii, 407; Fraknói, Magyarország egyházi és, 39; Lorenz, ‘Bogomilen, Katharer und bosnische “Christen”’, 114–15.

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Emeric emphasized in a letter to Innocent III in 1203 that he supported the conversion of the Bosnian ruler.67 Nonetheless, it is questionable to what extent these vows contributed to the fight against heresy. One thing is certain, the legatine intervention did not solve the problem for good, leaving popes reliant upon the influence of the Kings of Hungary in their attempts to eliminate heresy in the region.68 To conclude this short exploration of the intersection of papal and royal authority in the person of papal legates in thirteenth-century Hungary, we must emphasize the heterogenic nature of the interactions between Hungarian rulers and the legates. The popes generally sent their representatives with the necessary authority to contribute to higher goals of the apostolic see, but sometimes to help the local lay power, the kings themselves, as a reaction of the Church’s centre to the initiative of the periphery. We cannot speak, however, of a constant, or even frequent, clash of royal power and papal authority; rather, the relationship between the head of the Church with the secular order was far more complex. The quarrel of King Emeric and Cardinal Leo, because of the proposed coronation of the Bulgarian Tsar, was one of the few cases in which a confrontation between lay and ecclesiastical powers was sensible. The Hungarian monarch also had to acknowledge papal authority in the early 1230s, yet this situation had no significant effect on the king’s power in his realm. Papal delegates were dispatched because of the ruler’s misbehaviour only in one single case, in 1290 in connection with Ladislaus IV (the Cuman), and even his former conflict with Philip of Fermo began as cooperation twelve years earlier. The legate was entrusted with the consolidation of the royal power in Hungary, and although he clearly misinterpreted the situation and the measures needed, it has to be emphasized that he was clearly in a position to make demands and force his will on the king, something which his successors as legate were never able to achieve. Legates came to the royal court not always as the result of the will or agenda of the popes as the instrument of their policy. In some cases the kings themselves asked for assistance, such as Andrew II did before Jacob Pecoraria was entrusted with the role. In the particularly memorable instance with which this chapter opened, Béla IV even asked the pope to grant him the full office of legation. The petition was rejected, but it clearly shows that the kings of thirteenth-century Hungary were knowledgeable about the system of legation, the powers possessed by a legatus a latere, and the important role that the office played in contemporary politics.

67 Sweeney, ‘Innocent III, Hungary and the Bulgarian Coronation’, 321–22; Moore, Pope Innocent III, 112– 13; Regesta regum, ed. by Szentpétery and Borsa, no. 208; Register, vi, no. 211 (212); Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, ed. by Smičiklas, iii, 37. John’s letter to the pope contains further information: Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, ed. by Fejér, ii, 409. See Sweeney, ‘Innocent III, Hungary and the Bulgarian Coronation’, 322. 68 See Majnarić, ‘Papinski kapelan Ivan’, 12; Lorenz, ‘Bogomilen, Katharer und bosnische “Christen”’, 109–15.

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Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East / The Papacy and the Crusades: Proceedings of the VIIth Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, ed. by M. Balard (Farnham, 2011), 174–83 Figueira, R. C., ‘The Canon Law of Medieval Papal Legation’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Cornell University, 1980) ———, ‘The Medieval Papal Legate and his Province: Geographical Limits of Jurisdiction’, in Plenitude of Power: The Doctrines and Exercise of Authority in the Middle Ages, Essays in Memory of Robert Louis Benson, ed. by R. C. Figueira (Farnham, 2006), 73–106 Fine, J. V. A., The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest (Ann Arbor, MI, 1987) Fraknói, V., Magyarország egyházi és politikai összeköttetései a római szentszékkel, vol. i (Budapest, 1901) Hageneder, O., ‘Die Register Innozenz III.’, in Papst Innozenz III.: Weichensteller der Geschichte Europas, ed. by T. Frenz (Stuttgart, 2000), 91–102 Kiss, G., ‘Les Aspects des activités des légats pontificaux en hongrie aux xie–xiiie siècles’, Chronica: Annual of the Institute of History University of Szeged, 9–10 (2010), 37–53 ———, Dél-Magyarországtól Itáliáig: Báncsa nembeli István (1205 k.–1270) váci püspök, esztergomi érsek, az első magyarországi bíboros életpályája (Pécs, 2015) ———, ‘VIII. Bonifác és Magyarország (1290–1303). A pápai hatalmi legitimációs elképzelések és kormányzat összefüggései’, Századok 152 (2018), 1353–76 Körmendi, T., ‘A varasdi jelent kritikája’, in Tiszteletkör: Történeti tanulmányok Draskóczy István egyetemi tanár 60. születésnapjára, ed. by G. Mikó, B. Péterfi, and A. Vadas (Budapest, 2012), 503–13 Koszta, L., ‘Die Gründung von Zisterzienserklöstern in Ungarn 1142–1270’, UngarnJahrbuch, 23 (1997), 65–80 Kovács, S., A kunok története a mongol hódításig (Budapest, 2014) Kovács, V., ‘Alter ego domini papae Nicolai III: Fülöp fermói püspök, szentszéki legátus magyarországi tevékenysége (1279–1281)’, in Varietas delectate: A pápai-magyar kapcsolatok sokszínűsége a 11–14. században, ed. by G. Kiss (Pécs, 2019), 117-66 Kyer, C. I., ‘The Papal Legate and the “Solemn” Papal Nuncio 1243–1378: The Changing Pattern of Papal Representation’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Toronto, 1979) Lorenz, M., ‘Bogomilen, Katharer und bosnische “Christen”: Der Transfer dualistischer Häresien zwischen Orient und Okzident (11.–13. Jh.)’, in Vermitteln – Übersetzen – Begegnen: Transferphänomene im europäischen Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, interdisziplinäre Annäherungen, ed. by B. J. Nemes and A. Rabus (Göttingen, 2011), 87–136 Lower, M., ‘Negotiating Interfaith Relations in Eastern Christendom: Pope Gregory IX, Bela IV of Hungary, and the Latin Empire’, Essays in Medieval Studies, 21 (2004), 49–62 Majnarić, I., ‘Giovanni de Casamaris e l’abiura di Bilino Polje 1203 – Guidice delegato papale in Bosnia’, Review of Croatian History, 13 (2017), 29–44 ———, ‘Papinski kapelan Ivan od Casamarija i bilinopoljska abjuracija 1203: Papinski legat koji to u Bosni nije bio?’, Radovi Zavoda za povijesne znanosti HAZU u Zadru, 50 (2008), 1–13

papal legates in thirteenth-century hungary: authority, power, reality

Maleczek, W., ‘Das Frieden stiftende Papsttum im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert’, in Träger und Instrumentarien des Friedens im hohen und späten Mittelalter, ed. by J. Fried (Sigmaringen, 1996), 249–332 ———, Papst und Kardinalkolleg von 1191 bis 1216: Die Kardinäle unter Coelestin III. und Innocenz III. (Vienna, 1984) Moore, J. C., Pope Innocent III (1160/61–1216): To Root Up and to Plant (Leiden, 2003) Morris, C., The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford, 1989) Müller, H., ‘The Omnipresent Pope: Legates and Judges Delegate’, in A Companion to the Medieval Papacy: Growth of an Ideology and Institution, ed. by K. Sisson and A. A. Larson (Leiden, 2016), 199–219 Petrović, M., ‘Papal Power, Local Communities and Pretenders: The Church of Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia and the Struggle for the Throne of the Kingdom of HungaryCroatia (1290–1301)’, Banatica, 26 (2016), 11–30 Pósán, L., ‘A keresztes eszme II. András korában’, in II. András és Székesfehérvár: King Andrew and Székesfehérvár, ed. by T. Kerny and A. Smohay (Székesfehérvár, 2012), 81–101 Ruess, K., Die rechtliche Stellung der päpstlichen Legaten bis Bonifaz VIII. (Paderborn, 1912) Runciman, S., A History of the Crusades, vol. iii, The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (Cambridge, 1954) ———, The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy (Cambridge, 1947) Schmutz, R. A., ‘Medieval Papal Representatives: Legates, Nuncios and Judges-Delegate’, in Post scripta: Essays on Medieval Law and the Emergence of the European State in Honor of Gaines Post, ed. by J. R. Strayer and D. E. Queller (Rome, 1972), 443–63 Solymosi, L., ‘Egyházi-politikai viszonyok a pápai hegemónia idején (13. század)’, in Magyarország és a Szentszék kapcsolatának ezer éve, ed. by I. Zombori (Budapest, 1996), 47–54 Sweeney, J. R., ‘Innocent III, Hungary and the Bulgarian Coronation: A Study in Medieval Papal Diplomacy’, Church History, 42 (1973), 320–34 ———, ‘Magyarország és a keresztes hadjáratok a 12–13. században’, Századok, 118 (1984), 114–24 Szovák Kornél, K., ‘A kun misszió helye és szerepe a magyarországi domonkosok korai történeti hagyományában’, in A Szent Domonkos rend és a kunok, ed. by Á. Deme and G. Barna (Szeged, 2016), 115–26 Szűcs, J., Az utolsó Árpádok (Budapest, 1993) ———, ‘A kereszténység belső politikuma a xiii. század derekán. IV. Béla és az egyház’, Történelmi Szemle, 21 (1978), 158–81 Thoroczkay, G., ‘Megjegyzések a Hartvik-féle Szent István-legenda datálásának kérdéséhez’, in G. Thoroczkay, Írások az Árpád-korról – Történeti és historiográfiai tanulmányok (Budapest, 2009), 67–87 Watt, J. A., The Theory of Papal Monarchy in the Thirteenth Century: The Contribution of the Canonists (New York, 1965) Weiss, S., Die Urkunden der päpstlichen Legaten von Leo IX. bis Coelestin III. (1049–1198) (Köln, 1995)

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Weisz, B., ‘Megjegyzések az Árpád-kori sóvámolás és -kereskedelem történetéhez’, Acta Historica (Acta Universitatis Szegediensis), 125 (2007), 43–57 Zimmermann, H., Die päpstliche Legation in der ersten Hälfte des 13. Jahrhunderts: Vom Regierungsantritt Innozenz’ III. bis zum Tode Gregors IX. (1198–1241) (Paderborn, 1913) Zsoldos, A., Az Árpádok és alattvalóik: Magyarország története 1301-ig (Debrecen, 1997) ———, ‘Az ifjabb király országa’, Századok, 139 (2005), 231–60 ———, ‘Téténytől a Hód-tóig (Az 1279 és 1282 közötti évek politikatörténetének vázlata)’, Történelmi Szemle, 39 (1997), 69–98

Philippa J. Mesiano

Pope Alexander IV, King Henry III, and the Imperial Succession: Master Rostand’s Role in the Sicilian Business, 1255–1258

Scholarly debate on the role of the papacy in Christendom from the eleventh century onwards has focused mainly on the papacy’s claims to temporal and spiritual power. These claims have often been addressed in terms of the high political discourse between spiritual and secular rulers; less attention has been paid to the practical dynamics of diplomatic relations. Such papal claims of temporal power began at the time of the Gregorian Reforms (1050–80) and were implemented throughout the twelfth century during the struggle between the papacy and the German Empire, which saw the election of three imperial antipopes during the pontificate of Alexander III (1159–81).1 During the early thirteenth century, Innocent III (1198–1216) asserted further ecclesiological claims over temporal authorities as he attempted to adjudicate the disputed succession to the empire after the death of Henry VI.2 Similarly, Innocent IV (1243–54), upheld the principles of papal lordship over secular rulers in his deposition of Frederick II at the First Council of Lyons in 1245.3 Such ecclesiological claims were played down by Innocent IV’s successor, Alexander IV (1254–61), who has been dismissed by many scholars as a weak, apolitical, and ineffective ruler.4 This essay contends that the traditional interpretation is in need of reassessment. Although possibly lacking the strength and scholastic outlook of his predecessors when justifying papal power over secular rulers from an ecclesiological

I would like to thank Barbara Bombi and Brenda Bolton for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this chapter. 1 Johrendt, ‘The Empire and the Schism’. 2 Tierney, Crisis of Church and State, 128–36; Hauck, ‘Innocent III Desired to Rule the World’; Sayers, Innocent III, 15–16, 41, 48–93; Pavlac, ‘Emperor Henry VI’; Schmidt, ‘The Papal and Imperial Concept of plenitudo potestatis’. 3 Tierney, Crisis of Church and State, 141–42, 150–56; Van Cleve, Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, 461–530; Abulafia, Frederick II, 355–407. 4 Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward, i, 245; Runciman, Sicilian Vespers, 53, 62; Waley, Papal State, 153–54; Kelly and Walsh, Oxford Dictionary of Popes, 195–96; Montaubin, ‘Bastard Nepotism’, 151. Philippa J. Mesiano is a CHASE-funded PhD candidate at the University of Kent. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 159–170 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118962

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and canonistic perspective, Alexander IV actively managed his relations with secular powers through the effective utilization of his diplomatic envoys. This was especially the case of the diplomatic relations with Henry III in the mid-1250s, when the pope went to extreme lengths to nullify imperial political claims over Sicily. The papal attempts at practical management of this affair can be better investigated thanks to the rich surviving evidence concerning the mission of Master Rostand Masson, a key papal nuncio (messenger) acting for the Sicilian business in England from 1255 to 1257. While the existing historiography has hitherto overlooked the significance of Master Rostand’s role, this chapter seeks to reassess his contribution as a papal collector and diplomatic envoy in the Sicilian business. It aims to explore some of the quotidian aspects of diplomatic relations between spiritual and secular rulers, using Rostand’s mission to highlight the effectiveness and limitations of Alexander IV’s power in temporal affairs.5 In other words, this chapter examines the extent to which the pope exerted control over the English king through the diplomatic actions of Master Rostand during the years 1255–57. Diplomatic relations between the Church and the English Crown ought to be understood within the political context that characterized the Sicilian business. Following the death of Frederick II on 13 December 1250, Innocent IV was eager to end Hohenstaufen rule over Sicily, which was threatening the power and security of the Papal States.6 After failing to persuade either Charles of Anjou or Richard of Cornwall to claim the Sicilian throne, Innocent IV offered the kingdom to Henry III for his second son, Edmund, who accepted it in February 1254.7 During this time Sicily was still under the rule of Frederick’s son, Conrad IV, but following his death on 21 May 1254, Innocent IV was made guardian of Conrad’s infant son, Conradin. However, Frederick’s illegitimate son, Manfred Lancia (c. 1232–1266), soon challenged the pope’s authority by asserting regency in Sicily. Subsequently, the pope accused Manfred of abusing his power as regent and became engaged in several conflicts against him.8 In March 1255 Innocent IV’s successor, Alexander IV, attempted to make peace with Manfred.9 However, after failing to agree terms, the pope turned back to Henry for aid, confirming the investiture of Edmund as King of Sicily on 9 April 1255.10 As part of the Sicilian agreement, Henry promised to pay the pope 135,541 marks (£83,583 12s



5 It is generally acknowledged that from the eleventh century, the growth of written culture incited the formation of centralized bureaucracy across Western Christendom, which among other things, allowed both religious and secular leaders to extend and develop their use of diplomatic communication, and effectively utilize their officials as negotiators and administrators of foreign and domestic policy. See Plöger, ‘Foreign Policy’, 41–43; Johrendt and Müller, ‘Zentrum und Peripherie’; Jamme and Poncet, ‘L’Ecriture, la mémoire et l’argent’. 6 Weiler, ‘Matthew Paris’, 72. 7 TNA, SC 7/21/26; Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by de Loye, de Cerival, and Coulon, iii, no. 3036; Potthast, ii, no. 15364. 8 TNA, SC 7/20/9; Manselli, ‘Alessandro IV’, 394. 9 TNA, SC 7/1/30; Foedera, i.1, 315. 10 Annales monastici, ed. by Luard, i, 343; BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra E I, fols 189–90, cited in Original Papal Documents, ed. by Sayers, no. 481; Potthast, ii, nos 15784–85.

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4d), and to send an army to Sicily by October 1256.11 This extortionate request sparked a few tense years of diplomatic communication between England and the papacy. The evidence for whether or not Alexander IV was trying to assert rule over secular authorities during his pontificate is contradictory. One contemporary in particular, the Franciscan Salimbene (c. 1221–1290), described Alexander as a peacemaker with no desire to wage war.12 When the pope first came to office, his predecessor had already initiated the Sicilian business, and since Manfred had no interest in reaching peace, Alexander had no choice but to engage in war.13 Nonetheless, Powicke, Cuttino, and Carpenter have argued that Alexander took up the Sicilian affair more ‘whole-heatedly’ than had his predecessor, thus drawing claims of his peaceful nature into question.14 Mayr-Harting has further argued that Henry III was largely ‘in the pope’s pocket’ throughout his reign, suggesting a more assertive nature for Alexander IV.15 This is somewhat true, since England was a papal fief.16 Indeed, Alexander placed Henry under severe pressure to pay a huge sum of money and to send three hundred knights with a military captain to Sicily within a very short space of time, threatening the king with excommunication and interdict if he failed.17 Alexander also pressured Henry to make peace with King Louis IX of France (1226–70) and to forfeit his long-fought-for hereditary rights over the French kingdom, something which would have freed up English finances for war in Sicily.18 Regardless, Morris, Egger, Lloyd, and Carpenter have all argued that Henry and Alexander worked together as friends and allies throughout the Sicilian negotiation.19 While Alexander did order severe

Foedera, i.1, 316–18; Annales monastici, ed. by Luard, iii, 199; Lunt, Financial Relations, i, 281, 290. Fratris Salimbene de Adam ordinis minorum, Chronica, ed. by Scalla, ii, 658. Kelly and Walsh, Oxford Dictionary of Popes, 195–96. In the original Sicilian agreement, Innocent IV did not specify a certain sum of money, deadline, or ecclesiastical sanctions against Henry if he failed to meet papal demands: Foedera, i.1, 301–04, 316–18; Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward, i, 241–42 n. 2; Cuttino, English Medieval Diplomacy, 57; Carpenter, ‘King Henry III and the Sicilian Affair’, 6. 15 Mayr-Harting, Religion, Politics and Society, 259–60. 16 On 15 May 1213 King John had conceded England as a fief to the papacy in return for protection against a French invasion and support against his rebellious barons: Select Charters, ed. by Stubbs, 279–81; Webster, King John and Religion, 132–39, 155–56, 161–65. 17 Foedera, i.1, 316–18. As part of the original Sicilian agreement, Innocent IV had promised Henry III an additional loan of 100,000 livres tournouis to support him in the war against Manfred, while Alexander IV did not offer any such loan: Foedera, i.1, 303. Some historians have argued that Henry feared this threat of excommunication due to his pious nature; yet it is impossible to draw any conclusions regarding Henry’s own personal piety: Carpenter, ‘King Henry III and the Sicilian Affair’, 6; Hill, ‘Excommunication and Politics’, 98, 100. Nonetheless, one can infer that Henry wanted to retain papal favour for more pragmatic reasons — such as maintaining access to Church taxes, papal officials, and petitioning rights, as well as retaining papal protection from domestic revolts and foreign invasion. By 1212, King John (excommunicated from November 1209 to May 1213) had become more concerned by the implications of his excommunication as he was facing a domestic revolt and potential French invasion: Webster, King John and Religion, 146–47, 161–63. 18 TNA, SC 7/3/52; Foedera, i.1, 355, 358–59; CPR, iv, 567; Gavrilovitch, Étude sur le traité de Paris de 1259, 18–19; Chaplais, ‘Making of the Treaty of Paris’, 238. 19 Lloyd, ‘King Henry III, the Crusade and the Mediterranean’, 119; Morris, Papal Monarchy, 556; Carpenter, Reign of Henry III, 185; Egger, ‘Henry III’s England and the Curia’, 218.

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conditions to be included as part of the Sicilian agreement in his efforts to acquire English financial and military support, the extent to which the king felt he had to obey the pope’s demands remains an open question. In fact, there is evidence that the English king utilized papal overlordship for his own gain.20 Furthermore, it should be stressed that Anglo–papal relations were not only managed through direct contact and correspondence between the two rulers, but to a large degree involved their representatives, who had powers of negotiation in accordance with the faculties listed in their mandates of appointment.21 It was in the context of the Sicilian business that, on 3 May 1255, Alexander IV authorized Master Rostand and Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury (1241–70), to commute Henry III’s vow to go on crusade to the Holy Land into a promise of war against Manfred and his ‘Saracens’ in Sicily.22 On 22 May 1255, Rostand and Boniface were thus appointed to replace Walter of Suffield, Bishop of Norwich (1245–57), John Clipping, Bishop of Chichester (1253–62), and William of Taunton, Abbot of Winchester (1250–55), as special collectors of the ecclesiastical tenth in England and to transfer this money from funding the king’s crusade to financing the Sicilian venture.23 Following his arrival in England in September 1255, Rostand became ‘practically the sole’ special collector and made many changes to the administration of the tenth.24 These included a renewal and extension of the tenth for a further two years, a tax on vacant benefices, and a new, more thorough assessment of the value of benefices and monastic manors expanding on the ‘valuation of Norwich’ made by the Bishop of Norwich and his colleagues in 1254.25 Through his practical approach to the Sicilian 20 See Wiedemann, ‘Papal Overlordship’. 21 Figueira, ‘Papal Reserved Powers’, 191–92, 204–05; Rennie, ‘“Uproot and Destroy, Build and Plant”’, 174–76, 180. 22 TNA, SC 7/1/13, SC 7/1/15, SC 7/3/43; Potthast, ii, nos 15864–65. On 6 March 1250, Henry had sworn to Innocent IV that he would go on crusade to the Holy Land by 24 June 1256: Lunt, Valuation of Norwich, 58; Forey, ‘Crusading Vows’, 233. In April 1254 Henry had also promised the King of Castile, Alfonso X, that he would join his African crusade. Thus, following the pope’s commutation of Henry’s vow to Sicily he was reluctant to give up his plans to join Alfonso, and never formally commuted his vow to Sicily: Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 119–21; Lloyd, ‘King Henry III, the Crusade and the Mediterranean’, 113. The mention of Saracens was a direct reference to the Muslim community in Lucera which Frederick II had exploited for its ‘military and fiscal potential’ and which the papacy was now using, to ‘some degree of success’, as part of its crusading propaganda against Manfred: Maier, ‘Crusade and Rhetoric’, at 346, 348–49. 23 On 11 April 1250, Innocent IV granted Henry permission to levy a tenth of ecclesiastical revenues from his kingdom for a period of three years starting from June 1254: Lunt, Valuation of Norwich, 56–57. On 4 July 1254, the Bishop of Norwich, the Bishop of Chichester, and the Abbot of Winchester officially began to collect the tenth for the Holy Land: Lunt, Valuation of Norwich, 64; Potthast, ii, nos 15383, 15878; Annales monastici, ed. by Luard, i, 350–51; Hierarchia, 187, 371; Smith and London, Heads of Religious Houses, 83. 24 Lunt, Financial Relations, i, 259, 589. Boniface of Savoy took little interest in the collection and was absent from England when Rostand arrived: Lunt, Valuation of Norwich, 84. 25 Annales monastici, ed. by Luard, i, 350–53, 359–60, 366, 388–89; TNA, SC 7/3/7, SC 7/1/20, SC 7/2/15; Potthast, ii, nos 16526, 16537; Lunt, Financial Relations, i, 257–59. As part of their collection in 1254, the Bishop of Norwich and his colleagues were requested to survey and assess the value of all ecclesiastical revenue in England: Lunt, Valuation of Norwich, 52–53, 57, 64, 66–68.

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business, Alexander IV effectively utilized the skills of Rostand to collect extensive sums in England quickly and sufficiently in order to finance his ongoing war against Manfred.26 However, these changes to clerical taxation were to have a considerable impact on Anglo–papal relations. Evidently this papal policy in England was not unanimously well received. In particular, a sharp criticism of Rostand and his mission is raised in contemporary monastic chronicles, and ultimately Rostand’s mission to England resulted in a clash between Church and Crown, with the majority of the English clergy rejecting any involvement in the Sicilian business. According to the Benedictine monk Matthew Paris (c. 1200–1259), Rostand gathered all the prelates in London on 13 October 1255 and demanded that they pay ‘immense sums of money’ to reimburse the pope.27 The clergy were heavily opposed to Rostand’s mandate, and Matthew personally denounced the pope and his collectors as greedy, worldly men.28 While Matthew Paris is not a wholly reliable source as he held extensive prejudices against the papal curia for its supposedly overzealous involvement in English affairs, the annals of Burton and Dunstable also criticized Rostand for his active and speedy administration of extortionate church taxes.29 Some clerics even argued that Rostand had forged the papal letters sent to him, whilst others accused him of exceeding his position and falsely claiming certain papal powers.30 Regardless, Rostand was acting on papal instruction, and further papal documents sent in 1256 ordered him to continue collecting these taxes.31 In fact, he had been granted powers to excommunicate those who refused to meet the papal demands in order to secure the effective collection of ecclesiastical revenue on behalf of the pope.32 While the presence of papal collectors in England was not new, the degree of unpopularity towards each collector varied with the ‘nature of the demands’, reasons for exaction, and the ways in which this collector interacted with the clergy.33 Rostand was making heavy demands on the clergy in aid of an unpopular and unwarranted crusade, and to make matters worse, he did not hold office in the English Church and received many ecclesiastical benefices in England as payment for his services.34 These factors combined to make Rostand an incredibly unpopular tax collector, although they did little to diminish his effectiveness. In short, although Rostand increased the

26 Lunt, Papal Revenues, i, 119. Alexander IV strove to improve the practice of tax collection through more rigorous regulation: Montaubin, ‘Bastard Nepotism’, 152–53; Lunt, Papal Revenues, ii, 239–40. 27 CM, v, 521–22, 524–27, 532. 28 CM, v, 526, 532. 29 Annales monastici, ed. by Luard, i, 350, iii, 199; Vaughan, Matthew Paris, 140–41. 30 CM, v, 524–27; Annales monastici, ed. by Luard, i, 361. 31 The papal documents asking Rostand to collect ecclesiastical tithes in England are TNA, SC 7/2/2, SC 7/1/25, SC 7/3/7, SC 7/1/20, SC 7/3/8. 32 CM, v, 525; TNA, SC 7/1/25, SC 7/2/23; CPReg, i, 341; CPR, iv, 590; Foedera, i.1, 378–79; Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by de Loye, de Cerival, and Coulon, ii, no. 2238; Durham, Durham Cathedral Muniments, Locelli, III.7, III.14; Lunt, Financial Relations, i, 268, 271. 33 Lunt, Financial Relations, i, 585. 34 CM, v, 521; Annales monastici, ed. by Luard, iii, 214; CPR, iv, 429, 450, 455, 549, 564, 606; Calendar of Close Rolls, ix, 147; Lunt, Financial Relations, i, 262–63; Egger, ‘Henry III’s England and the Curia’, 215.

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clergy’s hatred of the Sicilian business and bore considerable responsibility for the administration of these taxes, he successfully carried out his role as papal collector by amassing revenue for war in Sicily. Before the extensive exploitation of Church finances, Henry III had tried to repay the pope through other means. In April 1255, he had asked parliament for financial assistance in the Sicilian business, but the barons refused to give any support unless, in exchange, Henry offered reforms of the realm.35 In their turn, the barons sought more parliamentary power as they were dissatisfied with Henry’s rule and were dismayed by the unfavourable terms of the Sicilian agreement which the king had approved without their consultation.36 According to Clanchy, Henry was so obsessed with the Sicilian business and extending his continental territory that he had agreed to Alexander’s demands for immense financial assistance and pressured all his subjects to meet these demands.37 On the contrary, Lloyd and Weiler have argued that Henry seized the opportunity to claim Sicily, since (after many failures in France in the 1240s and 1250s) he had accepted that his approach to reclaiming Angevin land was failing.38 He further saw the benefits of Sicily’s prosperous land, trading links with the East, and more importantly, its strategical location in relation to both France and the Holy Land.39 By May 1258 around 60,000 marks (approximately £40,000) had been collected from England in aid of Sicily, most of which came from the clergy.40 This illustrates dramatically how, amidst clerical rejection of the Sicilian business, the pope still managed to amass vast sums of money from the coffers of the English Church, largely as the result of the effective role of his leading special collector, Master Rostand.41 Yet, it is essential to assess how far Master Rostand’s mission contributed directly to the implementation of papal power in England, given that on his arrival he was appointed by Henry III and Alexander IV as both ‘the Pope’s nuncio and the King’s proctor’.42 Rostand’s primary function was to ensure the quick and efficient collection of tithes, since king and pope alike were anxious to pay off the merchants who had loaned the papacy money to wage war against Manfred.43 Nonetheless, Rostand’s dual

35 CM, v, 520–21, 623–24; Weiler, Henry III of England and the Staufen Empire, 158. 36 CM, v, 621. 37 Clanchy, England and its Rulers, 224. 38 Lloyd, ‘King Henry III, the Crusade and the Mediterranean’, 110–11; Weiler, ‘Henry III and the Sicilian Business’, 131–33. 39 With his brother, Richard, as King of Germany and his son, Edmund, as King of Sicily, Henry could surround the French kingdom and reclaim the Angevin territory: Lloyd, ‘King Henry III, the Crusade and the Mediterranean’, 111, 114, 118; Weiler, ‘Henry III and the Sicilian Business’, 131. 40 CPR, iv, 470; Lunt, Financial Relations, i, 289–90; Carpenter, ‘King Henry III and the Sicilian Affair’, 4, 7. 41 CM, v, 532. 42 CM, v, 539. For Rostand’s duties as papal nuncio, see TNA, SC 7/1/20, SC 7/1/25, SC 7/1/27, SC 7/2/15, SC 7/2/8, SC 7/3/14, SC 7/3/17, SC 7/2/5, SC 7/3/5, SC 7/3/1, SC 7/3/8, SC 7/2/21, SC 7/2/6. For Rostand’s duties as royal proctor, see CPR, iv, 554, 566–68, 629; v, 37. 43 Annales monastici, ed. by Luard, i, 354; Lunt, Valuation of Norwich, 83; Sayers, ‘Centre and Locality’, 126.

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appointment soon became more complex, since he was assigned further diplomatic duties relating to the Sicilian business and began to realize that the king could not muster the financial, military, or public support for this affair. Rostand was a native of Boudreaux in Gascony, which was then an English fief.44 While Rostand’s Gascon background could help explain why he was appointed on this mission due to his connections with England, France, and the papal curia, it could also have restricted his ability to serve both the king and pope effectively, if their plans clashed.45 Alexander IV also chose Rostand as his envoy because of his previous experience during Innocent IV’s pontificate as a papal negotiator on diplomatic missions to England between 1253 and 1254.46 Sayers has argued that many envoys held dual appointments in the service of the king and the pope because this resulted in ‘less friction’ between the pope and the Crown and ensured collaboration between the spiritual and secular powers.47 Nonetheless, since Rostand exerted a certain degree of independence throughout these negotiations, his royal appointment could de facto have been a direct challenge to papal control over the Crown. There are at least three instances when this was the case. First, on 24 June 1256, Master Rostand wrote to Henry III encouraging him to negotiate a marriage treaty between Edmund and Manfred’s daughter, Constance.48 A peace treaty with Manfred would have been the most practical strategy for the king. It would have secured his dynasty in Sicily, although it would also have legitimized Manfred’s position, completely undermining the papal plan of eliminating imperial power from the kingdom. Second, on 24 April 1257, when Henry III finally acknowledged that he was struggling to amass money to repay the pope, he ordered Rostand to halt the collection of ecclesiastical tithes in England and transfer all the existing money into the royal treasury.49 The king gave Rostand little choice in this matter, threatening to confiscate his English possessions if he failed. Nevertheless, by halting this collection, Rostand violated his role as papal collector, and in June 1257 the pope firmly ordered him to stop dispensing this money into the king’s treasury and to continue the collection of clerical taxes to repay the merchants.50 It is unclear whether Rostand obeyed the pope’s renewed order to continue the collection of taxes, although these were the last papal orders to Rostand with regard to this collection, suggesting that Rostand was subsequently dismissed from his position as special collector. Finally, in May 1257, Rostand assisted in drafting letters of procuration asking 44 CPR, iv, 429, 629; Annales monastici, ed. by Luard, i, 350; CM, v, 519–20. There is also evidence that Rostand held several ecclesiastical benefices in Gascony in 1255: Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by de Loye, de Cerival, and Coulon, i, 398, 399, 538, 550; Lunt, Valuation of Norwich, 84. 45 However, it must be noted that Gascony continued to change hands between the English and the French between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries and that as a result the Gascon people appear to have considered themselves to be more Gascon than English or French: Vale, English Gascony, 2–9, 154–215. 46 CPReg, i, 295, 302. 47 Sayers, ‘Centre and Locality’, 126. 48 TNA, SC 1/47/34; Diplomatic Documents, ed. by Chaplais, no. 283. 49 CPR, iv, 566; Carpenter, Reign of Henry III, 88–89, 209. 50 Foedera, i.1, 356–57; TNA, SC 7/2/21; CPReg, i, 345; Potthast, ii, no. 16865.

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the pope to modify the terms of the Sicilian agreement to make them more favourable to the king.51 These terms included either a removal of penalties for failure to pay the papal debt in the agreed time or, if these failed, a demand for the withdrawal of Edmund’s candidacy for Sicily.52 One clause stipulated that if no papal concessions were made, the king might seek a peace treaty with Manfred through the marriage of his son, Edmund, to Manfred’s daughter. The inclusion of this article was directly influenced by Rostand’s earlier suggestion that Henry should make peace with Manfred through the marriage of their children.53 Rostand and Artaldus de Sancto Romano delivered these letters to Simon de Montfort and Peter Savoy, whom the king had appointed as his proctors to carry out this mission.54 Simon and Peter were appointed with full and free powers to negotiate the specific terms of these demands with the pope.55 If these two men could not go to the curia in person, they were to appoint proctors in their place. These proctors would not have the same freedom to negotiate and would be required to follow the instructions as listed in the letters of procuration. By 8 June 1257 it was understood that Simon and Peter could not go to the curia as they were engaged in peace negotiations with the French.56 Furthermore, there is no evidence that they commissioned proctors to go on their behalf. In this event, Rostand travelled with the Archbishop of Tarentaise to the curia to negotiate the terms specified in the letters of procuration.57 While Rostand was not appointed the same freedom to negotiate these terms, this does not diminish his significant role in both drafting and negotiating this business. Ultimately, the pope responded to these demands by sending Master Arlot to suspend the deadline of the settlement including the penalties associated with this grant of Sicily until September 1258.58 Alexander was in a problematic situation. He desperately needed military and financial support from the English to defend his borders against Manfred and to repay the excessive papal debts incurred from the years of war and crusading, and had little option but to continue this business with the English king.59 Consequently, through his skills of negotiation (combined with Alexander’s lack of alternatives), Rostand 51 Rostand ordained these letters and collected them as a dossier to be sent to the king’s proctors along with thirty-eight blank schedules (twenty issued under the king’s seal, eight under Lord Edward’s seal, and ten under Edmund’s seal), CPR, iv, 567–68; Foedera, i.1, 360–61; Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward, i, 370–75. 52 Foedera, i.1, 360; Lunt, Financial Relations, i, 278; Weiler, ‘Henry III and the Sicilian Business’, 132. 53 Diplomatic Documents, ed. by Chaplais, no. 283. 54 CPR, iv, 567–68; Foedera, i.1, 360–61. A proctor had the freedom to ‘exercise his own will’ and negotiate a deal on behalf of his principal: Queller, ‘Thirteenth-Century Diplomatic Envoys’, 204. 55 Foedera, i.1, 360–61. 56 For more on these peace negotiations with France, which resulted in the Treaty of Paris in 1259, see Gavrilovitch, Étude sur le traité de Paris de 1259. 57 The Archbishop of Tarentaise had been in Paris with Simon de Montfort and Peter Savoy, Calendar of Close Rolls, x, 136–37. On 8 July 1257, the king commissioned Master Nicholas de Plimpton as a proctor to assist on this mission, CPR, iv, 568. 58 TNA, SC 7/3/52, SC 7/2/22, SC 7/2/39. 59 By the end of 1255 Manfred had been appointed governor of Sicily and had gained control of territory as far as Foggia. In the same year, Alexander was facing rebellion and war within the Papal States, particularly from within the March of Ancora: Waley, Papal State, 159; Weiler, Henry III of England

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had successfully bought the king more time to meet the terms of the Sicilian business without incurring any penalties. These three examples reveal the pope’s struggle to regulate Rostand’s activities while he was in England, as well as his urgent need for assistance and willingness to concede to petitions for concessions from Henry’s envoys.60 They also illustrate Rostand’s adjustment of his duties in accordance with the king’s financial and political circumstances. Thus, Alexander’s own representative posed a challenge to the pope’s agenda in Sicily and the strength of papal lordship over Henry. Although his faculties were defined by means of his mandate of appointment, which unfortunately does not survive, their extent can be understood through Rostand’s actions and instructions for this specific diplomatic mission. Rostand was ultimately a ‘freelance’ agent, appointed by both the king and the pope due to his skills as an administrator and negotiator.61 Matthew Paris noted that Rostand was disgraced and dismissed from papal office in the autumn of 1257 after furthering his own interests in England.62 Evidently, Rostand did lose his position as papal nuncio as there is no record of him holding this title after 5 June 1257.63 Yet Rostand’s dismissal from office did not result in a loss of papal favour and was simply a resolution to this conflict of interest. By December 1259, Rostand retained his role as papal chaplain and subdeacon, was granted papal permission to enjoy the fruits of his benefices for five years while engaging in the service of Henry III, and was made Archdeacon of Agen.64 Even after the Sicilian business had essentially been abandoned on 18 December 1258, Rostand continued to work as the king’s proctor and clerk, demonstrating how his dual appointment had helped him secure and consolidate his position in England.65 On the basis of the foregoing analysis, it is possible to draw several conclusions. Alexander IV continued the work of his predecessors in challenging the power of secular rulers, not through great ecclesiological and canonical statements, but through his practical management of diplomatic relations. In particular, this

60 61 62 63 64 65

and the Staufen Empire, 155. Alexander was in a vast amount of debt due to ongoing war with the Hohenstaufen family, the cost of financing the crusades, as well as the general living costs of curial members: Montaubin, ‘Bastard Nepotism’, 152–53. This is further illustrated in further diplomatic correspondence from Alexander IV to Henry III regarding the Sicilian agreement: TNA, SC 7/2/22, SC 7/2/37; Foedera, i.1, 366, 369; Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by de Loye, de Cerival, and Coulon, ii, no. 2379; CPReg, i, 354. During the thirteenth century, ‘freelance proctors’ were frequently employed to represent their petitioners at the papal curia: Bombi, ‘Andrea Sapiti’, 138. CM, v, 647, 666, 672–73. The last papal documents naming Rostand as the papal nuncio in England are dated 28 May 1257 (Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by de Loye, de Cerival, and Coulon, ii, no. 1935) and 5 June 1257 (CPReg, i, 345). CPR, iv, 629; CPReg, i, 354, 362, 363; Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by de Loye, de Cerival, and Coulon, ii–iii, nos 2391, 2396, 2812. CPR, v, 24, 37, 51–52, 66, 112. On 18 December 1258, the pope announced that if Henry could not meet the terms stipulated, then he would be absolved from the promises of the Sicilian agreement. Since, from 1258, Henry was largely at the mercy of his barons and unable to meet these terms, the business effectively ended: Foedera, i.1, 379–81, 386; Weiler, ‘Henry III and the Sicilian Business’, 133.

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can be seen through the mission of his envoy, Rostand, whom the pope utilized to attain large sums of money from the English Church in order to fund his political endeavours in Sicily. Nonetheless, this case study reveals that the dual appointment of envoys, such as Rostand, could vastly limit the pope’s ability to exert power over the king. In fact, through his appointments as royal clerk and proctor, Rostand had assisted the king in drafting and negotiating specific concessions which directly hindered the papal plans for war in Sicily. It is also clear from this case study that royal and papal agents could exercise a certain degree of autonomy to act within the boundaries of their mandate of appointment. All in all, to establish how far the papacy asserted power over secular rulers, it is therefore important to examine not only the ecclesiological and canonistic debate on papal claims of plenitude of power, but also the practical side of diplomacy, since not only the king and the pope, but also their envoys played a seminal and somewhat independent role throughout diplomatic negotiations. Ultimately, Alexander IV’s attempts at enforcing his demands over the English Crown and affirming his power over the king very much depended on the good service and cooperation of his envoy, Rostand.

Works Cited Manuscripts BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra E I Durham, Durham Cathedral Muniments, Locelli, III.7, III.14 The National Archives, SC 7 Primary Sources Annales monastici, ed. by H. R. Luard, 5 vols, RS, 36 (London, 1864–69) Calendar of Close Rolls, 47 vols (London, 1900–1963) Calendar of Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Henry III, 6 vols (London, 1901-1913) Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, Papal Letters, Vol. 1. A.D. 1198-1304, ed. W. H. Bliss (London, 1893) Diplomatic Documents Preserved in the Public Records Office, 1101–1272, ed. by P. Chaplais, vol. i (London, 1964) Fratris Salimbene de Adam ordinis minorum, Chronica, ed. by G. Scalla, 2 vols (Rome, 1966) Original Papal Documents in England and Wales from the Accession of Pope Innocent III to the Death of Pope Benedict XI (1198–1304), ed. by J. E. Sayers (Oxford, 1999) Les Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by J. de Loye, P. de Cerival, and A. Coulon, 3 vols (Paris, 1902–59) Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls Series, 7 vols (London, 1872–83) Select Charters and other Illustrations of English Constitutional History from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Edward the First, ed. by W. Stubbs, rev. H. W. C. Davis, 9th edn (Oxford, 1921)

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Secondary Studies Abulafia, D., Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor (London, 1998) Bombi, B., ‘Andrea Sapiti: His Origins, and his Register as a Curial Proctor’, EHR, 123 (2008), 132–49 Carpenter, D. A., ‘King Henry III and the Sicilian Affair’ (2012), 11 pages, , [last accessed 4 April 2016] ———, The Reign of Henry III (London, 1996) Chaplais, P., ‘The Making of the Treaty of Paris (1259) and the Royal Style’, EHR, 67 (1952), 235–53 Clanchy, M., England and its Rulers, 1066–1272: Foreign Lordship and National Identity (Oxford, 1983) Cuttino, G. P., English Medieval Diplomacy (Bloomington, IN, 1985) Egger, C., ‘Henry III’s England and the Curia’, in England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III (1216–1272), ed. by B. K. U. Weiler with I. W. Rowlands (Aldershot, 2002), 215–31 Figueira, R. C., ‘Papal Reserved Powers and Legatine Authority’, in Popes, Teachers and Canon Law in the Middle Ages, ed. by J. R. Sweeney and S. Chodorow (London, 1989), 191–211 Forey, A., ‘The Crusading Vows of the English King Henry III’, Durham University Journal, 65 (1973), 229–47 Gavrilovitch, M., Étude sur le traité de Paris de 1259 entre Louis IX, roi de France, & Henri III, roi d’Angleterre, Bibliothèque de l’École des hautes études, 125 (Paris, 1899) Hauck, A., ‘Innocent III Desired to Rule the World’, in Innocent III: Vicar of Christ of Lord of the World?, ed. by J. M. Powell, 2nd edn (Washington, DC, 1994), 15–18 Hill, F. G., ‘Excommunication and Politics in the Thirteenth Century’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia, 2016) Jamme, A., and O. Poncet, ‘L’Ecriture, la mémoire et l’argent: Un autre regard sur les officiers et offices pontificaux (xiii–xviii siècle)’, in Offices, écrits et papauté (xiiie– xviie siècle), ed. by A. Jamme and O. Poncet (Rome, 2007), 1–13 Johrendt, J., ‘The Empire and the Schism’, in Pope Alexander III (1159–81): The Art of Survival, ed. by P. D. Clarke and A. J. Duggan (Farnham, 2012), 99–126 Johrendt, J., and H. Müller, ‘Zentrum und Peripherie: Prozesse des Austauches, der Durchdringung und der Zentralisierung der lateinischen Kirche im Hochmittelalter’, in Römisches Zentrum und kirchliche Peripherie: Das universale Papsttum als Bezugspunkt der Kirchen von den Reformpäpsten bis zu Innozenz III., ed. by J. Johrendt and H. Müller (Berlin, 2008), 1–16 Kelly, J. N. D., and M. J. Walsh, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1986) Lloyd, S., ‘King Henry III, the Crusade and the Mediterranean’, in England and her Neighbours, 1066–1453: Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais, ed. by M. Jones and M. Vale (London, 1989), 97–119 Lunt, W. E., Financial Relations of the Papacy with England, 1327–1534, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1939–62) ———, Papal Revenues in the Middle Ages, 2 vols (New York, 1934–65) ———, The Valuation of Norwich (Oxford, 1924) Maier, C. T., ‘Crusade and Rhetoric against the Muslim Colony of Lucera: Eudes of Châtaeuroux’s Sermones de rebellione Sarracenoum Lucherie in Apulia’, JMH, 21 (1995), 343–85

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Manselli, R., ‘Alessandro IV’, in Enciclopedia dei papi, 3 vols (Rome, 2000), ii, 393–96 Mayr-Harting, H., Religion, Politics and Society in Britain, 1066–1272 (Harlow, 2011) Montaubin, P., ‘Bastard Nepotism: Niccolò di Anagni, a Nephew of Pope Gregory IX, and camerarius of Pope Alexander IV’, in Pope, Church and City: Essays in Honour of Brenda Bolton, ed. by F. Andrews, C. Egger, and C. M. Rousseau (Leiden, 2004), 129–76 Morris, C., The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford, 1991) Pavlac, B. A., ‘Emperor Henry VI (1191–1197): Similarities with Innocent III’s Temporal Policies’, in Innocent III and his World, ed. by J. C. Moore (Farnham, 1999), 255–69 Plöger, K., ‘Foreign Policy in the Late Middle Ages’, German Historical Institute London Bulletin, 28 (2006), 35–46 Powicke, F. M., King Henry III and the Lord Edward: The Community of the Realm in the Thirteenth Century, 2 vols (Oxford, 1947) Queller, D. E., ‘Thirteenth-Century Diplomatic Envoys: Nuncii and Procuratores’, Speculum, 35 (1960), 196–213 Rennie, K. R., ‘“Uproot and Destroy, Build and Plant”: Legatine Authority under Pope Gregory VII’, JMH, 33 (2007), 166–80 Runciman, S., The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1958) Sayers, J. E., ‘Centre and Locality: Aspects of Papal Administration in England in the Later Thirteenth Century’ in Authority and Power: Studies on Medieval Law and Government Presented to Walter Ullmann on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. by B. Tierney and P. Linehan (Cambridge, 1980), 115–26 ———, Innocent III: Leader of Europe, 1198–1216 (London, 1993) Schmidt, H.-J., ‘The Papal and Imperial Concept of plenitudo potestatis: The Influence of Pope Innocent III on Emperor Frederick III’, in Innocent III and his World, ed. by J. C. Moore (Farnham, 1999), 305–14 Smith, D. M., and V. C. M. London, eds, The Heads of Religious Houses in England, vol. ii, 1216–1377 (Cambridge, 2001) Tierney, B., The Crisis of Church and State, 1050–1300 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1964) Tout, T. F., Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England; the Wardrobe, the Chamber and the Small Seals, 6 vols (London, 1920) Tyerman, C., England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago, 1988) Vale, M. G. A., English Gascony, 1399–1453: A Study of War, Government and Politics during the Later Stages of the Hundred Years’ War (Oxford, 1970) Van Cleve, T. C., The Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen: Immutator mundi (Oxford, 1972) Vaughan, R., Matthew Paris (Cambridge, 1958) Waley, D., The Papal State in the Thirteenth Century (London, 1961) Webster, P., King John and Religion (Woodbridge, 2015) Weiler, B. K. U., ‘Henry III and the Sicilian Business: A Reinterpretation’, Historical Research, 74 (2001), 127–50 ———, Henry III of England and the Staufen Empire, 1216–1272 (Woodbridge, 2006) ———, ‘Matthew Paris, Richard of Cornwall’s Candidacy for the German Throne, and the Sicilian Business’, JMH, 26 (2000), 71–92 Wiedemann, B. G. E., ‘Papal Overlordship and Protectio of the King, c. 1000–1300’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University College, London, 2017)

Jean Dunbabin

Cardinal Gerard of Parma as Co-Ruler in the Kingdom of Sicily, 1285–1289

It was accepted in the thirteenth century that a papal legate might be sent to certain countries with close ties to the papacy when they were in crisis. The legates, as experienced diplomats and impartial observers, attempted to offer solutions to local troubles. In 1279, for example, Bishop Philip of Fermo was sent to Hungary to try (in vain) to make peace as anarchy prevailed after the death of King Stephen V.1 In England, there were the important legations of Pandulf, 1218–21, and Ottobuono (who would later become Pope Hadrian V), 1265–68, which were generally helpful in overcoming some at least of the results of civil war.2 In both Hungary and England, the legates could be seen as impartial advisors representing the pope in his mission to pacify Christian lands. In the Kingdom of Sicily (henceforth called the Regno) in the thirteenth century, such perception of impartiality was impossible, because the pope’s claim to overlordship there was both geographically and historically stronger than in any other European country; his interventions could never be seen as disinterested. Consequently his legates to the Regno, though they still preserved the authority which derived from their standing in the papal curia, lacked that of arbitrator which they might have enjoyed elsewhere. In compensation, they did have a measure of delegated power, though this was often difficult to exercise in the face of opposition. The circumstances in which Cardinal Gerard of Parma became co-bailli (effectively co-regent) of the Regno, along with Count Robert II of Artois in 1285, could hardly have been less propitious. The death of King Charles I of Anjou on 7 January 1285 had occurred at a moment when the Regno had desperate need of strong leadership if it were to survive. Since the outbreak of the Sicilian Vespers revolt in March 1282, things had gone from bad to worse for Angevin rule. In September 1282, the rebels on the island of Sicily had welcomed King Peter III of Aragon as their new ruler in virtue of his wife Constance’s claim to be the last surviving member of the Hohenstaufen

1 Ebgekm, Realm of St Stephen, 109. 2 Carpenter, Minority of Henry III, 254–56; Powicke, Thirteenth Century, 207–22. Jean Dunbabin is an Honorary Fellow of St Anne’s College, University of Oxford. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 171–180 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118963

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family; the combined Aragonese-Sicilian navy, captained by Roger de Lauria, had then inflicted several defeats on the Angevins, the worst of which involved the capture of Charles of Salerno, the heir to the throne, and large numbers of pro-Angevin nobles in the Bay of Naples on 8 June 1284; meanwhile rebellion against Angevin rule broke out in the Abruzzi mountains, in Calabria, in Apulia, and in Rome; the treasury in Naples was virtually empty. The Angevin cause looked hopeless.3 That it was not to turn out so (though the island of Sicily was indeed permanently lost to the Angevins) was largely owed to the skill and courage of Count Robert II of Artois, nominated by Charles I on his death bed as bailli of the Regno. This position he was to hold until either the release of Charles of Salerno from his Catalan prison or the attainment of majority by Charles’s eldest grandson, Charles Martel.4 Pope Martin IV, in his capacity as overlord of the Regno, in February 1285 sanctioned Charles’s death-bed arrangements but insisted on nominating also as bailli and equal of Count Robert, Cardinal Gerard of Parma. The (French) pope’s intention was to prevent the regency government from taking an excessively pro-French line. Gerard was to combine the authority of a cardinal with the power of a regent. He was to provide balance, to appeal to the local population.5 He was also to forward the reform of the kingdom in the direction that Martin wished, to alleviate the most serious grievances felt against Charles’s rule by his subjects.6 Both baillis were well rewarded for the fulfilment of their duties (which will have impoverished the royal treasury yet further).7 But the pope left it to Robert and Gerard, in these critical times, to work out how such power-sharing could be achieved. It was a sign of their political maturity that they contrived to work together without visible strain, while also preserving mostly good relations with Charles of Salerno’s wife, Maria of Hungary, and her teenage son, Charles Martel. Gerard’s credentials for the job to which Martin IV had appointed him were strong. He had been in the Regno as papal legate since the outbreak of the Sicilian Vespers, attempting to bring a measure of reconciliation to the inhabitants. He had worked with Charles of Salerno in putting forward to the Parliament of San Martino in 1283 both radical reforms of the taxation system and the relaxation of restrictions on aristocratic freedoms.8 He had a reputation for good judgement, knowledge of both canon and secular law, concern for the rights of the Church, and sympathy for the oppressed.9 But the critical conditions he faced in 1285 were not going to offer many opportunities for him to demonstrate these qualities. In March of that year

3 For an accessible, if rather dated, account in English of these events, see Runciman, Sicilian Vespers, 242–56. 4 RCA, xxviii, reg. iii, 18; xxx, reg. vii, 51. 5 Kiesewetter, ‘Die Regentschaft’, 480; Silanos, Gerardo Bianchi, 235. 6 This reform had already been started at the parliament of San Martino in March 1283. See Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge, 106–11. 7 For Gerard’s reward, RCA, xxxvi, reg. xxviii, 33; for Robert’s, Dunbabin, The French in the Kingdom of Sicily, 108–09. 8 Herde, ‘Legation des Kardinalbischofs Gerhard von Sabina’. 9 Silanos, Gerardo Bianchi, 23–24.

cardinal gerard of parma as co-ruler in the kingdom of sicily, 1285–1289

Pope Martin died and was succeeded by Honorius IV, of the Savelli family of Rome, who was even more determined than Martin had been to pursue the path of reform within the kingdom and hence the reconciliation of Charles I’s enemies. But with rebellion inside the surviving part of the Angevin Regno and constant Aragonese pressure on its crumbling frontiers, the times were critical. Only a few months after Honorius’s accession to power, it became evident that an attempted French diversion, the Aragonese crusade of King Philip III, which had been designed to distract Peter III of Aragon from his Sicilian campaign, had in fact collapsed without success.10 In these circumstances, the overwhelming priorities of the new government were necessarily to put down rebellions on the Italian mainland south of Rome (that in Rome could not be tackled), to build up defences against the Sicilians and Aragonese in Calabria and Apulia, and to recruit and pay soldiers and sailors for an attempted reconquest of the island of Sicily. To these ends it might be thought that the talents of a canon lawyer of pacific temperament could offer little to Robert II of Artois, on whose shoulders rested the military burden of ensuring Angevin survival. Yet Gerard’s contribution to Robert’s modest success was not in the end negligible. Andreas Kiesewetter, in his excellent study of the regency, has worked out the informal arrangements for power-sharing that obtained between 1285 and 1289. Obviously, military matters were Robert’s concern and ecclesiastical Gerard’s. Beyond that, government of civilians was the concern of both.11 Given the military crisis that faced them, this division almost automatically meant that Robert controlled the danger areas in Apulia and Basilicata, while Gerard was active in what, after the summer of 1285, became the more peaceful Campania, the Terra di Lavoro, and the Principate.12 Honorius had enjoined on them that neither was to take an important decision without consulting the other. In practice, important orders to officials were usually sent in the names of both men. Typical was a letter of 24 June 1285 calling on all those barons, counts, and other fief-holders who had left the Regno, especially those who had left after the death of Charles of Anjou, to return to fight for the defence of the realm. If they did not return before the next Lent, they were to lose their lands.13

10 Strayer, ‘Crusade against Aragon’. 11 Though this has been doubted, evidence for it is now clear in Le Carte di Léon Cadier, ed. by Morelli, fascicoli angionini, 4/1–23, where Gerard is shown sending mandates to the justiciars in his territory about matters of everyday government. For the difference between Registri and fascicoli, see ibid., xxiv. 12 Kiesewetter, ‘Die Regentschaft’, 481–82. The scrappy records of the regency show Gerard raising money in the Principate, ibid., 488 n. 55; hearing appeals in his court, RCA, xxx, reg. viii, 223; receiving the final accounts of dismissed officials, xxx, additions to reg. v, 1; creating notaries, xxx, reg. viii, 31; and appointing guardians for minors, xxxii, reg. xvi, 33. See also Silanos, Gerardo Biachi, 249–52. 13 RCA, xxviii, reg. iv, 62. One grave difficulty in reconstructing the deeds of the regency government is that only some of its documents survived in the Angevin royal archive before it was blown up in 1943. Volume twenty-nine of the reconstructed register was compiled from documents found in the ASV. Much information about government between 1285 and 1289 has therefore to be gleaned from later mentions in the registers of Charles II, from the papal registers, or from Robert of Artois’s papers in the Pas-de-Calais archives at Arras. But Kiesewetter, ‘Die Regentschaft’, 516–22, has found some other documents, and the publication of Léon Cadier’s research papers by S. Morelli in 2005 (see note 11, above) has helped to fill some gaps.

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The regents demonstrated prudence in emphasizing that what might seem a radical step, large-scale confiscation, was based directly on precedent.14 The major stumbling-block in the path of cooperation lay in the fact that Gerard was deeply committed to the reform of the Angevin state at a time when its very survival was in doubt. Gerard’s, and Honorius’s, point of view was easily defensible: Charles of Anjou’s government had become so unpopular among his subjects as to cause rebellion; if the government did not offer serious reform, it had no chance of regaining the loyalty of those who had been seduced to the Aragonese cause. As a first step, it was vital to conciliate both those who had remained loyal despite misgivings and those who had wavered in their loyalty. Gerard therefore, at Honorius’s demand, freed from excommunication many temporary waverers.15 Meanwhile Robert made gifts to large numbers of aristocrats in accordance, so he maintained, with the last wishes of Charles of Anjou.16 Thus far, agreement between the two baillis was easy. However, the return of confiscated goods to the penitent quondam waverers could anger those loyal men to whom the goods had been granted. And Gerard’s (and the popes’) reforming ambitions went far further than immediate appeasement. He sought to transform the Regno into a justly governed state, cleansed of the financial and other abuses which had alienated its subjects from Charles. The extent and scale of the reforms Gerard judged necessary were expressed in the Constitutio super ordinatione regni Sicilie, promulgated by Honorius IV on 17 September 1285.17 Gerard was responsible for this Constitutio, since it was based on the results of an enquiry into dissatisfaction that he had undertaken in response to the pope’s request. Both he and Honorius saw it as a natural development of the reforms begun by Charles of Anjou in June 1282 and continued by Charles of Salerno at the Parliament of San Martino.18 It was intended to be in force until such time as either Charles of Salerno was released from prison in Catalonia and could resume rule over the Regno or Charles Martel took control in his place.19 The parts of the Constitutio that related to the secular government of the realm provide evidence of the irritation, sense of grievance, and in some instances real misery caused by Charles of Anjou’s measures for raising money and also an army and a navy from his subjects, especially in the period 1280–82. The financial clauses of the Constitutio were the most important, and among these those relating to direct taxation, particularly to the subventio generalis (a tax on the movables of the laity below the rank of knight, intended to bring relief to the government in times of emergency), where the severest restrictions were imposed on the ability of the government to raise revenue from its subjects. The

14 That the threat was carried out, at least in some instances, is evident from the note attached in March 1286 to the document cited above, and from Le Carte di Léon Cadier, ed. by Morelli, Registri, 9 no. 11. 15 Les Registres de Honorius IV, ed. by Prou, 117, no. 141; 214–15, no. 290; 240, no. 319; 339, no. 477. 16 RCA, xxviii, reg. iii, 10, 18, 48, 51, 52, 61. 17 Estellés, XI Congresso di storia della Corona d’Aragona, iv, 292–307 (for the clauses discussed, see 296–304). 18 Kiesewetter, ‘Die Regentschaft’, 495; Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, 109–11. 19 By Charles II’s return to the Regno in 1289, the drawbacks to the implementation of the Constitutio were so evident that Pope Nicholas IV absolved Charles from the necessity of keeping to them: Kiesewetter, ‘Die Regentschaft’, 521–22, no. 7.

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subventio generalis was never to be taken more than once a year, the emergencies which justified it were to be genuinely serious, and a cap of 50,000 onces was set on the amount that could be raised in this way. Other taxes, the collectae (equivalent to feudal aids in England) were to be taken only when strict criteria were met, and their amounts were also capped. On top of this, no ruler was to issue new, devalued coinage more than once in his lifetime. Nor was he to take forced loans. Gerard was certainly correct in thinking that these clauses of the Constitutio would bring great relief to the lesser subjects of the Angevin regime and might even persuade some who had rebelled against Charles to rejoin the ranks of the faithful. But the timing of this initiative was disastrous, coming at a crisis when the regency government desperately needed money for defence. The regents’ attempts to comply with the Constitutio meant that they were condemned to non-stop searching for new means of revenue-raising and, if they could not find these, of acquiring loans. By the end of the regency, the Regno was very deeply in debt.20 Other appeals to popular sentiment in the reforming programme made similar complications for the government. Local communities were only to be responsible for the repair of old (defined as more than fifty years old) fortifications, not for the construction or repair of new ones. Merchants were freed from some of the restrictions Charles had imposed on exports. Various limitations were put on the application of forest law. When goods or transport were needed to assist the Crown, before royal officials could annex them the consent of the owner had to be sought and market prices given. These concessions to non-noble classes were balanced by others to aristocrats, which made the government’s task of raising an army and a navy more difficult. It was laid down that feudal military service could not be exacted outside the Regno, and the limits on it within the Regno were clearly defined. No rear vassal was to be burdened with service as if he were a direct vassal. No aristocrat was to be forced to build a ship or horse transport for the navy unless he had agreed to do so. The provision of ships’ biscuit was to be at the expense of the royal treasury. All these clauses bear witness to the sense of oppression rife in the Regno by the time of Charles’s death. Had the reform programme been drawn up in peace time, it would probably have stabilized the regime. But it contained nothing to answer the immediate and pressing military or financial problems that faced Gerard and Robert, while making these problems necessarily greater. Nevertheless, the co-baillis did what they were told, published the Constitutio throughout the realm, and attempted to ensure that their officials acted in accordance with its provisions.21 As time went on, the internal contradictions in the reform policy, granting aristocrats privileges which undermined central control while at the same time putting enormous pressure on those at the centre to govern well, proved to be its undoing. Strict adherence to its mandates became impossible; some administrative changes were made necessary.22

20 For the decline in taxes, both direct and indirect, during the regency, see Kiesewetter, ‘Die Regentschaft’, 506–08. Silanos, Gerardo Bianchi, 245, says that revenues were reduced by two-thirds during the regency. 21 Les Registres de Honorius IV, ed. by Prou, 240, no. 319. 22 Silanos, Gerardo Bianchi, 243–44.

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Gerard’s immediate task was to try to conciliate a rebellious population, in accordance with Honorius IV’s wishes. He freed from excommunication various people who had only departed from loyalty to the regime for a short time, and even extended grace to Henry of Castile (who nevertheless remained in prison).23 To this he added special concern with the operation of justice in the regions under his control. The survival of a group of his letters from the early months of the regency to the justiciar of Terra Laboris and the county of Molise shows Gerard’s anxiety on the point.24 Equally important was his determination to lighten the burden for the poor, while persuading the wealthier to contribute voluntarily to the war chest.25 These measures indicate that Gerard’s exercise of power was softened by his principles. It may be that his conciliatory policies went some way to assisting the population of the Regno’s northern counties to settling down once the dangerous rebellion of Conrad of Antioch in 1285 in the Abruzzo had been quelled. Despite his initial adherence to the reform programme, Gerard proved to be more pragmatic in his response to challenges than might have been expected.26 He, unlike the pope, was on the spot and could appreciate the critical situation the Angevins were in. One case, that of Adenolfo of Acerra, shows Gerard to have been distinctly unwilling to bow to the pope’s demand when he believed that the legal processes to which the pope objected had been in accordance with the laws of the Regno.27 Adenolfo IV of Acerra was one of the most important of aristocrats in the Regno, born of a father from a family that could trace its ancestry back to before the Norman conquest of Sicily, and of a mother who was the illegitimate daughter of Emperor Frederick II and sister to King Manfred, Charles’s ousted predecessor. Since 1267 Adenolfo and his father before him had been loyal to the Angevin rulers. But their closeness to the Hohenstaufen before 1267 and their relationship with Constance, wife of Peter of Aragon — and, according to Peter, legitimate heiress to the Kingdom of Sicily (Constance was Adenolfo’s first cousin) — inevitably kept alive suspicions of their real interests in Charles of Anjou’s mind. However, once the Sicilian Vespers rebellion broke out, Adenolfo’s loyal service won him a position of trust among the royal counsellors. Hence his downfall. Adenolfo was blamed for giving two pieces of advice that later proved to have been counterproductive for the Angevin Crown. He was blamed for advising Charles I to withdraw from Messina in September 1282; and worse, he was blamed for encouraging Charles of Salerno to make a stand against Roger de Lauria in the Bay of Naples in June 1284, and hence for the disaster that followed. Adenolfo was among the large number of aristocrats captured, along with Charles of Salerno. When Charles of Anjou heard of the catastrophe, he blamed his

23 RCA, xxviii, reg, iii, 3–7; Silanos, Gerardo Bianchi, 240. 24 Le Carte di Léon Cadier, ed. by Morelli, fascicoli angioinini, 4/1–10. Morelli suggests that Gerard made a useful contribution to the process whereby the justiciarships acquired geographical definition for the purpose of the administration of justice, ibid., lxiii. 25 Le Carte di Léon Cadier, ed. by Morelli, fascicoli angioinini, 4/6 and Registri, 6 no. 3; RCA, l, reg. lxix, 61, 131. 26 For other necessary adjustments to the Constitutio, see Kiesewetter, ‘Die Regentschaft’, 498. 27 For this whole incident, see Dunbabin, ‘Treason, Sodomy, and the Fate of Adenolfo IV’.

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son for going against his father’s explicit advice, and he pointed out that Cardinal Gerard of Parma had also urged the prince not to fight at sea.28 If true, this may go far to explain Gerard’s support for Robert II against Pope Honorius IV in the subsequent years. During Adenolfo’s imprisonment in Sicily, he engaged in secret negotiations with Queen Constance, ruling the island during her husband’s absence in Aragon. These negotiations, which he did not deny, formed the basis for an accusation of treason filed against him immediately on his return to southern Italy. As soon as he heard the charge, Adenolfo appealed to the pope, as he was entitled to do under the Constitutio. Honorius immediately summoned Adenolfo to him, heard his defence, and ordered the charge against him to be dropped. The pope was extremely angry when he heard that Adenolfo, as soon as he returned home, was arrested and prosecuted for treason in the Great Court of Naples, presided over by Robert of Artois. According to the law of the Regno, a guilty verdict would mean execution and the confiscation of the condemned man’s goods to the treasury. The memoir Robert drew up to defend himself against possible papal accusations after the trial shows that the count took many precautions to ensure that the court’s proceedings should be lawful in all respects.29 The guilty verdict could not, in his eyes, be impugned, though he was prepared to delay the execution. The pope on the other hand maintained that the baillis should be trying to conciliate the local population, not condemning them; he tried to get Gerard to claim the case for his own court, but without success. In fact, Gerard was not inclined to take the papal side. Hence both baillis were summoned to defend their actions before the papal court in March 1287. The end result was that the pope simply had to accept that Adenolfo should remain in prison and his goods be confiscated unless or until, as he maintained, Charles of Salerno was freed and able to speak in his defence. Gerard was too professional a lawyer to think, as Honorius obviously did, that the laws of the land could be abrogated in the interests of peace. He was also aware, as Honorius apparently was not, that showing mercy to traitors in a time of deep crisis was a dangerous policy. The long imprisonment inflicted on Adenolfo was what a canon lawyer would have considered appropriate punishment for a serious crime. One way or another, Gerard’s conscience was probably untroubled by the outcome (though the execution of Adenolfo in 1293, long after the cardinal had given up office in the Regno, must have shocked and appalled him). The most immediate effect of this dispute was probably to make Honorius unwilling henceforth to lend money to the impoverished regency government, which was a serious loss. The divisions between papal aims and those of the baillis did not disappear after Honorius’s death. The new pope, Nicholas IV, was as determined as his predecessor had been to control through his own officials the castle of Alba and the county of Loreto in the Abruzzi mountains, along the border with the Papal State.30 This was the area that Gerard had aspired to rule. There were other signs of tension between

28 RCA, xxvii, reg. cxxiii, 78. 29 Arras, Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais, série A, 900/1. 30 Kiesewetter, ‘Die Regentschaft’, 486, 494.

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Nicholas and Gerard.31 On the other hand, it was fortunate for Robert of Artois that the pope did not apparently share his predecessor’s interest in the fate of Adenolfo. Gerard’s authority as a cardinal was valuable to Robert in various ways. In the first place, it aided in securing the loyalty of ecclesiastics in the Regno. That Robert was, with Gerard, ‘bajulus regni Sicilie per ecclesiam Romam constitutus’ (‘bailli of the Kingdom of Sicily established by the Roman Church’) almost certainly smoothed his path in the immediate aftermath of Charles of Anjou’s death.32 Gerard was also able to secure from Honorius swift action against the Bishop of Larino, who had declared for the Aragonese Peter III and was probably using his pulpit in his favour.33 Then he obtained papal approval for the employment of the secular arm to force the reluctant clergy of the Capitanate to pay their contribution to the war in Sicily.34 The cardinal was perhaps fortunate in that two rebellions in the Abruzzo were quelled by Angevin military leaders of the second rank.35 But his concentration on the north of the Regno did leave Robert free to take on the much more dangerous south. Gerard’s normal residence was in Naples, in the Castel Capuana, where he could keep an eye on the magistri rationales, the royal accountants, the majority of whom were locals by birth.36 Given that Naples was frequently disturbed by riots, Gerard’s presence, along with his various attempts to smooth over local quarrels, will have contributed to the survival there of Angevin lordship throughout the critical years of the regency.37 Serena Morelli has suggested that Gerard was responsible for framing the sumptuary laws that were issued in the names of both baillis to restrain the expenditure of the wealthy in a time of desperate financial need.38 On occasion, his support could be seen in a dramatic form, as when he granted the banner of the Church to the fleet sent to reinforce the conquest of Augusta in the spring of 1287.39 It was no fault of Gerard’s but very unfortunate for the regency that this campaign ended in a total disaster for the Angevin fleet, and therefore in the end for the remainder of the regency of the attempt to reconquer the island of Sicily. More importantly, Gerard did have some skill in certain kinds of revenue-raising. When the regents appealed for military and financial help to the peoples of Italy, Gerard’s position made it possible for them to describe their survival as ‘a cause of the Roman Church’.40 Equally, as a cardinal he was able to exploit the only two ways of getting money that had not been severely limited by the Constitutio or the San Martino parliament edicts: ecclesiastical tithes and loans from churchmen, in particular from popes. There was nothing new in the annexation of tithes for Angevin 31 Silanos, Gerardo Bianchi, 252. 32 Les Registres de Honorius IV, ed. by Prou, 333–34, no. 4663. 33 Les Registres de Honorius IV, ed. by Prou, 339, no. 477. 34 Le Carte di Léon Cadier, ed. by Morelli, Registri, 11, no 7. 35 Silanos, Gerardo Biachi, 238–39, 240. 36 Silanos, Gerardo Biachi, 237. 37 RCA, xxii, reg. xv, 286. 38 Le Carte di Léon Cadier, ed. by Morelli, Introduzione, xxxviii–xxxix. Morelli also suggests that Gerard made a useful contribution to the process whereby the justiciarships acquired geographical definition in terms of the administration of justice, ibid., lxii–lxiii. 39 Kiesewetter, ‘Die Regentschaft’, 490 n. 61. 40 RCA, xxviii, reg. iv, 92.

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purposes; Clement IV had ordered the collection of a three-year tithe on the churches of France, Provence, and the imperial dioceses around Lyon for Charles of Anjou’s original conquest of the Regno.41 Martin IV’s reaction to the Sicilian Vespers had been to grant a three-year tithe from the churches of Provence for the defence of the Regno.42 Honorius IV in the autumn of 1285 granted a three-year tithe from the whole of the Italian peninsula, and Nicholas IV extended his grant for another year.43 Gerard oversaw the collection elsewhere, and within the Regno he licensed the officials who were to collect the tithes and hand them over to the treasurers.44 Although the demand for tithes met with all sorts of adverse reactions, what was collected nevertheless constituted a useful addition to the regency’s small and dwindling resources. Loans from the pope and cardinals were more productive, though they added to the burden of debt the regency government handed on to Charles II on his return from his Catalan prison. Martin IV was generous in this respect, Honorius IV was not, and Nicholas IV loaned a large amount tied to repayment from the tithes.45 In 1288 the cardinals lent 20,000 onces. Kiesewetter has calculated that the sum total of unpaid back loans for the years of the regency amounted to 50,333 onces of gold.46 Since the sources were mainly ecclesiastical, it seems reasonable to assume Gerard had much to do with this. Equally he is bound to have been deeply involved in the negotiations whereby the regents were enabled to put off paying the large sum of 8000 onces of gold owed each year by the ruler of the Regno to the pope, as one of the conditions of Charles of Anjou’s original agreement with Pope Clement IV.47 Impoverished though the treasury was at the end of the regency, the situation would have been worse if Robert of Artois had had to rule on his own as Charles of Anjou had intended. To institute a coalition government, harnessing a cardinal to a general, was a bold experiment on the part first of Pope Martin IV and then of Pope Honorius IV. The positive achievements of the regency government were few: the putting down of rebellions in the Abruzzo, the slow reconquest of most of the south Italian mainland, the safeguarding and education of Charles Martel. These might seem small pluses to set against the huge negatives: the failure to reconquer Sicily; the disaster of Augusta; the dwindling of resources; and the total failure to protect Angevin interests outside the Regno, in the Balkans, in Outremer, in Piedmont. On the other hand, the regents were responsible for the survival of the kingdom and the dynasty after the catastrophic losses of 1282–85. The evidence points to large numbers of Angevin supporters fleeing the country after the death of Charles of Anjou. That their obvious fears were not realized might in the circumstances be seen as a triumph. And to that triumph Gerard made a solid contribution.

41 Housley, Italian Crusades, 175. 42 Les Registres de Martin IV, ed. by Martin and others, 305–07, nos 588, 589. 43 Les Registres de Honorius IV, ed. by Prou, 143, no. 186 ; Les Registres de Nicolas IV, ed. by Langlois, 125, nos 617, 618; Silanos, Gerardo Bianchi, 240. 44 RCA, xxviii.1, reg. cxviii, no. 101; xxxiii, reg. xix, 18. Silanos, Gerardo Bianchi, 246. 45 Kiesewetter, ‘Die Regentschaft’, 509–10; Silanos, Gerardo Bianchi, 246. 46 Kiesewetter, ‘Die Regentschaft’, 510. 47 Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, ed. by Martène and Durand, ii, Clement IV, Epistola 154, 223–37, at 230.

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Works Cited Manuscripts Arras, Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais, série A, 900/1 Primary Sources Le Carte di Léon Cadier alla Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ed. by S. Morelli (Rome, 2005) Les Registres de Honorius IV, ed. by M. Prou (Paris, 1896–98) Les Registres de Martin IV, ed. by O. Martin and others (Paris, 1901–36) Les Registres de Nicolas IV, ed. by E. Langlois, 2 vols (Paris, 1887–93) Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, ed. by E. Martène and U. Durand, 5 vols (Paris, 1717) Secondary Studies Carpenter, D. A., The Minority of Henry III (London, 1990) Dunbabin, J., Charles I of Anjou: Power, Kingship and State-Making in Thirteenth-Century Europe (London, 1988) ———, The French in the Kingdom of Sicily, 1266–1305 (Cambridge, 2011) ———, ‘Treason, Sodomy, and the Fate of Adenolfo IV, Count of Acerra’, JMH, 33 (2008), 417–32 Ebgekm, P., The Realm of St Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–1526 (London, 2001) Estellés, J. S., ed., XI Congresso di storia della Corona d’Aragona: la società mediterranea all’epoca del Vespro, 4 vols (Palermo, 1983) Herde, P., ‘Die Legation des Kardinalbischofs Gerhard von Sabina während des Krieges der Sizilischen Vesper und die Synode von Melfi (28 Marz 1284)’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 21 (1967), 1–53 Housley, N., The Italian Crusades: The Papal-Angevin Alliance and the Crusades against Christian Lay Powers (1254–1343) (Oxford, 1982) Kiesewetter, A., Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II. von Anjou (1278–95) (Husum, 1999) ———, ‘Die Regentschaft des Kardinallegaten Gerhard von Parma und Roberts II. von Artois im Königreich Neapel 1284 bis 1289’, in Forschungen zur Reichs-, Papst- und Landesgeschichte: Peter Herde zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by K. Borchardt and E. Bünz, 2 vols (Stuttgart, 1998), i, 477–522 Powicke, M., The Thirteenth Century, 1216–1307, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1962) Runciman, S., The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1958) Silanos, P., Gerardo Bianchi da Parma (Rome, 2010) Strayer, J. R., ‘The Crusade against Aragon’, Speculum, 28 (1953), 102–13

Part III

The Papacy and the East

† Bernard Hamilton

The Power of Tradition: The Papacy and the Churches of the East, c. 1100–1300

In the late eleventh century the popes considered the Orthodox Eastern Churches to be part of the one Catholic Church to which they themselves belonged, and were aware of the existence of the independent Separated Eastern Churches.1 They knew from the acts of the Oecumenical Councils how those Churches differed in belief from the Catholic Church but had little contact with them before the settlement of the crusader states by Western Christians after 1099. In their subsequent dealings with the Separated Eastern Churches the popes enjoyed one very important diplomatic advantage: all those Churches acknowledged that the pope was the successor of St Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and held the powers which Christ had conferred on him, and that the Church of Rome enjoyed primacy of honour in the Christian world. As a result, the Eastern Churches welcomed the possibility of forming closer links with the Holy See. For most of the twelfth century the papacy did not consider the reconciliation of the Separated Eastern Churches a high priority, and the first negotiations about unity were not the result of papal initiative. William of Tyre reports how in c. 1181 the Maronite Church of Mount Lebanon, numbering some 40,000 souls, held discussions with Aimery of Limoges, Latin Patriarch of Antioch, and ‘abjuring their erroneous beliefs […] returned to the unity of the Catholic Church, receiving the orthodox faith and [stating that] they were prepared to receive and observe the traditions of the Roman Church with all reverence’.2 William’s account is partially confirmed by an entry in a Maronite Gospel Book in which Jeremiah al-Amshitti recorded how in 1183, having been chosen as Maronite Patriarch, he had been sent by his electors to Rome, presumably to receive papal confirmation.3 The conditions of the union were



1 See Appendix, below. 2 William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. by Huygens, 1018. 3 Florence, Laurentian Library, Cod. Syr. 1, fol. 6v; Bibliothecae Mediciae Laurentianae […] Catalogus, ed. by Assemani, [Syriac text] xxviii, [Latin translation] 17. Bernard Hamilton was Professor of Crusading History (emeritus) at the University of Nottingham. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 183–192 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118964

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only finally agreed in 1215, and later that year the Patriarch Jeremiah attended the Fourth Lateran Council.4 The Maronites formed the first Uniate Church. This was a model for the way in which union between the papacy and the Separated Churches should operate. The Maronite Patriarch had no religious superior except the pope and retained full authority over his Church. The Maronites retained their traditional liturgy, customs, and canon law insofar as these were compatible with Catholic norms. In theory, at least, the act of union involved minimal change. Nevertheless, it proved divisive. Broadly speaking the Maronites living in the coastal cities of the County of Tripoli and in regular contact with the Franks welcomed the development, but the more conservative part of the community living in the mountain villages of Lebanon were opposed to it. This division persisted throughout the thirteenth century, but after Mamlūk rule had been imposed in 1289 all the Maronites began to recognize the value of Western protection. The union was formally reaffirmed at the Council of Florence in 1444, although the detailed provisions were only finally agreed at the Synod of Mount Lebanon in 1736. Enthusiasts for Church union might reflect that this solution required patience; it took 550 years to complete the process.5 The papacy did not take the initiative in the attempt to effect a union with the Armenian Church. In the late twelfth century, although the majority of the Armenians lived under Muslim rule in eastern Anatolia, there was also a substantial diaspora in the northern crusader states, as well as an independent Armenian principality in Cilicia. The head of the Armenian Church was the Catholicus, and this Church was an ethnic church, with a vernacular liturgy and its own distinctive religious traditions. The Armenians claimed that their Church had a special relationship with the papacy, dating from the time of Constantine the Great, when a pact had been made between St Sylvester of Rome and St Gregory the Illuminator, the Apostle of Armenia.6 Reverence for Rome is apparent in the Lament for the Fall of Edessa in 1144 written by the Catholicos, St Nerses the Gracious: ‘O Rome, magnificent and revered mother of cities; see of the great St Peter chief of the Apostles; church which cannot be moved, built on the rock against which the gates of Hell will not prevail’.7 Thus when in 1184 the Catholicus Gregory IV sent an embassy to Rome with a profession of faith and a letter expressing goodwill to the pope, Lucius III supposed that this was a formal recognition of his authority and evidence that the Armenian Church wished to be in full communion with the Holy See. He sent a pallium to the Catholicus as a symbol of papal recognition, and a copy of the Rituale Romanum, the official service book, setting out the form of the sacraments used in the papal liturgy, as an exemplar of the correct way to conduct divine worship. This was translated into Armenian by St Nerses, Archbishop of Tarsus.8 But it is clear from later Armenian 4 Acta Innocentii III, ed. by Haluščinski, 458–61; Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. by Istituto per le scienze religiose, 228 and n. 3. 5 Van Leeuwen, Notables and Clergy in Mount Lebanon. 6 Guiragos of Kantzag, History of Armenia, 417. 7 ‘Lament on Edessa by Nersēs Šnorhali’, trans. by van Lint, 50. 8 Acta Romanorum Pontificum, 811–13.

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sources that Pope Lucius had seriously misunderstood the intention of the Armenian embassy. The Armenians wished to strengthen the ties between their Church and Rome at a time when Muslim power was growing, but they held a fourth-century view of the papal office believing that the pope was worthy of special respect as St Peter’s successor, but not accepting that he had powers of universal jurisdiction. Moreover, the Armenians had a different understanding of what constituted the universal Church from that held by the pope. Whereas the Latins believed that there was only one Church, of which the pope was the head, the Armenians held that the universal Church was composed of a number of separate Churches of which their own Church and the Latin Church were equal partners.9 These religious misunderstandings were complicated by political developments. When in 1195 Prince Leo II of Cilicia offered to become a vassal of the Western Emperor Henry VI in return for receiving a crown, Pope Celestine III insisted that the Armenian union should be reaffirmed. On 6 January 1198 the imperial chancellor, Conrad of Hildesheim, conferred a crown on Leo II, and the papal legate, Conrad of Mainz, received under oath the acceptance of the religious union of the Armenian Church with Rome made by a group of Cilician prelates who were Leo’s supporters. Pope Celestine III gave very detailed instructions about the changes which he wished the Armenian Church to make in order to conform to Catholic practice. The initiative for this act of union had come from Leo II, not from the Armenian hierarchy, most of whom viewed it with little enthusiasm. The papacy considered that the Armenian Church had now become a Uniate Church, but the Armenian clergy were not prepared to implement the papal conditions.10 The papacy repeatedly complained that no attempt was being made to carry out the reforms required by Celestine III, but the Armenians claimed that only a council representing the whole Armenian Church could introduce those changes and that such a council was difficult to convene because many Armenian bishops lived under Muslim rule. In 1261, at a time when King Hethum I had placed Cilicia under Mongol protection and no longer felt the need for a Western alliance, the papal legate, Thomas of Lentino, held a meeting at Acre with Armenian delegates, at which the Catholicus was represented by a theologian, Mekhitar of Daschir. He openly expressed the hostility which many Armenian churchmen felt to the papal demands that they should adopt religious changes: Whence does the Church of Rome [he asked] derive the power to pass judgement on the other Apostolic sees while she herself is not subject to their judgements? We [the Armenian Church] have indeed the authority to bring you [the Roman Church] to trial, following the example of the Apostles, and you have no right to deny our competence.11

9 St Nerses of Lampron, ‘Letter to Leo II’, 586–87. 10 Guiragos of Kantzag, History of Armenia; Sempad the Constable, Chronicle, 422–24, 614–15. 11 Account of the Conference, 697.

