The central concept that ties this book together is the idea that Rome - in the twelfth century & probably beyond - is that Rome, when written about, The central concept that ties this book together is the idea that Rome - in the twelfth century & probably beyond - is that Rome, when written about, is a more imagined place than a real one. This is not a very controversial idea once you spend some time reading through the sources of the twelfth century: they are filled with evocations of republican Rome, imperial Rome, early Christian Rome, modern Rome as cesspool embodying everything wrong with the modern world. For those outside the city it was a projector, where people could place their hopes & disatisfactions. For those inside the city it was a "toy box" (in the words of Chris Wickham), where individual objects could mean a whole range of overlapping and conflicting things.
This book collects six essays on twelfth century perceptions of Rome. There are two essays on the The Marvels of Rome - Mirabilia Urbis Romæ, a twelfth century 'guidebook' through the city's ancient monuments. There's one of the city's Jewish community and its ambivalent relationship to their adopted home. There's an essay on (unsurprisingly negative) interpretations of the city from their Roman counterparts in Constantinople as well as a more ambivalent take from Englishman-abroad John of Salisbury. It ends on the most interesting essay in the volume, which discusses Arabic interpretations of the city, how it was differentiated from or incorporated into Constantinople, and why it was so often associated with labyrinths.
This book fills a nice gap - there's truckloads written on the classicizing tendencies in twelfth-century Rome, but much less on how minority populations within the city or foreign populations outside it would have seen it. It leads to really interesting discussions on the rumored treasures from the Temple of Jerusalem housed in St. John's Lateran (there were supposedly two bronze columns from the Temple housed in the basilica, and they were supposed to weep every year on the anniversary of the Temple's destruction) and on how an early tie between labyrinths and Roman city foundations led to rumors in the Islamic world of complicated labyrinths within the city of Rome. ...more
This series as a whole has a penchant for taking popes that are often underrated and demonstrating how important they actually were to the era in which they lived. Eugenius lived in the shadow of St. Bernard, Celestine was known as the old man who hung around for a while before Innocent III became pope, and Adrian is probably best known for the relatively trivial fact that he's the only pope from England. Though he's probably the most famous and well-respected of the lot, this work on Alexander continues the trend - Alexander is best known for his decades-long struggle against contemporary emperor Frederic Barbarossa, and it's easy to paint him as perpetually hounded by the forces that surrounded him. This work instead turns that into an asset for his pontificate, exploring how his frequent bouts of exile could function as a boon for the role of the papacy in general.
There are a lot of good essays in here - I particularly enjoyed one about the relationship between Alexander and the resurgent Roman commune written by John Doran - though some may be a bit dense or specific for someone without a good knowledge of what's going on with the papacy at this point (check out I.S. Robinson's The Papacy, 1073 1198: Continuity and Innovation for a work that's helpful for that). ...more
This is a good collection of essays on Pope Adrian IV. Each has its own focus, but the volume is tied together in emphasizing Adrian's competency and This is a good collection of essays on Pope Adrian IV. Each has its own focus, but the volume is tied together in emphasizing Adrian's competency and taking away the blame (often placed upon him) for the souring of papal-imperial relations in the second half of the 1150s. Anne Duggan has a particularly good article in here that does a nice job disproving the idea that Adrian was simply manipulated into a position antagonistic to the empire by a wayward faction of cardinals that favored the Normans to the south. Instead, emphasis is put on the sheer number of external factors that Adrian had to deal with, and paints a picture of him as a solid pope, able to make the most of a difficult situation.
The volume also has a really nice collection of contemporary sources that are relevant to Adrian's pontificate. ...more
This is a very helpful book for doing research, though I'd imagine that it can be a bit of a tedious read for someone looking for a good overview of AThis is a very helpful book for doing research, though I'd imagine that it can be a bit of a tedious read for someone looking for a good overview of Arnold of Brescia & his importance to the 12th century. This is not what this book is trying to do, at all, so I do feel a bit bad for giving it only three stars here - as a work of scholarship it deserves four or five. But I don't think many people join Goodreads for their historical scholarship needs, so I'm going to give this one a grade based on how it would read to someone approaching the book for reasons other than research.
