J. Johrendt, H. Müller (Hg.), Römisches Zentrum und kirchliche Peripherie (Kriston Rennie)

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Francia-Recensio 2009/3 Mittelalter – Moyen Âge (500–1500)

Jochen Johrendt, Harald Müller (Hg.), Römisches Zentrum und kirchliche Peripherie. Das universale Papsttum als Bezugspunkt der Kirchen von den Reformpäpsten bis zu Innozenz III., Berlin, New York (Walter de Gruyter) 2008, 184 p. (Neue Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse. Neue Folge, 2), ISBN 978-3-11-020223-6, EUR 58,00.

rezensiert von/compte rendu rédigé par

Kriston R. Rennie, Brisbane

The product of a Studientag at the German Historical Institute in Rome, this collection of essays examines the variegated exchanges between Rome and its Christian provinces from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. With an emphasis on papal legation and its uses throughout the High Middle Ages, the work presented here addresses the multiple ways in which the Roman Church established and maintained a running dialogue with individual regions. Presented in two parts (»Römisches Zentrum« and »kirchliche Peripherie«), nearly every article in this collection deals in one way or another with the issue of communication and contact between the centre and the periphery. That Rome was the undisputed centre in political, religious, institutional, and legal terms is an idea under scrutiny. Establishing this centralised position was a gradual process of development, which the editors Jochen Johrendt and Harald Müller identify in their introduction as forming two distinct phases. The first was »experimental«, a period of transformation beginning with Leo IX’s (1049–1054) reforming papacy and lasting no later than the making of Gratian’s Decretum c. 1140. The second phase is given the most attention, as it deals with the twelfth and thirteenth centuries – a more documented period in the history of the Middle Ages but also a crucial phase or »Integrationsprozess« (p. 7) for the political, organisational, legal, institutional, and religious history of Europe.

The exchange between the Curia and various Christian regions is of central importance to this discussion. Drawing from a growing body of »Dekretalenrecht«, Lotte Kéry questions the production and significance of legal documents following 1140. The compilation of canon law collections in this period, moreover, is taken as evidence for the increased interplay between Rome and the periphery; the distribution and diffusion of papal decrees throughout Western Europe shows the centre extending its grasp in a bid for centralised control. Similarly, the circulation and copying of the law illustrates the initiative taken by the periphery in ecclesiastical and legal matters affecting their own interests.

Over time and through much practice, the office of legation redefined the channels of communication between Rome and the periphery, ultimately serving to lighten the burden of physical distance through improved and more frequent means of contact. As Thomas Wetzstein argues, Gregory VII’s (1073–1085) reforming papacy should be credited with recognising and exploiting this potential through personal networks, increased mobility, one-on-one meetings, and church councils. The enforced condition that bishops receive their pallium in person was but one papal manoeuvre for increasing personal relationships, thereby creating the opportunity for social contact and, as Wetzstein concludes, improving the dialogue between Rome and the provinces for subsequent generations.

There were, however, limitations to such an exchange. Stefan Weiß convincingly argues that, while the papacy was developing to accommodate its means of contact with the Christian provinces, regions such as Germany were less open to heightened communication. Furthermore, as Klaus Herbers notes, the greatest challenge for the Roman Church was one of integration into an entirely local tradition: »processes of integration and uniformity have consequences and costs« (p. 342).

Such inevitabilities influenced the quality and authority of papal legates in this period. Commenting on the hundred or so years between Popes Alexander II and III (c. 1061–c. 1181), Claudia Zey refers to »existenzielle Krisen« (p. 107) during which century cardinals were scarcely used in matters of legation – a sharp contrast to the early eleventh century. Zey interprets this period as a process of development whereby legatine powers were derived less from the actual office holder and more from the ecclesiastical office itself. Tied closely to this idea is the issue of delegated jurisdiction and obedience to Rome, which, as Müller contends, defined the means of communication with the papacy. Contact between the Curia and any given region, as the argument goes, was always tempered by the political, social, legal, institutional, and geographical conditions of the period, in Rome but also within the individual region.

It is to individual Christian provinces that section two of this collection is dedicated. Describing legatine activity to the Iberian Peninsula, Ingo Fleisch notes the intensification of contact in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Once considered a remote region of Christendom, Spain (and Portugal) in this period was brought closer into the orbis christianus through increased legatine efforts, which assisted considerably in developing, expanding, and strengthening the papacy’s »sphere of influence« (p. 140). Of all the works in this collection, Fleisch’s contribution is the most original because, as the author records, the history of papal legation in the Iberian Peninsula is »to this day insufficiently examined« (p. 141). Offering a chronological account of legatine activity south of the Pyrenees, Fleisch reconstructs the activity of countless legates commissioned to this region between 1130 and 1190, thereby throwing some much-needed light on an otherwise unexplored subject. From his work, and likewise for Przemyslaw Nowak’s piece on Poland, Johrendt’s article on Calabria, Nicolangelo D’Acunto’s article on Lombardy, and Rolf Große’s work on France, further light is shed on the organization and exchange between Rome and select provinces.

Overall, the spirit and interest of this collection of essays is one of contact and interaction. It addresses familiar topics like the centralisation of the Latin Church under Roman leadership, but its originality is derived from considering Rome’s dialogue with the rest of Christendom. In narrowing the focus from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, a crucial process of development and integration is revealed, both within the history of the papacy and Roman Church as emerging legal, social, and political institutions, but also within individual Christian provinces and dioceses. Concisely argued and presented in an organised and sensible fashion, this collection makes an especial contribution to the history of papal legation before Gratian, which, it must be said, has received little direct attention by scholars of the last century. And as this collection makes plain on more than one occasion, the dialogue between the centre and the periphery was a two-way system, an ongoing exchange. While criticism is owing for the scant attention to English historiography, the sheer breadth of interest covered in this collection belittles such opprobrium. For any scholar interested in medieval representation and power, this volume is a welcome addition.