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This confrontation did not mark the end of the union, because, as Mongol power grew weaker and Mamlūk power increased in the later thirteenth century, Cilicia stood once more in need of Western aid. The long-term consequence was that the Armenian Church became divided: some clergy and laity in Cilicia and Cyprus formed a Uniate Church which accepted papal authority and adopted the changes which the Holy See required,12 while the majority adhered to the Armenian Orthodox Church which held fast to its traditions. This division still remains. After the failure of the Third Crusade to recover Jerusalem at the end of the twelfth century, in the thirteenth century Innocent III and his successors began to see the Christian communities of Asia and Africa as potential allies against Islam. First they tried to find out more about them, and then they sought to form closer links with them. The Syrian Orthodox Church, often called the Jacobite Church, had numerous adherents in northern Syria and Mesopotamia. Its head was called the Patriarch of Antioch but had no fixed headquarters — each patriarch ruled the Church from the monastery of his choice. On the whole they had very good relations with the Franks in the twelfth century, particularly during the long reign of the learned Patriarch Michael III, the Syrian (1166–99), but no attempt was made to promote union between the Syrian Orthodox and Latin Churches. The patriarchs in the early thirteenth century lived in Muslim territory and had no dealings with the Franks at all, until in 1236 Ignatius II visited Jerusalem, which was once again in Frankish hands.13 The recently founded Dominican Order had established a house there, and Prior Philip held discussions with the Patriarch Ignatius and in 1237 wrote to tell Pope Gregory IX how, on Palm Sunday, Ignatius had abjured his doctrinal errors, sworn an oath of obedience to the Holy See, signed a profession of Catholic faith drafted both in Syriac and Arabic, and received the Dominican habit. His example was subsequently followed by some other Syrian Orthodox bishops living in Frankish territory.14 From the way in which the Holy See responded to this news, I would argue that the popes had learned from their experiences with the Maronites and the Armenians. They were anxious not to cause divisions in the Separated Churches, which would weaken their potential as allies. They therefore no longer expected that the submission of the head of one of these Churches signified that the entire Church had entered into union with Rome. Gregory IX accepted that Patriarch Ignatius II and those of his fellow bishops who had been reconciled to the Catholic Church should retain their offices in their own church. Pope Innocent IV regularized their position by granting them a faculty ‘to dwell among their own people and to remain in communion with them’.15 No attempt was made to form a Syrian Orthodox Uniate Church: the Catholic converts remained full members of their own Church and were 12 At the Synod of Sis in 1307: Acta in Mansi, xxv, 133–48. 13 The patriarchs were Athanasius IV (1199–1207), John XV (1208–20), and Ignatius II (1222–52). 14 Matthew Paris gives the text of the copy of this letter sent to the Dominican priors of England in CM, iii, 396–98. 15 ‘et hii qui ad catholicae ecclesiae redirent unitatem, ut inter suos habitent atque communiccnt’: Acta Innocentii papae IV, ed. by Haluščinski and Wojnar, 11–12.

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expected to work from the inside to bring their Church into union with Rome. This may seem strange to readers familiar with Catholic practice since the Council of Trent, but thirteenth-century popes were not interested in individual conversions, however eminent: their aim was to secure the corporate reunion of the Separated Churches with the Holy See. In c. 1238 Ignatius moved his headquarters to Antioch city, where he built a palace on Mount Silpius from which he governed his Church.16 He was sincere in his desire to bring his whole Church into communion with Rome, and drew up a plan for the concessions which the papacy would need to make if a Syrian Orthodox Uniate Church were to be brought into being.17 But his views did not enjoy much support among his clergy, the majority of whom were living under Muslim rule, and after his death in 1252 his successors were not pro-Western. Although some Syrian Orthodox bishops remained in communion with Rome, no further progress was made in achieving corporate reunion. The Coptic Church of Egypt was the sister-church of the Syrian Orthodox: their beliefs were identical, but they worshipped in different languages and had separate hierarchies. The Coptic Patriarch lived in Cairo but styled himself Patriarch of Alexandria. There was also an Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria, who was in communion with the Byzantine Patriarch in Constantinople, but who was only recognized by a minority of the Christian population of Egypt, the majority of whom were Copts. The popes maintained diplomatic relations with the Orthodox Patriarchs of Alexandria and ignored the Coptic Church. This remained true even in the early thirteenth century when they were trying to form a united Christian front against Islam, and it was the Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria who, at Innocent III’s invitation, was represented at the Fourth Lateran Council.18 This is an example of the papacy’s failure to use its prestige to improve relations with an important Separated Church. Potentially the Coptic patriarch might have been a powerful ally, since his authority reached not only the majority of Egyptian Christians, but also the churches in the independent Christian Kingdoms of Makuria and Alwa, which extended in Nubia from the south of Aswan to the Blue Nile. He was also recognized as head of the Church in the Kingdom of Ethiopia, which after centuries of isolation was once again becoming powerful under the Zagwe dynasty.19 In accordance with the pope’s wishes, both Jacques de Vitry and Oliver of Paderborn collected information about the Coptic Church and formed a fairly accurate picture of its extent in north-east Africa.20 No immediate attempt was made by the papacy

16 Gregory Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum, ed. by Abbeloos and Lamy, 666–70. 17 Acta Innocentii papae IV, ed. by Haluščinski and Wojnar, 99–101, 104–05. 18 Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. by Istituto per le scienze religiose, 228. 19 Meinardus, Two Thousand Years of Coptic Christianity; Welsby, Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia; Phillipson, Foundations of an African Civilisation, 227–45. 20 Jacques de Vitry, Histoire Orientale, ed. and trans. by Donnadieu, 304–11; Oliver of Paderborn, Historia Damiatina, ed. by Hoogeweg.

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to negotiate with the Coptic Church, probably because it was without a head for nineteen years from 1216 to 1235.21 In 1237 the Dominican Prior Philip of Jerusalem informed Gregory IX that he had sent envoys to the new Coptic patriarch, Cyril III, elected in 1235 ‘to whom are subject India the Less [and] Ethiopia, together with Egypt’. This mission was well received but had no long-term consequences probably because of political obstacles.22 The death of al-Kamil in 1238 marked the end of peaceful relations between the Franks and the Ayyubids, and after the death of Cyril III in 1243 none of his successors had any close dealings with the papacy. The greatest of the Separated Churches was the Church of the East, or the Chaldean Church, often, though wrongly, called the Nestorian Church. Its patriarch had his see in Baghdad, and Chaldean missions established churches along the Silk Road between Persia and China, and among the converts they made were some tribes of the Mongol confederacy including the Onguts of the Ordos region of Inner Mongolia to the north of the Great Wall of China.23 In the twelfth century the Chaldeans had a church in Jerusalem, but the papacy made no attempt to contact their patriarch.24 In the thirteenth century, Jacques de Vitry and Oliver of Paderborn, in accordance with the new papal policy, tried to find out more about these so-called ‘Nestorians’. Jacques reported that they had a church in Acre, but no bishop, and that they were very numerous in Asia, where some lived under Muslim rule, but other, more distant communities, lived under the rule of Christian kings, among whom was Prester John.25 Oliver of Paderborn discussed theology with the Chaldean community of Antioch and discovered that they did not hold Nestorian views.26 The Dominican William of Montferrat led a delegation to the patriarch of the Church of the East in Gregory IX’s reign and reported that the patriarch ‘wished to be obedient and to return to the fellowship of the Church’.27 Gregory IX was understandably delighted by this news and wrote to congratulate the patriarch, and subsequently some individual Chaldeans were received into the Catholic Church.28 Innocent IV extended to them the same privilege as that granted to convert Syrian Orthodox clergy: that of remaining in communion with the other, unreconciled members of their Church.29 Communications between the papacy and the Church of the East were facilitated by the growth of the Mongol Empire, for many Mongols were Chaldean Christians, and they were often used as envoys by the Mongol leaders in negotiations with the

21 Grumel, Traité d’Études Byzantines, 445. 22 CM, iii, 398; Richard, La Papauté et les missions d’Orient, 57. 23 Baumer, The Church of the East, 1–242. 24 John of Würzburg, ‘Peregrinatio’, ed. by Huygens, 138. 25 Jacques de Vitry, Histoire Orientale, ed. and trans. by Donnadieu, 913–14. 26 Oliver of Paderborn, Historia Damiatina, ed. by Hoogeweg, 266. 27 Prior Philip reported this in his letter to the pope, preserved in CM, iii, 398; Richard, La Papauté et les missions d’Orient, 57–58. 28 Acta Honorii III et Gregorii IX, ed. by Tautu, 303–05, 312. 29 Acta Innocentii papae IV, ed. by Haluščinski and Wojnar, 11–12.

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Christian West. From the beginning the Chaldean hierarchy expressed goodwill towards the Roman See. In 1245/46, the Dominican Andrew of Longjumeau, papal envoy to the Mongols of south-west Asia, met with Simeon Rabban-Ata, the ‘Visitor of the East’ of the Chaldean Patriarch Sabrisho V (1226–56). Rabban-Ata sent a profession of faith to the pope, together with a letter from the Patriarch, acknowledging the papal primacy and lamenting the loss of Jerusalem by the Latins in 1244.30 After 1262 the Mongol Ilkhans of Persia sought to form an alliance with the Christian West against the Mamlūks of Egypt. The Ilkhan Arghun (1284–91) sent as his envoy to the West in 1287 Rabban Sauma, an Ongut trained in a Chaldean monastery near Khan-Baliq (near Beijing), who had become the Visitor General (that is the second-in-command) of the Chaldean patriarch, Yaballahah III. Rabban Sauma wrote an account of his journey, which unfortunately only survives in an abridged Arabic version. Because of his office, he was able to negotiate about religious as well as diplomatic issues with the pope. He was received in audience in 1288 by Nicholas IV, the first Franciscan pope, who wished to promote good relations with Eastern Christians, a task in which his order had played a leading role. Rabban Sauma celebrated Mass in the Chaldean rite in the presence of the papal court and was personally reconciled to the Roman Church on Palm Sunday. In his account of his final audience, he claims that the pope gave him a letter for the patriarch in which he unconditionally recognized Mar Yaballahah as Patriarch of the East, but this appears to be a misunderstanding;31 the copy of this letter in Nicholas IV’s registers is more guarded in tone. It included a text of the Creed endorsed by the Second Council of Lyons in 1274, beginning ‘Credimus Sanctam Trinitatem’, and Jean Richard is surely correct in supposing that this implies that Nicholas was setting out the conditions of union between the Church of the East and Rome.32 This view is confirmed by the detailed profession of faith which the patriarch, Yaballahah III, himself finally sent in 1304 by the hand of the Dominican missionary, Brother James, to the newly enthroned Pope Benedict XI.33 The adhesion of the patriarch and of his Visitor General, Rabban Sauma, to union with the Holy See were personal acts of reconciliation. Although some individual Chaldean clergy followed their example and were reconciled by members of the mendicant orders working in the Ilkhanate, the Church of the East remained a Separated Eastern Church. In conclusion, the tradition that the pope was the successor to St Peter and that the Roman See was the first in honour among all the Churches of Christendom certainly gave the papacy an important advantage in its diplomatic relations with the Separated Eastern Churches. Moreover, when the popes became aware that 30 Simon of St Quentin, Historia Tartarorum, 30; Acta Innocentii papae IV, ed. by Haluščinski and Wojnar, 95–102. 31 Histoire du patriarche Mar Jabalaha III. For Rabban Sauma’s audience with Pope Nicholas, see ibid., 111–21. 32 The text of Nicholas IV’s letter to Mar Yaballahah is in Chabot, ‘Notes’; Richard, ‘La Mission en Europe’. 33 Chabot, ‘Documents concernant Mar Jabalaha III’.

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those Churches did not recognize supremacy of jurisdiction as part of the Petrine tradition, they modified their approach, treating the reconciliation of the heads of Churches as the beginning, not the conclusion, of the process of union. The concept of the Uniate Church was a spiritually valuable one, which sought to preserve what was distinctive in the traditions of the Eastern Churches while restoring the unity of the universal Church. The desire of the popes to achieve corporate union with the Separated Churches and not to try to exploit individual conversions which would weaken them was also admirable. Yet except in the case of the Maronites papal attempts at reunification were not fully successful, and that seems chiefly to have been the result of poor timing. Had this policy been pursued from the beginning of the Frankish settlements in the East it might have achieved a more positive result. That is speculative, but what is certain is that however sincere the reverence of Eastern Church leaders for the see of Rome may have been, they had no desire to antagonize the Islamic authorities among whom most of them lived by forming closer ecclesiastical ties with the Western Church at a time when its military power in the Levant was growing weaker.

Appendix: The Separated Churches of the East, c. 1100–1300 The Latin Church and the Orthodox Eastern Churches, under the Orthodox Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, accepted as authoritative the first seven Oecumenical Councils: Nicaea I (325), Constantinople I (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553), Constantinople III (680–81), and Nicaea II (787). The Separated Eastern Churches had become independent when they refused to accept the authority of some of those councils. The source of all those disagreements was the formulation of Christological doctrines, but that is not relevant to this essay. The Maronite Church did not accept Constantinople III. It took its name from St Maron, a fifth-century hermit, from whom its members claimed to have received their faith. They were found chiefly in Mount Lebanon and had their own patriarch. The Armenian Church did not accept the Council of Chalcedon. Its adherents claimed that this was not because of doctrinal disagreements, but because there had been no Armenian representatives present at that council. Their Church had been founded by St Gregory the Illuminator in c. 314. At its head was the Catholicus, who from 1150 to 1292 lived at Hromgla, a castle on the upper Euphrates. It was an ethnic Church with a vernacular liturgy. The Syrian Orthodox Church did not accept the Council of Chalcedon. It is sometimes called the Jacobite Church because it was first organized in the sixth century by Bishop Jacob Baradaeus. The head of the Church was the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, and this Church had a Syriac liturgy.

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The Coptic Church of Egypt did not accept the Council of Chalcedon. It was the sister Church to the Syrian Orthodox Church: they did not differ in doctrine but had separate hierarchies and worshipped in different languages. The Copts had a Coptic liturgy: this language was the medieval form of ancient Egyptian. The Coptic patriarch was called Patriarch of Alexandria, but during the central Middle Ages lived in Cairo. He was recognized as their spiritual head by the Churches in the independent Christian Kingdoms of Makuria and Alwa in Nubia, and by the Church in the Kingdom of Ethiopia. The Church of the East, or the Chaldean Church, did not accept the Council of Ephesus. For that reason it is often called the Nestorian Church because the Council of Ephesus condemned Nestorius’s teachings, but that is a misnomer because the Church of the East never endorsed his views. In the Middle Ages Western writers sometimes described it as the Chaldean Church, and I have used that term in this essay because it has an adjectival form which ‘Church of the East’ lacks. Its head was the Patriarch of Seleucia-Ctesiphon who lived in Baghdad, and it had a Syriac liturgy. During the period with which this essay is concerned it had provinces in Iraq, Persia, central Asia, and China and also had jurisdiction over the Christian Churches of South India. Some tribes of the Mongol confederacy, such as the Keraits, the Naimans, and the Onguts of Inner Mongolia, were members of this Church.

Works Cited Manuscripts Florence, Laurentian Library, Cod. Syr. 1 Primary Sources Account of the Conference Held between Doctor Mekhitar of Daschir, Envoy of the Catholicos Constantine I, and the Papal Legate at Saint-Jean d’Acre in 1262, in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Documents Arméniens, 2 vols (Paris, 1869–1906), i, 691–98 Acta Honorii III et Gregorii IX (1216–1241), ed. by A. L. Tautu, CICO Fontes, series 3, 3 (Vatican City, 1950) Acta Innocentii III, ed. by T. Haluščinski, CICO Fontes, series 3, 2 (Vatican City, 1944) Acta Innocentii papae IV (1243–54), ed. by T. Haluščinski and M. M. Wojnar, CICO Fontes, series 3, 4 (Vatican City, 1966) Acta Romanorum Pontificum a S. Clemente (an. c. 90) ad Coelestinum III (1198), CICO Fontes, series 3, 1 (Vatican City, 1943) Bibliothecae Mediciae Laurentianae Codicum Manuscriptorum Orientalium Catalogus, ed. by E. E. Assemani (Florence, 1742) Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. by Istituto per le scienze religiose (Bologna, 1973) Gregory Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum, ed. by J. B. Abbeloos and T. J. Lamy, 2 vols (Louvain, 1872–77)

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Guiragos of Kantzag, History of Armenia, in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Documents Arméniens, 2 vols (Paris, 1869–1906), i, 413–30 Histoire du patriarche Mar Jabalaha III et du moine Rabban Çauma, French trans. from the Syriac by J. B. Chabot, Revue de l’Orient Latin, 1 (1893), 567–610; 2 (1894), 73–142, 235–304 Jacques de Vitry, Histoire Orientale/Historia Orientalis, ed. and trans. [into French] by J. Donnadieu (Turnhout, 2008) John of Würzburg, ‘Peregrinatio’, in Peregrinationes Tres: Saewulf, John of Würzburg, Theodericus, ed. by R. B. C. Huygens (Turnhout, 1994), 78–141 ‘Lament on Edessa by Nersēs Šnorhali’, trans. by T. M. van Lint, in East and West in the Crusader States: Contexts – Contacts – Confrontations, vol. ii, Acta of the Congress held at Hernen Castle in May 1997, ed. by K. Ciggaar and H. Teule (Leuven, 1999), 29–105 Oliver of Paderborn, Historia Damiatina, ed. by H. Hoogeweg, in Die Schriften des Kölner Domschlasters, späteren Bischofs von Paderborn und Kardinalbishofs von S. Sabina (Tübingen, 1894), 159–280 St Nerses of Lampron, ‘Letter to Leo II’, in Recueil des historiens des croisades: Documents arméniens, 2 vols (Paris, 1869–1906), i, 579–603 Sempad the Constable, Chronicle of the Kingdom of Little Armenia, in Recueil des historiens des croisades: Documents arméniens, 2 vols (Paris, 1869–1906), i, 605–80 Simon of St Quentin, Historia Tartarorum: Simon de Saint-Quentin: Histoire des Tartares, ed. by J. Richard (Paris, 1965) William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. by R. B. C. Huygens, 2 vols (Turnhout, 1986) Secondary Studies Baumer, C., The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity (London, 2006) Chabot, J. B., ‘Documents concernant Mar Jabalaha III: 1. Lettre de Jabalaha au pape Benoît XI (18 mai 1304)’, Revue de l’Orient Latin, 2 (1894), 630–37 ———, ‘Notes aur les relations du roi Argoun avec l’Occident’, Revue de l’Orient Latin, 2 (1894), 576–81 Grumel, V., Traité d’Études Byzantines, vol. i, La Chronologie (Paris, 1958) Meinardus, O., Two Thousand Years of Coptic Christianity (Cairo, 1999) Phillipson, D. W., Foundations of an African Civilisation: Aksum and the Northern Horn, 1000 B.C. to A.D. 1300 (Woodbridge, 2012) Richard, J., ‘La Mission en Europe de Rabban Çauma et l’union des Églises’, XII Convegno Volta: Oriente et Occidente nel medioevo (Rome, 1957), 162–67 ———, La Papauté et les missions d’Orient au moyen âge (xiiie–xve siècles) (Rome, 1977) Van Leeuwen, R., Notables and Clergy in Mount Lebanon: The Khāzin Sheiks and the Maronite Church (1736–1840) (Leiden, 1994) Welsby, D. A., The Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia (London, 2002)

James Hill

Politics and Power in Latin Efforts at Church Union, 1300–1360

The pope held a unique position in Christendom. He was both political leader and patriarch and carried both religious and secular authority. While most other Christian Churches separated the office of head priest and head of the Church, the Latin Church, by the fourteenth century, had no such divisions. The (Greek) Patriarch of Constantinople was subordinate to the Byzantine emperor, the Armenian catholicos deferred to the king, the Serbian Church was headed by the Serbian emperor, and so on. The only other places where this was not the case was in Churches which existed under non-Christian political regimes, which held little or no political power, and this situation was obviously different to the arrangement of the Latin Church. This gave the papacy a unique position in its attempts to integrate other Churches and also created different challenges in dealing with secular rulers. In the fourteenth century, the papacy was keen to expand its religious and temporal power. In dealing with other Churches, however, the popes were limited in exercising both by their lack of reach beyond the Catholic world. This essay considers the extent to which papal attempts to bring other Churches into union during the period 1305–62 were political activities and examines the relationship between the power of the papacy and its efforts at union.1 Ostensibly, these were discussions on theological issues, but as this chapter shows, they were also inextricably bound in the politics of the region. Partly, this is a result of the papacy’s approach to Church union, which maintained that other Churches should conform to its own religious positions. Negotiations over union, therefore, were negotiating another Church’s surrender of ecclesiastic power, which were unlikely to be successful unless the papacy could offer something that would compensate for this loss. Power is defined here as the ability to enforce a desired action or to bring about an intended event. As a result, this kind of power can be observed through its outcomes



1 This period spans the first five ‘Avignon popes’: Clement V, John XXII, Benedict XII, Clement VI, and Innocent VI. The Avignon papacy was particularly involved in affairs in the Eastern Mediterranean, and this period allows a good range of examples which are usefully comparable. James Hill completed his PhD at the University of Leeds in 2017. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 193–204 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118965

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and an evaluation of the success or failure of a particular intention. The evaluation of power in this context is therefore more of an evaluation of the success of intentions and the achievement of expected outcomes than an attempt to quantify power as an abstract. Evaluating outcomes in this way has advantages over other methods of establishing power, such as through individual outcomes or resource control; it allows for a comprehensive examination of an interaction which is general enough to be comparable over different cases, and it allows for the possibility of systematic complications and institutional action.2 This analysis of politics and power in the negotiations and relationships between the papacy and other Churches is explored through two examples: the Byzantine Empire and the Kingdom of Armenia (Cilician Armenia in modern south-east Turkey, not modern Armenia, referred to in this piece as Armenia). Both powers were engaged in active dialogue with the papacy in the fourteenth century and provide a good overview of different problems the papacy experienced when trying to expand its authority in the East. The context of the relationship between the two Churches and the papacy were quite different; the Byzantines were in schism and saw union as a bargaining chip to be used to gain military support, while the Armenians were already in union with the Latin Church but were often accused of heretical deviations and were also interested in closer relations with the West in order to gain military aid.3 How these dialogues developed over the first sixty years of the fourteenth century gives a good opportunity to examine to role of power in the papacy’s relations with other Churches.

The Byzantine Church Negotiations between the Latin and Byzantine Churches during the first half of the fourteenth century were decidedly static as far as theological complaints went. The issues at stake were the same as those that were discussed, and briefly resolved, at Lyons in 1274.4 These issues, which included many of the long-running disputes between the Churches, such as the filioque clause in the Creed, the use of leavened bread, and clerical marriage, were not new to this period in any way. The union of Lyons ended in 1282 when the new emperor, Andronikos II, took power, but not explicitly because of what was agreed; rather, Andronikos argued that the council





2 Hart, ‘Three Approaches’, discusses this in the context of modern political power relations, but his findings are applicable. 3 There are many general readings on these topics. For an overview of Byzantium and the West in the fourteenth century, see Geanakoplos, Byzantine East and Latin West; Oikonomidas, ‘Byzantium and the Western Powers’; Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium. On Armenia and the West in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, see Hamilton, ‘The Armenian Church’; Boase, ‘History of the Kingdom’; Ghazarian, The Armenian Kingdom; Chahin, Kingdom of Armenia; and Dashdondog, The Mongols and the Armenians. 4 Nicol, ‘The Greeks and the Union of the Churches’.

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was invalid because the other patriarchs had not been present.5 Perhaps even more curiously, during the fourteenth century, the specifics of these religious issues were not even brought up in the negotiations between the Churches. Rather, these issues were framed in terms of the legitimacy of the union of Lyons and whether that was a valid council, rather than particularly on what was agreed there. This distinction adds another layer into the difficulties surrounding disputes: the Byzantines were not suggesting that the theological arguments made by either themselves or the Latins were wrong, but that the issue was irrelevant due to administrative failings. The patriarchs had not been present, and therefore the resolutions were not proper and needed to be redone. The failure of Lyons was, therefore, not explicitly because of theological division, despite the unpopularity of the union in Byzantium; the Byzantines did not appear to suggest that a rerun of the council would not go the same way, provided that things were conducted to their satisfaction. The reasons for the failure need to be explained beyond the divisions of the Churches. From the 1330s to the 1370s, embassies were regularly sent between Avignon and Constantinople to pursue this issue, but the theological positions of both sides did not change in any meaningful sense.6 Rather, what did change was the Byzantine willingness to negotiate on the validity of Lyons and its compromises. The papacy maintained its view that Lyons had settled the disputes and that the Byzantine Church merely needed to observe the terms, but the Byzantine Church first, after 1282, outright rejected the council and the West in general, then after 1330 rejected Lyons but wanted to revisit union in a new council, then finally, after 1355, offered to accept the terms of Lyons again, under certain circumstances. These dates represent political shifts and upheavals in the empire, and thus the struggle for union between these two Churches, while centring on theological issues, should be seen as being driven by political considerations first and foremost. Lyons was agreed in 1274, under the shadow of Charles II of Sicily’s plans to invade the empire and recover Constantinople for the Latins. By 1282, when Andronikos II rejected Lyons on his assumption of power, the Sicilian Vespers had all but removed the threat of Charles,

5 Geanakoplos, Byzantine East and Latin West, 68. 6 Embassies are recorded in the papal registers as taking place in (at minimum) 1327, 1333, 1337, 1339, 1343, 1346, 1348, 1350, 1353, and 1356. In addition, an unnamed ambassador sent by John Kantakouzenos appears in camera records for 1350 and 1351 at Avignon, though no details were recorded about him. See Jean XII: Lettres communes, ed. by Mollat, xiii, 191, nos 60898–900; Benoît XII: Lettres closes et patentes intéressant, ed. by Vidal i, 336–39, no. 1199, 340, nos 1200–01; Benoît XII: Lettres closes, patentes et curiales, ed. by Vidal, 383, no. 683; Clement VI: Lettres closes, patentes et curiales se rapportant a la France, ed. by Déprez, i, 205–12, nos 466–71, 228–30, nos 490–93, 246–74, nos 522–23, 259–60, no. 547; Clement VI: Lettres closes, patentes et curiales se rapportant a la France, ed. by Déprez, iii, 184, no. 2588, 185, no. 2595; Clement VI: Lettres closes, patentes et curiales intéressant, ed. by Déprez and Mollat, 216, nos 1626–29; Clement VI: Lettres closes, patentes et curiales intéressant, ed. by Déprez and Mollat, 295–96, nos 2129–37, 311–12, no. 2233; Innocent VI: Lettres secrètes et curiales, ed. by Gasnault, Laurent, and Gotteri, i.2, 202–03, no. 610, 238–40, nos 694–95; iv, 141–43, no. 2278, 149–50, nos 2292–95, 165–67, nos 2331–33; Clement VI: Lettres closes, patentes et curiales se rapportant a la France, ed. by Déprez, iii, 105–06, no. 4622.

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and the position of Andronikos was relatively stable.7 Tentative steps were taken after his death by Andronikos III and John VI Kantakouzenos, when Latin support was helpful but not necessarily seen as essential, and these embassies were not willing to compromise. It took another moment of crisis to spur another concession in the Byzantine position, and it came after John V Palaiologos’s victory in his civil war against John Kantakouzenos in 1354, which left the empire exhausted and vulnerable to the Turks, Genoese, and Serbs.8 This political shift was mirrored in the material demands made alongside the theological. Recognition of Latin religious authority and practice carried a price, and the Byzantines wanted military aid to help reassert themselves in Asia Minor and north Greece. As early as 1339, Barlaam, a Calabrian monk acting as an ambassador for Andronikos III, argued that a military intervention by the West for the benefit of the empire would go a long way towards dispelling the mistrust that had developed during the thirteenth century under Latin rule. He suggested that military aid had to precede Church union, and that the empire could not accept union with the Latins until they had been proven trustworthy.9 By 1356, when John V Palaiologos was making his offers, the urgent need for military help had increased as the Turks had made their first conquests over the Bosporus, occupying Gallipoli. He asked for a phased approach: he would personally convert in exchange for a limited military expedition, and then bring the rest of the empire into the Catholic fold in exchange for a full expedition against the Turks.10 The changing political climate and need for support in the Byzantine Empire thus provided a framework for union which the papacy ultimately failed to exploit. Why this was the case is not completely clear, but the collapse of talks following a failure to provide sufficient material support hints at the papacy’s lack of direct power. Despite having a clear path to union by 1356 the papacy was unable to take it further, possibly because the papacy was unable to mobilize, or convince anyone else to mobilize, the forces John required as his price.11 Thus, while the substance of the negotiations remained about the theological differences between the Churches, it was the political dimension surrounding the talks that enabled them and allowed them to develop. The Byzantines’ increasing need for Western aid as the fourteenth century progressed allowed for a continuation of negotiations, but unlike in 1282, it was not a restoration of Byzantine strength that ended them.

7 Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, 89–126; Runciman, Sicilian Vespers, 201–87; Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 39–90. 8 Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 253–62. 9 Benoît XII: Lettres closes, patentes et curiales, ed. by Vidal, 383, no. 634. 10 Reg. Vat. 62, fols 126r–127v. 11 John’s initial request was not particularly vast; he requested fifty transport ships, five hundred cavalry, and one thousand infantry. Reg. Vat. 62, fols 126r–127v: ‘Item dominus Innocentus papa sub celeritate qua poterit postquam filium meum habuerit in manibus sius mittet in vscheria quindecim cum equitibus quadringentum et alios centum cum navibus equites et mille pedites ita per erit exercitus totus vscheria quindecum, Galee subtiles quinque. equites quingentum, pedites mille quin duos exercitus applicuerit in Constantinopolitam per dei gratiam erit’.

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It also appears that it was not a result of complete indifference or lack of power on the part of the papacy either. There was a papal military response following John’s initial offer; the naval league, which had captured the city of Smyrna in 1344, was reconstituted and was active between 1359 and 1361.12 According to Philip de Mézières, this league fought with the Byzantines along the Bosporus Straights against the Turks.13 Unfortunately, there is little corroborating evidence for this league: the papal records for the years 1359–62 are muddled and partial, and there would appear to be substantial material losses in this period. Nevertheless, this league, which was under the command of the legate Peter Thomas, the previous ambassador to John Palaiologos, assisted the empire and should be seen as a positive response to the negotiations. The political relationship between the papacy and the empire improved during John’s reign and did bring tangible results. This expedition perhaps did not even meet John’s modest request for troops, but it does show that the negotiations were not a waste of time, and it also explains why John felt it worthwhile to visit Rome in 1365 personally to convert before Urban V.14 The West had proved willing to help, albeit in a limited fashion, and it was not beyond possibility that further assistance could be forthcoming. Ultimately the help that John desired did not materialize, but his optimism was justified to a certain extent. In the case of Byzantine negotiations, it was therefore not a failure of intentions, nor an unwillingness to address the religious issues, which divided the Churches. Rather, the ultimate collapse of these talks revolved around the difficulties the papacy faced in motivating large-scale expeditions in this period. As Peter I of Cyprus discovered in 1362, Europe was largely consumed by internal conflicts and concerns, and substantial aid for the East was not forthcoming.15 The link between the political cooperation of Europe with the religious negotiations of Church union was a catalyst for activity, but it was also the cause of the eventual failure of those negotiations. Political assistance provided the motivation for Byzantine involvement in the project, while the potential expansion of religious authority provided motivation for the papacy. The emperors after Andronikos II appeared willing to cede substantial amounts of religious control to the papacy in exchange for correspondingly substantial military aid. While the papacy was able to provide limited aid, as seen in the intermittent naval leagues in the Aegean, it appeared unable to manage large-scale military involvement, and this meant that it could not make progress on the religious negotiations. In short, the emperors’ use of union as a bargaining chip for military aid provided an opportunity for the reconciliation of the religious differences between the Byzantine and Latin Churches, but the limits of papal power prevented that opportunity from being fully exploited. 12 Carr, Merchant Crusaders, 74–78; Housley, Avignon Papacy, 32–35. 13 Philip de Mézières, The Life of Saint Peter Thomas, ed. and trans. by Smet, 84–85; Housley, Later Crusades, 66–68; Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 260–61. 14 Pall, ‘Encore une fois sur le voyage diplomatique de Jean V’; Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 262–66. 15 Housley, Later Crusades, 39–41. A romantic account of Peter’s recruitment drive around Europe can be found in William de Machaut, The Capture of Alexandria, trans. by Shirley and Edbury, 32–50.

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The Armenian Church Relations between the papacy and Armenia had a very different context to those with Byzantium, yet similar overall trends can be discerned. The relations between the Armenian Church, and by extension, the Kingdom of Armenian Cilicia, were also theological and political. Disputes between the Latin and Armenian Churches were not, however, concerned with the existence of the union, but rather about how closely the Armenian Church was conforming to the standards imposed by the Latin Church. The Armenian and Latin Churches had formally entered union after the creation of the Kingdom of Armenia in 1198, but the two had experienced an uneasy relationship in the thirteenth century.16 The Armenian Church maintained, or was alleged to have maintained, deviant practices in liturgy and rituals and did not fully accept the principles of papal primacy during this period, but in the early fourteenth century, at the Council of Sis in 1307, it voted to align itself more closely with Latin practice.17 Despite their differences, though, both Churches considered themselves to be in union through the thirteenth century, and while they may have disagreed with each other, the status of the union appeared not to be in question. The affirmation decided on at Sis was welcomed by Clement V and encouraged in a series of letters,18 but the issue of Armenian religious practice was not mentioned again for some time, despite regular contact between the papacy and the kingdom throughout John XXII’s pontificate.19 It was not until the very end of Benedict XII’s pontificate in 1339 that the papacy took much interest in Armenian practices again, issuing a series of corrections that it wanted resolved.20 While this tension partially remained during Clement VI’s pontificate, it appeared to lose importance under Innocent VI, and given that the same issues were brought up again at the Council of Florence in 1439, it does not seem that much changed in Armenian practice throughout the fourteenth century.21 The timing of these changing relations can be tied to important political shifts in Armenia and the Near East in a similar way to shifts in papal–Byzantine relations. The Council of Sis was held after the death of Ghazan, the friendly khan of Ilkhans, and the formal conversion of the khanate to Islam. Ghazan himself had converted in 1295, and Ilkhan power in the Levant waned after defeats in 1304. The Ilkhans were the kingdom’s main military ally against the Mamlūk sultanate, and it was a justifiable concern that the khanate might begin to seek rapprochement with the sultanate. That this happened in 1320 shows that the Armenians were correct in this regard, and the murder of King Levon III and his uncle Het‘um II by Mongol vassals

16 Hamilton, ‘The Armenian Church’, 73–87. 17 Richard, La Papauté et les missions d’Orient, 201. 18 Regestum Clementis Papae V, vi, 293–94, nos 7199–202; vii, 242–43, no. 8610. 19 Between this period and Benedict’s renewed interest in 1339, at least ninety-one letters were sent which were either addressed to prominent individuals in the kingdom or concerned them; the subject of orthodoxy is not a prominent concern. 20 Reg. Vat. 62, fols 34r–35v, 100r–124v. 21 Enchiridion Symbolorum, ed. by Denzinger-Schönmetzer, 1310–27.

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in 1308 must have further reinforced Armenian fears.22 Looking westwards for the aid that had been previously provided by the increasingly unreliable Ilkhans was a pragmatic choice, and it was clear that greater Church alignment was understood to be the political price of aid. Benedict’s corrections in 1339 came during a point of political turmoil in the Kingdom of Armenia, and Levon IV, the addressee of the corrections, was murdered by his own barons after a protracted dispute before the papal document even arrived in the kingdom.23 Here then, as with the Byzantine Empire, political circumstances provided the opportunity for greater alignment with the Latin Church. Armenia needed greater financial and military aid to assist against the sultanate, which made ever greater inroads into the kingdom throughout the fourteenth century, eventually destroying it entirely in 1375. Unlike the case of the Byzantine Empire, this political need was not tied to religious reform in most cases, and only Clement VI (1342–52) overtly made this connection.24 The Armenian Church was already in union and was already deemed worthy of aid. Certainly, many popes appealed to Europeans throughout the period to aid the kingdom and regularly issued crusade privileges to those who went East to fight for the kingdom.25 The 1344 naval league, which was aimed towards the Aegean, was also charged to assist Armenia if it could, or possibly Armenia was to be seen as an alternative objective.26 The papacy sent money to the kingdom several times to help it rebuild or as famine relief. In these cases, papal assistance was not tied to perceived religious orthodoxy. In contrast to the Aegean, the papacy and the European powers were comparatively inactive regarding Armenia. Despite recognizing the danger the Kingdom of Armenia faced, the papacy was not able to do very much about it. Crusades organized with the French for the reconquest of the Holy Land prior to the outbreak of the Hundred Years War often featured Armenia as a starting point or an objective, but these crusades never materialized.27 With the exception of a brief campaign in 1301 by Cyprus and the Hospitallers which led to no permanent gains, no smaller expeditions were sent for relief. A noteworthy exception was a Cypriot intervention in the early 1360s in West Cilicia, and there was sporadic assistance from the Hospital, though this latter activity was aimed mainly at the Turkish emirates to the west of the kingdom, not the Mamlūks. The kingdom was repeatedly invaded and gradually annexed by the Mamlūks, beginning in the 1320s after the Ilkhans had effectively ceased protecting the Armenians, and only a small amount of Western financial aid can be found in the record by way of assistance. This lack of military aid explains the continued divergence of the Armenian Church; the limited involvement of the

22 Dashdondog, The Mongols and the Armenians, 193–207. 23 Boase, ‘History of the Kingdom’, 30–31. 24 Clement VI: Lettres closes, patentes et curiales intéressant, ed. by Déprez and Mollat, 151–52, nos 1191–1200. 25 Regestum Clementis Papae V, i, 132–33, no. 748; Jean XII: Lettres communes, ed. by Mollat, iv, 341–42, no. 18098; Benoît XII: Lettres communes, ed. by Vidal, i, 366, no. 3971. 26 Clement VI: Lettres closes, patentes et curiales se rapportant a la France, ed. by Déprez, i, 164, no. 1087. 27 For examples of this from the 1320s, see Lettres secrètes et curiales du Pape Jean XXII, ed. by Coulon and Clémencet, ii, 198–207, nos 1571–73, 250–82, nos 1682–92.

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Latin Church and the West in general allowed the Armenian Church to retain its relative independence throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Despite the obvious hope of increased European support following the Council of Sis, that support was extremely limited. Crusade indulgences were offered for fighting in Armenia, but there is little evidence of people taking them. The prospective crusade of the early 1320s, intended to relieve Armenia and recapture the Holy Land, never materialized, and the Mamlūks captured Ayas and sacked it. The 1344 naval league, despite the suggestion that it should help Armenia, never did so. The funds and the military aid it did receive from the Hospital and Cyprus were mainly limited to a few frontier regions and made little overall difference to the security of the kingdom. The papacy was largely unable to provide the material power that was clearly desired as part of the move towards closer union. Whether a greater provision of aid from the papacy would have made any difference to the practices of the Armenian Church is unclear, but there certainly seems to be a correlation between Latin involvement in a region and the extent to which the papacy was able to impose reform. Byzantine conformity to the Latin Church was explicitly linked to Latin support. The Greek Church in areas under Latin rule was bullied into conformity and carefully policed.28 Churches that existed well outside of the Latin political sphere were not pursued for union at all, and the papacy appeared to make no effort to impose its theological position on them.29 Churches which were firmly under Latin authority, however, were expected to conform. It is not an unreasonable assumption that greater Latin interaction with Armenia would have resulted in more pressing calls for reform.30 The lack of Latin assistance certainly limited both the opportunity and the pressure for meaningful change, regardless of how much the Armenian Church was actually interested in reform.31 Linking reform and military aid, as Clement VI did, was quite counterproductive when that aid was not forthcoming. Clement appeared to accept the Armenian protests that were sent as a response to Benedict’s corrections, but the 1344 naval league still did

28 Coureas, Latin Church in Cyprus, 259–317. 29 At least, no such efforts have been recorded in the papal registers. It may be the case that the papacy simply had no one to negotiate with in these Churches, as they were not institutions with any political power if they were ruled by a different faith. This does not account for the lack of effort made to engage with powers such as Ethiopia, Georgia, or Christian princes in central Asia, who very occasionally appear in the papal registers but were not pursued. 30 This is not to say that such calls did not exist in Europe, and several commentators were highly critical of the Armenian Church in crusade treatises. Authors such as William of Adam, How to Defeat the Saracens, ed. by Constable, and the anonymous author of the Directorium ad passagium faciendum called for the urgent reform or conquest of Armenia, but there is no evidence that these treatises were taken seriously by the papacy, and papal policy did not reflect these views (aside from the brief upset at the end of Benedict’s pontificate). 31 Bueno, ‘Avignon, the Armenians, and the Primacy of the Pope’, convincingly argues that the truth of these accusations cannot ever be ascertained and, in many ways, is irrelevant. What is important was how such accusations were treated and what was done to rectify perceived errors. It is clear that the papal response to errors in the Armenian Church was very different from its response to complaints about the Greek Church.

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not go to Armenia to help. This led to the permanent loss of Ayas to the Mamlūks and a downward spiral that the kingdom did not recover from. Maintaining Armenia had strategic value to the crusading movement, as demonstrated by the planned crusade of the 1320s, but this did not hinge on the orthodoxy of the Armenian Church.32 Ultimately, the Latin Church gave little reason for the Armenian Church to reform itself, particularly when the papacy demonstrated how little power it was able to exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean. The papacy’s demonstrable lack of power with regard to the Kingdom of Armenia likely hindered its reformist agenda, though in many ways that agenda was also limited by the papacy’s own disinterest. Apart from a brief period of interest in the middle of the fourteenth century, the papacy paid no attention to the complaints of anti-Armenian lobbyists and appeared relatively content with the practice of the Church. There were several reasons that could account for this. The papacy seemed to have fairly limited contact with the kingdom, and when it did intervene in Armenian affairs, it preferred to communicate with other European powers about the kingdom, such as to give payments, rather than to communicate with the Armenians directly.33 The Armenian Church had its own structure, bishops, and leader, all of whom were notionally subject to the pope, but in practice the papacy found it difficult to control them. There was a constant language barrier as well, and problems between the Churches were often blamed on poor translation. As late as 1355 Innocent VI was sending Armenian natives who had come west back to the kingdom in order to facilitate communication.34 It is quite possible, then, that the popes in this period did not have a clear idea of the state of orthodoxy in Armenia and did not have the reach to influence it much in any case. Thus, in addition to the papacy’s limited ability to support the kingdom materially, which limited the political pressure for religious conformity, the papacy appeared to lack the ecclesiastical infrastructure to interfere substantially with the Armenian Church. Language barriers prevented direct communication between the vast majority of friars and the Armenian people, the Armenian Church retained a high degree of independence, and it is entirely unclear if most of the popes were aware of or concerned about this state of affairs. This lack of religious power was compounded by the papacy’s lack of political power in the region and allowed the Armenian Church to retain its ‘errors’ beyond the fourteenth century.

Conclusion Despite the different contexts of the relationships between the papacy and the Byzantine and Armenian Churches in the fourteenth century, there were many similarities in how these relationships progressed. Both Churches pushed for tighter relations with 32 Lettres secrètes et curiales du Pape Jean XXII, ed. by Coulon and Clémencet, ii, 198–207, nos 1571–73, 250–82, nos 1682–92. 33 Lettres secrètes et curiales du Pape Jean XXII, ed. by Coulon and Clémencet, ii, 120–21, no. 1438; Benoît XII: Lettres closes, patentes et curiales, 101–03, nos 151–55. 34 Innocent VI: Lettres secrètes et curiales, ed. by Gasnault, Laurent, and Gotteri, i, 187–88, no. 573; iii, 15–16, no. 1306.

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the Latin Church, offering greater ecclesiastical integration in exchange for greater military aid. In both cases, these offers did not lead to a substantial change in the religious relationships between the Churches or the political relationships between European powers and the secular authorities which governed the Churches. In both cases, the Latin Church was not able directly to impose its will through the installation of its own clergy or by conversion. The Armenian and the Byzantine Churches were established and independent and the congregations resistant to change without political will. It is hardly surprisingly that the Latin Church lacked the power to impose its theological norms on other Churches without support, but it is important to acknowledge that the Latin Church, despite its size and influence in Europe, was not directly powerful outside of areas where the political elite were Latin Christians. Consequently, political control and power had a direct influence on the progress of negotiations regarding ecclesiastical issues. In these cases, political considerations had two effects on union: they provided opportunity and led to desired outcomes. The weakening political situations in both Armenia and Byzantium allowed for the prospect of greater alignment between them and the Latin Church. For the Byzantine Empire, the need for protection from predatory Latin rulers drove the union achieved at Lyons in the thirteenth century, and the removal of that danger led to its collapse. The threat from the Turks was the primary motivation for John V Palaiologos’s overtures to Innocent VI, which again provided an opportunity for real progress that had been absent in the more stable reigns of Andronikos III and John VI Kantakouzenos. For Armenia, the Islamic turn of the Ilkhanate pushed the kingdom to look for aid from the West. These political crises provided impetus to seek reconciliation with the Latin Church in the hope of gaining material aid from it. The expected outcomes of these moves towards reconciliation on the part of the Armenians and Byzantines were the provision of military aid to help them fight the non-Christian threats to their territories and political clout to check the expansion of their powerful neighbours. The price that both powers were willing to pay was closer religious integration with the Latin Church, but in order to harness these offers the papacy was required to deliver military aid in sufficient quantity. In both cases, the papacy did provide aid, but in both cases, it was insufficient significantly to affect the discussions over union. The papacy’s failure to provide the large-scale military support that both powers needed was a reflection of its limited ability to motivate European kingdoms and its own lack of direct resources, and thus its lack of power. The resumption and the failures of Church union in this period were therefore ultimately an issue of power. The need for the power of the West allowed for talks to resume, or for reform to return to the agenda, but the failure of the West to provide that power prevented the completion of union or reform. Church union was certainly an issue the papacy found desirable, though not, it would seem, at the expense of more pressing issues closer to Rome and Avignon. Nevertheless, it invested significant time, resources, and political capital in attempts to bring about this outcome, but it would seem that what it lacked was the necessary power to finalize the process. In the end, the papacy’s ambitions for Church union were thwarted by its own limited ability to bring about direct action.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Benoît XII (1334–1342): Lettres closes et patentes intéressant les pays autres que la France, ed. by J. M. Vidal, 2 vols (Paris, 1913) Benoît XII (1334–1342): Lettres closes, patentes et curiales se rapportant à la France, ed. by J. M. Vidal (Paris, 1899) Benoît XII (1334–1342): Lettres communes, ed. by J. M. Vidal, 3 vols (Paris, 1911) Clement VI: Lettres closes, patentes et curiales intéressant les pays autres que la France, ed. by E. Déprez and G. Mollat (Paris, 1960) Clement VI: Lettres closes, patentes et curiales se rapportant à la France, ed. by E. Déprez, 3 vols (Paris, 1925) Directorium ad passagium faciendum, in Recueil des historiens des croisades: Documents arméniens, 2 vols (Paris, 1869–1906), ii, 368–519 Enchiridion Symbolorum, ed. by H. J. D. Denzinger-Schönmetzer (Freiburg, 1963) Innocent VI (1352–1362): Lettres secrètes et curiales, ed. by P. Gasnault, M.-H. Laurent, and N. Gotteri, 5 vols (Paris, 1959–) Jean XII (1316–1334): Lettres communes, ed. by G. Mollat, 16 vols (Paris, 1904–46) Lettres secrètes et curiales du pape Jean XXII (1316–1334) relatives à la France, ed. by A. Coulon and S. Clémencet, 4 vols (Paris, 1899–1972) Philip de Mézières, The Life of Saint Peter Thomas, ed. and trans. by J. Smet (Rome, 1954) Regestum Clementis Papae V [annus Primus–Annus Nonus]: Ex Vaticanis Archetypis Sanctissimi Domini Nostri Leonis XIII Pontificis Maximi Iussu et Munificenta, 9 vols (Rome, 1885) William de Machaut, The Capture of Alexandria, trans. by J. Shirley and P. Edbury (Aldershot, 2001) William of Adam, How to Defeat the Saracens, ed. by G. Constable (Washington, DC, 2012) Secondary Studies Boase, T., ‘The History of the Kingdom’, in The Cilician Kingdom of Armenia, ed. by T. Boase (Edinburgh, 1978), 1–33 Bueno, I., ‘Avignon, the Armenians, and the Primacy of the Pope’, Archa Verbi, 12 (2015), 108–29 Carr, M., Merchant Crusaders in the Aegean, 1291–1352 (Woodbridge, 2015) Chahin, M., The Kingdom of Armenia: New Edition (London, 2013) Coureas, N., The Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312 (Aldershot, 1997) Dashdondog, B., The Mongols and the Armenians (1220–1335) (Leiden, 2011) Dunbabin, J., Charles I of Anjou: Power, Kingship and State-Making in Thirteenth-Century Europe (London, 1998) Geanakoplos, D., Byzantine East and Latin West: Two Worlds of Christendom in Middle Ages and Renaissance (Oxford, 1966) Ghazarian, J., The Armenian Kingdom in Cilicia during the Crusades (London, 2000)

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Hamilton, B., ‘The Armenian Church and the Papacy at the Time of the Crusades’, Eastern Churches Review, 10 (1978), 61–87 Hart, J., ‘Three Approaches to the Measurement of Power in International Relations’, International Organization, 30 (1976), 289–305 Housley, N., The Avignon Papacy and the Crusades, 1305–1378 (Oxford, 1986) ———, The Later Crusades: From Lyons to Alcazar, 1274–1580 (Oxford, 1992) Nicol, D., ‘The Greeks and the Union of the Churches: The Preliminaries to the Second Council of Lyons, 1261–74’, in Medieval Studies Presented to Aubrey Gwynn, S.J., ed. by J. A. Watt, J. B. Morrall, and F. X. Martin (Dublin, 1961), 454–80 ———, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453 (Cambridge, 1993) Oikonomidas, N., ‘Byzantium and the Western Powers in the Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries’, in Byzantium and the West c. 850–c. 1200: Proceedings of the XVIII Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Oxford 30th March–1st April 1984, ed. by J. D. HowardJohnston (Amsterdam, 1988), 319–32 Pall, F., ‘Encore une fois sur le voyage diplomatique de Jean V: Paléologue en 1365/1366’, Revue des études sud-est européennes: Académie Roumaine, Institut des études sud-est européennes, 9 (1971), 535–40 Richard, J., La Papauté et les missions d’Orient au moyen âge (xiiie–xve siècles) (Rome, 1977) Runciman, S., The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1958)

Mike Carr

Modifications to Papal Trade Licences at the Avignon Curia

Any discussion of Mediterranean trade in the context of ecclesiastical power and authority immediately brings to mind the embargo which the papacy placed on trade with Muslims. The embargo is often cited as one of the most futile and ineffectual attempts of the papacy to exert power and authority over an aspect of life which lay outside of its control. Many have regarded it as a policy that was destined to fail, one which was inherently compromised by the greed of Latin merchants and the inability of the papacy to enforce it properly.1 The words of Sophia Menache are characteristic of such a view: ‘[papal] prohibitions proved worthless in face of the commercial interests of the Christian flock’.2 While it would be impossible to argue that the papal embargo succeeded in preventing all trade with Muslims, it is clear that, under closer investigation, this was not the actual objective of the papacy for most, if any, of the period. Indeed, in recent years the embargo has undergone somewhat of a reconsideration with scholars arguing against the idea that it intended to halt all trade with Muslims. Stefan Stantchev, most notably, has instead considered it as a ‘pastoral staff ’ which above all was meant to control the flock and reinforce the papacy’s central place in Christian society. Whether it ‘worked’ in banning trade and undermining the economy of its target was a less important matter.3 This chapter distances itself further from the debates over whether the embargo ‘worked’ in banning trade or not by exploring the supplications made by merchants and noblemen in the Avignon curia for exemptions to the embargo, which took the form of trade licences. These licences, many of which were modified by the pope and chancery officials, demonstrate that the aim of the papacy, at least in the later period, was the regulation, rather than prohibition, of trade with Muslims. Furthermore, The author would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for the award of an Early Career Fellowship (2016–19) during which this chapter was written. 1 See, for example, Housley, Avignon Papacy, 201–13; Luttrell, ‘The Crusade in the Fourteenth Century’, 130. 2 Menache, ‘Papal Attempts at a Commercial Boycott’, 245, and Menache, Clement V, 106. 3 Stantchev, Spiritual Rationality, 3–6, 87. See also Kelleher, ‘Family Business’. Mike Carr is Lecturer in Late Medieval History at the University of Edinburgh. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 205–215 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118966

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the modifications to licences — which will be discussed in detail later — provide an interesting addition to the debate about the reactive nature of papal government which lies at the heart of our understanding of ecclesiastical power and authority. In particular, they are a compelling example of how the popes were not mere passive actors in the sphere of Mediterranean commerce. In focusing on trade licences and their amendments, this essay reinforces Stantchev’s thesis, but also offers an example of how the papacy wielded real, albeit limited, influence over Mediterranean trade, as opposed to mere theoretical shepherding of the flock. Before analysing the trade licences from the Avignon period and their modifications, it is first necessary to give a brief background of the embargo and the expansion of the trade licencing system. Although informal papal attempts to limit trade with Muslims may have existed from the early 1160s, the embargo was first ‘officially’ promulgated by Alexander III at the Third Lateran Council in 1179.4 This banned trade with Muslims, especially in war materials such as arms, iron, and timber for galleys. It was then modified and reissued by successive popes throughout the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries in reflection of the changing situation in the Levant and Europe. After the fall of Acre in 1291 it gained added significance as a means of paving the way for the recovery of the Holy Land, and it continued to be promulgated in one way or another until the early modern period. The precise terms, focus, and strength of the embargo shifted from pope to pope, but by the Avignon period it had become what historians have defined as a ‘total’ one, meaning that it banned all trade with Muslims, not just in war materials, and that it also forbade travel to Islamic lands. The embargo was aimed primarily at the Mamlūk Empire, although on most occasions it was understood to apply to all Muslims.5 However, even though the embargo was total in principle, in practice it was far more selective. This was partly because the main responsibility for preaching the bans and punishing transgressors lay in the hands of the local clergy whose interpretation of the law was often more relaxed than that of the curia. As local clergy were influenced by regional interests, it was not uncommon for them to soften the impact of the embargo in areas where it had a greater effect on the population, such as in the maritime cities and Latin overseas possessions in the Mediterranean, or for them to be pressured into relaxing it by local rulers, which often led to reprimands by the pope.6 The embargo could be relaxed in various ways, such as through the loose interpretation of what destinations or commodities were banned, or through more ‘official’ means, especially the granting of graces by ecclesiastical authorities. These came in two main forms: absolutions, which absolved recipients who had already broken the embargo; and trade licences, which exempted recipients from the embargo in advance of trade. Before the fourteenth century, the process of granting absolutions was more widespread than that of licences, and it was also one that was

4 Stantchev, Spiritual Rationality, 35–36, 44–52. 5 The two best interpretations of the embargo in these years are given in Stantchev, Spiritual Rationality, 120–33, and Ashtor, Levant Trade, esp. 44–63. 6 Stantchev, Spiritual Rationality, 65–66; Housley, Avignon Papacy, 202–03.

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undertaken at a more local level, as high-ranking prelates were regularly granted papal permission to absolve embargo transgressors.7 Trade licences, on the other hand, were rarely granted before the fourteenth century. The first known licence was issued to the Republic of Venice in 1198, but only a handful are known from the thirteenth century. More survive from the earlier part of the fourteenth century, but it is only from the pontificate of Clement VI (1342–52) onwards that the number increases dramatically.8 Before the reasons for this are discussed, it is important to understand that the increase in licences from 1342 onwards is, in part, due to their greater state of preservation. In general, licences survive in two forms: as outgoing papal letters issued in response to petitions, recorded in a register of common letters, or as copies of petitions recorded in the Vatican registers of petitions, the Registra Supplicationum, or sometimes as both.9 Licences preserved as common papal letters exist throughout the period, but those preserved in the Registra Supplicationum only exist from 1342 onwards, the year in which the registers were created.10 The registers contain a large number of extant licences, which is one reason why there are so many more licences after 1342 than before.11 Nevertheless, if we take the Registra Supplicationum out of the equation and only compare the numbers of licences which survive as common papal letters, there are still far more from the pontificate of Clement VI onwards than compared to earlier popes. It is worth considering here the reasons why more trade licences were granted by Clement VI and his successors and whether this can be considered an active papal ‘policy’ to increase the trade licensing system. Unfortunately, unlike the embargo, licences were rarely commented on by contemporaries, and furthermore, they were not discussed by canon lawyers or promulgated like the embargo, meaning that (to my knowledge) no sources apart from the licences themselves survive that provide an overarching justification for their existence. Nevertheless, from the information we have about the issue of trade licences, and also from the clauses attached to the documents by popes and petitioners, we can glean several reasons why their number increased in the later Avignon period. One is the simple fact that the papacy generated money from the sale of licences. This was definitely a factor behind their issue, but contrary to what has been claimed, we have almost no idea of the total amounts which the curia raised from their sale.12 In fact, to date, I have only been able to identify eight examples of payments for licences for the entire twenty-eight-year



7 This, however, changed in 1308 when Clement V made the absolution of contrabandists a papal prerogative: Stantchev, Spiritual Rationality, 51. For more on absolutions, see ibid., 156–62, and Esch, ‘New Sources on Trade’; Esch, ‘Der Handel zwischen Christen und Muslimen im Mittelmeer-Raum’. 8 My research into licences is still ongoing, but at the time of writing I have identified more than 150 licences from the pontificates of Clement VI (1342–52), Innocent VI (1352–62), and Urban V (1362– 70). By contrast I know of only fifteen from the pontificates of John XXII (1316–34) and Benedict XII (1334–42). 9 Carr, ‘Crossing Boundaries in the Mediterranean’, 109–12. 10 Linehan and Zutshi, ‘Fiat A’, 998. 11 See Boyle, Survey of the Vatican Archives, 150–53. 12 See, for example, Housley, Avignon Papacy, 206–13; Richard, ‘Le Royaume de Chypre’, 134.

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period from Clement VI to Urban V, during which more than 150 licences were granted, meaning that any attempts to calculate their monetary value are rendered almost useless because of the deficit of data.13 If we therefore discount financial considerations, because of a lack of data, then we must consider other reasons. One justification that the popes give in the texts of the actual licences is that they were sometimes granted as a reward to those who undertook certain pious activities, such as for undertaking charitable work and, increasingly during the pontificate of Clement VI, as an incentive for crusading against the Turks. This was especially important for Clement who, in 1343, launched the Crusade of Smyrna against the Turks in the Aegean in an effort to defend Latin territories in the region. Some of the trade licences granted in this period were issued in order to offset the costs of this crusade and to help redirect Latin trade away from Anatolia and towards Mamlūk Egypt.14 Considering this, and also bearing in mind the pre-existing relaxations of the embargo created by local clergy and the existence of absolutions, it becomes evident that the mid-fourteenth century was a time in which the traditional embargo, imposed against Mamlūk Egypt, was no longer tenable or desirable on the part of the papacy. It is therefore likely that Clement VI and his successors actively increased the number of licences they issued in order better to suit the geopolitical situation in the Eastern Mediterranean and also in order better to regulate the processes associated with the relaxation of the embargo, by bringing more of this trade under the papacy’s control through licences. If this is the case, then how much control did the papacy actually have over the licences it granted? On the face of it, if one were to follow the arguments of Ernst Pitz — the most ardent exponent of reactive papal government — it could be argued that the licences were a totally reactive measure, instigated by the merchants who sought them through petitions rather than the popes themselves.15 However, as Thomas Smith, Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt, and others have pointed out, this interpretation of papal government is too simplistic.16 First of all, it should be noted that one of the (unfortunate) features of the Registra Supplicationum was that they were not used to record unsuccessful petitions. In fact, petitions which were not approved by the curial staff were mostly discarded, or sometimes retained by the curial proctors who made them on behalf of their clients. But because the records of very few proctors survive, then there are even fewer examples of unsuccessful petitions in existence, and none for trade licences of which I am aware.17 Thus, it is possible that the later Avignon popes may have rejected considerable numbers of requests for trade licences which were never recorded. Indeed, we know from earlier periods that petitions for trade licences were often rejected, as was the case during the pontificate of John XXII when 13 See Stantchev, Spiritual Rationality, 152–53, and Carr, Merchant Crusaders, 139–41. My current research will hopefully uncover more instances of payments for trade licences. 14 See Carr, Merchant Crusaders, 132–42; Carr, ‘Crossing Boundaries in the Mediterranean’, 115–18. 15 See Pitz, Papstreskript und Kaiserreskript and the comments in Smith, Curia and Crusade, 15 n. 40. 16 See Smith, Curia and Crusade, chap. 2, esp. 14–16, and Fonnesberg-Schmidt, The Popes and the Baltic Crusades, 21. 17 Suppliques de Clément VI, ed. by Ursmer Berlière, xxi–xxii; Zutshi, ‘Petitions to the Pope’, 84, 95.

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Venice made three unsuccessful requests in 1317, 1319, and 1327, which were recorded in the archives of Venice but not those of the papacy.18 Another important point is that although licences were granted on petition, there is extensive evidence of the papacy making modifications to the licences which it chose to issue, a factor which further suggests that Clement VI and his predecessors were not mere bystanders in the licencing process.19 Indeed, Zutshi has argued that in some instances the restrictions made to a successful petition made it, in effect, more like a rejection.20 From a provisional investigation of licences from the pontificates of Clement VI (1342–52) and Innocent VI (1352–62) it becomes apparent that from a total of ninety-five licences, over a third of them (thirty-five in total, or 37 per cent), had clauses or amendments made to them at the instigation of the pope himself, who seems to have personally approved all supplications for trade licences. The amendments were recorded at the end of the petition, usually following the word Fiat, which indicated the approval of the petition, and before the pope’s initial — R in the case of Clement VI, and G for Innocent VI.21 The clauses and amendments which were made to licences vary greatly, but the vast proportion relate to the moderation of the ‘value’ of a trade licence, which could be made in several ways. One way was through the restriction of the number of ships which a petitioner had requested. In general petitioners asked for permission to send either cogs (naves) or galleys to Mamlūk lands. Cogs were round-hulled cargo ships powered by sail, and galleys were smaller, swifter, vessels powered by oars as well as by sail. Cogs had far greater capacity for transporting merchandise and were thus favoured by petitioners. In some instances the papacy made minor reductions to licences by slightly reducing the numbers of a requested ship type, such as a restriction from five galleys to four galleys, authorized in 1344.22 But on most occasions they imposed a more severe reduction, such as by half, from two galleys to one galley, twice in 1349,23 and from four cogs to two cogs in 1351,24 or by two-thirds, from three cogs to one cog in 1346.25 In one instance, in 1347, the unfortunate supplicant Peter of Lucingio had his request reduced by three-quarters, from four galleys to one.26 The papacy also restricted licences by replacing high-capacity cogs with lower capacity

18 These are not the petitions themselves, but records of Venetian embassies tasked with securing licences: I libri commemoriali, ed. by Predelli, i.2, 183–84, nos 64–65; Le deliberazioni del Consiglio dei Rogati, ed. by Cessi and Sambin, i.5, 201, 207, nos 277, 353, xi, 361–71, nos 31, 98, 127, 137, 138; Diplomatarium Veneto-Levantinum, ed. by Thomas, i, no. 105. 19 An interesting comparative example, although without a focus on trade licences, is given by Hayez, ‘La Personnalité d’Urbain V’. 20 Zutshi, ‘Petitions to the Pope’, 94. 21 Suppliques de Clément VI, ed. by Ursmer Berlière, xxii. For more on amendments and restrictions to petitions, see Zutshi, ‘Petitions to the Pope’, 93–94. 22 To Peter, Duke of Bourbon, on 10 May 1344: Reg. Suppl. 6, fol. 374v. 23 To Hector Vincenti on 27 April 1349: Reg. Suppl. 19, fol. 266v; and to Manfred Zaccaria on 18 June 1349: Reg. Suppl. 20, fol. 44r. 24 To Pedro, Count of Ribagorza, on 22 November 1351: Reg. Suppl. 23, fol. 197r. 25 To James of Majorca on 28 October 1346: Reg. Suppl. 12, fol. 81r. 26 Reg. Suppl. 13, fol. 145r (23 April 1347).

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galleys. A common exchange was one cog for two galleys, which occurred in 1347, 1350, and 1352,27 and two cogs for two galleys, which occurred in 1346 and 1352.28 The exchange of cogs for galleys was actually far more drastic than the reduction in the number of the same ship type as each cog was calculated by the papacy to be of equivalent value to seven galleys. This is known from an amendment made to a Venetian licence in 1345 in which the pope allowed the Republic to replace each cog with seven galleys because, so argued the Venetians, pirates were threatening their trade routes and galleys offered better security than cogs. But even on this occasion the pope restricted the initial request from the doge, which was for each cog to be replaced by eight to ten galleys.29 The papacy also moderated the value of licences by restricting other specific details that the petitioners included in their original supplications. Thus on two occasions in 1350 petitioners stated how many galley voyages they would make, only to see them duly restricted by the pope, from twelve voyages to ten, and from four voyages to one.30 At times petitioners also stated how much trade they would like to undertake in monetary terms, which again was sometimes reduced, such as from 6000 gold florins to 2000 in 1349,31 and from 3000 gold florins to 2000 in 1351.32 On one occasion, a Genoese merchant called Domenic Codora and two of his associates were allowed to trade with the Mamlūks and to reside overseas for two years, and although they had not stated a desired monetary amount, their trade was still restricted to 5000 gold florins.33 The popes also imposed fixed durations in licences, ranging from three to five years,34 and sometimes combined the parameters of their restrictions, for example by exchanging a monetary amount for a number of ships, such as in 1350, when a licence for 25,000 florins was downgraded to four galleys but with no monetary limit.35 Finally, on two occasions, supplicants made requests for licences which were unclear in terms of their value but which nevertheless had restrictions imposed upon them. The first was made in 1345 by Leonardo Bartolommeo, whose request to ship unspecified amounts of mastic to the Mamlūks was restricted to one trip with one galley,36 and the second was made by Filippo of Sangineto in 1346, who

27 To Niccolò of Jamvilla on 15 February 1347: Reg. Suppl. 13, fol. 62r; to John of Montgisard on 7 October 1350: Reg. Suppl. 22, fol. 184; and to Dalmatius de Vissac on 2 May 1352: Reg. Suppl. 23, fol. 266v. 28 To Roger of Palermo on 17 July 1346: Reg. Suppl. 11, fol. 91r; and to William of Montague on 2 May 1352: Reg. Suppl. 23, fol. 266v. 29 Reg. Suppl. 9, fol. 139v (15 August 1345); Carr, Merchant Crusaders, 50; Carr, ‘Crossing Boundaries in the Mediterranean’, no. 12. 30 To Bindo Falconis on 13 June 1350: Reg. Suppl. 22, fol. 20v; and to Simon le Petit on 20 September 1350: Reg. Suppl. 22, fol. 141r. 31 To Angelus Pinelo on 27 April 1349: Reg. Suppl. 19, fol. 270r. 32 To Raymond Solas on 21 September 1351: Reg. Suppl. 23, fol. 151r. 33 To Domenico Codora on 5 February 1347: Reg. Suppl. 13, fol. 55r. 34 To Leodegard of Nabinaux and John of Montolif on 12 October 1348: Reg. Suppl. 17, fol. 270v; to Guillaume Roger and his wife Eleanor on 13 July 1352: Reg. Suppl. 24, fol. 62r; and to Raymond Babin on 11 June 1360: Reg. Suppl. 33, fol. 123v. 35 Reg. Suppl. 22, fol. 98r (11 July 1350). 36 Reg. Suppl. 9, fol. 168r (3 September 1345).

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asked for permission to send ‘some galleys’ to the Mamlūks, but saw this limited to two by the papacy.37 However, the amendments made to a licence did not always constitute a clear reduction of its value, and on some occasions the papacy responded positively to petitioners’ requests to amend an aspect of a licence that had already been granted, which sometimes significantly increased its value. For example, on 2 February 1350, Hector Vincenti, who had received a restricted licence the year before, made a successful petition for a licence for two galleys and up to 20,000 gold florins.38 This was cancelled by the preceptor P. Germani, and replaced on 24 February with a more generous licence for four galleys and 20,000 gold florins.39 Likewise, in the same year, Giovanni Cattaneo had his request for a licence for one cog and two galleys upgraded to one for two cogs.40 Another example exists for a licence which was reduced, but then partially increased after a second petition. This occurred in June 1349, when Octavian Zaccaria, the son of the famous crusader Martino Zaccaria and himself a participant in the Crusade of Smyrna, made a petition for a licence to trade up to 50,000 gold florins for six years which was restricted by the pope to one cog and two galleys. This was partially eased a few weeks later when Octavian successfully applied for a new licence, worth 25,000 gold florins for three years, to replace his existing one.41 This was only half the value of his original request, but presumably more generous than the restriction to one cog and two galleys. Unfortunately, the papal scribes do not state the reasons for these amendments, but on rare occasions some indication is given by the supplicants themselves. One such justification was given by Pedro of Ribagorza in 1349, who successfully persuaded the pope to upgrade his pre-existing licence for one galley to one for a cog because of the dangers of pirates.42 This is particularly unusual since in the example noted earlier, that awarded to Venice in 1345, the doge convinced the pope to swap the cogs in the licence for galleys because of the greater security of oared vessels.43 Another example exists from 1350, when Lucchinus and Mervaldus Pellegrino successfully asked for their licence of 10,000 gold florins to be swapped for a licence for a cog because of ‘many impediments’ which rendered their previous permit unusable, although what these impediments were is not stated.44 On the face of it, the examples cited above suggest a great deal of inconsistency on the part of the papacy. Why, for example, did it restrict some licences but upgrade others, and why did it agree to modifications, such as to Pedro of Ribagorza’s licence, which were based on a logic which it had contradicted in modifications elsewhere? The answer to these questions lies in the fact that behind each petition for a licence,

Reg. Suppl. 12, fol. 136v (8 December 1346). Reg. Suppl. 21, fol. 151v. Reg. Suppl. 21, fol. 165v. Reg. Suppl. 22, fol. 4r (21 May 1350). Reg. Suppl. 20, fol. 45v (18 June 1349); Reg. Suppl. 20, fol. 82r (3 July 1349). Reg. Suppl. 21, fol. 78v (5 November 1349), replacing a licence issued on 15 September 1349: ASV, Registra Avenionensia 110, fol. 435v. 43 See above, note 29. 44 Reg. Suppl. 22, fol. 45r (6 June 1350).

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and its modification, lay a host of discussions, calculations, and justifications, on the part of both the petitioner and the papacy, which were not recorded alongside the licence. Therefore, although it is tempting to suggest reasons for why the above licences were amended, little can be said with certainty from the information provided by the petition for the licence itself.45 This means that one must undergo the painstaking task of tracing the correspondence of the individuals named in each licence in an effort to piece together their relationship with the pope and other high-ranking prelates, as well as any activities which they were engaged in that may have influenced the outcome of their request. Little more is known about most of the examples cited above, and it may be that some of the licences were restricted to such an extent that they were never taken up by the supplicant.46 Nevertheless, it is likely that many of the modifications can be explained by simple factors which were never recorded. For example, it is possible that informal and unrecorded payments influenced whether a licence was restricted, and, if so, by how much, or simply that petitioners asked the pope for more than they really expected in anticipation of their licence being reduced. These factors seem likely, although it should be noted that a thirteenth-century manual cited bribes as a common reason for the failure of a supplication, which suggests that informal payments may not have been as common as first thought.47 Nevertheless, one thing that is certain is that the status of the licensee and his relationship with the papacy was absolutely crucial in securing a petition and, presumably, also in ensuring that any modification to a licence was not too restrictive. A good example of this is Octavian Zaccaria who made a petition for a licence on behalf of his close relative (consanguinitas) Manfred in 1349. This licence was actually restricted from two galleys to one by the pope, but nonetheless, it is reasonable to assume that Octavian’s name helped in the original supplication.48 He was, after all, a key participant in the Crusade of Smyrna and the son of the recently deceased papal favourite Martino Zaccaria, who had been the recipient of numerous licences dating back to the 1320s and who was specifically mentioned in both Manfred and Octavian’s petitions.49 The importance of ancestral pedigree and connections to crusading certainly seem to have been a factor in the issue of licences, and they also provide a possible reason for the generous amendment to Octavian’s restricted licence in 1349, mentioned above.50 A similar example of the importance of familial links is given by the famous physician and personal friend of Clement VI, Guy de Chauliac, who petitioned for a licence on behalf of his brother, Robert, in 1345.51 It is also likely

45 See, for example, the examples given by Stantchev, Spiritual Rationality, 149–50. 46 For this, see Zutshi, ‘Petitions to the Pope’, 85, 93–95. 47 According to the Rhetorica antiqua of Master Boncompagno da Signa, c. 1215 × c. 1226; see Smith, Curia and Crusade, 69–70. 48 Above note 23. 49 See Carr, Merchant Crusaders, 119–42. 50 Above, note 41. See Carr, Merchant Crusaders, 119–42, for more on the connections between crusading and licences. 51 Carr, ‘Crossing Boundaries in the Mediterranean’, 114.

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that petitioners would have taken advantage of any roles they were given by foreign dignitaries which would have boosted their standing in the eyes of the papacy, such as heading diplomatic missions to the curia. This seems to have been the case with the Cypriot nobles Raymond Babin, John of Morfo, and Thomas of Montolif, who made successful supplications for licences when acting as Cypriot ambassadors at the papal court in 1360.52 The importance that the papacy attached to familial and diplomatic networks can therefore be seen as a means by which it maintained even greater authority over the process of granting trade licences. To conclude, the papal trade embargo provides an interesting insight into the means by which the papacy aimed to impose, or maintain, some form of power and authority over Latin commerce with Muslims, an aspect of life which it is often presumed lay outside of its control. It is true that the papacy was not able to prevent all trade with Muslims, but from studying trade licences, it is clear that that was not its objective, at least by the Avignon period. The licences, although issued on petition, were tightly regulated by the popes, who chose which individuals received them and modified them accordingly. Unfortunately, because of the scarcity of sources, it is difficult to know how licences actually worked overseas, or what percentage of merchants trading with Muslims actually carried one, but that is not really the point.53 Making a petition for a licence at the curia, or anything else for that matter, was not something to be taken lightly. It would have required a great deal of thought on the part of the petitioner, not to mention time and money.54 The fact that so many individuals deemed it worth making a supplication for a licence is proof that even in this aspect of life, the papacy still maintained some vestige of power and authority.

Works Cited Manuscripts ASV, Registra Avenionensia 110 ASV, Registra Supplicationum 6, 12, 13, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 33 Primary Sources Le deliberazioni del Consiglio dei Rogati (Senato): Serie ‘mixtorum’, ed. by R. Cessi and P. Sambin, 2 vols (Venice, 1960) Diplomatarium Veneto-Levantinum: sive acta et diplomata res Venetas Graecas atque Levantis illustrantia a. 1300–1350, ed. by G. M. Thomas, 2 vols (Venice, 1880–89)

52 Reg. Suppl. 33, fol. 123v; Reg. Suppl. 35, fol. 309r; Edbury, Kingdom of Cyprus, 148, 175; Carr, ‘Between the Papal Court and the Islamic World’, pp. 120–21. 53 For an example of a merchant using a licence in Syria, see Carr, Merchant Crusaders, 138 n. 97. My current research will hopefully uncover more examples of this. 54 See Smith, Curia and Crusade, chap. 2, esp. 75.

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I libri commemoriali della Republica di Venezia regesti, ed. by R. Predelli, 4 vols (Venice, 1876–83) Suppliques de Clément VI (1342–1352): Textes et analyses, ed. by D. Ursmer Berlière (Rome, 1906) Secondary Studies Ashtor, E., Levant Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, 1983) Boyle, L. E., A Survey of the Vatican Archives and of its Medieval Holdings (Toronto, 1972) Carr, M., ‘Between the Papal Court and the Islamic World: Famagusta and Cypriot Merchants in the Fourteenth Century’, in Famagusta Maritima: Mariners, Merchants, Pilgrims and Mercenaries, ed. by M. Walsh (Leiden, 2019), pp. 113–27 ———, ‘Crossing Boundaries in the Mediterranean: Papal Trade Licences from the Registra Supplicationum of Pope Clement VI (1342–1352)’, JMH, 41 (2015), 107–29 ———, Merchant Crusaders in the Aegean, 1291–1352 (Woodbridge, 2015) Edbury, P. W., The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191–1374 (Cambridge, 1991) Esch, A., ‘Der Handel zwischen Christen und Muslimen im Mittelmeer-Raum: Verstöße gegen das päpstliche Embargo geschildert in den Gesuchen an die Apostolische Pönitentiarie (1439–1483)’, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 92 (2012), 85–140 ———, ‘New Sources on Trade and Dealings between Christians and Muslims in the Mediterranean Region (ca.1440–1500)’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 33 (2018), 135–48 Fonnesberg-Schmidt, I., The Popes and the Baltic Crusades, 1147–1254 (Leiden, 2007) Hayez, A.-M., ‘La Personnalité d’Urbain V d’après ses réponses aux suppliques’, in Le Fonctionnement administratif de la papauté d’Avignon: Actes de la table ronde organisé par l’École Française de Rome, avec le concours du CNRS, du Conseil Général du Vaucluse et de l’Université d’Avignon (Avignon, 23–24 janvier 1988), [ed. by D. Favier] (Rome, 1990), 7–31 Housley, N., The Avignon Papacy and the Crusades, 1305–1378 (Oxford, 1986) Kelleher, M., ‘The Family Business: Royal Embargo and the Shippers, Captains and Smugglers of Barcelona’s Marquet Family’, in Merchants, Pirates and Smugglers: Criminalization, Economics and the Transformation of the Maritime World (1200–1600), ed. by T. Heebøll-Holm, P. Höhn, and G. Rohmann (Frankfurt, 2019), 57–74 Linehan, P. A., and P. N. R. Zutshi, ‘Fiat A: The Earliest Known Roll of Petitions Signed by the Pope (1307)’, EHR, 122 (2007), 998–1015 Luttrell, A. T., ‘The Crusade in the Fourteenth Century’, in Europe in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by J. R. Hale, J. R. L. Highfield, and B. Smalley (London, 1970), 122–54 Menache, S., Clement V (Cambridge, 1998) ———, ‘Papal Attempts at a Commercial Boycott of the Muslims in the Crusader Period’, JEH, 63 (2012), 236–59 Pitz, E., Papstreskript und Kaiserreskript im Mittelalter (Tübingen, 1971) Richard, J., ‘Le Royaume de Chypre et l’embargo sur le commerce avec l’Egypte (fin xiiie– début xive siècle)’, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et BellesLettres, 128 (1984), 120–34

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Smith, T. W., Curia and Crusade: Pope Honorius III and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1216–1227 (Turnhout, 2017) Stantchev, S., Spiritual Rationality: Papal Embargo as Cultural Practice (Oxford, 2014) Zutshi, P., ‘Petitions to the Pope in the Fourteenth Century’, in Medieval Petitions: Grace and Grievance, ed. by W. M. Ormrod, G. Dodd, and A. Musson (Woodbridge, 2009), 82–98

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Part IV

Cultures of Ecclesiastical Authority and Power

Matthew Ross

The Late Medieval Papal Chapel: A Culture of Power and Authority

In the web of papal power and authority that spun across late medieval Rome, one node held special significance: the papal chapel. This essay illustrates the papal chapel’s importance as a human apparatus of papal power and authority between c. 1288 and c. 1304.1 It explores how the curia’s social structures affected cultural activity, especially among papal chaplains. In turn, it considers how papal chaplains’ cultural activities expressed and exerted papal power and authority. Of the wealth of cultural activities in the papal chapel, two disparate fields, law and music, became intertwined with far-reaching consequences for cultural life at the curia. These I shall study in comparison to the English chapel royal.2

The Papal Chapel and Curial Society The one surviving ordinance of the late thirteenth-century papal household states that the papal chapel contained some two dozen clerics who were appointed by the pope and lived a collegiate life at the papal palace. Papal chaplains sat at the heart of the detailed spectacle of papal ritual. They conducted a large portion of the pope’s daily private liturgy and carried out ceremonial duties for the pope and cardinals at table and in chapel. They travelled with the curia when it left Rome for itinerant summers and undertook special duties for the pontiff on request, notably diplomatic missions.3



1 Ross, ‘Papal Chapel’. 2 The origins and history of the chapel royal until 1327 have been traced by the musicologist Iain Bent: Bent, ‘Early History’; Bent, ‘English Chapel Royal’. 3 A household ordinance written around 1306 outlines the essential responsibilities of all personnel in the household, including the papal chapel. It exists in two manuscript sources: Aosta, Archivio storico del vescovado, MS uncatalogued, ed. in Frutaz, ‘La famiglia pontificia’, at 284–319, and Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, Cod. IX, D. 15, fols 67r–73v, ed. in Frutaz, ‘La famiglia pontificia’; also ed. in Haller, ‘Zwei Aufzeichnungen’, at 8–31. Matthew Ross completed his PhD at University College, London, in 2013. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 219–231 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118967

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The full picture of the papal chapel is far more complex and shows how an international elite acquired status and positions of influence in papal government, the Church, and curial society. Between nine and twenty-five papal chaplains are named in curial household rolls and accounts at any time, but some 246 names are styled ‘papal chaplain’ in the papal registers between 1278 and 1304.4 This was a society of influential clerics appointed by the pope, many personally, some in name only. In government, papal chaplains acted as legates, enforcing papal directives across Christendom. The pope gave papal chaplaincies to high officials at other courts to forge strategic bonds, and there was much fluidity at this time between honorary papal chaplains and others who fulfilled active duties at the papal court. In law, chaplains were favoured as papal auditors and exercised papal authority through their legal judgements. For many, the papal chapel was a stepping stone to higher curial office. Papal chaplains often entered the chapel following lower curial appointments (and could hold other offices alongside a papal chaplaincy). Many papal chaplains later became bishops, some became cardinals, and two in the period in hand became pope. Papal chaplains were not only deployed in a bureaucratic capacity, but also contributed to curial intellectual life. They were appointed in part for their personal accomplishments and prestige, often in the field of scholarship.5 A much-cited passage in the Liber de statu Curie Romane, a poem written between 1261 and 1265 by the poet and chronicler Heinrich von Würzburg, describes papal chaplains seated at Urban IV’s feet after ceremonial meals, entertaining him with scholarly discussion.6 The papal physician and chaplain Campano da Novara, in the dedicatory letter of his Theorica planetarum, noted his own participation in such a pastime, in colourful military metaphor.7 Intellectual and personal skills were crucial to papal chaplains’ work, particularly as legates. In May 1291, Nicholas IV sent his chaplain Matheus Protonobilissimus de Neapoli to Philip IV’s court to negotiate the release of papal bankers detained in France, extolling his chaplain for his scientia, conversatio, and probitas.8



4 A roll dating from 1278 lists by name the household of Nicholas III and their allowances in comestibles from the camera: BAV, MS Vat. Ottobon. lat. 2516, fols 168r–185v, ed. in Baethgen, ‘Quellen und Untersuchungen’. Account books of the Apostolic Camera for the years 1299–1300 and 1302–03 contain payments to and disbursements for papal chaplains: ASV, MSS Collectoriae 446 and Introitus et Exitus 5, ed. in Liber rationum, ed. by Schmidt. 5 A rare example of a papal letter appointing a papal chaplain was sent in 1298 from Boniface VIII to John of Droxford, then Keeper of the Wardrobe and later Bishop of Bath, inviting him to become a papal chaplain in recognition of his position at the English royal court and to enhance his future status and career: Les Registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Thomas and others, no. 2639. 6 Grauert, Magister Heinrich der Poet, 95–100, lines 773–882. 7 ‘Sumptis namque fecundis dapibus placet ut illud uenerabile capellanorum uestrorum collegium quos sibi uestra coadesse clementia uoluit uos sequatur. Quibus ad uestre sanctitatis pedes sedentibus iocundum sapientie certamen indictis in quo militaribus armis accincti militariter dimicant partes agrediens et agressa […] Habent itaque Philosophiam professi de uestre mense benedictione quo uentrem reficiant et quo mentem’: Campano da Novara, Theorica Planetarum, ed. by Benjamin and Toomer, 132. 8 Les Registres de Nicolas IV, ed. by Langlois, no. 7326.

