Rome and the Invention of the Papacy: The Liber Pontificalis

[Music] i'm sure many of you who have been to rome will have experienced what an extraordinary palances the city is where just walking out into the street you can walk through two or even three thousand years and of course an enormous amount has been written about the history of rome right across that period and indeed a great deal has been written about the history of the popes as well and particularly many studies have come out recently on the popes in late antiquity on the art the architecture and the transformation of rome from an imperial city to a christian city and the physical topographical and ideological impact of christianity and there are actually many more in progress but my book is not a straightforward history of rome either of early medieval rome or indeed of the early medieval papacy instead it's the study of rome through the prism of the text known as the libra pontificalis written in rome itself and my principal themes therefore are first of all the way a particular text can record and determine our perceptions of the past and thus shape or even manage memory and secondly i analyze the text to try and work out the distinctive representation of the popes and their role as successors of saint peter and i trace how the city depicts the city of rome itself as a holy city of saints and martyrs and lastly i ask who read it who copied it and explore the production dissemination and reception of the libra pontificalis now and what follows i'm going to show you some of the things that i've worked on in particular the illustrations but i'll also give you an outline of what i'm going to say so i'm going to get a share screen now and this is technically demanding for me but let's hope for the best you should all now have a whole screen um it's the not the one i want you to see that's why so in the 25 minutes that follow i should like briefly to introduce you to the text and give you a short summary of the themes that i address in the six chapters of my book these are the transformations of the city of rome the apostolic succession of the popes and the building and embellishment of churches in honour of the saints the significance of the papal chronicling of contributions to liturgy law doctrine and the establishment of papal authority and the implications of the early manuscript evidence so first of all what is the libra pontificalis well it's an historical narrative in the form of chronologically ordered serial biography so it has a biography of every pope from number one saint peter to number 112 stephen v but it's not a late 9th century text although we do not precise know precisely when where or even by whom it was produced nor how it was distributed there is general agreement that it was first compiled in rome in the first half of the sixth century within the papal administration and that's lp1 on the screen then it was resumed and updated in the course of the seventh century by anonymous officials within the papal administration in the 7th century that's lp 2 a b and c on your slide then continued thereafter into the 8th and the 9th centuries lp 3 and 4 with the biography is sometimes added in batches and sometimes on a life by life basis now these stages of composition have been more or less agreed over the years largely as a result in particular of the splendid 19th century scholar louis duchenne and this is the reconstruction that they have posed and i have modified it and it's because the text constructed the historical identity of the pope as bishop of rome and of the universal church that i have suggested that it invented the papacy in both the old sense of the latin word as discovery as well as in our modern senses now the leave of pontificon has also extended the history of rome in ways which augmented and enriched the identity of the city and of the people so let's look a little bit more at the structure and as i've said you'll get glimpses of the manuscripts i've worked on over the years each biography is structured in a similar way the examples here are the simple ones of lucius and stephen so basic structure is that you're given the name of the pope his nation which could mean where he was born or what his family origin was then his parentage the length of his reign the way he was elected his career the buildings that can be associated with him though most of those of only from the fourth century onwards ordinations death and burial and finally the length of the vacancy before the next successor so if i quote the life of lucius lucius born in rome son of porphyrios held the sea three years three months three days he was crowned with martyrdom he was bishop in the time of gallus and volusia he was exiled later by god's will he returned safe to the church he laid down the two priests and three deacons should not leave the bishops wherever he was to be witness on the church's behalf he was beheaded by valerian on the fifth of march he gave power over the whole church to his archdeacon stephen on his way to his passion he performed two december ordinations four priests four deacons for various places seven bishops he was buried in the cemetery of calistas on the villapia on the 25th of august the bishopric was vacant for 35 days now the interesting thing about this structure is that it mirrors the structure of the classical imperial serial biographies which i've listed on the slide here and give you an indication again of the way the biography is structured the emperor's name the life before he became emperor the process of becoming emperor including disputes and rivals the career as emperor including rebellions legislation public works buildings patronage religious observance the death and burial and the length of reign so in choosing the imperial format for their history the compilers of the libra pontificalists were making an obvious ideological as well as historiographical point now this format tool requires even greater significance when we consider the text's initial production as i've already mentioned everything about this text is disputed but my current