Arnold of Brescia is a fascinating person, an enigma about whom we know almost nothing. Despite / Because of this, he is often put up on a pedestal in order to represent the twelfth century as a whole. His story touches on the slow emergence of medieval heresy (and the changing clerical response), on the sudden rise of communes across the Italian peninsula, on the role that classical antiquity played in the mind of medieval people, and on the terribly tenuous balance of power existing between the Pope, the Emperor, and the citizens of Rome, all eager to grasp its share of the city's authority and venerability. Despite all these weighty topics, what we actually know about Arnold is minuscule. He was condemned by Innocent II in 1139 for inciting violence in his home town of Brescia, and trying to remove the presiding bishop from office. He studied in Paris for a time, probably under Peter Abelard. He was chased out of France by the sway of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and resided for a time in Switzerland. In 1145 or so he return to Rome, having reconciled with the papacy. Soon after arriving he began preaching against the pomp of the clergy, and became ambiguously enmeshed in the politics of the reinstated Roman Senate. In 1155 he was exiled from the city, captured by Frederic Barbarossa, and hanged by the prefect of Rome. His body was burned and the ashes were tossed into the Tiber, so that the people of the city would not venerate him as a saint.
There are huge and looming silences in this story, and it's terribly difficult to piece together exactly who Arnold was and how he interacted with the people around him. And as is often true in these sort of cases, what people said about Arnold often said more about the author than Arnold himself. Embracing this problem, Arsenio Frugoni makes his way through all of the contemporary accounts of Arnold and compares what is said about him, trying to create as comprehensive a portrait as possible while also illuminating the various intellectual tensions of the age. There is a lot of quibbling over details here, which could be off-putting to many readers. But from a broader perspective it's a fascinating look at how the absence of information about a figure - especially a figure who was executed in so dramatic a fashion - results in such varying projections and interpretations of his life. It's not surprising that Arnold has become a poster child for all sorts of ideas and causes - the most famous prophets are the most ambiguous, and the most remembered martyrs are those who died for an interpretable cause. ...more
I'm starting to believe that books shouldn't be written about Arnold of Brescia: he's a blank canvas, for people to project upon him whatever they'd lI'm starting to believe that books shouldn't be written about Arnold of Brescia: he's a blank canvas, for people to project upon him whatever they'd like. Arnold was a religious reformer active in the first half of the twelfth century. He studied under Peter Abelard, led a revolt against the bishop in his hometown of Brescia, and eventually arrived in Rome, where he preached against the curia and developed some kind of relationship with the newly re-formed Roman Senate. He was executed by Frederick Barbarossa in 1155, his ashes scattered into the Tiber. That's nearly all we know about him: he wrote nothing himself and those who wrote about him either hatred him immensely (Bernard of Clairvaux) or only met him fleetingly or not at all (John of Salisbury, Otto of Freising). Any entire book that claims to be about Arnold of Brescia is really about something else, and just decided to cast him as its protagonist. He's a religious reformer, political revolutionary, pre-cursor to democracy, all kinds of things.
Arnold of Brescia was probably really interesting - the bits we do know suggest that he was enmeshed in lots of the most interesting aspects of his day. But there's just not enough actual information about the guy to write a book about him. Greenaway, who wrote this book in 1931, did a better job of avoiding the more extreme partisanships of his predecessors. But there are still lots of broad statements like "In [Arnold] all ignoble or petty strains were purged away, all pursuit of personal or class ambitions was relinquished, and the cause for which he fought raised to a higher plane by the disinterestedness of his motives and the earnestness of his convictions" or "A restless passion for change and the firm conviction that nothing could be worse than present conditions engendered a regrettable turbulence of disposition.... so intent was he on reaching the goal of the endeavor, so acutely conscious of the purity of his ideal and the disinterestedness of his intention, so pathetically confident in the invincibility of his own example that he never paused to debate the consequences of a line of action or to count the cost either to himself or to his followers." There are also big historical generalizations along the lines of "It may be maintained that the failure of Arnold of Brescia's attempt made the Reformation a historical necessity."