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Scholarship was also symbolically tied to papal chaplains’ income. All papal chaplains held benefices, which were the chief economic support behind any clerical career. Indeed, their accumulating benefices are recorded in the papal registers by a succession of dispensations for pluralism and residence over many years that also trace the outline of their careers. Appointment to a benefice formally required skills in grammar, music, and literature, upholding the value that the curia placed on scholarship. On occasion, the pope would personally sanction a clerical appointment by commending the new incumbent’s learning. Boniface VIII did just this when he confirmed the famous canon lawyer and former papal chaplain Guido de Baisio as Archdeacon of Bologna in 1296.9 In addition to their benefices, the two dozen papal chaplains in active service in the chapel at a given time were also paid as members of the papal household. They were one of the highest-paid household offices, one rung below cardinals and equal to the auditor litterarum contradictarum, the papal physician, and the heads of the four household services (kitchen, pantry, cellar, and stables). So far as records indicate, papal chaplains had always received these payments in kind — in vidandae (provisions of food and drink for chaplains’ own households) and in prebendae or anonae (food and provision for horses). By 1299, the curia had begun to pay daily wages in cash, equivalent to the value of vidandae, for periods when chaplains accompanied the itinerant pope during the curia’s summer sojourns outside Rome.10 Chaplains also received a weekly provision of candles, food from the great kitchen for meals eaten in aula, entitlement to their part of hospitality offered gratis to the curia by towns on which it descended, and an allotted portion of the curial common services (servitia communa) and petty services (servitia minuta). In addition, chaplains received the ceremonial gift in coins known as the presbyterium on Christmas and Easter Day and on the anniversary of the papal coronation. All told, a papal chaplain’s income from the papal household was handsome, notwithstanding additional revenue from his benefices. His daily income in vidandae alone, calculated at the rate of their out-oftown substitute, was worth five times a skilled mason’s daily wage and equivalent to a sixth of an almonry servant’s entire annual upkeep.11 Strictly read, this provision supported papal chaplains’ official duties. In practice, it also enabled papal chaplains to exercise their duties in papal bureaucracy, law, and government — though their additional expenses for some individual missions were likely paid and recorded in accounts now lost — and supported their contribution to curial intellectual and cultural life, discussed further below.



9 ‘Consuevit apostolica sedes viros litterarum scientia preditos, generis nobilitate claros, et aliarum virtutum muneribus decoratos precipuis favoribus prosequi et condignis provisionibus ecclesiasticis decoratos honorare. […] Nos litterarum sufficientem scientiam, nobilitatem generis et alia virtutum dona que tibi suffragare didicimus attendentes ac volentes propter hoc personam tuam in prefata ecclesia honorare’ [editorial punctuation mine]: Reg. Vat. 48, part 1, fols 109v–110r; Les Registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Thomas and others, no. 467. 10 ASV, MSS Collectoriae 446 and Introitus et Exitus 5, ed. in Liber rationum, ed. by Schmidt. 11 For papal chaplains’ remuneration from the camera and personal wealth, see Ross, ‘Papal Chapel’, 82–98.

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Papal chaplains’ career trajectories differed widely, Some would enter the chapel early in their curial careers, others later in life. Giacomo Stefaneschi was about twenty-one when he was first recorded as a papal chaplain in 1291, and Guido de Baisio at least forty when he first appeared with the title in 1296.12 Through the late 1200s and early 1300s, the chapel contained a core of long-standing papal chaplains who hailed largely from Rome and the Papal States, especially Campagna, and who often came from noble families (though not from their highest ranks). Each pope recruited a wave of his own, additional chaplains, who were commonly local potentates from the Papal States, appointed for strategic territorial reasons.13 Equally, rich families, largely but not exclusively from the crucible of Rome, sought the benefits of chapel membership — the Colonna, Caetani, Stefaneschi, Orsini, Savelli, and Fieschi, to name the most famous. From further afield came other groups of chaplains from the British Isles, south-west and northern France, the Low Countries, Germany, eastern Europe, Iberia, and outliers from the Middle East and Orient. For those who wanted to build an international career, the papal chapel was a valuable instrument. Many powerful clerics passed through the papal chapel before returning to diocesan responsibilities or proceeding to episcopal sees.14 Such international mobility went in hand with the burgeoning of Europe’s universities. Peter Classen identified a pattern in the twelfth century whereby aristocratic Roman families sent their male children to centres of learning in northern France — Laon, Chartres, Reims, and, increasingly, Cluny and Paris — to obtain a schooling in litteratura, honestas, and religio, which was a prerogative for high position in curial society.15 The same trend somewhat endured at the thirteenth-century curia. The majority of papal chaplains of Roman origin first dispersed to Europe’s major centres of learning before returning to forge careers in and around the curia. Equally, extensive recruitment of papal chaplains from across Europe brought other university-educated clerics, not returning but migrating to the curia. It is notable that the curia did not exploit its own educational centre — the studium curiae — to build its own pipeline of top scholars. Founded by Innocent IV in 1244–45, the studium curiae existed primarily to provide the many visitors from other academic centres with a place of learning during their curial sojourn. It was not a studium generalis, like the universities of Paris and Bologna. Nor did it confer the licentia ubique docendi as universities did. No candidates in religious orders were

12 For papal chaplains’ ages, see Ross, ‘Papal Chapel’, 53–54. 13 Nicholas IV appointed large groups of chaplains from England, Languedoc, and northern Italy, notably Emilia Romagna, and two eminent lawyers from Bordeaux. Boniface VIII heavily recruited again from England, but predominantly from Rome and the Papal States, in particular Campania — a testament to his personal involvement in territorial policy, manifest in the stategic appointment of local figures to curial positions. Clement V favoured Italian papal chaplains for curial administrative uses, but also appointed south-western Frenchmen, apparently as honorary chaplains to foster allegiance with his home territory. For full discussion of papal chaplains’ provenance between 1288 and 1304, see Ross, ‘Papal Chapel’, 57–81. 14 Ross, ‘Papal Chapel’, 52–56. 15 Classen, ‘Rom und Paris’, 144–45.

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assigned to the curial studium to obtain their degree; rather they went to Paris for this purpose.16 Whilst higher education was a prerequisite of curial life, the curial studium would not produce qualified scholars of its own until it became a studium generalis in the fourteenth century.17 Far from the neatly defined office summarized in the 1306 household ordinance, the papal chapel was a complex and influential subsection of curial society. Its special appointment procedure (personal selection by the pope) side-stepped the bureaucratic procedures that regulated activities in many other curial offices, as did the fact that a papal chaplaincy could overlay a chaplain’s other positions at court. For most papal chaplains, there was no obligation to fulfil prescribed day-to-day duties in the chapel itself. As a result, they could participate in a whole array of practices — administrative, legal, intellectual, and social — and the chapel became a centre of legal, medical, and scientific study, of literary pursuits, and of patronage in the visual and musical arts.

The Papal Chapel and Curial Culture This wealth of expertise, underpinned by economic power, formed a socially competitive arena within the curia, in which status and perceived power were mediated by personal accomplishments. Prestigious cultural activities, their tastes and styles reflecting papal chaplains’ home regions, made the curia appear as a court among courts.18 In this hive of cultural activity, the papal chapel had two distinctive specialisms: law in the late thirteenth century, followed in the fourteenth century by music. The shift whereby music supplanted law as the papal chapel’s pre-eminent specialism illustrates the importance of institutional change for the papal chapel’s history. Furthermore, similarities between the papal chapel and the English chapel royal suggest that common institutional preconditions supported the emergence of specialist chapel musicians in both England and Rome. The thirteenth-century curia relied on papal chaplains as legal experts, and the chapel saw a concentration of legal activity that is unparalleled in the household chapels of other European courts.19 There was extensive crossover between papal chaplains and curial auditors of all kinds. Some twenty-six papal chaplains between 1288 and 1304 were named as auditors in the papal registers, acting at the curia or elsewhere in

16 For the thirteeenth-century Roman studium curiae, see Creytens, ‘Le “Studium Romanae Curiae”’; Paravicini Bagliani, ‘La fondazione dello “Studium Curiae”’. For the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century studium curiae, see Schwarz, Kurienuniversität. 17 The curial studium became a full studium generalis under Clement V, at some point before it appeared in this capacity in the acts of the Council of Vienne in 1312. See Creytens, ‘Le “Studium Romanae Curiae”’, 30–31. 18 For a fuller analysis of cultural activity in the papal chapel, see Ross, ‘Papal Chapel’, 197–244. 19 Chaplains royal had been used as attorneys under Henry III (1216–72), but only one chaplain royal arbitrated in a legal case under Edward I (1272–1307) and Edward II (1307–27): Bent, ‘Early History’, 185. In France, no evidence is yet known of chaplains of the capella regis acting as lawyers for the French Crown. For the French capella regis, see Branner, ‘Sainte-Chapelle’.

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Europe. Twelve were first named as both a papal chaplain and curial auditor, which suggests that some of these dual appointments went in hand. Beyond the twenty-six papal chaplain auditors, every successive auditor litterarum contradictarum in this period was also a papal chaplain.20 It is likely that many auditors were appointed to the papal chapel in order to offer them an official foothold in the curia, which reinforced their legal authority. The concentration of legal expertise in the papal chapel fostered flourishing activity in legal thought, as much a part of curial culture as patronage of the visual arts and literary, theological, and musical activity. Jurisprudence shows most clearly how investment in university education was rewarded with status in curial society. Ten papal chaplain auditors are attested in the registers as doctor in canon or civil law, or as having studied law at a university.21 At least eight further papal chaplain auditors taught law in universities during their careers. These elite lawyers also produced original legal works of their own.22 They include Altegradus de Cataneis de Lendinaria (papal chaplain in 1300 and 1301) who wrote a volume of Quaestiones, now lost, which was known to the eminent canonist Johannes Andreae who noted Altegradus’s opinion on adultery in his Super Decretalibus. Johannes Monachus (former papal chaplain of Honorius IV) wrote a famous apparatus on the Liber Sextus known as the Glossa aurea, and commentaries on several of Boniface VIII’s decretals including Unam sanctam, Detestandae, and Super cathedram. As Bishop of Novara, Papiano della Rovere (former papal chaplain before his elevation to this see) published synodal statutes in two parts: Instructiones et monitiones on doctrine and liturgy drawn from the ordinary of the papal chapel, and Constitutiones on canonical norms concerning standards of clerical life and ministry.23 Four current or former papal chaplains collaborated with Boniface VIII on the Liber Sextus (1298), the most important decretal collection since Gregory IX’s Liber Extra (1234); these were Berengarius Fredoli, Franciscus Roffedi Caetani, Guido de Baisio, and Guillelmus de Mandagotto. Furthermore, of the three glossators on the Sextus, two were associated with the papal chapel: Johannes Monachus was a former papal chaplain, and Guido de Baisio was an incumbent papal chaplain and auditor litterarum contradictarum when each produced his gloss.24 For their decisions on petitions and appeals submitted to the curia, and their contributions to canon law itself, legal specialists were prized and rewarded at

20 The auditor litterarum contradictarum was the auditor of the papal household, a prestigious office in its own right. Incumbents could also be papal auditors of other kinds earlier or later in their careers. The auditores litterarum contradictarum between 1288 and 1304, noting which first appeared as both papal chaplain and auditor, are listed in Ross, ‘Papal Chapel’, 209. 21 As titles and qualifications are not consistently recorded in the papal registers it is likely that more auditors also held these qualifications. 22 The selection known to this author, undoubtedly partial, is listed in Ross, ‘Papal Chapel’, Appendix 7, 281–82. 23 Johannes Andreae, Super decretalibus c. 7 X, V, 16; Jean Lemoine, Glossa Aurea; for Johannes Monachus’s commentaries on decretals, see Johannessesn, ‘Cardinal Jean Lemoine’. 24 Van Hove, ‘Liber Sextus Decretalium’, 227.

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the thirteenth-century curia. But in the fourteenth century the bond between the papal chapel and curial law changed decisively. From the 1330s, the papal auditors were formally organized as the Rota, the curia’s highest appellate tribunal, which still exists today. John XXII first laid out the new group’s statutes in his Ratio iuris of 1331: auditors had to be lawyers of the highest repute and were classified by age into three ranks.25 Meanwhile, a hierarchical structure had been developing in the papal chapel, crystallizing pre-existing but formerly fluid distinctions. The office of honorary papal chaplain was formalized and clearly named, distinguishing honorary capellani commensales from serving papal chaplains, termed the capellani intrinseci or capellani capelle intrinseci. Several papal chaplain auditors from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries continued in legal service as part of the new Rota while new auditors of the Rota were also made honorary chaplains. By the time this appellate tribunal was first termed the Rota in 1336, it is clear that its auditors were only ever capellani commensales, and never capellani capelle intrinseci.26 The symbolic connection between the papal chapel and curial jurisprudence endured in honorary papal chaplaincies, but serving papal chaplains ceased to work as papal auditors altogether. How did these changes affect musical activity in the papal chapel? In the second half of the thirteenth century, appointment to the papal chapel was heavily determined by legal expertise, as well as administrative and diplomatic skill. These legal experts had some musical competence, enough to sing the liturgy, learned during their early education at a cathedral song school. But they were unlikely to have had exceptional vocal and musical prowess. The sole indication of special musical skill among papal chaplains in the thirteenth century is the epithet cantor, written against the name of the papal chaplain Nicolaus de Spoleto in a household roll compiled under Pope Nicholas III in 1278.27 Indeed, there was little demand for specialist musical training among papal chaplains given that a separate body of singers, the Roman schola cantorum, not itself part of the papal household, undertook much of the sung liturgy in Roman ceremonial. Singers from the schola sang on high feast days and performed in the daily hours and at Mass alongside the papal chaplains, even (contrary to much scholarship to date) when the curia travelled outside Rome.28 By contrast, the musical skill of the chaplains royal at the English royal court had been valued highly for some time. The musical theorist Anonymous IV, associated with the Notre Dame school of polyphony that flourished in Paris in the twelfth century, commented favourably on the chapel royal’s singers. One singer in Henry III’s

25 Paris, BnF, MS lat. 4169, fol. 81 and BAV, MS Cod. Ottobon. lat. 911, cited in Tangl, Die päpstliche Kanzleiordnungen, 85. 26 Guillemain, La Cour pontificale, 346–49, 367–68. 27 BAV, MS Vat. Ottobon. lat. 2516, fol. 183r. 28 On the Roman schola cantorum, see Ross, ‘Papal Chapel’, 18–28, esp. 23–25 for evidence that three singers from the schola travelled with the curia to Anagni to carry out Boniface VIII’s private liturgy in the summer of 1302. On papal chaplains’ musical competence in relation to the schola, see ibid., 232–38.

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chapel, John Blakesmith, was even worthy of comparison with the best Parisian singers of the time.29 Consequently, as a corporate body the chapel royal could express ideals of power through music at a time when the papal chapel could not. The chapel royal’s highest liturgical duty was the chanting of the Christus vincit lauds at royal coronations and crown-wearings. These acclamations of ancient provenance evoked an ideal of monarchic power modelled on Christ’s spiritual kingship.30 Payments for singing the Christus vincit first appeared in 1200, initially to ‘clerks of the king’ and from 1204 to ‘clerks of the king’s capella’. Thereafter members of the chapel royal remained the only officers of the royal household paid for performing these acclamations of Christlike kingship. As the Christus vincit was the paramount expression of kingship in English royal crown-wearings, so in Rome the Exaudi Christe was the central statement of God-given authority in papal crown-wearings. But the Roman Exaudi Christe lauds were sung by performers from across the curia: archdeacons, notaries, and judges. There was no discrete link between the papal chapel and this acclamation of papal monarchic authority, musical or otherwise.31 The strength of ceremonial precedent must have inhibited potential changes to the papal chapel’s liturgical functions, as curialists’ roles in liturgy were prescribed by texts that changed little over centuries. But structural and functional differences between the chapels were also decisive. The chapel royal was much smaller than the papal chapel: it grew from four in 1245 to eight under Edward I and twelve under Edward II. Compared with the papal chapel, its function was more restricted and defined. Whereas papal chaplains had many legal and governmental functions beyond their liturgical duties, chaplains royal had few. The chapel royal travelled with the royal household, transporting the chapel’s liturgical equipment and performing the king’s daily liturgy. Only one chaplain arbitrated in a legal case under Edward I and Edward II, and few spent significant periods of time out of court.32 This in turn 29 ‘Boni cantores erant in Anglia, et valde deliciose canebant, sicut Magister Johannes filius Dei; sicut Makeblite apud Wyncestriam, et Blakesmit in Curia domini Regis Henrici ultimi’: Anonymous IV, De mensuris et discantu, ed. by Coussemaker, 344. 30 The authoritative study on the Christus vincit and other ruler acclamations remains Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae, 128–29. For the history of acclamatory lauds at the curia including the Exaudi Christe, which was the Roman counterpart of the Christus vincit, see ibid., 112–46. It is noteworthy that, whilst the chaplains royal alone performed the Exaudi Christe at the English royal court, in Rome the Exaudi Christe was chanted by performers drawn from across the curia, so does not provide an equivalent indication that the papal chapel had a special musical duty. 31 Exaudi Christe texts are recorded in Albinus’s Gesta pauperis scolari (1188) for the eighteen papal crown-wearings in the liturgical year and the papal crown-wearing on Easter Day: Liber Censuum, ii, 91. Censius’s twelfth-century ordo also records the Exaudi Christe for Easter Sunday: ibid., i, 290–21. Cardinal Jacopo Stefaneschi recorded the ceremonial for the inaugural coronations of Popes Benedict XI (27 October 1303) and John XXII (5 September 1316), as well as customary ceremonials for the coronation of a bishop elected pope (according to two texts, one of 1273 and another of 1303) and for the consecration of a new pope at St Peter’s in Rome according to the Roman Rite: Dykmans, Le Cérémonial papal, 271, 279, 296, 313, 337, 399, 444. 32 On 17 January 1292, Roger of Clare pardoned Richard le Fevre for a murder: Bent, ‘Early History’, 185. For the out-of-court duties of chaplains royal, see ibid., 180–82, and Ross, ‘Papal Chapel’, 185–86.

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made it possible for the chapel royal to assume specific functions at court and in liturgy as a corporate body, and to employ skilled singers at a time when the papal chapel could not. Furthermore, functional differentiation in the chapel royal was supported by clear administrative regulation. Chaplains royal were graded by rank in the thirteenth century and received differing wages and allowances in kind accordingly. There were up to five levels of robe allowances and four ranks of wages, in a wage system that had initially emerged to replace food allowances under Henry I.33 A chief chaplain in the chapel royal formally emerged in 1312, though he had a predecessor in all but name who undertook most of the later chief chaplain’s duties before the title itself appeared. The chief chaplain and his predecessor controlled the chapel royal’s finances. They operated a single chapel account and claimed chapel expenses directly from the royal household’s Wardrobe account. In the papal chapel such administrative rationalization developed later. Only from the 1330s did the curia formally recognize a chief chaplain — the magister capelle — who assumed full financial and administrative responsibility for the capella intrinseca. A consistent system of payment by wages is first recorded in Clement V’s cameral accounts in 1307, which evolved from the practice of paying curialists a day-rate during periods of itinerancy in lieu of payments in kind. The first wage payments equalled the market value of allowances in kind, and with time began to mark hierarchical differences between the types of papal chaplain. The cameral account payments of Benedict XII (1334–42) show that capellani commensales were paid at an equivalent rate to papal chaplains in the thirteenth century, whilst the capellani intrinseci received half this amount.34 The magister capelle’s leadership was marked by placing him first in lists of wage payments to capellani intrinseci. The capella intrinseca also adopted new accounting practices. Formerly the camera had paid household departments directly for services to the chapel (such as food, drink, laundry, and transport) whilst individual chapel staff claimed additional expenses from the cameral account ad hoc. Now the magister capelle prepared a single set of accounts for the whole chapel, paying household departments directly for their services and submitting regular claims to the curia’s main cameral account for standard expenses. With a newly restricted function, reinforced by increasingly rationalized regulation (in fact part of wider changes across the curia), the papal chapel began to employ specialist musicians. The first papal chaplain known to have composed music was Matheus de Longariga, first documented on the papal chapel’s payroll in 1378. He was followed by Matheus de Sancto Johanne in 1382, and a larger influx of musicians in 1393: a ‘Franciscus’ identified as the composer Johannes Franchois de Gemblaco, Johannes de Altacuria, Johannes de Bosco, and Johannes Symonis de Haspra.35 It is

33 For wages in the English royal court, see Green, Government of England, 19–37; Round, King’s Sergeants, 52–68; White, ‘Household of the Norman Kings’. 34 Ross, ‘Papal Chapel’, 99–100, 170–81. 35 Tomasello, Music and Ritual at Papal Avignon, 226, 233, 235–36, 248–49, 252–53.

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likely that a powerful wave of recruitment had been introducing a new and fashionable specialist musical practice into the papal chapel for some time. In the pontificate of Clement VI (1342–52), the largest single body of chaplains grouped by geographical provenance came from the dioceses of northern France and Flanders where the ars nova school of composition and singing had arisen, and where its principles were being taught in cathedral schools and diffused in a treatise compiled by students of its earliest exponent, Philippe de Vitry (1291–1361).36 Three factors combined to make this influx of technically skilled musicians possible. One was the curia’s move to Avignon under Clement V in 1309. The schola cantorum remained in Rome, and all performance of liturgical music fell to the papal chaplains, initially supported by local singers employed as needed.37 Another was the rationalization of papal chaplains’ function at the curia, especially the allocation of legal specialism to a new office of court and clarification of the purely honorary nature of the capellani commensales. Concurrently, a process of increasing regulation across the curia created conditions in the papal chapel similar to those that had, for some time, underpinned functional clarity in the chapel royal, notably its musical specialism. Once the formative requirements that papal chaplains have high legal education and undertake governmental and diplomatic duties had been removed, clerics with different educational specialism were able to enter the chapel in significant numbers. Over time, the main specialism among papal chaplains became music, and they filled the gap left by the absent schola cantorum. In a court chapel, where liturgy and music went in hand, a new type of courtier was engendered: the court chaplain as professional musician. The papal chapel could now become a specialist office for musical performance, with its potential to express ideas of papal power and authority through sound as never before. Three themes arise from this excursus on the papal chapel: its role in curial society, its distinctive place as a crucible of legal culture, and the growing importance of music as a jewel in the papal tiara. The thirteenth-century papal chapel was highly multifunctional, and its structure and function in curial society fostered legal culture (among other cultural activities only touched upon here) whilst inhibiting the growth of musical culture in the chapel. Only in the later fourteenth century, after serving papal chaplains had been divested of legal and governmental duties, could the papal chapel begin to develop musical specialism. Comparison between the papal chapel and English chapel royal also suggests that certain organizational

36 For recruitment patterns under Clement VI, see Tomasello, Music and Ritual at Papal Avignon, 54–57, and for broader recruitment from dioceses in northern France and Flanders under the Avignon popes, ibid., 205 (fig. 27). For the emergence of ars nova polyphony, see Leech-Wilkinson, ‘Emergence of ars nova’; for the treatise itself, see Plantinga, ‘Philippe de Vitry’s “Ars Nova”’; Fuller, ‘Phantom Treatise’. For early connections between ars nova polyphony and the papal court, see Bent, ‘Early Papal Motets’; Wathey, ‘Motets of Philippe de Vitry’. 37 Tomasello, Music and Ritual at Papal Avignon, 49 including his references at n. 19.

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preconditions supported the emergence of specialist musicians in these court offices. The two chapels may even illustrate a process common to all European courts of a certain size, wealth, and influence: that is, the organization of cultural production into differentiated, regulated offices. Important work is yet to be done to survey the household chapels of rulers across Europe.38 The implications of this work for historians of music, of the Church and papacy, and of courts in western Europe are considerable, and as yet to be considered at length.

Works Cited Manuscripts Aosta, Archivio storico del vescovado, MS uncatalogued ASV, MSS Collectoriae 446 and Introitus et Exitus 5 BAV, MS Cod. Ottobon. lat. 911 BAV, MS Vat. Ottobon. lat. 2516 Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, Cod. IX, D. 15 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France [BnF], MS lat. 4169 Primary Sources Anonymous IV, De mensuris et discantu, ed. by C. E. H. Coussemaker, in Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova series, 4 vols (Paris, 1864–76), i, 327–64 Campano da Novara, Theorica Planetarum, in Campanus of Novara and Medieval Planetary Theory: Theorica Planetarum, ed. by F. S. Benjamin and G. J. Toomer (Madison, WI, 1971) Jean Lemoine, Johannes Monachus Picardus Cisterciensis, Glossa Aurea nobis priori loco super sexto decretalium libro addita (Paris, 1535; repr. Darmstadt, 1968) Johannes Andreae, Casus breves super decretalibus et Clementinis (Albi, 1480) Liber rationum camerae Bonifatii papae VIII (Archivium Secretum Vaticanum, collect. 446 necnon Intr. et. ex. 5), ed. by T. Schmidt (Vatican City, 1984) Les Registres de Boniface VIII (1294–1303), ed. by A. Thomas and others, 4 vols (Paris, 1884–1939) Les Registres de Nicolas IV, ed. by E. Langlois, 2 vols (Paris, 1887–93)

38 Étienne Anheim considers the preconditions for the emergence of the court artist in his work on the fourteenth-century curia, especially under Clement VI: Anheim, ‘La Grande Chapelle de Clément VI’; Anheim, ‘La Forge de Babylone’; Anheim, ‘Naissance d’un office’; Anheim, ‘La Musique polyphonique à la cour des papes au xive siècle’.

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Secondary Studies Anheim, É., ‘La Forge de Babylone: Pouvoir political et culture de cour sous le règne de Clément VI (1342–1352)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, École pratique des hautes études, Paris, 2004) ———, ‘La Grande Chapelle de Clément VI: Les Hommes, les lieux, les pratiques’, in Monument de l’Histoire: Construire, reconstruire le palais des Papes (xive–xxe siècle), ed. by D. Vingtain (Avignon, 2002), 123–29 ———, ‘La Musique polyphonique à la cour des papes au xive siècle: Une sociologie historique’, Bulletin du centre d’études médiévales d’Auxerre, Hors-série, 2 (2008), , [last accessed 21 November 2015] ———, ‘Naissance d’un office: Pierre Sintier, premier maître de chapelle du pape (1336– 1350)’, in Offices et papauté (xiiie–xviie siècle): Charges, hommes, destins, ed. by A. Jamme and O. Poncet (Rome, 2005), 267–301 Baethgen, F., ‘Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der päpstlichen Hof- und Finanzverwaltung unter Bonifaz VIII’, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 20 (1928–29), 114–237 Bent, I., ‘The Early History of the English Chapel Royal ca. 1066–1327’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 1968) ———, ‘The English Chapel Royal before 1300’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 90th session (1963–64), 77–95 Bent, M., ‘Early Papal Motets’, in Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Rome, ed. by R. Sherr (Oxford, 1998), 5–43 Branner, R., ‘The Sainte-Chapelle and the Capella Regis in the Thirteenth Century’, Gesta, 10.1 (1971), 19–22 Classen, P., ‘Rom und Paris: Kurie und Universität im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert’, in Studium und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter, ed. by J. Fried (Stuttgart, 1983), 205–06 Creytens, R., ‘Le “Studium Romanae Curiae” et le maître du sacré palais’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 12 (1942), 5–83 Dykmans, M., Le Cérémonial papal de la fin du moyen âge à la Renaissance, vol. ii (Brussels, 1981) Frutaz, P. M., ‘La famiglia pontificia in un documento dell’inizio del secolo xiv’, in Paleographica, diplomatica et archivistica: Studi in onore di Giulio Battelli, vol. ii (Rome, 1979), 277–323 Fuller, S., ‘A Phantom Treatise of the Fourteenth Century? The Ars Nova’, Journal of Musicology, 4 (1985–86), 23–50 Grauert, H., Magister Heinrich der Poet in Würzburg und die römische Kurie (Munich, 1912) Green, J., The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986) Guillemain, B., La Cour pontificale d’Avignon, 1309–1376: Étude d’une société (Paris, 1966) Haller, J., ‘Zwei Aufzeichnungen über die Beamten der Kurie’, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 1 (1898), 1–38 Johannessesn, R. M., ‘Cardinal Jean Lemoine and the Authorship of the Glosses to Unam Sanctam’, Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law, 18 (1988), 33–42 Kantorowicz, E., Laudes Regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Medieval Ruler Worship (Berkeley, CA, 1946)

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Leech-Wilkinson, D., ‘The Emergence of ars nova’, Journal of Musicology, 13 (1995), 285–317 Paravicini Bagliani, A., ‘La fondazione dello “Studium Curiae”: Una rilettura critica’, in Paravicini Bagliani, Medicina e scienze della natura alla corte dei papi nel Duecento (Spoleto, 1991), 363–90 Plantinga, L., ‘Philippe de Vitry’s “Ars Nova”: A Translation’, Journal of Music Theory, 5 (1961), 204–23 Ross, M., ‘The Papal Chapel 1288–1304: A Study in Institutional and Cultural Change’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University College, London, 2013) Round, J. H., The King’s Sergeants and Officers of State with their Coronation Services (London, 1911) Schwarz, B., Kurienuniversität und stadtrömische Universität von ca. 1300 bis 1471 (Leiden, 2013) Tangl, M., Die päpstliche Kanzleiordnungen von 1200–1500 (Innsbruck, 1894) Tomasello, A., Music and Ritual at Papal Avignon, 1309–1403 (Ann Arbor, MI, 1983) Van Hove, A., ‘Liber Sextus Decretalium’, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. ix (New York, 1913), 227 Wathey, A., ‘The Motets of Philippe de Vitry and the Fourteenth-Century Renaissance’, Early Music History, 12 (1993), 119–50 White, G., ‘The Household of the Norman Kings’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th Series, 30 (1948), 127–55

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Dress to Impress: Jacques de Vitry’s Clothing and Episcopal Self-Fashioning

Bishops must surpass others by the adornment of their virtues. That is why special ornaments should distinguish them.1 Jacques de Vitry, Historia Occidentalis

Pope Innocent III died on 16 July 1216 in Perugia, and his body was temporarily laid to rest in the San Lorenzo Cathedral. By the next day, thieves had stolen the vestments from the dead pontiff.2 The precious clothing of medieval prelates was a crucial expression of their clerical authority as well as their position in the Church, and it teemed with symbolism. Considering the theft of Innocent III’s pontifical robes from his dead body, it is perhaps ironic that he was very much concerned with clothing during his lifetime. In an essay discussing religious dress during his papacy, Cordelia Warr has noted that ‘Innocent III’s policy regarding new expressions of popular religion can, in retrospect, be judged as partially responsible for the new emphasis on visual signs’.3 Indeed, canon 16 of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 displays much more emphasis on clothing and appearance than the decrees of previous Church councils: [Clerics] must have a becoming crown and tonsure […]. They are not to use red or green garments or curiously sewed together gloves, or beak-shaped shoes or gilded bridles, saddles, pectoral ornaments (for horses), spurs, or anything else

I wish to thank Fiona Lebecque and the people of the Société Archéologique de Namur, the staff of the Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois, and participants in the CROMIOSS project for their help, assistance, and suggestions concerning the artefacts of the Trésor d’Oignies. I am also greatly indebted to Jessalynn Bird, Brenda Bolton, Barbara Bombi, Anne Duggan, Bernard Hamilton, and Thomas W. Smith for their invaluable comments and suggestions during diffferent stages of this research. 1 Jacques de Vitry, Histoire Occidentale, ed. and trans. by Duchet-Suchaux, 233. 2 Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, ed. by Huygens. Reprinted in Serta mediaevalia, ed. by Huygens, 73–74. 3 Warr, ‘De Indumentis’, 489. Jan Vandeburie is Lecturer in Later Medieval History at the University of Leicester. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 233–252 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118968

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indicative of superfluity […]. Buckles may under no condition be worn, nor sashes having ornaments of gold or silver, nor rings, unless it be in keeping with the dignity of their office. All bishops must use in public and in the church outer garments made of linen, except those who are monks, in which case they must wear the habit of their order.4 Canon 16 was an attempt to impose a set of rules in reaction against an increased tendency of clergy to show off their position through their clothing caused, perhaps, by Innocent III’s own earlier writings. Before he became pope, Lotharius de Segni wrote De sacro altaris mysterio, a popular treatise on liturgy.5 A number of chapters focus on clerical clothing, and modesty is not a theme. In Chapter 64, titled ‘The Armour of Virtue’, Lotharius compares a bishop’s clothing to the armour he should wear to fight against the spirits of wickedness.6 When comparing to previous concerns regarding clerical dress, Warr concluded that ‘the movement had gone from stressing humility to stressing appearance’.7 In the Historia Occidentalis of Jacques de Vitry (c. 1165–1240), a treatise written in the late 1220s upon his return from the Holy Land and offering an overview of the state of the Western Church in the context of the reform movement of 1215, the former Bishop of Acre also shows a keen concern with clothing.8 If Innocent III’s concerns with ecclesiastical dress as found in canon 16 were still stressing a modicum of sobriety, then Jacques’s notes on the function of such vestments leaves little doubt about this move towards stressing appearance. In Chapter 34, on the priests, he noted: the vestments worn by the priest for the office of Mass contribute to embellish the house of the Lord; and, at the same time, they encourage devotion. They instruct through their symbolism of bringing spiritual arms in the combat against the spirits of evil.9 In Chapter 35 of his Historia Occidentalis, Jacques was more specific on the clothing of bishops, noting that, ‘just as they carry it in dignity, the higher priests, usually called bishops, must surpass others by the adornment of their virtues. That is why special ornaments should distinguish them’.10 Jacques de Vitry’s extant writings, in 4 Constitutiones Concilii quarti Lateranensis, ed. by García y García, 64–65. 5 On this treatise, see Tagliaferro, ‘Il “De sacro altaris mysterio”’. 6 Innocent III, De Sacro Altaris Mysterio Libri VI, 799: ‘De armatura virtutum (Caput LXIV) Ista sunt arma quae pontifex debet induere, contra spirituales neguitias pugnaturus. Nam, ut Inquit Apostolus: Arma militiae nostrae non sunt carnalia, sed ad destructionem munitionum potentia Deo [Cor. 2. 10]. De quibus idera Apostolus in alia dicit Epistola: induite vos armaturam Dei, ut possitis siare adversus insidias diaboli State ergo succiucti lumbos vestros in veritate, et induit loricam justitia, et calceati pedes in praeparationem Evangelii pacis, in omnibus sumentes scutum fidei, quo possitis omnia tela nequissimi ignea exstinguere, et galeam salutis assumite, et gladium spiritus, quod est verbum Dei [Ephes. 6]’. 7 Warr, ‘De Indumentis’, 501. 8 On this text, see the introduction to Historia Occidentalis, ed. by Hinnebusch. See also Bird, ‘Religious’s Role’. 9 Jacques de Vitry, Histoire Occidentale, ed. and trans. by Duchet-Suchaux, 229–30. 10 Jacques de Vitry, Histoire Occidentale, ed. and trans. by Duchet-Suchaux, 233.

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particular on clerical dress and its symbolism, present us with the rare opportunity to link these notes with the episcopal garments and attributes of the author himself. The Trésor d’Oignies, a collection of precious liturgical artefacts originating from the Augustinian priory of St Nicholas d’Oignies where Jacques had been a regular canon, but currently held at the Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois in Belgium, contains several pieces of clothing and liturgical attributes directly linked to Jacques de Vitry.11 Moreover, the recent scientific analysis of several of these objects for the CROMIOSS project has presented scholars with new information on their provenance and material context.12 This essay explores the expression of Jacques de Vitry’s episcopal power through the symbolism embedded in the imagery found on his personal attributes and uses the artefacts from the Oignies collection to shed light on how Jacques himself advertised his clerical role at the fringes of Christendom and in the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council’s reform and crusade efforts.13

The Episcopal Garments of the Oignies Treasure When in 1794 the French Assemblée ordered the seizure of all Church valuables, the last Prior of Oignies, Dom Grégoire de Pierlot, entrusted the priceless artefacts of the priory to a farmer couple in the nearby town of Falisolle. For twenty-three years a white cross on the wall of one of the farm buildings indicated where the treasure was stored safely before the prior could retrieve it. To trace the provenance of the Oignies artefacts further back, we can make use of three inventories from the seventeenth century.14 The oldest inventory dates from 1628 and was compiled by Arnold de Raisse (or Rayssius). François Moschus copied this inventory in 1636. A third inventory was compiled in 1648 by W. H. James Weale. The objects with direct connection to Jacques de Vitry in the 1628 inventory are a mitre of parchment and one of silk, a flagellum, episcopal rings, an agnus dei, a missal, a foot reliquary, and a portable altar. Weale’s inventory adds an ivory crozier, although the agnus dei in the earlier inventories may also refer to this crozier and its sculpted imagery. Although these documents represent the earliest comprehensive listing of the Oignies treasure, we can trace these artefacts further back through narrative sources. Thomas of Cantimpré (1201–1272) added a supplement to Jacques de Vitry’s vita of Marie d’Oignies probably in the early 1230s when Jacques had been appointed Cardinal-Bishop of Tusculum under Pope Gregory IX.15 In these writings, Thomas

11 See Formigoni, ‘Le Monde du frère Hugo’. See also Bolton, ‘Spiegels van Vroomheid’ and Bolton, ‘Mary of Oignies’. 12 , [last accessed 14 January 2019]. 13 On the Fourth Lateran Council and the Holy Land, see Powell, ‘Innocent III and the Crusade’ and Bolton, ‘“Serpent in the Dust”’. 14 These inventories are published in Didier and Toussaint, Autour de Hugo d’Oignies, 270–78. 15 See also Carpenter, ‘A New Heaven and a New Earth’; Thomas of Cantimpré, ‘Supplement’; and Donnadieu, ‘Entre sentiment et ambition’.

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tells us the story of how these vestments arrived at Oignies. In Chapter 12, Thomas recounts the story of how ‘by the spirit of prophecy’, Marie d’Oignies predicted that accidental damage to some ornamental material would be repaired ‘in an incomparable way’. He writes of how Prior Giles of Oignies had brought out the relics of the saints and the liturgical silk vestments for the feast day of a saint and had left these on the altar next to a burning candle. While the prior went for supper, the candle fell and burned the vestments. Marie d’Oignies consoled the sad prior and said to him that ‘within ten years, God will make unparalleled restitution to you for this damage’. Thomas continues that later, after Jacques was elected Bishop of Acre, he sent to the same prior ‘every episcopal vestment, with many other garments of fine linen, as well as all the altar vessels, with the diverse utensils of its ministers, all crafted of gold and silver.’ The bearer of all these apparently crossed the sea so fast (fifteen days), and so near in time to the end of the ten years when Marie d’Oignies had predicted these things would be fulfilled, that it seemed a divine miracle.16 While Thomas of Cantimpré’s supplement ought to be considered in a hagiographical context, it is interesting to note that he was writing before Jacques’s death. Indeed, also in the history of the foundation of the Priory of St Nicholas, the anonymous author mentions that ‘later, when [ Jacques] advanced to a worthier lot, he endowed our church with linen vestments, the relics of the saints, and other church ornaments, books, and many privileges of the apostolic see’.17 The text here implies that this happened when he was elevated to cardinal-bishop and before his death. Scholars often seem to have misinterpreted when exactly the treasure, including these episcopal attributes, arrived in Oignies. This confusion is likely caused by the way in which Jacques’s testament was formulated at the time of its execution between 1243 and 1246 by the then Prior of Oignies, Siger.18 In this document, the same is mentioned as in the Historia Fundationis, yet these items were already at Oignies and not part of Jacques’s bequest. What the document actually outlines in terms of bequest after Jacques’s death is 1500 livres to provide the community of Oignies with wine. More importantly, and more helpful when explaining why such fragile artefacts like the mitres have survived so well, we ought to recognize the importance of these objects in the origin story of the priory and the cult around Marie d’Oignies. These were not merely liturgical attributes but, in a way, hard evidence of a miracle performed by Marie d’Oignies. While elsewhere mitres would have been used until worn and then replaced, in the case of Oignies these artefacts became almost like relics, and the community would have taken great care of them and used them only for special occasions.19

16 Thomas of Cantimpré, ‘Supplement’, 150–51. 17 ‘Historia Fundationis’, 330: ‘pannis sericis, sanctorum reliquiis et aliis ecclesiae ornamentis, librorum voluminibus’. 18 Cartularium of the priory of Oignies, Mons, State Archives, cart. no. 54, fols 12–14. See also Veterum Scriptorum, ed. by Martène and Durand, 1278–80; Diplomatum Belgicorum, ed. by Foppens, 407–08 (repr. in Paravicini Bagliani, I Testamenti dei Cardinali del Duecento, 8) The original cartulary mentioned by Foppens was destroyed in World War II. 19 This also explains the careful repairs to these objects.

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The Power Invested in the Bishop While Jacques de Vitry was appointed Bishop of Acre by Pope Innocent III, it was the newly elected Honorius III who did the formal episcopal confirmation in Perugia. Three medieval representations showing Jacques as bishop are known. One on his episcopal seal,20 one in the centre of his parchment mitre, and one in an early fourteenth-century manuscript held in Cambridge (Corpus Christi College, MS 66A) containing his Historia Orientalis (Figures 13.1, 13.2, 13.3). All of these merely show a very generic and typical image of a bishop wearing or holding a mitre and crozier.21

Figure 13.1. The episcopal seal of Jacques de Vitry. Public Domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 13.2. Jacques de Vitry presenting a book to the pope, in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66A, fol. 1r. Licensed under a Creative Common AttributionNonCommercial 4.0 International License and reproduced with the kind permission of Corpus Christi Library.

Figure 13.3. A bishop on the illuminated mitre from the Oignies collection. Photo courtesy of the Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois, Trésor d’Oignies.

20 Cannuyer, ‘Les Emblèmes sigillaires’. 21 The mitres depicted show the typological development of medieval mitres in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, from a side-horned mitre to mitres with the horns juxtaposed front-back and the addition of a central vertical decorative band. See also Baylé, ‘La Mitre épiscopale en France’.

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Figure 13.4. The embroidered mitre of Jacques de Vitry (back). Photo courtesy of the Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois, Trésor d’Oignies.

A mitre, according to Jacques, is a symbol of the wearer’s knowledge of both Testaments and, comparing the ‘horns’ of the mitre to the horns of Moses, a symbol of the bishop’s duty to fight against the enemies of the Church.22 Here he summarizes Innocent III’s De Sacro Altaris, which also states that the mitre’s circular form also represented both new and old.23 Jacques de Vitry’s so-called Becket mitre is an early example of the style that would become known as ‘Opus Anglicanum’ with typical gold thread–embroidered mitres of white silk and other liturgical attributes.24 On the front of the mitre is a The reconstruction of Jacques de Vitry’s facial features and the way the mitre would look on his head by the CROMIOSS project has shown that the mitre as depicted in the image from the Cambridge manuscript is the most accurate representation of its shape. 22 Jacques de Vitry, Histoire Occidentale, ed. and trans. by Duchet-Suchaux, 183: ‘Habeat in capite mitram, id est, utriusque testamenti scientiam, ut facies Moysi sit cornuta. Cornibus enim duorum testamentorum debet inimicos ecclesie uentilare.’ See also Mellinkoff, The Horned Moses, 94–106. 23 Innocent III, De Sacro Altaris Mysterio Libri VI, 796: ‘Mitra pontificis scientiam utriusque Testamenti significat; nam duo cornua duo sunt Testamenta, duae fimbrae spiritus et littera. Circulus aureus, qui anteriorem et posteriorem partem complectitur, indicat quod omnis scriba docius in regno coelorum de thesauro suo nova proferi et vetera [Matt. 13]. Caveat ergo diligenter episcopus, ne prius velit esse magister, quam norit esse discipulus, ne si caecus caecum duxerit, ambo in foream cadant [Matt. 15]. Scriptum est enim in Propheta: Quia in scientiam repulisti, ego te repellam, ne sacerdotio fungaris mihi [Ose. 4]’. 24 See also Browne, Davies, and Michael, English Medieval Embroidery.

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depiction of the martyrdom of St Lawrence and on the back a typical depiction of the martyrdom of Thomas Becket (Figure 13.4). The image of Becket’s martyrdom shows strong similarities with typical contemporary images of his murder.25 The mitre was part of a series of similar mitres, seemingly spread among influential bishops as part of Pope Alexander III’s efforts to propagate the cult of Thomas Becket following his canonization in 1173. A total of six mitres of this series are known.26 Aside from the Oignies mitre showing the martyrdom of Thomas Becket and of St Lawrence, a mitre from the Cistercian convent of Seligenthal (near Landshut), now at the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich, shows the murder of Thomas Becket and the stoning of St Stephen.27 The same programme of images is found on a mitre from the treasury of the St Etienne cathedral of Sens.28 A mitre discovered in the sepulchre of Bernat d’Olivella (d. 1287), now held in the Diocesan Museum of Tarragona in Spain, shows the stoning of St Stephen and the martyrdom of St Lawrence. The same programme is again found on a mitre from the sepulchre of Archbishop D. Gonçalo Pereira (d. 1348), now held in the Tesouro-Museu da Sé Braga in Portugal. A sixth mitre, belonging to this series but standing out for its different iconography, comes from the museum of the treasury of the cathedral of Anagni in Italy and shows Thomas Becket and St Nicholas standing in full vestments on the front, with John the Evangelist and a female saint on the back.29 While not all mitres show Thomas Becket, the point of placing the recently martyred archbishop among the more famous martyred bishops is evident.30 We can see a similar intention with Alexander III’s mosaic programme in the apse of the cathedral of Monreale in Sicily. While Alexander III was clearly making an effort to advertise the canonization of his close acquaintance Thomas Becket, it is striking that at least three of these mitres have a provenance in frontier regions of Christendom at the end of the twelfth century. In her discussion of some of these mitres, Maureen Miller has noted that ‘for bishops to wear an image of Becket’s martyrdom on such a prominent symbol of their episcopal office was an act of identification that functioned on many levels. It aligned the wearer with Becket’s defence of his church unto death, with his willingness to confront temporal powers to protect sacred authority, and with his particular protection of his clergy and clerical status’.31 Indeed, giving a mitre that

25 There is particular resemblance with the imagery depicting Thomas Becket’s murder found on the so-called Limoges reliquaries which circulated throughout Europe. See Caudron, ‘La Diffusion des châsses de saint Thomas Becket’. 26 Inventoried in Vogt, ‘Episcopal Self-Fashioning’. 27 The mitre was given to the convent by Duchess Ludmilla of Bohemia (d. 1240), daughter of Duke Frederick of Bohemia, who was supposed to join Emperor Frederick Barbarossa when he died in 1189, around the time these mitres were likely distributed. 28 The connection between Sens and Thomas Becket is strong. William of Sens designed the choir at Sens which was a model for the new choir at Canterbury, and the cathedral treasury of Sens has the vestments of Thomas Becket as well as miracle windows similar to those in Canterbury cathedral. 29 The cathedral of Anagni has an oratory in honour of Thomas Becket and a Limoges Becket reliquary chasse. 30 See also Duggan, ‘Cult of St Thomas Becket’. 31 Miller, Clothing the Clergy, 204–05. See also Warr, Dressing for Heaven.

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symbolizes martyrdom to a bishop on the fringes of Christendom sent a powerful message both to the bishop and to his flock. In a more artistic context, Caroline Vogt has also drawn the attention to the hand of God in the apex of these mitres, both front and back. The hand, symbolizing divine support or blessing, does not just point down towards the depicted martyr, but goes beyond the image and the mitre itself to the wearer of the mitre: the bishop.32 Alongside the mitre there are more references to martyred bishops. Jacques’s maniple, in the same Opus Anglicanum style, shows images of both SS Denis and Thomas Becket, and Jacques’s portable altar contains relics of, among others, SS Lawrence and Nicholas.33 When attempting to answer how the mitre ended up with Jacques de Vitry, we might consider the link with the Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton, as he was a good acquaintance of Jacques from their time in Paris. In the Historia Occidentalis, Jacques lists Stephen Langton among the principal preachers carrying a great name, shining like stars on the heavenly firmament. Indeed, Langton identified himself with Thomas Becket and used the cult of the bishop-saint to build up his own episcopal role.34 Stephen Langton may have indeed been involved in the distribution of these English-produced mitres. There is also a chance that Jacques could have been given the mitre while auxiliary bishop in Liège before he was appointed Cardinal-Bishop of Tusculum, although it is likely that he obtained these episcopal attributes upon his first appointment as bishop. A more plausible explanation lies in the specific combination with the imagery of St Lawrence alongside Thomas Becket. As I will discuss elsewhere, Pope Honorius III constructed his own papal self-fashioning through his building project of the San Lorenzo basilica in Rome.35 Before it was damaged in World War II, a small yet central mosaic above the entrance to the basilica depicted Honorius III alongside St Lawrence, in equal proportions.36 This can be seen merely as a kind of signature central above the entrance, not only showing who was responsible for the new basilica, but also advertising his position as pope. However, John Doran, in his article on the role models of Innocent III, wrote that ‘throughout his pontificate, [Innocent] continued to develop this theory of primacy, searching for its roots in the past and using his most illustrious predecessors to emphasise the powers and prerogatives of the office which he himself held’.37 Indeed, Innocent’s successor Honorius also sought to emphasize the significance of his office. At the start of the building project, 32 Vogt, ‘Episcopal Self-Fashioning’. 33 Bottom: ‘RELIQUIE : SV[N]T I[N] H[OC] ALRTARE [SIC] : DE : LANCEA : D[OMI]NI : DE STIPITE D[OMI]NI : DE S[AN]C[T]O : PETRO : DE S[AN]C[T]O : ANDREA : DE S[AN] C[T]O : BARTHOLOMEO : DE LINGNO D[OMI]NI’; and top: ‘DE S[AN]C[T]O MATEE DEI MARTIR S[AN]C[T]I LAURENCII : DE S[AN]C[T]O VINCENTIO : DE S[AN]C[T] O NICOLAO : DE IOSEPH AB ARIMACIA : S[AN]C[T]O BERNARDO AB[B]A[TE] : DE S. CECILIA’. 34 See Vincent, ‘Stephen Langton’. 35 I am preparing an article on Honorius III’s architectural propaganda in the Basilica di San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura in Rome. 36 Other images showing popes alongside the saints often display the pope in smaller proportions. 37 Doran, ‘In Whose Footsteps?’, 72.

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in his role as camerarius, or papal treasurer, Honorius’s most illustrious predecessor was indeed St Lawrence who, as archdeacon, was also in charge of the papal treasury. Although eventually ascending to the papal throne, Honorius’s most important role throughout his career was as camerarius under three consecutive popes. Moreover, St Lawrence’s martyrdom must have been quite an example. Jacques de Vitry has noted that, upon being elected, Honorius distributed everything he had to the poor. Indeed, Honorius himself, in his sermon for the feast of St Lawrence, chooses to emphasize St Lawrence’s office as archdeacon and keeper of the treasury of the Church, and his distribution of alms to the poor. So Honorius placed himself alongside St Lawrence, the ‘original treasurer of the Church’, imitated his predecessors who made references to SS Peter and Paul, and emphasized his own important role in the Church as camerarius. With this in mind, some light can be shed on the symbolism of the mitre in question. Honorius III was the one personally to appoint Jacques to his new role as Bishop of Acre. In a different publication I have shown the intense interaction between Jacques and Honorius during Jacques’s mission in the Latin East and on the Fifth Crusade.38 I would therefore suggest that the gift of this mitre to Jacques was a highly symbolic act by Honorius. The idea of martyrdom in the context of a bishop sent to the frontiers of Christianity was in itself powerful symbolism. But the figure of St Lawrence would have reminded Jacques not only of the San Lorenzo cathedral in Perugia where Honorius III had been elected pope and where Jacques received his appointment, but it would have also served to remind Jacques of who his patron was and to whom he had to answer.

Episcopal Self-Fashioning The second mitre found in the Oignies collection is a unique artefact of the Middle Ages (Figure 13.5). Although medieval mitres have been found that contain pieces of parchment to keep their form, this is the only known medieval mitre made with an outer layer of illuminated parchment.39 The material analysis by the CROMIOSS project has shown that both parchment made from sheep skin and vellum from calfskin (under the miniature painting) was used.40 The artwork, especially the style of the seated figures and the pattern of triple white dots on Mary’s blue dress, seem to agree with a manuscript produced in Paris around the same time.41 Nonetheless, it was common for Western-trained craftsmen and painters to work in the Latin East,42 and parchment is known to have been shipped from western Europe to Frankish 38 Vandeburie, ‘The Preacher and the Pope’. 39 Greven, ‘Die Mitra des Jakob von Vitry’. 40 Decorte and others, ‘Interdisciplinary Study’ (unpublished). I am grateful to the authors for granting access to their findings. 41 I am grateful to Lieve Watteeuw for pointing this out. 42 See the example of the so-called Paris-Acre Master. Folda, ‘Hospitaller Master in Paris and Acre’ and Folda, ‘Figural Arts’.

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Figure 13.5. The illuminated mitre of Jacques de Vitry (front). Photo courtesy of the Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois, Trésor d’Oignies.

scriptoria by Italian merchants who provided many of the European luxury goods and materials in Outremer.43 I would agree with Jaroslav Folda, who, based on the unique character and distinctive style of decoration of this object, suggested that the mitre was commissioned by Jacques de Vitry in Acre, ‘far away from the more traditional production of such liturgical headdress in Western Europe’.44 Its origin in the East, and in particular in the city of Acre, helps us to explain how such a luxurious and unorthodox object was acceptable in this previously mentioned context of apostolic reform and regulation of religious dress. Frankish society in the East was known to have adopted a more ‘Eastern’ style of more lavishly decorated dress. Jacques de Vitry himself complained about this when he wrote that the Pollani (the Frankish indigenous community in the Latin East) ‘dressed like women with delicate clothes’ and that they were ‘arranged like a temple’.45

43 Barbara Drake Boehm also noted the ‘wealth and diversity of Acre’s markets’: Boehm, ‘Jacques de Vitry’, in Boehm and Holcomb, Jerusalem, 236 44 Folda, ‘Before Louis IX’, 151. 45 Drawing upon Psalm 143. 12–13: ‘Filiae eorum compositae, circumornatae ut similitudo templi’; see Prawer, World of the Crusaders, 84. See also Heller, ‘Fashion in French Crusade Literature’; Vandeburie, ‘“Maugré li Polein”’.

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Upon his arrival in Acre, Jacques complained of the wide variety of Western and Eastern Christian groups and how only a few of them would accept that they were supposed to be under his jurisdiction.46 He also complained about how he felt he was not listened to, especially by the Italian communities who were supposed to fall under his care.47 If we follow Folda’s point that the mitre was commissioned by Jacques in Acre, we can indeed see how, despite his initial criticism, Jacques may have realized that in order to get through to his flock and be accepted among his sheep, he would have to adopt a similar ‘Eastern’ style and adorn himself ‘like a temple’. In such a multicultural city teeming with different groups of Eastern Christians, Italian merchants, crusaders, pilgrims, Muslims, and Franks, it would have indeed been crucial for Jacques to adopt a fitting appearance in order to take up his leading ecclesiastical role. Interestingly, in a note in his Historia Orientalis on the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Jacques observed how ‘the aforesaid patriarch has under him abbots and priors, who are privileged to bear the ensigns of pontifical dignity, to wit, the staff, the mitre, the ring, and the sandals’.48 This observation confirms that, in order to stand out as bishop, he would have had to wear something slightly more extravagant than the usual episcopal clothing. There are indeed further signs that Jacques adopted this oriental style or, as Sharon Farmer put it, ‘like other Westerners, [Jacques] both desired and consumed the treasures of the East’.49 Jacques’s wealth and power were soon criticized, and he was accused of betraying the ideals of poverty and humility propagated by Marie d’Oignies. One awkward episode described by Thomas of Cantimpré, who was clearly against Jacques’s comfortable lifestyle and powerful position, is when Jacques brought a gift to Rome for Hugolino di Conti (later Gregory IX, but then still Bishop of Ostia). Jacques presented his friend with a heavy silver chalice filled with nutmeg. Hugolino accepted the nutmeg as it was ‘the fruit from the East’, but turned down the chalice as he said it was ‘the fruit of the city of Rome’.50 At the end of one of his letters Jacques indeed seems to pray to the Lord to promote commerce in the Holy Land and hopes that his journey through temporal goods will not cause him to miss out on those that are eternal.51 Although Jacques de Vitry was the only bishop with jurisdiction in Acre, he was certainly not the only bishop residing in the city. When Acre became the new capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1191, a large number of prelates, who had kept their title but no longer had access to their see, were forced to relocate to the crowded port city. The necessity of Jacques’s self-fashioning of his position as the Bishop of Acre is evident. Indeed, going back to the iconography on the front of the mitre, the centrality of the bishop figure, in the middle between Christ, Mary, and the Apostles, sends a clear message to any onlooker. The extravagant character of the mitre draws the attention of the audience and, similar to emphasizing the importance of the bishop himself 46 47 48 49 50 51

Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, ed. by Huygens, no. 2, 86. Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, ed. by Huygens, no. 2, 85–86. Jacques de Vitry, Histoire Orientale, ed. and trans. by Donnadieu, 234–37. Farmer, ‘Low Country Ascetics’, 222. Iacobus de Vitriaco, Vita Marie de Oegnies, ed. by Huygens, 186–89. Letters from the East, ed. and trans. by Barber and Bate, 104.

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through God’s pointing hand, the central image of the bishop leaves no doubt about the importance of the mitre’s wearer. As Folda put it: ‘It is an ambitious program that placed the bishop who wore this liturgical headdress directly in the line of latter-day apostles’.52

Symbols of Power Two more attributes stand out in the display of the episcopal position: the ring and the crozier. Rings are indeed traditional symbols of power, and their general importance in expressing authority needs no further discussion in this contribution.53 Aside from a symbol of the bishop’s office, the episcopal ring was for Jacques de Vitry not only a symbol of his alliance with and sole commitment to Christ and the Church but also a symbol of the faith of the bearer.54 The two rings from the Oignies collection that used to belong to Jacques are both set with sapphires. The choice of sapphires is not necessarily common for episcopal rings, nor is it a coincidence in the context of his episcopal position in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Sapphires are mentioned on several occasions throughout the Bible in lyrical references to the Holy Land.55 Among others, the Book of Tobit 13. 21 describes the gates of Jerusalem built of sapphire and emerald, and the Book of Lamentations 4. 7 states that the polishing of the Nazarites was of sapphire. A sapphire was indeed a precious stone commonly associated with the Holy Land and is therefore listed in a chapter on the precious stones found in the Holy Land and their characteristics in Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Orientalis. In this semi-encyclopaedic treatise, Jacques describes the sapphire as having both medicinal and spiritual powers. According to him, the sapphire revives and strengthens the wearer, extinguishes the burning of the soul, and heals the sickness of the tongue.56 It appears that again Jacques made a very conscious decision regarding the meaning behind his symbols of episcopal power. In this case, a gemstone that also relates to his role as reform and crusade preacher and missionary charged with the reform or conversion of Eastern Christians and Muslims.57

52 Folda, ‘Before Louis IX’. See also Jacoby, ‘Society, Culture, and the Arts’. 53 See Cherry, ‘The Medieval Episcopal Ring’. 54 Jacques de Vitry, Histoire Occidentale, ed. and trans. by Duchet-Suchaux, 183: ‘Habeat autem anulum in digito, ut dicere possit uoce sponse: Anulo suo subarauit me dominus noster Ihesus Christus. Non solum autem anulum, id est, fidei signaculum, in se debet habere, sed insuper animas subditorum uni uiro Christo procuret desponsare, quemadmodum dicit apostolus: Despondi enim uos uni uiro uirginem castam exhibere Christo.’ This explanation of the symbolism of the ring is rather common in a religious context. 55 Exodus 24. 10, 28. 18, 39. 11; Tobit 13. 21; Job 28. 6, 28. 16; Song of Solomon 5. 14; Isaiah 54. 11; Lamentations 4. 7; Ezekiel 1. 26, 10. 1, 28. 13; Revelation 21. 19. 56 Jacques de Vitry, Histoire Orientale, ed. and trans. by Donnadieu, 379: ‘Est ibi sapphyrus sereno celo colore similis, nunquam tamen quantumcumque purus sit imaginem speculi in se ostendit; dicitur autem vegetare et confortare membra gestantium ipsum et tumores sedare. Sudorem restringit, ardorem refrigerat interiorem, ulcera sanat, ex oculis sordes et ex fronte tollit dolores, morbis lingue medetur’. 57 See Bird, ‘Crusade and Conversion’.

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Figure 13.6. The episcopal crozier of Jacques de Vitry. Photo courtesy of the Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois, Trésor d’Oignies.

The bishop’s pastoral care over his flock is symbolized in his iconic episcopal staff or crozier. Jacques, using traditional Christian symbolism, explains that the bishop’s staff corrects, supports, and attracts. The sharp end can prick the lazy, the straight middle of the staff helps the bearer to rule and guides him, and the hooked end serves to catch and gather sinners and stragglers.58 Jacques de Vitry’s own ivory crozier, likely produced in southern Italy or Sicily like many ivory artefacts at the time, shows the confrontation between the Lamb (Christ) and the Dragon (Satan) from Revelations 17. 14 (Figure 13.6).59 This imagery is certainly not uncommon for medieval croziers, and a very similar scene is found on the fragment of an Italian thirteenth-century crozier held at the Musée du Louvre (Department of Decorative Arts, Sully, No. OA 7267), for instance. Though not unique, a reference to the apocalyptic fight of good against evil does fit well with Jacques’s preaching and missionizing activities. As I have shown elsewhere in a discussion of Jacques’s writings, he used an eschatological theme to invoke a sense of urgency for the reform of the Christian forces and the recovery of Jerusalem.60

58 Jacques de Vitry, Histoire Occidentale, ed. and trans. by Duchet-Suchaux, 183: ‘Habeat autem in manu baculum pastoralem, baculum scilicet correctionis, sustentationis et attractionis: qui acutus est in imo, ut pungat pigros; in medio rectus, ut regat et sustentet debiles; in summo recuruus, ut attrahat peccatores et colligat uagos iuxta illud: Collige, sustenta, stimula, uaga, morbida, lenta’. 59 Acre was also an important market in the ivory trade. 60 Vandeburie, ‘Consenescentis mundi die vergente ad vesperam’.

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Figure 13.7. Jacques de Vitry’s portable altar (bottom). Photo courtesy of the Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois, Trésor d’Oignies.

One particularly interesting and recurring symbolism is the image of the sun and the moon found on several artefacts connected to Jacques de Vitry. One side of Jacques’s episcopal seal depicts a two-barred cross with the sun and the moon on either side. The crucifixion scene on the Oignies evangeliary, produced by the workshop of Hugo d’Oignies between 1228 and 1230 and said to have belonged to Jacques, also includes a sun and a moon, made of gemstones, on either side of the cross. It is worth noting that the same evangeliary contains a sapphire at the feet of the

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Figure 13.8. The illuminated mitre of Jacques de Vitry (back). Photo courtesy of the Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois, Trésor d’Oignies.

crucified Christ. Similarly, the crucifixion scene at the bottom of Jacques’s portable altar also shows a large sun and moon on either side of the cross (Figure 13.7). This imagery in crucifixion scenes was rather common. The celestial bodies were shown in the sky above the crucified Christ to represent the darkness during the daytime when Christ died as well as the cosmological significance of the events. Moreover, as Gertrud Schiller has noted, ‘from antiquity, the sun and the moon were associated with power’ and ‘the placement of the sun and moon respectively at the right and left arms of the Cross came to be read typologically as the old and new testaments’.61 As discussed above, Jacques noted that also the two ‘horns’ of the mitre stand for the Old and New Testaments and the wearer’s knowledge of the Bible. In this context it is fascinating to note that the back of Jacques’s parchment mitre shows a large sun and moon in the triangular interstices (Figure 13.8). Moreover, the recent CROMIOSS investigations have revealed that the insides of the same mitre’s ‘horns’ also depict a large painted sun and moon. The sun and the moon above the crucifixion have also been regarded as symbolizing sin and redemption.62 Such symbolism on the mitre of a reform preacher would 61 Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 109. See also Constable, ‘The Relation between the Sun and the Moon’. 62 Heffernan, ‘“The Sun Shall be Turned to Darkness and the Moon to Blood”’.

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indeed be appropriate, especially considering the emphasis on the sinfulness of the inhabitants of the Holy Land in Jacques’s writings. Yet, with the absence of a crucifixion on the mitre, we need to look elsewhere for an explanation for this imagery. Pope Innocent III, perhaps the epitome of religious power, emphasized his papal authority in a letter in 1198 to Prior Acerbius and the other clergy of Tuscany by making use of an allegory based on the Book of Genesis. Innocent wrote: As God, the creator of the universe, set two great lights in the firmament of heaven, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night [Genesis 1. 15, 16], so He set two great dignities in the firmament of the universal Church […] the greater to rule the day, that is, souls, and the lesser to rule the night, that is, bodies. These dignities are the papal authority and the royal power. And just as the moon gets her light from the sun, and is inferior to the sun in quality, quantity, position, and effect, so the royal power gets the splendor of its dignity from the papal authority.63 Considering that it was Innocent III who appointed Jacques as Bishop of Acre, it is indeed plausible that Jacques chose to adopt this symbolism in order to emphasize the spiritual power invested in him by the papal authority and to honour his late patron. The celestial bodies would have reminded any rulers that their authority was given to them by the grace of God and the Church. Such symbolic reminders were particularly useful at occasions such as when Jacques was part of the legation mediating in the conflict between Emperor Frederick II and the Lombard League in 1226.64

Conclusions Jacques took his role as bishop seriously. In his first letter from the East, dated 4 November 1216, Jacques pondered his newly given task as Bishop of Acre and considered the words of the Apostle Paul concerning the qualities that a good bishop must possess. A bishop, he noted, ‘ought to be unblemished, self-controlled, prudent, decent, hospitable, a good teacher, not a drunk or a fighter, modest, not quarrelsome or greedy’, and ‘a good provost of his house’.65 Jacques seemed worried about the task at hand and did not want to be like a ‘monkey on the roof ’, a bishop on his throne, devoid of meaning. Upon his arrival in the Holy Land, it became evident that the quality of modesty would not help him establish his authority. In Chapter 34 of his Historia Occidentalis, Jacques wrote that ‘like the queen stands in her right surrounded by her various ornaments, the priest must ensure that, adorned on the outside with sacred garments, he is likewise, within his soul, clothed in honest morals’.66 Adopting an appearance leaning more towards that of the queen than of the priest, Jacques

63 64 65 66

PL, ccxiv, 377; translation from Source Book for Medieval History, trans. by Thatcher and McNeal, 208. RI, i, no. 1590, 321–22, no. 1624, 328–29. See also Abulafia, Frederick II, 159–61. Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, ed. by Huygens, no. 1, 71–72. Jacques paraphrases i Timothy 3. 2–7. Jacques de Vitry, Histoire Occidentale, ed. and trans. by Duchet-Suchaux, 229–30.

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self-fashioned his image of a bishop at the frontiers of Christendom. With symbolic references to his patrons, Popes Innocent III and Honorius III, who invested him with episcopal power, and powerful imagery of martyred bishops, Jacques made sure he stood out among the prelates crowding the Frankish capital. As Hoeberichts put it: ‘Jacques de Vitry remained a feudal bishop in his unwavering commitment to realise the Church’s policy of power which was directed to the recapture of the Holy Land and the subjection of the Saracens.’67 Indeed, Jacques’s use of symbols and wealth ought to be regarded in the context of Innocent III’s papacy and an increased emphasis on the appearance of important Churchmen. The discussed artefacts from the Oignies treasure, combined with Jacques’s own writings, show his conviction in his role as bishop, preacher, and missionary in the Holy Land and his self-fashioning and promotion of this image. Perhaps the use of the sun and the moon is the most striking, and its message is twofold: they symbolize the religious authority of the episcopal office as well as a sense of apocalyptic urgency for Jacques’s reform, crusade, and missionary efforts.

Works Cited Manuscripts Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66A Mons, State Archives, cart. no. 54 Primary Sources Constitutiones Concilii quarti Lateranensis una cum Commentariis glossatorum, ed. by A. García y García (Rome, 1981) Diplomatum Belgicorum, ed. by J. F. Foppens, vol. iii (Brussels, 1734) ‘Historia Fundationis Venerabilis Ecclesiae Beati Nicolai Oigniacensis ac Ancillae Christi Mariae Oigniacensis’, in Veterum Scriptorum et Monumentorum Historicorum, Dogmaticorum, Moralium, Amplissima Collectio, ed. by E. Martène and U. Durand, vol. vi (Paris, 1729), 327–30 The ‘Historia Occidentalis’ of Jacques de Vitry: A Critical Edition, ed. by J. F. Hinnebusch (Fribourg, 1972) Iacobus de Vitriaco, Vita Marie de Oegnies, Thomas Cantipratensis, Supplementum, ed. by R. B. C. Huygens (Turnhout, 2012) Innocent III, De Sacro Altaris Mysterio Libri VI, in PL, ccxvii, 773–916 Jacques de Vitry, Histoire Occidentale/Historia Occidentalis, ed. and trans. [into French] by G. Duchet-Suchaux (Paris, 1997) ———, Histoire Orientale/Historia Orientalis, ed. and trans. [into French] by J. Donnadieu (Turnhout, 2008)

67 Hoeberichts, Francis and Islam, 42.

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Letters from the East: Crusaders, Pilgrims and Settlers in the 12th–13th Centuries, ed. and trans. by M. Barber and K. Bate (Farnham, 2010) Lettres de Jacques de Vitry (1160/70–1240) évêque de Saint-Jean-d’Acre: Edition critique, ed. by R. B. C. Huygens (Leiden, 1960) Serta mediaevalia: Textus varii saeculorum x–xiii, Tractatus et epistolae, ed. by R. B. C. Huygens, vol. i (Turnhout, 2000) A Source Book for Medieval History, trans. by O. J. Thatcher and E. H. McNeal (New York, 1905) Thomas of Cantimpré, ‘Supplement to Jacques de Vitry’s Life of Marie d’Oignies’, in Two Lives of Marie d’Oignies, trans. by M. H. King and H. Feiss (Toronto, 1998), 213–61 Veterum Scriptorum et Monumentorum Historicorum, Dogmaticorum, Moralium, Amplissima Collectio, ed. by E. Martène and U. Durand, vol. i (Paris, 1724) Secondary Studies Abulafia, D., Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor (London, 1988) Baylé, J., ‘La Mitre épiscopale en France des origins à la fin du xve siècle’, Bulletin archéologique du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, n.s., 9 (1973), 41–97 Bird, J., ‘Crusade and Conversion after the Fourth Lateran Council: Jacques de Vitry’s and Oliver of Paderborn’s Missions to Muslims Reconsidered’, Essays in Medieval Studies, 21 (2004), 23–47 ———, ‘The Religious’s Role in a Post-Fourth Lateran World: Jacques de Vitry’s Sermons ad Status and Historia Occidentalis’, in Medieval Monastic Preaching, ed. by C. Muessig (Leiden, 1998), 209–29 Boehm, B. D., and M. Holcomb, eds, Jerusalem, 1000–1400: Every People under Heaven (New York, 2016) Bolton, B., ‘Mary of Oignies: A Friend to the Saints’, in Mary of Oignies: Mother of Salvation, ed. by A. B. Mulder-Bakker (Turnhout, 2006), 199–220 ———, ‘“Serpent in the Dust: Sparrow on the Housetop”: Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Circle of Pope Innocent III’, Studies in Church History, 36 (2000), 154–80 ———, ‘Spiegels van Vroomheid: Reliken van Maria van Oignies’, trans. by Janine Verster, in De Dynamiek van Religie en Cultuur: Geschiedenis van het nederlands Katholicism, ed. by M. E. Monteiro, G. Rooijakkers, and J. G. G. M. Rosendaal (Kampen, 1993), 124–37 Browne, C., G. Davies, and M. A. Michael, English Medieval Embroidery: Opus Anglicanum (New Haven, CT, 2016) Cannuyer, C., ‘Les Emblèmes sigillaires de Jacques de Vitry reproduits sur trois pièces du trésor d‘Oignies’, La Vie wallone, 58 (1984), 117–26 Carpenter, J. H., ‘A New Heaven and a New Earth: The Vitae of the Mulieres Religiosae of Liège’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Toronto, 1997) Caudron, S., ‘La Diffusion des châsses de saint Thomas Becket dans l’Europe médiévale’, in L’Oeuvre de Limoges et sa diffusion: Trésors, objets, collections, ed. by D. Gaborit-Chopin and F. Tixier (Paris, 2011), 23–42

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Cherry, J. F., ‘The Medieval Episcopal Ring’, in The Medieval English Cathedral: Essays in Honour of Pamela Tudor-Craig, Proceedings of the 1998 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by J. Backhouse (Donington, 2003), 208–17 Constable, G., ‘The Relation between the Sun and the Moon in Medieval Thought (to 1200)’, in Constable, Medieval Thought and Historiography (Abingdon, 2017), 115–24 Decorte, R., and others, ‘An Interdisciplinary Study around the Reliquary of the Late Cardinal Jacques de Vitry’, PLoS ONE, 14.2 (2019) (online: https://doi.org/10.1371/ journal.pone.0201424) Didier, R., and J. Toussaint, eds, Autour de Hugo d’Oignies (Namur, 2003) Donnadieu, J., ‘Entre sentiment et ambition: Les Réseaux de Jacques de Vitry au miroir du Supplementum ad Vitam Mariae Oignacensis de Thomas de Cantimpré’, in Vivre en société au Moyen Âge: Occident chrétien vie–xve siècle, ed. by C. Carozzi and others (Aixen-Provence, 2008), 133–50 Doran, J., ‘In Whose Footsteps? The Role Models of Innocent III’, in Innocenzo III: Urbs et orbis. Atti del congresso internazionale, Roma, 9–15 settembre 1998, ed. by A. Sommerlechner, 2 vols (Rome, 2003), i, 56–73 Duggan, A. J., ‘The Cult of St Thomas Becket in the Thirteenth Century’, in Duggan, Thomas Becket: Friends, Networks, Texts and Cult (Aldershot, 2007), chap. 9, 21–44 Farmer, S. A., ‘Low Country Ascetics and Oriental Luxury: Jacques de Vitry, Marie of Oignies, and the Treasures of Oignies’, in History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person, ed. by R. Fulton and B. W. Holsinger (New York, 2007), 205–22 Folda, J., ‘Before Louis IX: Aspects of Crusader Art at St Jean d’Acre’, in France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades, ed. by D. H. Weiss and L. Mahoney (Baltimore, MD, 2004), 138–57 ———, ‘The Figural Arts in Crusader Syria and Palestine, 1187–1291: Some New Realities’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 58 (2004), 315–32 ———, ‘The Hospitaller Master in Paris and Acre: Some Reconsiderations in Light of New Evidence’, Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, 54 (1996), 51–59 Formigoni, E., ‘Le Monde du frère Hugo: Jacques de Vitry et le prieuré d’Oignies’, in Autour de Hugo d’Oignies, ed. by R. Didier and J. Toussaint (Namur, 2003), 37–45 Greven, J., ‘Die Mitra des Jakob von Vitry und ihre Herkunft’, Zeitschrift für christliche Kunst, 20 (1907), 217–24 Heffernan, T. J., ‘“The Sun Shall be Turned to Darkness and the Moon to Blood”: How Sin and Redemption Affect Heavenly Space in an Old English Transfiguration Homily’, in Place, Space, and Landscape Narrative, ed. by L. L. Howes (Knoxville, TN, 2007), 63–78 Heller, S.-G., ‘Fashion in French Crusade Literature: Desiring Infidel Textiles’, in Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress: Objects, Texts, Images, ed. by D. G. Koslin and J. E. Snyder (New York, 2002), 103–19 Hoeberichts, J. J., Francis and Islam (Quincy, IL, 1997) Jacoby, D., ‘Society, Culture, and the Arts in Crusader Acre’, in France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades, ed. by D. H. Weiss and L. Mahoney (Baltimore, MD, 2004), 97–137 Mellinkoff, R. W., The Horned Moses in Medieval Art and Thought (Eugene, OR, 1970)

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Miller, M. C., Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200 (Ithaca, NY, 2014) Paravicini Bagliani, A., I Testamenti dei Cardinali del Duecento (Rome, 1980) Powell, J. M., ‘Innocent III and the Crusade’, in Innocent III: Vicar of Christ or Lord of the World?, ed. by J. M. Powell, 2nd edn (Washington, DC, 1994), 121–34 Prawer, J., The World of the Crusaders (New York, 1972) Schiller, G., Iconography of Christian Art (New York, 1972) Tagliaferro, P., ‘Il “De sacro altaris mysterio” di Lotario di Segni’, Studi storici e religiosi, 5 (1996), 23–39 Vandeburie, J., ‘Consenescentis mundi die vergente ad vesperam: Eschatological Rhetoric after the Fourth Lateran Council’, in The Uses of the Bible in Crusader Sources, ed. by E. Lapina and N. Morton (Leiden, 2017), 341–58 ———, ‘“Maugré li Polein”: European Migration to the Latin East and the Construction of an Oriental Identity in the Crusader States’, in Migration and Migrant Identities in the Near East from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, ed. by J. Yoo, A. Zerbini, and C. Barron (Abingdon, 2019), 244–61 ———, ‘The Preacher and the Pope: Jacques de Vitry and Honorius III’, in Papacy, Crusade, and Christian–Muslim Relations, ed. by J. L. Bird (Amsterdam, 2018), 131–54 Vincent, N., ‘Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury’, in Étienne Langton, prédicateur, bibliste, théologien, ed. by L.-J. Bataillon, N. Bériou, G. Dahan, and R. Quinto (Turnhout, 2010), 51–126 Vogt, C., ‘Episcopal Self-Fashioning: The Thomas Becket Mitre’, in Iconography of Liturgical Textiles in the Middle Ages, ed. by E. Wetter (Riggisberg, 2010), 117–28 Warr, C., ‘De Indumentis: The Importance of Religious Dress during the Papacy of Innocent III’, in Innocenzo III: Urbs et orbis. Atti del congresso internazionale, Roma, 9–15 settembre 1998, ed. by A. Sommerlechner, 2 vols (Rome, 2003), i, 489–503 ———, Dressing for Heaven: Religious Clothing in Italy, 1215–1545 (Manchester, 2010)

Catherine Lawless

Imaging Power: Gender, Power, and Authority in Florentine Piety

Ecclesiastical power, authority, and gender in medieval Florence can be fruitfully examined through relations between the friars and the women in their circles, both lay and religious, using the texts and images created within this exchange. In late medieval Florentine spirituality the power of woman was great, but her authority was not. An abbess or prioress had authority over her community, but they in turn were subject either to the superior of the order or the local bishop in spiritual matters, and often to lay patrons or the government of the city in temporal concerns. Then as now, no woman could hold sacerdotal authority within Catholicism, and they were also discouraged from preaching. Within the imagery of spiritual power and authority gender played an unstable role, with the shifting symbolism of father, mother, brother, sister, lover, spouse, and so on.1 Daniel Bornstein has shown how gender was important in the construction of late medieval female mysticism, in that women were believed to be more pliant in the receiving of impressions, like wax, due to their cooler and moister humours.2 Thus women’s bodies were seen as being more open to mystical and ecstatic encounters, but their experiences needed to be confessed and licensed by clerical authorities, as the mystical encounter could be demonic, rather than divine.3 John Coakley has shown how a symbiotic relationship between friars and women developed, noting that encounters with women were common for friars, and not incidental, given the importance of evangelicism for the mendicants. He convincingly argued that, although female mystics accepted, indeed welcomed, the authority of the friars, the friars themselves recognized in the women an access to the divine that they themselves lacked.4

1 Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother. See also De Certeau and Cifali, ‘Entretien, mystique et psychanalyse’, 167–68. 2 Bornstein, ‘Spiritual Kinship’, 176. 3 Caciola, Discerning Spirits, 130. 4 Coakley, ‘Gender and the Authority of Friars’, 450.

Catherine Lawless is Director of the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies at Trinity College, Dublin. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 253–267 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118969

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Figure 14.1. Bernardo Daddi, Crucifixion with St Clare, a friar and mourners. Limerick, Hunt Museum. Reproduction courtesy of The Hunt Museum, Limerick.

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Figure 14.2. Bernardo Daddi, The Virgin and Child with SS John Baptist. New York, Metropolitan Museum. Licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0.10). Public Domain Dedication.

Figure 14.3. Taddeo Gaddi, The Tree of Life. Florence, Museo dell’Opera di S. Croce (refectory). Image from Wikimedia Commons, Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-SA3.0).

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These tensions can readily be seen in two images, both originating from Franciscan circles of piety, and both painted by followers of Giotto, probably in the 1340s. Although the audiences and patronage are uncertain, the imagery reflects the need for religious authorities to respond to the power of female piety and to contain it with their authority. The first is a small diptych by Bernardo Daddi (c. 1280–1348) or his workshop, split between the Hunt Museum in Limerick, Ireland (Figure 14.1) and the New York Metropolitan Museum (Figure 14.2), and the second is the fresco of the Tree of Life by Taddeo Gaddi (c. 1290–1366) in the refectory of the Franciscan friars’ church of S. Croce in Florence (Figure 14.3).5 Both images come from a Franciscan context, and both are related to female piety. I use these images not only because they raise questions about gender, power, and authority, but also because they challenge what we understand by patronage and control over imagery. Power and authority were algorithms of uneven and contingent nature. The centre of ecclesiastical power in Florence was its cathedral. The role of women in the Church was confined until the penitential movement of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to that of traditional monasticism or anchoritism. Large, well-endowed houses presented repositories for the daughters of Florentines and provided for the city’s spiritual health and well-being.6 With the advent of penitential piety, and particularly the arrival of the mendicant orders, women were able to avail of different models of piety, moving between the full enclosure of older monastic models to living a life of piety within their own home wearing a penitent’s habit, and one which became increasingly affiliated to a mendicant order.7 Women were also able to come together in houses to lead religious lives, often clustering around the mendicant churches, in particular the Dominican S. Maria Novella and the Franciscan S. Croce. Further, the affectivity and emotional intensity of Cistercian-inspired spirituality lent itself as particularly appropriate to a more feminized piety. So influential, and feminized, was the penitential movement that Vincenza Talò has called it a ‘vast female magma’, impossible for clerical authorities to control.8 Anna Benvenuti Papi shows how the unregulated piety of the laity, and in particular, that of women, troubled the clergy. The Dominican Fra Giordano da Rivaldo in his sermons of 1303–06 in Florence admonished his audience against those mad and stupid people who believed that they could master Scripture on their own and who, enclosing themselves away from the world, also moved away from their spiritual guides. He urged instead that people go to confession, go to Communion, the Masses,



5 The linking of the two panels was published by Miklós Boskovits in 1984, where he stated that the New York panel was the companion panel of the Crucifixion ‘(location unknown) bought in 1965 by Julius Weitzner’: Boskovits, in Offner, The Fourteenth Century, 358, 611. The Crucifixion panel appears in a photograph in the Fondazione Zeri in the University of Bologna (14806), labelled as ‘Sotheby’s Sale, June 30, 1965/Various Properties, lot 32/ (bought back)/ as B. Daddi/ Same diptych as MMA Mad.+ SS./Blumenthal # 41.100.100.15./F.Zeri, June 1965’. This is the panel in the Hunt Museum. For the Taddeo Gaddi fresco, see Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi, 171–82. 6 Strocchia, Nuns and Nunneries, 9–10. 7 Benvenuti Papi, In castro poenitentiae, 17, 94–95, 122, 235–36, 305, 334. 8 Talò, Il Monachesimo Femminile, 295.

