Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes; Fourth Edition

by Eamon Duffy

  On the Goths and other Barbarians: J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Barbarian West 400–1000, London 1967; P. S. Barnwell, Emperor, Prefects and Kings:The Roman West 395–565, London 1992; C. Wickham, Early Medieval Italy, London 1981. R. McKitterick (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History Volume 2 c.700–900, Cambridge 1995, contains many essays of direct relevance. For a one-volume survey of the religious background of the period see D. Knowles and D. Obolensky, The Christian Centuries Volume 2: the Middle Ages, London 1969, (good on Byzantine-Latin relations); C. Mango, Byzantium:The Empire of New Rome, London 1980 for fuller treatment of the Byzantine church and its relations with the West; survey and good bibliographies in J. M. Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire, Oxford 1986; J. Pelikan, The Christian Tradition Volume 2: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom 600–1700, Chicago 1977 is excellent on theology and spirituality. L. Duchesne’s L’Eglise au VIe. siècle, Paris 1925 is strong on the often bewildering theological controversies of the sixth century, and the role of the popes in them.

  The fundamental source for the popes of the period is the Liber Pontificalis, the great papal chronicle which provides contemporary biographies of the popes from the sixth to the ninth centuries. The Latin text with splendidly full French notes was edited by L. Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis:Texte, Introduction et Commentaire, Paris 1886–92, and then reissued with a third supplementary volume, edited by C. Vogel, Paris 1955–7. A good English translation from Duchesne’s edition, incorporating much of the material from his notes, has been published in three volumes by Raymond Davis: The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), Liverpool 1989; The Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes (Liber Pontificalis), Liverpool 1992; The Lives of the Ninth-Century Popes (Liber Pontificalis), Liverpool 1995.

  The fullest narrative history of the popes for this period is H. K. Mann, The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, London 1902–32 (18 volumes). Mann was a Roman Catholic priest and Rector of the English College in Rome. His book was solidly grounded in the available sources, and wears its prejudices on its sleeve. It is uncritical, but readable and (mostly) factually reliable.

  On Ravenna, Rome, and the Empire: R. A. Markus, ‘Ravenna and Rome 554–604’, Byzantion 51 (1981); T. S. Brown, ‘The Church of Ravenna and the imperial administration in the seventh century’, English Historical Review 94 (1979) pp. 1– 28; G. Bovini, Ravenna Mosaics, Oxford 1978; L. Von Matt and G. Bovini, Ravenna, Cologne 1971; J. Meyendorf, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions, New York 1989.

  On Monophysitism: A. A. Luce, Monophysitism: Past and Present, London 1920; W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, Cambridge 1972.

  On Gregory the Great, F. H. Dudden, Gregory the Great: His Place in History and Thought, London 1905 (two volumes) is still valuable; Jeffrey Richards, Consul of God:The Life and Times of Gregory the Great, London 1980; R. A. Markus, From Augustine to Gregory the Great, London 1983, (important for English mission), and the same author’s Gregory the Great and His World, Cambridge 1997; C. Straw, Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection, Berkeley 1988; C. Dagens, Saint Gregoire le Grand: Culture et Experiences Chrétiennes, Paris 1977. His letters and the Pastoral Rule have been translated into rather stiff English in J. Barmby (ed.), The Book of Pastoral Rule and Selected Epistles of Gregory the Great, Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series 12 and 13, New York 1895; his dialogues were translated by E. G. Gardner in The Dialogues of St Gregory, London 1911. The best treatment of the patrimony remains E. Spearing, The Patrimony of the Roman Church in the time of Gregory the Great, Cambridge 1918, but see also Jeffrey, The Popes and the Papacy, chapter 18.

  For the Church in Ireland, K. Hughes, The Church in Early Irish Society, London 1966, and a survey of recent literature in Dáibhí ó Cróinín, Early Medieval Ireland 400–1200, London 1995.

  For ‘micro-christendoms’ in the age of Gregory, see Herrin, Formation of Christendom, and Brown, Rise of Western Christendom.

  For Anglo-Saxon Christianity: H. Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England, London 1972; discussion of Rome and England in Eamonn ó Carragáin, The City of Rome and the World of Bede, Newcastle upon Tyne 1994; for the Lindisfarne Gospels lectionary and Southern Italian influence, J. Backhouse, The Lindisfarne Gospels, London 1981, chapter 3. Essential sources translated in J. F. Webb and D. H. Farmer (eds.), The Age of Bede, Harmondsworth 1983 (includes Eddius Stephanus, ‘Life of Wilfred’) and Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, edited by J. McClure and R. Collins, Oxford 1994.

  For the anti-Gregorian reaction in Rome, Peter Llewellyn, ‘The Roman Church in the Seventh Century: the legacy of Gregory the Great’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 35 (1974), pp. 363–80.