Arnold of Brescia sits at the intersection of two big strands of development of the age - the communal movements and ecclesiastical reform. It would be great if he wrote, or if his writing survived, but I think it's probably best to be skeptical of any book that claims to know what he did or what he central motivations were, or who he really was....more
This is a wonderful book to read before visiting Rome. It's title is very apt: it's a history through topography, through art, through tangible placesThis is a wonderful book to read before visiting Rome. It's title is very apt: it's a history through topography, through art, through tangible places and things. It tells the story of medieval Rome through it's buildings, which is a really interesting and memorable way to do it. I think Krautheimer in general is a better art historian than historian - some of his non-art sections are a bit generalized - but that's okay. I really like that he weaves both together, and shows how the political, economic, or social history of the city became reflected in its buildings.
Poor Pope Celestine. Being pope from 1191-1198 is a bit of unfortunate timing for anyone hoping for long-lasting historical recognition: 1198 marked tPoor Pope Celestine. Being pope from 1191-1198 is a bit of unfortunate timing for anyone hoping for long-lasting historical recognition: 1198 marked the rise of Pope Innocent III, usually cast as the high-point of the medieval papacy. Celestine's personal characteristics and circumstances didn't do him any favors either. He was very old when he became pope, and he was immediately set in opposition to Henry VI, the young and powerful king of the Germans. It's easy to cast Celestine as the feeble and ineffectual old man, the guy who vacillated and made concessions until the younger, more vibrant Innocent III stepped onto the scene. Innocent III's own biographer, in The Deeds of Pope Innocent III, told almost exactly that story, and it's been fairly accepted down to the present.
This collection of essays aims to revitalize Celestine's reputation, and it pretty much succeeds. It's hard to read through this book and see Celestine as simply a prelude to more exciting things to come. He was a cardinal for nearly half a century, and was intimately involved in the political, social, and theological debates of his time. As pope, he did much to secure papal lands around Rome and ensure papal independence despite encroaching imperial power.
The essays here range from Celestine's time as a cardinal to his relationship with Judaism or the French monarchy, to his role in changing how canonization functioned within the papal curia. They can be fairly specialized, but they're all pretty interesting if you're curious about the development of the papacy during this period....more
This is a collection of essays that follows a recent trend in Reformation-era scholarship that emphasizes the commonalities between Protestant and CatThis is a collection of essays that follows a recent trend in Reformation-era scholarship that emphasizes the commonalities between Protestant and Catholic reform. In the study of penance and confession this really got going in the 1970s, particularly in the shift in emphasis from canon law and theology to the practice's social impact, especially in the works of John Bossy and Thomas N. Tentler. These essays continue that trend and focus on four major themes: (1) Protestant and Catholic similarities/differences on sin and confession, (2) penance as both consolation and discipline – this is indebted to Tentler’s assertion of the same thing about the late medieval period, (3) the idea that Bossy’s thesis (penitence moved from a communal process to a personal/psychological one) is not necessarily true, and much 16th century penance was community-oriented (4) the laity was not passive in the process of determining how penitence should be carried out.
The essays by Kenneth Parker, Charles Parker, Wietse de Boer, and Jennifer Selwyn are particularly good. de Boer's essay looks at how attempts to enforce penance related to infant mortality in Milan were actively resisted by the laity, and Selwyn's looks at how Jesuits in southern Italy used penitence rituals as a tool to heal community divisions. Other essays have interesting points as well, though some are a bit dry. ...more
This is a little collection of essays that are worth a read, but are definitely not essential unless you're studying the Reformation closely. This oneThis is a little collection of essays that are worth a read, but are definitely not essential unless you're studying the Reformation closely. This one is pretty old, and there are other, more up-to-date works to serve as an introduction.