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mix with good people, use prayer, and go to sermons.9 He also called on women to imitate the Virgin, rather than more Christocentric (and uncloistered) forms of religious life, naming many practices common to late medieval holy women: ‘It is not read of our Lady that she fasted or went on pilgrimage, except a little, or gave alms, or served in hospitals. Yet, why do the saints say that she merits more than the angels? They say: because she loved Jesus Christ above all others.’10

Personal Devotion: Bernardo Daddi The imagery of the Daddi diptych serves as a visual metaphor of the relations of power, authority, and gender in medieval Florence. The small size of the diptych suggests its imagery was, therefore, probably intended for personal rather than collective devotion, or, at least, the devotion of a small group of people rather than a large one.11 The right-hand panel shows the crucified Christ with the mourning women at the left, the centurion and the soldiers at the right, and kneeling at the foot of the cross St Clare and a Franciscan friar (Figure 14.1). The friar has no halo, and he is thus probably to be identified as the commissioning agent of the panel. The left-hand panel shows the Virgin and Child flanked by SS Louis of Toulouse and Catherine of Alexandria on the left, and SS Agnes and Elizabeth of Hungary on the right, the latter wearing the robes of the Franciscan third order. In the foreground are SS John the Baptist, Francis, John the Evangelist, and Anthony of Padua (Figure 14.2). The prominence of St Clare in this depiction is interesting. She occupies the place usually occupied by either the Magdalen or, in Franciscan imagery, St Francis.12 As Frugoni has noted, the canonization process of St Clare was opened by Pope Innocent IV and not through any impetus of the Franciscan first order. Nor were any Franciscan friars called to testify in the process.13 During Clare’s life she had fought continuously for the ability to live a life of apostolic poverty at San Damiano.14 In 1245, Innocent IV had imposed the Rule of Ugolino on the community, authorizing the nuns to hold property and fixed assets. This was problematic for Clare as it violated her commitment to apostolic poverty. The Rule of St Clare, based on that of St Francis and his last testament, and the first rule to have been written by a woman for women, was accepted only two days before her death in 1253 and soon became binding not

9 Benvenuti Papi, In castro poenitentiae, 235–36. 10 ‘della Nostra Donna non si legge che digiunasse o pellegrinasse, se non uno pocolino, o desse limosina, o servisse ai spedali. Ordunque, dicono i santi, perché meritae ella sopra tutti gli angeli? Dicono: imperocché ella amò Gesù Cristo sopra gli altri’: Prediche inedite, ed. by Narducci, 384, quoted in Benvenuti Papi, In castro poenitentiae, 236. 11 On the usefulness of the terms ‘individual devotion’ or ‘personal devotion’ instead of ‘private’, see Schmidt, Painted Piety, 81. 12 Dante, Paradiso, XI: 52–81. See, for instance, the Crucifixion and mourner with kneeling donor, close follower of Bernardo Daddi, 40 × 28.5 cm, 1320s, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 23.211. 13 Frugoni, Una Solitudine Abitata, 10. 14 Talò, Il Monachesimo Femminile, 296, 300.

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on the Clarissan order itself, but on her own convent of San Damiano and one or two others.15 The house of San Damiano had relied on friars procuring alms for the nuns, and thus a direct dependency was established between the first and second orders, a dependency that the friars were not universally keen to maintain. Not only did Clare’s commitment to apostolic poverty create uncomfortable memories of the founder, but the cura monialium and responsibilities of the first order towards the second were not accepted by all friars.16 She was canonized by Alexander IV in 1255, who pronounced the decision in the cathedral of Anagni.17 The feast of St Clare was inserted into the Franciscan liturgy only in 1340, and so Clare is unlikely to have served in such a key role in a panel destined for a friar or friary, even despite the small dimensions of the panel.18 The emotional intensity of the swooning Virgin in the Crucifixion is typical of the type of piety encouraged by late medieval texts such as the Meditationes Vitae Christi, where the reader (a nun) is exhorted to meditate upon the pains of the Passion as if she were there and to feel the sorrow of the Virgin and the mourning women. The blood being caught by angels reminds the viewer of the sacrifice made by Christ and of his pierced and broken body, a body that will be consumed in the Eucharist.19 The Meditationes, long accepted as a text written in Latin by a Franciscan friar, Giovanni de Cauli of San Gimignano, for a Clarissan nun, has recently been suggested to have been written first in Italian by a nun, probably but not necessarily a Clarissan, and corrected later by a friar more concerned with public ministry than the interior journey of the original writer.20 The text, whether Franciscan or not, is typical of both Cistercian and mendicant affective piety apparent in late medieval devotional texts and images, influencing each other and all operating within the same framework of emotional intensity. The left-hand panel offers a less emotionally intense scene, but one in which late medieval affectivity is no less exploited.21 The Christ Child reaches out towards St Agnes to pet the lamb in a touching gesture, but one that also reminds the viewer of the sacrifice that will be made of his flesh, visible in the neighbouring Crucifixion. The gesture could remind one of the mystic marriage consummated by Agnes with her spouse, Christ, in her martyrdom.22 St Agnes was, as one of the virgin martyrs praised by St Ambrose, a key figure in the promotion of virginal piety.23 Catherine of Alexandria was one of the most popular saints in the later Middle Ages, undoubtedly 15 Vauchez, Ordini mendicanti, 52. 16 Frugoni, Una Solitudine Abitata, 12; Roest, Order and Disorder, 31. 17 Frugoni, Una Solitudine Abitata, 11. 18 Vauchez, Ordini mendicanti, 53. 19 On the imagery of the swooning Virgin, see Neff, ‘Pain of Compassion’. 20 McNamer, ‘Origins’. The authorship of the Meditationes is beyond the scope of this essay, but its possible composition by a woman and its later correction by a friar fits perfectly into a discussion on the friars’ mediation and regulation of female voices. 21 Baetjer, European Paintings, i, 40; ii, 8. 22 Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, trans. by Granger Ryan, i, 101–05, at 102; Iacopo da Varazze, Legenda Aurea, ed. by Maggioni, i, 169–73. 23 Iacopo da Varazze, Legenda Aurea, ed. by Maggioni, i, lvi.

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due to the success of the legend of her mystic marriage which made her the daughterin-law of the blessed Virgin and which, despite the ubiquity of nuptial imagery in the lives of the martyrs, exercised a particular fascination for medieval poets, artists, and patrons. The mystic marriages of Agnes and Catherine with the Child Jesus made them suitable patrons not only for nuns, but also for penitent women whose vitae often speak of their mystic union with Christ. The combination of themes, combined with the playfulness of the Child and contrasted with his adult fate on the cross, again, fits well with the mood of texts such as the Meditationes Vitae Christi. The fact that most of the saints in the left-hand panel are confessors and not martyrs is also resonant with the penitential piety of the late Middle Ages, and with the Meditationes Vitae Christi, which told readers: not only the martyrs but also the confessors bore their tribulations and infirmities with great patience, and have to this day. If you read about the Blessed Francis and the Blessed virgin Clara, your mother and leader, you will discover how they remained not only patient but even cheerful throughout many tribulations, poverty, and illness. And also you will continue to see this quality in those who lead a saintly life, because their souls were not and are not in their bodies but in Christ, owing to their devoted contemplation of his life.24 The other figures in the panel firmly connect it to Franciscan piety. The image of St Elizabeth of Hungary (d. 1231) was multifaceted. Her legend, promoted by the Angevin royal family to which she belonged and by the Franciscan Order which claimed her, emphasized her roles as a dutiful wife and mother, a widow determined to refuse remarriage, a penitent who freely gave alms and who also willingly subjected herself to the authority of a male confessor. The inclusion in a number of Florentine devotional manuscripts of Elizabeth’s legend and the revelations attributed to her indicates that her cult transcended the confines of the Franciscan Order and appealed to pious Florentine women, and in particular, widows attracted to the penitential life.25 The dynamics of power and authority can be seen in the panel. The place of spiritual power is concentrated in the redemptive sacrifice of Christ on the cross and the consumption of his body in the Eucharist; thus the position of Clare is given paramount importance as she kneels before the Crucifix. Her image and her fama sanctitatis held power, but little authority outside the motherhouse of San Damiano. Further, although Clare’s ardent commitment to apostolic poverty would have made her an unlikely promoter of objects like the gilded, jewel-like little diptych here discussed, it could have served as a valuable aid to piety for devout women, and

24 Meditations on the Life of Christ, ed. by Green and Ragusa, 2–3. 25 Her legend, for example, is found in the fourteenth-century Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, MS Panciatichiano 38, fols 120v–132v, and the fifteenth-century Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, MS II, VII, 25, fols 152–153. Elizabeth of Hungary is one of the saints included in Giovanni del Biondo’s altarpiece of Annunciation with Saints, commissioned by Andreucciola Acciaiuoli for her husband’s burial chapel, that of the Cavalcanti, in the Dominican S. Maria Novella, c. 1378. King, Renaissance Women Patrons, 100–103.

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in particular, those women who lived a life of penitential piety within a Franciscan matrix, but in their own homes.26 The role of the kneeling friar leads to many questions. It is unlikely that a friar could or would commission such a panel for his own house with Clare instead of Francis at the foot of the cross. He may well have done so as procurator for a Clarissan house or for a devout laywoman. Further, it is possible that his figure appears here not as a donor figure for others, but as a figure to be remembered in the prayers of those looking at the panel. The friar, whatever role he played in the production of the panel, is a mediator between the male ecclesiastical world of power and authority, and the female devotional world where charismatic power was possible, but legal and sacerdotal authority was not.

Female Power in the Tree of Life The power of female devotion is visible within the refectory of the Franciscan house of S. Croce. There, occupying an entire wall, is a fresco by Taddeo Gaddi depicting, in the centre field, Christ crucified on the wood of the Tree of Life, inspired by the text by the Franciscan General Bonaventure of Bagnoreggio, which was written c. 1259.27 The imagery of the Tree of Life had been deployed about forty years earlier in a large panel by Pacino di Bonaguida, for the convent of the Poor Clares of Monticelli in Florence.28 In Taddeo Gaddi’s fresco of the Tree of Life Francis clutches the foot of the cross, while to his left, Bonaventure, author of the Tree of Life, sits writing on a scroll. To the right are SS Anthony of Padua, Dominic, and Louis of Toulouse, to the left, the mourners composed of the swooning Virgin, Mary Magdalen, two Marys, and St John the Evangelist. Kneeling in front of them is a figure wearing a white wimple and ashen-coloured robes, her hands joined in prayer, and placed in a direct diagonal behind St Francis. She is in the position of a donor figure, and her robes suggest that she is a penitent associated with the Franciscan Order. In two diamond-shaped panels in the bottom corners of a fictive frame are found, on the left, St Clare and, on the right, St Elizabeth of Hungary. Directly below the crucified Christ, again in the fictive frame, is the dove of the Holy Spirit. Below the frame, and thus in a clearly demarcated separate space, the Last Supper is depicted, with Christ depicted underneath the dove of the Holy Spirit, the Crucifixion of the central zone, and God the Father. The fresco, described by Simbeni as like a monumental triptych with the Last Supper as its predella, has four scenes on either side of the Lignum Vitae. On the top left, there is the stigmatization of St Francis, and below is St Louis arriving

26 On imagery and female private prayer, see Lawless, ‘Sensing the Image’. 27 The text of the Tree of Life translated into English is found in Bonaventure, The Tree of Life, trans. by Cousins. 28 Pacino di Bonaguida, Tree of Life, panel, 248 × 151 cm, c. 1310. Florence, Accademia, inv. 1890, 8459.

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at his see and feeding the poor and sick; on the top right, Romanus bringing food to St Benedict, and below, Mary Magdalen washing the feet of Christ.29 The patronage of the frescoes is not known, although the coat of arms visible in the border has been identified as that of the Manfredi family.30 Ladis notes that most of the Manfredi were buried in the Dominican church of S. Maria Novella, but that at least one member, Filippo, was marked by a stone in the nave of S. Croce inscribed ‘HEREDUM DOMINI PHILIPPI MANFREDI ET DESCENDENTIUM’. Vaggia Manfredi, identified by Ladis as his wife, was buried on 10 November 1345, and so he concluded that she was ‘too early for her to be the donor shown in the mural wearing the garments of a Franciscan tertiary’.31 Becherucci, however, disagreed and found the date plausible for the depiction of Vaggia.32 A Filippo di Filippo di Bernardo Manfredi was buried in S. Maria Novella in 1338, and Vaggia, wife of Filippo Manfredi in the same church of S. Maria Novella 10 November 1345.33 If the kneeling woman can be identified with the Vaggia Manfredi who was buried ‘with the habit’ in S. Maria Novella, it shows a remarkable fluidity of association of penitent women, or pinzochere, between the two key mendicant spaces of the city, the Franciscan S. Croce and the Dominican S. Maria Novella. This fluidity can be supported by the reference in the S. Maria Novella sepoltuario of another Manfredi, Margherita, who was buried on 3 January 1370 in S. Maria Novella, but with the habit of the Friars Minor.34 The presence of St Dominic within the fresco could thus be explained through the devotional interests of Vaggia. The mechanics of patronage are too unknown to formulate hypotheses on the involvement of the kneeling woman with the frescoes themselves. Although Simbeni has noted numerous grammatical errors in the Latin text, the close involvement, if not overall planning, must have been taken care of by the friars themselves.35 However, Vaggia’s involvement, and that of her family, in the circles of piety of both S. Croce and S. Maria Novella does provide an explanation for the presence of St Dominic, and the friars’ involvement and spiritual instruction to the circles of penitent women surrounding, in particular but not exclusively, the mendicant churches may underlie the choice of themes associated with penitence, consumption, mysticism, and affectivity. The authority of the Lignum Vitae is seen through St Bonaventura’s writing of the scrolls at the foot of the tree. This cannot but also be associated with Bonaventura’s authority as the author of the only official biography of St Francis, the Legenda 29 Simbeni, ‘Gli affreschi di Taddeo Gaddi nel refettorio’, 118. 30 Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi, 172. 31 Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi, 172. A Riccho Manfredi is listed in the sepoltuario of 1439, the earliest one extant for S. Croce, where it states ‘y dice AMCCLXXXXViiii [1289 …] Sepulcra cimiteri q. sunt su capellis eclesie […] S. Ricchi Manfredi - 147’: Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, MS 619, fol. 4v. 32 Becherucci, I musei di Santa Croce, 164. 33 The sepoltuario of S. Maria Novella gives a date of 29 April 1338 for ‘Philippus f. q. Philippi Bernardi de Manfredis cum habitu’: ‘Nomi di uomini e di donne seppellitti in S. Maria Novella’, ed. by di San Luigi, 144, 195. 34 ‘Dom. Margherita de Manfredis pop. S. Petri Buonconsigli cum habitu FF. Minorum quem portavit an. 60. & ultra.’: ‘Nomi di uomini e di donne seppellitti in S. Maria Novella’, ed. by di San Luigi, 124. 35 Simbeni, ‘Gli affreschi di Taddeo Gaddi nel refettorio’, 115.

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Maior. The stigmatization of St Francis confirms Francis as the alter Christus, and its depiction beside the Tree of Life is a further link in the chain of authority linking Bonaventura to the founder saint. The other three scenes all concern consumption and charity. In the lower scene, St Louis wearing the episcopal mitre as Bishop of Toulouse and his Franciscan robes receives the poor. A powerful figure of humility, St Louis had renounced the Kingdom of Naples in order to become a Franciscan friar. In visiting Florence in 1296 he invited the poor of the city to a meal in S. Croce itself, and as noted by Amanda Quantz, the buildings depicted in the fresco can be identified with that same church.36 The scene on the top right shows the priest at his Easter meal hearing news of St Benedict’s hunger, after the rope to which a loaf of bread and a bell was attached by Romanus was broken by the devil. Below is the scene wherein the Magdalen anoints the feet of Christ with precious ointment and dries them with her hair, which is not only a powerful one of humility and penitence, but also prefigures her anointment of Christ’s dead body in the tomb. The words of Bonaventura in the Tree of Life connect hospitality and charity with the anointing of Christ’s feet: ‘Like Matthew, therefore / follow this most devoted shepherd; / like Zacchaeus / receive him with hospitality; like the sinful woman / anoint him with ointment / and wash his feet with your tears, / and wipe them with your hair / and caress them with your kisses’.37 The Last Supper was treated by Bonaventura as ‘the most worthy of remembrance’ and links to the anointment of the feet of Christ as well as to the banquet scenes above, as at that supper ‘the King of Glory diligently washed the feet of the fishermen’ and instituted the Eucharist.38 The importance of the Eucharist to penitent women has been well documented and is central to understanding these images. Angela of Foligno’s (d. 1309) visions were of St Francis, the Trinity, and the Eucharist. In one vision she herself was given the chalice to distribute.39 In another vision she nursed from Christ and saw him place the heads of her ‘sons’ (Franciscan friars) into the wound in his side.40 Linked to the subversion of male, clerical authority noted by Benvenuti Papi and Walker Bynum, Christ also told the penitent sinner and ‘New Magdalen’ Margherita da Cortona (d. 1297) that she could have Communion frequently.41 Christ told her that there were many unworthy priests, who polluted the Eucharist with their hands.42 Having entered a new cell, she received Communion from a priest who gave her by accident unconsecrated bread. This was due to his hiding consecrated hosts to prevent them being stolen from the church for witchcraft or magic. Margherita blamed her failure to sense the sweetness of Christ on her own sin, until Christ revealed to her what had happened.43

36 Quantz, ‘At Prayer’, 342–43. 37 Bonaventure, The Tree of Life, trans. by Cousins, 137. 38 Bonaventure, The Tree of Life, trans. by Cousins, 139. 39 Walker Bynum, ‘Fast, Feast, and Flesh’, 13. 40 Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, 129. 41 Acta Sanctorum, Februarii iii, ed. by the Bollandists, 339–40. 42 Acta Sanctorum, Februarii iii, ed. by the Bollandists, 340. 43 Acta Sanctorum, Februarii iii, ed. by the Bollandists, 343.

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All the scenes are appropriate for a refectory of Franciscan friars not only for their own devotions, but also for their ministry among the laity, and particularly, for their ministry to the pinzochere, embodied in the kneeling donor figure just behind St Francis in the central scene. She, in fact, occupies a more central place than the two saints associated with the second and third orders, Clare and Elizabeth, both placed in the border and firmly outside the central and narrative scenes. The friars, and important visitors to the refectory, could thus see displayed on its walls the erudite mysticism of St Bonaventura, and the scenes of consumption and charity closely linked to the Eucharist. But they could also see the importance and power of female devotion and patronage, there in the figure of the kneeling tertiary, a woman perpetuated in the memory of the friary itself, in a space in which it is unlikely any woman ever entered bodily.

Women and Friars Despite views expressed about the dangers of encounters with women, the evangelical nature of the friars’ mission necessitated their ministry and guidance of devout women, and as in the case of the cult of Elizabeth of Hungary, they were able to use particular models of holiness to inspire those women. A Florentine Franciscan equivalent to Elizabeth is provided by the young widow Umiliana dei Cerchi. Having refused to remarry, she led a life of austere penitence and charity within the tower of her natal family. Immediately after her death in 1246 the Franciscan Vito da Cortona wrote her biography in a clear attempt to build or respond to a cult.44 The case of Umiliana typifies the behaviour noted by Dalarun, in his work on Giovanna da Signa, where he demonstrates how cults that originally attracted women, both as followers of the saint and as recipients of her miracles, quickly became both masculinized and clericalized.45 The Bishop of Florence, Ardingo, saw in Umiliana a useful model with which to control the many irregular groups of pious lay women and to channel their activity into mainstream religious life. The real or perceived risk of heresy was combatted with accounts of Umiliana’s devotion to the Eucharist, Confession, and her complete submission to the authority of her confessor, Fra Michele degli Alberti.46 Another male intermediary, Umiliana’s brother, Arrigo, played a role in the promotion not only of her cult, but also of the pinzochere. Arrigo was first documented in July 1264 when he was active in business and made money through usury.47 Having become a Franciscan tertiary, in his testament of 1289 he left a house for Donna Ravenna and for his mother, Donna Ermellina, both vestite di S. Croce, or penitents attached to S. Croce, to live in individual cells, and instructed that no other women

44 Acta Sanctorum, Maii iv, ed. by the Bollandists, 385–400. A translation is provided in Schuchman, ‘Life of Umiliana de’ Cerchi’. 45 Dalarun, ‘Jeanne de Signa’, 191–92. 46 Benvenuti Papi, ‘Cerchi, Umiliana, beata’. 47 Benvenuti Papi, In castro poenitentiae, 88.

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were to live there unless they too were vestite di S. Croce, and they were to remain in the care of the convent of S. Croce, to which he left 200,000 florins.48 To remain within the Franciscan context, some further examples of the relationship between the friars and charismatic holy women can be given. Margherita da Cortona, a penitent after the death of her married lover, was seen by her Franciscan biographer as a new Magdalen, yet her role was tempered by the urban landscape in which she lived. After the feast of St Thomas the Apostle, Christ told her not to go through Cortona looking for alms, but trust to his friars instead.49 He also told her that times were different from those of the Magdalen, and that she was to stay in her cell and make of that a desert. She was to confide in the care of the Franciscans, to avert her face from whoever served her, and to wear a veil.50 Her confessor and biographer, Fra Giunta Bevegnati, was told by his superiors to visit Margherita only every eight days, as his daily visits were the subject of rumour.51 However, the vita shows some dissent within the order itself. In another vision Christ told Margherita that the Franciscans were to cease preaching inanities, and instead the words of the Gospel and the epistles of St Paul.52 When the friar Filippo wondered if he needed to interrogate sinners during Confession, Christ told Margherita that for most sinners this was indeed necessary, and that the order of Friars Minor was the best order.53 However, he also told her that simony was increasing, and that even the Franciscans were afflicted by it.54 Christ told her that she would be given a crown on the feast of St Clare, and that she is the third light in the order, after St Francis and St Clare.55 The Franciscan Ubertino da Casale was, like Fra Giunta Bevegnati, another of these mediator figures. He was in S. Croce between 1285 and 1289, and again between 1298 and 1302.56 In Paris, between 1289 and 1299, he drifted far from his original vocation but was converted by Angela da Foligno.57 He also knew Margherita da Cortona and had a copy of Fra Giunta Bevegnati’s Vita, which he lent to Cardinal Napoleone Orsini while serving as his chaplain.58 Both images raise questions about the relationship between the three Franciscan orders and the wider world of penitent women moving within their orbit. The experiences of both Margherita da Cortona and Angela da Foligno reveal that their mysticism made them powerful, but only if those mystical experiences were accepted and redacted by male clerical authorities. Like Clare, their spirituality had to be contained within the borders of the existing ecclesiastical hierarchy and tailored to

48 Richa, Notizie Istoriche, ii, 152. 49 Acta Sanctorum, Februarii iii, ed. by the Bollandists, 307. 50 Acta Sanctorum, Februarii iii, ed. by the Bollandists, 312. 51 Sensi, ‘Giunta di Bevignate’. 52 Acta Sanctorum, Februarii iii, ed. by the Bollandists, 342. 53 Acta Sanctorum, Februarii iii, ed. by the Bollandists, 347–48. 54 Acta Sanctorum, Februarii iii, ed. by the Bollandists, 348. 55 Acta Sanctorum, Februarii iii, ed. by the Bollandists, 358–59. 56 Accroca, ‘Introduzione’. 57 Angela of Foligno, ed. by Lachanze, 22. 58 Sensi, ‘Giunta di Bevignate’.

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its priorities. Caroline Walker Bynum noted this process thus: ‘Female creativity must be facilitated by men; female saints are not canonized or revered unless they are in some way religiously useful to men; female rejection of family and fertility must be conceptualized by men as acceptance of other communal and generative possibilities.’59 In conclusion, this essay has looked at networks of gender and power within Franciscan circles in Florence through the prism of two images originating from those circles. The mechanics of patronage of both images are unknown, but their Franciscan nature cannot be denied, nor can the role of women within the mental landscape of Franciscan evangelicism in the Florentine context. The diptych, almost certainly conceived for private devotion, concentrates on affective themes, often gendered as female, of tenderness and compassion, and the female Saint Clare occupies the position of honour at the foot of the cross of Christ, watched by the Franciscan friar who mediates a position between the male ecclesiastical authority and female piety. The fresco shows the importance of a female penitent to S. Croce and reminds the male audience of their duties towards the laity, in this instance, personified in the body of a kneeling woman.

Works Cited Manuscripts Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, MS 619 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, MS II, VII, 25 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, MS Panciatichiano 38 Primary Sources Acta Sanctorum, Februarii iii, ed. by the Bollandists (Paris, 1865) Acta Sanctorum, Maii iv, ed. by the Bollandists (Antwerp, 1685) Angela of Foligno: The Complete Works, ed. by P. Lachanze (New York, 1993) Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God, The Tree of Life, the Life of Saint Francis, trans. by E. Cousins (New York, 1978) Iacopo da Varazze, Legenda Aurea, ed. by G. P. Maggioni, 2 vols (Florence, 1998) Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans. by W. Granger Ryan, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ, 1993) Meditations on the Life of Christ, ed. by R. Green and I. Ragusa (Princeton, NJ, 1961) ‘Nomi di uomini e di donne seppellitti in S. Maria Novella, tratti da un Libro di cartapecora esistente nelle mani de’ Frati di detta chiesa’, ed. by I. di San Luigi, Delizie degli Eruditi Toscani, 9 (1777), 123–302

59 Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, 16.

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Prediche inedite del beato Giordano da Rivalto dell’ordine dei predicatori recitate in Firenze dal 1302 al 1305, ed. by E. Narducci (Bologna, 1867) Schuchman, A. M., ‘Life of Umiliana de’ Cerchi (1246)’, in Medieval Italy: A Documentary History, ed. by K. Jensen, J. Drell, and F. Andrews (University Park, PA, 2009), 377–84 Secondary Studies Accroca, F., ‘Introduzione’, to Ubertino da Casale, ‘L’Albero della L’Albero della Vita Crocifissa di Gesù’, ed. and trans. by F. Olgiati and D. Solvi, in Fonti Francescane: Nuova edizione, ed. by E. Caroli (Padua, 2004), 1335–36 Baetjer, K., European Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum, 3 vols (New York, 1980) Becherucci, L., I musei di Santa Croce e di Santo Spirito a Firenze (Milan, 1983) Benvenuti Papi, A., ‘Cerchi, Umiliana, beata’, in DBI, [last accessed 2 January 2019] ———, In castro poenitentiae: Figure e modelli femminili nella rappresentazione della santità (sec. xii–xiv), Santità e società femminile nell’Italia medievale (Rome, 1990) Bornstein, D., ‘Spiritual Kinship and Domestic Devotion’, in Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy, ed. by J. C. Brown and R. C. Davis (London, 1998), 173–92 Boskovits, M., in R. Offner with K. Steinweg, continued under the direction of M. Boskovits and M. Gregori, The Fourteenth Century, the Painters of the Miniaturist Tendency: A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Section 3, 9, new edn (Florence, 1984) Caciola, N., Discerning Spirits: Divine and Daemonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2003) Coakley, J., ‘Gender and the Authority of Friars: The Significance of Holy Women for Thirteenth-Century Franciscans and Dominicans’, Church History, 60 (1991), 445–60 Dalarun, J., ‘Jeanne de Signa, ermite toscane du xive siècle, ou la sainteté ordinaire’, Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome, Moyen Age, 98 (1986), 161–99 De Certeau, M., and M. Cifali, ‘Entretien, mystique et psychanalyse’, Espaces Temps, 80.1 (2002), 156–75 Frugoni, C., Una Solitudine Abitata: Chiara d’Assisi (Assisi, 2006) King, C., Renaissance Women Patrons: Wives and Widows in Italy, c. 1300–1550 (Manchester, 1998) Ladis, A., Taddeo Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonné (Columbia, NY, 1982) Lawless, C., ‘Sensing the Image: Gender, Piety and Images in Late Medieval Europe’, Open Arts Journal, 4 (2014–15), 41–60 McNamer, S., ‘The Origins of the Meditationes Vitae Christi’, Speculum, 84 (2009), 905–55 Neff, A., ‘The Pain of Compassion: Mary’s Labor at the Foot of the Cross’, Art Bulletin, 80 (1998), 254–74 Quantz, A., ‘At Prayer in the Shadow of the Tree of Life’, in Franciscans at Prayer, ed. by T. J. Johnson (Leiden, 2007), 333–56 Richa, G., Notizie Istoriche delle Chiese Fiorentine Divise ne’ Suoi Quartieri, 10 vols (Florence, 1754–62)

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Roest, B., Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares between Foundation and Reform (Leiden, 2013) Schmidt, V. M., Painted Piety: Panel Paintings for Personal Devotion in Tuscany, 1250–1400 (Florence, 2005) Sensi, M., ‘Giunta di Bevignate’, in DBI, [last accessed 2 January 2019] Simbeni, A., ‘Gli affreschi di Taddeo Gaddi nel refettorio: programma, committenza e datazione. Con una postilla sulla diffusione del modello iconografico del Lignum Vitae in Catalogna’, in Santa Croce: Oltre le apparenze, ed. by A. De Marchi and G. Piraz (Pistoia, 2011), 113–41 Strocchia, S. T., Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore, MD, 2010) Talò, V., Il Monachesimo Femminile: La vita della donne religiose nell’Occidente medievale (Milan, 2006) Vauchez, A., Ordini mendicanti e società italiana xiii–xv secolo (Milan, 1990) Walker Bynum, C., ‘Fast, Feast, and Flesh: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women’, Representations, 11 (1985), 1–25 ———, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, 1992) ———, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, CA, 1982)

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Royal Women, the Franciscan Order, and Ecclesiastical Authority in Late Medieval Bohemia and the Polish Duchies

So that you may walk more tranquilly along the way of the Lord’s commands, follow the advice of our venerable father, our Brother Elias, minister general. Prefer his advice to the advice of others and consider it more precious to you than any gift. Indeed, if someone tells you something else or suggests anything to you that may hinder your perfection and that seems contrary to your divine vocation, even though you must respect him, still, do not follow his advice; instead, poor virgin, embrace the poor Christ.1

In what must be the most oft-quoted passage from the epistolary correspondence between Clare of Assisi (d. 1253) and Agnes of Bohemia (d. 1282), Clare instructs Agnes that she must not listen to the advice given to her by ‘someone’ who may lead her away from the path that she had chosen to follow as a nun of the Order of San Damiano.2 Instead, she must heed the wisdom of the Minster General of the Order of Friars Minor, Elias of Cortona (d. 1253). This piece of advice offers historians of women’s authority a fascinating glimpse of how Clare — a woman who, whether she was entirely aware of it or not, was being shaped by the papacy into a figure of enormous spiritual importance even within her own lifetime — exercised her own authority to advise Agnes on which male ecclesiast she ought to defer to. Though inevitably subject to the spiritual direction of clerics, Clare had built up a standing that she felt gave her some ability to choose the pastor most likely to guide Agnes along the correct path and to steer the new convert accordingly. Clare of Assisi was a nun and most probably a mentee of Francis of Assisi (d. 1226), the friar around whom the identity of the order was shaped. It is difficult to know 1 Mueller, Clare’s Letters to Agnes, 59. 2 Clare’s letters of spiritual advice to Agnes have elicited a large bibliography. See, for example, Mueller, Clare’s Letters to Agnes; Mueller, Companion to Clare of Assisi, esp. 119–208; Mooney, ‘Imitatio Christi or Imitatio Mariae?’; Monagle, ‘Poor Maternity’. Kirsty Day is Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at Aalborg University. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 269–284 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118970

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precisely when Clare became a nun or when the community of poor nuns in Assisi was formed, or, indeed, what criteria we would use to pinpoint the birth of such a community; the earliest mention of a group of nuns at San Damiano, the community of which Clare was a part, appears in a papal privilege of 1219.3 Clare, then, had lived as a nun for at least fifteen years when Agnes converted to a fully professed life in 1234. Agnes’s side of the correspondence is not extant. The passage above is from the second of four letters that Clare wrote to Agnes from 1234 to 1253, and it was likely written at some point between 1234 and 1238. Elias of Cortona, the minister general, had fallen out of favour with the male followers of Francis, but in Francis’s vita he is one of Francis’s early followers.4 The legendary witness that Elias bore to the life of the person from whom Clare drew inspiration may have informed Clare’s recommendation of Elias to Agnes.5 The ‘someone’ against whom Clare warns the Bohemian princess was most likely Pope Gregory IX, with whom Clare had been negotiating aspects of her community’s religious constitutions, or forma vitae.6 It is not clear without context why Clare tells Agnes to ignore Gregory or what aspect of Agnes’s religious calling Clare believes might be endangered by the pope’s counsel, and these issues have already been treated at length by scholars such as Maria Pia Alberzoni, Catherine Mooney, and Joan Mueller.7 More interesting for the present study is the way in which Clare stages various authorities and explains these to Agnes in the letter. In her correspondence, Clare negotiates a difficult set of power differentials between herself and Agnes. The same tale that named Elias as one of Francis’s early followers, Thomas of Celano’s vita of St Francis, written in 1228–29, also named Clare as an early convert.8 Clare was also approximately forty years old at the time and experienced in the religious vocation, whereas Agnes was a neophyte nun of twenty-three. Clare was, however, writing to the princess of a dynasty that played an important role in central European politics, which was becoming more of a concern to a papacy embroiled in conflict with the Hohenstaufen emperor, Frederick II. Clare manages this through her reimagining of Agnes’s power in spiritual terms. She crafts her salutation as follows: To the daughter of the King of kings, handmaid of the Lord of lords, most worthy spouse of Jesus Christ and therefore, very distinguished queen, the Lady Agnes, Clare, useless and unworthy handmaid of the Poor Ladies, sends her greetings and the prayer that Agnes may always live in the utmost poverty.9



3 The privilege was issued by Pope Honorius III to the community of Santa Maria of the Holy Sepulchre in Monticelli: Bullarium Franciscanum, ed. by Sbaralea, 3–4. The most recent account of the origin of the community can be found in Mooney, Clare of Assisi, esp. 30–53. 4 Though see the revisionist reading of the sources for Elias in Sedda, ‘La “malavventura” di frate Elia’. 5 Cusato, ‘Clare and Elias’. 6 Mueller, Privilege of Poverty, 67–71. 7 Alberzoni, ‘Clare and the Papacy’; Mooney, Clare of Assisi, 100–106; Mueller, Privilege of Poverty, esp. 70–71. 8 Francis of Assisi, Early Documents, ed. by Armstrong, Hellmann, and Short, 197. 9 Mueller, Clare’s Letters to Agnes, 54–55.

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Agnes is a ‘very distinguished queen’, but she gains this title via her membership of the holy family rather than any earthly one and, most importantly, through her submission to Christ. Within a movement in which the performance of humility brought spiritual reward, Clare’s choice to style herself as the ‘useless and unworthy handmaid of the Poor Ladies’ lends authority to the guidance she issues to Agnes. The mentoring relationship that had formed between the two women as a product of their correspondence became the conduit through which Clare taught the princess which patriarchal authority was correct. The reason that Agnes should choose wisely, of course, was because this is how the poor virgin would best submit to the poor Christ. The first passage is one in which we see Clare exhibit extreme courage in protecting what she understood to be the norms of her beloved religio, which is why it has attracted so much attention from scholars of the Franciscan Order. It also offers us an insight into how female religious who understood themselves or were understood to be spiritual authorities modelled and taught attitudes about male ecclesiastical authorities and norms to their female mentees. That Clare herself exercises a form of ecclesiastical authority here is not where the interest of this essay lies; it is no longer interesting to ask whether women had ecclesiastical authority in the Middle Ages.10 A greater number of studies than it is possible to enumerate here have demonstrated that, although women may have been excluded from clerical office, they exercised authority through patronage, their own writings, spoken and epistolary dialogue with other male and female religious, and serving as abbesses.11 In recent years, examining women’s interaction with male authority and the influence that female lay and professed religious had upon male religious thinkers has proven fruitful in determining the contours of a specifically ‘female’ authority. Studies edited by Fiona Griffiths and Julie Hotchin, for example, demonstrate a continuity between 1100 and 1500 of cooperation between men and women in the context of their religious lives, and women’s influence upon male religious life and thought in Germany.12 Similarly, Tanya Stabler Miller has illuminated the spiritual authority exercised by the Paris Beguinage in shaping the theologian Robert of Sorbonne’s dialogues on pastoral care.13 These studies have helpfully complicated a picture of women religious in the Middle Ages as either dominant and authoritative defiers of oppressive male ecclesiasts or oppressed by patriarchal authority. In this chapter, I build on this initiative by exploring the contours of authority held by the royal and noble women who were associated with female Franciscan communities in Bohemia and the Polish duchies and examining how they interacted with male ecclesiastical authorities. Since a very early stage in the development of modern histories of the origins of the Franciscan Order, the narrative of Clare’s struggle against the papacy for a truly ‘Franciscan’ 10 On noble and royal women specifically, Yvonne Seale argues that ‘aristocratic and royal women did not have to buck the system, to be notorious or “extraordinary”, in order to wield power during the High Middle Ages’: Seale, ‘Well-Behaved Women?’, 101. 11 De Gier and Fraeters, Mulieres Religiosae. 12 Griffiths and Hotchin, Partners in Spirit. 13 Stabler Miller, Beguines of Medieval Paris.

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life for women — whatever that may have looked like — has been understood to be the perfect expression of Franciscan life. The Protestant theologian Paul Sabatier wrote the following of Clare’s relationship with the papacy in his 1893 biography of Francis of Assisi: Is it not one of the loveliest pictures in religious history, that of this woman who for more than half a century sustains moment by moment a struggle with all the popes who succeed one another in the pontifical throne, remaining always equally respectful and immovable, not consenting to die until she has gained her victory?14 More recently, scholars such as Joan Mueller have woven Agnes into this metanarrative of struggle as a co-conspirator in Clare’s attempts to defy the papacy.15 While Agnes has received attention in anglophone Franciscan scholarship, other royal Franciscan women in medieval east-central Europe have received less, perhaps because they do not participate in this dramatic narrative of struggle. When we neglect the evidence for these women, we miss how a wider community of women envisaged their Franciscan vocation, as well as how obedience to male authority, in particular, confessorial authority, featured heavily in this expression. Clare’s own letter points to this. Performing subservience to Christ took in part the form of submission to a male confessor and to a thirteenth-century papacy which had reconceptualized itself as a vicariate of Christ.16 Despite the publication of groundbreaking investigations into the growing importance of the confessor from the thirteenth century in the wake of the canonization of confession at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the scholarship on Franciscan women has not situated the evidence for the nuns or lay women who were associated with the order within the broader, changing climate of the confessor–penitent dynamic.17 When we do so, we begin to understand better the form that their interaction with Franciscan spirituality took, as well as showing how, like Clare, women often performed submission to male ecclesiastical authority as they exercised their own, often through relating these ideas to others. This essay concentrates on thirteenth- and fourteenth-century sources in which the noble and royal women of Bohemia and the Polish duchies appear to legitimize the development of ecclesiastical structures of surveillance, such as confession and enclosure, when exercising their own authority in numerous forms. Starting with the fourteenth-century vita of Anna of Silesia, the sister of Agnes of Bohemia, and then moving on to a series of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century papal documents which demonstrate these women’s interaction with the curia, I demonstrate the benefits of looking past the struggle narrative as the truest expression of female Franciscan devotion. In doing so, I also examine how these women’s particular status as members of the Bohemian and Polish royal families, the Přemyslids and the Piasts, shaped the

14 Sabatier, Life of St Francis, 159. 15 Mueller, Privilege of Poverty. 16 Numerous studies exist on the reconceptualization of the papacy as a vicariate of Christ under Innocent III. For a basic overview of the history of the idea, see Sayers, Innocent III, 15–16. 17 See, for example, Elliott, Proving Woman.

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type of authority that they possessed, as well as their performance of submission. These women embraced various forms of religious life during a time in which the papacy and religious orders were set on curbing princely excess. In a climate of increased surveillance and recording, the behaviour of these women came under particular scrutiny. Even if we might debate the extent to which this restriction of princely excess was enforced, the papacy and its agents seem at least in theory to have had a real coercive power. Ultimately, I argue that the exercise of pulling out these threads of identity and authority helps us to see how thirteenth- and fourteenth-century male ecclesiasts shaped female authority in a way that made them conform with new spiritual programmes associated with the Fourth Lateran Council. This study reveals that women often exercised their own authority when they opted for complicity in submitting to that of male ecclesiasts. The vita of Anna of Silesia conveys well how these multilayered authorities formed models of correct royal female penitential behaviour for purposes of spiritual edification. Anna of Silesia was a Bohemian princess who became Duchess of Silesia upon her marriage to Duke Henry II of Silesia in 1216. Henry was the son of Hedwig of Silesia, who was canonized in 1267 by Pope Clement IV. Both Hedwig and her husband Henry I were generous donors to the Church, especially to the Cistercian Order. They famously funded the construction of a Cistercian women’s monastery in Trzebnica, Silesia, in 1202. After her husband’s death, Hedwig took on a penitent life. Little is known about what form this took precisely during her lifetime, but after her death she was known for harsh acts of bodily mortification, such as walking barefoot in the snow until her feet bled.18 Hedwig was close to the Cistercian Trzebnica community, of which her daughter Gertrude became abbess. The vita of Anna of Silesia stages a mentoring relationship between Hedwig and Anna, in which the experienced penitent teaches her daughter-in-law how to perform penance in the context of the royal setting. Produced at the earliest in 1328 and certainly within the first half of the fourteenth century, the vita was likely a collaborative effort between a Franciscan friar named Herbord and the women of the community of Franciscan nuns at Wrocław who, according to the vita, had a close relationship with Anna and therefore bore witness to her life.19 Anna was a major patron of the monastery and is named as founder in a short history of the community which appears as an appendix to the vita, suggesting that she had been fashioned as the institution’s founder by at least this point in time.20 The text appears in a codex

18 For the edition of Hedwig’s vita, written in the early fourteenth century, see Vita sanctae Hedvigis, ed. by Szemkowicz. For biographies of Hedwig, see Gottschalk, St Hedwig and Walter, Studien zum Leben. To my knowledge, there are no recent extended studies of the duchess. For Hedwig in the context of the spiritual activity of royal women in central Europe, see Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 195–294. 19 Vita Annae ducissae Silisiae, ed. by Szemkowicz. For Herbord’s relationship with Hedwig and Anna, see Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 287–88. 20 ‘Anna ducissa, filia regis Bohemie, coniunx ducis Henrici et ducissa Wratislaviensis, fundatrix monasterii sancte Clare, obiit anno Domini 1265’: ‘Notae Monialium Sanctae Clarae Wratislaviensium’, 534.

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compiled by the nuns.21 This codex also includes other texts that were important to the nuns’ devotion, such as the vitae of SS Francis, Clare, and Antony of Padua, and the liturgy for the feast of Corpus Christi, which suggests that this was a frequently used volume. The very first line of the vita emphasizes that Anna was subservient to Hedwig ‘in all things’, and the text later tells us that Anna had learned her penitential habits from Hedwig.22 The two women sit together at Mass hidden behind a curtain and remove everything of ‘silk and purple’ before listening to the Mass, participating together in a semi-monastic type of renunciation.23 In all episodes of Anna’s vita in which she is inculcated with the norms of this penance, Hedwig is close by and usually actively involved. This lay adoption of monastic penance is manifest also in the relationship that Anna shares with the Franciscan friars at Wrocław, who act as her confessors. The text notes that Hedwig and Anna both confessed to the male religious at court, and while presumably the reader is not meant to take from this passage that their confession was a shared experience, in the context of Hedwig’s portrayal as Anna’s mentor we might understand that Hedwig had taught Anna this behaviour. The text tells us that after the Franciscan friars came to the region of Silesia, Anna took on a mendicant confessor. The confessor instructed Anna that they should both receive discipline after sleeping together, and they did so: Anna from her handmaid and Henry from the friars.24 In an appendix to the vita, Henry II is named the son of Hedwig rather than the son of Henry I, emphasizing the family’s holy authority via the maternal line. She does not appear frequently even in this short text, but her spectre is present at the points in which the intertwined concerns of penitential authority and dynastic legitimacy are discussed. Hedwig is presented by Herbord and the nuns as an authority in the particular form of penance that Anna had taken on as a royal penitent, if the confessor is not far behind — an observation to which I shall return. Gábor Klaniczay’s survey Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses beautifully mapped out the central European royal courts during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in particular as semi-monastic spaces in which the noble and royal women of these courts were teachers and spiritual

21 Wrocław, Wrocław University Library, MS BUW IV F 193. 22 ‘Anna beatissima, postquam intravit terram Polonie, sancte Hedwig in omnibus ita subdita et obediens extitit, et, sicut mos erat, quod uxores ducum ad mensam altius sedere solerent, sancta Anna, licet filia regis fuerit, nunquam inde turbata fuit, quod pre ceteris inferius consedit et sancte Hedwigi ita familiaris extitit, quod omnium quasi secretorum sanctitatis eius conscia fuit’: Vita Annae ducissae Silisiae, ed. by Szemkowicz, 657. 23 ‘Quando vero missa celebratur, sancta Hedwigis velo circumdabatur et nullus permittebatur interesse, nisi sola sancta Anna, que etiam omnia ornamenta sua deponebat infra missam et in omni sanctitate conformabat se sancte Hedwigi et quidquid portabat de serico et purpura ita amplum semper formari fecit, ut aptum esset ad officium altaris, nec strictas manicas portabat’: Vita Annae ducissae Silisiae, ed. by Szemkowicz, 657. 24 ‘Statim vixit cum marito suo secundum consilium eorum, et disciplinas accipiebat a quadam pedissequa sua et maritus eius a fratribus’: Vita Annae ducissae Silisiae, ed. by Szemkowicz, 658. See also Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 287–88.

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directors.25 These ‘heavenly courts’ stood in conceptual contrast to the earthly courts of their husbands and brothers. Sean Field argues in his work on Isabelle of France that where a court such as that of Louis IX was a heavenly court developed in dialogue with women such as his sister Isabelle, the central European heavenly courts were the purview of female authority.26 Some of these women, such as Agnes of Bohemia and the princess Salomea of Kraków (d. 1268), professed as nuns, and others took on a degree of religious penance without taking formal vows, such as Anna and Hedwig.27 Others still, such as the Hungarian princesses Kinga (d. 1292) and Jolenta (d. 1298) — who became duchesses upon their marriages to, respectively, the High Duke of Poland Bolesław V, and Duke of Greater Poland Bolesław I — took some kind of vow after the death of their husbands but do not seem to have professed as nuns.28 The men of the courts also took on penitential activity. They were involved in the crusading movement and fought wars against the Mongols, who by then were seen very much as a religious threat. But their direct involvement with the religious activity of the royal courts during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was less pronounced than that of the women, and beyond taking up the cross on crusade, no men were depicted with Christlike attributes in a way that was comparable to a figure such as Louis IX. Klaniczay observed that the development of the central European courts as penitential spaces that were directed by women was in part the result of the spiritual programme associated with the Fourth Lateran Council.29 As many before have articulated, the early thirteenth-century papacy envisaged a community of believers, both lay and religious, subject ultimately to the papacy and formed against the transgressive impulses that threatened to destabilize Christendom at its core. Responsibilities were placed on all to fight heresy and the infidel, in part through self-reform and the regulation of one’s own behaviour. The excesses of clerics, professed religious, and rulers, in particular, were identified as threats and condemned by the papacy. The penalty for non-conformance was burning in eternal hellfire, a punishment which, through the work of Dominican inquisitors in particular, was brought out of the abstract unknowable of the afterlife and performed on earth.30 The women found their role in this programme within the courts and cloisters, most performing contempt of wealth through donation to the construction of churches and engaging in forms of bodily mortification, some by professing as nuns. 25 Klaniczay, Holy Rulers. 26 Field, Isabelle of France, 5–6. 27 On Salomea of Kraków, see Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, esp. 206–07, 221–23; and Gustaw, ‘Salomea’. There is speculation about whether Anna might be considered a Franciscan ‘tertiary’ in Walter, ‘Franziskanische Armutsbewegung in Schlesien’, but the evidence is patchy. The idea of a ‘tertiary’ Franciscan Order did not exist until the very late thirteenth century at the earliest; see More, ‘Institutionalizing Penitential Life’. 28 On Kinga, see Gustaw, ‘Kinga – Kunegunde’; Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 206–07; Kowalska, ‘Błogosławiona Kinga’; and Kumor, ‘Fundacja starosądeckiego klasztoru’. On Jolenta, see Blok, Święci nie przemijają; Gustaw, ‘Jolenta – Helena’; Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 206–07. 29 Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 195–96. 30 Ames, ‘Does Inquisition Belong to Religious History?’, 23–24.

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Authors of hagiography, quite often the women’s confessors, built these women’s authority on their performance of such acts as royal women, the highest of society becoming the lowest in a late medieval feminine reworking of the Gospel narratives. Royal women learned penance in part through reading the hagiographies of these figures, some of whom were recommended as role models by members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Gregory IX, for instance, in 1235, recommended the Árpád princess Elizabeth of Hungary (d. 1231) as a role model to the noblewoman Beatrix of Castile. After the death of her husband, the Landgrave of Thuringia, Louis IV, in 1227, Elizabeth lived a form of lay religious life and facilitated the construction of a hospital in Marburg. In Gregory’s letter, he also names Agnes of Bohemia as another figure of spiritual authority who had embraced religious life after having been ‘intoxicated’ by Elizabeth’s holiness.31 Of course, what we have seen above and much of the material with which scholars such as Klaniczay deal are iconic portrayals of the figures mentioned; images from hagiographies written long after their subjects had died, and which lay somewhere between how the members of such courts wanted to be portrayed and how the clerics who shaped the hagiography envisaged an ideal court. Saints were meant to be extraordinary and not necessarily figures to be emulated. But hagiographies were texts that were meant to inspire, and both the settings and the nature of the relationships depicted in these texts by necessity had to be familiar to the members of their intended audience, whom they were meant to edify. Anna’s close relationship with Hedwig in the text was meant to add to Anna’s spiritual prestige and that of the monastery, but it was also meant to teach others how to behave. This is particularly significant when we consider the role of the confessor within the text. Hedwig is a spiritual authority within the text as she teaches Anna everything she needs to know about penance, including submission to one’s confessor. The looming presence of the confessor within the text is a result of the canonization of mandatory confession by Innocent III at the Fourth Lateran Council. Dyan Elliott has argued that the canonization of confession created the hagiographic trope of submissive woman as proof of orthodoxy.32 The agents of Lateran IV, including hagiographers, modelled those ordained as priests as proxies for God, and therefore subordination of laity to the clergy as proof of subordination to God. Women, Elliot argues, were ‘quintessential laypersons, who, barred from ordination and locked away in an enduring position of deferential subordination were particularly suited for modelling the proper attitude [of the laity] to the clergy’.33 Women, therefore, excluded completely from the ecclesiastical hierarchy, were the ideal model of submission. The portrayal of the submissive women in hagiography became an anti-heretical hallmark in hagiography. Elliott sees this trope play out most powerfully and startlingly in the material relating to the canonization of Elizabeth of Hungary. Canonized in 1234, Elizabeth

31 Annales Minorum, ed. by Wadding, 447–50. 32 Elliott, Proving Woman. 33 Elliott, Proving Woman, 48.

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was a Hungarian princess and Thuringian landgravine. After the death of her husband Louis on crusade, Elizabeth took on a life of harsh penance under the spiritual direction of her confessor Conrad of Marburg, also an inquisitor. By Conrad’s own admission and in the testimonies of Elizabeth’s handmaids, the punishments that he meted out to Elizabeth were incredibly severe. One of Elizabeth’s companions, Isentrud, provided the following testimony in support of Elizabeth’s canonization: When, while her husband was still alive, she was already under obedience to Master Conrad, he once summoned her to one of his sermons, but she was not able to come on account of the arrival of the marquise of Meißen. Offended, Conrad sent word through a messenger informing her that, due to her disobedience, he would no longer be overseeing her spiritual care. She hastened to him the very next day and humbly begged him to forgive the offense. He did not want to, but when she and her handmaids threw themselves down at his feet, he relented. As punishment, he ordered them to strip down to their shirts and soundly whipped them.34 Instances such as Elizabeth’s acquiescence to Conrad’s direction and these harsh punishments were taken by papal inquisitors and authors of hagiography as the ultimate proof of orthodoxy. They also had a profound impact upon the penitential climate of the central European royal court.35 As the startling blend of high status and absolute submission in the stories associated with Elizabeth seeped into the consciousness of central European royalty following Elizabeth’s canonization in 1234, the royal courts became sites for the performance of pious behaviour by royal women, and the cloisters of these regions in turn. Elliott cautions that these are simply representations of women’s realities and that ‘we can seldom discern the extent of the women’s participation in what is generally understood to be their own creative performances since the clerical hand constructs or at least shapes the vehicle through which women’s creativity is conveyed’.36 This is true, but given that it was written collaboratively with the nuns of the Wrocław community, who gave their testimonies to Herbord, we have to assume that the women of Anna’s community played some role in this, even if it is difficult to pinpoint precisely where.37 Remembering that the text was written during a period in which investigations into sanctity became inquisitorial in nature helps the historian to draw out the significance of their testimonies as the basis for the text. Christine Caldwell Ames has demonstrated that the role of the inquisitor grew out of that of the confessor. Dominican confessors’ handbooks suggest that friars had to be prepared to hear confessions of heretical activity.38 Confessional processes, as structures that 34 Life and Afterlife of St Elizabeth of Hungary, ed. by Wolf, 199. 35 On the influence of Elizbeth in central Europe more broadly, see in particular Felskau, ‘Imitatio und institutionalisierte Armenfürsorge’ and Machilek, ‘Die Přemysliden, Piasten und Arpaden’. 36 Elliott, Proving Woman, 7–8. 37 On the importance of reading texts written ostensibly by confessors as collaborative productions between confessors and women religious, see Watt, Medieval Women’s Writing, 13–16. 38 Ames, ‘Does Inquisition Belong to Religious History?’, 19–20.

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were meant to produce truth, were thus central to the way in which canonization procedures developed along inquisitorial lines. By virtue of having gone through this procedure, the situations described were true as far as the text’s audience — the earliest of which, let us not forget, would have comprised the nuns who gave their testimony — was concerned. This in turn lends weight to the physical presence of the friar in the text. If Hedwig is Anna’s spiritual mentor and instils Anna with a penitential courtly etiquette which comprised deference to one’s confessor, the friars shape this. I have already discussed how Anna went to the friars for guidance on the penance that she and her husband ought to perform in order to atone for sleeping together. Alone, this instance perhaps does not quite communicate the nature of the friars’ power and authority. Confession of sin and the acceptance of the penance prescribed by one’s confessor were ostensibly voluntary acts, and contrition was the most important part of the spiritual transaction between confessor and penitent. But the mandatory nature of confession meant that while contrition was necessary for the spiritual health of the penitent, it also shored up the power of the confessor. Anna’s vita states that she ‘placed herself and her children under the Friars Minor, whom she supported until her death’.39 Anna’s ultimate submission to the friars, combined with the friars’ power as confessors, is illustrated by an episode of the vita in which the friars protest Anna’s desire to build a monastery for Franciscan nuns. According to the vita Anna was a major patron of the friars, whose monastery was part of the complex of her court. The friars did not take Anna’s decision to build a monastery for nuns as part of this complex well at all, although the reasons for this opposition are not articulated, and tried to block Anna’s efforts, reducing Anna to tears and begging. They concede after Anna’s performance of humility that she may go ahead and build the cloister.40 Anna’s authority, even as a royal donor who sustained the friars, thus only extends as far as the friars allowed. The friars were no Conrad of Marburg, but the extent of the power that they wielded over Anna demonstrates that confessors had the ultimate authority. The portraits of spiritual authority in Anna’s vita are formed out of a mesh of interwoven ecclesiastical and social authorities, all of which are tempered by gendered discourse. The vita demonstrates that a central facet of royal women’s authority as architects of the heavenly courts, as well as the point at which their authority ends, is derived from submission to the authority of their confessor. Confessorial power stemmed from the staging of confessors as proxies of Christ and people on earth who realized the terrors that would await humankind in the afterlife. Submitting to one’s confessor was submitting to Christ. Intended in part for the nuns’ edification, the pedagogical relationship that is depicted between Hedwig and Anna in the text offers an idealized model for how penitential behaviour, including that of obedience to the confessor, ought to be taught. The spaces inhabited by royal women and the relationships that they shared with each other are the sites for the transfer of knowl-

39 ‘et ita ordini fratrum se et pueros suos subdiderat, quod etiam usque ad mortem conservavit’: Vita Annae ducissae Silisiae, ed. by Szemkowicz, 658. 40 Vita Annae ducissae Silisiae, ed. by Szemkowicz, 658.

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edge from authoritative figures such as Hedwig to the next generation of penitents. While these episodes were, of course, refracted through the lenses of memory and the clerical hand, the power dynamics and the authority that they stage are rooted in the relationships between women and their confessors. Perhaps because of this, texts like these take on a special kind of authority of their own. The startling blend of royal status and humiliation by one’s confessor in the vitae of royal women, as well as the direct recommendation of these women to one another as role models by the papacy, built up a textual genealogy of royal penance that would have made it difficult for these women to have deviated from the tradition of submission to the distinctly patriarchal structures of ecclesiastical surveillance. This is not to say that these women were free of agency. Even if they were part of a religious movement in which relinquishing worldly power was central to salvation, consent was necessary for penitential benefit. The dramatic images of renunciation in these texts are striking precisely because women who had authority chose to participate in these movements and to teach penance to others.41 It is perhaps unsatisfying that these claims are based on highly performative texts that were intended as models. How do we know that these women followed the plan that the papacy had intended for them, and that the mentoring relationships between women were not simply fiction? It is more difficult but not impossible to pick out how women transferred these ideas to one another. The available sources demonstrate both how women were complicit in structures that promoted surveillance and the regulation of women’s religious lives, and how important the idea of the papacy as an authority in this type of regulation had become by the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. For instance, on 27 April 1259, Pope Alexander IV issued a document to the community of Franciscan nuns in Wrocław. We learn from the papal letter that Agnes of Bohemia had told the pope that Anna of Silesia had financed the monastery’s construction at her own expense, and that she had also bestowed ‘many ecclesiastical ornaments’ on the monastery.42 Presumably also at Agnes’s bequest, he prohibited the community from alienating or separating the ornaments from the monastery, and from selling them, in order that ‘these ornaments be conserved in memory of the duchess [Anna]’.43 We do not have surviving correspondence between the sisters themselves, but the papal document demonstrates that Agnes and Anna maintained contact across a vast distance and cloister walls, and shared concerns and ideas about the image and salvation of their dynasty. They may also have discussed the correct form of religious

41 Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 202. 42 ‘Insinuavit nobis carissima in Christo filia nostra Agnes soror monasterii sancti Francisci Pragensis ordinis sancti Damiani, quod dilecta in Christo filia nobis mulier […] ducissa Polonie germana sua cupiens ad gloriam celestis patris piis meritis provenire monasterium vestrum suis propriis sumptibus fecit construe et eidem quam plura ecclesiastica ornamenta pietate contulit liberali’: Schlesisches Urkundenbuch, ed. by Irgang, 189. 43 ‘Quia vero decens et dignum esse dinoscitur, quod ornamenta ipsa in eiusdem ducisse memoriam cum omni diligentia conserventur, universitati vestre auctoritate presentium districtius inhibemus, ut tam de ornamentis ipsis quam de aliis a Christi fidelibus monasterio prefato concessis nullatenus alienare vel distrahere seu vendere presumatis’: Schlesisches Urkundenbuch, ed. by Irgang, 189–90.

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life to follow. In 1262, the Wrocław community received permission from the pope to follow the forma vitae of St Clare.44 As the papacy permitted so few communities to follow that rule, it seems plausible that either Anna or the Wrocław community had heard about this from Agnes.45 An addendum to Anna’s vita, a short chronicle of the Wrocław community, mentions also that nuns from Prague made up the ‘founding’ corporation of Franciscan women religious at Wrocław. Whether this is true or not, interesting for our understanding of authority is the way in which Wrocław revered Prague as a model institution with which they wanted to connect themselves genealogically, how Agnes seems to have been a nurturing figure in Anna’s spiritual direction, and how both Agnes and Prague functioned as conduits through which ideas spread. It shows how ideas spread through Agnes’s exercise of authority on her sister’s behalf, but also how Agnes and Prague were created as authoritative points of reference through communication and chronicle. Agnes was, of course, also exercising her authority in order to preserve the memory of her sister and, by extension, her dynasty’s holy bloodline. Agnes was thus cast in a role in which she was central to the communication of the by now inseparable ideas of dynastic spirituality and a form of renunciation of property that was heavily imbued with the symbolism and gestures of the nascent Franciscan Order. What we notice here in particular is that Agnes’s authority is mediated through the institution of the papal curia. This may be an obvious point for many readers of this volume, but it shows the extent to which Agnes — often portrayed by historians as Clare’s partner in the struggle against the papacy for an ‘authentically Franciscan’ forma vitae for women religious — had to work within the papacy’s bureaucratic framework in order to enact her authority and preserve her family’s memory. Even this tiny glimpse into Agnes’s authority in relation to the papacy and her sister’s spiritual enterprise demonstrates that it is inadequate to characterize Agnes either as a co-conspirator in Clare’s rebellion against the papacy, as a royal person who got away with what she wanted, or as someone who relinquished all power to the papal will. Her authority derived from the papacy as much as her position, and the Franciscan women as direct subjects of the papacy’s authority were reliant on the curia for their basis of life and support. In participating in this, too, she affirmed a system of surveillance and recording that was orchestrated by the thirteenth-century papacy through the extension of its confessional and bureaucratic reach. Possible also is that the women under study felt more visible and more susceptible to surveillance, or sanctions for rule-breaking, because of their prominent status. We are offered two brief glimpses into the women’s movement between cloisters — also likely a mechanism for the spread of ideas of submissiveness — in papal documents issued by Alexander IV to the Wrocław community in 1260 and by John XXII to Jadwiga of Poland in 1321. Alexander’s document granted the Wrocław nuns permission to

44 For a recent detailed study of Clare’s forma vitae, see Mooney, Clare of Assisi, 161–96. On Clare’s forma vitae in context of the other rules given to communities of Franciscan women, see Smith, ‘Shaping Authority’. On Wrocław’s privilege, see Sutowicz, ‘Przyczynek’. 45 Roest, Order and Disorder, 53.

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receive Gertrude of Trzebnica — the Abbess of Trzebnica and daughter of Hedwig of Silesia — as a visitor into their enclosure.46 Jadwiga obtained a dispensation from John XXII to go against the norms of enclosure prescribed by the nuns’ rule and the decretal Periculoso (issued by Pope Boniface VIII in 1298) which demanded the strict claustration of all women religious in order to visit the communities of Franciscan nuns at Gniezno and Stary Sącz.47 Given that the rules for women’s enclosure had become more stringent over the course of the thirteenth century, we might read these dispensations as the result of powerful women pulling rank over the papacy. Being in positions of power may have helped these women’s cases or have given them the means with which to contact the papacy with relative ease, but what these two examples show is that they felt compelled to obtain permission from the pope in order to transgress enclosure, and that they were aware of the norms to which they were meant to adhere. The ritual that they went through in order to obtain papal permissions enforced the idea that they were subject to papal authority, which may in turn have shaped their relationships with other women. Certainly, the reason for gaining permission to authorize these visits was to gain spiritual inspiration from well-known authorities as well as to cement relationships within and between powerful families. That this performance of authority was mediated through the papacy provides an insight into the nature of royal women’s authority in this context and how the papacy’s authority was affirmed and reproduced as these women exercised theirs. These are just a few examples from a fragmentary base of evidence for the royal women of Bohemia and the Polish duchies who collaborated with the Franciscan Order. An uneven spread of evidence, and the nature of this evidence as a set of collaborative constructions that evade attribution to a sole author, frustrates a definite conclusion about the nature of these women’s authority and of how this was shaped through interaction with the papacy. Situating this material within the context of a Church which had developed its mechanisms of surveillance and recording in response to perceived transgressions which were thought to pose a serious threat to Christendom, however, allows us to make some observations on these issues. It is clear that we must move beyond the characterization of defiance of papal authority as a quality inherent to Franciscan status. Such defiance became increasingly difficult across the course of the thirteenth century and into the fourteenth not only because of the need for papal validation in a turbulent spiritual climate, but also in part because the changing nature of male ecclesiastical authority and the way that this was enacted and reproduced through the body of the confessor meant that submitting to this authority became a type of submission to Christ: an act of penitence at the very core of Franciscan ideals of humility. Debates over this particular assertion of papal authority within religious life would have some consequences for the identities of some organizations within the Order of Friars Minor who were not so ready to accept the idea that the pope was the vicar of Christ. But an initial examination of

46 Schlesisches Urkundenbuch, ed. by Irgang, 222. 47 Kodeks dyplomatyczny Wielkopolski, ed. by Zakrzewski, 360–61.

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the evidence associated with these women indicates that these debates do not seem to have touched these communities at this point in time.48 Moreover, numerous Franciscan men who achieved canonical status in the order’s history collaborated closely with the papal curia.49 This is not to suggest that the women’s complicity in the curbing of their own authority is not striking. These women exercised a great deal of authority in their generous patronage of Franciscan institutions in central Europe; in the most literal sense, they were architects of the heavenly courts. Forming the very structure of these courts were the networks that women created or reinforced between each other, through which submission to patriarchal authorities might be taught. The women dealt with in this essay were, of course, royal by birth, and so were exposed to the pressure of increased surveillance on account of their societal prominence. In affirming these mechanisms of surveillance, though, they also helped to legitimize the aggressive surveillance and recording of others who were identified as threats by programmes such as that propounded at Lateran IV — measures against non-Christians, for instance. Ultimately, this line of inquiry adds to those that problematize the characterization of women religious either as deriving authority through disobedience or as completely oppressed subjects. I hope that, in turn, this study also poses a challenge to the narrative of a singular authoritative Franciscan identity for women, and indeed the notion that such a thing may have existed.

Works Cited Manuscripts Wrocław, Wrocław University Library, MS BUW IV F 193 Primary Sources Annales Minorum, ed. by L. Wadding, vol. i (Quaracchi, 1931) Bullarium Franciscanum Romanorum pontificum constitutiones, epistolas, ac diplomata continens tribus ordinis minorum, clarissarum et poenitentium, I: Ab Honorio III ad Innocentium IIII, ed. by J. H. Sbaralea (Rome, 1759) Francis of Assisi, Early Documents, vol. i, The Saint, ed. by R. J. Armstrong, J. A. W. Hellmann, and W. J. Short (London, 1999) Kodeks dyplomatyczny Wielkopolski, ed. by I. Zakrzewski, vol. ii (Poznań, 1878) The Life and Afterlife of St Elizabeth of Hungary: Testimony from her Canonisation Hearings, ed. by K. B. Wolf (Oxford, 2011) ‘Notae Monialium Sanctae Clarae Wratislaviensium’, in MGH SS, xix, 533–36

48 On the formation of groups of so-called ‘Spiritual’ Franciscans who sought to question this idea, see Burr, Spiritual Franciscans. 49 See Power, ‘Franciscan Advice’.

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Schlesisches Urkundenbuch, ed. by W. Irgang, vol. iii (Cologne, 1984) Vita Annae ducissae Silisiae, ed. by A. Szemkowicz, in Monumenta Poloniae Historica, vol. iv (Lwów, 1884), 656–61 Vita sanctae Hedvigis ducissae Silesiae, ed. by A. Szemkowicz, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, vol. iv (Lwów, 1884), 501–655 Secondary Studies Alberzoni, M. P., ‘Clare and the Papacy’, in Clare of Assisi and the Poor Sisters in the Thirteenth Century, ed. by J. F. Godet-Calogeras, trans. by N. Celashi and W. Short (St Bonaventure, NY, 2004), 30­­­–89 Ames, C. C., ‘Does Inquisition Belong to Religious History?’, American Historical Review, 110 (2005), 11–37 Blok, P., ed., Święci nie przemijają: Materiały z sympozjum naukowego o Błogosławionej Jolencie z okazji 700-Lecia jej smierci (Gdańsk, 2002) Burr, D., The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (University Park, PA, 2001) Cusato, M., ‘Clare and Elias: An Enigmatic Friendship’, in Clare of Assisi: Investigations, ed. by M. F. Hone (St Bonaventure, NY, 1993), 90–111 De Gier, I., and V. Fraeters, eds, Mulieres Religiosae: Shaping Female Spiritual Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods (Turnhout, 2014) Elliott, D., Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, 2004) Felskau, C.-F., ‘Imitatio und institutionalisierte Armenfürsorge: Das “Modell Elisabeth” und die mulieres religiosae in Ostmitteleuropa (ca. 1200–1280)’, in Elisabeth von Thüringen und die neue Frömmigkeit in Europa, ed. by C. Bertelsmeir-Kierst (Frankfurt am Main, 2008), 52–76 Field, S., Isabelle of France: Capetian Sanctity and Franciscan Identity in the Thirteenth Century (Notre Dame, IN, 2006) Gottschalk, J., St Hedwig: Herzogin von Schlesien (Cologne, 1964) Griffiths, F., and J. Hotchin, eds, Partners in Spirit: Women, Men, and Religious Life in Germany, 1100–1500 (Turnhout, 2014) Gustaw, R., ‘Jolenta – Helena’, in Hagiografia Polska: Słownik Bio-bibliograficzny, ed. by R. Gustaw, 2 vols (Poznań, 1971), i, 624–32 ———, ‘Kinga – Kunegunde’, in Hagiografia Polska: Słownik Bio-bibliograficzny, ed. by R. Gustaw, 2 vols (Poznań, 1971), i, 757–79 ———, ‘Salomea’, in Hagiografia Polska: Słownik Bio-bibliograficzny, ed. by R. Gustaw, 2 vols (Poznań, 1971), ii, 300–313 Klaniczay, G., Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses, trans. by E. Pálmai (Cambridge, 2002) Kowalska, B., ‘Błogosławiona Kinga i jej duchowi opiekunowie’, Prace Naukowe Wyższej Szkoly Pedagogicznej w Częstochowie. Zeszyty Historiczne, 6 (2000), 183–94 Kumor, B., ‘Fundacja starosądeckiego klasztoru i parafie na Sądecczyźnie fundowane przez PP. Klaryski’, Tarnowskie Studia Teologiczne, 10 (1986), 157–64 Machilek, F., ‘Die Přemysliden, Piasten und Arpaden und der Klarissenorden im 13. und frühen 14. Jahrhundert’, in Westmitteleuropa, Ostmitteleuropa, Vergleiche und

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Beziehungen: Festschrift für Ferdinand Seibt zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by W. Eberhard (Munich, 1992), 293–306 Monagle, C., ‘Poor Maternity: Clare of Assisi’s Letters to Agnes of Prague’, Women’s History Review, 24 (2015), 490–501 Mooney, C., Clare of Assisi and the Thirteenth-Century Church: Religious Women, Rules and Resistance (Philadelphia, PA, 2016) ———, ‘Imitatio Christi or Imitatio Mariae? Clare of Assisi and her Interpreters’, in Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters, ed. by C. Mooney (Philadelphia, PA, 1999), 52–77 More, A., ‘Institutionalizing Penitential Life in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Third Orders, Rules, and Canonical Legitimacy’, Church History, 83 (2014), 297–323 Mueller, J., Clare’s Letters to Agnes: Texts and Sources (St Bonaventure, NY, 2008) ———, A Companion to Clare of Assisi: Life, Writings, and Spirituality (Leiden, 2010) ———, The Privilege of Poverty: Clare of Assisi, Agnes of Prague, and the Struggle for a Franciscan Rule for Women (University Park, PA, 2006) Power, A., ‘Franciscan Advice to the Papacy in the Middle Ages’, History Compass, 5 (2007), 1550–75 Roest, B., Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares between Foundation and Reform (Leiden, 2013) Sabatier, P., The Life of St Francis of Assisi, trans. by L. Seymour Houghton (London, 1902) Sayers, J. E., Innocent III: Leader of Europe, 1198–1216 (London, 1993) Seale, Y., ‘Well-Behaved Women? Agnès of Baudement and Agnès of Braine as Female Lords and Patrons of the Premonstratensian Order’, Haskins Society Journal, 28 (2016), 101–17 Sedda, F., ‘La “malavventura” di frate Elia: Un percorso attraverso le fonti biografiche’, Il Santo: Rivista francescana di storia dottrina arte, 41 (2002), 215–300 Smith, J. A., ‘Shaping Authority in the Female Franciscan Rules and formae vitae’, Parergon, 33 (2016), 23–48 Stabler Miller, T., The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority (Philadelphia, PA, 2014) Sutowicz, A., ‘Przyczynek do badań nad życiem wewnętrznym w klasztorze klarysek wrocławskich’, Saeculum Christianum, 10 (2003), 5–22 Walter, E., ‘Franziskanische Armutsbewegung in Schlesien: War die Herzogin Anna († 1265), die Schwiegertochter der hl. Hedwig, eine Terziarin des Franzikanerordens?’, Archiv für schlesische Kirchengeschichte, 40 (1982), 207–21 ———, Studien zum Leben der hl. Hedwig Herzogin von Schlesien (Stuttgart, 1972) Watt, D., Medieval Women’s Writing: Works by and for Women in England, 1100–1500 (Cambridge, 2007)

Part V

Ecclesiastical Communities and Collective Authority and Power

Nicholas Vincent

Shall the First Be Last? Order and Disorder amongst Henry II’s Bishops

Even in our supposedly free-and-easy world, questions of precedence are not easily ignored. The more determined upon ‘informality’ an institution or a society becomes, the more inclined it may be to discriminate between those who matter and those who merely make up a crowd. Hence, even that most alarming of modern dress codes ‘Smart Casual’ invites the question ‘How “smart”, and quite how “casual”?’ The court of Henry II (1154–89), we are told, was a place of informality, ruled by a king ‘not filled with pride […] nor exalting himself as more than a man’.1 As I have argued elsewhere, there is reason to doubt whether this and other such remarks were intended to be read as literal truth.2 Rather, like a modern historian praising the ‘magnanimity of Stalin’ or the ‘decorous epithets of Richard Nixon’, what we have here is oxymoronic satire, arising from statements that were the precise opposite of what contemporaries knew to be true. In an earlier essay, I set out to examine the pecking order amongst the earls who witnessed Henry’s charters. Although no precise order of precedence emerged there, convention dictated that certain individuals, particularly those of royal birth or close association with the Crown, ranked above all others. So clear were these conventions that when overlooked in charter witness lists, as they were from time to time, the most obvious explanation is that such charters have been forged or tampered with.3 In what follows, this enquiry is now extended to the bishops at Henry II’s court. What determined episcopal precedence, and were Henry’s bishops as status-conscious as his earls? As we shall discover, episcopal

For their assistance with what follows, I am indebted to Julia Barrow, Martin Brett, Katy Cubitt, Kate Cushing, Hugh Doherty, Tom Licence, and Richard Sharpe. I dedicate it to the memory of Christopher Brooke, in grateful remembrance of many kindnesses. 1 Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, ed. by James, 116–17: ‘Rex noster Henricus secundus […] non apponit superbire nec aliquid altum sapere presumit, nec unquam elacione aliqua lingua eius intumescit, nec se supra hominem magnificat’. 2 Vincent, ‘Court of Henry II’; Vincent, ‘Did Henry II Have a Policy?’. 3 Vincent, ‘Did Henry II Have a Policy?’, based upon the 4500 or more entries in LCH, of which roughly 2470 retain witness lists, by no means all of them complete. Nicholas Vincent is Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 287–316 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118971

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precedence was handled rather differently from that amongst the secular hierarchy. Such difference reveals aspects of the manifest power both of court and episcopate that might otherwise remain invisible. To begin with, some preliminary scene setting. If only as a means to avoid scandal, from an early date Church leaders were obliged to establish rules of precedence. This reflected wider societal concepts of order and rank. Within a society conceived of as a series of mutually dependent groupings, a three-fold model popularized from the late tenth century onwards (clergy, warriors, and peasants) was itself superimposed upon a rather more complicated pre-existing division by ‘orders’ (ordo/ordines). The English and Latin vocabularies both raise difficulties here, best resolved by thinking of each ‘order’, like an ‘order of chivalry’, as an essentially homogeneous group. Like an order of chivalry, however, each such group could itself be ranked, both in relation to other such groups and internally, here using the language of the theatre or hippodrome, by gradus, stair by stair. Within each group there was thereby the opportunity both for promotion by merit or dignity, and for demotion as punishment for misbehaviour (degredatio, literally ‘a stepping back’).4 Within the general order of the clergy, just as those ordained deacons were considered to rank above subdeacons, and priests above deacons, so the ‘order’ of bishops ranked higher still. Although in theory a band of brothers modelled on the equality amongst the twelve apostles, in council or conclave, where two or more bishops were gathered together, it might prove highly embarrassing if one bishop claimed privileges, in seating or function, contested by his fellows. As successor to the prince of the apostles, the Bishop of Rome claimed the privileges of St Peter. But for the rest, who would preside in the absence of Peter or his successors, not least over the debates and arguments that might attend the choice or election of a new pope or metropolitan? At episcopal consecrations, although all might share equally in the power of the Holy Spirit, it would inevitably be the case that not everybody could assume authority over the liturgy, deliver the sermon, or present the successful candidate to his fellow bishops. Agreement over precedence was therefore required if near constant squabbles were to be avoided. All bishops were equal, but some were more equal than others. One means of ranking here might have been supplied by the dignity of the bishop’s see. According to the tradition of apostolic succession, certain sees might have been deemed to rank above others by virtue of their antiquity or, in the case of Rome, the prestige of their first occupants. Yet this was a far from ideal solution. What if an older see were refounded elsewhere, as the church of Constantinople claimed was the case with the see of old-Rome, and as was undoubtedly true in England, after 1066, where cathedrals were deliberately translated from one location to another? What of the case where a newer see was widely assumed to take precedence over an older? Antioch boasted a church founded by Peter before either Jerusalem or



4 For basic introductions here, and despite its anachronisms, see Duby, Three Orders. For a recent attempt to extend this conceptual framework, see Peltzer, Rang der Pfalzgrafen, and various of the contributions to the collection Peltzer, Rank and Order.

shall the first be last? order and disorder amongst henry ii’s bishops

Rome, yet Rome and Jerusalem entertained few doubts as to their own seniority.5 Instead, what emerged was a combination of institutional and personal hierarchy. This allowed churches of particularly exalted status to take precedence over others, whilst at the same time dealing with the majority of bishops on a personal rather than an institutional basis. Save in cases where a bishop occupied a see of higher dignity proved by ancient custom or the privileges of his church, precedence was to be decided by the date of ordinatio and hence by the date of episcopal consecration. Such was the ruling by Gregory the Great, itself taken up by Gratian and the canonists. Awarding special honour to the bishopric of Autun, in July 599 Gregory had decreed that Bishop Syagrius of Autun should take precedence immediately after his metropolitan, the Archbishop of Lyons. The other bishops of the province, however, should rank in accordance with their dates of consecration, not only in their seating in council but in their subscribing or ‘any other matter’, in which surely we can include their appearance in witness lists.6 Gregory’s letter, which refers in passing to Augustine’s mission to the English, was perhaps known to Bede. Certainly, in reporting Archbishop Theodore’s Council of Hertford (672), Bede records the council’s decree that in future each bishop would accept rank according to the date and ‘order’ (ordo) of his consecration.7 Such, in broad outline, was the ruling repeated by Lanfranc’s Council of London in 1075, itself claiming merely to re-enact legislation first agreed at the Councils of Milev (416), Braga (573), and Toledo IV (633), itself now received from the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals. Seating in council, Lanfranc declared, was to be by date of ordination, save for those bishops who could claim customary privileges, here specifying the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of London and Winchester.8 Repeating Gregory the Great’s instructions on ranking by date of consecration tempered by customary dignity, Gratian subsequently attempted to resolve a potential ambiguity where bishops were translated from one

5 Twomey, Apostolikos Thronos; Dunn, Cyprian and the Bishops of Rome; Gaudemet, ‘La Primauté romaine’, and Gaudemet, ‘La Primauté pontificale’. 6 Gregory, Registrum Epistolarum, ix. 222, ed. by Ewald and Hartmann, ii, 213–14, before this as Gregory, ‘Epistolae’, ix. 108 (JL, no. 1751), whence PL, lxxvii, 1036: ‘Episcopos secundum ordinationis suae tempus siue ad consedendum in concilio, seu ad subscribendum vel in qualibet alia re sua attendere loca decernimus et suorum sibi praerogatiuam ordinum vindicare’. Taken up by Anselm of Lucca and other canonists, whence Gratian, Decretum, dist. 17, c. 7, ed. by Friedberg, 53. Elsewhere in his letter, Gregory commends Syagrius for assisting Augustine in his preaching to the English. 7 Hertford, c. 8 (Bede, iv. 5), in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, 352: ‘Ut nullus episcoporum se praeferat alteri per ambitionem, sed omnes agnoscant tempus et ordinem consecrationis suae’. For discussion here, I am grateful to Katy Cubitt. 8 Councils & Synods, i.2, 612–13, c. 1: ‘Statutum est ut singuli secundum ordinationis sue tempora sedeant, preter eos qui ex antiqua consuetudine siue suarum ecclesiarum priuilegiis digniores sedes habent’, and for Pseudo-Isidore, see Decretales pseudo-Isidorianae, ed. by Hinschius, 364 (Toledo IV, c. 3: ‘secundum ordinationis sue tempus resideant’), 318 (Milev, cc. 13–14, demanding dated letters of ordination (‘litteras accipiant ab ordinatoribus suis manu eorum subscriptas, continentes consulem et diem’) to avoid disputes between posteriores and anteriores), 423 (Braga I, c. 6: ‘ut conseruato metropolitano episcopi primatu, ceteri episcoporum secundum sue ordinationis tempus alius alio sedendi deferat locum’).

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see to another. The date of ordination, he declared, should be that of the bishop’s consecration to episcopal office, not of his assignment to a particular church, so that, as with the Roman cardinals, movement from one see to another would not oblige a bishop to forfeit his existing rank.9 Much these same conventions, in embryo, were to be found in the Rule of St Benedict whereby monks were accorded ‘orders’ (ordines) within their communities according to the date of their conversion to the monastic life (conuersatio), overridden in certain cases by the greater dignity allowed to individual brothers by their abbot, and with ambiguity over the ordering of monks who removed themselves from one house to another.10 The Benedictine Lanfranc would have been well aware of such precedents, establishing the rankings by which monks stood in choir and perhaps sat in the refectory.11 For the Benedictines, nonetheless, what counted was monastic conversion, not the particular clerical ‘order’ (as bishop, priest, or deacon) occupied by any particular monk. The Rule of Chrodegang, by contrast, widely influential in the lives of secular clergy, maintained the Benedictine emphasis on rank determined by order, tempered by promotion according to merit, but here laying new stress upon the grades of clerical ordination. Thus, in the refectory, seating was to be at distinct tables for the bishop and his guests, as likewise for priests, deacons, subdeacons, and ‘the other grades’ (gradus). Nothing is specified here of ranking at the individual tables, although date of ordination may have remained the determining factor.12 Lanfranc’s decisions of 1075 were issued in the form of a canon, witnessed by thirteen of the bishops who had attended his council.13 At the head of this list, and in accordance with the council’s own rulings, we find the Archbishop of Canterbury, followed by the Archbishop of York and then the Bishops of London and Winchester,

9 Commentary to Decretum xvii, c. 7 (Corpus Iuris Canonici, i, 53): ‘Verum tempus ordinationis non ad ecclesias sed ad personas refertur, sicut ex consuetudine cardinalium sancte Romane ecclesie et episcoporum uniuscuiusque prouincie euidenter apparet’. 10 Regula Benedicti, c. 63 (PL, lxvi, 871): ‘Ordines suos in monasterio ita conseruent ut conuersationis tempus ut vite meritum discernit utque abbas constituerit’, specifying that monks were to receive the peace, process to Communion, to the Psalm, and to stand in choir ‘secundum ordines quos [abbas] constituerit vel quos habuerint’, here allowing a degree of discretion to the abbot to promote or degrade according to merit, but regardless of age or personal favour. For this and what follows, I am indebted to Julia Barrow. 11 As noted in Canterbury Professions, ed. by Richter, lxv–lxvi, lxviii, and for specific reference to ordines in Lanfranc’s rules for the monks of Canterbury, see Monastic Constitutions, ed. by Knowles, 52, 62, 74, 78, 86, 120, 156, 164, 188–90, esp. at 120, 156 for specific references to ‘ordo conversionis’. 12 S. Chrodegangi […] regula canonicorum, ed. by Schmitz, 3, c. 2: ‘Ordine suos canonici ita conseruent ut ordinati sunt in gradibus suis secundum legitimam vel sanctam institutionem Romana ecclesia in omnibus omnino locis […] excepto his quos episcopus in altiora gradu constituerint vel degradauerint certis ex causis’; 14, c. 21: ‘Prima mensa episcopi cum ospitibus et cum peregrinis sit et ibidem arcidiaconus vel quibus episcopus iusserit, sedeant. Secunda mensa cum presbyteris; tercia cum diaconibus; quarta cum subdiaconibus; quinta cum religuis gradibus; sexta cum abbatibus vel quos iusserit prior; in septima reficiant clerici canonici qui extra claustra canonica in ciuitate commanent, in diebus Dominicis vel festiuitatibus preclaris’. 13 Councils & Synods, i.2, 614–16, from the single-sheet pseudo-original Cambridge, St John’s College, MS L.9 (236).

