In Dialogue. Responses to Papal Communication c.1100–1400
Introduction
In dialogue: responses to papal communication
Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt, Lars Kjær & William Kynan-Wilson
Pages: 291-305
https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2208903
This essay examines responses to papal communication in Latin Christendom principally between the years 1100 and 1400. It introduces seven multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary articles in a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History on this topic, while also exploring further examples that reveal the range of responses to papal communication and the significance of these responses. It emphasises the ways in which papal communication was tied to papal authority, the importance of examining the wider context and life cycle of papal communication, and it considers some of the methodological challenges that this topic poses.
Research Articles
The Investiture Contest in the margins: popes and peace in a manuscript from Augsburg cathedral
Erik Niblaeus
Pages: 306-319
https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2210041
The article is an analysis of a dispute between the canons of Augsburg cathedral chapter and their bishop, Hermann II (1096–1133). It concentrates on a series of short texts collected in the margins of an older patristic manuscript and argues that most of these texts can be said to form a kind of dossier, likely assembled by the canons in the aftermath of a cancelled personal visit by Pope Paschal II (1099–1118) to Augsburg in 1107. In the conclusion, the case is situated in the broader context of papal communication at the time of the Investiture Contest.
‘Theologians know best': Paris-trained crusade preachers as mediators between papal, popular and learned crusading pieties
Jessalynn Lea Bird
Pages: 320-338
https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2210038
The study of the crusades would be transformed if scholars started not with papal letters but with evidence demonstrating how organisers in various periods and regions served as brokers between papal, popular and learned discourses and crusading pieties. Surviving preaching materials suggest that Paris masters promoting various crusades forefronted contemporary reform campaigns targeting usurers, sexual incontinence and heresy. Preachers anticipated or responded to audiences' concerns about specific elements of crusading, outlining various forms of participation while situating the crusade within a web of familiar or novel devotional practices. Promoters could ignore, (re)interpret and adapt the images and particulars presented in papal letters and often forwarded knowledge of local circumstances and substantial queries to the papal curia, thereby influencing future papal communications. Individual popes reacted in a responsive rather than dictatorial manner in both communication and policy, while papal communications were always subject to local interpretation and negotiated reception and implementation.
Papal crusade propaganda and attacks against Jews in France in the 1230s: a breakdown of communication?
Christoph T. Maier
Pages: 339-352
https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2210334
This article presents a case study of the papal communication accompanying crusader violence against Jews in France in the mid 1230s. The pogroms perpetrated during the preparatory phase of the so-called Crusade of the Barons, during which 1000s of Jews were killed, are the best-documented anti-Jewish attacks of the thirteenth century. They coincide with a period of unprecedented crusade propaganda in Europe when crusades to the Holy Land, the Latin Empire and the Baltic were preached. The article argues that the pogroms were at least in part provoked by Pope Gregory IX's crusade message, which formed the basis of propaganda, even though the pope never called for violence against Jews and on the contrary condemned the attacks sharply. The fact that so many Jews were killed by crusaders in France in the mid 1230s can, therefore, be described as the result of a partial breakdown of papal communication.
Power, celebration and circuits of legitimation: the local use of papal letters in late twelfth-century Denmark
Emil Lauge Christensen, Kim Esmark & Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt
Pages: 353-369
https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2208906
This article explores the role of papal communication in the local construction of royal and papal authority. Taking the kingdom of Denmark as its case, it analyses letters issued by Pope Alexander III to King Valdemar I and the Danish clergy before a grand meeting at Ringsted in 1170. It is argued that to understand the function and impact of the papal letters fully it is necessary to examine not only their verbal content, but also their wider processual context: how a Scandinavian delegation obtained the letters at the papal court in Benevento; how the letters were presented to the Danish audience as part of the ritual celebrations at Ringsted; and how the events later were framed and narrated by local Scandinavian authors. As a whole, the process constituted a ‘circuit of legitimation', a reciprocal exchange between the pope and the king of recognition and glorification.
Papal communications and historical writing in Angevin England
Michael Staunton
Pages: 370-386
https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2210042
This article examines the role of papal communications in historical writing in England under the Angevin kings (1154–1216). Taking the examples of Gervase of Canterbury, Roger of Howden and Herbert of Bosham, it demonstrates a variety of responses to papal communications between the curia and England. By the late twelfth century such communications – particularly papal letters – had become an integral part of the material of historical writing. Some writers included papal letters for the purpose of narration or legitimation. Others were interested in the process of communication itself, while others again used the language and ideas in these letters for their own comments on events. By examining papal communications from an underexplored perspective, we gain insights into how learned and politically engaged men responded to papal interventions in English affairs. Equally, examining how such historians engaged with papal communications reveals aspects of their methods, models and expectations of their audience.
Difficult gifts: gifts to and from the popes in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England
Lars Kjær
Pages: 387-401
https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2210040
This article explores how gifts, and stories about gifts, to and from the popes were treated and discussed in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England. The first part explores the intellectual context in which these stories were written, namely scriptural and classical ideas about the gift that circulated in the period, and the practical challenges faced by the papacy. The second part explores how English clerks and aristocrats utilised these gifts and stories about them. The exchange of gifts, the article argues, presented the papacy and its partners with mutually incompatible practical and ideological pressures. Despite the efforts of skilled actors such as Pope Innocent III, these challenges could only be navigated, never resolved.
Italian and French responses to Urban V's visual communications, c.1368–1420
Claudia Bolgia
Pages: 402-425
https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2210039
This article explores the visual responses (with political, spiritual and social connotations) to the visual statements about the role of Rome and the pope in Western Christendom made by Pope Urban V (1362–1370) at the time of his return to the Urbe from Avignon in 1367–9. It investigates the plurality of responses to these papal statements, the chain of further visual communications that these statements set in motion as well as their longue durée by engaging with the reception of the pontiff's powerful messages by different audiences, both secular and ecclesiastic, from Rome to the Italian peninsula more broadly, and southern France, in the following 50 years.