This is still pretty good, though, and it stands up against the test of time fairly well. There are three essays here - the first urges a reorientation of Reformation studies away from theological minutia and towards its broader social impact. The second looks at the relationship between humanists and reformers - Moeller argues that even though Luther himself was not a humanist, his parallel ideas attracted a younger generation of reformers who spread and popularized his ideas. It was this communication that separated Luther from earlier critics of the Church, and allowed the Reformation to succeed.
The third essay is the most substantial and makes an argument about why Lutheran theology was so popular in northern Germany while Zwingli was preferred in the south. Moeller notes that a trending away from medieval 'republicanism' in cities towards a tighter oligarchy had raised tension in Germany cities even before Luther, and the addition of religious tensions caused the two issues to become intermingled. It was common, for example, that a town would demand lower taxes and a Protestant preacher as part of the same group of demands. This was especially true in the south, which retained a strong communal spirit.
Moeller then argues that the communal spirit of the south was more drawn to the theology of Zwingli, while the north preferred Luther. Lutheranism was inherently corporate in outlook – it took away the institution of priesthood and made it a priesthood of all believers and it sanctified work on behalf of the community. However, at the same time, the emphasis on personal faith made more a much more individualistic faith and made it more difficult to tie religion to any sort of external community. For Zwingli and Bucer, however, the church and state were much more intrinsically tied together and were seen as mutually supportive in the creation of a Christian community. "Bucer’s ethic was essentially a community ethic." The difference probably derived in part from the fact the Zwingli/Bucer were burghers while Luther was subject of a prince. Zwingli/Bucer were more ‘medieval’ in their focus on the town and salvation was bolstered by a community that promoted conditions that would allow God’s word to be obeyed....more
"As I see it, the ‘Christian Middle Ages,’ as far as the essentially rural masses are concerned, is a legend which is being increasingly challenged. A"As I see it, the ‘Christian Middle Ages,’ as far as the essentially rural masses are concerned, is a legend which is being increasingly challenged. And, if it is legend, the two Reformations constituted, despite mutual excommunication, two complementary aspects of one and the same process of Christianization whose impact and limits still have to be assessed."
As I was reading this book I found myself agreeing with one half of Delumeau's ideas, and then strongly disagreeing with the other. The first half of this work is largely a look at the Council of Trent and its immediate aftermath. It's a pretty familiar story by now: in the wake of the Reformation, Catholicism countered by cracking down on 'superstitious' practices and by trying to create a more active, education, and uniform clergy. Deluumeau argues that this should be seen in the context of comparable reform occurring in Protestant countries, and observes that both sides had largely the same goals, just to varying degrees. Delumeau was one of the earlier historians to argue along these lines, bucking the trend of scholarship that saw Protestants and Catholics solely as opposing camps, and focused particularly on theological differences. Delumeau's focus on the commonalities between the two sides, therefore, is interesting.
But it's harder for me to get on board with his second point: that the two faiths were so similar because they were both undertaking a process of "Christianizing" the rural masses that had been Christian in only the most superficial sense of the word.
This argument makes me very grumpy. I think it's a weird argument to make for a number of reasons, but mostly because it takes post-Tridentine Catholicism to be the one "true" Catholicism, and assumes that forms of faith that deviate from it are contaminated in some way. I think that's an odd way to approach religion. Medieval Christianity was undeniably weird from a modern perspective, superstitious as well. It was very flexible and diverse, because it was universal. Nearly everyone in Europe practiced it, so it was naturally practiced in a wide variety of ways. Delumeau seems to take this fact to imply that these people were not Christians in any real sense of the word, simply because their idea of Catholicism was not the same as the definition codified a hundred years later. He even goes so far as to suggest that the drop-off in Church attendance over the course of the 18th century was some kind of purge, where all of the 'fake' Catholics fell away leaving a core of true believers (ugh). This is a terribly unimaginative way to view religion and history and it makes me feel a little resentful to a book that is otherwise very good. ...more
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I was expecting a pretty traditional textbook that recounted the late medieval period and the ReformaI was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I was expecting a pretty traditional textbook that recounted the late medieval period and the Reformation. And it is that, sort of, but it's presented in a really interesting way.