view is that the compilation coincides with the beginning of the ostrogothic wars when the armies of the eastern emperor justinian invaded the ostrogothic kingdom that had been established in the former roman imperial territory in italy and the slide depicts life 59 of pope agupetus in which the emperor justinian prostrates himself before the pope and thus provides a fitting climax to this first section of the libra pontificalis now perhaps it would be helpful if i explained the historical background very briefly and i've given you some dates here so that you can keep track of what i'm saying and the map too may help during the fourth and fifth centuries the western roman empire had rare emperor had rarely resided in rome was much more likely to be in milan or ravenna in rome as in many other cities in the western empire after the legalization of christianity by the emperor constantine in the early 4th century the bishop emerged as a major political and administrator as well as religious leader after the deposition of the last roman emperor in the west by the military leader ottawa and from the 480s by the ostrogothic king theodoric based in the roman imperial city of ravenna italy was ruled by these people and on theodoric's death in 526 his grandson atholaric succeeded at the age of 10 more or less under the regency of his mother but when aphalaric died amelia swinther associated her cousin theodohat with her on the throne and it was amelia swinther's murder by her cousin that appears to have precipitated the arrival of justinian's armies in italy now the goths then led successively by king whitigus and king totaler resisted the byzantine armies they were often supported in this by people generally called romans but they were defeated and justinian's triumph is marked by the so-called pragmatic sanction of 554 and by 584 the byzantines had established the x arcade of ravenna in the north east of italy but in the meantime the lombards had arrived settling in the north as well as in the central part in the areas which became known as the duchess of spelato and then avento so from the end of the sixth century the second half of the sixth century therefore italy is essentially divided between three authorities or jurisdictions the pope and the secular administration of some kind based in rome the byzantine government based in rivena known as the ex-arcade and the various lombard duchies which comprised the kingdom of lombard it remains a major problem to establish how much real as opposed to nominal political authority the byzantine exarch of ravenna or the emperor in constantinople actually exerted over rome during the 200 years that followed but the pope consistently asserted his spiritual authority and his leading position in matters of doctrinal orthodoxy within the entire church in this highly charged context the production of the libra pontificalis assumes enormous significance for it appears as if the popes were seizing their moment and offering a statement about the sea of saint peter and its bishop as the new rulers of rome in the guise of a presentation of the history of the bishops and the formation of the christian church in rome the text was deliberately designed to emulate imperial history as i have said while simultaneously acting i think as a continuation of the acts of the apostles in it the history and identity of the people and the city of rome itself were gradually transformed along with the perception of the imperial past now the wealth of information offered in these paper biographies about particular buildings and acts of patronage especially from the time of pope sylvester and the conversion of the emperor constantine to christianity which is actually credited to sylvester in the text has proved to be a rich resource for art and architecture historians nevertheless all the ostensibly faithful details about building an ornament do need to be read carefully and critically in the context of the overall purpose and content of the text but the text creates an image of a holy city of christian martyrs alongside and organically developing from the antique and imperial past it also presents an overwhelming impression of the pope's monopoly of church building within the city replacing the roman emperors as the major benefactors that said as historical evidence the libra pontificalness can be unnervingly and often frustratingly selective and telegraphic in style as you heard from that extract about the life of lucius that i read you and it's especially frustrating and telegraphic when read alongside the very sophisticated theological pastoral and exegetical treatises sermons and letters produced by all the popes who are eight subjects of these biographies despite its brevity the libra pontificalis nevertheless cleverly packs a remarkable amount of carefully chosen and constructed historical detail in order to make political points and it's those that i analyze in my book now one of these for instance is the consistent juxtaposition of the imperial monuments and the new christian buildings in the text and sometimes even the conversion of one into the other as you can see from this example of the consecration of the pantheon as a christian church sometime between 608 and probably 609 and 613 another is the prominence of the people of rome in the narrative as witnesses or crowds of protesters as enthusiastic supporters of particular candidates for the papal throne as participants in processions and ecclesiastical rituals within the city such as those introduced by the pope nouris as recipients of food distribution and other forms of welfare provision as sufferers of privations floods disease famine and enemy attack and as the beneficiaries of particular public works such as fountains accommodation for the poor improvements to the city's water supply repair of the city walls and pastoral and administrative organization or even as emulators of the pope in the role of benefactors of church buildings and providing burial places to particular popes in private cemeteries so the text acts and was possibly even designed to act as a virtual