  For the rise of Islam: F. Gabrieli, Muhammad and the Conquests of Islam, London 1968; H. Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, London 1986.

  For Iconoclasm: Herrin, Formation, chapter 8; Brown, Rise chapter 14 and ‘A Dark Age Crisis: Aspects of the Iconoclastic Controversy’, English Historical Review 88 (1973), pp. 1– 34; Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire, pp. 30–68.

  For Roman Pilgrimage: Debra J. Birch, Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages, Woodbridge 1998; a delightful exploration of English pilgrimage, mostly focused, however, on later periods, is Judith Champ, The English Pilgrimage to Rome: A Dwelling for the Soul, Leominster 2000.

  For the emergence of the papal state: L. Duchesne, The Beginnings of the Temporal Sovereignty of the Popes A.D. 754–1073, London 1908; P. Partner, The Lands of St. Peter, London 1972; T. F. X. Noble, The Republic of St. Peter:The Birth of the Papal State, 680–825, Philadelphia 1984.

  For the popes and the Franks: Noble, The Republic of St Peter:The Birth of the Papal State, 680–825; R. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms and the Carolingians 751–987, London 1983; J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church, Oxford 1983; D. Bullough, The Age of Charlemagne, London 1973; L. Wallach, ‘The Roman Synod of 800 and the alleged trial of Leo III’, Harvard Theological Review 49 (1956) pp. 123– 42; sources in L. Thorpe, Two Lives of Charlemagne, Harmondsworth 1969; B. W. Scholz and B. Rogers (eds.), Carolingian Chronicles, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1970; C. H. Talbot (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany, London 1954 (contains a selection of the correspondence of St. Boniface with a series of eighth-century popes, which throws a flood of light on attitudes to the papacy, and the self-understanding of the popes of the period).

  On Nicholas I and the East: F. Dvornik, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, Cambridge 1948. Much of Dvornik’s scholarship was distilled into the brief and readable Byzantium and the Roman Papacy, New York 1966; F. A. Norwood, ‘The Political Pretensions of Nicholas I’, Church History 15 (1946), pp. 271– 85; Y. Congar, ‘Nicolas 1er: Ses Positions Ecclésiastiques’ in Rivista di storia Della Chiesa in Italia 21 (1967), pp. 393–410; the whole subject of East-West relations is surveyed by a great scholar in Henry Chadwick, East and West:The Making of a Rift in the Church: From Apostolic Times until the Council of Florence, Oxford 2003.

  There is no satisfactory overview of the ‘Dark Century’. A detailed picture can be built up from the relevant volumes of Mann’s The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages (embarrassed) and the third volume of F. Gregorovius’ eight-volumed History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages, London 1894–1902 (censorious), while the early chapters of Peter Partner, The Lands of St Peter, provide an overarching political narrative. Helpful brief discussion of the Ottonian revival in C. N. L. Brooke, Europe in the Central Middle Ages 962–1154, London 1994, pp. 211ff. The greatest gossip of the tenth century was the chronicler and diplomat Liudprand of Cremona, the source for some of the most entertaining and discreditable stories about the popes of this period. His observations on the papacy, on an embassy to Byzantium, and on the reign of Otto the Great are translated by F. A. Wright in The Works of Liudprand of Cremona, London 1930.

  CHAPTER THREE: ‘SET ABOVE NATIONS’

  Mann, The Lives of the Pop
es in the Early Middle Ages; Gregorovius, City of Rome; Krautheimer, Rome; Barraclough, Medieval Papacy, and Ullmann, Short History, all remain valuable for this period. Two books by R. W. Southern provide profound introductions to the medieval world and the place of the Church within it: The Making of the Middle Ages, London 1987, and Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, Harmondsworth 1970 (particularly good on the evolution of papal institutions). Brooke, Europe in the Central Middle Ages provides general political context and a strong emphasis on the religious dimension, with up-todate reading-lists. For the rest of the period two books in the same seriesq

  J. H. Mundy, Europe in the High Middle Ages 1150–1309, London 1991, and (especially) D. Hay, Europe in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, London 1989 – are invaluable.

  Two surveys of the reform papacy provide essential and complementary coverage: Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy:The Western Church from 1050 to 1250, Oxford 1989 is beautifully written and very comprehensive with exhaustive bibliographical essays, and I. S. Robinson, The Papacy 1073–1198, Cambridge 1990, an exploration in depth of institutional and ideological transformation. Also valuable but drier is G. Tellenbach, The Church in Western Europe From theTenth to the EarlyTwelfth Centuries, Cambridge 1993.

  Fascinating early sources are edited and translated by Ian Robinson in The Papal Reform of the Eleventh Century: Lives of Pope Leo IX and Pope Gregory VII, Manchester 2005.