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both of these sees having established their peculiar and customary dignity above all others: as early as the tenth century in the case of London, if we are to judge from the attestations to Anglo-Saxon royal charters, perhaps rather more recently in the case of Winchester.14 However, and as long ago noticed by Christopher Brooke, the witness list of 1075 thereafter signally ignores the very rules that the witnesses themselves had appeared to accept.15 After Canterbury, York, London, and Winchester and ahead of Herman, Bishop of Sherborne (consecrated 1045), it names Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances (consecrated 10 April 1048): a powerful political figure, intruded here, despite the relatively recent date of his consecration, presumably on the basis of personal status. And what of the listing of the three bishops who follow? Here Wulfstan of Worcester (consecrated 8 September 1062) precedes Walter of Hereford and Giso of Wells (both consecrated 15 April 1061).16 Is this to be attributed to indifference, to uncertainty over dates, to muddle on behalf of whoever it was who wrote down the names, or perhaps to the difficulties of ranking witnesses who in physical reality were seated to left and right of the presiding archbishop, rather than lined up in clear order of precedence?17 Certainly, disputes over precedence were by no means resolved by the rulings of 1075. In attempting to combine the two mutually incompatible concepts of date of consecration and customary dignity, indeed, the rulings of 1075 merely opened the way for further dispute. Not only did Lanfranc pursue his primacy over York, but claims for metropolitan status were advanced by the sees of London, Winchester, and in due course St David’s. In these disputes, Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and other such antique or pseudo-antique authorities loomed rather larger than might have been comfortable to those who wished status to be based upon consecration dates, not customary dignity.18 From the early years of King Richard I, such disputes entered a new and relatively well-documented phase. Conceptualizing Canterbury’s suffragans as a chapter with its own dignitaries, and no doubt spurred on by the architecture of contemporary chapter houses in which seating was assigned according to special dignity, as early as 1109 London was claiming to act as dean within the province of Canterbury. By the 1170s, this extended to a claim to act as mediator between archbishop and suffragans, not least in summoning London’s fellow bishops to provincial councils. Into this situation, Rochester now intruded a claim to be considered Canterbury’s chaplain and therefore, 14 Keynes, Atlas of Attestations. For Winchester, suggesting that as late as 1072 there was no certainty that it would be accorded the same special status as London, see Councils & Synods, i.2, 608–09. Contrary to this, Tom Licence, having studied the witnessing order of the diplomas of Edward the Confessor, concludes that Winchester did indeed already enjoy special status: below, note 77. 15 Brooke, ‘Archbishop Lanfranc, the English Bishops, and the Council of London’, 46–49. 16 For consecration dates, here and elsewhere, I depend upon Powicke and others, Handbook of British Chronology, where necessary corrected by the new edition of John Le Neve, Fasti, ed. by Greenway and others, and for Normandy, Spear, Personnel of the Norman Cathedrals. 17 Brooke, ‘Archbishop Lanfranc, the English Bishops, and the Council of London’, 49 n., noting seating arrangements at the 1049 Council of Rheims and drawing attention to the semicircular synthonon that Lanfranc had built in the apse of Canterbury cathedral. 18 Brooke and Morey, Gilbert Foliot, 151–62, and for St David’s, see now Evans, ‘Transition and Survival’.

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if not to sit at the archbishop’s right hand, at least to stand immediately behind him in procession. Beginning in 1190 in the absence of Archbishop Baldwin on crusade, and continuing in 1193 at the consecration of Hubert Walter as Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Rochester, Gilbert Glanvill, laid claim to special and customary dignity, demanding recognition in the same way that London and Winchester had long been recognized.19 It was with these disputes still ongoing that, in March 1194, the English bishops processed to the crown-wearing of King Richard I in Winchester Cathedral, following what Gervase of Canterbury describes, in a mixture of Roman and English legalese, as their ‘orders’ (ordines suos) founded upon ‘primogeniture of consecration’ (primogenita consecrationis).20 When presented to Pope Celestine III, in 1197, Rochester’s claims provoked a ruling that the archbishop should restore proper order amongst his suffragans and prevent ‘those who by ordination rank last’ from intruding themselves above their seniors. In doing so, the archbishop was instructed both in 1197, and again in a reissue of Celestine’s ruling by Innocent III, in July 1199, ‘to observe that order to which the Church of Rome adheres’ (‘illum ordinem quem tenet Romana ecclesia’), imposing precedence and seating arrangements according to date of ‘ordinatio’.21 Order (ordo) and ordination alias consecration (ordinatio), here as elsewhere, remain clearly distinguishable concepts. Read literally, the papal rulings of 1197 and 1199 reduced everything to a matter of consecration dates. In reality, the intention, as in 1075, was to rank bishops by the date of their episcopal consecration (ordinatio) tempered by any special dignity (dignitas) that might rightfully be claimed. This in turn, of course, merely begged the question ‘what special dignity and of which particular churches?’ As a result, the rulings by Celestine and Innocent failed to settle the issue. Winchester (claiming dignity as subdean), Rochester (as chaplain), Salisbury (as precentor), and in due course Bath all now claimed special dignity, albeit that such claims were expressed as often in their setting aside as in their enforcement. They assumed particular sensitivity in situations in which a senior see (Canterbury or London, for example) was vacant or unrepresented, and where functions such as consecration of bishops, enthronement of an archbishop, or royal coronation thereby devolved to bishops lower down the pecking order.22

19 Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. by Stubbs, i, 487–88, 522–25, claims based in part upon the Rochester dossier of forgeries, including the heavily polemical Vita Gundulfi, as made clear in the account of the dispute supplied by Registrum Roffense, ed. by Thorpe, 51. For the suffragans of Canterbury as a capitular college, see Kemp, ‘Canterbury Provincial Chapter’, esp. 186–87 for London’s claim to act as dean and summoner, as noted by Eadmer, Historia Novorum, ed. by Rule, 211–12; Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. by Stubbs, i, 510. 20 Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. by Stubbs, i, 524–25: ‘ordines suos teneant episcopi secundum primogenita consecrationis’. 21 Registrum Roffense, ed. by Thorpe, 51, whence Papsturkunden in England, ed. by Holtzmann, Folge 33, ii, no. 288, 480–81; Letters of Pope Innocent III, ed. by Cheney and Cheney, no. 161, 28. 22 Registrum Roffense, ed. by Thorpe, 51, 56; Charters […] of Salisbury, ed. by Macray, no. 129, 109–10; Early Charters, ed. by Gibbs, no. 182, 141–42. For Salisbury’s alleged precentorship, a consequence perhaps of the prominence afforded the Sarum liturgy from the 1190s onwards, see Kemp, ‘Canterbury Provincial Chapter’, 189–90.

shall the first be last? order and disorder amongst henry ii’s bishops

Events and circumstances, as much as any specific privilege, continued to create new instances. Indeed, any deviation from custom, however innocently allowed, might ignite claims that would persist for decades. In June 1162, for example, during a vacancy in the see of London, Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, had quite properly presided at the consecration of Thomas Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury. Forty years later, this incident seems to have inspired the then Bishop of Winchester to claim that he, rather than the Bishop of London, had the right to consecrate a Bishop of Worcester in the absence of the archbishop, himself too ill to attend.23 Similarly in 1221, Joscelin, Bishop of Bath, was involved, entirely innocently, in disputes between Salisbury and Rochester over who took precedence in the consecration of a newly elected Bishop of London. In the absence of both the archbishop and the Bishop of Winchester, the consecration was performed by a team of six bishops, led by Bath who took precedence by virtue of being the longest consecrated.24 A decade later, however, at the consecration of Edmund of Abingdon as Archbishop of Canterbury (April 1234), this led Bath once again to stake a claim to preside, here claiming first place above the Bishops of London and Winchester, despite the fact that London and Winchester traditionally took precedence, and despite the fact that Bishop Peter of Winchester (consecrated September 1205) was in all respects senior to Joscelin of Bath (consecrated May 1206).25 As such claims multiplied, so the capitular organization of Canterbury’s suffragans began to coalesce. By the time of Archbishop Chichele, in the early fifteenth century, no less than six of Canterbury’s suffragans were claiming special dignity: London as dean, Winchester as chancellor, Lincoln as vice-chancellor, Salisbury as precentor, Worcester as chaplain, with Rochester now reduced to the humbler role of crucifer or cross-bearer.26 Here then was a rich compost of claims and counterclaims from which pride or resentment might sprout. Nor were such difficulties by any means confined to the English side of the Channel. We have already found Gregory the Great recognizing the peculiar dignity of the see of Autun. We have also observed the Bishop of Coutances, in 1075, ranked somewhat uneasily above most of the English bishops. At the Norman and Plantagenet courts, bishops mingled from across England, Wales, Scotland, France, and in due course Ireland. How was precedence to be determined amongst so diverse a group of dignitaries? Even if their dates of consecration were to serve as chief measure, how to establish an accurate record of such dates? Within its 23 Canterbury Professions, ed. by Richter, no. 143, 60–61, and for the consecration of Becket, itself merely the latest in a series of such consecrations that, according to the see of London, Bishops of Winchester performed as vicars of London, see Kemp, ‘Canterbury Provincial Chapter’, 188–89. 24 Charters […] of Salisbury, ed. by Macray, no. 129, 109–10, and for the earlier involvement of Joscelin of Bath, together with the Bishop of Rochester, in disputes of 1218 over the right of the Bishop of London to conduct all future episcopal consecrations, see Registrum Roffense, ed. by Thorpe, 56; Letters and Charters of Cardinal Guala, ed. by Vincent, no.19 n.; English Episcopal Acta 45, ed. by Kemp, no. 92, 102–03. 25 Early Charters, ed. by Gibbs, no. 182, 141–42, where Joscelin’s claim was advanced (speciously) ‘ratione prioritatis eo quod primo inter omnes fuit consecratus’. 26 Kemp, ‘Canterbury Provincial Chapter’, 193, citing Lyndwood, Provinciale, 317, and cf. Wordsworth, Precedence of English Bishops.

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late antique context, the Council of Milev (416) had insisted that all ordinations be recorded in writing by the ordaining authorities (ordinatores). But how, given medieval levels of literacy and archive-keeping, were such records to be maintained? How could the various claims to special status advanced amongst non-English bishops be regulated? In the twelfth century, it was by no means only Canterbury and York that disputed primacy. Toledo notoriously, and both Bourges and Armagh with no less determination, pursued such claims. In all these cases, tensions were heightened by the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals and by post-Hildebrandine emphasis on hierarchy.27 The four great archbishoprics of France, as defined by the ‘Notitia Galliarum’ as early as c. 400, were ranked in descending order of dignity as Lyons, Rouen, Tours, and Sens. Robert of Torigny repeats this assertion in the 1180s.28 But even this ranking was disputed and overlaid claims within each province for the particular dignity of individual sees. By the thirteenth century, various French suffragans were claiming to act as ‘dean’ or ‘vicar-general’ ahead of all other bishops within their particular province.29 In the archbishopric of Tours, for example, the Bishop of Le Mans claimed seniority in presiding over the election of future archbishops, whatever rights might be asserted by the canons of Tours or the Bishops of Angers or Brittany.30 Into this erupted attempts, from the 1150s onwards, to establish Dol-de-Bretagne as a metropolitan church over and above the other Breton bishops, independent of the partially Capetian-controlled see of Tours.31 The dignity of Bourges was hotly denied by Bordeaux, that of Armagh by Cashel and Dublin. And so the squabbling was to continue, for several centuries thereafter. So much for theory and law. What though of practical impact at the Plantagenet court? Here we have little alternative but to turn to witness lists, and here, immediately, caveats multiply.32 Witness lists are artificial constructs. They may indicate presence at court, but they most certainly cannot be read as indicators of absence. The names they list were chosen in part by seniority, in part because deemed appropriate to particular items of business. Not only are witness lists attached to forged as well as to authentic charters, but in the majority of cases they survive in cartulary and other copies rather than in the original single-sheets. As a result, several layers of recopying and potential error intrude between the witnesses as assembled, selected, or listed and the written record that survives. Fortunately, by the time of Henry II, witness lists were presented as a single text block, not in columns as had been the case with the diplomas of the Anglo-Saxon kings. As a result, there is little risk that witness names have been misplaced in copying, by reading across (rather than down) columns. Indeed, there is hardly a single instance under Henry II where an original and a later

27 In general here, see Fuhrmann, ‘Studien zur Geschichte mittelalterlicher Patriarchate’; Delivré, ‘Foundations of Primatial Claims’. For Toledo, most recently, see Wood, ‘Playing the Fame Game’. 28 Robert de Torigni, ‘Chronicle’, ed. by Howlett, i, 302. 29 Delivré, ‘Foundations of Primatial Claims’, 388–90, 399–402; Kemp, ‘Canterbury Provincial Chapter’, 185–86, noting the position of Bayeux within the province of Rouen 30 Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux, ed. by Barlow, no. 99, 158–59. 31 Conklin, ‘Les Capétiens’. 32 See, in particular, Bates, ‘Prosopographical Study’.

shall the first be last? order and disorder amongst henry ii’s bishops Table 16.1. Archi/episcopal witnesses in the charters of King Henry II.

Number of archi/episcopal witnesses

Instances

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 12 14 15

359 269 179 69 30 14 7 3 1 2 2 1

copy differ in the ordering of witnesses. Nor is there much doubt that the witness lists themselves were structured according to pre-existing ideas of ‘order’, in general beginning with archbishops, bishops, abbots, church dignitaries, earls, and lesser courtiers, invariably ranking bishops ahead of abbots, abbots ahead of deans, earls ahead of barons, and so forth.33 Even so, it remains to be proved that these broader categories of witness were themselves internally ranked according to the precedence of individual bishops. Let us begin with the clear cut, and from there proceed into rather murkier regions. All told, of the approximately 2470 charters of Henry II that survive with some form of witness list, roughly two fifths (936 charters) were witnessed by one or more archbishops or bishops. In descending order of magnitude, we find 359 instances of single episcopal witnesses, either as part of a larger group of lay and clerical witnesses or in sixty-seven cases as sole attesting authority.34 Thereafter, charters are witnessed by two or more bishops in the pattern outlined in Table 16.1. Within this broader context, the four Archbishops of Canterbury who held office under Henry II witnessed 158 of the king’s surviving charters (of the roughly 2470 such charters whose witness lists have been preserved). The only Archbishop of York during this period (Roger de Pont-l’Evêque), appears on a hardly less impressive ninety-one occasions. Most such appearances occur in charters concerning the clergy, but by no means invariably so. Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, for 33 A phenomenon first explored by Russell, ‘Triumph of Dignity’. For attempts to take this rather further, into rankings by precedence, see Russell, ‘Significance of Charter Witness Lists’; Russell, ‘Social Status’, this entire approach heavily (and fairly) criticized by Haskins, ‘Charter Witness Lists’. 34 Bishops as sole witness: LCH, nos 130, 142, 148, 152, 201, 228, 259, 269, 478, 621, 627, 637, 732, 762, 778, 830, 832, 836, 1098, 1136–38, 1145, 1176, 1361, 1452–54, 1478, 1526–27, 1627, 1667, 1733, 1766, 1787, 1798, 1812, 1911, 1917, 1958, 2062, 2095, 2143, 2149, 2179, 2209–10, 2224, 2226, 2272–73, 2306, 2337, 2342, 2363, 2392, 2468, 2483, 2548, 2584, 2685, 2867, 2925, 2945–46, 3008.

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example, witnessed a dozen royal grants to laymen; Archbishops Thomas, Richard, and Baldwin at least two each.35 The only peculiar feature to witnessing by the Archbishops of Canterbury is that, until the time of Archbishop Richard in the 1170s, neither Theobald nor Thomas appears as a witness outside England.36 On the twenty-seven occasions that Canterbury and York coincided here, invariably at locations in the southern province, Canterbury in every instance took precedence over York.37 Theobald, as Archbishop of Canterbury, witnessed several times at York, often in the company of the Bishops of Durham and Lincoln, but without any mention of attendance by Archbishop Roger.38 Archbishop Roger occasionally witnessed at both Canterbury or Dover, the two chief locations where royal charters were issued in the Canterbury diocese, but in several of these cases either in support of grants to the local archbishop or in second place behind the more highly ranked southern metropolitan.39 By the same token, whenever Canterbury appeared alongside an Archbishop of Rouen, Canterbury ranked first.40 York, by contrast, who witnessed alongside Rouen on four occasions, all of them at Norman locations, invariably ranked behind the Norman metropolitan. It might be thought that York yielded place here for no other reason than that, in these particular instances, he was a guest in the Norman archbishop’s province.41 In reality, even when travelling in Normandy, the Archbishop of Canterbury continued to trump Rouen.42 Papal legates occasionally took precedence even over the Archbishop of Canterbury.43 So, very rarely, did Thomas Becket as chancellor.44 However, the only non-clerics to take precedence over any archbishop were the king’s mother, Matilda, and the queen.45 Elsewhere, amongst the laity, only the king’s eldest son took precedence over any bishop, at least

35 LCH, nos 69, 100, 483, 517, 695, 852, 952, 983, 1002, 1027, 1434, 1599, 1638, 1667, 1691, 1934, 2420, 2758, and the forged nos 2754–55. 36 For charters issued in Normandy or Maine, three of these four by Archbishop Baldwin, see LCH, nos 864, 1660, 2028, 2178. By contrast, Archbishop Roger of York appears frequently as witness to charters issued in France: nos 66, 592, 684, 1347, 1532, 1561–62, 1568, 2210, 2377, 2684, and the suspect nos 1350, 1442. 37 LCH, nos 351, 652, 663, 852, 1081, 1533, 1658, 1701, 1705, 2235–44, 2412, 2459, 2487–88, 2549, and the certainly or potentially forged nos 253, 1966, 2807. 38 LCH, nos 1080, 1288, 1507, 1671–73, 1897, 2450, 2885–86, and probably no. 1781. 39 LCH, nos 499, 777, 852, 1464, 1705, 2807, of which nos 499 and 777 are in favour of the archbishop or church of Canterbury, and nos 852, 1705, and 2807 witnessed by Roger at Dover, in second place to Archbishop Theobald. 40 LCH, nos 864, 1076, 2848, 2851. 41 LCH, nos 66, 684, 2377, 2684. 42 LCH, nos 864, 1076, on both occasions involving Baldwin of Forde and Walter of Coutances, late in Henry’s reign. 43 LCH, nos 712, 2848, here discounting the obviously forged no. 952, where the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Heraclius, appears to take precedence. 44 LCH, nos 1360, 1465, 2295, and cf. nos 941, 2087, 2384, these last three almost certainly forged. 45 LCH, nos 952, 1183, 1632–34, 2154, 2156–58, 2326, 2657, ranking Eleanor or Matilda over a variety of bishops, which tends to support the authenticity of the two other occasions (nos 2152, 2155) when Matilda is to be found witnessing ahead of the Archbishop of Rouen.

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in charters whose witness lists are free from suspicion of forgery.46 All of this should immediately suggest a degree of structuring to witness lists, and already an element of deliberate rather than merely haphazard ranking. Of the continental archbishops, the four incumbents of Bordeaux witness a mere nine charters between them, never in company with other metropolitans.47 Those of Dol and Tours witness even fewer.48 Here, the chief point of interest is that Archbishop Bartholomew of Tours witnesses on one occasion, in his own cathedral city, in second place to Archbishop William of Rheims.49 William aux Blanche-Mains, Archbishop of Rheims, outranked Bartholomew (consecrated to Tours in 1174) in all manner of ways, by birth (as son of the Count of Blois-Champagne), by ordination (as Bishop of Chartres since 1165, in 1169 translated to the archbishopric of Sens), and by the peculiar dignity of the see of Rheims. Just as interesting is the way in which the Archbishops of Rouen appear to have been outranked not only by papal legates and by Archbishops of Canterbury but on one occasion, in the early 1170s, by Peter, Archbishop of Tarentaise.50 Peter had been consecrated to his Alpine see in or before 1141, almost certainly after Archbishop Rotrou of Rouen obtained consecration (originally in July 1139, as Bishop of Evreux, translated to Rouen in 1165). Peter’s high ranking thus seems to reflect not so much his longevity as archbishop, but the fact that he was present in Normandy as a papally commissioned peacemaker, and as a living saint, the worker of miracles.51 Rotrou and Henry II’s two other Archbishops of Rouen, Hugh of Amiens and Walter of Coutances, together witnessed eighty-five of Henry II’s surviving charters, appearing not only in Normandy but elsewhere in France and England, invariably ranking behind the Archbishops of Canterbury but ahead of the Archbishop of York.52 More anomalous is the pattern of witnessing by the Archbishops of Dublin. John Cumin (consecrated c. 21 March 1182) appears thereafter only once as witness to a royal charter, issued at Westminster, ranked behind Archbishop Baldwin (a bishop since 1180, translated to Canterbury in 1184), but ahead of the Bishops of 46 LCH, no. 512, witnessed by Henry the Young King ahead of the Bishop of Durham. Cf. nos 55, 222, 517, 596, 833, 1055–56, 1062, 1408, 1479, 1871, 1961, 2221, 2446, 2720, 2765–66, 2877, where bishops take precedence over others of the king’s sons. Geoffrey, the king’s illegitimate son, as chancellor trumps the Bishop-elect of Chester/Coventry in no. 2743. We can discount the apparently forged no. 2399 (for the monks of Saint-Valery, a notorious centre of forgery), where Richard de Lucy takes precedence over Archbishop Becket. In other instances, where the king himself (nos 2341, 2343–44), Richard de Lucy (no. 2399), or Henry, Duke of Saxony (no. 2557), take precedence over bishops, forgery seems the most likely explanation, all five of these charters being impeachable on grounds other than their witnessing pattern. 47 LCH, nos 741, 1056, 1202, 1679, 1696, 1812, 2306, 2666, 2668, only three of these charters (nos 1056, 2666, 2668) outside the province of Bordeaux. 48 LCH, nos 288, 555–56, 1755–56, 2250, 2663, and the two likely forgeries nos 1208–09, discounting the appearance of the Archbishop of Rheims in the outrageous Glastonbury forgery (no. 1131). 49 LCH, no. 556. 50 LCH, no. 2726, and for Archbishops of Rouen behind papal legates or Archbishops of Canterbury, nos 864, 1076, 2099, 2848, 2851. 51 See my forthcoming essay, ‘Peter Archbishop of Tarentaise’. 52 In England, LCH, nos 1136–37, 2211, 2320–21, 2538, 2742, 2848, 2851, 2867. In the province of Tours, nos 251, 1739, 1823, 2436 and probably no. 285. Ahead of the Archbishop of York, nos 66, 684, 2377, 2684.

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Norwich, Rochester, and Ely (consecrated in 1175, 1185, and 1174 respectively).53 His predecessor, the last of the native Irish archbishops, Lorcán (alias Laurence) Ua  Tuathail (consecrated 1162), likewise witnesses only one certainly authentic royal charter: the treaty of Windsor, in October 1175, by which Connaught was brought under a degree of Plantagenet overlordship.54 However, here by contrast, although an archbishop of more than twelve-years standing, Lorcán ranked in the witness list below Bishops Richard of Winchester and Geoffrey of Ely (both consecrated as recently as October 1174). It is surely impossible to read this as anything other than a deliberate disparagement of Lorcán and the Irish Church. As this suggests, we might do well to jump now to the other extreme of the episcopal witness lists, to those bishops deemed inferior in all save in exceptional circumstances. In this way, whenever Scots, Welsh, or Irish bishops appear as witnesses, they are invariably ranked last, or if more than one such bishop appears, in an order that reflects their perceived gradations of inferiority. Peter, Bishop of St David’s, the most frequent such witness, recorded on nine occasions, never once took precedence over any of the twelve English bishops alongside whom he appeared.55 By contrast, although of relative late consecration (c. 7 November 1176), in the witness list to Henry II’s settlement of disputes between the Kings of Castile and Navarre he ranked ahead of all other Welsh and Scots bishops including both Adam of St Asaph (consecrated c. 12 October 1176) and Christian of Whithorn (consecrated over twenty years earlier, c. 1154). On this same occasion, apparently in March 1177, Guy Rufus, although only Bishop-elect of Bangor (not consecrated until 22 May 1177), was granted full episcopal title, perhaps as a means of ensuring his precedence over the lowly Bishop of Whithorn.56 Amongst the Norman bishops, a similarly inferior status attached to the see of Avranches. As a result, never once, in more than thirty appearances by three incumbents of the see, does a Bishop of Avranches witness ahead of any other Norman bishop. This includes two appearances below a Bishop of Sées, three below Coutances, eleven below Lisieux, and no fewer than thirteen occasions when Avranches was ranked inferior to Bayeux.57 Leaving definite forgeries to one side, in only one rather dubious instance did Avranches rank above any other bishop, and the inferior in question here, Stephen of Fougères, Bishop of Rennes, was himself the cinderella amongst the suffragans of the archdiocese of Tours, appearing as witness almost invariably in an inferior position to all other bishops, including the almost equally lowly Bishop of Nantes.58 Moving up the Norman pecking order, the

53 LCH, no. 2501. 54 LCH, no. 686, here discounting no. 783, supposedly issued at Dublin, in which the archbishop appears above one of his suffragans, the Bishop of Clogher, here described as bishop ‘of Louth’. 55 LCH, nos 514, 517, 802, 1266, 1344, 1945, 2555, 2893–94, alongside Bishops of Bath, Chichester, Coventry, Durham, Ely, Exeter, Hereford, London, Norwich, Rochester, Winchester, and Worcester. 56 LCH, no. 517. 57 LCH, nos 183, 812, 814, 919, 1002, 2064, 2152, 2259, 2269, 2326, 2684, 2718, 2851, 2935. 58 Discounting the forgeries (LCH, nos 2425, 2718), Richard of Avranches (consecrated c. 1170) is only once ranked above Stephen of Rennes (consecrated c. 1168), and this in a charter itself of by no means unquestioned authenticity (no. 2064). In turn, Stephen invariably ranks behind Robert of Nantes,

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Bishops of Coutances fare only slightly better than those of Avranches, and those of Sées only a little better than Coutances.59 All of these sees — Welsh, Scots, Irish, Norman, and Angevin — ranked towards the lower end of the pecking order within their own provinces, let alone within the wider Plantagenet world. Wealth may well have been a determining factor here. Certainly, the sees of the west and south of Normandy were poorer than those of the north and east.60 At the same time, in both Normandy and Anjou, the rankings of Henry II’s reign represented a significant transformation from the situation as described in the late fourth-century ‘Notitia Galliarum’, itself regularly recycled thereafter as a guide to precedence within the French Church. Here, within the archdiocese of Rouen, we find a ranking, in descending order from Bayeux at the head, via Avranches, Evreux, Sées, and Lisieux to Coutances at the bottom.61 Our evidence, by contrast, suggests that in practical rather than theoretical terms, by the 1150s Avranches had plummeted from second to sixth place. Similarly in the province of Tours, the descending prestige of Le Mans, Rennes, Angers, and Nantes found in the ‘Notitia’ was overturned, with Rennes now slipping from second to last place.62 Neither of these orderings bears any relation to what appears a more or less random listing of Norman and Angevin suffragans, included in the so-called ‘Mappa Mundi’ attached to Gervase of Canterbury’s chronicle.63 Gervase nonetheless records the seniority of both Bayeux and Le Mans within their respective provinces. By contrast, the papal Liber Censuum, as compiled in the 1190s, continues to follow ‘Notitia’ order, for both the provinces of Rouen and Tours.64 In 1207, when the bishops of Normandy sealed letters to Philip Augustus, in effect acknowledging his regalian right, they did so in an order very similar to that

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consecrated c. December 1170, so almost two years his junior in terms of ordination (nos 55, 1055, 2668), save in one instance (no. 57) where a witness list is either forged or leaves uncertainty as to the identity of the bishops involved. On two occasions (nos 742, 1259), Stephen ranks above bishopselect (of Winchester and Lincoln). Coutances is invariably ranked behind all other bishops save Avranches (LCH, nos 2152, 2269, 2684, outranked by Richard, Bishop of Coutances, by consecration as well as potentially by prestige), and in two instances, hard to explain, by John fitz Luke, Bishop of Evreux (nos 1657, 2332, despite the fact that John as Bishop of Evreux, consecrated 1182, in theory should have outranked William de Tournebu, Bishop of Coutances, consecrated c. May 1184). Elsewhere, Evreux outranks Coutances in one authentic instance (no. 1076, explicable by dates of consecration) as well as in two potential forgeries (nos 238, 2152). For Bishops of Sées listed out of consecration order above Bishops of Coutances, and in a unique instance a Bishop of Evreux, see nos 900, 1856, 2269, 2683. By contrast, note the placement of Froger, Bishop of Sées (consecrated 1159), behind Bishops Henry of Bayeux (consecrated 1165) (nos 80, 132, 240, 251, 279, 533, 535, 975, 1201, 1259, 1330–31, 1669, 1769, 1857, 2063–64, 2066, 2269, 2328, 2492, 2667, 2760) and Giles of Evreux (consecrated 1170) (no. 2492). For comments here, see Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest, 150–52. ‘Notitia Galliarum’, 555, 585–86. ‘Notitia Galliarum’, 555, 586–87. Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. by Stubbs, ii, 448, listing the Norman bishops as Coutances, Bayeux, Avranches (‘Agenensis’), Lisieux, Sées, and Evreux, and those of the province of Tours as Le Mans, Angers, Nantes, Vannes (‘Aletensis’), Rennes, and Léhon. Liber Censuum, i, 196–99 (adding, after Nantes, the Breton bishoprics of Quimper, Vannes, SaintMalo, Saint-Brieuc, Treguier, Léhon, and Dol).

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of the ‘Notitia’, for the most part ignoring dates of consecration, placing the most recently consecrated Robert, Bishop of Bayeux, in first place followed in descending order by the Bishops of Avranches, Evreux, Lisieux, Coutances, and Sées, only the ranking of Sées here departing from that laid down in the ‘Notitia’ more than eight hundred years before.65 Once again, although ranking might vary here, as with the archbishops, it seems to have been applied with deliberate intent. From the last amongst equals we must now attempt to assess various bishoprics of greater prestige. Let us begin with the relatively straightforward. Here, various principles should be established before we deal with exceptions. The study of combinatorics (the ranking of any combination of two or more entities) becomes exponentially more complicated, the more instances are considered. Amongst the suffragans of the province of Rouen there are potentially 720 different ways (six factorial) of organizing the six individual bishoprics. Hence the significance of even such nearly perfect matches as that between the ‘Notitia’ (c. 400 ad) and the Norman letters of 1207, identical to six out of seven places. By the time we come to the English bishoprics (ten suffragan dioceses in the southern province, two in the northern, in addition to the four Welsh sees) we arrive at an alarming potential of twenty thousand billion possible combinations (sixteen factorial). Not only this, but since each see was occupied by a number of incumbents, each with a distinct date of consecration and claims to dignity, the combinatorics run riot. Fortunately, in only a handful of cases do we find more than five bishops witnessing in combination with one another.66 When a bishop with prior date of consecration witnesses ahead of a bishop consecrated later, we can assume that the Gregorian-canonical rules are being applied. What we need to isolate instead are those occasions when dates of consecration did not determine precedence, either because such dates were ignored or muddled, or to accommodate the customary or personal dignity of particular bishops. Here the case of the Norman bishoprics, and in particular the pre-eminence of the see of Bayeux, remains relatively easy to demonstrate. Amongst the six suffragans of the province of Rouen, there is no doubt that Bayeux claimed particular dignity, from the time of the ‘Notitia’ (c. 400 ad) via all subsequent listings. The two incumbents of the see during our period, Philip de Harcourt (1142–63) and Henry de Beaumont (1165–1205), between them witnessed 210 of Henry II’s charters, or nearly 10 per cent of those that retain their witness lists. If we focus here upon combinations involving other suffragans of the province of Rouen, searching here for anomalies, we find Bishop Rotrou of Evreux (consecrated 1139) quite naturally named ahead of Philip of Bayeux

65 Layettes du Trésor des Chartes, ed. by Teulet, Delaborde, and Berger, i, no. 828, 310–11, in descending order from Walter, Archbishop of Rouen, via Robert of Bayeux (consecrated 1206), William of Avranches (consecrated c. 1199), Luke of Evreux (consecrated c. 1203), Jordan of Lisieux (consecrated c. 1201/02), Vivian of Coutances (consecrated c. 1201/02), to Silvester of Sées (consecrated c. 1203). 66 Five episcopal witnesses: LCH, nos 253, 288, 592, 663, 819, 852, 919, 975, 1080, 1202, 1288, 1330–31, 1660, 1673, 1871, 1897, 1934, 1963, 2063, 2111, 2189, 2200, 2269, 2412, 2501, 2766, 2851, 2885, 2929. Six: nos 178, 368, 380, 464, 555, 1002, 1076, 1131, 1259, 1266, 1469, 1470, 1669, 2684. Seven: nos 652, 1658, 1666, 2064, 2172, 2197, 2198. Eight: nos 1826–27, 2152. Nine: no. 45. Twelve: nos 1533, 2848. Fourteen: nos 2765, 2965. Fifteen: no. 517.

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(consecrated 1142) in the witness lists to twenty royal charters, the majority of which appear to be authentic.67 In two of these instances, Rotrou is specifically named as justiciar of Normandy, both his priority of consecration and his secular office here propelling him ahead of Philip of Bayeux.68 In a further thirteen instances, however, Philip of Bayeux (consecrated 1142) is named ahead of Rotrou of Evreux (consecrated 1139).69 These instances surely suggest that Bayeux was assumed to be of higher dignity than Evreux, save where ranking was decided according to date of consecration. Likewise in dealings with the see of Lisieux, Arnulf of Lisieux (consecrated 1141) might be expected to have ranked ahead of both Bishops of Bayeux, Philip (consecrated 1142) and Henry (consecrated 1165). This consecration order is indeed observed on twenty-three occasions, mostly authentic.70 In one such case, Arnulf of Lisieux (consecrated 1141) appears ahead of both Philip of Bayeux (consecrated 1142) and Rotrou of Evreux (consecrated 1139), in an anomalously superior position.71 Much more frequently, however, on sixty occasions, Philip of Bayeux is named ahead of Arnulf of Lisieux, despite having been consecrated after, rather than before him.72 Not only this, but more strikingly still, Henry of Bayeux, although consecrated a full twenty-four years after Arnulf, trumps his older colleague on at least eight separate occasions.73 In other words, the witness lists do indeed support the contention that Bishops of Bayeux enjoyed a customary dignity higher than that of either Evreux or Lisieux. As for the pecking order between these latter two sees, Arnulf of Lisieux (consecrated 1141) witnesses no fewer than 134 charters of Henry II. When Arnulf is found in combination with Rotrou of Evreux, consecrated two years before him, Rotrou normally takes precedence.74 On no fewer than eight occasions, however, Arnulf appears ahead of Rotrou, suggesting that on balance, Arnulf or the see of Lisieux enjoyed greater prestige.75 Taken together with what we have noted of the lesser Norman sees, this would give us a pecking order at

67 LCH, nos 15–21, 410, 410a, 411, 413, 897, 919, 1114, 1596, 1666, 2041, and the suspected forgeries nos 175, 238, 1166. 68 LCH, nos 410, 410a. 69 LCH, nos 267, 502, 1328, 1528, 1678, 1828, 2152, 2155, 2267, 2326, and the suspected forgeries nos 900, 1904–05. Not surprisingly, elsewhere Henry of Bayeux (consecrated 1165) takes precedence over both Giles (consecrated 1170) and John (consecrated c. 1182) of Evreux: nos 183, 1402–03, 1669, 1880, 2063, 2278, 2492, and for John nos 559, 1076, 1458, 1483, 1657, 2112, 2332, discounting no. 1484, indicted as a forgery on other grounds, where John fitz Luke, Bishop of Evreux (consecrated c. 1182) appears to take precedence over Henry of Bayeux (consecrated 1165). 70 Arnulf ahead of Philip: LCH, nos 872, 919, 1221, 1528, 1596, 1666, 1878, 2263, 2505–06, 2514, 2851, and the forgeries nos 238, 908–11, 2061. Arnulf ahead of Henry, nos 178, 1378, 1769, 2851, and the forged no. 2063. 71 LCH, no. 1878, although cf. no. 919, where in the presence of a papal legate, the three bishops appear in correct order of consecration, as Rotrou, Arnulf, and Philip. 72 LCH, nos 267, 397–99, 410, 410a, 411, 413, 439–40, 500, 546, 555, 811–12, 814, 871, 986, 1002, 1080, 1114, 1183, 1202, 1288, 1556, 1565, 1571, 1579–80, 1638, 1673, 1678–79, 1696, 1827–28, 1897, 1934, 2041, 2189, 2194, 2200, 2326, 2349, 2411, 2593, 2656, 2673, 2839, 2885, 2887–88, and the forged nos 900, 1559–60, 1826, 2152, 2197–98, 2312. 73 LCH, nos 534, 1330, 1880, 2278, 2667, 2684, 2748, and the possibly forged no. 1331. 74 LCH, nos 410, 411, 413, 592, 1114, 1666, 1828, 1898, 2041, 2163, 2428, 2936, and the suspect nos 238, 2343, and cf. no. 2283, probably forged, where Arnulf even appears after Giles of Evreux (consecrated 1170). 75 LCH, nos 267, 1528, 1596, 1678, 1878, 2326, and the suspected forgeries nos 900, 2152.

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Henry II’s court, in descending rank, of Bayeux, Lisieux, Evreux, Sées, Coutances, and Avranches: entirely distinct from the ‘Notitia’ ranking observed elsewhere. Thus far, and given that precedence could be decided either by prior consecration or superior dignity, we find a tangled pattern amidst which the relative status of the six suffragans of Rouen can be discerned only by preponderance and after complex calculation. These complexities become all the greater when we turn to England or to combinations between English and Norman bishops. Here, once again, we would do well to begin at the top and then to work downwards into the middling and lower ranks. In England, as early as 1075, the sees of London and Winchester were deemed to enjoy particular dignity: London, according to Bede, originally selected as the site of St Augustine’s cathedral church; Winchester, both as capital of the West Saxon kingdom and as one of the wealthiest bishoprics of northern Europe. Whenever lists were made of the suffragans of Canterbury, either by English or foreign authorities, however random the naming of other sees, London (or London and Winchester) tended to rank first.76 As Tom Licence has drawn to my attention, the convention in late Anglo-Saxon diplomas, from the 1040s onwards, was that Winchester already enjoyed special status, even though precedence in the witness lists to Edward the Confessor’s diplomas had generally been accorded to the beneficiary’s diocesan bishop, presumably because it was within the diocesan’s secretariat, or on occasion by the diocesan’s own hand, that such diplomas continued to be written and issued.77 Although this tradition of favouring the local diocesan had faded away by the 1150s, the high status of both London and Winchester continued to be reflected in the witness lists to Henry II’s charters. In particular, the Bishops of Winchester, Henry of Blois (consecrated 1129) and Richard of Ilchester (consecrated 1174), trumped virtually all others. Henry of Blois, who witnessed twenty-two of Henry II’s charters, was consecrated as long ago as 1129, so that his exceptional longevity might alone explain his high ranking. Richard of Ilchester (consecrated only in 1174) witnesses a far more substantial 119 royal charters (129 allowing for his ten appearances as bishop-elect). To judge from their placement in these lists, both Henry and Richard ranked above all other bishops, English, Norman, or otherwise. There are only two exceptions here: a suspected forgery for Waltham Abbey (where the bishops appear to be arranged for the most part by date of consecration), and a handful of instances, including the Waltham charter, in which Winchester is ranked behind London.78 The ranking of 76 Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. by Stubbs, ii, 448, listing London, Winchester, Ely, Rochester, Lincoln, Bath, Norwich, Hereford, Chester, Worcester, Exeter, Salisbury, Chichester, Bangor, Llandaff, St David’s, St Asaph; London, BL, MS Cotton Vespasian A XXII (Rochester Surveys, c. 1220), fols 120v–122r, listing Rochester, London, Winchester, Salisbury, Bath, Exeter, Hereford, Worcester, Chester, ‘Legacestrenses’ (i.e. Lincoln), Ely, Chichester, Norwich, York, Durham, ‘Haugustaldensis’ (i.e. Hexham), and Whithorn; Liber Censuum, i, 223–26, listing London, Rochester, Chichester, Exeter, Winchester, Bath and Wells, Salisbury, Worcester, Hereford, Coventry, Lincoln, Norwich, Ely, St David’s, Llandaff, Bangor, St Asaph. 77 T. Licence, forthcoming as an appendix to his new biography of Edward the Confessor. 78 For the Waltham forgery, LCH, no. 2765, witnessed by Richard, Archbishop of Canterbury, Gilbert, Bishop of London (first consecrated 1148), Joscelin of Salisbury (consecrated 1142), Walter of Rochester (consecrated 1148), Bartholomew of Exeter (consecrated 1161), Roger of Worcester

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London and Winchester here is problematic. For the most part, whenever Winchester and London were combined, they were ranked by date of consecration.79 In two apparently authentic instances, however, breaking with consecration order, Richard of Ilchester (consecrated 1174) took precedence over Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London (first consecrated to a bishopric in 1148).80 By contrast, in another instance, Richard of London (consecrated 1152) took precedence over Henry of Blois (consecrated 1129).81 There is no clear rule here, nor any sign that, as yet, London had secured its later and undisputed precedence over Winchester. By contrast, Winchester’s own high status is not in doubt. In particular, although Bishop Richard of Winchester was consecrated on the same day (6 October 1174) as Geoffrey Ridel, Bishop of Ely, on each of the more than seventy occasions when they appear together in witness lists, Richard of Winchester took precedence over Geoffrey of Ely.82 This applied to the two men even as bishops-elect.83 It stands in marked contrast to their earlier careers when, as Archdeacon of Canterbury, Geoffrey had taken precedence over Richard, Archdeacon of Poitiers, on twenty-nine of the thirty occasions when they appear in combination.84 This universal and surely deliberate placement of Winchester above Ely, after 1174, supplies yet further proof that those compiling royal witness lists were aware of rank and status as factors determining placement. Meanwhile, the precedence afforded Winchester raises questions over the supposedly equally or even more prestigious see of London. In theory, from at least as early as the reign of Henry I, London ranked at the head of Canterbury’s suffragans. In reality, the witness lists to Henry II’s charters suggest that such pre-eminence was by no means universally acknowledged. Bishops Richard (consecrated 1152) and Gilbert Foliot (translated to London in 1163 from the see of Hereford to which he had been consecrated on 5 September 1148) certainly ranked high in witness lists, Richard as witness to thirty-five of Henry II’s charters, Gilbert to fifty-one. London invariably trumped not only Avranches, Sées, and all Welsh or Scottish bishops but

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(consecrated 1164), Richard of Winchester, Geoffrey of Ely, and John of Chichester (all three consecrated 6 October 1174), John of Norwich (consecrated 1175), Reginald of Bath (consecrated 23 June 1174), Hugh of Durham (consecrated 1153), Adam of St Asaph (consecrated 1175), and Geoffrey, Bishop-elect of Lincoln. For London ahead of Winchester, see nos 636, 2172, 2203, and the suspected forgeries nos 672, 2765. Gilbert of London (1148) over Richard of Winchester (1174): LCH, nos 636, 672, 2172, 2765, two of these (nos 672, 2765) almost certainly spurious or reworked, both of these and no. 636 involving beneficiaries within the diocese of London. The two appearances by Henry of Blois (1129) ahead of Richard of London (1152) are almost certainly forged: nos 1826–27. LCH, nos 45, 2418. LCH, no. 2203. LCH, nos 45, 100, 102, 222, 224, 292, 324, 346, 386–88, 464, 467, 549, 632, 634–36, 638, 644, 686, 695, 703–05, 718, 735, 860, 864a, 946, 990, 1002, 1011, 1106, 1191–92, 1198, 1211, 1362, 1429, 1430–31, 1449–51, 1533, 1613, 1642, 1646, 1753–54, 1820, 1933–34, 1944, 2073, 2172, 2183, 2292, 2418, 2431, 2518–19, 2555, 2559, 2705, 2765, 2767, 2772, 2910, and the suspect no. 253. LCH, nos 224, 703. The exception is LCH, no. 431. For the standard order, see nos 66, 395, 458, 629, 684, 694, 810, 867, 958, 1278, 1413, 1490, 1494, 1683, 1797, 1843, 1863, 1882, 1929, 1963, 2163, 2208, 2265, 2558, 2929, and the potentially spurious nos 131, 935, 1988, 2874.

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all Bishops of Chichester, Hereford, Norwich, and Rochester.85 On the rare occasions when either Richard or Gilbert of London were named in a position inferior to Bishops of Bath, Bayeux, Ely, Lincoln, Lisieux, or Salisbury, this was generally either because such bishops outranked them by date of consecration or as a result of proved or suspected forgery.86 Leaving aside a couple of anomalies to which I must shortly return, in most other cases London is found to outrank all other bishops, even when such bishops were of prior consecration, as for example with Richard of London’s outranking of both Henry of Winchester (consecrated 1129) and Nigel of Ely (consecrated 1133), or Richard and Gilbert’s outranking of Arnulf of Lisieux (consecrated 1141), Joscelin of Salisbury, Philip of Bayeux (both consecrated 1142), and Robert of Lincoln (consecrated 1148).87 Even so, and here excluding obvious forgeries, there are instances, not so easily explained, when Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London (consecrated 1148), is outranked by Hugh, Bishop of Durham (consecrated 1153), and by Richard of Ilchester, Bishop of Winchester (consecrated 1174).88 All of this suggests that London’s predominance was not necessarily as clear as that of Winchester, nor of Bayeux within the province of Rouen, nor of Le Mans within the province of Tours. In particular, and here allowing for personal circumstance as well as hierarchy determined by custom or date or appointment, it may suggest a period of disfavour for Gilbert Foliot in the 1170s: the period when Gilbert was still trying to live down his involvement in the persecution of the recently martyred Thomas Becket. From the relatively undisputed precedence of Bayeux, Winchester, and London, the face cards of this particular game, we must now cut the pack further down. Here immediately we encounter problems. In only a handful of Henry II’s charters do we find more than half a dozen bishops named in combination, but the ranking of such combinations does not always make sense, either in terms of ranking by customary prestige or by date of consecration. A handful of examples must suffice. The first of these is in many ways the most anomalous. The settlement decreed by Henry II in 1177 between the Kings of Castile and Navarre, whose witness list is preserved only in copies by the chronicler Roger of Howden, is witnessed by no fewer than fifteen

85 Avranches (LCH, nos 1537, 1900); Chester/Lichfield (nos 1426, 2929); Chichester (nos 214, 368, 517, 652, 819, 1658, 2203, 2294, 2765, 2848); Hereford (nos 45, 517, 1360, 1658, 1826, 1827, 2172, 2848); Norwich (nos 45, 368, 468, 517, 652, 977, 1475, 1476, 1477, 1658, 1907, 2172, 2557, 2765, 2766, 2848, 2883); Rochester (nos 517, 2765); Sées (no.178). 86 Richard of London (consecrated 1152) behind Nigel of Ely (consecrated 1133) (LCH, no. 1537, and the forged no. 663), Robert of Bath (consecrated 1136) (no. 2111), Joscelin of Salisbury (consecrated 1142) (no. 364), and Robert of Lincoln (consecrated 1148) (nos 820, 1499). All five charters in which Richard (consecrated 1152) appears behind both Arnulf of Lisieux (consecrated 1141) and Philip of Bayeux (consecrated 1142) are indictable as forgeries: nos 909–11, 1826–27. 87 Bayeux (LCH no. 1638); Ely (nos 368, 657, 852, 2578, 2737); Lisieux (nos 18, 1638 and the forged no. 908); Salisbury (nos 45, 694, 1494, 1822, 1950, 2765, and the forged nos 1826–27); Winchester (no. 2203). Richard’s (consecrated 1152) outranking of Robert of Bath (consecrated 1136) (nos 1826–27), like Gilbert’s (consecrated 1148) outranking of Philip of Bayeux (no. 908), almost certainly results from forgery. 88 LCH, no. 2418, and cf. the forged no. 1826, and the suspect nos 601 and 1827.

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bishops, ranked here in an order that makes very little sense whether judged by consecration dates or customary status. We thus find the following order of bishops (here with consecration dates for suffragans, in brackets): Canterbury, Hugh of Durham (20 December 1153), Geoffrey of Ely (6 October 1174), Roger of Worcester (23 August 1164), Bartholomew of Exeter (c. 18 April 1161), Gilbert of London (5 September 1148), Walter of Rochester (14 March 1148), Reginald of Bath (23 June 1174), John of Norwich (14 December 1175), John of Chichester (6 October 1174), Robert of Hereford (6 October 1174), Peter of St David’s (1176), Adam of St Asaph (1175), Maurice of Bangor (1177), Christian of Whithorn (1154).89 Save for the archbishop placed at the head of this list, and the Welsh and Scottish bishops at the end, most of these fifteen names follow no discernible order. No explanation for this confusion (for example, that the charter might have been drafted by its Spanish beneficiaries, themselves unaware of English order of precedence) is entirely plausible. It has to be dismissed here as an anomaly, perhaps the result of faulty information supplied to its chief copyist, Roger of Howden. Elsewhere, a similarly eccentric order of precedence appears in Howden’s list of the bishops in attendance at Richard I’s coronation in September 1189. This despite the fact that another of the chroniclers, Gervase of Canterbury, states specifically that such ceremonies were arranged according to date of consecration.90 Much more reassuringly, the next most populous list amongst Henry II’s charters, of the fourteen bishops, witnessing the preamble to the Constitutions of Clarendon in January 1164, follows what we would consider standard consecration/dignity order, including the promotion of London and the demotion of St David’s, with a hiatus involving three of the mid-ranking bishops, where Salisbury (consecrated 1142) might have been expected to rank higher than is the case, and Lincoln (consecrated 1148) rather lower: Canterbury, York, Gilbert of London (1148), Henry of Winchester (17 November 1129), Nigel of Ely (1 October 1133), William of Norwich (1146), Robert of Lincoln (19 December 1148), Hilary of Chichester (3 August 1147), Joscelin of Salisbury (1142), Richard of Chester (c. 18 April 1161), Bartholomew of Exeter (c. 18 April 1161), Robert of Hereford (22 December 1163), David of St David’s (19 December 1148), Roger elect of Worcester.91

89 LCH, no. 517. 90 Roger of Howden, Gesta regis Henrici secundi, ed. by Stubbs, ii, 79, listing those in attendance as the Archbishops of Canterbury, Rouen, Dublin, Trier, and Bishops Hugh of Lincoln (consecrated 21 September 1186), Hugh of Durham (1153), William of Worcester (21 September 1186), John of Exeter (October 1186), Reginald of Bath (1174), John of Norwich (1175), Seffrid of Chichester (1180), Gilbert of Rochester (1185), Peter of St David’s (1176), Reiner of St Asaph (1186), Guy of Bangor (1177), Albinus of Ferns (1185), Concord of Enaghdun, Geoffrey, Archbishop-elect of York, and John, elect of Whithorn. For Gervase on the coronation of 1194, see above, note 20. 91 LCH, no. 2965, also in Councils & Synods, i.2, 877–78.

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Another charter of Henry II — the foundation charter of Waltham Abbey, supposedly dated c. 1177, in reality almost certainly interpolated or spurious — likewise follows standard consecration/dignity order in twelve out of fourteen cases, promoting the Bishop of London at the head of the list, but misplacing Bath and Durham towards the end, here ranked ahead only of a Welsh bishop and a bishop-elect.92 The king’s almost certainly authentic confirmation, in 1163, of a major settlement between the Bishop of Lincoln and the Abbot of St Albans, is witnessed by twelve bishops in order of consecration, save once again for the unexplained demotion of Joscelin, Bishop of Salisbury, and the ranking of Hugh, Bishop of Durham, towards the end of the list but nonetheless still higher than the Bishops of Hereford, Exeter, and Coventry.93 Two other authentic instances — a royal charter in favour of Richard, Bishop of Winchester, 1175/76, and the foundation charter of Amesbury Priory in 1179, witnessed respectively by eleven and nine bishops — follow consecration order, although in the first instance with anomalous promotion of Roger of Worcester (the king’s cousin) and John of Norwich (a leading courtier), in both instances with Geoffrey Ridel, Bishop of Ely, promoted to unexpected pre-eminence, in one case even above Gilbert Foliot as Bishop of London.94 What emerges here, I would suggest, is a basic preference for bishops ranked by consecration order, allowing for the customary dignity of Winchester and London, but with frequent exceptions, either through deliberate favouring of courtier bishops (as was potentially the case with Geoffrey Ridel of Ely, John of Norwich, and Roger of Worcester) or the disfavouring of others (the suspected rebel, Hugh du Puiset, Bishop of Durham, Gilbert Foliot of London in the 1170s, and perhaps also Joscelin of Salisbury). Lists were compiled neither randomly (even in the case of the Spanish settlement, with the Welsh and Scottish bishops relegated to its end), nor according to any strictly observed ‘rule’. Instead, they were governed by a mixture of consecration order, custom, and personal favour.

92 LCH, no. 2765: Canterbury, Gilbert of London (5 September 1148), Joscelin of Salisbury (1142), Walter of Rochester (14 March 1148), Bartholomew of Exeter (c. 18 April 1161), Roger of Worcester (23 August 1164), Richard of Winchester (6 October 1174), Geoffrey of Ely (6 October 1174), John of Chichester (6 October 1174), John of Norwich (14 December 1175), Reginald of Bath (23 June 1174), Hugh of Durham (20 December 1153), Adam of St Asaph (12 October 1175), Geoffrey elect of Lincoln. 93 LCH, no. 1533: Canterbury, York, Henry of Winchester (17 November 1129), Nigel of Ely (1 October 1133), William of Norwich (1146), Hilary of Chichester (3 August 1147), Joscelin of Salisbury (1142), Walter of Rochester (14 March 1148), Hugh of Durham (20 December 1153), Gilbert of Hereford (5 September 1148), Bartholomew of Exeter (c. 18 April 1161), Richard of Coventry (c. 18 April 1161). 94 LCH, no. 45 (Amesbury): Canterbury, Richard of Winchester (6 October 1174), Geoffrey of Ely (6 October 1174), Gilbert of London (5 September 1148), Joscelin of Salisbury (1142), Bartholomew of Exeter (c. 18 April 1161), Roger of Worcester (23 August 1164), Robert of Hereford (6 October 1174), John of Norwich (14 December 1175). LCH, no. 2848 (Winchester): Hugh legate, Canterbury, Rouen, Gilbert of London (5 September 1148), Geoffrey of Ely (6 October 1174), Roger of Worcester (23 August 1164), Bartholomew of Exeter (c. 18 April 1161), Reginald of Bath (23 June 1174), John of Norwich (14 December 1175), John of Chichester (6 October 1174), Robert of Hereford (6 October 1174), Hugh of Durham (20 December 1153).

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With this in mind, let us pass to a few specific instances. We must be cautious here of confusing anomalies for evidence of politically significant favour or disfavour. Even so, patterns can be discerned. After Winchester and London, and near the head of the pack, the Bishops of Lincoln enjoyed high status. Robert de Chesney (consecrated 19 December 1148, died 27 December 1166) witnessed 104 of Henry II’s surviving charters, far more than was the case for either Walter of Coutances (bishop 1183–84), witness to four, or Hugh of Avalon (bishop 1186–1200), witness to a mere three. Even so, on his rare appearances Walter (consecrated 1183) took precedence over Baldwin, Bishop of Worcester (consecrated 1180), and Hugh, Bishop of Durham (consecrated as long before as 1153).95 Hugh of Lincoln (consecrated 1186) trumped Ralph of Lisieux and John of Evreux (both consecrated c. 1182).96 Judged by date of consecration, Bishop Robert of Lincoln (consecrated 1148) likewise enjoyed precedence ahead of several theoretically senior colleagues. Thus in eleven of the thirteen authentic instances in which Robert appears in association with Nigel, Bishop of Ely (consecrated 1133), it is Robert whose name appears first.97 Robert enjoyed similar precedence on eleven of the fourteen occasions on which he appeared in association with Arnulf of Lisieux (consecrated 1141), and on all fifteen of the occasions when he appeared together with Philip, Bishop of Bayeux (consecrated c. 1142).98 In the same way, although consecrated later, he regularly trumped both William of Norwich (consecrated 1146) and Hilary, Bishop of Chichester (consecrated 1147).99 On a handful of occasions, Robert even appeared ahead of Gilbert Foliot, both as Bishop of Hereford (consecrated in September 1148, a few months ahead of Robert himself) and once ahead of Gilbert as Bishop of London (to which see Gilbert was translated in 1163).100 The only bishop who steps out of consecration order in this way to trump Robert of Lincoln is Bishop John of Worcester (consecrated 1151), and then once only.101 It is worth noting here that Lincoln was not only the largest but one of the wealthiest sees in England, at least when judged by the figures for vacancy receipts 95 LCH, nos 2178 (above Baldwin of Worcester), 2546 (above Hugh of Durham). 96 LCH, no. 1660. 97 Robert ahead of Nigel: LCH, nos 368, 852, 1180, 1265, 1464, 1806, 1963, 2412, 2442, 2773, 2774, and the spurious no. 2807. Nigel ahead of Robert: no. 2578, in the Constitutions of Clarendon (above, note 91), and in the spurious nos 663, 777. 98 Robert ahead of Arnulf: LCH, nos 811–12, 814, 1080, 1288, 1673, 1897, 2189, 2200, 2885, and the spurious no. 2197. Robert ahead of Philip: nos 811–12, 814, 1080, 1288, 1535, 1536, 1673, 1829, 1897, 2189, 2200, 2885, and the spurious nos 2197–98. In the case of both Arnulf and Philip, all of these charters were issued at English locations, mostly at York, all early in Henry II’s reign. 99 Robert ahead of Hilary on ten out of eleven occasions: LCH, nos 177, 331, 368, 652, 819, 904, 1658, 1963–64, and the Constitutions of Clarendon (above, note 91), versus no. 2412. Robert ahead of William, on two of the three occasions when they combined: nos 368, 1658, versus the Constitutions of Clarendon (note 91). 100 LCH, nos 1360, 1658, 2201 (Hereford), and nos 819, 1499, both involving beneficiaries in the diocese of Lincoln, where Robert appears ahead of Gilbert (consecrated 1148) and Richard (consecrated 1152), Bishops of London. For the more usual order of London before Lincoln, see nos 368, 652, 852, 1360, 1658, 2111, 2578 (Bishop Richard), 2929, and the Constitutions of Clarendon (Bishop Gilbert), and the spurious nos 663, 1988. 101 LCH, no. 708, versus no. 709 where Robert trumps John.

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recorded in the royal Pipe Rolls. Here, a super league of Canterbury, Durham, and Winchester (each valued in excess of £2000 per annum) stands above a second tier of York, Lincoln, and Ely, each with incomes approaching or in excess of £1000.102 Using these figures as our guide, let us then turn from Lincoln to Ely. Here, once again, we find consecration order as the general rule, but regularly interrupted to promote one particular Bishop of Ely above other episcopal colleagues. In the case of Ely, Bishop Nigel (1133–69) witnessed forty of Henry II’s surviving charters, his successor Geoffrey Ridel (1174–89) an even more impressive 150 (153 if we include his appearances as bishop-elect). Both Nigel (rebuilder of the Exchequer) and Geoffrey (de facto royal chancellor) enjoyed high status at Henry II’s court. What is chiefly noticeable, nonetheless, is the relatively humble ranking of Nigel compared to that of Geoffrey. Stepping back from consecration order, Nigel appears on various occasions in a position inferior to that of Philip, Bishop of Bayeux (consecrated c. 1142), Hilary, Bishop of Chichester (consecrated 1147), Robert, Bishop of Exeter (consecrated 1155), Arnulf of Lisieux (consecrated 1141), and in eleven of twelve authentic instances inferior to Robert, Bishop of Lincoln (consecrated 1148).103 By contrast, Geoffrey Ridel (consecrated 1174) regularly leapfrogged ahead of Henry of Bayeux (consecrated 1165), Hugh of Durham (consecrated 1153), and, amongst his fellow bishops of the southern province, Bartholomew of Exeter (consecrated 1161), Walter, Bishop of Rochester (consecrated 1148), and on two occasions even Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London (first consecrated 1148).104 On the whole, and in accordance with his prior consecration, he took precedence over John of Oxford, Bishop of Norwich (consecrated 1175), although in four exceptions here, three of them involving beneficiaries in the diocese of Norwich, John was advanced above

102 Howell, Regalian Right, 211–33, supplying rough totals for regalian receipts to c. 1200, here avoiding the years of Interdict after 1209, when Church lands were deliberately wasted. On this basis: super-league Durham (£4000), Winchester (£3000), Canterbury (£2000); first-division York (£1500), Lincoln (£1500), Ely (£900); second-division Bath and Salisbury (both £500), London and Norwich (both £400); third-division Chichester, Hereford, Worcester (all c. £300), Exeter (less than £300); fourthdivision Lichfield and St David’s (both less than £200), Rochester (£100 or less). 103 Nigel behind Philip of Bayeux: LCH, no. 1934, set against consecration order which would place Nigel above Philip, as in nos 1002, 2152, 2155. Nigel behind Hilary of Chichester: nos 69, 2412, set against consecration order in nos 84, 368, 1533, 1957, 1963, 2600 and the suspected forgeries nos 2152, 2425. Nigel behind Robert of Exeter: no. 1957, as opposed to consecration order in nos 2264, 2268, 2600. Nigel behind Arnulf: no. 1934, as opposed to consecration order in no. 1002 and the suspected forgeries nos 2152, 2425. Nigel behind Robert of Lincoln: nos 368, 852, 1180, 1265, 1464, 1806, 1963, 2412, 2442, 2773–74, and the suspect no. 2807, as opposed to consecration order in no. 2578 and the suspect nos 663, 777. 104 Geoffrey above Henry of Bayeux: LCH, nos 464, 1747, 2259, 2394 and the the suspect nos 2287, 2393, as opposed to consecration order in no. 2490. Geoffrey above Hugh of Durham: nos 380, 468, 644, 869, 1189, 1194, 1470, 2545, 2848, 2934, and the suspect nos 2765, 2941, as opposed to consecration order in nos 386, 517, 2490, 2821, 2877 and the suspect no. 2765. Geoffrey above Bartholomew of Exeter: nos 45, 517, 634–35, 700, 869, 1190, 1198a, 1449–51, 1747, 1773, 1871, 2172, 2259, 2304, 2848, 2910, as opposed to consecration order only in the suspect nos 2765–66. Geoffrey above Walter of Rochester: no. 517, although cf. no. 2510 where Bishop Gilbert of Rochester (consecrated 1185) trumps Geoffrey (consecrated 1174). Geoffrey above Gilbert of London: nos 45, 517.

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Geoffrey.105 Likewise, in an anomalous witness list of the 1180s, Geoffrey appears behind William de Vere, Bishop of Hereford (consecrated 1186).106 Descending now from the first to the second division, Norwich (with an annual income not far short of that of London) exhibits features similar to those of Ely, with one bishop, William Turbe, only modestly placed in the witness lists followed by another, John of Oxford, a former courtier, afforded far greater prominence. William (consecrated 1146), witness to nine of Henry II’s charters, was trumped on occasion by Hilary of Chichester (consecrated 1147), Robert of Lincoln, Gilbert of Hereford (both consecrated 1148), Richard of London (consecrated 1152), Hugh of Durham (consecrated 1153), and Robert of Exeter (consecrated 1155).107 Only once did he step out of order to trump a bishop of less recent consecration, Joscelin of Salisbury (consecrated 1142).108 By contrast, John of Oxford (consecrated 1175), witness to seventy-seven royal charters, on occasion stepped out of order to take precedence over Hugh of Durham (consecrated 1153), Bartholomew of Exeter (consecrated 1161), Geoffrey of Ely, and Robert of Hereford (both consecrated 1175).109 In particular, and almost as a matter of course, on a dozen or more occasions, John of Oxford took precedence over Reginald fitz Joscelin, consecrated Bishop of Bath almost a year before him (23 June 1174).110 As this in turn suggests, wealth alone was not the chief determinant of status, since a second-division see such as Bath could be relegated on occasion behind one of even the third or fourth division judged according to wealth. This is most clearly apparent in the case of Reginald of Bath’s father, Joscelin de Bohon, Bishop of Salisbury (witness to thirty-two charters of Henry II). Consecrated as long ago as 1142, and a man of high status both by birth and income, Joscelin nonetheless ranked only modestly in royal witness lists. In the preamble to the Constitutions of Clarendon ( January 1164), for example, we have already found him ranked behind four bishops (Gilbert of London, William of Norwich, Robert of Lincoln, and Hilary of Chichester) who in theory he should have outranked according to date of consecration.111 A year earlier, at the settlement between Lincoln and St Albans, Joscelin had similarly been trumped by William of Norwich and Hilary of Chichester.112 Elsewhere, and despite his remarkable longevity, he was regularly outranked by such relative newcomers as Bartholomew of Exeter (consecrated 1161), Richard of Winchester, and Geoffrey of Ely (both consecrated 105 John of Norwich above Geoffrey of Ely: LCH, nos 380, 1469–70, 2501, all but the last involving John’s diocese. For consecration order observed here, see nos 45, 102, 108, 109, 126, 141, 194, 222, 388, 466, 468, 469, 517, 644, 700, 869, 977, 991, 1008, 1106, 1121, 1190, 1218, 1396, 1429, 1430, 1434, 1642, 1646, 1773, 1871, 2073, 2105, 2172, 2183, 2304, 2465, 2561, 2693, 2707, 2765, 2766, 2767, 2811, 2877. 106 LCH, no. 2053, as opposed to consecration order in no. 2561. 107 LCH, nos 368, 652, 1658, and possibly no. 1957, as opposed to consecration order in relation to various of these bishops in no. 1533. 108 LCH, no. 1533. 109 LCH, nos 380, 517, 2172, 644, 1469–70, 1871, 2848, and the forgery no. 2765. 110 LCH, nos 108–09, 380, 466, 469, 1089, 1469–70, 1871,?1928, 2877, and the suspected forgeries nos 1927, 2765, 2811, as opposed to consecration order in nos 517, 528, 2465, 2848. 111 Above, note 91. 112 LCH, no. 1533.

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1174).113 Equally revealing, in no authentic charter did Joscelin himself outrank any bishop consecrated before him.114 Passing now to the third division when measured by wealth, the see of Chichester was held in turn by Bishops Hilary (1147–69), John (1174–80), and Seffrid (1180–1204). Hilary (consecrated 3 August 1147) witnessed forty-eight surviving royal charters, Seffrid seventeen, and John a mere four. Here once again focusing on occasions where consecration order was ignored, and setting aside the special cases of Durham and Evreux, whose placement amongst the southern English bishops remained unsure, we should begin by noticing Bishop Hilary’s very occasional promotion over both Joscelin of Salisbury (consecrated 1142) and Nigel of Ely (consecrated 1133), in one instance in a charter involving the diocese of Chichester, in the others not.115 He likewise took precedence over William, Bishop of Norwich (consecrated 1146 or early 1147), in one instance in a charter involving the monks of Bury St Edmunds, hardly the Bishop of Norwich’s greatest admirers.116 By contrast, Bishop John of Norwich (a courtier, consecrated in 1175) took precedence over Bishop John of Chichester (a non-courtier, consecrated a year earlier).117 Even so, and reminding us that Chichester was a relatively humble see, Hilary not only ranked behind Robert, Bishop of Lincoln (consecrated 1148), on nine out of the ten occasions when they appeared together, but from time to time was named in an inferior position to both Robert, Bishop of Exeter (consecrated 1155), and Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford (consecrated 1148).118 Like Chichester, Exeter was a third-division see when judged according to income: so poor indeed that it was refused by Henry II’s courtier, Godfrey de Lucy, who considered it insufficient to support his lifestyle.119 Bishop Robert of Exeter witnesses only six charters of Henry II. Here it is hard to establish whether we are dealing with Robert I (consecrated 1138, died March 1155) or Robert II (consecrated 1155, died 1160). Even if this had been Robert I, however, we might note his placement in a single instance above Nigel, Bishop of Ely (consecrated 1133).120 Bishop Bartholomew

113 LCH, nos 45, 464, and for Bartholomew, no. 1975. Elsewhere, Joscelin outranked Bartholomew of Exeter in nos 45, 1494, 1533, and the forgery no. 2765, itself the only occasion when he also outranked Richard of Winchester or Geoffrey of Ely. 114 The only exceptions here, both forged, are the two charters of Montacute Priory, LCH, nos 1826-27, where Joscelin outranks the local diocesan, Robert, Bishop of Bath (consecrated 1136). 115 Hilary above Joscelin of Salisbury: LCH, no. 1533, as opposed to consecration order in nos 781, 870, 1823. Hilary above Nigel of Ely: nos 69 (Chichester diocese), 2412, as opposed to consecration order in nos 84, 368, 1533, 1957, 1963, 2600, and the suspect nos 2152, 2425. 116 LCH, nos 368 (Bury), 652, 1658, as opposed to consecration order in nos 1533, 1957. 117 LCH, nos 517, 2823, 2848, as opposed to consecration order only in the forged no. 2765. 118 Below Lincoln: LCH, nos 177, 331, 368, 652, 819, 904, 1658, 1963–64, as opposed to no. 2412. Below Robert of Exeter: nos 1957, 2600. Below Gilbert of Hereford: no. 781, as opposed to consecration order in nos 1533, 1658. 119 Roger of Howden, Gesta regis Henrici secundi, ed. by Stubbs, i, 346. 120 LCH, no. 1957, also placing Robert (1138 or 1155) above William of Norwich (consecrated 1146) and Hilary of Chichester (consecrated 1147). In two further instances, Robert of Exeter appears above Hilary of Chichester: nos 1957, 2600.

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(consecrated before 18 April 1161) witnesses a respectable forty royal charters. An instance in which he takes precedence over both Gilbert of London (consecrated 1148) and Walter of Rochester (consecrated 1148) has already been identified as an anomaly.121 For the rest, and with the exception of unique instances in which he takes precedence over Richard of Avranches and Joscelin of Salisbury (both consecrated 1142), Bartholomew’s appearances are chiefly remarkable for their modesty.122 He is thus regularly relegated behind not only the former de facto chancellor, Geoffrey Ridel, Bishop of Ely (consecrated 1174), but John of Oxford, Bishop of Norwich (consecrated December 1175), and Roger of Worcester (consecrated 1164).123 In the Becket conflict, Geoffrey and John had both been supporters of Henry II, ranged against Bartholomew who together with Roger of Worcester had supported Becket against the king.124 It is worth noting here that in their frequent (two dozen) appearances together as papal judges delegate, Bartholomew and Roger were invariably listed in consecration order, with Exeter taking precedence over Worcester.125 In royal charters, by contrast, Bartholomew might find himself relegated behind Roger, perhaps out of personal prejudice, perhaps because Roger was the king’s cousin and a grandson of King Henry I. In several charters for Launceston Priory, Bartholomew of Exeter was trumped by Geoffrey Ridel of Ely, perhaps as a means by which the canons of Launceston might deliberately cock a snook at their diocesan.126 We have found much the same thing in charters in favour of the monks of Bury St Edmunds where the local diocesan, Bishop William, was relegated to virtually last place in a witness list, well out of his expected position when judged by consecration date.127 A similar tendency occurs in forged charters of Montacute Priory, where the local diocesan, Robert, Bishop of Bath (consecrated 1136), ranks seventh out of eight episcopal witnesses, trumped by at least four colleagues who, on the basis of consecration, he should have outranked.128 Now approaching the bottom of the English pack, the Bishops of Rochester and Carlisle appear too infrequently as witnesses to make any real impression.129 But the 121 LCH, no. 517. 122 LCH, nos 1975 (Salisbury), 2259 (Avranches). 123 Behind Geoffrey of Ely, in nineteen instances, all apparently authentic: above, note 104. Behind John of Norwich, in two: LCH, nos 1773, 1871, set against consecration order in eight authentic charters, nos 45, 517, 700, 869, 2172, 2304, 2766, 2848, and the suspicious or forged nos 2765–66. Behind Roger of Worcester: nos 517, 2848, 2929, set against consecration order in nos 45, 1266 and the forgeries nos 2765, 2860. 124 Details here in Morey, Bartholomew of Exeter. 125 English Episcopal Acta XI, ed. by Barlow, nos 108, 125; English Episcopal Acta 33, ed. by Cheney and others, nos 163, 187, 210, and for more than twenty papal letters addressed to them in order as Bartholomew and Roger, see Cheney, Roger, Bishop of Worcester, 319–72, Appendix 2, nos 5–7, 9, 13–14, 16, 22, 24–25, 33–35, 42, 47, 59, 81–82, 87–88, 92, 98, 114, 122. 126 LCH, nos 1449–51. 127 LCH, no. 368. 128 LCH, nos 1826–27. 129 Aethelwulf of Carlisle (1133–57) witnesses only once: LCH, no. 2450, behind three other bishops all consecrated after him. Waleran (1182–84) and Gilbert Glanvill of Rochester (1185–1214) twice each: nos 349, 484, 682, 2501, always in consecration order, save for no. 2501 where Gilbert surprisingly takes

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see of Chester/Coventry/Lichfield was clearly far from wealthy, its impoverishment perhaps explaining the way in which Bishops Walter Durdent (1149–59, witness to fifteen of Henry II’s charters), Richard Peche (1161–82, witness to eight), and Hugh de Nonant (1188–98, witness to four) are regularly demoted out of consecration order, being trumped not just by the greater courtiers such as Richard of Winchester or Roger of Worcester but by even such small fry as Bartholomew of Exeter, John and Alfred of Worcester.130 Like describing the fall of playing cards, there is a risk here of the details overwhelming the broader game. Even so, precedence was no less important amongst bishops as it remains amongst cards. What emerges, I hope, is that whilst there were no fixed rules to the ordering of bishops, there were undoubtedly expectations either to be confirmed or confounded. The Church in general opted for consecration order, as established in canon law and repeated in the decretals late into the thirteenth century and beyond. On occasions when the king’s court operated knowingly under papal oversight, it took particular care to observe this same order in the ranking of witnesses. Hence the way that consecration order was observed, with only minor variations for the Constitutions of Clarendon in 1164.131 Hence the fact that it was perfectly or near perfectly observed thereafter on at least three occasions when King John was most anxious to stage-manage papal reactions: in the petitions directed by the English bishops to Innocent III over elections at Canterbury in 1205, at Bath and Wells in 1206, and in the preamble to the 1215 Magna Carta.132 Elsewhere, consecration order remained an important factor in determining rank amongst episcopal witnesses, even in the average run of royal charters. But, unlike the Church, the king and his secretariat were prepared to entertain alternative rankings, not least according to the relative degree of royal favour that any particular bishop might enjoy. By such means, we find bishops leapfrogging those who, by ecclesiastical convention, we might expect to have taken precedence. Just as Geoffrey Ridel, at Ely, or John of Oxford, at Norwich, were the beneficiaries of

precedence over Geoffrey Ridel of Ely (consecrated 1174). Bishop Walter of Rochester (1148–1182) witnesses three charters: nos 517, 1533, 2420, or six if we allow the forgeries nos 2197–98, 2765, generally in consecration order save for the anomalous no. 517. 130 Walter Durdent (consecrated 1149) trumped by John (consecrated 1151) and Alfred (consecrated 1158): LCH, nos 2410, 2549. Richard Peche (consecrated 1161) trumped by Bartholomew of Exeter (consecrated later in 1161): nos 1533, 2929. 131 Above, note 91. 132 Canterbury (1205): Early Charters, ed. by Gibbs, no. 181, 139–40, ranking thirteen bishops in consecration order save for precedence for London, slight demotion of Henry, Bishop of Llandaff, and confusion between Geoffrey of Coventry (consecrated 21 June 1198) and Eustace of Ely (consecrated the same year, but on 8 March). Bath and Wells (1206): Church, Chapters, 404–05, eleven bishops listed in perfect consecration order save for precedence afforded to London, and cf., from the same occasion, the ranking of the Welsh bishops, again in perfect consecration order, but headed by London and Hereford: Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells, ed. by Bird and Paley Baildon, i, 62–63. For the 1215 Magna Carta (two archbishops and seven bishops in consecration order tempered by the customary privileges of Canterbury, Dublin, London, and Winchester), see Foedera, i.1, 131.

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such favouritism in the 1170s and 1180s, so Jocelin of Salisbury in the 1160s, or Gilbert Foliot a decade later, seem to have suffered a degree of eclipse. Such leapfrogging, of course, might be purely accidental: a sign of indifference and informality rather than subtle political calculation. Set against this, it is surely significant that elsewhere it appears to have been very deliberately achieved. Hence the way in which Richard of Ilchester, at Winchester, was invariably and on more than seventy occasions ranked ahead of Geoffrey Ridel at Ely.133 Hence the significance, a few decades later, when in the 1220s we find the then Bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches, suddenly relegated in royal witness lists behind his theoretical subordinates, in reality his political rivals, the Bishops of Bath and Salisbury.134 This change of the 1220s can be clearly observed since the charters of King Henry III were not only precisely dated but preserved with their witness lists on an official charter roll. The dating and hence various of the subtler hints of Henry II’s charters are less easily recoverable. Even so, the ranking of witnesses remained a significant means by which power could be projected. It retains significance, too, in prompting us to think not always like twenty-first-century historians but on occasion like bishops of the twelfth century, keen to advertise their status yet never entirely sure whether this was best done by pushing forwards or deliberately holding back. Meanwhile, it reminds of the ways in which a king like Henry II could himself manifest his authority, where necessary in subtle contradiction of other secular or ecclesiastical powers. Henry, according to Gerald of Wales, was a king famed for ‘filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich empty away; exalting the humble, and putting down the mighty from their seats’.135 Praised here in the words of the Magnificat, like Christ himself, his ultimate role model, the king discharged his proper functions as God’s vicar on earth as much by contradicting as by respecting convention. Kings, like Christ, were expected to establish their own rules, not merely to enforce those imposed by others. And rules themselves, as we all know, can be as much honoured in the breach as in the observance. Meanwhile, the bending or breaking of rules, as in the cases studied here, can itself serve as one of the principal advertisements that such rules do indeed exist.

133 Above, note 82. 134 Vincent, Peter des Roches, 226, a disruption in the case of Winchester and Bath already apparent in the witnessing of the 1225 Magna Carta which otherwise lists the Archbishop of Canterbury and eleven of his suffragans in consecration order save for the customary promotion of London and a hiatus over the promotion of John of Ely (consecrated 8 March 1220) ahead of Hugh of Hereford (consecrated 27 October 1219). 135 Gerald of Wales, Expugnatio Hibernica, ed. by Scott and Martin, 130–31: ‘Humilitatis amator, nobilitatis oppressor, et superbie calcator, esurientes implens bonis et divites demittens et dimittens inanes, exaltans humiles, ponens de sede potentes’ (cf. Luke 1. 53).