realm for its readers displaying a christian city grafted on to its imperial foundations and mapping it in narrative for those who had not seen and might not ever see especially those who live north of the alps the most famous of the stories of support from the people of the city of rome for the popes is the story illustrated from this 18th century edition of pope cornelius in the middle of the third century whose so the text goes at the request of a certain lady lucina took up the bodies of the apostles saints peter and paul from the catapults at night in fact first of all the blessed lucina took the body of paul and put it on her estate on the via ostiansis close to the place where he was beheaded the blessed cornelius took the body of saint peter and put it close to the place where he was crucified among the bodies of the holy bishops in the temple of apollo on the monsareus on the vatican at nero's palace on the 29th of june the shrine of saint peter apparently thus created became the site of the magnificent basilico saint peters founded by the emperor constantine though naturally there has been considerable discussion about this story as well as the chronology and location of the barriers and pleaser himself in the libra pontificalis however it is peter's career that provides the foundation story for the church as a whole it offers many aspects of christian identity developed further in the rest of the text peter's teaching his organization of the clergy the sharing of the stories of the gospels and placing the gospels both essential to the christian faith and confirmed by saint peter the recognition of both the letters of peter as part of the new testament canon the dramatic affirmation of faith in the face of imperial persecution culminating in peter's execution the rejection of simon magus's heretical views as an indication of peter's maintenance of the catholic apostolic faith rome's primacy in relation to antioch and alexandria and finally peter's major cult in rome the life of peter also spells out peace's provision for the succession with his appointment clement reiterated in the life of clement that's put number four that you see here preceded by the lives of linus and plato's further believer pontificalis provides a narrative about the christian community of rome its many martyrs and martyred bishops under pagan emperors and the leadership of put sylvester and his successors under the christian emperors and incidentally the popes and the texts are always numbered they're not when you have many gregories or many felix's or bonifaces it's not bonkers one two the kind of thing that we observed from rob bartlett's talk on tuesday those of you who heard it but the popes are numbered in this inexorable sequence from one onwards it was from the 4th century onwards that rome's topography was transformed with many new buildings as well as converted old public buildings both within and without the wars created to honour the christian saints and accommodate christian ritual in structure and material these marvelous buildings many of them still visible in rome evoked an ancient and imperial past but simultaneously they offered new spaces with new functions images of christ and his saints and the various popes as you see from these examples san cosman damiani san lorenzo the lateran foreign just a few examples in all of these there are decorative sequences of new and recycled marble columns elaborate floor and wall revetments and extended series of narrative cycles illustrating the biblical and hagiographical texts of the christian religion one of the most dramatic sequences of these is the eighth century church of santa maria antiqua well it was actually sixth century onwards but most of the frescoes you see here the late 7th and 8th century and some of them according to the league of pontificalis were the responsibility of pope john 7. the sixth century authors and later continuators of the libra pontificalis constructed a chronology also of the pope's contributions to doctrine ecclesiastical organization and law the structure of the christian year and the liturgy and by that i mean the sixth century authors had what they had in the sixth century and put it into some kind of chronological sequence in relation to particular popes before that all of these made a very powerful historiographical case for the authority of the pope just a few examples i give here the record of pope sylvester synod in rome but there are many other interest instances in the text of paper legislation then there are the particular claims made for the pope's responsibility of adding certain things to the liturgy especially to the mass and here to les boris and simicus are credited with making decrees that gloria sergius the first is credited with introducing the agnes d into the liturgy as well as the marian feasts and at his time also there is the feast of the exhortation of the cross an obvious question with any text from any period is who had access to it and who read it i tried to understand the text transmission and reception by looking at every early medieval manuscript of the text this map shows you that distribution with another example of one of them i looked at every early medieval manuscript up to the end of the 10th century and it was not just those containing the full text but also the abbreviated versions known as epitomes and reflections of papal history incorporated into canon law collections from the same period this map as i've said shows the early medieval transmission of the full text from the epitomes but i added to it references in library catalogues where there is emulation by other people writing histories of abysses or bishoprics on the model of the libra pontificalis or they actually made a very extensive use of the text as you can see from the map it's very oddly weighted north of the alps very few early manuscripts are from italy and not one manuscript of the full text survives from rome itself until the 12th century the frankish manuscripts predominantly from the 8th and the 9th centuries and are now scattered in libraries throughout