Ozment argues against the traditional narrative of late medieval intellectual history: the flowering of scholasticism, the threat of nominalism (Ozment calls William of Ockham the Black Death of medieval intellectual history), and then intellectual stagnation until the Reformation. He instead suggests that Ockham's thought didn't cause the break between the two periods, but provided the central link between them. You can probably guess it based upon the years that start and end the book (1250 and 1550), but Luther comes out of this work looking very medieval.
After a whirlwind tour through scholastic thought (loosely organized around different approaches to the questions of salvation, epistemology, and exegesis and starring Augustine, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham), Ozment also takes a look at less dialectical forms of spirituality during the period, particularly Bernard of Clairvaux, Franciscans, and beguines. The second half of the work looks at Luther and the Reformation, with particular attention at how Luther's theology was likely derived from a mixture of German mysticism and Ockham's nominalism. Ockham's God was much more remote and unrestrained than Aquinas's: God was not bound to create the universe that he did, and he possessed the power to alter it at will. But Ockham's God wasn't arbitrary either, as is often suggested: he was instead based on the concept of covenants. God made the universe work the way it worked because he promised to, not because he was required to. This way of approaching theology stresses the omnipotence of God, and it's easy to understand how it would not be a large leap to Luther's theory of salvation....more
A good, engaging textbook. I particularly liked Ozment's overview of later medieval thought, theological, philosophical, and political. A subject likeA good, engaging textbook. I particularly liked Ozment's overview of later medieval thought, theological, philosophical, and political. A subject like that can be difficult to cover in a textbook due to its technicality, but this is a nice balance of clear explanation, the occasional in-depth case study, and plenty of excerpts from primary sources. More textbooks should go that route, I think.
I also liked the choice of time frame, 1250-1550. Most books on intellectual thought would either go late medieval or Reformation, but Ozment decides to go for both and it really adds an originality to his work. I could have done with a little more interweaving of the two halves, but the fact that both of them are there allows him to demonstrate how the Reformation managed to be a shocking, traumatic moment for those who lived through it, but also a somewhat unsurprising development in retrospect, given the general trends of late medieval thought.
My only slight qualm is that I think he's a bit too hard on late medieval Catholicism. Don't get me wrong, a lot of it was kind of a disaster - but it was also a disaster that had been going on for a while. People had been complaining about corruption, clerical wealth, uneducated priests, and more for centuries before the Reformation, so it makes Ozment's claim that the Reformation sprung out of a general sense of spiritual repression a bit unconvincing (or at least underdeveloped). Still a very good textbook, though.
Just as a heads up, since this is a textbook: there are certain parts that may be somewhat slow going if you don't have any background in theology. The majority of it is very accessible and readable, but if you don't have any background in the subject you'll occasionally need some patience and a trip over to Google. It's worth it, though - this sort of mixture of clarity and depth is hard to find....more
This is an interesting enough book on the Investiture Contest, but it never comes together quite as nicely as it could have.
Rough focuses on the GospeThis is an interesting enough book on the Investiture Contest, but it never comes together quite as nicely as it could have.
Rough focuses on the Gospels of Matilda, an illuminated Gospel commissioned by the illustrious Matilda of Tuscany. Matilda was a fascinating woman, a patron of monasteries as well as a power player in contemporary politics. The manuscript was produced in the later 11th century in Italy, likely in the midst of the Investiture Contest between Gregory VII and Henry IV. It's a period that produced a huge amount of polemical literature but not nearly as much art: only five vaguely contemporaneous pieces survive, and they're all from the tail end of the conflict in the 12th century. Matilda's Gospels stand as perhaps the sole exception, and are thus very interesting to art historians and historians of the Gregorian Reform.