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Works Cited Manuscripts BL, MS Cotton Vespasian A XXII Cambridge, St John’s College MS L.9 Primary Sources Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. by B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford 1969) Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells, ed. by W. H. B. Bird and W. Paley Baildon, 2 vols (London, 1907–14) Canterbury Professions, ed. by M. Richter, CYS, 67 (1973) Charters and Documents Illustrating the History of the Cathedral, City, and Diocese of Salisbury, ed. by W. D. Macray, RS, 97 (London, 1891) Decretales pseudo-Isidorianae et capitula Angilramni, ed. by P. Hinschius (Leipzig, 1863) Eadmer, Historia Novorum in Anglia, ed. by M. Rule, RS, 81 (London 1884) Early Charters of the Cathedral Church of St Paul, London, ed. by M. Gibbs, Camden Society, 3rd series, 58 (1939) English Episcopal Acta XI: Exeter 1046–1184, ed. by F. Barlow (Oxford, 1996) English Episcopal Acta 33: Worcester 1062–1185, ed. by M. Cheney and others (Oxford, 2007) English Episcopal Acta 45: Bath and Wells 1206–1247, ed. by B. Kemp (Oxford, 2016) Gerald of Wales, Expugnatio Hibernica: The Conquest of Ireland, ed. by A. B. Scott and F. X. Martin (Dublin, 1978) Gratian, Decretum, in Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. by E. Friedberg, vol. i (Leipzig, 1879) Gregory, Registrum Epistolarum, ed. by P. Ewald and L. M. Hartmann, MGH Epistolae, i–ii (Berlin, 1891–99) The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. by W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS, 73 (London, 1879–80) John Le Neve, Fasti ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1066–1300, ed. by D. E. Greenway and others, 11 vols (London, 1968–2012) Layettes du Trésor des Chartes, ed. by A. Teulet, H.-F. Delaborde, and E. Berger, 5 vols (Paris, 1863–1909) The Letters and Charters of Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, Papal Legate in England, 1216–1218, ed. by N. Vincent, CYS, 83 (1996) The Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux, ed. by F. Barlow, Camden Society, 3rd series, 61 (1939) Lyndwood, W., Provinciale (Oxford, 1679) The Letters of Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) Concerning England and Wales, ed. by C. R. Cheney and M. G. Cheney (Oxford, 1967) The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, ed. by D. Knowles, rev. C. N. L. Brooke (Oxford, 2002) ‘Notitia Galliarum’, published as an appendix to Chronica Minora saec. iv. v. vi. vii., ed. by T. Mommsen, MGH Auctores Antiquissimi, ix (Berlin 1892), 552–612

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Papsturkunden in England, ed. by W. Holtzmann, 3 vols (1930–31); repr. Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, 3., Folge 14–15, 33 (Berlin, 1935–52) Registrum Roffense, ed. by J. Thorpe (London, 1769) Robert de Torigni, ‘Chronicle’, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. by R. Howlett, 4 vols, RS, 82 (London 1884–89) Roger of Howden, Gesta regis Henrici secundi Benedicti abbatis, ed. by W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS, 49 (London 1867) S. Chrodegangi […] regula canonicorum, ed. by W. Schmitz (Hanover, 1889) Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium: Courtiers’ Trifles, ed. by M. R. James, rev. C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983) Secondary Studies Bates, D., ‘The Prosopographical Study of Anglo-Norman Royal Charters’, in Family Trees and the Roots of Politics: The Prosopography of Britain and France from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century, ed. by K. S. B. Keats-Rohan (Woodbridge, 1997), 89–102 Brooke, C. N. L., ‘Archbishop Lanfranc, the English Bishops, and the Council of London 1075’, Studia Gratiana, 12 (1967), 41–59 Brooke, C. N. L., and A. Morey, Gilbert Foliot and his Letters (Cambridge, 1965) Cheney, M. G., Roger, Bishop of Worcester, 1164–1179 (Oxford, 1980) Church, C. M., Chapters in the Early History of the Church of Wells, a.d. 1136–1333 (London, 1894) Conklin, G., ‘Les Capétiens et l’affaire de Dol de Bretagne, 1179–1194’, Revue d’Histoire de l’Eglise de France, 78 (1992), 241–63 Delivré, F., ‘The Foundations of Primatial Claims in the Western Church (Eleventh– Thirteenth Centuries)’, JEH, 59 (2008), 383–406 Duby, G., Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined (Chicago, 1980) Dunn, G. D., Cyprian and the Bishops of Rome: Questions of Papal Primacy in the Early Church (Strathfield, NSW, 2007) Evans, J. W., ‘Transition and Survival: St David and St Davids Cathedral’, in St David of Wales: Cult, Church and Nation, ed. by J. W. Evans and J. M. Wooding (Woodbridge, 2007), 20–40 Fuhrmann, H., ‘Studien zur Geschichte mittelalterlicher Patriarchate’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschicte: Kanonistische Abteilung, 39 (1953), 112–76; 40 (1954), 1–84; 41 (1955), 95–183 Gaudemet, J., ‘La Primauté pontificale dans le Décret de Gratien’, in Gaudemet, La Doctrine canonique médiévale (Aldershot, 1994), chap. 10 ———, ‘La Primauté romaine vue par Ives de Chartres’, in Gaudemet, La Doctrine canonique médiévale (Aldershot, 1994), chap. 9 Haskins, G. L., ‘Charter Witness Lists in the Reign of King John’, Speculum, 13 (1938), 319–25 Howell, M., Regalian Right in Medieval England (London, 1962)

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Kemp, E., ‘The Canterbury Provincial Chapter and the Collegiality of Bishops in the Middle Ages’, in Études d’histoire du droit canonique dédiées à Gabriel Le Bras, 2 vols (Paris, 1965), i, 185–94 Keynes, S., An Atlas of Attestations in Anglo-Saxon Charters, c. 670–1066 (Cambridge, 2002) Licence, T., Edward the Confessor (New Haven, 2020) Morey, A., Bartholomew of Exeter, Bishop and Canonist (Cambridge, 1937) Peltzer, J., Canon Law, Careers and Conquest: Episcopal Elections in Normandy and Greater Anjou, c. 1140–c. 1230 (Cambridge, 2008) ———, Der Rang der Pfalzgrafen bei Rhein: Die Gestaltung der politisch-sozialen Ordnung des Reichs im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Ostfildern, 2013) ———, ed., Rank and Order: The Formation of Aristocratic Elites in Western and Central Europe, 500–1500 (Ostfildern, 2015) Powicke, F. M., and others, Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd edn (London, 1986) Russell, J. C., ‘Significance of Charter Witness Lists in Thirteenth Century England’, New Mexico Normal University Bulletin, special supplement (1930) ———, ‘Social Status at the Court of King John’, Speculum, 12 (1937), 319–29, repr. in Russell, Twelfth Century Studies (New York, 1978), chap. 15, 203–18 ———, ‘The Triumph of Dignity over Order in England’, The Historian, 9 (1947), 137–50, repr. in Russell, Twelfth Century Studies (New York, 1978), chap. 14, 190–202 Spear, D., The Personnel of the Norman Cathedrals during the Ducal Period, 911–1204 (London, 2006) Twomey, V., Apostolikos Thronos: The Primacy of Rome as Reflected in the Church History of Eusebius and Historico-Apologetic Writings of Saint Athanasius the Great (Münster, 1982) Vincent, N., ‘The Court of Henry II’, in Henry II: New Interpretations, ed. by C. Harper-Bill and N. Vincent (Woodbridge, 2007), 278–334 ———, ‘Did Henry II Have a Policy towards the Earls?’, in War, Government and Aristocracy in the British Isles, c. 1150–1500: Essays in Honour of Michael Prestwich, ed. by C. Given-Wilson and others (Woodbridge, 2008), 1–25 ———, ‘Peter Archbishop of Tarentaise: An Alpine Saint in Plantagenet Politics’ (forthcoming) ———, Peter des Roches: An Alien in English Politics, 1205–1238 (Cambridge, 1996) Wood, J., ‘Playing the Fame Game: Bibliography, Celebrity, and Primacy in Late Antique Spain’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 20 (2012), 613–40 Wordsworth, C., The Precedence of English Bishops and the Provincial Chapter (Cambridge, 1906)

Maroula Perisanidi

Eustathios’s Life of a Married Priest and the Struggle for Authority in Twelfth-Century Byzantium

In the twelfth century, the papacy and large parts of the Western Church, including in particular the monks and regular canons, condemned clerical marriage for its many abuses: it led to the alienation of Church property; it entangled the clergy more and more with their local society; and it threatened to pollute the sacred when married men dared to touch the body of Christ with the same unclean hands that had touched the bodies of their wives.1 Efforts were even made to erase from the historical record instances where clerical wives could be seen to form a normal and valued part of their community.2 In some areas, the laity were incited to rebel against their married pastors by boycotting their Masses, and the clergy themselves were threatened with deposition and loss of benefices.3 Although clerical marriage did not prove easy to eradicate and in some regions clerical dynasties remained common at a parish level until the thirteenth century, there was a strong consensus among ecclesiastical opinion-formers that association with women should mean the loss of a cleric’s spiritual authority and social status.4

I would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for generously funding my research and Professor Julia Barrow and Dr Charis Messis for their comments on this essay. 1 On clerical marriage in the West, see Thomas, Secular Clergy in England, 154–89; Barrow, Clergy in the Medieval World, 115–57; Hunter, ‘Married Clergy’; Parish, Clerical Celibacy, 183–202. 2 See Elliott, Fallen Bodies, 81–106. 3 For example, the 1175 Council of Westminster reminded priests who lived with ‘harlots’ that they needed to disown them or lose their office and benefice. By this time, clerical marriage had become invalid, so this would have also included wives. See Councils & Synods, ii, 965–93. For the boycott on the Mass of married priests, see canon 3 of the Roman council of 1059 in Mansi, xix, 897. 4 On the persistence of clerical dynasties, see Brooke, ‘Married Men’; Kemp, ‘Hereditary Benefices’; Barrow, ‘Hereford Bishops’. On how the clergy tried to resist clerical celibacy, see Melve, ‘Public Debate on Clerical Marriage’; Meijns, ‘Opposition to Clerical Continence’. Maroula Perisanidi is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Leeds. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 317–327 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118972

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To this situation in the West, this chapter contrasts a contemporary example from Byzantium, where clerical marriage was also employed as part of a struggle for power and spiritual authority, but in this case, it was a string to a cleric’s bow, rather than a weapon to be used against him. In what follows, I focus on a saint’s Life written in the twelfth century by Eustathios, Bishop of Thessalonike. I discuss Eustathios’s personal troubles with local monastic communities, as well as the wider competition between secular clerics and monks during this period, and demonstrate how this Life can be seen to construct an alternative model of moral and spiritual authority from that offered by monks in Byzantium and the secular Church in the West.5 I argue that, in contrast to the celibate and secluded monks, the choice of Eustathios’s priest to marry and start a family highlights his generosity, obedience, and selflessness, and enhances his standing in the community.

Eustathios and his Monastic Adversaries Eustathios was born in the last years of Emperor Alexios Komnenos’s reign (1081–1118) and died some eighty years later, in 1195 × 1199.6 He spent much of his life as a secular man, focusing on learning and teaching. He joined the Church probably in his forties and must have been almost sixty years old when he became bishop. The first prestigious position he attained came in the second half of the 1160s, when he became chief imperial orator and patriarchal teacher (maistor ton rhetoron).7 His first episcopal honour did not come until 1174 when we hear of him as a candidate for the see of Myra.8 But a more prestigious bishopric awaited him: Eustathios became Archbishop of Thessalonike c. 1176.9 In Thessalonike, he took his episcopal role seriously, as witnessed by his sermons and hagiographies, many of which have survived. He continuously urged the laity to be better Christians and often castigated the monks for not setting a good example.10 Indeed, the latter fell short of his expectations, and he wrote a long treatise on how they could improve their lives.11 His vision of monasticism was one that consisted of a strictly regulated communal life steeped in prayer and contemplation, and he was part of a minority of ecclesiastics who still supported the system of the charistike.12 This system was meant to allow monks to concentrate entirely on spiritual affairs, 5 For an edition of Eustathios’s Life of St Philotheos of Opsikion, see PG, cxxxvi, 141–61. 6 Most dates of Eustathios’s life are debated. See Schönauer, Eustathios von Thessalonike, 3*–5*. 7 Schönauer, Eustathios von Thessalonike, 3*. See also Metzler, Eustathios von Thessalonike und das Mönchtum, 7; Kazhdan and Franklin, Studies on Byzantine Literature, 121–23. 8 Kazhdan and Franklin, Studies on Byzantine Literature, 123. 9 There is debate about the exact date when Eustathios was appointed to the see of Thessalonike and the date he assumed his position. See Kazhdan and Franklin, Studies on Byzantine Literature, 123–32; Magdalino, ‘Eustathios and Thessalonica’, 227; Stone, ‘Eustathian Panegyric’, 255–56. 10 For Eustathios’s relationship with his flock and his efforts to make them respect his authority, see Magdalino, ‘Eustathios and Thessalonica’. 11 See Eustathii Thessalonicensis De emendanda vita monachica, ed. by Metzler. 12 Eustathii Thessalonicensis De emendanda vita monachica, ed. by Metzler, 198–99.

E u s tat h i o s’s Lif e o f a Marri e d Pri e st

while leaving the financial administration of the monastery to laymen.13 It is not surprising, then, that he attacked the Thessalonian monks for their greediness, their retention of private property, and their involvement in commerce.14 He further criticized their involvement with other secular activities, such as hunting, claiming that their love of horses had almost earned them the title of ‘centaurs’.15 The secular ways of the Thessalonian monks were tarnishing Eustathios’s name as a bishop, as they were meant to be under his supervision. They undermined his authority both directly, for example by slandering him or by seeking ordination from another bishop, and indirectly by making him appear weak in the eyes of the laity.16

The Twelfth-Century Holy Man and Komnenian Hellenism Even if Eustathios expressed his problems in local and personal terms, by blaming the Thessalonian monks specifically, his statements should be considered within a wider competition for spiritual authority.17 Eustathios belonged to a group of scholars, including Theodoros Balsamon, Ioannes Zonaras, Ioannes Tzetzes, and Niketas Choniates, who lamented the slipping standards of monasticism during this period. Given that these were all highly educated men with close links to the ecclesiastical hierarchy, we should consider whether what had changed was monasticism itself or the way that at least part of the Byzantine society saw it. This question was raised by Paul Magdalino who explained their comments in the context of social and professional jealousy: these twelfth-century intellectuals had little time for ‘uneducated holiness’, especially when it proved to be more financially profitable than their own under-appreciated learning. He also saw their criticisms as a reaction to the threat that unruly monks posed to the secular Church. This included both cenobitic monks who were leading

13 On the charistike, see Thomas, Private Religious Foundations, 157–60. On Eustathios’s views on the economy, see Merianos, Οικονομικές ιδέες στο Βυζάντιο. 14 If we believe Eustathios, their love of profit led to further reprehensible behaviour: the monks used their role as spiritual directors to enrich themselves by creating networks of influential disciples, and they sacrificed learning for the sake of money, selling off, for example, a famous manuscript of Gregory of Nazianzus’s work that was apparently of no use to them. See Eustathios’s On hypocrisy in Eustathii metropolitae Thessalonicensis opuscula, ed. by Tafel, 88–98; Eustathii Thessalonicensis De emendanda vita monachica, ed. by Metzler, 160–63. 15 Eustathii Thessalonicensis De emendanda vita monachica, ed. by Metzler, 169. 16 For the monks slandering Eustathios, see Eustathii Thessalonicensis De emendanda vita monachica, ed. by Metzler, 214–15; on ordination, see 12–13, 212–13. For more on Eustathios’s relationship with the monks, see Angold, Church and Society in Byzantium, 348–55; Metzler, Eustathios von Thessalonike und das Mönchtum, 49–52. For the question of whether Eustathios ‘fled’ his see because of opposition from his flock, see Schönauer, ‘Flucht vor den Gläubigen?’. 17 Eustathios compared the Thessalonian monks unfavourably to monks in Constantinople, where he believed the right standards were still maintained. Yet, an example suggestive of the less than ideal state of monasticism in the capital is inadvertently given by Eustathios himself. According to his account, when the emperor ran out of supplies for a wedding feast, he managed to procure everything he needed including red and black caviar from the nearby monastery of St John of Petra. See Angold, ‘Monastic Satire’, 97–98, 100–101.

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a secular life, and other unattached ascetics, such as stylites or holy fools. These men offered alternatives to the official ecclesiastical hierarchy and often usurped the rights of the ordained clergy, with confession and penance being one locus of contention.18 Similarly, the attitude of these scholars towards monasticism can be seen within the context of Byzantium’s classical turn in the twelfth century. Anthony Kaldellis has highlighted a possible connection between the exaltation of classical Greece and the noticeable decline in the authority and appeal of traditional Christian ideals of the perfect life. Given that the ascetic rejection of the world had originally been founded in opposition to the worldly virtues of the Greek city, a renewed appreciation of these classical virtues could have exacerbated the questioning of certain ascetic expressions. Or, conversely, the time might simply have been ripe for Hellenism to act as a replacement for a belief system that was already giving ground.19 But the complaints expressed by Eustathios and other scholars must also have had a wider basis, going beyond Hellenists, professional jealousy, or personal squabbles. This is strongly suggested by the decline in the number of saints’ Lives written in this period, given that monks had previously been a favoured topic of hagiography. Indeed, Magdalino saw twelfth-century attitudes towards spurious holy men as symptomatic of ‘the repressive ideological climate’ which had had its roots in the time of Alexios I and which led the Komnenian clergy to take measures against heretical ideas, pagan survivals, and certain types of philosophical inquiry.20

The Life of Philotheos: Clerical Marriage and the Religious Ideal Eustathios’s Life of the married priest Philotheos of Opsikion has survived in only one manuscript containing a collection of works by the archbishop.21 As we learn from the title of the Life, Eustathios wrote this at the request of a monk, also called Philotheos, for use as a sermon.22 It was not a completely original composition, but rather the reworking of brief hagiographical notices found in the Synaxarion of Constantinople (mid-tenth century) and the Menologion of Basil II (979 × 1005).23

18 Magdalino, ‘Byzantine Holy Man’, 56–59. On the question of monastic confession, see also Zonaras’s treatise on nocturnal emissions in Σύνταγμα, ed. by Rhalles and Potles, iv, 590–611; Papagianne and Troianos, ‘Kanonischen Antworten’, 247–49; Gautier, ‘Le Chartophylax Nicéphore’, 183–87. 19 Kaldellis saw the roots of this anti-monastic reaction in the eleventh century. Notably, its marks were present in the writings of Michael Psellos, whose exploration of human psychology encouraged scepticism towards explanations which relied on faith rather than reason. See Kaldellis, Hellenism in Byzantium, 253–55. 20 Magdalino, ‘Byzantine Holy Man’, 61. 21 Schönauer, ‘Zum Eustathios-Codex Basileensis A. III. 20’, 238–39. 22 ‘τοῦ αὐτοῦ λόγος ἐπελευστικὸς βίου τοῦ κατὰ τὸν ἅγιον Φιλόθεον τὸν Ὀψικιανόν, ἐκ προσώπου Φιλοθέου τοῦ μοναχοῦ, ἀνδρὸς ἀξίου λόγου, τοῦ καὶ προκαλεσαμένου εἰς ταύτην τὴν γραφήν.’: PG, cxxxvi, 141. 23 For the Synaxarion, see Synaxarium, ed. by Delehaye, 1–94, at 47–48. Although the Synaxarion is thought to date from the tenth century, Delehaye’s edition is based on a manuscript dating from the twelfth to thirteenth century. See Luzzi, ‘Synaxaria’. For the Menologion, see PG, cxvii, 49.

E u s tat h i o s’s Lif e o f a Marri e d Pri e st

According to both of the older versions, Philotheos was a pious and generous priest, who fasted, prayed, gave money to the poor, and took care to be a good teacher to his flock. One of the main differences, however, is that in the Menologion there was no mention of Philotheos’s wife and children, while in the Synaxarion, we read: ‘after he married and became a father, he was deemed worthy of the priesthood’.24 This short phrase would become the basis for Eustathios’s long praise of married life and criticism of monastic abuses. The story of Philotheos’s marriage, how it was decided and arranged, as well as how it was experienced by the couple and the wider community, serves to support some of Eustathios’s main objections against monasticism: greediness, disobedience, and involvement in secular life. The first extended discussion of monasticism in this hagiography comes in Chapter 10, which presents us with the arguments that will convince Philotheos to marry rather than become a monk. First, we are told that ‘there are many paths that lead to the peak of virtue’, then we are given the ‘commonplace’ view on monasticism:25 The majority of people think that the superior kind of life is a solitary and simple one, devoid of possessions, where each person thinks only about themselves. And for this reason, places of retreat are sought after and turned into hermitages, and for this reason many even stuff themselves into caves, concealing themselves from mankind, and creep into the holes of the earth, and use other means through which they can flee from the marketplace and from the love of extravagance in life and from distraction, hesitating to love one’s community and companionship, on the grounds that it cannot lead them to God.26 This is followed by the disadvantages that monasticism presents, even when it is done right: it cannot provide a modus vivendi for people still living in the world, and it is in a sense an easier path to take because, premised as it often is upon solitude, it entails fewer temptations.27 More specifically, Eustathios describes life as a type of theatrical spectacle with God as the judge of the contest and with athletes competing in spiritual sports against vice. Although monks could wrestle against those spirits and come out victorious, their achievement was not as great as that of virtuous men who lived in the world: For he who throws his opponent before a myriad eyes would not feel shame towards a monk, but would, I think, surpass him in achievement. For the monk

24 ‘γάμῳ δὲ προσομιλήσας καὶ παίδων πατὴρ γενόμενος, τῆς ἱερωσύνης καταξιοῦται’: Synaxarium, ed. by Delehaye, 47. 25 ‘πολλαὶ ὁδοὶ πρὸς τὴν τῆς ἀρετῆς ἀκρόπολιν’: PG, cxxxvi, 149. 26 ‘δοκεῖ δὲ τοῖς πλείοσιν ὑπερέχειν τῶν ἄλλων ὁ μονήρης καὶ ἀπέριττος βίος, καὶ τὸ μηδὲν ἔχειν, ἀλλ᾿ ἕκαστον ἄνθρωπον μόνον ἑαυτὸν ἐπισκέπτεσθαι· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο οἱ ἀνακεχωρηκότες τόποι ζητοῦνται καὶ ἐρημάζονται, πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ σπηλαίοις διὰ τοῦτο ἑαυτοὺς παραβύουσι κρυπτόμενοι τὸν ἄνθρωπον, καὶ εἰς γῆς ὀπὰς παραδύονται καὶ ἄλλα ποιοῦσι δι᾿ ὧν ἐκφευξοῦνται τὰς ἀγορὰς καὶ τὸν ἐν βίῳ φανητιασμὸν καὶ τὴν σύγχυσιν, τὸ πολιτικὸν καὶ σύμβιον ὀκνοῦντες φιλεῖν ὡς μὴ δυνάμενον προσάγειν θεῷ’: PG, cxxxvi, 149. 27 Eustathios expresses similar views in his Oration to a Stylite in Thessalonike; see Eustathii metropolitae Thessalonicensis opuscula, ed. by Tafel, 182–96. See also Stratigopoulos, ‘Orator or Grammarian?’.

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wrestles, runs, boxes, and competes in other types of contest, as if on a plain field which has no obstacles. But the divine athlete of the world who competes in the middle of the streets competes with caltrops strewn underfoot — those which a vulgar life sprouts and sharpens — and has countless stones lying around as obstacles. Therefore, when victorious he gains a further ornament in addition to the others: he also challenges others to match his zeal, and thus multiplies the men who are most excellent in the eyes of God.28 These are thoughts that Eustathios ascribes to Philotheos, just before we are told about his decision not to become a monk. After ‘balancing in a precise set of scales monastic and secular life’, Philotheos selected a virtuous secular life, like that of Job.29 This choice was intimately linked to his decision to marry and start a family. In fact, the next thing we are told is that Philotheos decided to follow the example of his parents and to take a wife: ‘he wished, just like those who gave birth to him, to set forth in the world a similar good, an honest succession, a fortunate offspring, a blessed seed’.30 By staying in the world and marrying, Philotheos could in turn provide an example for his community, as his parents provided an example for him. God is shown to have approved this marriage by blessing the couple with children: in the same way that he blessed the land of Opsikion making it fertile with paradisiacal plants, he gave Philotheos and his wife noble fruit.31 We can see then that in depicting Philotheos’s decision to marry, Eustathios clearly contrasted the solitary life of the monk to a familial life, which allowed one to teach by example and to be useful to the community as well as to oneself. Similarly, Eustathios’s emphasis on Philotheos’s obedience can be taken as a criticism of the monks’ disobedience. Philotheos appears to be respectful towards both his parents and the ecclesiastical canons. This becomes evident in his process of choosing a wife: he turned to his parents for advice and clearly secured their consent, which was necessary for the validity of marriage.32 What is more, it becomes clear

28 ‘οὕτω γὰρ ὁ ἐπ᾿ ὄψεσι μυρίαις καταρριπτῶν τὸν ἀντίμαχον οὐκ ἂν ἐντρέποιτο τὸν μονάζοντα, ὑπεραναβαίνοι δὲ ἂν οἶμαι τῷ κατορθώματι. ὁ μὲν γὰρ μονάζων ὡς ἐπὶ σταδίου λείου καὶ μηδὲν τὸ συμποδίζον ἔχοντος, καὶ παλαίει, καὶ θέει, καὶ πὺξ πονεῖται, καὶ τἄλλα τοῦ ἀγῶνος ποιεῖ· ὁ δὲ περὶ μέσας ἀγυιὰς κόσμου θεῖος ἀγωνιστής, τριβόλων ὑπεστρωμένων, ἃ[ς] καὶ ἀναφύει καὶ ὀξύνει συρφετώδης βίος, ἔτι δὲ καὶ λίθων ὑποκειμένων μυρίων προσκόμματος, ἀεθλεύει· διὸ καὶ νικήσας ἔχει τι καὶ πλέον ἐπικόσμημα, τά τε ἄλλα, καὶ ὅτι καὶ ἄλλους εἰς τὸν ὅμοιον προκαλεῖται ζῆλον, καὶ οὕτω πληθύνει τοὺς κατὰ θεὸν ἀριστεῖς.’: PG, cxxxvi, 152. 29 ‘ταλαντεύσας δὲ ὅμως ἐν ἀκριβεῖ σταθμώματι τὸν μονίαν βίον καὶ τὸν πολιτικόν’: PG, cxxxvi, 152. 30 ‘καὶ ἐθελήσας, ὥσπερ αὐτὸν οἱ γεννήσαντες, οὕτω καὶ αὐτὸς ἀφεῖναι καλὸν ὅμοιον ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, διαδοχὴν τιμίαν, ἐπιγονὴν μακαρίαν, εὐλογητὸν σπέρμα’. Indeed, we are explicitly told that Philotheos’s parents were happy that in this too ‘he follows his father’s example’ (‘χαίροντες δὲ, ὅτι καὶ ἐνταῦθα πατρώζει ὁ παῖς’): PG, cxxxvi, 152. 31 ‘θεὸς δὲ ὁ τούτους ἐπιλεξάμενος, καὶ φυτὰ παραδείσῳ πρέποντα ἐνθέμενος τῇ τῶν Ὀψικιανῶν γῇ, οὐκ ἀφῆκε μὴ τελεσφορῆσαι αὐτὰ καὶ ῥίζωμα στερέμνιον, καὶ πρέμνου ἀναδρομήν, καὶ βλάστην ἁδράν, καὶ καρποὺς ἐν καιρῷ εὐγενεῖς· ἀλλὰ θέλημα τῶν φοβουμένων αὐτὸν κἀνταῦθα ποιῶν, ἐπλήθυνε τὸν οἶκον τῷ Φιλοθέῳ ταῖς διὰ τέκνων ἐπιγοναῖς, καὶ αὐτῶν οἵων ἐπισπᾶσθαι πατρός τε ἀγαθοῦ εὐλογίαν καὶ μητρὸς ἐπὶ τέκνοις εὐφραινομένης.’: PG, cxxxvi, 152–53. 32 Σύνταγμα, ed. by Rhalles and Potles, i, 310.

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from the sequence of the story that Philotheos’s wedding preceded his decision to join the clergy. As such, the prerequisite that a man who does not wish to remain celibate should marry before the subdiaconate was also respected.33 Furthermore, we are told that Philotheos followed ‘the holy canon’ which required his life to be examined before ordination, and we are explicitly reassured about the motives of his witnesses.34 They did not praise him ‘for the sake of gaining dignity or anything else enticing’, and everything about him became known through this process, ‘for they fulfilled the command of the most upright canon’.35 Philotheos was also following canon law as far as his secondary occupation is concerned: he and his wife were involved in agricultural activities.36 Being a farmer was one of few secular professions that was open to clerics, alongside being a teacher or a scribe.37 Philotheos’s respect for the canons contrasts greatly with that of the Thessalonian monks, as we know from Eustathios’s treatise on the improvement of monastic life, in which he stated explicitly that their contempt towards their bishop was uncanonical.38 Perhaps Eustathios’s most important criticism of the monks involved their greediness. This was in stark opposition to Philotheos’s behaviour, and his wife again had an important role to play. Emphasis was placed on the fact that Philotheos was generous both before and after his marriage, and Eustathios depicted the clerical wife as her husband’s helpmate. From thence onwards (lest something of the viciousness of life be mixed into the good of former virtue, or the worldly toil of this good couple make the former grain useless through the side-growth of weeds), a different path of virtue was much desired by the saint. He kept himself to his former good ways — being the same in virtue and not changing — and also guided his wife to similar things. They equally achieved the work of God together. And there was no fighting between these yoke-mates, let alone goading each other to anger. For they thought of the old unions of God’s people, who once given by God to one another as helpmates did his work worthily.39

33 See for example canon 26 of the Apostles in Σύνταγμα, ed. by Rhalles and Potles, ii, 33. 34 ‘καὶ ἐκτελεῖσθαι ἤρξατο, καὶ ὁ ἱερὸς κανὼν ἐζήτει τὴν ἐκ μαρτυριῶν σύστασιν·’: PG, cxxxvi, 153. For a canon requiring the examination of the priest’s life before his ordination, see canon 9 of the First Council of Nicaea in Σύνταγμα, ed. by Rhalles and Potles, ii, 137. 35 ‘οὐδὲ πρὸς ἀξίωσιν λαλοῦντας, ἢ ἄλλο τι ἐφολκόν […] κανόνος γὰρ εὐθυτάτου ἐκεῖνοι ἐπλήρουν παράγγελμα’: PG, cxxxvi, 153. 36 On Eustathios’s views on agriculture in the Life of Philotheos, see also Merianos, ‘More than a Shepherd to his Flock’, 318–20. 37 Zonaras on canon 10 of Nicaea II: ‘παιδεύειν δὲ καὶ διδάσκειν παῖδας ἀρχόντων καὶ δούλους, καὶ τὰ τούτων ἤθη ῥυθμίζειν, οὐ κωλύονται’, Σύνταγμα, ed. by Rhalles and Potles, ii, 588. See also Constantelos, ‘Clerics and Secular Professions’; Laiou, ‘God and Mammon’. 38 ‘εἰ δὲ ἡ Θεσσαλονίκη οὕτως ἀνδρείους ἐκτρέφει μοναχούς, οἳ καὶ κατὰ κανόνων καὶ νόμων ἀνδρίζονται καὶ τὸν ἀρχιερέα περιφρονοῦσι’: Eustathii Thessalonicensis De emendanda vita monachica, ed. by Metzler, 184. For the obedience owed by monks to their bishop, see canon 4 of the Council of Chalcedon: Σύνταγμα, ed. by Rhalles and Potles, ii, 226. 39 ‘τὸ δὲ ἐντεῦθεν (ἵνα μὴ τῷ καλῷ τῆς πρώην ἀρετῆς παραμιχθείη τι τῆς ἐν βίῳ φαυλότητος, μηδὲ ὁ κατὰ κόσμον κάματος τοῦ καλοῦ τούτου ζεύγους τὸν πρῶην σῖτον ἀχρειώσῃ ζιζανίου παραφυάδι), ἄλλη μέθοδος ἀρετῆς τῷ ἁγίῳ ἦν περισπούδαστος. ἑαυτόν τε γὰρ ἐπὶ τοῖς προτέροις ἀγαθοῖς ἐτήρει, ὁ αὐτὸς ὢν

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There were now two holy people rather than one who could toil together for the good of their community. Indeed, one of the first things that we hear about the couple is that together they could ‘sow and plough and transport salutary goods’.40 The help of Philotheos’s wife was important for both practical and moral reasons. This becomes obvious if we compare the agricultural activity of the married couple to that of the monks as described in Eustathios’s treatise, where he hints towards sexual immorality by lamenting the disproportionate number of female servants compared to male farmhands employed by some monasteries.41 In addition to being assured about the added value of Philotheos’s wife, we are told that his flock continued to come first: As he worked at both virtue and life simultaneously, and so acquired the goods from the earth which pass into the soul, he measured out what sufficed for his household and from his righteous hard work distributed what was necessary to the needy. For he never slackened in unloading his container of surplus for those who were thirsty for it, and toiled not so much for himself and his family as for his brothers in Christ.42 A telling sign of Philotheos’s continued generosity was that one of the miracles he performed was that of the multiplication of food and wine for the welfare of his community.43 Once again, this can be contrasted precisely with a detail in his attack on monastic misbehaviour, since Eustathios accuses the Thessalonian monks of thinking about wine in the context of maximizing their profits.44

Conclusion In his Life of St Philotheos of Opsikion, Eustathios put forward a model of holiness which was markedly different from traditional ideals of Eastern asceticism and Western clerical standards. He used the example of a married cleric to encourage monks to

40 41 42

43 44

τὰ εἰς ἀρετήν, καὶ μὴ ἀλλοιούμενος, καὶ τὴν ὁμόζυγα εἰς ὅμοια εὔθυνε· καὶ κατώρθουν ἐπίσης τὸ τοῦ θεοῦ ἔργον ἀμφότεροι. καὶ οὐκ ἦν ζυγομαχεῖν αὐτούς, πολλῷ δὲ πλέον οὐδὲ παροιστρεῖν. ἐνεθυμοῦντο γὰρ τὰς παλαιὰς συζυγίας τῶν τοῦ θεοῦ ἀνθρώπων, οἳ βοηθοὶ πρὸς θεοῦ δεδομένοι ἀλλήλοις, ἐργάται ἦσαν ἐκείνου ἄξιοι.’: PG, cxxxvi, 153. ‘καὶ ζεῦγος θεοῦ δι᾿ αὐτῶν ἀπετέλεσαν, δεξιὸν καὶ ἀροῦν καὶ σπείρειν καὶ φορτηγεῖν τὰ σωτήρια’: PG, cxxxvi, 152. The word σωτήρια used here to refer to grain literally means ‘the things that bring salvation’ and is also a reference to the spiritual work that the couple did together. ‘καὶ μὴν αὐχεῖ καὶ παῖδας γεωργικοὺς ποριζόμενος, καὶ τοῦτο μὲν κτηματικόν· ἱνατί δὲ καὶ παιδίσκας, καὶ αὐτὰς ἀσυμμέτρους τῷ τῶν παίδων ἀριθμῷ ὡς ὑπερεκπίπτειν τῷ πληθυσμῷ’: Eustathii Thessalonicensis De emendanda vita monachica, ed. by Metzler, 136–37. ‘καὶ ἀρετὴν ἐν ταυτῷ καὶ βίον τεχνώμενος, καὶ οὕτω ποριζόμενος τὰ ἐκ γῆς ἀγαθὰ διαβαίνοντα καὶ ἐς ψυχήν, τοῖς τε οἰκείοις ἐπεμέτρει τὸ ἀρκοῦν, καὶ τοῖς δεομένοις ἐκ δικαίων πονημάτων ἐσιτομέτρει τὰ δέοντα. οὐδέποτε γὰρ ἀνίει ἐξαντλῶν τὴν παρ᾿ αὐτῷ περιούσιον δεξαμενὴν τοῖς διψῶσιν αὐτῆς, οὐ τοσοῦτον ἑαυτῷ καὶ τοῖς αὐτοῦ πονούμενος εἰς ὅσον τοῖς ἐν Χριστῷ ἀδελφοῖς.’: PG, cxxxvi, 155. PG, cxxxvi, 156–57. Eustathii Thessalonicensis De emendanda vita monachica, ed. by Metzler, 131.

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lead a more virtuous life. But he did not phrase the advantages of marriage via the usual reasoning that it helps to avoid illicit sexual behaviour.45 Rather, Eustathios highlighted all the benefits that family life could have for a priest’s personal growth as well as his community’s welfare. Marriage provides Philotheos with a chance to prove his mettle in the world and to lead his flock by example, in explicit contrast to the path of monasticism, while it provides Eustathios with an opportunity to showcase Philotheos’s respect for his parents and for canon law at every stage of the process. Eustathios also presents the priest’s wife as a help-mate who toiled alongside her husband to procure what was necessary for the community, emphasizing the couple’s generosity and their positive material and moral contribution, quite apart from Philotheos’s agricultural miracle involving bread and wine. To varying degrees of specificity, these points complement Eustathios’s criticisms of the Thessalonian monks in his other works. These monks are portrayed as either leading a virtuous but selfish life in isolation, or becoming too concerned with secular pleasures and profits — including in the area of agriculture where Philotheos had been so admirable. Unlike Philotheos, their arrogance led them uncanonically and stubbornly to refuse to obey ecclesiastical authority — which in their case meant instructions from Eustathios himself. The Life, however, may have been less hostile than it initially appears. If, as the title suggests, it was written to be read as a sermon by the monk Philotheos, the implicit criticisms in it might have been rendered more palatable for other monastics, coming from the mouth of one of their own. Such a collaboration between Eustathios and a monk would also show that it is not easy to neatly separate the different groups which vied for power based on their religious status. At least some monks were willing to support Eustathios’s struggle for authority. In any case, the mention of the monk Philotheos sends out an important message about the possibility of a symbiosis between monks and the secular Church. Relations could be much more amicable, if only other monks respected Eustathios enough to become his mouthpiece and spread his ideas. Finally, going back to the objections against clerical marriage with which we began, Eustathios’s Life of Philotheos helps us appreciate some of the differences between Byzantium and the West: it does not raise the question of sexual purity, it praises clerical entanglement in local society, and it shows the clerical family to increase the wealth of the community, not diminish it.46 As such, Eustathios offers a model of spiritual authority that does not depend on the imitation of monastic life, but rather capitalizes on the very differences between secular and monastic clergy, idealizing the life of the numerous village priests who formed the backbone of the secular Church, of which he too was a member. 45 This argument is based on i Corinthians 7. 5, which asks spouses to come together again after periods of abstinence, lest the devil temp them. In the West this argument was used by the proponents of clerical marriage when opposing the imposition of celibacy. See, for example, Henry of Huntingdon in Fenton, ‘Writing Masculinity’, 68. 46 For a more detailed comparison of Western and Eastern attitudes towards clerical marriage, see Perisanidi, Clerical Continence.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Eustathii metropolitae Thessalonicensis opuscula, ed. by T. L. F. Tafel (Frankfurt, 1832) Eustathii Thessalonicensis De emendanda vita monachica, ed. by K. Metzler (Berlin, 2006) Σύνταγμα τῶν θείων καὶ ἱερῶν κανόνων, ed. by G. A. Rhalles and M. Potles, 6 vols (Athens, 1852–59) Synaxarium ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae (e codice Sirmondiano nunc Berolinensi), ed. by H. Delehaye (Brussels, 1902) Secondary Studies Angold, M., Church and Society in Byzantium under the Comneni, 1081–1261 (Cambridge, 1995) ———, ‘Monastic Satire and the Evergetine Monastic Tradition in the Twelfth Century’, in The Theotokos Evergetis and Eleventh-Century Monasticism, ed. by M. Mullett and A. Kirby (Belfast, 1994), 86–102 Barrow, J., The Clergy in the Medieval World: Secular Clerics, their Families and Careers in North-Western Europe, c. 800–c. 1200 (Cambridge, 2015) ———, ‘Hereford Bishops and Married Clergy, c. 1130–1240’, Historical Research, 60 (1987), 1–8 Brooke, C. N. L., ‘Married Men among the English Higher Clergy, 1066–1200’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 12 (1956), 187–88 Constantelos, D., ‘Clerics and Secular Professions in the Byzantine Church’, Byzantina, 13 (1985), 375–400 Elliott, D., Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA, 1999) Fenton, K. A., ‘Writing Masculinity and Religious Identity in Henry of Huntingdon’, in Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. by P. H. Cullum and K. J. Lewis (Woodbridge, 2013), 64–76 Gautier, P., ‘Le Chartophylax Nicéphore, Oeuvre canonique et notice biographique’, Revue des études byzantines, 27 (1969), 159–95 Hunter, D. G., ‘Married Clergy in Eastern and Western Christianity’, in A Companion to Priesthood and Holy Orders in the Middle Ages, ed. by G. Peters and C. C. Anderson (Leiden, 2016), 96–139 Kaldellis, A., Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformation of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition (Cambridge, 2007) Kazhdan, A., and S. Franklin, Studies on Byzantine Literature of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Cambridge, 1984) Kemp, B. R., ‘Hereditary Benefices in the Medieval English Church: A Herefordshire Example’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 43 (1970), 1–15

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Laiou, A. E., ‘God and Mammon: Credit, Trade, Profit and the Canonists’, in Byzantium in the 12th Century: Canon Law, State and Society, ed. by N. Oikonomides (Athens, 1991), 261–300 Luzzi, A., ‘Synaxaria and the Synaxarion of Constantinople’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, vol. ii, Genres and Context, ed. by S. Eftymiadis (Farnham, 2014), 197–208 Magdalino, P., ‘The Byzantine Holy Man in the Twelfth Century’, in The Byzantine Saint, ed. by S. Hackel (London, 1981), 51–66 ———, ‘Eustathios and Thessalonica’, in FILELLHN: Studies in Honour of Robert Browning, ed. by C. N. Constantinides, N. M. Panagiotakes, E. Jeffreys, and A. D. Angelou (Venice, 1996), 225–38 Meijns, B., ‘Opposition to Clerical Continence and the Gregorian Celibacy Legislation in the Diocese of Thérouanne: Tractatus Pro Clericorum Conubio (c. 1077–1078)’, Sacris Erudiri, 47 (2008), 223–90 Melve, L., ‘The Public Debate on Clerical Marriage in the Late Eleventh Century’, JEH, 61 (2010), 688–706 Merianos, G., ‘More than a Shepherd to his Flock: Eustathios and the Management of Ecclesiastical Property’, in Reading Eustathios of Thessalonike, ed. by F. Pontani, V. Katsaros, and V. Sarris (Berlin, 2017), 309–30 ———, Οικονομικές ιδέες στο Βυζάντιο τον 12ο αιώνα: Οι περί οικονομίας απόψεις του Ευσταθίου Θεσσαλονίκης (Athens, 2008) Metzler, K., Eustathios von Thessalonike und das Mönchtum (Berlin, 2006) Papagianne, E., and S. Troianos, ‘Die kanonischen Antworten des Nikolaos III. Grammatikos an den Bischof von Zetunion’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 82 (1989), 234–50 Parish, H., Clerical Celibacy in the West, c. 1100–1700 (Farnham, 2010) Perisanidi, M., Clerical Continence in Twelfth-Century England and Byzantium: Property, Family and Purity (London, 2019) Schönauer, S., Eustathios von Thessalonike: Reden auf die Große Quadragesima (Frankfurt, 2006) ———, ‘Flucht vor den Gläubigen? Abenteuerliches aus dem Leben des Eustathios von Thessalonike’, in Zwischen Polis, Provinz und Peripherie: Beiträge zur byzantinischen Geschichte und Kultur, ed. by L. Hoffmann and A. Monchizadeh (Wiesbaden, 2005), 705–17 ———, ‘Zum Eustathios-Codex Basileensis A. III. 20’, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, 50 (2000), 231–46 Stone, A. F., ‘Eustathian Panegyric as a Historical Source’, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, 51 (2001), 225–58 Stratigopoulos, D., ‘Orator or Grammarian? Eustathios in his Work on Ad Stylitam quendam Thessalonicensem’, in Reading Eustathios of Thessalonike, ed. by F. Pontani, V. Katsaros, and V. Sarris (Berlin, 2017), 243–51 Thomas, H. M., The Secular Clergy in England, 1066–1216 (Oxford, 2014) Thomas, J. P., Private Religious Foundations in the Byzantine Empire (Washington, DC, 1987)

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Christine Meek

The Bishop, the Convent, and the Community: The Attempt to Enclose the Nuns of S. Giustina, Lucca, 1301–1302

In 1298 Pope Boniface VIII promulgated a decree imposing strict enclosure on all orders of nuns. The decree, known from its first word as Periculoso, converted what had long been a monastic ideal and pious aspiration for convents of nuns into the law of the Church.1 Periculoso provided that from that time onwards all nuns of whatever order and wherever their convent might be situated should remain perpetually cloistered, so that none of them should ever have permission to leave their convent, and that no one, whether they be disreputable or respectable, should be allowed to enter. The only possible exceptions were that if any of the nuns was found to be suffering from a dangerous and contagious disease, which would imperil the others if she were to remain, she might have permission to leave and that the appropriate authority might grant a special licence for an outsider to enter the convent, if there was a reasonable and obvious cause. If an abbess or prioress were required to perform fealty for a fief that the convent held of a secular lord, she was to do so through a proctor, if possible; otherwise she might leave the convent with respectable and decent company, but should return as soon as conveniently possible. If the convent was involved in litigation or had business outside the convent, bishops and other prelates were to allow them to conduct these affairs through proctors or attorneys and to ensure that any princes or secular lords did likewise. The enforcement of these regulations was committed to prelates, who were to apply enclosure as soon as possible to all convents within their city or diocese. All expenses incurred were to be met through alms procured from the faithful for this purpose, but anyone who refused or resisted was to be constrained by ecclesiastical censures, without right of appeal, invoking the aid of the secular arm, if necessary.



1 For the Latin text, together with an English translation, see Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women, 133–36. Christine Meek is Associate Professor of Medieval History and Senior Fellow emeritus of Trinity College, Dublin. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 329–340 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118973

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This essay explores ecclesiastical authority and power through a case study of the attempt by the Bishop of Lucca in 1301–02 to apply these regulations at the Benedictine convent of S. Giustina. Since the convent was in the centre of the city and included two churches, which served as parish churches for the local residents who also had burial rights there, and since the nuns belonged to local families, who could bring pressure to bear on the communal councils in support of their interests, the bishop found himself embroiled on all sides. The nuns resisted attempts to change their way of life, especially as the proposed enclosure involved extensive building work in the convent that they claimed was beyond their means, and they sought a cardinal protector at the papal curia to uphold their interests. The parishioners appointed a proctor to protest to the bishop at the infringement of their rights and appeal to Rome. The commune of Lucca also made representations in Rome in support of the nuns and the parishioners. Nor in the event did the bishop find the support from Pope Boniface VIII for which he might reasonably have hoped, given that he was attempting to enforce the constitutions of that same pope. The Bishop of Lucca in 1300 was Enrico del Carretto, who was provided by Pope Boniface VIII on 1 August that year, quashing an election of Raynerio de Montemagno, one of the cathedral canons, made by the archdeacon and chapter, despite the pope’s reservation of the see.2 When Pope Boniface VIII informed the chapter and clergy of Lucca of his choice of Enrico del Carretto as bishop, and instructed Niccolò da Prato, Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia and Velletri, to consecrate him, the Lucchese chapter seems to have accepted this without any further resistance, and there is no indication that Bishop Enrico ever had problems with the cathedral clergy. The new bishop belonged to the noble Ligurian del Carretto family; he named Cardinal Luca Fieschi as a kinsman in his will and was therefore also related to Ottobuono Fieschi, Pope Adrian V. The date of his birth is uncertain but was probably some time before 1270. He had entered the Franciscan Order in his youth and been sent to the University of Paris to complete his studies, obtaining a degree in theology (in sacra pagina baccalarius) by 1300. The date of his arrival in Lucca is not recorded, though he was certainly there by 12 July 1301. He showed himself a conscientious pastor, zealous and even severe in his attempts to check abuses and improve the standards of the clergy and the faithful committed to his care. He apparently conducted episcopal visitations. Although there are no records from his episcopate among the series Visite Pastorali in the Archivio Storico Diocesano of Lucca, he was given permission by Pope Benedict XI to conduct visitations by deputy during an absence at the papal curia on 3 April 1304.3 At some point during his episcopate (it is impossible to state precisely when) he held a synod and issued a series of seventy-seven constitutions. While some of these are based on the legislation of a previous Bishop of Lucca, Guercio, who had held a synod in 1253, others are new. Some of Bishop Enrico’s constitutions concern the conduct of the laity, and others serve to protect the possessions and the liberty of the Church, but the majority concern the conduct of ecclesiastics, stressing the

2 Meek, ‘Del Carretto, Enrico’. 3 Le Registre de Benoit XI, ed. by Grandjean, no. 663.

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obligation of regular performance of ecclesiastical functions, the living of an honest and edifying life, avoiding involvement in lay affairs, and other abuses.4 It was perhaps in the context of his position as a papal appointee and something of a high stickler in matters of discipline that early in his episcopate Bishop Enrico became involved in a dispute with the convent of S. Giustina, the major Benedictine nunnery in Lucca. S. Giustina was situated within the city walls and was by a large margin the most important female religious house in Lucca. Founded in 782, it was originally named S. Salvatore, but dedication to S. Giustina was added after the acquisition of the relic of the saint’s head in 1053. By the fourteenth century the convent was a property holder to an extent that made it a significant institution in the context of the Lucchese church as a whole. In a levy on Lucchese ecclesiastical institutions to finance the building of the chapel of S. Benedetto in 1340, which was a condition for the raising of the interdict imposed in the time of Castruccio Castracani, ruler of Lucca from 1316 to 1328, the convent of S. Giustina was assessed at £80, as compared to £12 10s for the convent of S. Cerbone, and £39 2s 6d for the Clarisse of Gattaiola, while the Lucchese bishopric was assessed at £87 10s, the cathedral chapter at £107 10s, and the collegiate church of S. Michele in Foro at £65.5 In a document relating to another financial levy, which gives a comprehensive list of Lucchese churches, and which the archivist Salvatore Bongi attributed to 1387, the convent of S. Giustina was given a valuation of £47 15s. This may be compared with valuations of £15 for the convent of S. Cerbone, £5 for the convent of S. Niccolò Novello (founded in the 1330s), and £4 for the convent of S. Paolo de Cosellis. The Lucchese bishopric was given a valuation of £78 15s and the cathedral chapter £62 10s. Important collegiate churches such as S. Michele in Foro and S. Frediano had valuations of £30 and £76 14s respectively, and even the Mansio of S. Giacobo de Altopascio was evaluated at no more than £50.6 The documents relating to Bishop Enrico’s attempt to impose enclosure reveal that the convent comprised a considerable complex of buildings, even if it is impossible to work out the ground plan. Within the convent precincts there were two churches, S. Giustina with the saint’s altar, which was a centre of devotion, and S. Maria, two cloisters, including a second cloister with a door leading onto a lane, a bakehouse, and a room where the rent rolls were kept, as well as domestic buildings (domos). An exhibition of finds from an archaeological excavation on the site revealed pottery and other small items of good quality.7





4 Manselli, ‘La sinodo lucchese’. 5 Lucca, Archivio di Stato di Lucca, Imposte Diverse e Straordinarie no. 1. While there are large figures in the left-hand margin of this document, for example, £3200 (£MMMCC) for S. Giustina, there is no indication of the basis for calculation, and they can only have a comparative significance. Discussed in Inventario, ed. by Bongi, ii, 90. All documents cited are from the Archivio di Stato in Lucca unless otherwise indicated. 6 For these valuations and a description of the document in which they are contained, see Inventario, ed. by Bongi, iv, 116–20. Again the significance of these figures is purely comparative. 7 ‘Gli stovigli delle monache’. The exhibition was held at Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi, Lucca, 26 October 2012 – 6 January 2013. For the excavations, see Ciampoltrini, ‘I saggi 1990 nell’area Galli Tassi’; Abela, ‘La Chiesa di Santa Giustina’.

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It is difficult to determine how large the convent was in 1301. Lucchese convents were usually quite small, numbering no more than eight or nine nuns. When domina Anastasia was elected abbess on 24 March 1298 those taking part in the election were listed as sisters Philippa, Palmiera, Perfecta, Thomasia, Mathea, Agniesia, Margarita, Marina, Clara, and Johanna. As they are described as ‘maior et sanior pars totius capituli’ there may have been a few more, and there was also the previous abbess, domina Palma, who had been relieved of her office on the grounds of old age and ill health (unless she is to be identified with the Palmiera listed above).8 On 20 January 1311, however, Abbess Anastasia granted a lease with the consent of only five named nuns, Umilia, Agniesina, Bartolomea, Giovanna, and Telda, only two of whom can be identified with nuns listed in 1298.9 But perhaps the most reliable indication of the personnel of the convent comes from a document of 28 May 1332. This is some thirty years later than the bishop’s attempts to impose enclosure, but is particularly likely to be comprehensive, since it relates to an authorization to absolve the nuns and convent from sentences of excommunication they had incurred for supporting Castruccio Castracani, Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria, and the antipope Nicholas V, and it was therefore important that all involved should be named. The document lists the abbess as domina Bartolomea, and the nuns as Johanna domini Orlandi, Filippa Coluccii, Bartolomea Sbarrini, Jacoba Gadduccii, Ysabecta Chellini, and Petra domini Pini. It also lists Margarita domini Nicolai, Agatha Landi, Madalena Ghirardi, Justina Puccii, Clara domini Nicolai, and (separately) Cathalina Thomuccii Overardi and Niesia Nardelli as novices, Bonaventura Ursi, donna Alderandesta Rodulfi, donna Contessa Lupardi, Mingarda Cecchori, Gessa Morrucci, domina Andrucia Corsi, and domina Ghita ser Bonaccorsi as female converse, Giovanni Miglioris and Gerardo Bianchi as male conversi, Bernardo Bonacci as the convent’s notary and procurator, and domina Puccia, widow of Simo Johannis tiratoris, as porteress. This is a total of six nuns, seven counting the abbess, seven novices, a porteress, seven female and two male conversi, and the notary, who presumably did not live in the convent.10 The documents from 1298 and 1301 give very little information on the background of the nuns; it is not even clear whether the names given are their baptismal names or names in religion. Two documents from 1332, however, are rather more revealing. The abbess Bartolomea is named in a document of 16 October 1332 as a member of the Antelminelli family, that is, the family of Castruccio Castracani.11 The list of nuns in the document of 28 May 1332 includes Bartolomea Sbarrini, who was almost certainly a daughter of Sbarrino Sbarra, a member of a prominent family who was active in the political life of the city in these years, and several nuns and novices who



8 Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 24 March 1298. Only the fully professed nuns, who had a voice in the chapter, would have been included, although there were almost certainly also novices and converse. The pergamene of the series Diplomatico are available online on the Archivio di Stato website: [last accessed 9 March 2020]. 9 Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 20 January 1311. Again there may have been a number of others. 10 Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 28 May 1332. It is not clear why two of the novices are listed separately from the others. 11 Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 16 October 1332.

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are indicated as daughters of men with the honorific dominus, which indicates either a knight or a doctor of laws. It seems likely that other nuns came from Lucchese families, although perhaps not such prominent ones as the Abbess Bartolomea or Bartolomea Sbarrini. If the same were the case in 1301, the convent would be able to call on the support of powerful relatives to assist them in their efforts to resist the bishop’s attempts to impose enclosure. There are indications that all was not well in the convent of S. Giustina, however, and that the nuns may have been by no means above reproach. On the instructions of Matteo, Cardinal-Bishop of Porto and S. Rufina, as papal legate,12 his chaplain Fra Ranuccio da Casoli and the Franciscan Fra Rolando di Lucca absolved domina Palma from the post of abbess on the grounds of old age, serious ill health, and manifest inadequacy (manifestam insufficientiam).13 Two days later he authorized Fra Ranuccio and Fra Rolando to summon the nuns to proceed to the election of a new abbess, but in the same letter instructed them to make enquiries about what reforms were required in the convent.14 Pope Boniface VIII himself wrote to the piovano of Mostesgradi on 10 June 1298 that it had come to his attention that much property belonging to the convent of S. Giustina was in the hands of laymen and clerics, who claimed to hold it for life or on long-term or perpetual leases confirmed by the Holy See. He ordered the piovano to ensure that these properties were returned to the convent, using ecclesiastical censures against any who resisted.15 On 5 February 1300 Pope Boniface commissioned the Bishop of Pistoia to ensure that the abbess and convent of S. Giustina were able to enjoy in peace the indulgences and privileges granted by the papacy and were not molested, with ecclesiastical censures for anyone attempting this.16 If the passage of the convent’s properties to outsiders on long-term or perpetual leases may be attributed to the rule of an aged and sick abbess, and infringements of the convent’s privileges may have been no fault of the nuns themselves, a different picture is presented by an order of 25 February 1300 to the priors of the Augustinian house of S. Donato in Lucca, in which Cardinal Matteo,

12 The legate was Cardinal Matteo di Acquasparta, a member of the Franciscan order and famous theologian and ecclesiastical statesman. He was papal penitentiary from 1291 and died in 1302: Musco, I francescani e la politica, 278–87. 13 Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 20 March 1298. They were also to question the nuns about a suitable successor. This was not to constitute an election, but apparently to provide the cardinal with information on the basis of which he could himself make an appointment: ‘scrutamini monialium eiusdem monasterii voluntates et vota non per modum electionis sed ad nostram informationem ut si forsan aspirante divina gratia in aliquam vel aliquas de se ipsius concorditer convenirent eodem monasterio deo auctore de abbatissa iuxta debitum officii nostri possumus utiliter providere’. 14 ‘super omnibus aliis que in ipso monasterio reformatione indigent plenam indaginem faciatis’: Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 22 March 1298. One of the nuns, Anastasia, was then elected as abbess by ten others and was confirmed in office by the legate: Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 24 March 1298. 15 Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 10 June 1298. The properties were listed as ‘decimas, terras, domos, vineas, prata, pascua, nemora, molendina, piscarias, grangias, iura, iurisdictiones, maneria, possessiones et quedam alia bona’. While these are formulaic terms, they may well indicate both the kinds of property the convent held and also the extent of their property holdings. 16 Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 5 February 1300.

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on papal authority, commissioned them to absolve the nuns of S. Giustina from the sentences of excommunication they had incurred by coming to blows among themselves and with other nuns and secular clergy, and for disobedience to the abbess and simony. They were also ordered in observance of the norms of the statutes to surrender to the abbess any private property they had, to be put to the common use of the convent.17 There is unfortunately no information on the events that had led to these sentences of excommunication, but it seems clear that all was not well in the convent. And it seems that there had been little improvement in the situation a few years later, for at the height of dispute over the imposition of enclosure on 29 September 1302 Fra Gentile, Cardinal of S. Martino in Monte, with the authorization of Pope Boniface VIII, issued a similar commission to the confessor of the abbess and nuns to absolve them from the excommunication they had incurred for coming to blows among themselves and with secular clerics. He also ordered that if they had private property, they were to surrender it to the convent.18 Most of these problems seem to be internal and unlikely to be solved by the imposition of enclosure, but in any case Bishop Enrico was probably acting largely in obedience to the terms of Boniface VIII’s constitution Periculoso. In a letter of 12 July 1301 to the abbess and nuns he instructed that certain building works should be undertaken within the convent in order to ensure enclosure. These involved building what is described as a solar or balcony (solarium sive ballatorium), which should stretch as far as the entrance to the church in the first cloister. The choir of the church in which the nuns celebrated the divine offices was to be closed off with a wall or iron grating (clausura ferrea). A window with a grating was to be made at a suitable point in this wall through which the nuns would be able to see the Host when Mass was celebrated. An altar was to be built on the solar or balcony where Mass could be celebrated for the people of the parish in the lower part of the church which was not enclosed. A window or parlatorium with a decent iron grating was to be made with a little doorway to allow the chalice to pass through when Communion was taken. Inside the enclosure a door was to be made in the wall of the church stretching as far as the choir, so that the nuns could go to the choir to celebrate the divine offices without being seen or able to see, and once the enclosure ordained in this way was made no one would be able to approach them nor would they be able to leave the enclosure. The nuns were ordered to begin this work within fifteen days and to have completed it within three months, on pain of excommunication.19

17 Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 25 February 1300. Simony may allude to the common practice of entry into a convent with a dowry. 18 Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 29 September 1302. Since this was a general commission to the nuns’ confessor, some of this may be formulaic, rather than indicating actual breaches of monastic discipline. Fra Gentile da Montefiore was another Franciscan theologian and ecclesiastical statesman, and papal penitentiary from 1303. He commissioned the chapel of S. Martino in the Lower Church at Assisi, and died in 1312. 19 The bishop’s letter does not itself survive, but it is cited in full in other documents: Diplomatico, S Giustina, 9 October 1301 and 22 October 1301.

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There is no indication in surviving Lucchese documents of the nuns’ reaction to these instructions. They apparently made no effort to begin this building work, since later references reveal that they had incurred the sentences of excommunication. It is difficult to believe that they took no action in the face of orders that were going to mean a serious disruption of their way of life and major expenditure on building work, which they certainly had no desire to undertake and which they could probably ill afford. As is well known orders for the enclosure of nuns caused consternation and resistance elsewhere at this date and later. When Bishop Dalderby of Lincoln attempted to impose enclosure at the Benedictine convent of Markyate in 1300 he met with a unanimous refusal, and some of the nuns threw his sealed orders at his retreating back. While no other nuns are recorded as reacting in such an extreme fashion, there was resistance in other convents in his diocese and little indication of success in enforcing enclosure there or elsewhere.20 The Bishop of Lucca’s reluctance to make himself available in October 1301 to meet in person with either the nuns’ proctor or that of the parishioners suggests that he may have already heard all he wanted to on this matter. There is no direct record of opposition to the proposed changes on the part of the parishioners either, but they must have protested, because in a second letter dated 12 October 1301 the bishop stated that he had no desire to deprive the parishioners of their rights in the church in the second cloister, in which they were accustomed to hear Mass and receive the sacraments and where they had burial rights. The bishop therefore ordered that the door in the middle of the church should be kept open and the door giving onto the lane (chiasso) and two others that gave entry to the second cloister were to be firmly walled up with stone, bricks, and mortar. The nuns were allowed a further fifteen days beyond the three months stipulated in the bishop’s letter of 12 July to complete this work.21 The precise nature of these building works is not easy to envisage. The convent was suppressed in the Napoleonic period, and the buildings have long since vanished. The site in Via Galli Tassi became a hospital and is now occupied by the Tribunale. Ballatorium means a balcony and solarium in Lucchese usage normally indicates a solar or storey raised above ground level, so the bishop was apparently instructing the nuns to build some kind of raised passageway, an interpretation which is supported by the protests of the parishioners that they would be obliged to pass underneath it. This combined with the iron grating or wall to separate the choir where the nuns celebrated divine offices from the rest of the church, which was open to the congregation of the parish, with an altar for the celebration of Mass, an iron grille so that the nuns could see the Host, and a small door through which the chalice could be passed, makes it clear that the building works required were quite extensive. The layout of the convent with a first and second cloister, a door opening onto a lane or side road (chiasso), two other doors leading to the second cloister, and a second

20 Power, Medieval English Nunneries, 343–54; Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women, 114–15. 21 Like the letter of 12 July, the bishop’s letter of 12 October 1301 does not survive, but is quoted in full in two other pergamene: Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 9 October 1301 and 22 October 1301.

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church beyond, is equally difficult to envisage, though the reference to several doors, at least one of which opened onto the outside world, makes it clear how permeable the convent was. The main intention, however, is clear: to cloister the nuns, cutting them off from the laity attending the church and ensuring that their comings and goings could not be observed by anyone outside the cloister, and to achieve both active and passive enclosure with persons outside the convent unable to approach the nuns and the nuns unable to leave the convent. This meant a considerable change on the situation before 1301, and it was this that embroiled the bishop in a dispute with the nuns of S. Giustina, the parishioners of the church, and secondarily with the commune of Lucca itself. The bishop’s letter of 12 October 1301, by which time the initial three-month period given for completing the building work in his letter of 12 July had expired, gave rise to a flurry of activity. On 9 October 1301 twenty-two listed parishioners of the church of S. Giustina appointed one of their number, the notary Fredo Alcherii, as their proctor for all lawsuits in the court of the bishop or his vicar and any other judge delegate, especially any appointed by the pope or papal legate, and for appeal to the pope. On 15 October Fredo Alcherii named Tomeo Riccordati as pro-proctor, and it was he who presented the parishioners’ case.22 After relating the contents of the bishop’s two letters of 12 July and 12 October 1301, he protested that if this were done, all the parishioners would suffer loss and diminution of their rights in a number of ways. The problem was mainly one of access. If the entrances to the second cloister were closed they would lose access to the graves and tombs of their ancestors and the right to burials there for the future, rights which they had enjoyed from time immemorial, and there was nowhere else where they could have their cemetery. They would also be cut off from the church of S. Maria, which lay beyond the second cloister, and where they had been accustomed from time immemorial to attend divine offices and to pray on the feasts of the Virgin, receive candles at Candlemas and olive branches on Palm Sunday and the sacraments at Easter and Christmas. They would also lose access to the church of S. Giustina through these doors and via the domestic buildings (domos) of the convent, which was also the only way they could enter the church of S. Maria. If the choir of S. Giustina was closed, as the bishop’s letters ordained, they would lose access to the altar of S. Giustina and would no longer be able to pray and attend divine offices there, and they should be being encouraged in their devotion, not precluded from it. If the elevated passageway was built, it would greatly restrict the space for the parishioners to attend divine offices, since the church was itself very small, and any attempt to enlarge it would again be to their disadvantage, since the local custom in Lucca was for such work to be undertaken at the expense of the parishioners, not the rector of the church. Dust and dirt would fall on them as they passed under this passageway on entering the church by the usual door and while

22 Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 9 October 1301. The parishioners include three other members of the Alcherii family and three of the Rimbotti family, but many of them are given artisan designations, such as porter, carpenter, smith, or apothecary, or are simply listed with a given name and a patronymic.

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they stood at the altar of S. Pietro there to hear divine offices. The passageway would also have to be built extremely low, so that they would lose effective use of that part of the church anyway. All of these changes were greatly to the loss and prejudice of the parishioners and had been ordered without them having been consulted or summoned. The proctor made this protest before Messer Antonio, canon of Asti, the episcopal vicar in the bishop’s palace. The bishop himself was not present, for although the proctor called loudly for him, Martino, the bishop’s servant, refused him access, and he was not able to give the bishop a copy.23 On 22 October 1301, a few days after the representations made on behalf of the parishioners, the convent’s proctor, Beraldo, son of the late Morettino Maschanelli, appeared in the bishop’s palace and sought an interview with him, getting as far as the upper salon, near the door to the episcopal camera. The bishop was present, but Martino, his servant and porter, denied the proctor entry on the grounds that the bishop was busy and suggested the proctor should see Messer Antonio, the vicar, instead. The convent had apparently already appealed to Rome, and the proctor’s main concern was to prevent any further action until the outcome of this appeal was known. The proctor therefore presented his appeal to the bishop’s vicar in writing, first relating events so far and then requesting that the orders and proceedings and any sentences be suspended until the outcome of appeals of both the convent and the parishioners to the pope should be known. The vicar was given a copy of this appeal, but the proctor did apparently manage to see the bishop on 7 November, when he repeated the convent’s appeal against the orders for enclosure.24 At some point the abbess and convent must have decided that they needed to bring more influence to bear, for on 21 January 1302 Fra Gentile, Cardinal of S. Martino in Monte, wrote agreeing to their request to become their protector.25 It is less clear exactly how the communal authorities of Lucca became involved, since none of the documents in the series Diplomatico, S. Giustina indicate recourse to the communal authorities and no records of meetings, communal councils, or other such bodies survive in Lucca earlier than 1330. However, it seems likely that both the parishioners and the abbess and convent of S. Giustina appealed to the communal authorities for support, perhaps both officially and through the more informal influence that they were able to bring to bear via family connections and as local residents. But intervene the communal authorities certainly did, for on 22 September 1302 Pope Boniface VIII wrote to the Bishop of Lucca and the Prior of S. Frediano to the effect that the podestà and the council and commune of Lucca had informed him that the convent of S. Giustina had two parish churches within its walls, where the parishioners heard divine offices and had rights of burial. The enclosure ordered

23 Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 9 October 1301. This protest follows the grants of proxy on the same pergamena. 24 Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 22 October 1301. It is not clear whether Beraldo was appointed proctor especially for the question of enclosure or whether he acted as the convent’s proctor more generally. 25 Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 21 January 1302. It is not clear when this request had been made.

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by the bishop would prejudice these rights and be a great expense to the convent itself. For these reasons they had not yet begun the work, despite sentences of excommunication by the bishop against both the nuns and the parishioners. The pope therefore commissioned the bishop and the Prior of S. Frediano to consider these claims and see if some better way could not be found to ensure that the nuns remained enclosed.26 This almost certainly brought to an end any active effort to impose enclosure at S. Giustina. Boniface VIII’s quarrel with the French king, Philip IV, with the attempt to seize the pope at Anagni and his death shortly afterwards, meant that his pontificate ended in confusion, leaving serious problems for his successors. The early years of the fourteenth century were also a difficult period for the Lucchese church and particularly for Bishop Enrico, who had to fight off an attempt by the commune to take over the bishop’s secular lordship, known as the Iura Vescovile, in 1308, and suffered losses of property in the sack of Lucca by Uguccione della Faggiuola on 14 June 1314, followed by the rule of Castruccio Castracani after 1316. Bishop Enrico probably left Lucca soon after the sack and spent the rest of his life in Avignon, where he was well regarded and influential as a theologian. But he did not forget Lucca, issuing regular instructions to his vicars general and naming the poor of Lucca as his heirs in the will made shortly before his death in 1323.27 But nothing more is heard of the effort to impose enclosure on S. Giustina. There is no further reference in the series Diplomatico, S. Giustina either to building work or to Bishop Enrico’s efforts to enforce enclosure, and indirect evidence suggests that matters continued as before.28 A lease granted by Abbess Anastasia on 20 January 1311 was issued at the door by the grille and might perhaps suggest a degree of enclosure, but the same document also indicates the presence of the notary Rolandinus Albertini de Giuviano and two peasant witnesses, demonstrating that the abbess was conducting the convent’s business directly and not through proctors.29 Similarly on 16 October 1334 Abbess Bartolomea de Interminelis leased a mill to a peasant couple for twelve years in the presence of seven named nuns, the couple themselves, two peasant witnesses, and the notary in the camera where the rent rolls were kept (‘in camera dicti monasterii ubi libri redditorum dicti monasterii morantur’). Wherever this may have been in the convent complex, it is clear that the abbess and nuns were dealing directly with tenants and not observing enclosure.30 A letter of 28 May 1332 in which 26 Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 22 September 1302. The podestà of Lucca was Lambertuccio de’ Visdomini da Piacenza for the first semester of 1302 and Ugolino Novelli de’ Rossi da Parma for the second, but in either case was clearly acting ex officio and not personally: Inventario, ed. by Bongi, ii, 312. 27 Lucca, Archivio Storico Diocesano di Lucca, Libri Antichi 9 records the acts of his vicars and agents. For his death Libro LL.52, fol. 22r–v; Pergamene A.n. 27, 15 November 1323. 28 Nos 71 and 73 of Bishop Enrico’s constitutions provide for the enclosure of nuns, but allow for a wide range of exceptions in the case of obvious and necessary causes, which allowed for the entry not only of close relatives, doctors, priests and confessors, and those involved in the deathbeds and funerals of nuns, but also of builders, carpenters, and those delivering essential supplies. There was nothing applicable to the particular problems presented by S. Giustina: Manselli, ‘La sinodo lucchese’, 242–44. 29 ‘acta sunt in porticu dicti monasterii iuxta parllatorium’: Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 20 January 1311. 30 Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 16 October 1334.

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Giovanni, Cardinal of S. Concordio, as papal legate, at the request of the Abbess of S. Giustina authorized the frate guardian of the Franciscans and Francesco, canon of Lucca, to raise the sentences of excommunication the nuns had incurred for having supported Castruccio Castracani, Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria, and the antipope he had set up and who had been condemned as heretics, might suggest that they were involved in contemporary political struggles in a way difficult to reconcile with strict enclosure. But, although the terms of the letter suggest fairly active involvement, the convent probably had little choice but to support Castruccio Castracani and his political allies in the period between 1316 and his death in 1328.31 While both Bishop Enrico and the papacy had other serious preoccupations in the years after 1302, which might have prevented them from pursuing the attempt to impose enclosure on S. Giustina, these do not in themselves explain their failure. It is difficult not to sympathize with the English canonist John of Ayton, quoted by Eileen Power, who wrote that it was easy enough to order bishops to enforce enclosure, but that ‘scarce any mortal man’ could achieve this in the light of the nuns’ opposition, so that the statutes were at best ill-kept, if not a dead letter.32 It is also worth noting that Cardinals Matteo di Acquasparta and Gentile de Montefiore, though members of the Franciscan Order, like Bishop Enrico, successively papal penitentiary, were prepared to take a more sympathetic view of the nuns of S. Giustina, granting them absolution and undertaking their protection. Bishop Enrico, however, not only had to deal with recalcitrant nuns; he met with opposition from all sides in Lucca. If the objections of the convent that they could not afford the extensive building work necessary to achieve enclosure might have been overridden, on the grounds that they were a lax body resisting reform, the opposition of the parishioners was more serious. If some of their arguments were a little far-fetched, it is clear that they would indeed suffer loss of their customary access to the churches of S. Maria and S. Giustina, with the altar there that was the centre of the saint’s cult, and that they would be deprived of their customary religious services and access to their family tombs and future burial rights in the church. The pope’s suggestion that some better way might be found of achieving enclosure without infringing the rights of the parishioners or straining the finances of the convent seems impractical, given that the two churches were an integral part of the convent. The case of S. Giustina illustrates just how closely a city convent might be interwoven with the local community, and how extremely difficult it would be to leverage ecclesiastical authority and power to achieve the enclosure of the nuns, even if all parties had supported it and been doing their best to achieve it.

31 The nuns are said to have sided with them, obeyed them, and supported them, with food, drink, and other prohibited acts, giving them aid, counsel, and support — ‘adheserunt et obedierunt participando cum eis eorumque seguacibus cibo, potu loquela aliisque prohibitis comunibus actibus et dando illis auxilium consilium et favore’: Diplomatico, S. Giustina, 28 May 1332. 32 Power, Medieval English Nunneries, 353.

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Works Cited Manuscripts Lucca, Archivio di Stato di Lucca, Diplomatico, S. Giustina [various dated pergamene] Lucca, Archivio di Stato di Lucca, Imposte Diverse e Straordinarie no. 1 Lucca, Archivio Storico Diocesano di Lucca, Libri Antichi 9 Lucca, Archivio Storico Diocesano di Lucca, Libro LL.52 Lucca, Archivio Storico Diocesano di Lucca, Pergamene A.n. 27 Primary Sources Inventario del Regio Archivio di Stato in Lucca, ed. by S. Bongi, 4 vols (Lucca, 1872–88) Le Registre de Benoit XI, ed. by C. Grandjean (Paris, 1905) Secondary Studies Abela, E., ‘La Chiesa di Santa Giustina in età rinascimentale: il confronto tra le fonti documentarie e le testimonianze archeologiche’, in Nella terra, nel tempo: Gli scavi archeologici nel complesso Galli Tassi di Lucca, Atti del Convegno, Lucca, Villa Bottini, 10 maggio 2004, ed. by G. Ciampoltrini, E. Abela, and S. Bianchini, special issue, Rivista di Archeologia, storia, costume, 34 (2006), 109–20 Ciampoltrini, G., ‘I saggi 1990 nell’area Galli Tassi: un quartiere della città romana, il monastero di S. Salvatore, la chiesa di S. Giustina’, in Nella terra, nel tempo: Gli scavi archeologici nel complesso Galli Tassi di Lucca, Atti del Convegno, Lucca, Villa Bottini, 10 maggio 2004, ed. by G. Ciampoltrini, E. Abela, and S. Bianchini, special issue, Rivista di Archeologia, storia, costume, 34 (2006), 13–24 ‘Gli stovigli delle monache: Reperti dal monastero di Santa Giustina dal xiv al xvi secolo’, in Notiziario della Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Toscana, 8[/2012] (2013), 204–05 Makowski, E. M., Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and its Commentators, 1298–1545 (Washington, DC, 1997) Manselli, R., ‘La sinodo lucchese di Enrico del Carretto’, in Miscellanea G.G. Mersseman, i, special issue, Italia Sacra, 15 (1970), 198–246 Meek, C., ‘Del Carretto, Enrico’, in DBI, , [last accessed 3 January 2019] Musco, A., ed., I francescani e la politica, vol. ii (Palermo, 2007) Power, E., Medieval English Nunneries (Cambridge, 1922)

Matthew Phillips

Archbishop Walter Reynolds, the Clerical gravamina, and Parliamentary Petitions from the Clergy in the Early Fourteenth Century

Throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the clergy presented lists of grievances, or gravamina, to the English Crown for redress. These grievances represented complaints against a broad array of abuses, primarily relating to the conflict between ecclesiastical and secular courts over competing claims of jurisdiction.1 One of the most voluminous topics of complaint in the fourteenth century concerned writs of royal prohibition, which prevented ecclesiastical judges from proceeding in certain legal cases.2 Another frequent topic for grievance concerned the processing of criminal clergy, their caption, and indictment.3 Other jurisdictional complaints related to criminal tithes, royal patronage, and benefices, whilst non-jurisdictional grievances included complaints against the conduct of royal officials.4 There were also a handful of anomalous grievances, mostly found in the list of 1341, relating to contemporary political developments.5 The gravamina of the thirteenth century were

1 The most comprehensive survey of the clerical gravamina can be found in Jones, ‘Bishops, Politics, and the Two Laws’. The conflict over competing jurisdictions has also been explored in Jones, ‘Relations of the Two Jurisdictions’. See also Helmholtz, Oxford History of the Laws of England; Swanson, Church and Society, 140–90. 2 PROME, January 1327, items 1, 2, 13; June 1344, item 23 (c. 5); April 1376, items 199–202, 206, 207, 209; January 1377, items 80–84; October 1377, items 119, 120, 122–23. For the list compiled in 1399, see Concilia magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. by Wilkins, iii, 240a–245b (cc. 48, 49, 51, 52, 62, 63). Also, for a complaint against limitations placed upon ecclesiastical prohibitions, see PROME, January 1352, item 63. 3 PROME, January 1327, items 10, 11; April 1341, items 19, 22, 24; June 1344, item 23 (cc. 1, 3, 7); January 1352, items 60–61, 66–68; January 1377, item 6; October 1377, items 114, 118. 4 For articles concerning the litigation of tithes, see PROME, January 1327, item 3; June 1344, item 23 (c. 7); April 1376, item 205; October 1377, items 118, 121. For articles concerning patronage and benefices, January 1352, items 12, 59, 64. For complaints against royal officials, January 1327, item 8; April 1341, items 23, 25; October 1377, items 115, 117; Concilia magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. by Wilkins, iii, 240a–245b (cc. 46, 47, 60). 5 PROME, April 1341, items 1–3, 7.

Matthew Phillips completed his PhD at the University of Nottingham in 2013. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 341–354 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118974

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usually compiled in convocation, where up to three weeks might be spent collecting the grievances for presentation to the king.6 The conciliar provenance of the lists presented in the fourteenth century is more uncertain, yet they still appear to be the product of broad consultation.7 This essay offers a case study in the effort by the clergy to exert power on a collective basis in the attempt to achieve their ends. The first half compares the clerical gravamina to a series of ‘private’, or parliamentary, petitions presented by the clergy. This focus seeks to place the clerical gravamina within a broader supplicatory context and questions the extent to which the jurisdictional conflict between secular and ecclesiastical courts reflected a dichotomy between the interests of the Church and the Crown. One of the documents examined in this chapter represents a hitherto overlooked list of clerical gravamina and sheds new light on the role played by Walter Reynolds, Archbishop of Canterbury (1313–27), in the presentation of clerical gravamina during the years 1325–27. The composition and presentation of the clerical complaints under Archbishop Reynolds forms the second half of this chapter. It will be argued below that in contrast to his ambiguous role in helping the clergy to attain the statute Articuli Cleri in 1316, Reynolds gave his support, and indeed took a lead, in the compilation and presentation of gravamina in 1325–27. However, despite the involvement of Reynolds in 1327, the clergy largely failed to monopolize on the political capital provided by the regency regime of Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer. This failure stood in stark contrast to the success of the commons in securing statutory relief to their complaints in Parliament.

‘Private’ Petitions from the Clergy In 1981, Jeffrey Denton identified petitions as an important avenue for future research that would augment our understanding of the role of the clergy in Parliament.8 Consideration below will be afforded to a comparison between the clerical gravamina and the petitions presented by what we may broadly term the ‘collective’ clergy, that is to say, petitions presented — ostensibly — for the benefit of the whole English Church. Nine such documents survive in Special Collection 8, ‘Ancient Petitions’, at the National Archives, Kew, London.9 The small number of these petitions from



6 Jones, ‘Bishops, Politics and the Two Laws’, 222 and passim. 7 It is unclear if the gravamina of 1341, 1376, and January 1377 had been compiled in convocation, since no convocation sat concurrently with parliament on these occasions. The gravamina presented in the parliament of June 1344 can be linked to the convocation held at St Paul’s in that year; see PROME, June 1344, item 1. The gravamina presented in January 1352 are likely to have been discussed in the convocation held in May the previous year, when the second year of the biennial tenth was made conditional on the redress of clerical grievances; see Weske, Convocation of the Clergy, 253. 8 Denton, ‘Clergy and Parliament’, 97. 9 The vast majority of petitions are held in Special Collection 8, ‘Ancient Petitions’, at TNA; see Dodd, Justice and Grace. A survey of this material has identified some 283 petitions presented between 1272 and 1399 by bishops alone; see Phillips, ‘Church, Crown and Complaint’, Appendix F. TNA, SC 8/340/16007, SC 8/40/1985, SC 8/277/13840, SC 8/7/346, SC 8/40/1986, SC 8/16/785, SC 8/135/6717, SC 8/19/901, SC 8/46/2285.

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the collective clergy stands in contrast to the many hundreds of petitions presented in Parliament by bishops, religious houses, and members of the lower clergy, when seeking to advance their private interests, rather than the broader, institutional interests of the Church.10 Owing to the relatively few occasions on which the clergy presented a private petition, the descriptive label used to identify the supplicants was never formalized: ‘les evesques’ (c. 1290–1307), ‘archiepiscopus, episcopi, ac ceteri prelati et clerus cantuar’ province’ (1315), ‘le ercevesque, evesques, et altres prelatz’ (1321), ‘le ercevesque e les prelatz de la province de canterbir’ (1324–25), ‘les prelatz a ceste parlement asembles’ (1325), ‘esvekes, abbes et priors’ (c. 1325–27), ‘vestri assidui et devoti prelati totus que clerus provinciae cantuariensis’ (1377), ‘ses humbles prelates et clergie de realme d’engletere’ (1378), and ‘les gents de seinte esglise d’engletere’ (1391).11 Out of these nine documents, one is actually a list of clerical gravamina, possibly the Latin original that was subsequently recorded in French on the rolls of Parliament for the assembly of January 1377.12 Another of the documents in the SC 8 series appears to be directly related to the gravamina presented in 1316, whilst a third document represents a somewhat anomalous list of clerical gravamina presented in 1325 — this latter document will be explored in more detail below.13 The remaining six petitions appear to be unrelated to any surviving list of clerical gravamina. We should begin, then, by outlining the differences between the clerical gravamina and private petitions from the collective clergy. Indeed, when they were recorded on the rolls of Parliament in the fourteenth century, the gravamina were invariably described as peticions.14 For the purpose of clarity, however, I will continue to refer to them as gravamina throughout this chapter. In fact, there were broad functional and administrative differences between the gravamina and petitions from the clergy. In terms of the administrative process by which the two forms of supplication were expedited, private petitions were presented to the receivers of petitions in Parliament and subsequently processed by the triers of petitions, whilst the clerical gravamina appear to have been passed to the king’s council for consideration with a mandate to take action upon them.15 Furthermore, whereas the gravamina sought to alter the relationship between secular and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, by beseeching the Crown to change legal procedure, alter administrative process, or issue statutory legislation, petitions typically sought remedy for specific intractable legal problems that could not be resolved at common law. Essentially, then, private petitions sought to utilize royal justice in response to specific grievances, whilst the gravamina sought to restrict

10 For petitions from religious houses, see Petitions to the Crown, ed. by Dodd and McHardy. 11 TNA, SC 8/340/16007, SC 8/40/1985, SC 8/277/13840, SC 8/7/346, SC 8/40/1986, SC 8/16/785, SC 8/135/6717, SC 8/19/901, SC 8/46/2285. 12 TNC, SC 8/135/6717; PROME, January 1377, items 80–85. SC 8 is an artificial collection and contains a number of documents that have ‘strayed’ from other collections; see Dodd, ‘Parliamentary Petitions?’. 13 TNC, SC 8/40/1985, SC 8/40/1986. 14 PROME, April 1341, item 18. 15 Denton, ‘Walter Reynolds and Ecclesiastical Politics’, 273; Calendar of Chancery Warrants, 451; Dodd, Justice and Grace, 91–107.

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the scope of royal justice and thereby ensure that a whole of series of grievances would not arise in the future. In contrast to the gravamina, the surviving petitions from the clergy each contained one complaint or request. Although a number of ‘multiple-clause’ private petitions have survived from a range of supplicants (both clerical and lay), the fact that the extant petitions from the collective clergy conveyed only a single request serves to highlight how, in the instances which gave rise to a private petition, the clergy were responding to a particular and specific cause of grievance.16 In one petition, the king was asked to attend the translation of a saint. In another, the clergy made complaint against the fiscal policies of the Crown.17 Other petitions conveyed complaints against tax collectors making undue distraints upon the clergy, against lay forces occupying churches throughout the realm, against general oppressions visited upon the clergy and the pope, and against the Archbishop of York having his cross carried before him in the province of Canterbury.18 What is notable about this rather diverse series of petitions is that only one finds parallel in an article of gravamina. The petition presented against tax collectors in the Parliament of October 1378 is broadly similar to the complaint put forward as an article of gravamina in the Parliament of 1341.19 This is not to say that the two complaints were directly related, merely that broad similarities may be observed between the type of complaint forwarded in the two forms of clerical supplication. Even in this instance, however, the comparison only goes so far. Whereas the petition presented in 1378 complained of maladministration by tax collectors with a special focus on the city of London, the gravamina of 1341 dealt with a sensitive political issue surrounding an attempt by the Crown to tax members of the clergy who had not been in attendance at Parliament. Moreover, in 1341, the clergy complained that royal officers had publicly forbade ‘all people to pay the tithe of lambs, fleeces, and sheaves to God and Holy Church’, thereby adding a secondary jurisdictional dimension to their complaint. There was little cross-over, therefore, in terms of the complaints being forwarded by the clergy in their gravamina and in their private petitions. The private petitions from the clergy differ from the gravamina in two further respects. First, it has been observed by J. R. Wright that the clerical gravamina encapsulated an insularity that promoted the concerns of the English Church to the exclusion of the interests of the papacy.20 Whilst the petitions from the clergy conform to this pattern, it is of special interest that one of these documents contained a request for the king to show deference to the pope and the Church of Rome.21 Placed within the broader context of the clerical gravamina, this petition stands

16 For ‘multiple-clause’ petitions, see Dodd, Phillips, and Killick, ‘Multiple-Clause Petitions’. 17 TNA, SC 8/277/13840, SC 8/16/785. 18 TNA, SC 8/19/901, SC 8/46/2285, SC 8/340/16007, SC 8/7/346. 19 TNA, SC 8/19/901; PROME, October 1378, item 25. 20 Wright, The Church and the English Crown, 188. 21 TNA, SC 8/340/16007.