europe so remember that has said that i said this is a 6th century text we've primarily had only 8th and 9th century copies of it looking at these was of course a great pleasure because it took me to many absolutely wonderful libraries in copies of the full text the manuscripts reflect many different families or ascensions made as those copying the text adapted it for local consumption and very boringly these recessions are called a b c and d give you an example of a now then the e text actually and some of the others of a contains the few very very early fragments that are from italy and one manuscript the e1 that has been lost since the 18th century so the only evidence we have for it is the engravings that were made at that stage the beat have been identified as frankish dating from the late 8th century onwards they include interpolations of frankish material into the 8th century lives that are only in the courtesies of frankish origin here is one example from the be reception noun laden where the bishops who were invited to attend the city of rome in 769 are actually listed in no other manuscript do we have the names listed many of the frankish interpolation seems to me also to be associated with the frankish court with people that are there or known to have served at court and i've suggested in my book the possibility that the composition and insertion of these very frankish interpolations can be credited to writers at the abbey of sandini near paris many of whom of the abbots of who which actually served as ambassadors on behalf of the king to the popes for affiliations and differences between different recessions the kind of things scholars look for is peculiarities like this one this is from the life of stephen ii which is already complicated because there are three different versions of it an original of lombard and a frankish but clemens gandner has identified two strands of this lombard version on the basis of the alternative versions of the story of pope stephen ii traveling to frankie and citing a celestial sign in one version he sees a fireball a gladio globus ignaeus and in another version he sees a fiery sword so even in frankie these variant versions were in circulation and scribes had modified the text by the end of the 8th century codicological context can also throw light on the way a text is perceived and this is particularly the case with the abbreviated versions or epitomies this is one example in an 8th century manuscript from the tour region and actually contains the epitome abbreviated version along with a great deal of canon law text such epitomes also serve to indicate what the abbreviators chose to distill from the full text with a particular interest in the early law the early liturgy the early martyrs information about ecclesiastical and clerical organization and the pope's upholding of orthodox doctrine the surviving manuscripts rarely include the lives of the popes much past life 94 of stephen ii so very few extend beyond the eighth century we've actually only got one manuscript which contains the full text of the lives up to 112. it's quite clear from the text that i mentioned earlier in the frankish world which actually appear to have read and used the text the kind of message that they're taking on board let me give you just one example of somebody who'd read the legal point of vitalis a man called wallaford strabo because he got the point instantly with his comment just as roman emperors are said to have held the absolute rule of the entire world so the head bishop in the roman sea who holds peace's office is elevated to the highest position of the entire church as a form of history writing then the libra pontificalis is pioneering essentially transforming an archive into an historical narrative and distilling the essential elements that authors wish to communicate certainly it is appraisee of a vast compendium of information that existed at the time even if in many instances the summary narrative is often all we've got further no other historical narrative of this period gives the popes much more than walk on parts here they are central stage above all the libra pontificalness represents the popes as active agents in the gradual development of the papacy as an institution and thereby is the core of the christian church in the insistence on apostolic succession anchoring the christian faith in the work of saint peter and his successors the pope became the logical continuation and institutionalization of the work of christ and his disciples it both chronicled and is itself an instrument for the transformation of rome from imperial city to christian capital its general importance for us is how an historical narrative can shape the time and context in which it was written by means of a particular representation of the past and thus manage memory there is a constant tension between representation and reality in interpreting historical evidence specifically however i argue in my book that the text of the lever pontificalis was designed to shape the memory and a particular understanding of the history of the popes and of the city of rome so this invention of the papacy therefore articulates an understanding of the popes that was repeated and extended throughout the middle ages and into the early modern period so thank you very much for listening and i shall be happy to answer any questions that you may have i'm just going to revert now back to stopping so if you've got any pressure up right i've simply got to hang on a second right oh i've got part of a question i'm not sure amy how i get all of it oh here we go right um a question very very interesting one what if any relationship is there between the donation of constantine and the legal point of vicaris thank you for asking that for those of you who may remember um about the donation of constantine perhaps not exactly it was exposed as a major forgery as a in the 15th century by a man called lorenzo vela and the current thinking primarily is that it was produced in the papal administration possibly during the pontificate of pope paul the first the language