  On Cluny and monastic reform: B. Bolton, The Medieval Reformation, London 1983; C. H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism, London 1984; H. E. J. Cowdrey, The Cluniacs and Gregorian Reform, Oxford 1970; N. Hunt, Cluny under St Hugh, London 1967; N. Hunt (ed.), Cluniac Monasticism in the Central Middle Ages, London 1971.

  On celibacy of the clergy, A. L. Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy, New York 1982; C. N. L. Brooke, Medieval Church and Society, Cambridge 1971, pp. 69–99 (on Norman England).

  On the Normans in the South: R. H. C. Davis, The Normans andTheir Myth, London 1976; D. C. Douglas, The Norman Achievement 1050–1100, London 1969, and The Norman Fate 1100–1154, London 1976; D. Mack Smith, Medieval Sicily 800–1713, London 1968; J. J. Norwich, The Normans in the South 1016–1130, London 1967 and The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130–1194, London 1970 (compulsively readable popular accounts). On Byzantium and Rome: Hussey, Orthodox Church, and C. M. Brand, Byzantium confronts the West, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1968.

  On the Cardinals: Robinson, Papacy chapter 2, and S. Kuttner, ‘Cardinalis: The History of a Canonical Concept’, Traditio 3 (1945), pp. 129–214.

  There are extended discussions of Gregory VII, in Ullmann, Morris, Robinson and Brooke; magisterial biography by H. E. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085, Oxford 1998. Cowdrey has also edited and translated Gregory’s letters, The Register of Gregory VIII 1073–1085, Oxford 2002. The best short life is that in the Bibliotheca Sanctorum; a survey of modern interpretations is provided by I. S. Robinson, ‘Pope Gregory VII: 1073-1085 Bibliographical Survey’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985), pp. 439–83. A selection of his letters has been edited by E. Emerton, The correspondence of Pope Gregory VII: Selected Letters from the Registrum, New York 1932, and see also H. E. J. Cowdrey (ed.), Epistolae Vagantes of Pope Gregory VII, Oxford 1972. For the papacy after Gregory, one of the best treatments is H. E. J. Cowdrey, The Age of Abbot Desiderius, Oxford 1983, which covers the pontificate of Blessed Victor III and much more.

  On the Investiture controversy: B. Tierney (ed.), The Crisis of Church and State 1050–1300, New Jersey 1964 (documents); K. Morrison, Tradition and Authority in the Western Church, 300–1140, Princeton, New Jersey 1969; I. S. Robinson, Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Contest, Manchester 1978, and W. Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government, London 1970. Y. Congar, Eglise et Papauté: Regards Historiques, Paris 1994, collects some important papers on the theology of the papacy by a great historical theologian: chapter 6 deals with the seminal influence of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. St. Bernard’s seminal instructions to Pope Eugenius III have been translated by J. D. Anderson and E. T. Kennan in St. Bernard of Clairvaux: Five Books on Consideration:Advice to a Pope, Kalamazoo, Michigan 1976.

  For the Crusades: Jonathan Riley-Smith, What Were the Crusades?, London 1992, with bibliography, and the same author’s The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, London 1986; C. Erdmann, The Origin of the Idea of Crusade, Princeton, New Jersey 1977 (classic discussion); H. E. Mayer, London 1972; S. Runciman,The Crusades, London 1972; S. Runciman, A History of the Crusades, Cambridge 1951– 4 (3 volumes); Robinson, Papacy chapter 9 is also important.

  For Hadrian IV: E. M. Almedingen, The English Pope:Adrian IV, London 1925; W. Ullmann, ‘The Pontificate of Adrian IV’, Cambridge Historical Journal 11 (1953–5), pp. 232–52; R. W. Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies, Oxford 1970, pp. 234–52, and especially the essays and documents brought together by Brenda Bolton and Anne J. Duggan, Adrian IV: The English Pope (1154–1159), Brookfield, Vermont 2002. My discussion of the papacy, the Normans and Ireland is based on F. X. Martin, ‘Diarmuid Mac Murchada and the Coming of the Anglonormans’ in A. Cosgrave (ed.), A New History of Ireland Volume 2: Medieval Ireland 1169–1534, Oxford 1987, pp. 43–66. The standard life of Barbarossa in English is by P. Munz, Frederick Barbarossa, London 1969, although his reading of Barbarossa’s policy is widely rejected.