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alone as a request made by the collective clergy explicitly promoting the interests of the papacy.22 Unfortunately, the provenance of this document is unclear, and it can be dated only roughly on the basis of the hand to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. Certainly, the advocacy of papal interests in this petition appears to be rather unique.23 However, the petition does illustrate how the clergy were not entirely averse to forwarding the interests of the papacy in their supplications, and represents an important proviso to the generalization that the English clergy were insular in their concerns.24 Another observation to emerge is that whereas in their gravamina the clergy presented a united front against the jurisdictional claims of the Crown, one of the private petitions from the clergy documents an instance of intra-Church conflict. In this petition dating to 1324–25, the clergy of Canterbury province registered a complaint against the Archbishop of York having his cross carried before him when entering and travelling throughout the southern province.25 Similar instances of intra-Church conflict are found in petitions presented by individual bishops.26 By contrast, even though on several occasions throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, clerical gravamina were presented by the clergy of Canterbury province to the exclusion of their northern brethren, the clerical grievances always represented a united front in defence of ecclesiastical interests.27 By placing the clerical gravamina within a broader context of private petitions presented by the clergy in parliament, it becomes evident that there was a disconnect between the two forms of supplication. The discrepancies outlined above are reflected more broadly in a survey of some 283 petitions presented by individual bishops in the fourteenth century. Notably, writs of prohibition, which were one of the most voluminous topics of complaint in the fourteenth-century gravamina, appear in only two of the extant petitions presented by medieval bishops in England.28 Indeed, it has been demonstrated elsewhere that the clergy were quite prepared to make use of writs of prohibition when it suited them as individual litigants.29 The evidence surveyed here thereby serves to underline the findings of existing research, which has demonstrated that whilst the clergy sought to limit the extent of the secular jurisdiction,

22 In 1344 the clergy asserted the exclusive right of the pope to judge bishops and archbishops, but this was still fundamentally a defence of the English Church rather than a promotion of papal interests, see PROME, June 1344, item 23 (c. 1). Also, see the complaint in Parliament: January 1390, item 24. 23 Although, see TNA, SC 8/5/213. For discussion, see Phillips, ‘Church, Crown and Complaint’, 138–39. 24 Wright, The Church and the English Crown, 189. 25 TNA, SC 8/7/346. 26 Phillips, ‘Church, Crown and Complaint’, 81–94. 27 In the fourteenth century the gravamina were presented in the name of the clergy from both provinces in 1344, 1352, and October 1377; whilst in 1327, 1376, and January 1377 the gravamina were presented in the name of the province of Canterbury: PROME, January 1327 (Canterbury Register, i); June 1344, item 23; January 1352, item 57; October 1377, item 112; April 1376, item 199; January 1377, item 80. 28 TNA, SC 8/146/7300, SC 8/103/5126; Phillips, ‘Church, Crown and Complaint’, 227–30. 29 Flahiff, ‘Use of Prohibitions’.

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they readily utilized royal justice to their own advantage.30 In this sense, jurisdictional conflict was ‘consumer’ driven or, as R. N. Swanson has neatly summarized: ‘The relationship between secular and spiritual courts was actually determined not by the supreme authorities in either field, but by those who sought justice.’31 Furthermore, a large body of work has demonstrated how the clergy themselves played an important role as part of the ‘supreme authority’ of the state.32 In terms of their role in royal government, of particular interest for our current discussion is the involvement of bishops in providing royal replies to clerical gravamina. For example, in 1285, the chancellor, Robert Burnell, Bishop of Bath and Wells, was assigned alongside other members of the king’s council to discuss the gravamina with the prelates.33 Similarly, in 1316, Archbishop Reynolds as a member of the king’s council ‘was in a position to determine the outcome of his own provincial clergy’s petitions [gravamina] to the king’.34 This seems to indicate a stark divide between secularist clergy who promoted the rights of the Crown, and the sacerdotalist clergy who stood in defence of ecclesiastical liberties. However, the evidence drawn from the gravamina of 1325, explored below, demonstrates how even a committed secularist such as Walter Reynolds could, on occasion, adopt a sacerdotalist position. Overall, this opening section has illustrated the complexity of the relationship between the Church and Crown in late medieval England, and indeed, between members of the clergy themselves. As such, the following discussion surrounding the ‘successes’ and ‘advances’ of the clergy in relation to their gravamina in the early fourteenth century should be interpreted with this broader context in mind.

The Clerical gravamina in the Early Fourteenth Century Archbishop Walter Reynolds has been denigrated by chroniclers and historians alike for failing to stand up to the demands of the Crown over taxation, and also for failing to provide the clergy with the strong leadership offered by his predecessor, Robert Winchelsey.35 This interpretation seems to be at odds with the significant, indeed, unprecedented advances made by the clergy in their jurisdictional conflict with the Crown during the archiepiscopacy of Walter Reynolds. Since both the scale of the ‘victories’ for the clergy and the degree of leadership provided by Archbishop Reynolds remain open to question, the issues surrounding the presentation of clerical grievances in 1316 and 1327 will form the focus of the subsequent discussion.

30 Flahiff, ‘Use of Prohibitions’, 101; Jones, ‘Relations of the Two Jurisdictions’, 88–89; Swanson, Church and Society, 185–86; Dodd, Justice and Grace, 224. 31 Swanson, Church and Society, 185. 32 For a theoretical consideration of the episcopate’s role as royal judges, see Dodd, ‘Reason, Conscience and Equity’. 33 Richardson and Sayles, ‘The Clergy in the Easter Parliament’, 226; Jones, ‘Bishops, Politics and the Two Laws’, 220–21. 34 Denton, ‘Walter Reynolds and Ecclesiastical Politics’, 273. 35 Wright, The Church and the English Crown, 241–49.

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First, then, to what extent did the clergy secure substantial jurisdictional concessions from the crown under Archbishop Reynolds? In terms of the gravamina of January 1316, this question has already been addressed in detail by Jeffrey Denton. Notably, Denton has questioned the extent to which the resulting statute, Articuli Cleri, issued as letters patent on 24 November 1316, addressed the prevailing concerns of the clergy.36 Indeed, Denton has gone so far as to suggest that the statute was issued in ‘defence of the interests of royal government’, highlighting how the clergy had presented twenty-one articles of gravamina at the Parliament of January 1316, yet only six of these articles were addressed by the resulting statute.37 This interpretation builds upon the work of Richardson and Sayles, who demonstrated how the content of the Articuli was largely derived from the gravamina presented in 1280 and 1309.38 Similarly, W. R. Jones observed that seven of the statute’s thirteen chapters merely worked to confirm concessions that had been granted to the clergy on previous occasions.39 Additional support for Denton’s argument is provided by the finding, explored below, that by the mid-1320s Edward II withheld the possibility of offering further jurisdictional concessions beyond those contained in the statute of 1316. The Articuli Cleri, therefore, represented an exercise in consolidation more than the provision of new concessions, and on this basis, the statute represented only a limited advance for the Church in terms of the jurisdictional conflict with the Crown. However, this interpretation is challenged somewhat by the apparent value placed upon the statute by the clergy themselves. Aside from the fact that there were a handful of new concessions granted in 1316, Jones has emphasized the important development in 1316 whereby royal replies to the gravamina were given statutory form.40 Indeed, having the concessions embodied in a statute appears to have been explicitly requested by the clergy on the basis that the replies given by the king’s council ‘were of little or no effect’.41 Furthermore, the clergy appear to have regarded the statute of 1316 more highly even than subsequent legislation such as the statute Pro Clero drawn up in 1352.42 Notably, the clerical gravamina compiled in 1399 asked for the Articuli Cleri to be confirmed, alongside the liberties granted to the Church in Magna Carta, as well as the writ Circumspecte Agatis, which clarified the limits of secular jurisdiction under Edward I.43 Therefore, although the contents of the Articuli Cleri may have been something of a disappointment to the clergy, the form of the royal concessions as statutory legislation resists the conclusion that the clergy would have regarded the statute as a defence of royal interests.

Denton, ‘The Making of the Articuli Cleri’, 564–65. Denton, ‘The Making of the Articuli Cleri’, 569–71, 585. Richardson and Sayles, ‘The Clergy in the Easter Parliament’, 230–34. Jones, ‘Bishops, Politics, and the Two Laws’, 224–25. Jones, ‘Relations of the Two Jurisdictions’, 96. Denton, ‘Walter Reynolds and Ecclesiastical Politics’, 264; TNA, SC 8/40/1985; printed in Richardson and Sayles, ‘The Clergy in the Easter Parliament’, 203 n. 1. 42 Statutes of the Realm, ed. by Luders and others, i, 324. 43 Concilia magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. by Wilkins, iii, 243 (cc. 44–45). For the writ Circumpecte Agatis, see Graves, ‘Circumspecte Agatis’; Millon, ‘Circumspecte Agatis Revisited’. 36 37 38 39 40 41

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The next occasion on which the clergy presented their gravamina under Walter Reynolds was in the Parliament of January 1327, the first Parliament of Edward III under the regency government of Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer.44 On this occasion, the clergy received positive replies from the Crown for eight of the thirteen grievances they presented. This was a more significant advance than in 1316, even after it is acknowledged that most of these complaints were not new and eleven of the thirteen articles of grievances presented in 1327 can be located in the pre-1316 lists of gravamina.45 Yet, the extent of clergy’s success is open to question on two grounds: first, the royal replies were not drawn up as a statute; and second, many of the outstanding grievances that had been raised by the clergy in June 1316, and deferred by the Crown for future consideration, were not repeated in 1327. This suggests that the clergy failed to monopolize on the opportunity provided by a regency regime that needed to consolidate its political support. As we have already seen, in 1316 the clergy had placed great importance on having the royal replies to their gravamina embodied in a statute. The failure of the clergy in 1327 to repeat their earlier success stands in stark contrast to the achievements of the Commons in this area. At the start of their regency, Isabella and Mortimer sought to gain support from the Lords and Commons in Parliament by offering ‘fundamental and far-reaching legislation’, with the Commons going so far as to insist that the text of the common petitions, alongside the resulting statutes, should be circulated throughout the counties.46 This suggests that the Commons were successful in precisely the same area where the clergy had failed. The contrasting fortunes of the clergy and the Commons are complicated, however, by the inclusion of two clerical concerns among the body of common petitions. These related to the confiscation of episcopal temporalities and royal presentation to prebends and churches under Edward II. In these areas, at least, the clergy can be said to have gained some form of statutory remedy.47 The very success of the clergy in the areas addressed by the common petitions — which differed from the gravamina owing to their focus on specific action taken by the deposed Edward II — reiterates the more general failure of the clergy in 1327. It was only by going through the Commons that the clergy appear to have been able to gain some form of statutory remedy.48 The broader supplicatory context in 1327, therefore, appears to place the clergy on the lower tier of a two-tier petitionary system. It is possible that the clergy gained some reassurance that the jurisdictional concessions offered at the assembly would be upheld on the basis of the Guildhall oath, taken on the feast of St Hilary, 13 January, where those assembled promised to support the ordinances of the Parliament in session made to the honour of God and 44 PROME, January 1327 (Canterbury Register, i), items 1–13. 45 For the repetition of pre-1316 gravamina, see Wright, The Church and the English Crown, 192 n. 81. 46 Ormrod, ‘Agenda for Legislation’, 11; Ormrod, Edward III, 59; PROME, January 1327 (C 65/1); Statutes of the Realm, ed. by Luders and others, i, 252–57. 47 PROME, January 1327 (C 65/1), item 5; Statutes of the Realm, ed. by Luders and others, i, 255–57 (cc. 2, 10). 48 For the regency regime’s response to private petitions, see Harris, ‘Taking your Chances’.

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Holy Church and for the benefit of the whole people.49 Indeed, the complaints raised by the clergy in 1327 do not appear to have been repeated throughout the rest of the fourteenth century, which perhaps speaks to the efficacy of the royal replies.50 Yet, given that the Commons took extra precaution to ensure the widespread dissemination of the legislation offered in January 1327, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the clergy failed to capitalize on the prevailing political conditions. The extent of the clergy’s success in 1327 can be questioned in one further respect. Even though the clergy attained a greater number of positive replies to their gravamina than had been the case in 1316, it is surprising that so few of the outstanding grievances from 1316 were repeated in 1327. A substantial number of the grievances presented in 1316 were deferred for consideration at a later date, having received the royal reply: ‘ideo in proximo parliamento ut supra’.51 The inclusion on the Canterbury Register of two complaints presented in 1327 with no corresponding royal reply suggests that the gravamina listed on the manuscript represent all of the issues that were raised by the clergy for discussion on that occasion. It is significant, therefore, that the clergy chose to repeat only two of the unanswered grievances that had been presented in 1316. Not only, then, did the clergy fail to monopolize on the events of 1327, but they appear to have approached the issues surrounding jurisdictional conflict with a sense of moderation and caution. As we have seen, both the years 1316 and 1327 witnessed mixed fortunes for the clergy in their jurisdictional conflict with the Crown. It remains to consider the role of Archbishop Reynolds in these developments. On the basis of Denton’s analysis, Archbishop Reynolds did little to support the sacerdotalist position advanced by his lower clergy in 1316, and indeed, he may have actively stood in opposition to it. Owing to illness, Reynolds was not present at the convocation of the clergy in Lincoln when the clergy put forward their gravamina. Indeed, the archbishop apparently played a greater role in responding to the clerical grievances for the king than he did in their composition.52 Certainly, subsequent negotiations over clerical taxation suggest that the lower clergy and Reynolds were in opposition during this period.53 In at least one important respect, however, Archbishop Reynolds may have helped to advance the sacerdotalist position. There was a delay between the Lincoln Parliament of January 1316, and the drawing up of the Articuli Cleri as letters patent in November later that year. During this intervening period, the clergy exerted pressure on their archbishop for the royal replies to their gravamina to be drawn up as a statute, with the Articuli Cleri eventually being issued by the king following the grant of a tenth

49 Haines, Church and Politics, 172. 50 Both c. 11 of 1327 and c. 2 of 1344 cover the problem of clerks accused of bigamy, and although the complaint is not repeated verbatim, it is essentially the same, see PROME, January 1327 (Canterbury Register, i), item 11; June 1344, item 23. 51 Items deferred for later consideration included 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21; see Denton, ‘The Making of the Articuli Cleri’, Appendix. 52 See above. 53 Denton, ‘Walter Reynolds and Ecclesiastical Politics’, 264–69.

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from both provinces of the English Church.54 As highlighted above, it was the form of the royal concessions in 1316, rather than the extent of the grievances redressed, that held special value for the clergy. At the very least, therefore, Reynolds acting in the dual capacity of Archbishop of Canterbury and royal councillor appears to have played a role in helping to secure the all-important statutory form for the jurisdictional concessions granted by the Crown. Reynolds’s support for the sacerdotalist position in 1327 seems more certain than in 1316. Perhaps the strongest evidence in favour of this interpretation is provided by a list of clerical gravamina, hitherto overlooked, that appears to have been presented in the Parliament of June 1325.55 The content of this document is consistent with the types of issues that were typically raised in the gravamina. Four out of the five requests covered overtly jurisdictional issues, and one of these grievances had been presented in 1316 and was repeated again in the gravamina presented in 1327.56 Curiously, however, the clerical complaints were composed in French — the language typically used in the drafting of private petitions — rather than Latin. A further question mark hangs over the purpose of the document, moreover, owing to the inclusion of a final request which asked the king to provide a response to the articles given in previous parliaments ‘sur les fraunchises et les fraunches custumes de Seynte Esglise’ (concerning the liberties and free customs of the Holy Church).57 Although it was not uncommon for the clergy to repeat grievances that had been presented on previous occasions, such as in 1309 when the clergy repeated seven articles from 1280, this type of blanket request asking the king to provide remedy for unarticulated outstanding grievances is found in no other list of clerical gravamina.58 The unusual nature of the gravamina presented in June 1325 appears to be explained by the political conditions during the last years of Edward II. Apparently, the king had forbade Archbishop Reynolds from holding convocation after 1323, thereby eliciting a protest from the archbishop in the form of a letter to the king, wherein Reynolds complained that he was unable to obtain redress for his clergy’s grievances as a result of the royal policy.59 This letter, dated 20 January 1326, suggests that the clergy took the decision in June of the previous year to present their gravamina in the form of a private petition in Parliament, hence the unusual characteristics of the clerical complaints. Despite their attempt to circumvent the obstacles that stood in the way of gaining redress, Reynolds and his clergy received a dilatory response 54 Denton, ‘Walter Reynolds and Ecclesiastical Politics’, 266, 269. 55 This petition can be usefully added to the list of gravamina compiled by Jones, ‘Bishop, Politics and the Two Laws’, 240–43; TNA, SC 8/40/1986. Denton dates the petition to the last years of Edward II on the basis that the petition contained a complaint against bishops who had lost their temporalities: Denton, ‘The Making of the Articuli Cleri’, 595 n. 1. The Parliament of June 1325 commends itself as the assembly at which the petition was presented, since the clergy’s complaint related to bishops who had not been allowed to attend Parliament, Parliamentary Writs, ed. by Palgrave, ii.2, 328–33. 56 TNA, SC 8/40/1986 (item 3); Denton, ‘The Making of the Articuli Cleri’, 595; PROME, January 1327 (Canterbury Register, i), item 4. 57 TNA, SC 8/40/1986 (item 6). 58 For 1309, see Concilia magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. by Wilkins, ii, 315–22. 59 Edwards, ‘Political Importance of the English Bishops’, 340 n. 5; TNA, SC 1/49/92.

A rc h b i sho p Walt e r Re y no ld s

from the Crown. One complaint was dismissed on the basis that ‘la ley de la terre en certein en cieu point’ (the law of the land is certain on such points), whilst another complaint concerning the £100 fine for escaped felons was rejected because ‘le roi ne se pas uncore avises de chaunger les usages ne les leys usees en sa terre en cieu cas’ (the king is still not advised to change the uses nor the law used in his land in such cases).60 The gravamina of 1325, and the context in which they were presented, thereby tend to reinforce the picture provided by chroniclers, who accused the clergy of being unable to stand up to the Crown during the 1320s and made reference to attacks made against the liberties of the Church and the prelates.61 The problems facing the clergy in terms of finding remedy for their gravamina correlate with broader political trends in the mid-1320s. Mark Ormrod has highlighted how little legislative relief was offered to the Commons during the last years of Edward II. Indeed, in parallel with the clergy, the Commons complained that their complaints, put forward in Parliament, were frequently adjourned with urgent business left unresolved.62 In the past, Archbishop Reynolds has been frequently cast as a moderate, whose archiepiscopacy was characterized by cooperation with the Crown. That the archbishop was forced to adopt what must have been, for him, an uncomfortably confrontational stance in 1325–26 works to underline the sense of alienation and discontent with royal government during Edward II’s years of ‘tyranny’.63

Conclusion The opening discussion of this chapter explored the disconnect between the clerical gravamina and a number of private petitions presented by the ‘collective’ clergy. Placing the gravamina within this broader supplicatory context has revealed a variety of concerns that dominated the thoughts of the clergy beyond issues of jurisdictional conflict. Although a comprehensive survey of petitions from the lower clergy would help us better to understand how representative of clerical concerns the gravamina truly were, the picture outlined above is very much supported by the relatively large number of private petitions presented by individual bishops. Whilst the gravamina clearly represented issues of genuine concern, this chapter generally works to underline the position that we should be wary about drawing from the gravamina too sharp a dichotomy between the interests of Church and state. Furthermore, although the gravamina represent a continuation of the sacerdotalist tradition that had been determinedly pursued during the thirteenth century, here too, caution should be employed when considering the divergence of interests between the sacerdotalist and secularist clergy. In particular, Archbishop Reynolds, whose unfavourable

60 TNA, SC 8/40/1986 (items 2, 3). The latter rejection was in contrast to the more favourable response received by the clergy in 1327; see PROME, January 1327 (Canterbury Register, i), item 4. 61 Flores Historiarum, ed. by Luard, 210; Chronicon Henrici Knighton, ed. by Lumby, 439. 62 Ormrod, ‘Agenda for Legislation’, 9. 63 Fryde, Tyranny and Fall.

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historical reputation owes largely to his secularist position, assumed an active role in seeking the advance the sacerdotalist position in 1325–27 when he took a lead in the presentation of the clerical gravamina. Similarly, although his role in 1316 is more uncertain, he may have helped to secure the royal grant of jurisdictional concession in the all important statutory form. It seems somewhat peculiar that it was under Archbishop Reynolds that the clergy secured important advances for the sacerdotalist position. Despite his secularist leanings, favouring harmonious relations with the Crown, in 1325 and 1326, Reynolds adopted an uncharacteristic, confrontational position and opposed Edward II on the issue of clerical gravamina. Interestingly, and true to his reputation for seeking to avoid conflict with the Crown, Archbishop Reynolds appears first to have sought to circumvent the royal embargo on jurisdictional concessions by presenting a list of clerical complaints in the form of a private petition. When this strategy failed to yield results, Reynold was forced to face the problem head-on by confronting the king in a letter. This evidence goes some way towards supporting Wright’s rehabilitation of the archbishop and suggests that Reynolds was willing to take a stand when pushed too far. That said, the results of Reynolds’s involvement may have been a mixed blessing for the sacerdotalists. The gravamina of 1327, in stark contrast to the common petitions, seem to be characterized by caution, if not outright temerity. A broader discussion surrounding the continuation, development, and waning of the clerical gravamina throughout the rest of the fourteenth century after 1327 must be left for another occasion. It is perhaps worth highlighting here, however, that the events of 1327 demonstrate how the clergy stood to gain by forming an alliance of interest with the Commons in their attempts to exercise collective power. The advantages of forging broader political alliances in Parliament were to be demonstrated in a much more profound manner during the crisis of 1341 and the ensuing conflict between Archbishop John Stratford and King Edward III.64 These examples highlight a missed opportunity for the clergy to play a more active role in Parliament. The contrasting fortunes of the common petition and the gravamina, after the link between the supply of taxation and the redress of grievances was established in 1340, were, at least in part, the result of the clergy’s self-imposed political isolation by resisting attendance in Parliament.65 Examples of petitions from regional clerical communities provide some evidence of the desire of the lower clergy to act collegiately in order to gain redress in Parliament. By avoiding fuller participation in Parliament, the clergy confined themselves to the lower tier of a two-tier supplicatory system dominated by the Commons, effectively limiting their own collective power.

64 Haines, Archbishop John Stratford, 312–18. See also PROME, April 1341, item 9. 65 Ormrod, Edward III, 145.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Calendar of Chancery Warrants, 1244–1326 (London, 1927) Chronicon Henrici Knighton vel Cnitthon Monarchi Leycestrensis, ed. by J. L. Lumby, vol. i, RS, 92 (London, 1889) Concilia magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. by D. Wilkins, 4 vols (London, 1737) Flores Historiarum, ed. by H. R. Luard, vol. iii, RS, 95 (London, 1890) Parliamentary Writs and Writs of Military Summons, ed. by F. Palgrave, 2 vols (London, 1827–34) Petitions to the Crown from English Religious Houses, c. 1272–c. 1485, ed. by G. Dodd and A. K. McHardy (Woodbridge, 2010) Statutes of the Realm, ed. by A. Luders and others, 11 vols (London, 1810–28) Secondary Studies Denton, J., ‘Walter Reynolds and Ecclesiastical Politics, 1313–1316: A Postscript to “Councils & Synods, II”’, in Church and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to C. R. Cheney on his 70th Birthday, ed. by C. N. L. Brooke and others (London, 1976), 247–74 Denton, J. H., ‘The Clergy and Parliament in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, in The English Parliament in the Middle Ages, ed. by R. G. Davies and J. H. Denton (Manchester, 1981), 88–108 ———, ‘The Making of the Articuli Cleri of 1316’, EHR, 101 (1986), 564–95 Dodd, G., Justice and Grace: Private Petitioning and the English Parliament in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford, 2007) ———, ‘Parliamentary Petitions? The Origins and Provenance of the “Ancient Petitions” [SC 8] in The National Archives’, in Medieval Petitions: Grace and Grievance, ed. by W. M. Ormrod, G. Dodd, and A. Musson (Woodbridge, 2009), 12–46 ———, ‘Reason, Conscience and Equity: Bishops as the King’s Judges in Later Medieval England’, History, 99 (2014), 213–40 Dodd, G., M. Phillips, and H. Killick, ‘Multiple-Clause Petitions to the English Parliament in the Later Middle Ages: Instruments of Pragmatism or Persuasion?’, JMH, 40 (2014), 176–94 Edwards, K., ‘The Political Importance of the English Bishops during the Reign of Edward II’, EHR, 59 (1944), 311–47 Flahiff, G. B., ‘The Use of Prohibitions by Clerics against Ecclesiastical Courts in England’, MedSt, 3 (1941), 101–16 Fryde, N., The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II, 1321–1326 (London, 1979) Graves, E. B., ‘Circumspecte Agatis’, EHR, 43 (1928), 1–20 Haines, R. M., Archbishop John Stratford: Political Revolutionary and Champion of the Liberties of the English Church ca. 1275/80–1348 (Toronto, 1986)

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———, The Church and Politics in Fourteenth-Century England: The Career of Adam Orleton, c. 1275–1345 (London, 1998) Harris, S. J., ‘Taking your Chances: Petitioning in the Last Years of Edward II and the First Years of Edward III’, in Medieval Petitions: Grace and Grievance, ed. by W. M. Ormrod, G. Dodd, and A. Musson (Woodbridge, 2009), 173–92 Helmholtz, R. H., The Oxford History of the Laws of England: The Canon Law and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction from 597 to the 1640s (Oxford, 2004) Jones, W. R., ‘Bishops, Politics, and the Two Laws: The Gravamina of the English Clergy, 1237–1399’, Speculum, 41 (1966), 209–45 ———, ‘Relations of the Two Jurisdictions: Conflict and Cooperation in England during the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 7 (1970), 79–210 Millon, D., ‘Circumspecte Agatis Revisited’, Law and History Review, 2 (1984), 105–27 Ormrod, W. M., ‘Agenda for Legislation, 1322–c. 1340’, EHR, 105 (1990), 1–33 ———, Edward III (Stroud, 2005) Phillips, M., ‘Church, Crown and Complaint: Petitions from Bishops to the English Crown in the Fourteenth Century’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Nottingham, 2013) Richardson, H. G., and G. O. Sayles, ‘The Clergy in the Easter Parliament, 1285’, EHR, 52 (1937), 220–34 Swanson, R. N., Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989) Weske, D. B., Convocation of the Clergy: A Study of its Antecedents and its Rise, with Special Emphasis upon its Growth and Activities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London, 1937) Wright, J. R., The Church and the English Crown, 1305–1334: A Study Based on the Register of Archbishop Walter Reynolds (Toronto, 1980)

Melanie Brunner

The Power of the Cardinals: Decision-Making at the Papal Curia in Avignon

In 1324, a letter to King James II of Aragon summarized a description of how politics was conducted at the papal court, suggesting that it was the practice of the curia to assume that two were better than one, and three better than two, so whenever the pope had important business he called two or more cardinals, depending on the nature of the affair.1 While this statement cannot be taken at face value, it raises a number of important points about papal government: the importance of the cardinals in the political structure of the curia, the collective nature of at least some decision-making processes, and the rather ill-defined nature of what exactly the cardinals were supposed to be doing. The cardinals fulfilled a wide variety of roles in ecclesiastical politics, but one of their main functions was to provide advice to the pope. Their power derived to a large extent from their relationship with the pope, and this gave them a formal role in papal government and both formal and informal influence on the development of papal policy.2 While there have been many studies of the College of Cardinals, its development and legal status, as well as the relationship between individual popes and their cardinals,3 the structural role of the College as a whole in papal decision-making







1 ‘Qui respondit [Ubertino], quod melius videbant duo, quam unus, et tres quam duo, quod iste erat modus curie Romane. Nam papa, quando habebat aliquod arduum negocium tractare, vocabat duos vel plures cardinales secundum qualitatem negocii.’ From a letter of Ferrarius de Apilia to James II of Aragon: Acta Aragonensia, ed. by Finke, ii, no. 393, 614–18, at 617. 2 For some general discussions of curial government in the fourteenth century, see Lützelschwab, Flectat cardinales ad velle suum?; Anheim, Beattie, and Lützelschwab, ‘Die Kardinäle des avignonesischen Papsttums’; Plöger, England and the Avignon Popes; seminal for the topic is still Guillemain, La Cour pontificale. 3 For a general survey of the role of the cardinals, see most recently Dendorfer and Lützelschwab, Geschichte des Kardinalats. See also Mollat, ‘Contribution’; Ganzer, ‘Der ekklesiologische Standort’; Watt, ‘Constitutional Law’; and Zacour, ‘Cardinals’ View of the Papacy’. Melanie Brunner is Lecturer in Medieval Studies and Project Editor for the International Medieval Bibliography at the University of Leeds. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 355–369 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118975

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processes has rarely been addressed directly. That the cardinals played an important role in papal government which extended to decision-making seems obvious, but the details of how this worked in practice can be hard to pin down. The pontificate of John XXII (1316–34) provides a good case-study of the role of the cardinals; there is ample documentation for consultations, committees, and the different ways of doing politics during his long and eventful reign.4 There are even some examples of individual cardinals having a measurable impact on papal policy, by forcing or persuading the pope to adopt a policy he might not otherwise have considered. During the debates about the Franciscan poverty ideal in the 1320s, for instance, John XXII circulated a draft version of the final bull Cum inter nonnullos among at least some of the cardinals. This document was meant to put an end to the debate, and it was carefully drafted and planned. Much longer than the final version, the draft included a discussion of the Franciscan concept of the simple use of fact. And we do have one cardinal’s reaction to the proposed bull, probably that of the Franciscan Bertrand de la Tour, in the form of a detailed commentary on this draft. This report seems to have convinced the pope that the question of the simple use of fact did not need to be addressed in the bull, and when the pope published Cum inter nonnullos in November 1323, it no longer referred to that concept.5 If influence can be described as the ‘transmission of information that changes other actors’ behaviors by changing their perceptions’,6 then Bertrand de la Tour’s report on the draft version of the papal bull provides a text-book example of influence exercised during a crucial part of the decision-making process. Such examples do, however, risk obscuring some of the more structural aspects of the power of the cardinals. In such instances, power can be defined and analysed as the ability to determine (or at least influence) the actions of others, but the cardinals’ influence on papal policy was often more subtle than that: the power of cardinals cannot just be measured in terms of whether they could impose their opinions on a pope, either individually or as a group.7 This is especially true if it is taken into account that any assessment of this type of influence would depend on accurately identifying the aims of all actors before examining to what extent and how they achieved their goals. As modern discourse on power has shifted away from the question of who holds power to questions of the forms and operations of

4 The main summary of the life and pontificate of John XXII is still Valois, ‘Jacques Duèse’ although his view of the pope has been nuanced considerably in recent years. For more recent discussions of the pope, see Schmidt and Rohde, Papst Johannes XXII. and Fournié, Jean XXII et le Midi. 5 For a discussion of the cardinal’s report and its attribution to Bertrand de la Tour, see Nold, Pope John XXII and his Franciscan Cardinal, 119–39 with reference to BAV, MS Vat. lat. 3740, fols 45rb–50va. An edition can be found in Nold, Pope John XXII and his Franciscan Cardinal, 178–94. See also DuvalArnould, ‘La Constitution Cum inter nonnullos de Jean XXII’ and Duval-Arnould, ‘Élaboration d’un document pontifical’. 6 Knoke, Political Networks, 11. The literature on power and decision-making is vast, and no attempt is made here to include an exhaustive bibliography. 7 For a concise summary and definition of the differences between power and authority, see Barry, Introduction to Modern Political Theory, esp. 81–82. On medieval ideas about power in their ecclesiastical and political context, see Canning, Ideas of Power.

the power of the cardinals: decision-making at the papal curia in avignon

power, it has become clearer that power is situational and not necessarily inherent in people or institutions.8 The curial processes of decision-making constituted both the institutional framework for enacting and displaying power and a space for individuals to negotiate power relationships. Power is a relational rather than absolute concept,9 and it depends on a productive tension between political structures and individual agency.10 As can be seen from the brief examples of James II’s informants and the role of Bertrand de la Tour in the debate about Franciscan poverty, influence and power originate in communities of social discourse and are fundamentally about communication.11 This essay therefore analyses the structural role of the cardinals in ecclesiastical government during the Avignon period, bearing in mind that this can only be done through an analysis of the practice of government,12 and that this practice involved both political structures and the individuals who interacted with and manipulated those structures. The focus is on the decision-making process as it played out in negotiations and deliberations at the papal court itself; other types of power and influence exercised by the cardinals, such as their role as papal electors or legates, are outside the scope of this study. The College of Cardinals had grown out of three different groups of clerics with primarily liturgical functions in the city of Rome and at the papal court. By the twelfth century, the College had developed into one of the major instruments of ecclesiastical government, taking on political, juridical, and administrative functions, including the exclusive right to elect the pope.13 While there was a certain amount of consensus that the Roman Church was a corporation with the pope as its head and the cardinals as its members, and that major decisions ideally included the input of both, the exact relationship between the pope and the cardinals, and the extent and limits of their respective powers, remained ambiguous and contested. There was no consensus on the extent to which a pope was obliged to seek advice from the cardinals before making a decision, or whether decisions taken without the cardinals’ advice and (implicit) consent were valid.14 Linked to that was the equally unresolved question as to whether, even if the pope was obliged to seek the counsel of the cardinals, this

8 Knoke, Political Networks, 2, and Brown, ‘Power after Foucault’, 67. See also Mann, Sources of Social Power, 6–7. 9 Barry, Introduction to Modern Political Theory, 100. 10 On the relationship between structure and agency, see Dowding, ‘Agency and Structure’ and Marsh and Smith, ‘Understanding Policy Networks’. 11 Knoke, Political Networks, 4. 12 On this point, see Felten, ‘Verhandlungen an der Kurie’, 420. 13 For surveys of the development of the College of Cardinals, see Ganzer, ‘Der ekklesiologische Standort’; Lulvès, ‘Machtbestrebungen des Kardinalats’; and Broderick, ‘Sacred College of Cardinalsʼ. The right to elect the pope conferred another and different kind of power on the cardinals which is outside the scope of this article; similarly the complication of the power relationships between pope and College because of the pope’s role in the creation of new cardinals will also not be addressed here. 14 See Zacour, ‘Cardinals’ View of the Papacy’ and Paravicini Bagliani, ‘“De fratrum nostrorum consilio”’.

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compelled him to act on their advice.15 Nevertheless, the cardinals were intimately involved in papal government, both individually and collectively, and rejection of any legal obligation to secure their consent did not necessarily imply a rejection of the importance of seeking their advice. The cardinals each occupied the same position in relation to the pope in what has been described as an ‘influence network’; each of them maintained the same structural relations to the pope and to other network actors at the curia and beyond.16 There was an ongoing tension between the fact that, structurally, the cardinals were indistinguishable on relational grounds and, individually, each competed for power within the network, while at the same time needing to protect its status as a whole.17 In some ways, the structural equivalence of the cardinals can be seen in the efforts by secular rulers to cultivate friends in the College,18 as well as in the numerous attempts by the Aragonese kings of the early fourteenth century to ensure the appointment of an Aragonese cardinal, a campaign which only succeeded in 1356.19 The cardinals’ privileged access to the pope made them valuable for secular rulers and religious institutions alike. Access to any cardinal for the type of information and support only a cardinal could provide was therefore very important, and having this type of access was in many ways more important than which specific cardinal provided it, although some individual cardinals were clearly more effective and better connected than others.20 This does not necessarily mean that the cardinals provided exactly the type of information and support their friends and patrons were hoping for, and their role as conduits of information provided the cardinals with influence and power precisely because they could be selective in how they disseminated, manipulated, or withheld privileged information. Before 1356, a number of cardinals received a handsome retainer to look after Aragonese interests at the curia by lobbying the pope and keeping the court in Barcelona informed of important developments and the latest gossip. The most prominent of these was Napoleone Orsini, who had been created cardinal by Pope Nicholas IV in 1288, and who developed and retained an active interest in Aragonese affairs throughout his career.21 Once Nicholas Rosell was appointed cardinal in

15 Zacour, ‘Cardinals’ View of the Papacy’, 428–29, suggests that decisions about the finances of the Church or the alienation of Church property were the exception in that they needed the explicit consent of the cardinals. On the complicated question of the (potential) obligation of a pope to seek the advice and consent of his cardinals, see also Wood, Clement VI, 104–19. 16 See Knoke, Political Networks, 11–12. On a similar discussion of the equivalence of cardinals in structural terms, despite the clear differences between individual cardinals in terms of their dignitas, see Lützelschwab, Flectat cardinales ad velle suum?, 29. 17 This can most clearly be seen in the electoral capitulations of 1352. For a brief summary, see Anheim, Beattie, and Lützelschwab, ‘Die Kardinäle des avignonesischen Papsttums’, 279–80. See also Wood, Clement VI, 104–05, and more generally Lulvès, ‘Machtbestrebungen des Kardinalats’. 18 Felten, ‘Verhandlungen an der Kurie’, 468. See also Lützelschwab, Flectat cardinales ad velle suum?, 37. 19 On the first Aragonese cardinal, see Vincke, ‘Nikolaus Rosell’. 20 See Lützelschwab, Flectat cardinales ad velle suum?, 29. 21 On the significance of Napoleone Orsini for Aragonese policy at the curia, see most recently Schmidt, ‘“Pestilens domus Aragonum”’, esp. 352–54.

the power of the cardinals: decision-making at the papal curia in avignon

1356, he took on the role of passing information about developments at the curia to King Pere IV, and he began lobbying the pope on behalf of the king. As the cardinal pointed out in a 1357 letter to the king, he did his best to intervene on the monarch’s behalf during a consistory meeting which discussed the alliance between the Iberian kings and the Muslim ruler of Granada, as well as the conflict between Aragon and Genua. He claimed access to both the meeting and the opinions and knowledge of his brother-cardinals and passed a detailed account of the discussion in consistory back to the king.22 It was important for any ruler to have access to this type of insider support and information, even if Pere IV could never be entirely sure to what extent he was able to rely on the accuracy and effectiveness of his cardinal. Even an ineffective friend at the papal curia was better than not having one at all, as from a structural point of view, it did not really matter which cardinal was the king’s special friend at the curia, as long as he had such a friend. In a similar way, the office of cardinal protector of a religious order had become, by the fourteenth century, a way for orders to have a voice at the curia and access to information from meetings to which their direct representatives would not be formally invited; cardinal protectors both represented the orders’ interests at the papal court and ensured papal oversight and discipline in the orders.23 In terms of actual decision-making, the main venue for both the formal and informal participation of the cardinals in government was the consistory meeting, access to which was highlighted in Nicholas Rosell’s letter to Pere IV. Popes and cardinals met regularly in consistory to deliberate about the business of the Church, and by the fourteenth century these meetings had become part of the standard procedure of curial government and administration.24 The meetings fulfilled a wide variety of functions, providing a forum, among other things, for the creation of new cardinals, the reception of ambassadors, canonization proceedings, appeals, and judicial proceedings; they have been described as functioning to all intents and purposes as a permanent synodal committee and therefore providing the type of decision-making venue that was otherwise characteristic of councils and synods.25 Consistories could be open, when other prelates and even lay people could be present, or secret, when only the cardinals and the pope were involved. In many cases, both public and secret consistories were very formal and scripted; the actual deliberations and decisions had already taken place, and the consistory meetings provided the space for the official announcement of the decision. This was generally the case with consistories announcing a canonization or the creation of a new cardinal, for

22 For an edition of the letter, see Vincke, ‘Nikolaus Rosell’, 170–73. On the significance for papal policy, see most recently Leonhard, Genua und die päpstliche Kurie. 23 On the early history and development of the office of cardinal protector, see Faber, ‘Gubernator, protector et corrector’ and Andenna, ‘Il cardinale protettore’. 24 For a discussion of the role and development of consistories, see Noethlichs, ‘Das päpstliche Konsistorium’. See also Ganzer, ‘Der ekklesiologische Standort’, 118. For a medieval view of the consistory, see especially the papal ceremonial of Jacopo Stefaneschi: Dykmans, Le Cérémonial papal, ii, 422–25. 25 Ganzer, ‘Der ekklesiologische Standort’, 120.

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instance.26 During the actual decision-making process, meetings tended to be held behind closed doors and with a limited number of participants, something that is hinted at in the information passed on by the Aragonese informant of James II about the curial habit of consulting two or three cardinals before making any decisions.27 There is ample evidence for consistory meetings taking place during the pontificate of John XXII. References to the discussion of papal policy in consistories can be found in the case of the divorce of Charles of Valois and Bianca of Burgundy in 1322,28 in the debates about the Greek schism and potential Church union in 1324 and 1333,29 and in a 1323 report of the Aragonese informant Ferrarius de Apilia on a debate about how to deal with Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian, whose election to the imperial throne was never recognized by John XXII. This particular letter is interesting as it reports a brief but heated discussion between the pope and two of the cardinals who opposed his uncompromising policy against Ludwig.30 Among other things, then, the consistory also provided a space for dissent and opposition. There are also numerous references to the consistory meetings that dealt with the question of apostolic poverty; these can be found in the written reports submitted to the pope in 1322–23,31 as well as in some of the papal letters themselves.32 The most extended discussion of a consistory meeting during this particular controversy is contained in an interpolation to the Italian translation of the so-called chronicle of Nicolaus Minorita, which describes two meetings in the spring of 1322.33 This text

26 On the difference between consilium (the deliberations) and consistorium (the public announcement of the decision), see Noethlichs, ‘Das päpstliche Konsistorium’, 275, 287. See also also Lützelschwab, Flectat cardinales ad velle suum?, 25–26, for a discussion of the creation of new cardinals under Clement VI. 27 For the significance of the public enactment of the process of consultation, even if the decision had already been reached, see Althoff, Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter, 166, 171, 183; and more recently Althoff, Kontrolle der Macht, esp. 11–27. 28 Vitae paparum Avenionensium, ed. by Baluze, iii, 356–71 (the reference to the contributions of the cardinals in consistory can be found at 359), and Annales Ecclesiastici, ed. by Mansi, v, for 1322, no. 28, 192. See also Esch, Die Ehedispense Johanns XXII., 47–48, and Acta Aragonensia, ed. by Finke, ii, no. 512, 825–27 for an example. 29 Annales Ecclesiastici, ed. by Mansi, v, for 1324, no. 40, 287; and for 1333, no. 17, 553 (where John XXII referred to discussions with the cardinals in consistory in a letter to Andronikos III Palaiologos). 30 Acta Aragonensia, ed. by Finke, i, no. 262, 393–96, especially 395. The two cardinals quoted verbatim in the letter were Jacopo Stefaneschi and Peter Colonna; they were also supported by Napoleone Orsini. 31 See for instance the contributions of Galhard Saumade, Archbishop of Arles, ‘per ea que tam per s(anctitatem) u(estram) quam per plures dominos prelatos et magistros in theologia pridie in consistorio et alias alegata fuerunt’: Duval-Arnould, ‘Les Conseils remis à Jean XXII’, 172, and Giacomo da Fusignano, Bishop of Lucera, ‘quia congregationibus dominorum prelatorum et magistrorum in theologia infirmitate grauatus interesse non potui, ipsorum responsiones non audiui’: ibid., 158. See also the report by the Archbishop of Bremen which begins with the words ‘Superfluum reputans que tam copiose tacta sunt in consistorio repetere’: ibid., 173. 32 Such as the introduction to Quia nonnumquam ‘in fratrum nostrorum ac multorum archiepiscoporum episcoporum et aliorum prelatorum necnon multorum professorum utriusque iuris et multorum sacre theologie magistrorum presentia, dum consistorium teneremus’: Extrauagantes Iohannis XXII, ed. by Tarrant, 220. 33 The text has been edited in Storia di fra Michele Minorita, ed. by Zambrini, 61–82.

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cannot have been compiled before the 1380s, but the interpolation itself has usually been interpreted as being based on an eyewitness report, partly because, despite its hostility to the pope, its portrayals of some of the Franciscan prelates are less than flattering. Despite this, it has generally been assumed that its author was a Franciscan or Franciscan sympathizer.34 While the complex nature of the text presents problems for the use of its lively description of the discussions, the text itself does testify to the importance of the meetings themselves, and to the significance of being able to participate in the discussions in order to influence the decision-making process. Both for the pope and for the cardinals, this could clarify the options available, identify possible problems, and (potentially) overcome opposition. Consistory meetings played an integral part in the process of decision-making at all levels, and they were particularly important in producing and enacting consent. A large part of these negotiations went on in private (often, but not necessarily, in secret) before the decision-making became public, which allowed for the sounding out of opinions and the gathering of advice. One of the things that distinguished the cardinals from other advisors was that they could offer what has been called authoritative advice: their recommendations, although obviously not amounting to commands, were more than advice, and the pope needed to take their recommendations into account even if he ultimately rejected them.35 At its most formal, the authoritative nature of the cardinals’ counsel is reflected in the papal bulls resulting from the process through the formula de fratrum nostrorum consilio. The formula is an indication not only of the cardinals’ involvement in the process of decision-making, but also of their consent. It implied that the decision was taken on the cardinals’ advice, and that pope and cardinals were acting together in its resolution.36 It was the cardinals working in conjunction with the pope who validated the proceedings and the decisions taken.37 An example of these processes can be seen in the curial consultation about whether the French King Charles IV should be granted a crusading tenth, which he had requested in late 1322.38 Throughout John’s pontificate, there were discussions about

34 There has been very little discussion of the identity of the author of the Italian interpolation, or of its relationship to the chronicle of Nicolaus Minorita. Karl Müller has suggested that the interpolation is at least based on an eyewitness account, especially as the story it presents is, in its main outlines, confirmed by the chronicle of Nicolaus Minorita, and he has speculated that the interpolation may have been transferred into the Italian translation from another (lost) account of the poverty controversy: see Müller, ‘Einige Aktenstücke’, 66–67. Müller’s account is still the most extensive discussion of the text; see ibid., 65–67. The most recent discussion of the chronicle itself can be found in Mierau, ‘Die sog. “chronica n. minorita”’. 35 See Watt, Authority, 12, on the auctoritas of the Roman senate. 36 Lulvès, ‘Machtbestrebungen des Kardinalats’, 79, and Zacour, ‘Cardinals’ Views of the Papacy’, 428, with reference to Gregory X’s letter Ubi periculum (1274) for which the cardinals had been consulted, but which they did not approve. 37 Stollberg-Rillinger, Cultures of Decision-Making, 24, and Watt, Authority, 97. 38 On this proposal and its curial discussion, see Housley, ‘Franco-Papal Crusade Negotiations’. The king’s letter and the cardinals’ responses can be found in Lettres secrètes et curiales du pape Jean XXII, ed. by Coulon and Clémencet, ii, nos 1562, 1693–1709, cols 184–95, 283–318.

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requests for crusading tenths by a number of French and Iberian kings.39 Decisions whether to grant the right to collect such a tax were always hampered by the amount of variables involved, in terms of logistics, finances, dates, and the possible impact of expeditions that were too short, too small, or otherwise unsuccessful. This uncertainty was compounded by increasing curial scepticism about the commitment of the various rulers to an actual crusade, rather than their commitment to securing money which could then be spent elsewhere. Both in the present and in the past, decision-making at its most basic involves isolating possible courses of action, and the choosing of, and committing to, one of these alternatives.40 As decision-makers are now, cardinals and pope were, however, bound by a number of constraints that had an influence on decisions, independent of the issue at hand, such as structural constraints on the decision-making process in the form of the institutions and cultural norms involved, as well as facing ambiguous and poorly defined problems, and incomplete information; they also had limited time, resources, and skills.41 In 1323, the consequences of the alternatives before the cardinals were and remained unclear, as they depended on interlocking variables and the cardinals’ best guesses about the king’s real intentions. Discussion of the request began in a consistory meeting where the pope raised the issue, and it continued in the written reports submitted by the cardinals to John XXII.42 Their seventeen reports reflect these tensions, and they are in turn reflected in the pope’s cautious answer. But while individual cardinals by no means agreed on what exactly they thought of the proposal and how John should respond to it, the papal answer nevertheless drew heavily on the cardinals’ written reports. Moreover, it has been suggested that the degree of concurrence between the responses of the cardinals is a sign that discussion amongst them was carried on informally outside the consistory meeting during which the issue had been raised formally.43 Debates about policy occurred not just in consistory meetings but across the papal palace, in both formal and informal settings, and discussions could move from consistory to other venues and back. In the case of a potential reunion of the churches, a letter by Marino Sanudo to the Byzantine emperor, Andronikos III Palaiologos, described informal discussions held at the curia, involving some of the cardinals, the pope’s nephew Petrus de Via, King Robert of Naples, and representatives of the French nobility.44 Not all of these meetings could or did lead 39 See for instance the request by all kings of the Iberian Peninsula for help against the Saracens in 1330 (Annales Ecclesiastici, ed. by Mansi, v, for 1332, no. 10, 530) or James II of Aragon’s request for a crusading tenth in 1320 (Acta Aragonensia, ed. by Finke, iii, no. 164, 345–51). 40 Stollberg-Rillinger, Cultures of Decision-Making, 7. 41 See Forester, ‘Bounded Rationality’, 24. 42 Raising a complex issue in consistory and then requesting written reports was a standard feature of John XXII’s decision-making process. See for instance the case discussed in Nold, Marriage Advice for a Pope, esp. lx–lxi. 43 Zacour, ‘Cardinals’ Views of the Papacy’, 426–27, and Housley, ‘Franco-Papal Crusade Negotiations’, 174, 177. 44 Annales Ecclesiastici, ed. by Mansi, v, for 1324, no. 40, 287: ‘Propterea frequenter colloquium hujusmodi cum pluribus dominis Cardinalibus, et cum excellenti domino Rege Roberto, et cum aliquibus principibus regni Franciae, et etiam cum domino Petro de Via nepote domini Papae’.

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to tangible policy outcomes and quantifiable influence on specific decisions, but the cardinals were nevertheless intimately involved with the development of policy and the decision-making process. The communication structures at the curia linked the pope and his cardinals (as well as other advisors) into a community of social discourse,45 and this underpinned the cardinals’ more formal role in validating decisions taken in consistory. The sharing and evaluation of information was an essential part of the decision-making process and was therefore integral to the influence wielded by the cardinals at the curia. The theoretical poverty controversy in the 1320s involved the full apparatus of papal consultation and decision-making: consistory meetings, formal and informal discussions, the gathering of formal written reports for the pope, and a number of papal bulls which announced the decision taken by John XXII.46 The controversy is also very well documented and therefore provides a good case-study for the assessment of the consultation process at work, in terms of both the contributions of individual participants and the significance of the structures in place at the curia. On an individual level, much of the advice was not enormously helpful to the pope, and the written reports in particular vary in length, quality, and coherence, while some of the authors clearly tried to avoid committing themselves.47 Taken together, the discussions in consistory and the written reports showed, however, that, even if there was no consensus about the definition of evangelical poverty, the non-Franciscan participants in the debate shared an unease about the Franciscan concept of the absolute poverty of Christ and the apostles. And there was certainly no appetite among the non-Franciscans to go out of their way to defend the Franciscan position. At the papal court, as well as in most other political entities, policy was always a ‘bargained outcome’,48 which ideally bound (or at least reconciled) participants to the final decision whether or not they agreed with it. Because political systems need ambiguity if bargains are to be negotiated,49 the transition between deliberation, negotiation, and decision often remains fluid,50 and this fluidity is apparent in the poverty debate, both in the records of discussions at the curia, the written reports

45 See Knoke, Political Networks, 4. 46 On the poverty controversy, see Nold, Pope John XXII and his Franciscan Cardinal; Lambert, Franciscan Poverty; and most recently Miethke, ‘Papst Johannes XXII.’. On consultation processes under John XXII more generally, see also Nold, Marriage Advice for a Pope; Boureau, Le Pape et les sorciers; and Duval-Arnould, ‘Les Conseils remis à Jean XXII’. 47 Such as Johannes Gaetani Orsini who argued that his knowledge of Scripture was insufficient to give an opinion, ‘nec me suficere uideo in ipsis ualeam prout optarem debitum consilium impertiri, maxime cum in diuina pagina non adeo sum imbutus’: Duval-Arnould, ‘Les Conseils remis à Jean XXII’, 156, and Arnaud de Pellegrue, the Franciscan Cardinal Protector, who declared that he did not have an opinion and trusted the pope to make the right decision. In the margin of the table of contents, the pope drily remarked ‘Iste non dedit consilium’: ibid., 155. 48 Gordon, Lewis, and Young, ‘Perspectives on Policy Analysis’, 7. 49 Minogue, ‘Theory and Practice’, 16. 50 Stollberg-Rillinger, Cultures of Decision-Making, 8, 25. See also Felten, ‘Verhandlungen an der Kurie’, 464–65, for a similar point.

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compiled for John XXII, and the intervention of non-curial actors.51 The production of consent therefore went beyond getting everyone to agree, and to some extent it implied more than just agreement, while at the same time often falling short of acceptance. Although individual papal decisions often remained highly controversial, the process of decision-making aimed at least in part to ensure that the participants felt involved and bound by its proceedings. It was therefore important to be included in the process and to be among the cardinals consulted in the preparation of papal policy. This nonetheless came with its own risks: not only did participation in procedures that were meant to bring about a decision bind the participants to a decision they potentially disliked, it could also constrain their future actions and autonomy.52 Participation in the process lent legitimacy to the outcome,53 but it also implied acceptance of the result in advance, independent of what that result might turn out to be.54 The consultation about Franciscan poverty included practically anyone who was present at the curia in spring 1323, and in the end even the two Franciscan cardinals involved seem to have felt bound by the decision, no matter how much they had argued against the papal definition of Franciscan poverty during the consultation process. Overall, the process was meant to bind participants to the decision-making process and its outcome, and what has been called the ‘mechanisms for the aggregation of preferences’ can be shown to have an impact on the strategies of the actors involved.55 The structure of the consultations at the papal court, with their formal and informal discussions and written reports, had an impact on the ways in which decisions were reached and how participants acted in order to achieve a favourable outcome. And it was in the discussion inside and outside consistory that the cardinals sought allies and developed their strategies.56 The meetings therefore not only had an influence on, and were influenced by, the relationship between the pope and the cardinals, they were also an important venue for enacting the relationships of the cardinals with one another. Some individual cardinals were clearly more involved in the process of decision-making than others, and while the cardinals could act as a collective entity, especially when the status of the College as a whole was at stake, the College of Cardinals was also characterized by internal rivalries and divided loyalties. It did not therefore necessarily present just one opinion, and it is important to remember that

51 One of the most important non-curial interventions is the publication of the so-called letters of Perugia by the Franciscan general chapter of 1322. See Bartoli Langeli, ‘Il manifesto francescano’. 52 Sikora, ‘Der Sinn des Verfahrens’, 43. Participants in consultations were well aware of the pitfalls; an example of an unsuccessful attempt to avoid being involved in a consultation process can be found in a personal account by the later Pope Benedict XII. The account has been edited in Maier, ‘Eine Verfügung Johanns XXII.’, 62–63. 53 Krischer, ‘Problem des Entscheidens,’ 36. 54 Sikora, ‘Der Sinn des Verfahrens’, 48, and Stollberg-Rillinger, ‘Einleitung’, 9. 55 Dowding, ‘Agency and Structure’, 21–23. 56 While the letters of the Aragonese envoys, procurators, and informants at the papal court need to be treated with a certain amount of caution, they are valuable precisely because they provide us with a picture of these processes in action, as the letters describe, construct, and intervene in these processes and strategies. For one example of the complex interactions involved, see Acta Aragonensia, ed. by Finke, ii, no. 391, 609–10.

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when a papal bull refers to the consilium of the cardinals, this advice might have been contradictory. Again, this can be seen most clearly in the consistory debates and written consilia presented by the cardinals during the debate about theoretical poverty. During the discussion of the question of the poverty of Christ, the two Franciscan cardinals Bertrand de la Tour and Vital du Four found themselves isolated in the College, in part because they defended their order’s position rather than following the consensus of the rest of the cardinals. The extent of this consensus should not be overstated, but the cardinals did not on the whole support the Franciscan position that Christ and the apostles had renounced common property rights. Nonetheless, when John XXII turned on one of the Franciscan cardinals during a particularly stormy consistory meeting, accusing him of lying and asking him whether he had any further ‘fatuities’ to add to his previous remarks, the College closed ranks against the pope and forced an end to the meeting.57 The College, though composed of competing individuals, thus protected its corporate status against both the pope and external actors. The College of Cardinals assembled in consistory provides us with a snapshot of political culture at the curia in Avignon.58 It shared in the authority of the pope, and although it can be hard to define and quantify the influence of the pope’s advisors on papal policy, this type of influence, and also the right to exercise it, was a form of power that was nonetheless real for being ill-defined and often informal.59 In the discussion of whether agency or structure is the defining feature of policy networks, it has been argued that the structure of an organization will affect the outcome, independent of the preferences of the actors, but it is important to keep in mind that it is the agents who use and interpret the structures and who over time can change the framework.60 Political systems operate as social networks, and curial decision-making involved a relatively small and closed group of people in a very confined space.61 The cardinals occupied a shared position in relation to the pope and other network actors; individually and collectively, they provided advice to the pope and acted as conduits of information to other curial actors. They were important in the political process because of their access to, and dissemination of, information, gossip, and rumour; and these two aspects of the cardinals’ influence were interdependent. Information was one of the currencies of power, and the ability to access, share, or withhold information was an important aspect of political influence at the curia. Information, including gossip, was an important political resource, not just at the curia, and demonstrating access to, and consumption of, information had a powerful actual and symbolic value.62 Decision-making and the

57 Storia di fra Michele Minorita, ed. by Zambrini, 75–76. 58 Carpenter, ‘Introduction’, 9. For the use of the term in historical enquiry more generally, see Formisano, ‘Concept of Political Culture’. 59 See Watt, Authority, 13, for a similar point. 60 Dowding, ‘Agency and Structure’, 21–23. 61 Knoke, Political Networks, 7. See also Mann, Sources of Social Power, 14–16, on criticism of a unitary conception of society and the importance of understanding the ‘diversity of intersecting networks of social interaction’ (16). 62 See Forester, ‘Bounded Rationality’, 27, and Krischer, ‘Problem des Entscheidens’, 55. An example of this can be found in Acta Aragonensia, ed. by Finke, ii, no. 501, 800–801.

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development of papal policy occurred against a background of interactions between and amongst the advisors and groups of advisors, both with and against each other, with and against the pope, and with and against the structures of deliberation in place at the papal court. Political culture can be defined as the formal and informal codes of conduct which govern political action; it constituted the public and private framework of politics and consisted of the institutional structures and the beliefs that governed how these structures were formed and how they operated, as well as the day-to-day politics which interacted with these structures.63 The framework of politics was set both by the institutions and structures already in place, and by the agenda of individual popes — the pontiff was the one who shaped the debate, if only because he was asking the questions. Overall, however, it was the way in which cardinals interacted with both the structure and the individuals populating it that made up political culture at Avignon.

Works Cited Manuscripts BAV, MS Vat. lat. 3740 Primary Sources Acta Aragonensia: Quellen zur deutschen, französischen, spanischen, zur Kirchen- und Kulturgeschichte aus der diplomatischen Korrespondenz Jaymes II. (1291–1327), ed. by H. Finke, 3 vols (Berlin, 1908–22) Annales Ecclesiastici ab anno MCXCVIII ubi desinit Cardinalis Baronius auctore Odorico Raynaldo, ed. by J. D. Mansi, 38 vols (Lucca, 1738–56) Extrauagantes Iohannis XXII, ed. by J. Tarrant (Vatican City, 1983) Lettres secrètes et curiales du pape Jean XXII (1316–1334) relatives à la France, ed. by A. Coulon and S. Clémencet, 4 vols (Paris, 1899–1972) Storia di fra Michele Minorita come fu arso in Firenze nel 1389 con documenti riguardanti i fraticelli della povera vita: Testi inediti del buon secolo, ed. by F. Zambrini (Bologna, 1864) Vitae paparum Avenionensium, ed. by É. Baluze, rev. G. Mollat, 4 vols (Paris, 1917–27) Secondary Studies Althoff, G., Kontrolle der Macht: Form und Regeln politischer Beratung im Mittelalter (Darmstadt, 2016) ———, Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter: Kommunikation in Frieden und Fehde (Darmstadt, 1997) Andenna, C., ‘Il cardinale protettore: Centro subalterno del potere papale e intermediario della communicazione con gli ordini religiosi’, in Die Ordnung der Kommunikation und

63 For this definition, see Hoak, ‘Introduction’, 1.

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Forester, J., ‘Bounded Rationality and the Politics of Muddling Through’, Public Administration Review, 44 (1984), 23–31 Formisano, R. P., ‘The Concept of Political Culture’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 31 (2001), 393–426 Fournié, M., ed., Jean XXII et le Midi (Toulouse, 2012) Ganzer, K., ‘Der ekklesiologische Standort des Kardinalskollegiums in seinem Wandel – Aufstieg und Niedergang einer kirchlichen Institution’, Römische Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte, 88 (1993), 114–33 Gordon, I., J. Lewis, and K. Young, ‘Perspectives on Policy Analysis’, in The Policy Process: A Reader, ed. by M. Hill, 2nd edn (Harlow, 1997), 5–9 Guillemain, B., La Cour pontificale d’Avignon, 1309–1376: Étude d’une société (Paris, 1962) Hoak, D., ‘Introduction’, in Tudor Political Culture, ed. by D. Hoak (Cambridge, 1995), 1–10 Housley, N. J., ‘The Franco-Papal Crusade Negotiations of 1322–3’, Papers of the British School at Rome, 48 (1980), 166–85 Knoke, D., Political Networks: The Structural Perspective (Cambridge, 1990) Krischer, A., ‘Das Problem des Entscheidens in systematischer und historischer Perspektive’, in Herstellung und Darstellung von Verfahren: Verfahren, Verwalten und Verhandeln in der Vormoderne, ed. by B. Stollberg-Rillinger and A. Krischer (Berlin, 2010), 35–64 Lambert, M. D., Franciscan Poverty: The Doctrine of the Absolute Poverty of Christ and the Apostles in the Franciscan Order 1210–1323, 2nd edn (St Bonaventure, NY, 1998) Leonhard, J., Genua und die päpstliche Kurie in Avignon (1305–1378): Politische und diplomatische Beziehungen im 14. Jahrhundert (Bern, 2013) Lulvès, J., ‘Die Machtbestrebungen des Kardinalats bis zur Aufstellung der ersten päpstlichen Wahlkapitulationen’, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 13 (1910), 73–102 Lützelschwab, R., Flectat cardinales ad velle suum? Clemens VI. und sein Kardinalskolleg: Ein Beitrag zur kurialen Politik in der Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 2007) Maier, A., ‘Eine Verfügung Johanns XXII. über die Zuständigkeit der Inquisition für Zauberei’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 22 (1952), 226–46; repr. in Ausgehendes Mittelalter: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Geistesgeschichte des 14. Jahrhunderts, ed. by A. Maier and A. Paravicini Bagliani, 3 vols (Rome, 1964–77), ii, 59–80 Mann, M., The Sources of Social Power, vol. i, A History of Power from the Beginning to a.d. 1760, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2012) Marsh, D., and M. Smith, ‘Understanding Policy Networks: Towards a Dialectical Approach’, Political Studies, 48 (2000), 4–21 Mierau, H. J., ‘Die sog. “chronica n. minorita”: Rezeptionswege und das sich wandelnde Bild von Johannes XXII.’, in Papst Johannes XXII.: Konzepte und Verfahren seines Pontifikats, ed. by H.-J. Schmidt and M. Rohde (Berlin, 2014), 427–65 Miethke, J., ‘Papst Johannes XXII. und der Armutsstreit’, in Angelo Clareno francescano: Atti del XXXIV Convegno internazionale Assisi, 5–7 ottobre (Spoleto, 2007), 263–313 Minogue, M., ‘Theory and Practice in Public Policy and Administration’, in The Policy Process: A Reader, ed. by M. Hill, 2nd edn (Harlow, 1997), 10–29 Mollat, G., ‘Contribution à l’histoire du sacré collège de Clément V à Eugène IV’, Revue d’histoire ecclesiastique, 45 (1951), 22–112 and 566–94

the power of the cardinals: decision-making at the papal curia in avignon

Müller, K., ‘Einige Aktenstücke und Schriften zur Geschichte der Streitigkeiten unter den Minoriten in der ersten Hälfte des 14. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 6 (1884), 63–112 Noethlichs, S., ‘Das päpstliche Konsistorium im Spiegel der Quellen des 11. bis 13. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung, 125 (2008), 272–87 Nold, P., Marriage Advice for a Pope: Pope John XXII and the Power to Dissolve (Leiden, 2009) ———, Pope John XXII and his Franciscan Cardinal: Bertrand de la Tour and the Apostolic Poverty Controversy (Oxford, 2003) Paravicini Bagliani, A., ‘“De fratrum nostrorum consilio”: La plenitudo potestatis del papa ha bisogno di consigli?’, in Consilium: teorie et pratiche del consigliare nella cultura medievale, ed. by C. Casagrande (Firenze, 2004), 181–94 Plöger, K., England and the Avignon Popes: The Practice of Diplomacy in Late Medieval Europe (London, 2005) Schmidt, H.-J., ‘“Pestilens domus Aragonum”: Papst Johannes XXII. und die Könige von Aragón’, in Papst Johannes XXII.: Konzepte und Verfahren seines Pontifikats, ed. by H.-J. Schmidt and M. Rohde (Berlin, 2014), 343–94 Schmidt, H.-J., and M. Rohde, eds, Papst Johannes XXII.: Konzepte und Verfahren seines Pontifikats (Berlin, 2014) Sikora, M., ‘Der Sinn des Verfahrens: Soziologische Deutungsangebote’, in Vormoderne politische Verfahren, ed. by B. Stollberg-Rillinger (Berlin, 2001), 25–51 Stollberg-Rillinger, B., Cultures of Decision-Making (London, 2016) ———, ‘Einleitung’, in Vormoderne politische Verfahren, ed. by B. Stollberg-Rillinger (Berlin, 2001), 9–31 Valois, N., ‘Jacques Duèse, pape sous le nom de Jean XXII’, in Histoire Littéraire de la France, 42 vols (Paris, 1865–1995), xxxiv, 391–630 Vincke, J., ‘Nikolaus Rosell O.P., Kardinal von Aragon’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 14 (1944), 116–97 Watt, E. D., Authority (London, 1982) Watt, J. A., ‘The Constitutional Law of the College of Cardinals: Hostiensis to Joannes Andreae’, MedSt, 33 (1971), 127–57 Wood, D., Clement VI: The Pontificate and Ideas of an Avignon Pope (Cambridge, 1989) Zacour, N. P., ‘The Cardinals’ View of the Papacy, 1150–1300’, in The Religious Roles of the Papacy: Ideals and Realities, 1150–1300, ed. by C. Ryan (Toronto, 1989), 413–38

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Helen J. Nicholson

Negotiation and Conflict: The Templars’ and Hospitallers’ Relations with Diocesan Bishops in Britain and Ireland

It is a commonplace of medieval history that diocesans and metropolitans were in constant conflict with the exempt religious orders of the Church.1 From the second decade of the twelfth century onwards, a succession of papal privileges exempted the military religious orders from the authority of the diocesan bishops, as a means of enabling these orders to increase their income and allow them to discharge their functions more effectively.2 The Templars’ and Hospitallers’ exemptions in particular have attracted detailed study.3 This chapter will focus on these privileged orders in Britain and Ireland, considering how they used the privileges granted by the papacy to achieve power and authority and how this led them into conflict with diocesan bishops. Nevertheless, the interests of these two groups did not necessarily conflict with each other; positive, constructive relations also existed. The privileges and exemptions given to the new military-religious orders in the first half of the twelfth century set them outside episcopal authority. They were exempted from paying tithes on their own produce; they were permitted to celebrate private Masses in places under interdict, elect their superior without outside interference, build churches and cemeteries on their own land, and approach whichever bishop they preferred to consecrate their churches and ordain their clergy. They could also recruit a confraternity of supporters who would make annual donations and who would be buried in their consecrated ground even if the area were under interdict,

1 Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism, 132–34; Forey, Military Orders, 115, 237; Schenk, Templar Families, 79, citing Prutz, Entwicklung und Untergang, 27, 40–41; Morton, Medieval Military Orders, 116–17. 2 Forey, Military Orders, 113–14; García-Guirarro Ramos, ‘Exemption’; Housley, Avignon Papacy, chap. 8; Kennan, ‘Innocent III, Gregory IX and Political Crusades’. 3 Forey, Military Orders, 123, 127; Riley-Smith, Knights Hospitaller, 157–70; Barber, New Knighthood, 56–61; Carraz, L’Ordre du Temple, 462–78; Demurger, Les Templiers, 108–19; Demurger, Chevaliers du Christ, 91–95; Schenk, Templar Families, 79–85 (positive relations); Vones, ‘“… contra episcopalem auctoritatem multa praesumunt …”’; Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, 123–27. Helen J. Nicholson is Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff University. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 371–389 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118976

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provided these supporters were not personally under interdict.4 At the Third Lateran Council (1179) the Templars’ and Hospitallers’ exemptions came under heavy criticism: delegates especially objected to their possession of churches and exemption from paying tithes. The council declared that the exemption applied only to the produce of lands acquired moderno tempore, in modern times, but Pope Alexander III — who was dependent on the support of the exempt orders (Templars, Hospitallers, and Cistercians) — went on to define this as the previous ten years.5 At the same time, bishops gave property to these orders, and many episcopal registers indicate that peaceful relations were the norm. Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester (1129–71), confirmed to the Hospitallers land at Godsfield in Hampshire, where the Hospitallers developed a commandery, and gave them his hospital of Holy Cross in Winchester.6 Matthew Paris depicted the saintly Bishop Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln (1235–53) in lengthy and fruitless dispute with the Templars, Hospitallers, and other exempt orders over their privileges; yet Bishop Robert not only instituted the Templars’ and Hospitallers’ presentees to their churches without objection, but also allowed the Order of the Temple to have the parish church of Rothley in Leicestershire, under certain conditions.7 In 1279, Walter Giffard, Archbishop of York (1266–79), gave the Hospital the church of St Felix, referring to the brothers’ hospitality, honour, and support for the downtrodden poor and their constant and generous liberality.8 Alexander Bicknor, Archbishop of Dublin (1317–49), gave the Hospitallers the parish church of Rathmore in County Kildare, with its chapels, tithes, and obventions, for the support of pilgrims and the necessities of the poor.9 In 1480 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bourchier, urged his suffragans to instruct their clergy to invite their congregations to donate to the Hospitallers’ defence of the island of Rhodes.10 Jochen Schenk has pointed out that some bishops were enthusiastic supporters of the Order of the Temple, urging their clergy to allow the brothers to preach in their churches and make collections for the Holy Land.11 Damien Carraz has suggested that the bishops encouraged these new orders because (like the later mendicant orders) they would support Church reform and provide pastoral care.12 Even the less enthusiastic would have realized that the Templars ‘enjoyed widespread local

4 Papsturkunden für Templer und Johanniter, ed. by Hiestand, 204–10, no. 3, 214–15, no. 8, 216–17, no. 10, 257, no. 57, 260–61, no. 61; CH, i, 29, no. 30, 95–96, no. 113, 101–02, no. 122, 107–08, no. 130, 173–75, no. 226. 5 CH, i, 385–86, no. 566; Gerald of Wales, ‘Speculum Ecclesiae’, 205. 6 ‘House of Knights Hospitallers’, 187; ‘Hospitals: St Cross’, 193–94; Knights Hospitallers in Medieval Hampshire, ed. by Beard, xx–xxi. 7 CM, v, 97–98; Rotuli Roberti Grosseteste, ed. by Davis, 6, 44, 46, 76, 81, 91, 94, 97, 114, 118, 145, 148, 155, 156, 183, 241, 245, 271, 273, 301, 313, 324, 470, 511; Rotuli Ricardi Gravesend, ed. by Davis, 162–63. 8 Register of Walter Giffard, ed. by Brown, 47–48. 9 MacNeill, ‘Hospitallers at Kilmainham’, 20. 10 O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, 101, citing Lunt, Financial Relations, ii, 592. 11 Schenk, ‘Aspects and Problems’, 282–86, and see 275. 12 Carraz, ‘Templars and Hospitallers’, 113, cited by Schenk, ‘Aspects and Problems’, 284; Carraz, ‘Expériences religieuses en contexte urbain’, 55.

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support’ and that they needed to work with them.13 The Templars acquired a large network of appropriated churches across England and Ireland, donated largely by kings, Matilda of Boulogne (d. 1152, wife of King Stephen), and eminent secular nobles such as William Marshal, Robert de Ferrers, and Roger de Mowbray.14 The Hospitallers in England were also well endowed with churches: around a hundred after 1313, when they acquired the Templars’ former churches.15 When bishops gave churches, this could be merely a recognition of an earlier secular gift. Bishop Grosseteste’s donation of Rothley church followed King Henry III’s of the manor of Rothley to the Templars in 1231; likewise, in 1318 Thomas, Earl of Kildare, gave the Hospitallers land at Rathmore, the advowson of the church, and the chapels pertaining to it, so that Archbishop Bicknor’s donation only acknowledged what had already been done.16

Parochial Rights and Duties In making these donations, bishops took care to ensure that these privileged orders would play the role they intended for them, and they insisted on their rights of visitation of churches. Nevertheless, in common with other exempt religious orders, the Hospitallers and Templars withstood these claims, leading to disputes that sometimes erupted into physical violence.17 Paolo Virtuani has examined one such case that arose in the province of Dublin in the early 1260s.18 In 1259 or 1260 Fulk de Sandford, Archbishop of Dublin (1256–71), investigated the ownership of the church of Stachfythenan (Tippenenan/Whitehouse in County Kildare) and issued an inspeximus confirming that it was held by the Hospitallers. Yet when the rector died shortly afterwards the archbishop claimed the right to appoint a replacement, and in 1262 his clerk, conducting a visitation of the diocese, claimed the right of visitation of the church. An ‘armed multitude’ opposed him, including at least one armed Hospitaller. Unable to gain access, the archbishop’s clerk excommunicated the armed men, except for the Hospitaller, and laid the church under interdict.19 The case rapidly escalated to challenge the Hospitallers’ rights throughout the province. Archbishop Fulk appealed to Pope Urban IV, who set up a commission to investigate. Virtuani notes that the archbishop had already granted this church that he did not yet control to ‘an Italian clergyman’, Bonefacius

13 Schenk, ‘Aspects and Problems’, 281. 14 Nicholson, Knights Templar on Trial, 218–49; the Templars’ appropriated churches in England and Ireland are discussed in Nicholson, ‘Evidence of the Templars’ Religious Practice’. 15 O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, 101. 16 Knowles and Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses, 295; ‘House of Knights Templar’; Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 301 (inspeximus of 1318 confirmation). 17 Schenk, ‘Aspects and Problems’, 286–87, 289–92. For the background and basis of episcopal visitations of religious houses, see Cheney, Episcopal Visitation, 19–26. 18 Virtuani, ‘Unforgiveable Trespasses’, 200–204. 19 Virtuani, ‘Unforgiveable Trespasses’, 202.

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de Coronato, nephew of a cardinal. He suggests: ‘Fulk saw the opportunity to add extra weight to his claim by bringing in powerful allies from the papal curia.’ The Hospitallers fought back, refusing to cooperate with the commission. Not until 1269 was a final settlement agreed, and the archbishop was condemned to pay the legal costs and lift all interdicts and excommunications on the church. Virtuani suggests that the Hospitallers had employed in their defence documents issued to them in the 1250s by Pope Alexander III, which particularly emphasized their exemption from episcopal visitation.20 The case illustrates the Hospitallers’ determination and legal skill in defending their privileges. They used similar means to defend their property against secular landowners, even their patrons: stalling, appealing to the papal court, and repeatedly citing the privileges granted to them by the papacy.21 Sometimes the parties attempted negotiation. On 3 December 1501 Charles Booth or Bothe, vicar-general of William Smythe, Bishop of Lincoln, held a meeting at St Paul’s Cathedral in London with Brother Thomas Newport, knight, treasurer, and lieutenant-prior of the Hospitallers in England, Nicholas West, ‘conservator of their privileges’, and other members of the Order of St John, to discuss the brothers’ infringements of episcopal jurisdiction in Leicester archdeaconry.22 The Hospitallers claimed the right to this jurisdiction in Little Dalby, Rotherby, and Rothley, stating that they held this privilege by the authority of the apostolic see. They claimed that all their ‘customary tenants’ were under their jurisdiction and that they held the rights of correction of morals and proof of wills. When asked to define ‘customary tenants’, Thomas Newport said that they held their tenancies from the Hospitallers by copy, or indenture, or at will, ‘who are commonly called: “Hoole tenaunts of Saint John’s”.’ The bishop’s case against the brothers comprised three specific areas. First, it was alleged that chaplains holding commanderies absolved excommunicated persons and granted certificates of absolution. The Hospitallers replied that their privileges did not extend so far, and it was not their intention that chaplains should absolve excommunicants unless on the point of death, ‘and that only in regard to conscience, but not to courts of law’. Second, the Hospitallers’ chaplains performed clandestine marriages ‘without publication of banns and within the prohibited degrees’. The Hospitallers replied that they did not intend such things to be done and asked for details so that the offenders could be punished. Third, some of the Hospitallers’ commissaries claimed the privilege of granting probate on wills of persons who died in houses on which the Hospitallers’ cross had been placed — their tenants or associates. The Hospitallers replied that they had no right to prove wills except those of their tenants. In short, the Hospitallers claimed that those who had been carrying 20 Virtuani, ‘Unforgiveable Trespasses’, 204. 21 Nicholson, ‘Margaret de Lacy’. 22 Registrum Caroli Bothe, ed. by Bannister, ii, vii, citing (n. 7) Churton, Lives, 185–88. Churton’s source (188 n. i) is ‘Reg. Linc. f. 124’ — presumably Lincoln, Lincolnshire Archives (057), Episcopal Register of Bishop William Smith, reference DIOC/REG/23, fol. 124. For the parties in the case, see Newcombe, ‘Booth, Charles’; Bowker, ‘Smith, William’; O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, 353 (Brother Thomas Newport); Heal, ‘West, Nicholas’; Phillips, Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, 83, 84, 85, 88, 90, 169.

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out these practices had been overstepping their privileges. Nevertheless, they stood by their claim to jurisdiction, and Brother Thomas Newport and Nicholas West requested a time and place when they could present their privileges and immunities. Booth said he would consult the bishop to arrange this, but the bishop’s register does not record another meeting.23 Booth and the Hospitallers clashed again twenty years later. Booth was now Bishop of Hereford, an office he held between 1516 and 1535.24 Booth’s registers record that the Hospitallers at the former Templar commanderies of Upleadon and Garway had overstepped their privileges in several respects, including the issues that had arisen in the cases already described.25 At Upleadon, where the bishop was the rector of the parish church (in the neighbouring village of Bosbury), the Hospitallers and their people had always paid tithes. The firmarii (officers in charge of the manor) and inhabitants of the Hospitallers’ manor and the whole household heard divine service and received the sacraments at the parish church. The prior and his fellow brothers exercised jurisdiction over other tenants in the parish whose houses were marked with the Hospitallers’ crosses. However, the current firmarius at Upleadon had failed to pay the tithes, had built an oratory within the manor (including a baptistery), which had not been formally consecrated, and had installed a priest without consulting the bishop. This priest publicly celebrated Masses and divine service for the household and others who wished to attend. In addition, the firmarius, in his position as seneschal of the prior and brethren, had awarded probate in his temporal court on the wills of the tenants of the manor and awarded administration of their estates to executors — although as a layman, and twice married, he had no authority to undertake such duties.26 At Garway, the Hospitallers owned the parish church, appointed the priest, and assigned him an income; but the church was subject to visitation from the bishop, who should receive four marks for his maintenance by reason of this visitation. But at the most recent visitation the four marks had not been paid. The bishop also claimed that according to ancient law and the new laws introduced by Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York and cardinal, he as bishop should install the priest and assign the vicar a fitting income.27 The prior asserted that the benefice of Garway could not afford to pay tithes and the seigneurial lands were exempt by papal privilege, but the bishop claimed that the benefice was rich and any privileges should be cancelled as noxious to the Church.28 The bishop claimed that the Hospitallers’ clergy were acting beyond their authority, infringing the rights of other parish priests. The curates of the churches of Garway and Callow and the master or custodian of the hospital of St John situated in the suburbs of 23 Churton, Lives, 189. 24 Registrum Caroli Bothe, ed. by Bannister, 86–92 (fols 59b–60b of the register). 25 This case has been noted by O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, 99–100, 156; Nicholson, ‘Military Religious Orders in the Towns’, 120. 26 Registrum Caroli Bothe, ed. by Bannister, 86–89. 27 Registrum Caroli Bothe, ed. by Bannister, 90. 28 Registrum Caroli Bothe, ed. by Bannister, 90.

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the city of Hereford had celebrated various services and clandestine marriages (that is, without calling the banns). At Easter, the master and curate of Garway had knowingly administered the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist to those from other parishes. On this occasion it appears that the parties did not meet to negotiate, as Thomas Docwra, grand prior of the Hospital in England (1501–27), replied in writing to the bishop’s accusations. He denied the bishop’s claims and dismissed his complaints, stating that the order’s privileges authorized all the activities to which the bishop objected.29 Regarding the procurations that the bishop demanded for the church of Garway, Docwra stated that these payments had been in dispute for a hundred years past. Following arbitration he had been advised to pay half a mark a year; if the bishop were not content with this Docwra would pay nothing at all. Three years later, on 29 March 1524, Bishop Booth again attempted to conduct a visitation on the parish church at Garway. This time he laid the church under interdict, because of the non-payment of two triennial procurations, and because of the ‘manifest malice and contumacy of the parishioners’ (‘manifestam maliciam et contumaciam parochianorum’) barring the doors of the church so as not to give free entry to the bishop into the church, not ringing the bells on his arrival, and not exhibiting the other episcopal honours to him […]. And he pronounced that the sentence of greater excommunication […] fell on all and each of those involved and their counsellors and abettors for their confederated malice aforethought, locking the doors of the said church as above and not permitting the venerable father to enter, in impediment and contempt of ordinary and episcopal jurisdiction and violation of ecclesiastical liberty.30 However, the other matters, such as the hospital at Hereford celebrating marriages, do not appear again in his register. Booth was a conscientious bishop who attempted to enforce episcopal authority. He began his episcopate by formally visiting his own dean and chapter, who had apparently not previously received an episcopal visitation, and he went on successfully to enforce visitation of St Ethelbert’s hospital and St Guthlac’s priory, both at Hereford — St Guthlac’s was a dependency of the great abbey of Gloucester.31 He attempted to enforce clerical discipline, deposing the Prior of Monmouth for poor management.32 He had charters of clerical liberties copied into his register.33 He administered his diocese so effectively that he increased the annual value of the bishopric by 17 per cent in the years 1524–34.34 So it is not surprising that he was prepared to confront the Order of St John over what he saw as infringements of his rights and incomes, especially as he was already familiar with the order’s exploitation of its privileges. 29 30 31 32 33 34

Registrum Caroli Bothe, ed. by Bannister, 90–92. Registrum Caroli Bothe, ed. by Bannister, 151–52. Registrum Caroli Bothe, ed. by Bannister, iv–v; Bartleet, ‘Priory of St Guthlac’. Registrum Caroli Bothe, ed. by Bannister, vi–vii. Registrum Caroli Bothe, ed. by Bannister, iv. Registrum Caroli Bothe, ed. by Bannister, vii.