Rough's particular concern is one illumination: Christ's Cleansing of the Temple.
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Rough's short little book then goes through the varying commentaries on the Cleansing during the period, focusing particularly on Peter Damian, Humbert of Silva Candida, Anselm II of Lucca, and Bruno of Asti. He provides mini-biographies of each and notices a general increase in militarism in the reformers interpretations. While Peter Damian saw the cleansing as a moral allegory, albeit in the context of simony, Bruno of Asti viewed as an opportunity to pen a scathing condemnation of his political opponents. Rough also includes a brief sections on the Patarines, which allows him to claim that contemporary attitudes towards the Cleansing of the Temple story were moral, theological, political, and social in nature.
It's not a bad book by any means, but it's not very focused. Though the works is nominally about the Gospel illuminations, they quickly fall to the background in favor of a summary of contemporary biblical commentaries. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes this book a lot less distinctive than it could be. Rough's conclusions are similar to what you'd find in most works on the Investiture Contest. He misses the opportunity to really dive into the iconography present in the illuminations, and the potential to find some new angles on a period that's been very heavily studied. When he does do this - such as his section on the pallium in the portrait of St. Matthew - it's fascinating.
This is a perfectly good overview of the political history of Germany from Henry III in the mid-eleventh century until the death of Henry VI right befThis is a perfectly good overview of the political history of Germany from Henry III in the mid-eleventh century until the death of Henry VI right before the dawn of the thirteenth. There's a good, substantial section on Henry IV and the Investiture Controversy, overviews of the "legalized anti-kings" Lothar III and Conrad III, and then a pretty substantial conclusion on Frederick Barbarossa and his aftermath. The book's central theme seems to be why Germany - so unified and promising circa 1050 - seemed to fall apart into an entanglement of messy principalities while France and England became increasing more stable and centralized. In a lot of ways, it functions as a mirror image to I.S. Robinson's very good The Papacy, 1073 1198: Continuity and Innovation, telling the same story over the same time period, but from the other side of the Alps. Most of the time, it's very readable, though a previous familiarity with German geography will help.
I only have a couple complaints: Fuhrmann is not terribly kind to the popes - most of them are usually described as "colorless" or "misanthropic" or characteristic of a papacy that "saw its own greatness measure in the number and extent of its own possessions and privileges," which I'm not entirely certain are always fair. On the positive side, this doesn't really disrupt his argument or narrative. A bit odder is the books structure - there are digressions throughout that address everything from France and England to contemporary spirituality to urban development. While I am all for integrating cultural and social histories into political narratives, it's not terribly well integrated here. There will be a section, seemingly out of nowhere that will talk about Premonstretensians, Hildegard of Bingen, and the biographies of Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux, and then he'll dive right back into Welf/Staufer political machinations without ever giving a clear explanation of how they'd be related. It's not the end of the world, but it's jarring.
A particularly disconcerting example of this comes right at the start: this book has one of the weirder introductory chapters I've ever read in an academic book, in which Fuhrmann tries to cover medieval historiography, the nomenclature of the Germanic people, medieval climate and geography, and concepts of space, time, and the individual in 30 pages. It's weird, perfunctory, and leads to lots of statements like "people of those times did not share our enthusiasm for nature," and "the inhabitants on on the North Sea and Baltic coasts adopted a largely passive attitude towards the power of the sea." There is a diversion into whether coniferous or deciduous trees were more common, a study of changing skull shapes, and a brief existential consideration of why medieval people didn't just commit suicide on a large scale due to the difficulty of their lives. I feel like Fuhrmann figured he should give the Annales school a go, but just couldn't find the strength to put his heart into it. Pretty much nothing in the first chapter is ever brought up again in the rest of the book.