of the donation of the constantine at the time has many many similarities with language of papal letters from that period now that would suggest that when the donation of constantine is produced and it's transmitted very very quickly to frankie that it is coinciding with the transmission of some of the 8th century texts of the liber pontificalis and indeed possibly copies of the entire text it may therefore very well be part of the same effort to make claims about the status of the papacy and particular relationship between constantine and pope sylvester and there are certainly many overlaps not only in terms of possible motive but also if you look at the life of sylvester life 34 then a lot of the detail there is actually also in the donation of constantine so there is a very very considerable interest in looking at those texts side by side or perhaps more precisely at the transmission of the text side by side next question is what kind of sources would the authors of the libra pontificalis had access to that too is really very important if we look at the 6th century what they have had available to them is lists of popes they also had lists known as the depositio of martirum so places where they were buried had been recorded there's also a very important text known as the de wiries illustrates on illustrious men by jerome where he actually gives you details about particular authors and what they wrote and for peter and for clement there is a very very good correlation between the liberal pontificalis and the deirdis illustrates there are also chronicles and histories put together for the fourth century we have eusebius's chronicle which was translated into latin and extended by jerome up to the 378 and there too jerome actually uses the popes as a way of anchoring some of his chronology and his narrative once he gets past the um conversion and the reign of nero now i say jerome because the insertion of papal detail is is much greater than the original greek version of eusebius but eusebius also put popes and bishops of rome into both his chronicle and to the historia ecclesiastica as you wrote now as well as that there were various texts of actor some of them very much in the way of legends and saints lives in hagiography of a number of the individuals available up into the sixth century which were then incorporated once we're into the seventh and eighth century extensions then there are other chronicles lists records that are kept but we also have in the leave of pontific colors as i mentioned and implied with one or two of the slides lists of estates lists of dedications of churches lists of gifts lists of decorations and the idea is that the authors if not themselves in the papal office responsible for the estates and the looking after all the churches were certainly next door or even on it on another side of the room from the available archives and materials so there's a lot of material that's going into these sources which are in paper registers added to that of course we've got letters although the lever pontificalis claims it's way back unto julius that the whole papal office is established with authors to write and it may well be right certainly we have papal letters emanating from the papacy for a very very early period and the poets kept registers of all their outgoing letters we don't have a lot of them surviving unfortunately one major collection is the letters of pope gregory the first which was actually compiled at the end of the 8th century so a lot of them weren't included but a good 800 of them were other letters that we know about from the popes are actually recipients of copies so that's another form of information so all these things are going together and whoever is putting this history together is making a very sincere effort to try and structure what he wants to say from the material available to him and just occasionally he can't there's a beginning at the beginning of the life of pope leonisius where he says well i can't tell you who his parents are because i haven't been able to find it out thank you so the next question is can you speak a bit more about how the popes came to mirror their role after that of the roman emperors especially with regard to how we view the role of the papacy historically through these sources well that's a nice question to ask it's it takes a number of forms when i was talking about the papal embellishment of churches i'll start with the material evidence when we look at the basilica of saint buildings that we know are associated with the emperors or indeed not churches but other imperial buildings they're built in a very very magnificent style so when popes start founding churches building churches decorating churches and use the same kind of materials it seems to me that they're making a very very obvious visual point another way which has been discussed quite a lot by scholars and there's a lovely article by mark humphries about it is the processions and way in which the people are involved in religious rituals in rome so that the whole visual and display of the popes is very very similar audiences processions special religious rituals in which the popes are taking part so that's added to it then in the leadership they offer within rome and the leadership they offer within the church they're offering very very specific models of themselves as as leaders now i'm not suggesting that they are taking on secular rulership as defined but what they are doing is actually emulating the style of rulership in issuing legislation concerning the church and pronouncing on doctrine in the way they present themselves in the structure of their administration so and then finally of course in this historiographical way they are making the obvious parallel they're asking their readers to make that connection and say right first of all we had serial biographies of emperors and now we have serial biographies of the new rulers of rome propose i hope that's a sufficient answer i have a question here about please what about peace's date of death the 29th of june was the day in which both saint peter and sir