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No doubt his advisors at Hereford briefed him on the past history of the case at Garway. The quarrel over the payment of procurations at Garway dated back to at least the time of Bishop Thomas Milling (1474–92).35 In 1492 the prior of the Order of St John had agreed to pay the procurations of four marks in order to halt the legal proceedings.36 Yet Booth’s claim to the right of visitation at Garway was valid. The English Hospitallers had received the commanderies of Garway and Upleadon in 1313, after the dissolution of the Templars. While the Templars’ properties were in royal hands between 1308 and 1313, the royal keepers’ accounts recorded that although the Templars had appropriated Garway church and parish it was not exempt from episcopal jurisdiction. The Templars owed a tithe to the diocese of Hereford for the parish and parishioners of Garway, and paid the archdeacon’s procuration and senagium or synodal due.37 In 1338 Grand Prior Philip de Thame’s report on the Hospitallers’ incomes and expenses in the priory of England included the information that the church at Garway was appropriated and that 7s 8d was due each year for the archdeacon’s procuration and senagium.38 An episcopal visitation report survives from 1397, showing that the Bishop of Hereford enforced his right of visitation.39 In short, the bishop’s claim to visitation rights at Garway in 1521 had a sound basis; yet the Hospitallers continued to dispute it. The dispute was still ongoing in 1529, when Gregory O’Malley notes it was raised at the convocation of the clergy of the Province of Canterbury.40 The above cases detail just three of numerous episcopal challenges to the Hospitallers’ privileges. Jonathan Riley-Smith pointed out that in the 1190s some Oxford scholars suggested that although the Hospitallers’ privileges protected them from actual excommunication by a bishop, they could be denounced by a bishop as excommunicated.41 O’Malley notes that in 1484 the turcopolier of the order (one of the officials of the order’s headquarters) and two members of his household were excommunicated for failing to pay tithes, and William Knollis, commander of Torphichen — the head of the order in Scotland — was similarly punished in 1506.42 Convocation repeatedly complained that the Hospitallers were burying excommunicates and suicides, administering the sacraments to those outside

35 Registrum Ricardi Mayew, ed. by Bannister, iii–iv, 19–20; for this dispute, see also O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, 99–100. 36 O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, 99, citing Registrum Ricardi Mayew, ed. by Bannister, 28, 31–32. 37 TNA, E 358/19 rot. 25(1) (Garway, year 5): ‘predicte ecclesie de Garewy quam predicti fratres habuerunt in proprios usus’; E 358/19 rot. 47 dorse (year 6): ‘ecclesie de Garewy quam dicti Templari habuerunt in proprios usus’. E 358/19 rot. 25(2) (Garway, year 2): ‘cu[m] senenag’ Archid[iaconi] Heref ’ solut’ ex co[n]suet[udine] p[ro] d[e]c[im]a ecc[lesi]e de Garewy .xx.s .x.d’; E 358/19 rot. 50 dorse (Garway, year 3): ‘una cum exp’n’s’ Archidi[aconi] in adventibus suis ad ecclesias illas visit’ns, ac eciam exp’n’s’ parochianorum Procuratorum ad festum Natal’ domini’; the words ‘expens’ parochianorum Procuratorum’ appear again in year 4 (ibid.). 38 Knights Hospitallers in England, ed. by Larking, 196, 198. 39 Bannister, ‘Visitation Returns’, vol. 44, 289. 40 O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, 100, citing Concilia magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. by Wilkins, iii, 717. 41 Riley-Smith, Knights Hospitaller, 161, citing Brundage, ‘Twelfth Century Oxford Disputation’, 158–60. 42 O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, 100, citing CPReg, xv, 26–27, no. 48; xviii, no. 625.

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their jurisdiction, conducting marriages without calling the banns, and absolving excommunicated persons.43 O’Malley has noted two particular disputes over the conduct of marriages where no banns had been called, at the Hospitaller manors at Dingley in Northamptonshire in 1519 and at Grafton in Warwickshire in 1530, adding that although in 1529 Convocation prohibited ‘clandestine’ marriages, complaints were still being brought in 1531.44 In 1439 the Hospitallers at Templeton in Devon brought in an outside priest, consecrated a church and cemetery, and offered baptisms and burials — as they would be accused of doing at Upleadon in 1521. Where such extra-parochial churches usurped parish functions and attracted local laity to their doors, they would eventually become de facto parish churches, which threatened the income and authority of the legitimate parish priests. Yet O’Malley points out that, despite the Bishop of Devon’s opposition, ‘Templeton had achieved parochial status by 1535’.45 The Hospitallers maintained that their privileges allowed them to welcome all and sundry to their churches. They seem always to have assumed that their privileges extended to all who gave alms, not only to the members of the confraternity.46 Their chapels attracted the laity not only because the order accepted all comers without questions but because they provided spiritual support in rural localities that still lacked sufficient parish churches to serve the scattered population.47 As at Garway, where the parishioners prevented the bishop from conducting his visitation, it was the laity’s demand for the Hospitallers’ spiritual services that encouraged them to expand their activities into prohibited areas. Nevertheless, bishops sometimes accused the Hospitallers of neglecting their parochial duties. In the late fourteenth century, when the order’s resources were focused on campaigns against the Ottoman Turks in the Balkans and Asia Minor, the Bishop of St Davids noted that the Hospitallers’ church of Llanrhidian in Gower was in such poor repair that ‘for a long time it had not been possible for the divine offices to be celebrated with due honour’. The bishop complained that at a previous visitation he had sternly warned the commander of the Hospital at Slebech to make the repairs, but as this had not been done the bishop sequestrated the revenues of the rectory to pay for the work.48 In 1397 the parishioners at Garway complained at the episcopal visitation that although their priest worked hard, serving both Garway and Wormbridge with daily services, he could not perform his office properly because he could not speak Welsh and most of his parishioners could not speak English.49 O’Malley has observed that during the fifteenth century the Archbishops of Armagh several times sequestrated the income from Hospitaller benefices to pay their vicars

43 O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, 98. 44 O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, 98–99. 45 O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, 99. 46 O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, 98. 47 O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, 99. 48 Williams, Welsh Church, 167, quoting Episcopal Registers of the Diocese of St Davids, ed. by Isaacson, i, 174–76, 269. 49 Smith, ‘A View from an Ecclesiastical Court’, 72.

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and for repairs to buildings.50 In the diocese of Lincolnshire in the early sixteenth century, the Hospitallers were accused of allowing five churches or their rectories to become dilapidated.51 The Hospitallers also came into conflict with diocesan authority in England over some of their hospitals. Generally very little information survives about the hospitals under their care in England, which indicates that they operated without problems. However, conflicts arose at Hereford and Winchester.

Hospitals The disagreement of 1521 between Bishop Booth of Hereford and Thomas Docwra included the accusation that the master or custodian of the Hospital of St John situated in the suburbs of the city of Hereford had celebrated various religious services and clandestine marriages.52 This raises the question of the proper functions of this hospital. According to the Hospitaller brother John Stillingflete, writing in 1434, their hospital at Hereford was given to the Hospitallers by King Richard I (1189–99), who held ‘amorem specialem’ (special affection) for the Hospitallers and their order.53 In March 1347, Bishop John de Trelleck of Hereford wrote to King Edward III of England that the Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem had ‘quamdam capellam’ (a certain chapel) at Hereford, ‘which is vulgarly called a hospital’, which was not taxed because of its poverty, as it had scarcely enough for one chaplain to celebrate the divine services and ‘pro […] sustentacione degencium inibi infirmorum’, to sustain the degenerating infirm people who dwelt there.54 This was probably a typical medieval European hospital, comprising (to use Elizabeth Prescott’s description) ‘a long hall, narrow in relation to its width, with or without aisles, terminating in or adjoined by a chapel’.55 The chaplain would have taken care of the inmates’ spiritual needs. The hospital at Hereford did not appear again in the bishops’ registers until the complaints of 1521, indicating that it caused the bishop no trouble. A Hospitaller rental for the commandery of Dinmore and Garway in the year 1505 states that William Glasdo’, chaplain, rented the ‘capellam ibidem vocatam hospital’ (the chapel there

50 O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, 99. 51 O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, 99, citing Bowker, Secular Clergy, 135; Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, ed. by Thompson, i, 51 (rectory ruinous at East Claydon, Buckinghamshire), 90 (badly defective chancel at Horkstow church, Lincolnshire), 96 (Willoughton church, Lincolnshire: broken sedilia and windows in the choir and porch needed repair; Gainsborough church chancel needed repair and rectory ruinous), 113 (broken windows in chancel of Langford church, Bedfordshire). 52 Registrum Caroli Bothe, ed. by Bannister, 86–92. Discussion of the issues relating to the hospital at Hereford can be found in Hermitage Day, ‘Preceptory of the Knights Hospitallers at Dinmore’, 63–64. 53 John Stillingflete, ‘Liber Johannis Stillingflete’, 836, 839; Rees, History of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, 39–40, 44. 54 Registrum Johannis de Trillek, ed. by Parry, 297; Hermitage Day, ‘Preceptory of the Knights Hospitallers at Dinmore’, 63; Tapper, Knights Templar and Hospitaller in Herefordshire, 33. 55 Prescott, English Medieval Hospital, 7–8.

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called ‘hospital’) with its tenements and a meadow for 26s 8d a year.56 The hospital was still operating in 1536, when the ‘capella vocata hospitale Sancti Johannis Baptiste juxta muros Herefordie annexa prioratui Sancti Johannis Jerusolamitani in Anglia’ (chapel called the hospital of St John the Baptist next to the walls of Hereford, annexed to the prior of St John of Jerusalem in England) was valued at thirty shillings a year.57 Although the hospital of St John at Hereford was in the possession of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in England, the order appears to have operated it as an independent cost centre (as it is not specifically mentioned in Philip de Thame’s report of 1338), and its chaplain seems to have been an independent person, not an employee of the order (as he was renting the property from the order in 1506). At the dissolution of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in England in 1540, Sir Thomas Coningsby, a local landowner, acquired the Hospital’s properties in Hereford and established a new hospital on the site, for ‘a chaplain and eleven poor old servitors that have been soldiers, mariners or serving men’; this may simply have been a continuation of the previous institution.58 It is easy to understand how the chaplain at this little hospital in the suburbs of a thriving city could have expanded his operations to meet local demand, allowing outsiders to attend services in the chapel, accepting their offerings as alms for the hospital, and then going on to offer other services which were not required for the work of the hospital but which brought in valuable income and were valued by the local laity. In contrast, at Winchester problems between the Hospitallers and the bishop arose, ironically, from the favour of a previous bishop. In 1137, Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester, entrusted the care of his newly founded hospital of Holy Cross in Winchester to the Hospitallers. They were to clothe and maintain thirteen poor, imbecile, and feeble persons and feed another one hundred each day. The thirteen should receive wheat bread of a weight of fifteen marks (ten pounds) each day, with three dishes at lunch and one at dinner, while the hundred should receive a larger loaf of bread, one dish, and a fixed measure of drink. To provide the income to support the hospital’s work, the bishop assigned sixteen churches with their appurtenances to the hospital of St Cross, and a tithe, with land and two mills.59 This was a substantial gift which would have been very valuable to the Hospitallers. In the 1292 Taxatio Ecclesiastica of Pope Nicholas IV the hospital of Holy Cross was valued at £10 3s 8d.60 As in 1338 the whole of the Hospitallers’ Hampshire property had an estimated annual income of just under £67, Holy Cross hospital could have increased the value of their Hampshire holdings by around 15 per cent.61

56 Hereford, Hereford Record Office, A63/III/23/1: Rental of Dinmore and Garway, 20 Henry VII, fols 19r–24r, at fol. 19r. 57 Registrum Caroli Bothe, ed. by Bannister, 365. 58 Hereford, Hereford Record Office, A63/VIII/1: Coningesby’s Hospital; Rees, History of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, 90. 59 CH, i, 557–58, no. 877. 60 Taxatio Ecclesiastica, ed. by Ayscough and Caley, 214. 61 Knights Hospitallers in England, ed. by Larking, 22.

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But Bishop Blois’s successor was less happy with the Hospitallers as administrators of this hospital. In 1185 Richard of Ilchester, Bishop of Winchester, John, Prior of the convent of St Swithin, Roger des Moulins, grand master of the Hospital, and Garnier of Nablūs, prior of the Hospital in England, in the presence of King Henry II and Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem, agreed that the Hospitallers would hand over the administration of the hospital of Holy Cross to the bishop and surrender their claims to all the tenements next to the house of St Bridget in London which were held by the bishop. In exchange they would receive the bishop’s churches of Morden and Hannington. In addition, they would no longer need to pay an annual rent of fifty marks of silver and two candles of ten pounds of wax to the monks of St Swithin, Winchester, in return for the monks’ administering the hospital. The bishop would add support for another one hundred poor, undertaking to feed and clothe 213 poor in perpetuity.62 Yet this agreement was not put into effect: the churches remained in the bishop’s hands, and the Hospitallers continued to claim the right to administer this hospital. In 1189 King Richard I confirmed the gift of Holy Cross hospital to them, and in 1199 his brother and successor King John repeated the confirmation.63 This was despite the fact that a commission set up by Pope Celestine III to settle the dispute had decided that Holy Cross should belong to the bishop. In 1204 the Bishop of Winchester appointed a master for Holy Cross, but the Hospitallers refused until 1379 to relinquish the documents and legal records relating to it.64 Clearly they were determined to keep this valuable property, and even when they were forced to surrender control they retained the record of their former ownership. Given the bitterness of the disputes that could develop between the diocesan bishops and the exempt orders, we might expect that when they had the opportunity to move against the exempt orders they would do so. However, when their opportunity came with the accusations of heresy brought by King Philip IV of France against the Order of the Temple in 1307, the bishops were ambivalent. On the one hand they were anxious to stamp out heresy and protect their flocks; on the other, they wished to protect the independence of the Church against royal interference.

The Proceedings against the Templars, 1308–1311 In August 1308, Pope Clement V laid out in his letter Faciens misericordiam the basis for the proceedings against the Templars throughout Christendom, stating that the Templars had confessed to heresy, and that this should be thoroughly investigated by provincial Church councils, which should absolve or condemn

62 Knowles and Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses, 404; CH, i, 480–82, no. 755; ‘Hospitals: St Cross’, 194. 63 ‘Parishes: Hannington’; CH, i, 557–58, no. 877, 679, no. 1093; Knights Hospitallers in Medieval Hampshire, ed. by Beard, xx. 64 ‘Hospitals: St Cross’, 194.

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the individual Templars. In his letter addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the pope named him and Antony Bek, Bishop of Durham and nominal Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Archbishop of York, and the Bishops of Lincoln, Chichester, and Orléans as primarily responsible for overseeing the trial in Britain, with the two papal inquisitors and Guy of Wych.65 He wrote to the four archbishops in Ireland on similar lines.66 In the event, matters did not progress as directed. As Maeve Callan has observed, there is no surviving evidence that any of the Irish archbishops acted on the papal instructions. Proceedings in Ireland were driven by the papal inquisitors and their nominees. The investigatory team did not include any of the Irish episcopate.67 In Scotland proceedings were led by William of Lamberton, Bishop of St Andrews (1297–1328), and a French canon, John of Solertio; as in Ireland, the other Scottish bishops played no role.68 Further south, the Archbishop of Canterbury was too unwell to lead the trial in the province of Canterbury, and this task fell to the Bishop of London. Much of the business of the proceedings against the Templars in Britain was carried out at Church councils in London and York, and it was at these councils in the summer of 1311 that the decision was taken to send the Templars to religious houses to perform penance for their alleged sins. It was not until the following spring, in March 1312, that Pope Clement made the formal decision to dissolve the order and transfer its properties to the Hospitallers. It may appear at first glance that the episcopate in Britain and Ireland were essentially well-disposed towards the Templars. Bishop Antony Bek stood bail for the grand commander of England, Brother William de la More; Ralph Baldock, Bishop of London, maintained that although he was present throughout the proceedings in London this was not as an investigator but only as an observer on behalf of the king; and William Greenfield, Archbishop of York, made repeated claims that he was too unwell to attend the proceedings, as if unwilling to be involved.69 The bishops of the province of York apparently decided not to use torture and allowed the Templars to abjure all heresy without obtaining any confessions.70 The Irish, Scottish, and English bishops at the Council of Vienne agreed with the majority view that the Templars should be allowed to defend themselves.71 Of the complaints that we have seen repeatedly brought against the Hospitallers, only the charge that they absolved lay people from excommunication was brought up during the proceedings against the Templars in England. One clerical witness in Scotland mentioned that the Templars had deprived him of a tithe, but this complaint

65 Proceedings against the Templars, ed. by Nicholson, i, 10; ii, 10–11. 66 Callan, The Templars, the Witch and the Wild Irish, 48. 67 Callan, The Templars, the Witch and the Wild Irish, 48–49, 50–51, 61, 67–69. 68 Nicholson, Knights Templar on Trial, 134–35, 142. 69 Proceedings against the Templars, ed. by Nicholson, i, 142; ii, 139 and n. 51; Perkins, ‘Trial of the Knights Templars’, 432–33; Fraser, A History of Antony Bek, 165, 172–73, 219; Haines, ‘Greenfield, William’. 70 Perkins, ‘Trial of the Knights Templars’, 443. 71 Nicholson, Knights Templar on Trial, 194–95.

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was not taken into the final summaries of the evidence. There was no mention of clandestine marriages.72 Nevertheless, the English bishops investigated the case thoroughly.73 The bishops of the province of Canterbury were not convinced of the Templars’ innocence from heresy. When it became clear in early December 1309 that the Templars being interrogated in London would not confess to the charges, the provincial Church council decided to send three bishops with the two papal inquisitors to the king to ask him to allow torture to be used, to obtain confessions.74 The Templars were allowed to abjure all heresy only after three brothers in the province of Canterbury had been tortured and confessed to some of the charges.75 The bishops’ determination to ensure that the matter was investigated may have reflected their concern to ensure the spiritual well-being of their flocks — many of whom were served by parish priests appointed by the Templars — or might reflect a wish to be seen to cooperate with papal instructions, which the king had initially opposed.

The Templars and Hospitallers in Royal Service While their service for the much-disliked King Edward II may have tarnished the Templars in the eyes of these prelates, their close relations to the Crown generally made the Templars’ and Hospitallers’ power difficult to challenge.76 Their function as trusted servants of the Crown even enabled a few members of the military religious orders to obtain first-hand experience of episcopal authority. In 1195 Hubert Walter, chief justiciar of England, appointed Brother Alan of St Cross, Hospitaller, as Bishop of Bangor in North Wales, although this appointment was opposed by the canons and he was never able to establish himself as bishop.77 In 1274 Brother Stephen of Fulbourn, Hospitaller, was elected on the request of King Edward I of England as Bishop of Waterford in Ireland; he subsequently went on to become Archbishop of Tuam. He was also treasurer and then justiciar of Ireland, and as such was the head of the King of England’s government there.78 The most famous Hospitaller bishop was arguably Brother Guérin the Hospitaller, Bishop of Senlis from 1213/14 until his death in 1227 and minister of three French kings: Philip Augustus (1180–1223), Louis VIII (1223–26), and Louis IX.79 These Hospitallers gained the episcopate less 72 Proceedings against the Templars, ed. by Nicholson, i, 120, 187, 198, 202, 242, 343, 345, 346, 390, 422–23; ii, 114, 197, 216, 221, 268, 388, 391, 392, 394, 448, 483. 73 Nicholson, Knights Templar on Trial, 99, 101, 122, 177, 182–84. 74 Councils & Synods, ii.2, 1241–43, 1264–74, esp. 1267. 75 Nicholson, Knights Templar on Trial, 183–86. 76 Nicholson, ‘“Nolite confidere in principibus”’. 77 Jenkins, ‘King John and the Cistercians’, 167, citing Hays, ‘Rotoland, Sub-Prior of Aberconway’. Shaun D. McGuinness is currently researching a PhD at the University of Bangor on the medieval bishops of Bangor and St Asaph and their acta, 1092–1307; this will clarify the position of Brother Alan of St Cross. 78 Connolly, ‘Fulbourn, Stephen of ’; Virtuani, ‘Knights of St John’, 82–97. 79 Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 115–16.

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because of their reputation for piety and learning and more because they had proved themselves to be loyal and efficient servants of their king. Whatever the views of the ecclesiastical authorities, while the Crown protected the Templars and Hospitallers their power was unassailable.

Conclusion The Templars and Hospitallers were not alone in attracting the wrath of the diocesan clergy. The mendicant friars’ exemptions caused equal anger. Sometime during the years 1305–10, possibly during the trial of the Templars, the rectors of London churches wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury to complain that the friars were overstepping their rights and taking over the work and the income of the secular clergy.80 The episcopal registers of Hereford for 1511 contain a copy of a letter from the bishops and clergy of the province of Canterbury to the pope complaining about the privileges of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem and of the mendicant friars, and particularly that they ignored interdicts and excommunications, continuing to carry out marriages and bury the dead.81 The Order of St Lazarus in England, like the Templars and Hospitallers a privileged religious order connected to the Holy Land, also aroused episcopal resentment, especially over the brothers’ claim to be exempt from visitation.82 However, the Templars and Hospitallers held an especially strong position: their ecclesiastical exemptions and privileges arose from their protection of pilgrims to the Holy Places and the active military defence of Christendom. While the Carmelite friars and the Order of St Lazarus also originated in the Holy Land, it was the Templars and Hospitallers who were most famed for their protection of Christians. Their religious vocation gave these orders considerable moral authority, which — coupled to their legal expertise and the support of the Crown — enabled them to exploit their privileges to the full and hold their own against episcopal pressure. The prelates also had a religious calling: to ensure the best pastoral care for their flocks, through the framework of apostolic authority. Where the military orders could ensure this, they had the support of the bishops; but where the bishops perceived that the orders’ behaviour could threaten pastoral care or their own authority they were quick to act to rebuke or restrain. Although the Stachfythenan case appears to have been simply a struggle for power, some conflict arose from an episcopal desire for reform. In the early sixteenth century, Bishop Booth was not the only English bishop who wanted to restrict the exemptions of the religious orders.83 In 1518 Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio were appointed legates for the reformation of monasteries: their plans included visitation of all religious houses and dissolution of

80 Councils & Synods, ii.2, 1242, 1255–63. 81 Registrum Ricardi Mayew, ed. by Bannister, 50–52. 82 Marcombe, Leper Knights, 175–81. 83 Bernard, ‘Dissolution of the Monasteries’, 393.

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small houses, which could either be combined with larger houses or their incomes put to more effective use elsewhere, for example in founding schools.84 Wolsey’s argument was that these religious houses were not performing any useful function, but Bishop Booth’s problem was that the Hospitallers were proving far too useful to local people. The Hospitallers’ privileges would not have caused the Bishops of Lincoln and Hereford (for example) such problems if the laity had not responded to the services the Hospitallers offered. The Hospitallers’ tenants and others appreciated the order’s provision of spiritual services: the order was meeting a local demand. It was not the Hospitallers or their officials but the laity who barred the door of Stachfythenan church to the Archbishop of Dublin’s clerk in 1262 and the door of Garway church to the Bishop of Hereford in 1524. When King Henry VIII dissolved the religious orders in England in 1536–40 he may have relieved the episcopate of their conflict with the exempt religious orders, but he deprived himself of loyal servants and the laity of much-valued suppliers of priestly services.

Works Cited Manuscripts Hereford, Hereford Record Office, A63/III/23/1 Hereford, Hereford Record Office, A63/VIII/1 Lincoln, Lincolnshire Archives, DIOC/REG/23 TNA, E 358/19 Primary Sources Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Prepared under the Superintendence of the Deputy Keeper of the Records: Edward III, 1330–1334 (London, 1893) Concilia magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. by D. Wilkins, 4 vols (London, 1737) The Episcopal Registers of the Diocese of St Davids, 1397–1518, ed. by R. F. Isaacson, 3 vols, Cymru Record Series, 6 (London, 1917–1920) Gerald of Wales, ‘Speculum Ecclesiae’, in Giraldus Cambrensis Opera, ed. by J. S. Brewer, 8 vols, RS, 21 (London, 1861), iv, 3–354 John Stillingflete, ‘Liber Johannis Stillingflete de nominibus fundatorum Hosp. S. Johannis Jerusalem in Anglia’, in Monasticon Anglicanum: A History of the Abbies and Other Monasteries, Hospitals, Frieries, and Cathedral and Collegiate Churches, with their Dependencies, in England and Wales, ed. by W. Dugdale and others, vol. vi.2 (London, 1846), 831-9

84 Bernard, ‘Dissolution of the Monasteries’, 394; O’Sullivan, ‘The “Little Dissolution”’; Hoyle, ‘Origins of the Dissolution’, 282.

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The Knights Hospitallers in England, Being the Report of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master Elyan de Villanova for AD 1338, ed. by L. B. Larking, intro. J. M. Kemble, Camden Society, 1st ser., 65 (London, 1857) The Knights Hospitallers in Medieval Hampshire: A Calendar of the Godsfield and Baddesley Cartulary, ed. by F. Beard (Winchester, 2012) Papsturkunden für Templer und Johanniter: Archivberichte und Texte, ed. by R. Hiestand (Göttingen, 1972) Proceedings against the Templars in the British Isles, ed. by H. J. Nicholson, 2 vols (Farnham, 2011) The Register of Walter Giffard, Lord Archbishop of York, 1266–1279, ed. by W. Brown, Surtees Society, 109, (Durham, 1904) Registrum Caroli Bothe, episcopi Herefordensis, a.d. mdxvi–mdxxxv, ed. by A. T. Bannister, CYS, 28 (London, 1921) Registrum Johannis de Trillek, episcopi Herefordensis, a.d. mcccxliv–mccclxi, ed. by J. H. Parry, CYS, 8 (London, 1912) Registrum Ricardi Mayew, episcopi Herefordensis, a.d. mdiv–mdxvi, ed. by A. T. Bannister, CYS, 27 (London, 1921) Rotuli Ricardi Gravesend diocesis Lincolnensis, ed. by F. N. Davis with C. W. Foster and A. H. Thompson, CYS, 31 (Oxford, 1925) Rotuli Roberti Grosseteste, episcopi Lincolniensis, a.d. 1235–1253, ed. by F. N. Davis, CYS, 10 (London, 1913) Taxatio Ecclesiastica Angliæ et Walliæ auctoritate P. Nicholai IV circa A.D. 1291, ed. by T. Astle, S. Ayscough and J. Caley (London, 1802) Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1517–1531, ed. by A. H. Thompson, 3 vols, Lincoln Record Society, 33 (Hereford, 1940–47) Secondary Studies Baldwin, J. W., The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, CA, 1986) Bannister, A. T., ‘Visitation Returns of the Diocese of Hereford in 1397’, EHR, 44 (1929), 279–89, 444–53; 45 (1930), 92–101, 444–63 Barber, M., The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge, 1994) Bartleet, S. E., ‘The Priory of St Guthlac, Hereford’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 30 (1907), 142–50 Bernard, G., ‘The Dissolution of the Monasteries’, History, 96 (2011), 390–409 Bowker, M., The Secular Clergy in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1495–1520 (Cambridge, 1968) ———, ‘Smith, William (d. 1514)’, in ODNB, li, 355–58 Brundage, J., ‘A Twelfth Century Oxford Disputation Concerning the Privileges of the Knights Hospitallers’, MedSt, 24 (1962), 153–60 Callan, M. B., The Templars, the Witch and the Wild Irish: Vengeance and Heresy in Medieval Ireland (Ithaca, NY, 2015) Carraz, D., ‘Expériences religieuses en contexte urbain: De l’ordo monasticus aux religiones novæ, le jalon du monachisme militaire’, in Les Ordres militaires dans la ville médiévale (1100–1350): Actes du colloque international de Clermont-Ferrand, 26–28 mai 2010, ed. by D. Carraz (Clermont-Ferrand, 2013), 37–56

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MacNeill, C., ‘The Hospitallers at Kilmainham and their Guests’, Journal of the Royal Society of the Antiquaries of Ireland, 54 (1924), 15–30 Marcombe, D., Leper Knights: The Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem in England, 1150–1544 (Woodbridge, 2003) Morton, N., The Medieval Military Orders, 1120–1314 (Harlow, 2013) Newcombe, D. G., ‘Booth, Charles (d. 1535)’, in ODNB, vi, 606–07 Nicholson, H. J., ‘Evidence of the Templars’ Religious Practice from the Records of the Templars’ Estates in Britain and Ireland in 1308’, in Communicating the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Sophia Menache, ed. by I. Shagrir, B. Kedar, and M. Balard (Abingdon, 2018), 50–63 ———, The Knights Templar on Trial: The Trial of the Templars in the British Isles, 1308–1311 (Stroud, 2009) ———, ‘Margaret de Lacy and the Hospital of St John at Aconbury, Herefordshire’, in Hospitaller Women in the Middle Ages, ed. by A. Luttrell and H. J. Nicholson (Aldershot, 2006), 153–77 ———, ‘The Military Religious Orders in the Towns of the British Isles’, in Les Ordres militaires dans la ville médiévale (1100–1350): Actes du colloque international de ClermontFerrand, 26–28 mai 2010, ed. by D. Carraz (Clermont-Ferrand, 2013), 113–26 ———, ‘“Nolite confidere in principibus”: The Military Orders’ Relations with the Rulers of Christendom’, in Élites et ordres militaires au moyen âge: Rencontre autour d’Alain Demurger, ed. by P. Josserand, L. F. Oliveira, and D. Carraz (Madrid, 2015), 261–76 O’Malley, G., The Knights Hospitaller of the English Langue, 1460–1565 (Oxford, 2005) O’Sullivan, D., ‘The “Little Dissolution” of the 1520s’, Post-Medieval Archaeology, 40 (2006), 227–58 ‘Parishes: Hannington’, in A History of the County of Hampshire, vol. iv, ed. by W. Page (London, 1911), 229–30 Perkins, C., ‘The Trial of the Knights Templars in England’, EHR, 24 (1909), 432–47 Phillips, S., The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2009) Prescott, E., The English Medieval Hospital, c. 1050–1640 (London, 1992) Prutz, H., Entwicklung und Untergang des Tempelherrenordens (Berlin, 1888) Rees, W., A History of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in Wales and on the Welsh Border, Including an Account of the Templars (Cardiff, 1947) Riley-Smith, J., The Knights Hospitaller in the Levant, c. 1070–1309 (Basingstoke, 2012) Schenk, J., ‘Aspects and Problems of the Templars’ Religious Presence in Medieval Europe from the Twelfth to the Early Fourteenth Century’, Traditio, 71 (2016), 273–303 ———, Templar Families: Landowning Families and the Order of the Temple in France, c. 1120–1307 (Cambridge, 2012) Smith, L. B., ‘A View from an Ecclesiastical Court: Mobility and Marriage in a Border Society at the End of the Middle Ages’, in From Medieval to Modern Wales: Historical Essays in Honour of Kenneth O. Morgan and Ralph A. Griffiths, ed. by R. R. Davies and G. H. Jenkins (Cardiff, 2004), 64–80 Tapper, A., The Knights Templar and Hospitaller in Herefordshire (Almeley, 2005) Virtuani, P., ‘The Knights of St John of Jerusalem in Medieval Ireland (c. 1169–1378)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University College, Dublin, 2014)

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———, ‘Unforgiveable Trespasses: The Irish Hospitallers and the Defence of their Rights in the Mid-Thirteenth Century’, in Soldiers of Christ: The Knights Hospitaller and the Knights Templar in Medieval Ireland, ed. by M. Browne and C. Ó Clabaigh (Dublin, 2016), 195–205 Vones, L., ‘“… contra episcopalem auctoritatem multa praesumunt …”: Die Entwicklung des Verhältnisses des Templer- und des Johanniterordens zur Bischofsgewalt in den Ländern der Krone Aragón bis zum Ende des 12. Jahrhunderts’, in Ritterorden und Kirche im Mittelalter, ed. by Z. H. Nowak (Toruń, 1997), 163–92 Williams, G., The Welsh Church from Conquest to Reformation (Cardiff, 1976)

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Hospitaller and Teutonic Order Lordships in Germany

Power and authority can be seen as key concepts for understanding the Holy Roman Empire. Until 1806 the supreme authority of the emperor was unquestionable, at least in theory. In practice, however, from the thirteenth century onwards actual power rested to an ever-increasing degree with princely and other territories. The position of the military religious orders in the empire is therefore not always easy to understand. The two supreme masters of the Hospital and of the Teutonic Order claimed what would be called ‘sovereign’ status from the sixteenth century onwards. Already in the later Middle Ages the ‘Ordensstaaten’ of the Hospitallers on Rhodes and of the Teutonic Order in Prussia and Livonia were sometimes held to be independent entities acknowledging no other temporal superior.1 Of course this did not mean that their possessions throughout Latin Europe were exempt from royal or other temporal rights or interference. Within the empire north of the Alps, the two officers in charge of their German possessions were made imperial princes, the Deutschmeister in 1494 and the Hospitaller prior of Germany in 1548.2 These two charters did not, however, exempt all Hospitaller and Teutonic Order possessions from princely or other territorial rights and interference. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, many lawsuits were waged at the Imperial Chamber Court (‘Reichskammergericht’) and at the Imperial Aulic Council (‘Reichshofrat’). The papers concerning such lawsuits at the Reichskammergericht are currently being calendared.3 With their help, it is now possible to study how medieval privileges helped to defend the small territorial lordships of both the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Order in Germany. 1 Hafkemeyer, Der Malteser-Ritter-Orden; Wippermann, Der Ordensstaat als Ideologie, 28–75. 2 Maximilian I for the Deutschmeister Fr. Andreas von Grumbach, Löwen, 16 September 1494, RI, xiv.1.i, no. 1011; extant only as a copy: Vienna, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Reichsregister 10/I, fol. 23r. The original was lost probably in 1525 when peasants destroyed the castle of Horneck, then the residence of the Deutschmeister: Hofmann, Der Staat des Deutschmeisters, 110–12 and n. 135. Charles V for the Prior of Alamania Fr. Georg Schilling von Cannstatt, Augsburg, 29 February 1548, the original document Karlsruhe, Generallandesarchiv, Rep. 20 Johanniter Urkunden no. 20. 3 About the ongoing project, see Oestmann, Die Akten des Reichskammergerichts. Karl Borchardt is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Würzburg and Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, ed. by Thomas W. Smith, ES 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 391–405 © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.118977

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Protected and Privileged Properties Contrary to archbishops, bishops, abbots, and other prelates, the military religious orders did not become imperial princes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. One reason for this were ecclesiastical reform ideals directed against paying for protection and accepting fiefs.4 Contrary to established practice, churches and especially religious orders were to be free from lay intervention. They were to have their own ecclesiastical laws and law courts, and they were to be subject only to taxation by their own superiors, by the bishops, or by the pope (privilegium fori and privilegium immunitatis). In accordance with such principles, Frederick Barbarossa guaranteed tuitio (royal protection) to the Hospitallers in 1156.5 He added exemption from dues and services in 1158 and the licence to acquire estates of every kind in 1185.6 The Templars received a similar imperial privilege in 1184.7 When Frederick Barbarossa’s grandson King Frederick II donated a hospital at Ellingen near Weißenburg to the Teutonic Order in 1216, it was expressly stated that ‘nulli umquam aliquam advocatiam debeant recognoscere, verum imperator vel rex, qui pro tempore regnaverit, pro salute anime sue in hiis eos debeant defensare’.8 Nevertheless, all newly founded churches, monasteries, and orders still needed lay help and protection. Such protectio was not available free of charge. Both the king and the temporal lords who now protected or defended churches, monasteries, and orders were not content with prayers and liturgical services on behalf of their souls.9 Yet the thirteenth-century imperial privileges for the military religious orders did not specify which services the rulers expected. The privileges usually concerned donations and purchases of estates that owed services to various lords and exemptions from dues and tolls; such exemptions could be criticized as unjust competition by others who also wanted to sell their products at market. For the Hospital, King Philip agreed in 1207 that both liberi and ministeriales were empowered to donate estates they held from the empire.10 Otto IV followed in 1211, and Frederick II repeated Frederick I’s clauses in 1221.11 In 1227 his son Henry (VII) confirmed the licence for ministeriales to donate or sell estates to the Hospitallers.12 This was reissued by King Rudolf in 1274 and King Adolf in 1295, who had already declared his general protection in 1292.13

4 West, ‘Monks, Aristocrats, and Justice’; Borchardt, ‘Vogtei und Schutz’. 5 Die Urkunden Friedrichs I., ed. by Appelt and others, i, 261–62, no. 152. 6 1158: Die Urkunden Friedrichs I., ed. by Appelt and others, ii, 13–15, no. 228, confirmation by Emperor Charles IV, 1365: RI, viii, no. 4175; 1185: Die Urkunden Friedrichs I., ed. by Appelt and others, iv, 190–91, no. 923, confirmation by Emperor Charles IV, 1368: RI, viii, no. 4671. 7 Die Urkunden Friedrichs I., ed. by Appelt and others, iv, 134–35, no. 887. 8 Die Urkunden Friedrichs II., ed. by Koch and others, iii, 417–19, no. 380. 9 Von Planta, Adel, Deutscher Orden und Königtum, 25–73; Von Planta, ‘Advocacy and “Defensio”’. 10 Die Urkunden Philipps von Schwaben, ed. by Rzihacek and Spreitzer, 318–20, no. 140. 11 CH, ii, 131–32, no. 1368; Die Urkunden Friedrichs II., ed. by Koch and others, iv, 312–15 no. 784. 12 CH, ii, 373–74, no. 1888, 375, no. 1892. 13 1274: CH, iii, 316–17, no. 3562; 1292: CH, iii, 612–13, no. 4200; RI, vi.2.i, no. 124; 1295: CH, iii, 661–62, no. 4275; RI, iv.2.ii, no. 554. For early modern confirmations, see Karlsruhe, Generallandesarchiv, Rep. 20 Johanniter Urkunden nos 81, 88, 124, 134, 142, 158, 165, 172.

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The Templars did not figure prominently in the empire north of the Alps. As they usually sided with the papacy, Innocent IV and Alexander IV granted them protection throughout Germany and Poland in 1249 and 1257 respectively;14 a general tuitio for their rights and privileges followed from King Adolf only in 1295.15 The Teutonic Order came into being in the 1190s and soon acquired similar imperial privileges. In 1206 and 1212 Philip and Otto IV declared their tutela and empowered any ‘liber homo aut ministerialis’ to make donations ‘de hiis bonis, que ab imperio tenet’.16 Frederick II repeated this in 1214 and 1218.17 Finally, the Teutonic Order received confirmations by Rudolf in 1273, Adolf in 1293, Albrecht in 1298, and Henry VII in 1309.18 In Germany donations and purchases had to be licenced not only for fiefs of vassals but also for bona held by ministeriales.19 Imperial ministeriales acquired this licence for the Hospital from King Philip in 1207, for the Teutonic Order from Frederick II in 1214.20 After his imperial coronation Frederick renewed his concessions including the right to acquire imperial fiefs.21 Ministeriales of the Church obviously needed no such special licences to give their estates to religious institutions, as archbishops, bishops, or abbots could not deny the right to make such pious donations. Things were different for ministeriales of secular princes, counts, and lords. Here a special licence was necessary for any single case, for example in 1229/30 from Count Hartmann IV and his son Hartmann V of Kyburg on behalf of the Hospitallers. At Acre they had buried Hartmann V’s brother Werner and then transferred his bones to Jerusalem after the armistice between Frederick II and Sultan al-Kamil.22 Such licences from lay princes or territorial lords were rare. This meant that in many territories, for example of the Wittelsbach, Guelf, or Wettin families, foundations of the military religious orders remained scarce exceptions.23

14 1249: Urkunden und Regesten zur Geschichte des Templerordens, ed. by Irgang, 35–36, no. 33; 1257: ibid., 43–44, no. 43. 15 RI, vi.2.ii, no. 489. 16 1206: Die Urkunden Philipps von Schwaben, ed. by Rzihacek and Spreitzer, 279–82, no. 124; 1212: Codex diplomaticus ordinis sanctae Mariae Theutonicorum, ed. by Hennes, i, 11–12, no. 12; Die Urkunden des Deutschordenszentralarchivs, ed. by Arnold, i, 6–7, no. 17. 17 1214: Die Urkunden Friedrichs II., ed. by Koch and others, ii, 155–57, no. 246; 1218: ibid., iii, 86–88, no. 468, 88–90, no. 469. 18 1273: Codex diplomaticus ordinis sanctae Mariae Theutonicorum, ed. by Hennes, i, 201–03, no. 231; 1293: Die Urkunden des Deutschordenszentralarchivs, ed. by Arnold, i, 329–30, no. 1037; 1298: Codex diplomaticus ordinis sanctae Mariae Theutonicorum, ed. by Hennes, i, 300, no. 338; 1309: ibid., i, 337, no. 379. Later confirmations were also comprehensive but not specific, for example by Emperor Charles IV, 1356: ibid., i, 408–10, no. 465. 19 On this problem, see Schulz, ‘Die Zisterzienser’, 174–77. 20 1207: Die Urkunden Philipps von Schwaben, ed. by Rzihacek and Spreitzer, 318–20, no. 140; 1214: Die Urkunden Friedrichs II., ed. by Koch and others, ii, 129–31, no. 230. 21 1221: Die Urkunden Friedrichs II., ed. by Koch and others, iv, 409–11, no. 820, 404–06, no. 818, 398–402, no. 816 with a penalty of 100 lb of gold; later copies ibid., 411–13, no. 821 with a penalty of 500 lb of gold. 22 CH, ii, 394–95, no. 1937, 405, no. 1958. 23 Count Palatine Otto II, Duke of Bavaria, licenses a donation to the Teutonic Order, 1229: Codex diplomaticus ordinis sanctae Mariae Theutonicorum, ed. by Hennes, i, 86–87, no. 77.

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Another point in the general charters given to the military religious orders concerned the privilegium immunitatis. Their freedom from commercial dues had to be restricted as people soon complained about unfair competition. A good example is a charter issued in 1239 by Duke Frederick II of Austria and Styria, recently restored to his territories, for the Teutonic Order. The brethren received freedom from tolls and similar dues only for their own commodities such as wine, grain, salt, cheese, fish, oil, animals, and for their own monies, despite the fact that the order defended the Holy Land and that this deserved spiritual rewards.24 Not much was said in thirteenth-century general charters about secular jurisdiction. Ecclesiastical courts were still very popular at this time, because they followed rational principles to find the truth, whereas the local customs of secular law courts still permitted oaths and duels. Later on the crises of the later Middle Ages led to a revival of the secular law courts. Consequently secular jurisdiction over the possessions of the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Order soon became an issue of ever increasing importance. In 1371 the Hospitaller Prior of Germany Fr. Konrad von Braunsberg complained to the prioral chapter that members of the order appealed to their secular friends and relatives and to secular law courts whenever he tried to enforce discipline. By threatening to resign his office he forced the officers present on the chapter to swear an oath that this should no longer happen in future.25

Princes, Principalities, and Territories Secular jurisdiction (‘merum et mixtum imperium’, according to Digest 2.1.3) was of course indispensable for forming territories and principalities. The military religious orders might be given or might purchase properties that included the right to have local law courts for their peasants and sometimes even for their citizens. In such cases both orders would appoint secular officials instead of enfeoffed vassals to exert secular jurisdiction. Yet there were usually local exceptions. Nowhere within the empire were the military religious orders able to acquire large territories that excluded rights of other imperial princes or lords. For this reason, and despite their privileges of 1494 and 1548 respectively, neither the Teutonic Order nor the Hospitallers were able to form large principalities in Germany. Another problem concerned fiefs. Generally speaking, all jurisdiction within the empire rested with the monarch and was held as an imperial fief. Advocacies could be such fiefs.26 Traditional ecclesiastical institutions such as archbishoprics, bishoprics, and Benedictine monasteries received temporal jurisdiction and lordships as fiefs from the emperor and passed them on as fiefs to lay princes or other nobles.

24 Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Babenberger, ed. by Fichtenau and Zöllner, 186–89, no. 344. 25 Engel, ‘Die Krise der Ballei Franken’, 287–90. 26 Dendorfer and Deutinger, Das Lehnswesen im Hochmittelalter; Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, 438, 445–46; Reynolds, The Middle Ages without Feudalism. For regional comparisons including the Levant, see Structures féodales et féodalisme; Schieffer, ‘Das Lehnswesen’.

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Together with the advocacies Church reformers generally loathed such feudal obligations. Oaths of vassalage obliged such institutions to render costly services and distracted military religious orders from fighting enemies of the faith. So being part of the feudal system was no longer possible for the new orders of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, especially for Cistercians, Premonstratensians, and the military religious orders. Oaths of fidelity were often forbidden, for the Templars in the papal letter Omne datum optimum of 1139, and for the Hospitallers in an addition to Christiane fidei religio of 1154 when it was renewed in 1186.27 For the Hospitallers in Germany Innocent IV expressly excluded fiefs in 1252.28 For the Teutonic Order Honorius III ruled out oaths of fidelity in 1216, and this was repeated by Frederick II at his imperial coronation in 1220.29 It is true that Honorius III confirmed a licence for the Teutonic Knights to acquire imperial fiefs in 1219, but in 1254, 1258, and 1274 Innocent IV, Alexander IV, and Gregory X declared that brethren might hold estates as if they had not entered the order, except fiefs.30 Both being part of the imperial feudal system and not having ‘merum et mixtum imperium’ raised problems concerning temporal jurisdiction and lordship, especially in cases where people suffered death sentences and mutilations or in cases concerning the transfer of landed estates.31 Consequently most possessions of the military religious orders in Germany remained part of other principalities or lordships. The privileges of 1494 and 1548 made the Deutschmeister and the Johannitermeister (as the Hospitaller Prior of Alamania was called in German) imperial princes. This new status was clearly helpful to reject princely or other attempts to levy taxes, exert jurisdiction, confiscate ecclesiastical properties, or determine the Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist confession of the inhabitants. It was also helpful to protect the rights and possessions of the orders throughout the principalities and territories in the empire. Yet the two privileges did not found new principalities, at any rate not for possessions where older rights of other princes or lords continued to exist. Sometimes this was already clear from the medieval charters. For example, the house of Mecklenburg that ruled the country of Werle had donated to the Hospital the commanderies of Mirow and Nemerow. At Mirow in 1301, Nicholas II of Werle confirmed the possessions of the Hospitallers and their freedom from lay dues and taxes. At Malchow, a place belonging to their house of Mirow, the Hospitallers were licensed to found a town in 1309, but received only freedom from tolls, services, and

27 Papsturkunden für Templer und Johanniter, ed. by Hiestand, 78, 125–27. 28 CH, ii, 733, no. 2616. See also Brückner, Lehnsauftragung, 82–84. 29 1216: Codex diplomaticus ordinis sanctae Mariae Theutonicorum, ed. by Hennes, i, 26–29, no. 25, at 28; 1220: ibid., 50–54, no. 49, at 51. 30 1219: Codex diplomaticus ordinis sanctae Mariae Theutonicorum, ed. by Hennes, i, 40–41, no. 38; Tabulae Ordinis Theutonici, ed. by Strehlke, 160, nos 173–74; 1254: Die Urkunden des Deutschordenszentralarchivs, ed. by Arnold, i, 134, no. 402; 1258: ibid., 166, no. 507; 1274: ibid., 233, no. 733 with references to the transumpts of 1362, 1404, et cetera. 31 ‘Merum imperium’ meant ‘gladii potestas’ and ‘mixtum imperium’ meant ‘iurisdictio in danda bonorum possessione’: Hoke, ‘Imperium merum et mixtum’.

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dues ‘tanquam vasallos nobilium dominorum nostrorum de Werle’.32 In the same way as noble or knightly vassals they remained subjects of the Lords of Werle and later on of the Dukes of Mecklenburg. Less clear was the case of Mergentheim, the future capital of the Hoch- and Deutschmeister. Fiefs and castles were expressly excluded when the three brethren Andreas, Heinrich, and Friedrich von Hohenlohe became knights of the Teutonic Order in 1219/20. Concerning their heritage the treaty with their two lay brothers Gottfried von Hohenlohe and Konrad von Brauneck expressly excluded castles, fiefs, vassals, and serfs (‘castra, feoda, homines tam militaris quam rustice conditionis’), that is, everything that had to do with secular lordship.33 Nevertheless, the Teutonic Order was gradually able to establish its lordship at Mergentheim, primarily by founding a new town next to the castle at Mergentheim that received a privilege by Emperor Louis IV in 1340.34 The Hospitallers continued to hold the parish church of Mergentheim but renounced all secular rights in 1355, especially their part of the town’s law court. From then on they had to be content with the town parish and its pertinent estates, which they sold to the Teutonic Order in 1554.35 Never again did the house of Hohenlohe claim territorial rights at Mergentheim, especially when during the sixteenth century the Deutschmeister moved his residence from Horneck to Mergentheim and his office was amalgamated with that of the Hochmeister after Fr. Albrecht von Brandenburg had defected from the order in 1525 and become a Protestant vassal of his Catholic uncle, the Polish King Sigismund.36 Less successful were the Hospitallers in the village of Heitersheim to the south of Freiburg im Breisgau, where the Johannitermeister began to have his regular residence in the sixteenth century. Heitersheim had been given to the Hospitallers in about 1276, when Margrave Henry II of Hachberg became a Hospitaller. His two sons, Margraves Henry III and Rudolf I, quarrelled about this donation, and their people (satellites) inflicted damages upon Hospitaller estates. Yet in 1297 the two margraves renounced ‘omne bannum, advocatiam seu iurisdictionem, sive consisteret in mero imperio vel mixto, in causis criminalibus vel civilibus’ at Heitersheim and in its territory and all ‘iuramenta homagii’. In return the order promised ‘orationes’ in favour of the margraves.37 From then on the Hospitallers were the temporal lords of Heitersheim. Yet Heitersheim had been a fief of the monastery of Murbach. As late as 1724 Murbach claimed and received dues from the Hospitallers for Heitersheim. All other villages that belonged to Heitersheim had also been fiefs of various nobles and

32 CH, iv, 1–3, no. 4527, 222–23, no. 4877. 33 1219: Hohenlohisches Urkundenbuch, ed. by Weller, 19–21, no. 37; Wirtembergisches Urkundenbuch, 92–94, no. 624; , [last accessed 17 January 2016]; confirmation by King Frederick II, 1220: Die Urkunden Friedrichs II., ed. by Koch and others, iii, 335–39, no. 594. 34 Oberrheinische Stadtrechte, ed. by Schröder and Köhne, 126–28. 35 Klebes, Der Deutsche Orden, 14–26, 32, 207–25, 257–60, 329–32, 429–32; Rödel, Das Großpriorat Deutschland des Johanniter-Ordens, 158–61. 36 Herrmann, Der Deutsche Orden; Arnold, ‘Hochmeisterverlust, Bauernunruhen und Reformation’. 37 CH, iii, 705–06, no. 4359.

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knightly families who were subjects of the Breisgau and later on of Vorderösterreich. At least from 1612 onwards Heitersheim participated at the meetings of the estates of the Breisgau. In 1778 the Hospitallers had to recognize that Heitersheim was dependent upon the Breisgau. The Johannitermeister continued to be a prince of the empire, although his residence was not a territory directly subject to it.38 In other places the military religious orders also tried hard to defend the independence of their possessions from neighbouring territories. Sometimes they even forged medieval charters for this purpose. One such example was the commandery and village of Reichardsroth. The commandery had been founded by the house of Hohenlohe. For winning a lawsuit at the Imperial Chamber Court that started in 1584, the Hospitallers forged a charter by adding the words ‘von kayßerlichen und könniglichen rechten’ and thereby made Gottfried von Hohenlohe renounce not only his own rights but also the imperial rights to all Hospitaller estates in favour of his uncle Fr. Heinrich von Boxberg, the Hospitaller ‘summus magister per Alamaniam’ (Appendix, no. 1, below, dated 1272,39 based on a probably genuine charter of 1278, Appendix, no. 2, below). Similarly, in 1297 Count Frederick IV von Castell renounced ‘omne ius, quod nobis et nostris heredibus competebat vel competere poterat ex causa quacunque’ concerning estates and possessions of the Hospitallers in four villages.40 By claiming all imperial rights at Reichardsroth, the Hospitallers strove to turn their house and their peasants into a small independent territory, whereas in fact Gottfried von Hohenlohe had only given up any rights he had inherited from his ancestors. The list of such examples could be continued. Apart from jurisdiction the basic problem was imperial taxes, which began to be collected on a more regular basis from the fifteenth century onwards. Both the Hospitallers (column I in Table 22.1, directly below, prior of Alamania, Johannitermeister) and the Teutonic Order (column II in Table 22.1, Deutschmeister, and columns A to D sometimes the Hochmeister for his four baiulie camerales Austria, Etsch and Gebürg, Alsace and Burgundy, and Koblenz, until they became subjects to the house of Habsburg41 or were integrated into the Deutschmeistertum42) are mentioned in the imperial registers (Reichsmatrikeln) since the fifteenth century.43

38 Schneider, ‘Das Fürstentum und Johannitergroßpriorat Heitersheim’. 39 In 1245 Kraft von Boxberg and his two brothers Konrad and Wolfrad von Krautheim had a sister, who was married to Gottfried von Hohenlohe: Hohenlohisches Urkundenbuch, ed. by Weller, 123–24, nos 217–18. This was Richza von Krautheim, the grandmother of Gottfried von Hohenlohe in 1272/78. The genealogy deserves further studies: Schwennicke, Europäische Stammtafeln, nos 154B and 155; Wendehorst and Hageneder, ‘Die Dekretale Papst Innocenz’ III.’. The 1272 document is mentioned during a lawsuit from 1584 to 1605 in Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Reichskammergericht, ed. by Hörner, Ksoll-Markon, and Füßl, 150–52, no. 5399, at 151. 40 Monumenta Castellana, ed. by Wittmann, 92–93, no. 240. 41 Arnold, ‘Mittelalter’, 162; Gelmi, ‘Im Zeitalter der Reformation’, 175–76. 42 Heim, Die Deutschordenskommende Beuggen; Limburg, Die Hochmeister des Deutschen Ordens, 180–83; Bayard, ‘Der Deutsche Orden und die Ballei Koblenz’. 43 Werminghoff, Die deutschen Reichskriegssteuergesetze, 256–62; Sieber, Zur Geschichte des Reichsmatrikelwesens, 7–20; Ten Haaf, Deutschordensstaat und Deutschordensballeien, 70–72, 118. Payments by the Teutonic Order in 1492: Klebes, Der Deutsche Orden, 519–20.

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Originally the Teutonic Order bailiwick of Bohemia had also been a camera magistralis.44 Yet here it was the same case as with the Hospitaller priory of Bohemia: both entities were always regarded as subjects of the King of Bohemia and never paid any dues directly to the empire. This was remarkable, because the Hospitaller prior of Bohemia was also responsible for commanderies in Austria and adjacent regions that did not belong to the Bohemian Crown. In Germany both the Teutonic Order and the Hospitallers had to pay taxes to the empire, even before the Deutschmeister and the Johannitermeister became princes. Yet neither the Teutonic Order nor the Hospitallers were permitted to tax all their possessions within the empire themselves. On the contrary, such taxation was usually collected by other princes or territorial rulers. Consequently many bailiffs and commanders of both orders participated in territorial estates (Landständen), a practice that deserves further study. In a sense this indirect taxation that existed parallel to the direct taxation made both the Deutschmeister and the Johannitermeister princes without a principality. Nevertheless, the Deutschmeister of Mergentheim and his bailiwick of Franconia belonged to the imperial circle (Reichskreis) of Franconia, the bailiwick of Alsace and Burgundy with its lordship Altshausen to the circle of Swabia, and the Johannitermeister at Heitersheim to the circle of the Upper Rhine, as if they had a principality there.45 Both orders enjoyed protection and privileges for their possessions and their small lordships but had to respect the rights of those rulers and princes in whose principalities their possessions were situated.

44 On the medieval origins, see Militzer, ‘Bozen, Koblenz, Österreich und Elsass’. 45 Dotzauer, Die deutschen Reichskreise, 82, 142, 207, 213.

ho sp i tal l e r an d t e u to n i c o r d e r lo rd shi ps i n ge rmany Table 22.1. Taxes owed by the military religious orders to the empire in Germany. I. Prior of Alamania, Johannitermeister; II. Deutschmeister; A. Hochmeister for Austria; B. Hochmeister for Etsch and Gebürg; C. Hochmeister for Alsace and Burgundy; D. Hochmeister for Koblenz.

I

II

A

B

C

D

142246

1047

-

-

-

-

-48

143149

10

50

40050

-

-

-

145451

10

-

-

-

-

-

146752

30-60-053

30-60-0

-

-

-

-54

147155

15-30-0

4-8-0

2-4-0

2-4-0

2-4-0

2-4-0

148056

23-45-0

6-12-0

3-6-0

3-6-0

3-6-0

3-6-0

148157

27-26-0

10-10-0

6-6-0

6-6-0

7-6-0

6-0-0

148658

0-0-2000

0-0-2000

-

-

-

-

148759

0-0-1000

0-0-1000

-

-

-

-

148960

16-70-0

5-20-0

3-6-0

3-6-0

3-14-0

3-6-0

152161

14-46-120

19-55-180

3-13-300

3-13-300

3-13-300

3-13-300

153262

28-82-0

38-110-0

6-26-0

6-26-0

-

-

166363

10-30-240

19-55-448

-

-

10-30-240

-

46 Reichstagsakten, Ältere Reihe, viii (1883), 156–65, no. 145, at 160. 47 Until 1454 the figures are ‘gleven’; gleve means lance, that is, one knight plus three or four men. 48 For the imperial taxation decreed in 1427 the Deutschmeister paid 510 florins and 244 schock groats (1 schock = 60 pieces) in 1428: Reichstagsakten, Ältere Reihe, ix (1887), 251 and n. 4. 49 Reichstagsakten, Ältere Reihe, ix (1887), 524–34, no. 408, at 527, 533. 50 From the Hochmeister in Prussia, not only for his four camere magistrales. The Teutonic Order is not mentioned in 1422 and in 1454, because at that time the brethren were themselves at war with Poland. 51 Reichstagsakten, Ältere Reihe, xix.2 (2013), 620–88, no. 20, at 658, 676. 52 Müller, Reichs Tags Theatrum, vi, 283–86. 53 From now on the figures are men on horse – men on foot – florins. 54 Koblenz is here included in the payment by the Deutschmeister. 55 Reichstagsakten, Ältere Reihe, xxii.2 (1999), 798–807, no. 121, at 804–05. 56 Müller, Reichs Tags Theatrum, v, 740–43. 57 Müller, Reichs Tags Theatrum, v, 756–60. 58 Müller, Reichs Tags Theatrum, vi, 17–18. 59 Müller, Reichs Tags Theatrum, vi, 104–06. 60 Müller, Reichs Tags Theatrum, vi, 165–09. 61 Reichstagsakten, Jüngere Reihe, ii (1896), 424–42, no. 52. 62 Hernach volgend die Zehen Krayß (Augsburg, 1532). 63 Verzeichnuß Deß Heyl: Römischen Reichs Teutscher Nation Hochlöblichster: Hoch: und Wol-löblicher Stände nach den Zehen Reichs-Craissen (1663). One man on horse for 12 fl, one man on foot for 4 fl.

399

4 00

k a r l bo rc ha r dt

Appendix: Edition 1. May 1272 or 2 May 1270: Gottfried von Hohenlohe renounces all rights of dominion and taxation concerning present and future Hospitaller possessions at (Reichards)Roth in favour of his uncle Fr. Heinrich von Boxberg, supreme master of that Order in Germany. [No one of Gottfried’s heirs or successors shall act contrary to this stipulation.] — Forgery. One copy on paper, Munich, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Ritterorden Urkunde 111/1 (earlier 111a), 20.7 cm broad and 33.5 cm high; notes on the back: i, 1, ad 2, No. 5, No. 12, 1572, Copia donationis Godefridi de Hohenloe uber die commendam Reichardtsrodt unnd eingehörige gütter unnd unnderthanen (Borchardt, Die geistlichen Institutionen, i, 119 and n. 34 (ii, 885); Urkunden der Reichsstadt Rothenburg, ed. by Schnurrer, i, 32–33, no. 63). Wir Gottfridt herr inn Hohenlohe wollen kundt thuen aller meniglich mit dißem gegenwertigen brieff allen, die ihn sehen, hörn oder lossen64, das wir durch die lauther lieb Gottes unnd durch St. Johanns des heyligen tauffers und umb vergebung und aplaß unnßer sündt alle unnßere recht und alle vogtrecht unnd alle herrlichkheit, atzung, nutz unnd gewalt, wie die genant sein, klein oder groß, wie [wir]65 die jetzundt haben oder inkhünfftiglichen gehaben möchten, von kayßerlichen und könniglichen rechten oder von recht66 unnßer herrschafft in allen gütern, die der maister und der commenthur und die brüder des hospitals St. Johanns in Jerusalem in dem hauß zum Rode Würtzburger bistumbs jetzundt inhaben unnd besitzen, unnd waß sie inn zuekhunfft gewinnen unnd besitzen67 möchten, in allen gebieten und herrschaften, wie und wo und von welchen leuten und persohnen, die unß mit recht zuegehörn und verkhündet sein, daß inn worden ist und besitzen von demseben und noch werden möcht, das geben wir und zehlen und sagen ledig und loß zue einen68 ewigen titul und eigen unwiderrufflich zue einer ewigen Gottes gab nit widerruffen und widersprechen von [unß]69 und allen lebendigen menschen, den70 gaistlichen wohlgebohrnen herrn brueder Heinrich von Boxperg, unßern71 lieben oheim, obristen meister in allen deutschen landen des vorgenanten spittelß St. Johanns, der die gab von unns empfangen hat zue einen72 handthaben für sich und für die vorgenanten brüeder deß vorgenanten hauß für ihre nachkhommen. Wir Gottfridt der vorgenant herr zue Hohenlohe geheissen und geloben für unß und unnßer erben und für unnsere nachkhommen und inhaber der güetern recht unnd herrlicheit stehet gantz unnd väßt zuehaben unnd unnß kheinerley sach, wie die gesein

64 lesen recte. 65 om. 66 wegen add. ante corr. 67 waß sie inn zuekhunfft add. ante corr. 68 einem recte. 69 om. 70 dem recte. 71 unßerm recte. 72 einem recte.

ho sp i tal l e r an d t e u to n i c o r d e r lo rd shi ps i n ge rmany

mocht, nicht73 außgenohmmen, weder mit recht noch ohnrecht noch umb khein undankhbarkheit derselben Gottsgab noch widersprechen noch widerkhünnen in khein weeg ohngeverdte. Und der sach zur einer wahren getzeukhnuß so haben wir die gegenwertige brieff gefeßtiget mit unnßern inhangenden insigel, der do geben ist des jahrs nach Christi gebuhrt Mo 5574 und LXXII mensis75 Maij. 2. 2 May 1278: Gottfried von Hohenlohe renounces all rights concerning present and future Hospitaller possessions at (Reichards)Roth in favour of his uncle Fr. Heinrich von Boxberg, supreme master of that Order in Germany. [No one of Gottfried’s heirs or successors shall act contrary to this stipulation.] Two copies on paper (A and B), Munich, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Ritterorden Urkunde 115, one piece 20.3 cm broad and 33.2 cm high, on the back: 2, copia donationis iurium et dominii Gottfridi nobilis de Hohenloch anno 1278 [corrected from 1272] den 2. Maij in Reichardtsroth; the other piece 21.3 cm broad and 34 cm high, on the back: No. 116, both pieces from the archives of the Hospitaller commandery of Rothenburg (Hohenlohische Landes-Hoheit, ed. by Hanßelmann, i, 423 no. 60 from a copy in the archives of the Hohenlohe family (C). Hohenlohisches Urkundenbuch, ed. by Weller, 264–65, no. 387; Borchardt, Die geistlichen Institutionen, i, 119 and n. 34 (ii, 885); Urkunden der Reichsstadt Rothenburg, ed. by Schnurrer, i, 43, no. 88). Nos Gotfridus76 nobilis de Hohenloch notum esse volumus universis presentes litteras inspecturis, quod nos amore Dei77 et beati Ioannis baptiste et pro remissione peccatorum nostrorum omne ius omnemque actionem realem et personalem78, utilem et directam79, quod et quam habemus et in futurum habere80 poterimus iure dominii vel dominandi in omnibus bonis, que magister sive commendator et fratres domus hospitalis sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani in Rode Herbipolensis diocesis tenent et possident et que in futurum tenebunt et possidebunt in disserta terra nostri [sic!], quomodocunque vel qualitercunque et de quacunque persona vel personis nobis quocunque iure astrictum ad nos pervenerint aut in futurum poterunt pervenire, damus et concedimus titulo donationis irrevocabiliter inter vivos nobili viro et religioso domino fratri Henrico de81 Boxsperg avunculo nostro, honorabili summo magistro per Alimaniam82 sacre domus hospitalis supradicti recipienti dictam dationem, concessionem seu donationem pro se et predicta domo et fratribus et pro

73 nichts recte. 74 CC recte. 75 forsan LXX II mensis, meaning 2 May 1270. 76 Gottfridus B, Godfridus C. 77 divi A. 78 mixtam om. ABC. 79 utilem et directam om. C (ductam AB). 80 huic AB, om. C. 81 om. B. 82 Allmaniam C.

401

402

k a r l bo rc ha r dt

eorum successoribus universis promittentes. 83Nos Godfridus84 de Hohenloch nobilis predictus per nos et nostros heredes ac bonorum successores predicto magistro stipulanti pro se, pro domo et fratribus et eorum successoribus supradictis dictam dationem, concessionem et donationem ratam et gratam et firmam85 habere86 et tenere87 et non contravenire occasione aliqua vel exceptione de iure vel de potestate nec ipsam donationem vel concessionem ingratitudinis vel causa aliqua revocare88. In cuius rei testimonium presens scriptum sigilli nostri munimine roboramus. Acta sunt hec anno Domini millesimo89 CC90 LXX octavo91, secundo mensis92 Maii.93

Works Cited Manuscripts Karlsruhe, Generallandesarchiv, Rep. 20 Johanniter Urkunden nos 79, 81, 88, 124, 134, 142, 158, 165, 172 Munich, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Ritterorden Urkunde 111/1 Munich, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Ritterorden Urkunde 115 Vienna, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Reichsregister 10/I Primary Sources Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Reichskammergericht, ed. by M. Hörner, M. Ksoll-Markon, and W. Füßl, vol. xiii, Nr. 5283–5568 (Buchstaben I und J) (Munich, 2006) Codex diplomaticus ordinis sanctae Mariae Theutonicorum: Urkundenbuch des Deutschen Ordens, ed. by J. H. Hennes, 2 vols (Mainz, 1845–61) Hohenlohische Landes-Hoheit, ed. by C. E. Hanßelmann (Nürnberg, 1751) Hohenlohisches Urkundenbuch, ed. by K. Weller, vol. i (Stuttgart, 1899) Monumenta Castellana: Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte des fränkischen Dynastengeschlechtes der Grafen und Herren zu Castell, 1057–1546, ed. by P. Wittmann (Munich, 1890) Oberrheinische Stadtrechte, ed. by R. Schröder and C. Köhne, vol. i (Heidelberg, 1895) Papsturkunden für Templer und Johanniter, Neue Folge, ed. by R. Hiestand (Göttingen, 1984)

83 Nos – recovare om. Hanßelmann. 84 Gottfridus B. 85 et firmam om. Hohl. UB. 86 huic Hohl. UB. 87 tenore Hohl. UB. 88 Nos – recovare om. Hanßelmann. 89 M B. 90 CCo B 91 LXX octavo] LXXVIIIo B. 92 mense C. 93 L(ocus) S(igilli) add. AB.

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Reichstagsakten = Deutsche Reichstagsakten, Ältere Reihe (1376–1485), ed. by Historische Kommission (Munich, started in 1867); Jüngere Reihe: Deutsche Reichstagsakten unter Kaiser Karl V. (Munich, started in 1893) Tabulae Ordinis Theutonici ex tabularii Regii Berolinensis codice potissimum, ed. by E. Strehlke (Berlin, 1869) Die Urkunden der Reichsstadt Rothenburg, 1182–1400, ed. by L. Schnurrer, 2 vols (Neustadt an der Aisch, 1999) Die Urkunden des Deutschordenszentralarchivs in Wien. Regesten, vol. i, 1122–Januar 1313; vol. ii, Februar 1313–November 1418, ed. by U. Arnold (Marburg, 2006–07) Die Urkunden Friedrichs I., ed. by H. Appelt and others, MGH Diplomata regum et imperatorum Germaniae, x.1–5 (Hanover, 1975–90) Die Urkunden Friedrichs II., ed. by W. Koch and others, MGH Diplomata regum et imperatorum Germaniae, xiv, 4 vols to date (Hanover, 2002–) Die Urkunden Philipps von Schwaben, ed. by A. Rzihacek and R. Spreitzer, MGH Diplomata regum et imperatorum Germaniae, xii (Wiesbaden, 2014) Urkunden und Regesten zur Geschichte des Templerordens im Bereich des Bistums Cammin und der Kirchenprovinz Gnesen, ed. by W. Irgang (Cologne, 1987) Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Babenberger in Österreich, ed. by H. Fichtenau and E. Zöllner, vol. ii (Wien, 1955) Wirtembergisches Urkundenbuch, vol. iii (Stuttgart, 1871) Secondary Studies Arnold, U., ‘Hochmeisterverlust, Bauernunruhen und Reformation: Krisenbewältigung unter den Deutschmeistern Dietrich von Cleen und Walter von Cronberg’, Ordines Militare, 16 (2011), 241–57 ———, ‘Mittelalter’, in Der Deutsche Orden in Tirol: Die Ballei an der Etsch und im Gebirge, ed. by H. Noflatscher (Marburg, 1991), 125–70 Bayard, F., ‘Der Deutsche Orden und die Ballei Koblenz (1216–1809)’, in Die Realität und das Göttliche: Festschrift zum Jubiläum 1216–2016, vom Deutscherrenhaus zum LudwigMuseum, ed. by B. Reiferscheid and M. Hesslinger (Koblenz, 2016), 22–29 Borchardt, K., Die geistlichen Institutionen in der Reichsstadt Rothenburg ob der Tauber und dem zugehörigen Landgebiet von den Anfängen bis zur Reformation, 2 vols (Neustadt an der Aisch, 1988) ———, ‘Vogtei und Schutz bei den geistlichen Ritterorden des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts’, in Kirchenvogtei und adlige Herrschaftsbildung im europäischen Mittelalter, ed. by K. Andermann and E. Bünz (Ostfildern, 2019), 87–141 Brückner, T., Lehnsauftragung (Frankfurt am Main, 2011) Dendorfer, J., and R. Deutinger, eds, Das Lehnswesen im Hochmittelalter: Forschungskonstrukte – Quellenbefunde – Deutungsrelevanz (Ostfildern, 2010) Dotzauer, W., Die deutschen Reichskreise (1383–1806): Geschichte und Aktenedition (Stuttgart, 1998) Engel, W., ‘Die Krise der Ballei Franken des Johanniterordens zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte, 18 (1955), 279–90

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Gelmi, J., ‘Im Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung’, in Der Deutsche Orden in Tirol: Die Ballei an der Etsch und im Gebirge, ed. by H. Noflatscher (Marburg, 1991), 171–96 Hafkemeyer, G. B., Der Malteser-Ritter-Orden (Hamburg, 1956) Heim, P., Die Deutschordenskommende Beuggen und die Anfänge der Ballei Elsaß-Burgund von ihrer Entstehung bis zur Reformationszeit (Bonn, 1977) Herrmann, A., Der Deutsche Orden unter Walter von Cronberg (1525–1543): Zur Politik und Struktur des ‘Teutschen Adels Spitale’ in der Reformationszeit (Bonn, 1974) Hofmann, H. H., Der Staat des Deutschmeisters: Studien zu einer Geschichte des Deutschen Ordens im Heiligen Römischen Reich Deutscher Nation (Munich, 1964) Hoke, R., ‘Imperium merum et mixtum’, in Handwörterbuch zur Deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, vol. ii (Berlin 2012), 1195–96 Klebes, B., Der Deutsche Orden in der Region Mergentheim im Mittelalter: Kommende, Stadtund Territorialherrschaft (1219/20–c. 1525) (Marburg, 2002) Limburg, H., Die Hochmeister des Deutschen Ordens und die Ballei Koblenz (Bad Godesberg, 1969) Militzer, K., ‘Bozen, Koblenz, Österreich und Elsass: Die Entstehung der hochmeisterlichen Kammerballeien des Deutschen Ordens’, in Militzer, Zentrale und Region: Gesammelte Beiträge zur Geschichte des Deutschen Ordens in Preussen, Livland und im Deutschen Reich aus den Jahren 1968 bis 2008 (Weimar, 2015), 26–44 Müller, J. J., Des Heil. Römischen Reichs Teutscher Nation Reichs Tags Theatrum, wie selbiges unter Keyser Friedrichs V. allerhöchsten Regierung von Anno MCCCCXL bis MCCCCXCIII gestanden, 1 vol. in 6 parts ( Jena, 1713) Oestmann, P., Die Akten des Reichskammergerichts: Schlüssel zur vormodernen Geschichte (Düsseldorf, 2012) Reynolds, S., Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994) ———, The Middle Ages without Feudalism: Essays in Criticism and Comparison on the Medieval West (Farnham, 2012) Rödel, W. G., Das Großpriorat Deutschland des Johanniter-Ordens im Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Reformation anhand der Generalvisitationsberichte von 1494/95 und 1540/41, 2nd edn (Cologne, 1972) Schieffer, R., ‘Das Lehnswesen in den Urkunden der Kaiserin Konstanze, in den frühen Königsurkunden Friedrichs II. und in den Urkunden der Könige von Jerusalem’, in Ausbildung und Verbreitung des Lehnswesens im Reich und in Italien im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert, ed. by K.-H. Spieß (Ostfildern, 2013), 221–38 Schneider, W., ‘Das Fürstentum und Johannitergroßpriorat Heitersheim und sein Anfall an Baden’, in Heitersheim 1806: 200 Jahre Herrschaftsübernahme Badens im Johanniter-, Malteserfürstentum, ed. by W.-D. Barz (Berlin, 2006), 1–86 Schulz, K., ‘Die Zisterzienser in der Reichspolitik während der Stauferzeit’, in Die Zisterzienser: Ordensleben zwischen Ideal und Wirklichkeit, Ergänzungsband, ed. by K. Elm (Cologne, 1982), 165–93 Schwennicke, D., ed., Europäische Stammtafeln, vol. xvi (Berlin, 1995) Sieber, J., Zur Geschichte des Reichsmatrikelwesens im ausgehenden Mittelalter (1422–1521) (Leipzig, 1910)

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405

Index

Abbo, abbot of Fleury: 34–35 Acre: 242–43 Africa: 46 Agnes of Bohemia: 269–72, 279–80 Albigensian Crusade: 136–42 Alexander IV, pope: 159–68 Alexandria, patriarchs of: 187 Andrew II, king of Hungary: 148–50 Anna of Silesia: 272–74, 278, 279–80 Anselm of Liège: 40 arengae, papal: 36–37, 44 Armenian Church: 184–85, 198–201 Arnald Amalric, archbishop of Narbonne: 141 Arnulf of Rheims: 32–33 Articuli cleri (1316): 347, 349 Avignon curia: 355–66 Béla IV, king of Hungary: 145–46 benefices: 221 Bernardo Daddi: 256–60 Bertrand, cardinal-priest of SS Giovanni e Paolo: 137–40 Boniface VIII, pope: 329, 330 Bosnia: 153–54 Burchard of Worms: 30–32, 39 Byzantine Church: 194–97, 318–25 canon law collections: 49, 224 Canterbury, primacy of: 290–91, 293 Celestine III, pope: 185 Chaldean Church see Church of the East chapel, papal: 219–29 Charlemagne, emperor: 126–27 Chelles, Council of (994): 33

Chichester, see of: 310 Christ: 18, 29, 49, 110, 112–19 Church of the East: 188–89 Clare of Assisi: 269–72, 280 Clement II, pope: 42 Clement VI, pope: 207–08 Cluny: 38 College of Cardinals: 357–66 Conrad of Urach, cardinal-bishop of Porto e S. Rufina: 141–42 consistory, papal: 361–64 Constance, queen of Sicily: 67, 71–72 Constantine the Great: 120–21 Constitutio super ordinatione regni Sicilie: 174–75 Coptic Church of Egypt: 187 crozier: 245 crusades: 80–81, 86, 93, 136, 137, 152, 162, 173, 199–200, 201, 208, 211, 235, 241, 244 see also Albigensian Crusade De ordinando pontifice: 40–41 Dictatus pape: 50, 57 Donation of Constantine: 45, 49 Elizabeth of Hungary: 276–77 enclosure: 256, 281, 329–39 Enrico del Carretto, bishop of Lucca: 330–39 Eustathios, archbishop of Thessalonike: 318–25 exemption for military orders: 371–72; 392–94 Exeter, see of: 310–11

4 08

in d e x

fiefs: 394–96 Florence: 253–65 Franciscans: 256, 257–58, 259–65, 271–73, 279–82, 330, 339, 356, 357, 361, 363, 364, 365 Frederick II, emperor: 67–76, 392, 393 Gerald of Parma, cardinal: 171–79 Gozelin of Fleury, abbot: 38 gravamina, clerical: 341–52 Gregory I, pope: 125–27 Gregory V, pope: 34, 35–36 Gregory VII, pope: 54–60 Gregory IX, pope: 145–46, 186, 188, 270 Gregory de Crescentio, cardinal: 152 Hedwig of Silesia: 273–75, 278 Heitersheim: 396–97 Henry II, king of England: 287–313 Henry III, emperor: 40, 41 Henry III, king of England: 160–61, 164–65 Honorius III, pope: 135–43, 240–41 Honorius IV, pope: 173–74 hospitals: 379–81 Hospitallers: 371–85; 391–401 Innocent I, pope: 29 Innocent III, pope: 44, 67–68, 70–75, 92–93, 98, 113, 127, 233, 248 Innocent IV, pope: 94, 152–53, 186, 188 Jacob of Pecoraria, cardinal: 149–50 Jacobite Church see Syrian Orthodox Church Jacques de Vitry: 187, 188, 234–49 John XXII, pope: 356–66 John of Jesi, bishop: 151 Judaism: 79–105 Lateran Council III (1179): 89, 97, 206 Lateran Council IV (1215): 97, 184, 187, 233–34, 276 Lawrence, St: 239–41 lay piety: 253–65, 269–82 Leo I, pope: 29 Leo IX, pope: 44–49

Leo Branchaleoni, cardinal-priest of S. Cruce in Gerusalemme: 146–47 Liber Diurnus: 36, 56 Liber pontificalis: 115 Lincoln, see of: 307–09 liturgy: 89–90, 153, 184, 226, 234, 258, 274, 288 Louis VIII, king of France: 142 Lucca: 329–39 Lyons Council II (1274): 194–95 Markward von Anweiler: 74–75 Maronite Church of Lebanon: 183–84 marriage, clerical: 320–25 Marseilles: 138 Martin IV, pope: 172 Matthew Paris: 109–10, 163 Mekhitar of Daschir: 185 Mergentheim: 396 Mongols: 188–89 music: 225–29 Nerses, St: 184 Nestorian Church see Church of the East Nicholas IV, pope: 177–78, 189 Norwich, see of: 309 nuns: 332–39 Odilo of Cluny, abbot: 38–39 Oignies: 235–48 Oliver of Paderborn: 187, 188 Opus Anglicanum: 238–40 pallium: 184 parochial rights and duties: 373–79 Paul, St: 112 Peter Damian: 51–54 Peter of Poitiers: 111–12 Peter, St: 18, 29, 32, 112–18, 127, 183, 190 petitions: 207–13, 342–46 Philip of Fermo, bishop: 147–48 Philotheos of Opsikion, St: 320–25 Prague: 280 Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals: 29–30, 40, 46, 49

i nd e x

Reichardsroth: 397, 400–02 ring, episcopal: 244 Roman Frangipani, cardinal-deacon of S. Angelo: 142 Rome, Council of (1046): 41 Rostand Masson, papal nuncio: 160–68 S. Giustina, Lucca, convent of: 330–39 ships: 209–10 Sicily: 160–68, 171–79 Silvester I, pope: 120–21 Silvester II, pope: 32–34 St-Basle de Verzy, Council of (991): 32, 33–34 studium curiale: 222–23 Syrian Orthodox Church: 186 Taddeo Gaddi: 260–63 taxation: 96, 136, 150, 162–63, 165, 172, 174–75, 179, 344, 349, 362, 372, 380, 392, 395, 397, 398, 399, 400–01

Templars: 371–85 proceedings against (1308–1311): 381–83 Teutonic Order: 391–99 Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury: 239–40 Toulouse: 139 trade licences, Mediterranean: 205–13 universities: 222 Velasco, Franciscan monk: 152–53 vestments: 233–49 Walter Reynolds, archbishop of Canterbury: 346–52 Wazo of Liège, bishop: 40–41 William of Dijon: 37–38 Wroclaw: 279–80 Yaballahah III, Chaldean patriarch: 189

409

Europa Sacra

All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field. Titles in Series

Religious and Laity in Western Europe, 1000-1400: Interaction, Negotiation, and Power, ed. by Emilia Jamroziak and Janet E. Burton (2007) Anna Ysabel d’Abrera, The Tribunal of Zaragoza and Crypto-Judaism: 1484–1515 (2008) Cecilia Hewlett, Rural Communities in Renaissance Tuscany: Religious Identities and Local Loyalties (2009) Charisma and Religious Authority: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Preaching, 1200–1500, ed. by Katherine L. Jansen and Miri Rubin (2010) Communities of Learning: Networks and the Shaping of Intellectual Identity in Europe, 11001500, ed. by Constant J. Mews and John N. Crossley (2011) Alison Brown, Medicean and Savonarolan Florence: The Interplay of Politics, Humanism, and Religion (2012) Faith’s Boundaries: Laity and Clergy in Early Modern Confraternities, ed. by Nicholas Terpstra, Adriano Prosperi, and Stefania Pastore (2013) Late Medieval and Early Modern Ritual: Studies in Italian Urban Culture, ed. by Samuel Cohn Jr., Marcello Fantoni, Franco Franceschi, and Fabrizio Ricciardelli (2013) Thomas A. Fudge, The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus, Medieval Priest and Martyr (2013) Clare Monagle, Orthodoxy and Controversy in Twelfth-Century Religious Discourse: Peter Lombard’s ‘Sentences’ and the Development of Theology (2013) Darius von Güttner-Sporzyński, Poland, Holy War, and the Piast Monarchy, 1100–1230 (2014) Tomas Zahora, Nature, Virtue, and the Boundaries of Encyclopaedic Knowledge: The Tropological Universe of Alexander Neckam (1157–1217) (2014) Line Cecilie Engh, Gendered Identities in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs (2014) Mulieres religiosae: Shaping Female Spiritual Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, ed. by Veerle Fraeters and Imke de Gier (2014)

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e uro pa s ac r a

Bruno the Carthusian and his Mortuary Roll: Studies, Text, and Translation, ed. by Hartmut Beyer, Gabriela Signori, and Sita Steckel (2014) David Rosenthal, Kings of the Street: Power, Community, and Ritual in Renaissance Florence (2015) Fabrizio Conti, Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers: Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan (2015) Mendicant Cultures in the Medieval and Early Modern World: Word, Deed, and Image, ed. by Sally J. Cornelison, Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, and Peter Howard (2016) Adriano Prosperi, Infanticide, Secular Justice, and Religious Debate in Early Modern Europe (2016) Studies on Florence and the Italian Renaissance in Honour of F.W. Kent, ed. by Peter Howard and Cecilia Hewlett (2016) Relics, Identity, and Memory in Medieval Europe, ed. by Marika Räsänen, Gritje Hartmann, and Earl Jeffrey Richards (2016) Boundaries in the Medieval and Wider World: Essays in Honour of Paul Freedman, ed. by Thomas W. Barton, Susan McDonough, Sara McDougall, and Matthew Wranovix (2017) Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, Confraternity, Mendicant Orders, and Salvation in the Middle Ages: The Contribution of the Hungarian Sources (c. 1270–c. 1530) (2018)

In Preparation

Convent Networks in Early Modern Italy, ed. by Marilyn Dunn and Saundra Weddle