On a side note: thank you so much to whoever read this book before me, and put annotations in the margins. You made reading this book so much more fun, and you have carried on the monastic tradition of glossing with a vengeance. I liked your little hearts next to sections where popes would do particularly holy things, and your little crying face next to the section about the slave trade. Anyways, thanks! I was very sad when you stopped writing in the margins half way through. ...more
Let's start with this: I'm a total pope nerd. When Benedict XVI resigned earlier this year, it blew my mind. When a Jesuit subsequently bec4.5 stars.
Let's start with this: I'm a total pope nerd. When Benedict XVI resigned earlier this year, it blew my mind. When a Jesuit subsequently became pope and chose the name Francis, it blew my mind again. It has been quite a year.
In light of that, it does not take very much for me to find a book about popes fascinating. For a lot of people, this book will probably seem terribly dry - it's nearly all institutional history, it dives head first into lots and lots of details, and at times it can seem frustratingly fixated on the papal curia. There are, I don't know, sixty pages on papal finances.
I love stuff like that! Institutional history has a reputation for stuffiness for a reason, but it's also incredibly important. The papacy reached into absolutely every aspect of medieval life, particularly by the end of this period, and I think it's therefore hugely important to figure out how the papacy viewed itself in the broader context of the world in which it operated, and to learn the nuts and bolts of the curia in order to figure out how (or to what degree) it turned this self-image into a reality. This book does an excellent job of that.
Robinson's work is divided loosely into two sections: in the first, he looks at the papacy as an institution. Robinson provides a lovely amount of detail that's not easily summarized, but the general sense that one gets is one of gradual solidification and self-definition. Getting off to a quick start with the 11th century reformers, the papacy became increasingly keen to define itself as an entity - especially in relation to secular powers and the episcopate - and responded by developing a curia and a modus operandi that allowed it to be involved in both secular and spiritual affairs at the highest levels.
Robinson traces the rocky relationship with the Roman people that had the papacy enduring long periods of exile throughout the 12th century and the growing importance - financial and political - of the papal lands surrounding Rome. Papal councils and legations also proved to be key tools of papal influence - the latter became far more numerous and influential, and councils gradually emerged less as a judicial body centered on Rome and more as as reforming tool that highlighted the power of the pope and curia. Perhaps the most dependably influential function of the papacy, though, was judicial: by the mid-12th century the papal court was flooded with legal appeals from all corners of Europe, spurring on the rising efficiency of the Roman curia and chancery. But perhaps most important of all, for Robinson, were the cardinals. The cardinals appear all over this book, to the extent that it's rather easy to imagine them as the real powers: they elect the pope, they are his chief advisers, they tend to be the ones sent to broker deals with the secular powers. And maybe most importantly, they're the ones who remain, running the curia, as individual popes come and go. There's an aspect of institutional memory in the College that's fascinating, and I wish Robinson had been able to explore it a bit more.
The second half of the work explores the relationship of the papacy to the outside world. It's necessarily limited - relations with England and France are mentioned only in passing, Becket is mentioned only in relation to the conflict with Frederick Barbarossa. But it's a good overview of the most pressing political issues of the 12th century for the papacy: crusades, Normans, and the Empire. Despite the necessary exclusions, Robinson does a nice job covering the period, and a particularly nice job of working in his discoveries from the work's first half. Cardinals, especially in their role as legates, were crucial for Innocent II and Alexander III when they were attempting to assert themselves to the wider Christian world against the anti-popes who were challenging them. The importance of the papal lands becomes immediately clear as soon as a pope is exiled from Rome and thus divorced from the revenue of the lands associated with it. The pendulum swing of alliances with the Normans and the Empire is traced back to the factions that repeatedly developed within the College of Cardinals.