were venerated in sebastian's catacombs wasn't it yes indeed it was i think we possibly have to take on board the idea that the 29th of june is a day that's chosen possibly according to the legal pontificalist by cornelius as the data veneration or it may even have been a date venerated from the very very beginning in calendars that are very very early survivals we have this noted the whole idea of the very lindsen sebastian's catacombs and then the translation is of course an extraordinarily interesting one and you may have noticed when i was showing you the life of saint peter that right at the bottom it too said that he was buried on the vatican hill so what we have is the sixth century record of where peter's body now is and then in the course of the narrative telling you about how that actually came about but whether that was really the actual date i suppose we simply have to take that on trust for what has been transmitted to us i have a question about what was the response of the greek orthodox church to the libra pontificalis that's an extraordinary interesting question we don't know i've got no precise indication of quotation and maybe some of the listeners can offer one of their actual knowledge and reception of this text in particular there's an enormous amount of communication between the greek orthodox church and the roman catholic church throughout the early middle ages some of it is not very friendly because they're out of agreement with each other in differing definitions of the trinity in particular and the status of christ there's certainly regular communication between the greek greek church the patriarch in constantinople and with the popes constant embassies are recorded we have letters lots and lots of communication and also with the eastern mediterranean church we have people coming to rome some of them are actually more or less religious exiles in that they are out of sympathy with the greek versions of christology and and settling rome instead but an actual recorded response to the leave of pontificalis we haven't got there has been a very interesting suggestion made of one way in which the libra pontificalist might have been distributed is that it could have been as it were a diplomatic presence a legate arrives and he says well i've we've brought our history with us as a as a kind of present now that may well be the case and it may well also be how it's reaching frankie in some instances but nevertheless we haven't got anybody actually saying in the greek world what they thought of this text but something might come up or never knows it is possible that people had actually read it but that would be a matter of sifting through some of the chronicles from the ninth century to see if they're recording information that they could have derived from the legal pontifications it wouldn't prove it because of course that information could have been derived from a different source next question is did the officials of the former western empire transfer to the papal administration explaining perhaps a similarity in approach that you mentioned well that's a very interesting question as well it's certainly a possibility if one's talking about clerks in an administration notaries who know the law know how to put a legal document together it would make sense for some of them then to find jobs in the new administration it's also the case that we can occasionally document somebody who is playing the same kind of role that one might have played in the former western empire in terms of somebody in charge of these states somebody in charge of the repair of the wars and some of these secular officials not so much transferring to the papal administration as working for the popes as part of the administration so that you you could have the department that would look after the upkeep of the walls and the mills and the water supply and such things and the pope basically will be the head of the lot we don't often have a lot of information about the particular officials but we do have sufficient number of references to them to suggest that the popes did indeed have a secular wing to their administration very very occasionally there is somebody who transfers from one to the other and the best example i can think of is the man called theodotus who is described first of all as a head within the secular administration and then becomes a primicarius within the priestly side of the administration and theodosius is particularly famous for us because we have portraits of him and all the results of his patronage of the church of santa maria antiqua in rome with the frescoes on the walls and also the gift that he gave to another church in rome san andreas where there is a list of the relics of the saints that he bought from the catacombs into rome and installed in that church in the middle of the eighth century and on theodotus there's another cambridge university press book if i may mention it which has just been published by john osborne and he talks at length about theodosius in his family and the important contribution he made to the frescoes of santa maria antiqua it's called rome in the 8th century a history in art another very very good question thank you is thank you do you have any theory as to why the lp ends shortly before nine hundred why the pontifical stops being written is a really really interesting one raymond davis who has actually provided the most wonderful translation of the entire libra pontificalis in three paperback books from liverpool university press has actually suggested in the introduction to the third volume that the impetus dies out in within the administration in a particularly interesting way in the popes themselves get increasingly involved into the politics of italy which are getting very i suppose disintegrative at that point that the we haven't actually got a full sequence of lives from 106 up to 112 there are one or two where we have no lives surviving and one or two of those that are towards the end of the ninth century are written we know by people very very much higher up in the paper administration but after that