  On the twelfth and thirteenth-century papacy in general: K. Pennington, Pope and Bishops: The Papal Monarchy in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Philadelphia 1984; Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, Il Trono di Pietro: l’Universitalità del papato da Allesandro III a Bonifacio VIII, Rome 1996. R. Brentano, Rome before Avignon, London 1974, is unfailingly fresh and challenging. On Innocent III, the fullest medieval memoir has been translated by James M. Powell, The Deeds of Pope Innocent III, by an Anonymous Author, Washington 2004; the standard modern life is by H. Tillmann, Pope Innocent III, Amsterdam 1980; briefer study with useful bibliographies by J. Sayers, Innocent III: Leader of Europe 1198–1216, London 1994. There is a selection of essays and issues in James L. Powell (ed.), Innocent III: Vicar of Christ or Lord of the World?, Washington 1994; also see C. R. Cheney, Pope Innocent III and England, Stuttgart 1976, D. P. Waley, The Papal State in the Thirteenth Century, London 1961.

  On repression of heresy: R. I. Moore, The Origins of European Dissent, London 1977; B. Bolton, ‘Innocent III’s treatment of the Humiliati’, in D. Baker (ed.), Studies in Church HistoryVolume 8, Oxford 1971, pp. 73–82; J. R. Strayer, The Albigensian Crusades, New York 1971; B. Hamilton, The Medieval Inquisition, London 1981(for later developments); E. A. Synan, The Popes and the Jews in the Middle Ages, New York 1965. On the Fourth Crusade see D. E. Queller, The Fourth Crusade:The Conquest of Constantinople, Leicester 1978, and J. Godfrey, 1204: the Unholy Crusade, Oxford 1980. Byzantine/Roman relations more generally are treated in J. Gill, Byzantium and the Papacy 1198–1400, New Jersey 1979; theological study from a sympathetic Roman point of view can be found in Aidan Nichols, Rome and the Eastern Churches, A Study in Schism, Edinburgh 1992. On the friars: R. M. Brooke, The Coming of the Friars, London 1975; C. H. Lawrence, The Friars, London 1994.

  For Frederick II and the papacy: T. C. Van Cleve, The Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, Oxford 1972; D. Abulafia, Frederick II: a Medieval Emperor, London 1988. For papal provisions, G. Barraclough, Papal Provisions, London 1935 (throwing light on papal government and authority more generally). Papal finance is illustrated by the collection of documents with commentary by W. E. Lunt, Papal Revenues in the Middle Ages, New York 1934 (2 volumes). For a fascinating account of an incident illuminating the role of the papacy in thirteenth-century Italian politics, see S. Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers, Cambridge 1958.

  The unfortunate Celestine V has found a splendid biographer in Paolo Golinelli, Il Papa Contadino: Celestino V e il Suo Tempo, Florence 1996. For Boniface VIII, see T. S. R. Boase, Boniface VIII, London 1933; F. M. Powicke, ‘Pope Boniface VIII’, History 18 (1934) pp. 307– 29; C. T. Wood,
Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII, London 1971. The French dossier of accusations against Boniface VIII has been edited, explored and (mostly) dismissed in Jean Coste (ed.), Boniface VIII en Procès: Articles d’Accusation et Dépositions des Témoins (1303–11), Rome 1995. For the Jubilee, see H. Thurston, The Holy Year of Jubilee: An Account of the History and Ceremonial of the Roman Jubilee, London 1900, which has relevance for subsequent chapters also. H. L. Kessler and J. Zacharias, Rome 1300: On the Path of the Pilgrim, New Haven and London 2000, offers an imaginative and beautifully illustrated evocation of the city during the first Jubilee. Apocalyptic hopes and fears centred on the papacy are explored in Part 4 of Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism, Oxford 1979.

  The artistic and architectural setting of the papacy of the high Middle Ages is discussed in Krautheimer, Rome, chapter 8; John White, Art and Architecture in Italy 1250–1400, New Haven and London 1993, chapters 4, 7 and 10; P. Hetherington, Pietro Cavallini: A Study in the Art of Late Medieval Rome, London 1979; W. Oakeshott, The Mosaics of Rome, London 1967; E. Hutton, The Cosmati:The Roman Marble Workers of the XIIth and XIIIth Centuries, London 1950.

  On the Avignon papacy: B. Guillemain, Le Cour Pontificale d’Avignon, 1309–1376, Paris 1962; G. Mollat, The Popes at Avignon 1305–1378, Edinburgh 1963; Y. Renouard, The Avignon Papacy 1305–1403, Hamden, Connecticut 1970. The first Avignon pope is subjected to close scrutiny in Sophia Menache, Clement V, Cambridge 1998. Patrick Nold’s Pope John XXII and his Franciscan Cardinal, New York and Oxford 2003, explores the complexities of the poverty issue and its impact on the papacy. An invaluable sidelight on the papacy of the Avignon period is thrown by J. Gardner, The Tomb and the Tiara: Curial Sculpture in Rome and Avignon in the Later Middle Ages, Oxford 1992.