The term "papal monarchy" pops up a lot in regards to this period and the one right after it. It's an understandable one - the papal curia frequently looks remarkably similar to the courts of contemporary secular monarchs. But at the same time, Robinson's work does a good job of showing how the pope, even at the height of his influence, was working within a huge, complex, and multifaceted set of power structures....more
Gregory VII is one of the most interesting figures of the Middle Ages, and you could probably make an argument that he was one of its best figures or Gregory VII is one of the most interesting figures of the Middle Ages, and you could probably make an argument that he was one of its best figures or one of its worst. He's terrifically driven, and you get the sense in all of his writings that he absolutely believes in the necessity of what he's doing. It's probably his best and his worst quality.
Gregory VII is the pope who really gets the famed Investiture Controversy going, and the majority of papacy was spent waging a nasty battle with the Emperor Henry IV over how power was delineated between clerical and secular authorities. I'm not sure that's what he really intended to do - I think he was essentially trying to continue the clerical reform program set up by his predecessors like Leo IX - but the manner in which he envisioned ecclesiastical reform enfolding crashed headlong into decades of imperial practice and quickly escalated amid lots of strong personalities.
These letters don't frequently deal directly with Gregory's conflict with the empire, though it does pop up. Instead, it collection is centered on the letters that Gregory sent to clerics throughout his pontificate. They aren't quite as exciting as the imperial letters, which are filled with lots of name calling and portentous accusations, but they do offer a nice counterbalance to the more argumentative portrait of Gregory. You get a sense of the backdrop of how Gregory thought about things, and how he envisioned the ideal set up of the Church.
Regardless of your opinion, he's an enormously important pope, and hints of this pop up in the letters. Papal legates become more an more important as means for the papacy to reach more distant outposts of Christendom, there's a renewed self-confidence, and - most interesting to me - there is an emphasis on reforming the clergy throughout the whole Church. While that's a worthy goal to a certain extent, in practice it frequently seemed to lead to a conceptual demotion of the laity in the life of the Church, an issue that the Catholic Church is still trying to grapple with today....more
Gregory the Great, along with Augustine, is one of the few medieval writers who you can read today and occasionally forget that they were writing theiGregory the Great, along with Augustine, is one of the few medieval writers who you can read today and occasionally forget that they were writing their works about 1500 years ago. Of course, it's substantially different - there are not a huge number of best-sellers today that will ramble at length about the symbolic significance of Old Testament priestly robes - but the core of the Pastoral Rule is really accessible. It reads a bit like a self-help book (though Gregory envisioned it as a book on how to help others) and a lot of the advice is still really good. Gregory was an accomplished guy on all sorts of levels, but I think quite a bit of it stemmed from the fact that he was just really emotionally insightful and that he was a very empathetic person. It's a simple message: in order to be an effective spiritual guide, you have to help different people in different ways. But the details really shine, and the fact that Gregory felt the need to account for every aspect of a person (their marital status, their age, all their various tendencies and dispositions) makes this a helpful book for anyone to read.
If you are a Christian - particularly in any sort of leadership role - I'd recommend giving the whole thing a read. Same goes for any historians. But even if you aren't, it's still worth a quick look, even if you just glace through the sections that strike your fancy....more
I read this book for a survey class of medieval theology and near the end of the course, one of my classmates said of this book, "It doesn't really buI read this book for a survey class of medieval theology and near the end of the course, one of my classmates said of this book, "It doesn't really bust the narrative much at all." That's fair enough. Logan's book offers a pretty traditional chronology and analysis of Church history, and there's certainly nothing here that's going to be earth-shattering for someone who has read a bit about medieval Christianity.
But regardless of that, I quite liked this work as a textbook. It's clear and approachable without being condescending, and it has a sense of life and personality to it that can be rare in surveys. Is it weird to find a a textbook charming?
There's also a nice variety of material. You certainly get a history of the popes, but there's also coverage of less institutional aspects of religious life. There's also an entire half chapter dedicated to medieval cathedrals, which made me very happy. Overall, it's a good quick overview of the subject. It would be a pretty useful text to use for a class, or if you're just somewhat interested in the subject. ...more
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