there just seems to have been a lack of interest in maintaining it whether it's because the purpose was no longer so urgent the distribution as i said right at the end of my talk even of the 9th century sections is not particularly widespread and it may well be that it had done the job but the other interesting thing is that in the 12th century it gets taken up again what you find is that at particular moments in paper history the libra pontificalis is then taken up the first bit a bit adapted and then extended to whatever the person at the time pandofo in the 12th century um palatino in the 15th century and then panvinio editing the texts and this 15th and 16th century development is something that stefan bauer has recently chronicled in his own book and in a new article so that side of it you can look at all those as well what it also is the case however is that there remains a huge amount of work to be done on these continuations the 11th 12th century and again what is happening to the texts in the later medieval copies and so the whole way in which a text might function what you do with it and then indeed what you don't do with it is a really really interesting one so thank you for raising it another question what were some of the factors that led to the first creation of the pontificalis in justinian's time another huge question thank you the first element that i might mention is simply the absence now of clear political authority when it's being challenged the ostrogoths are in deep trouble they're fighting for their existence it's uncertain who is now really in control certainly the popes in rome want to make sure that rome stays well managed and well conducted so that the way in which they can provide some kind of identity and cohesion is to make the statement about their entitlement or the suitability to lead rome in the way that they do the challenge i think doesn't emerge for quite some time but another factor i think is also the doctrinal problems and in fact so great with the doctrinal problems at the beginning of the 6th century that some scholars have suggested that that may actually be a better place to locate the first composition of the point of view but whatever that may be it's certainly the case that it continues to be a factor in relations between rome and the east these ecclesiastical disputes lack of unity a third element might be that in the whole of the western empire one is actually dealing with the whole of what used to be the western empire after 476 you actually have areas which have broken off they're independent they are now ruled by for want of a better word germanic rulers in conjunction often and mostly with the romans within those particular former roman provinces so that essentially what you're seeing in the papal libra pontificalis you can also see reflected in some of these where you get origin stories written within these kingdoms which establish the background and the identity of these peoples that are now ruling the former roman provinces so you get histories of ghosts you get histories eventually the lombards were that's eighth century that the history of the um it's not called a history of the franks but it is the history of the frankish kingdoms written at the end of the sixth century so it may well be that the libra pontificalist is actually one of the pioneers of this development of forming smaller identities on one level but with the difference that with the popes you've actually got the universal church involved as well and this very very strong consciousness of the need to continue to provide leadership of the church in at a time when essentially it was perceived to be threatened another possible factor as i think about it is that the ostrogoths were officially heretics they were aryans they believed a different form they had a different understanding of christ's position within the trinity and were regarded as heretics by the catholics so it's another reason for the popes and the papal administrations to assert the papal identity at this time just at the precise moment when you have it being apparently challenged politically by these invading armies well we've got time for one more question if anyone wants to ask something or you may will be worn out i have one more question do both sides of the various scissors such as the synod or the avignon paper see use the leave of quantification well i don't know about the having your paper see using the pontificalis this is a reference to that later medieval history which really needs to be explored but certainly it's absolutely certain that beads writing the historia ecclesiastica in england knew the legal pontificalis and in fact he even received a copy of the first version of the life of gregory ii so that he he is getting his installments as well as the early texts now whether actually the people presiding over the synod of whitby in 664 had it that i don't know for certain but it's a possibility it's certainly very interesting it's known in francia by the end of the sixth century gregory of tour that i had already mentioned writing at the end of the sixth century knew the leave of pontificalis and he models his own history of the bishops of tour on it towards the end and bead also models the historia abarth and the history of the abbott with mouth jarrow on the legal point of economist so it's possible that even with whitby at 664 the league of pontificalists has indeed already reached england and of course we have to remember that some of the earliest archbishops of canterbury augustine and then the later theodore who was actually a syriac christian but brought to england in the 7th century to become archbishop of country could well have brought the libra pontificalis with him then so thank you for asking that

Channel: Cambridge University Press

Views: 5,834

Keywords: Cambridge University Press, History Festival 2020, Area Studies, European History 1000-1450, History, Religion, European Studies, European History 450-1000, Church History

Id: GnHnwJyAllQ

Length: 55min 7sec (3307 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 16 2020