‘Lo, I have set thee this day over the nations, and over the kingdoms.’
(Jeremiah 1.10)
Between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries, those words were frequently quoted in papal correspondence. The pope—the successor of St Peter—had been placed, by God, above peoples and above kings. That the pope saw himself, and was seen by many, as supreme lord of all Christians is a commonplace in accounts of the period. In most tellings, this was a source of conflict. Kings and emperors—effective rulers of their own territories—could never bear the idea that they might be subject to a distant priest. Hence Emperor Henry IV’s dispute with Pope Gregory VII; hence King John of England’s battle with Pope Innocent III; hence Emperor Frederick II’s wars against Gregory IX and Innocent IV. This is the tale of the so-called ‘papal monarchy’ and its opponents.
But that story can be turned on its head. This book examines specific relationships between popes and kings, points when a king placed himself under the lordship of the pope, or sought the ‘protection of St Peter’—a formal relationship whereby a realm received defence from the prince of the Apostles and his successor. These relationships were not forced on kings, but sought by them. Secular rulers were not resisting the pretensions and claims of Rome; rather they desired to receive the pope as guardian or lord.
The reason why is simple: having a special relationship with the pope meant that kings were able to use papal authority—the pope’s position ‘over the nations, and over the kingdoms’—for their own purposes. Secular rulers could send petitions to the pope asking him to grant their requests. Thus, perhaps counter-intuitively, papal overlordship could actually contribute to the strengthening of royal power in a kingdom, rather than undermining royal independence.
* * *
Relationships between Medieval popes and kings have received plenty of attention from scholars. Historians well disposed towards the papal monarchy have focused on the structural relationship between popes and kings—that is, what the pope’s position was vis-à-vis Christian kingship in general. The importance of specific relationships between certain kings and the Holy See has also been recognized, however. Sometimes these specific relationships—the king of England receiving his realm as a fief in 1213, for example—have been seen as concrete illustrations of the pope’s attempts to enforce a universal world monarchy. The implication is that the popes would have liked all kings to receive their realms as fiefs.1
Rather than see these specific relationships as attempts to enact a general policy—the papacy trying to reduce all rulers to subservience—they have to be examined on their own terms and comparatively. Over the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, different types of relationship developed. Initially, as we shall see in chapter one, alliances between popes and kings were ad hoc and did not conform to set types. Indeed, it is not at all clear what either popes or kings thought their alliances meant in the eleventh century. Over the course of the twelfth century, the kingdom of Aragon moved into being ‘under the protection of St Peter’—a relationship with Rome analogous to that of certain monasteries and ecclesiastical institutions. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the language of fiefs and vassals—feudum; vassallus—appears in papal letters. Secular rulers might be ‘vassals’ of the pope; kingdoms might be papal ‘fiefs’. Over the course of the thirteenth century, it was established that these new relationships were fundamentally different from the existing protective relationships: although both vassal-kings and protected-kings might pay tribute (census) to the pope, a vassal-king could be deprived of his kingdom for failing to pay. Emphasizing the variation and development in these relationships moves us away from seeing them merely as specific instances of a general policy aimed at the subjection of kingship to the priesthood.
Distinguishing between different sorts of papal–royal relationship is important for another reason too. The (mainly German and Austrian) historians writing in the first half of the twentieth century tended to see any special relationship between a king and the pope as ‘feudal’. Thus the pope become feudal overlord of (deep breath) Sicily, Aragon, Portugal, England, Hungary, Poland, Croatia, Denmark, the Rus’, Melgueil (southern France), the Isle of Man, the county of Besalú, the county of Cerdanya, Brittany, Provence, Barcelona, the entire Iberian peninsula, Corsica, and Sardinia. Calling all these relationships ‘feudal’ meant that ‘the king […] had to surrender his land into full papal ownership […] and receive […] it back as a fief, so that he became legally an usufructuary. In recognition of his usufruct and of the Petrine protection the king […] undertook to render certain services’.2
The assumptions that all relationships between kings and the pope were ‘feudal’, and that the summary above holds true for all ‘feudal’ relationships, were challenged in the later twentieth century. Johannes Fried and Alfons Becker distinguished between different types of relationship.3 Fried advanced the idea that Aragon, Portugal, and some other counties were under papal protection rather than feudal lordship; Becker suggested that some kings were bound to the pope by a (non-vassalic) fidelity. Both, however, took it as read that some kings—the Norman rulers of Sicily and the thirteenth-century kings of England—were feudal vassals of the pope in the classic sense suggested above. Stefan Weinfurter, more recently, has dated the acceptance of ‘feudal bonds’ into the papacy’s relationship with the Siculo-Normans to around the 1120s, but emphasized that ‘feudalism’ was one tool amongst many in papal power relations.4
The trend in anglophone historiography was different. Elizabeth Brown and Susan Reynolds asked whether all the relationships which historians have labelled ‘feudal’ were really similar enough for the tag to mean anything.5 Relatedly, both asked whether features which historians have assumed to be characteristic of feudal relations really came from timeless alliances between tribal chiefs and their followers, or rather were constructions of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century legal profession, seeking to codify the relationships between kings and their greatest subjects.
Taking both of these approaches into account, I focus on both terminology and duties. ‘Feudal’—as I use it here—is nominal: a feudal relationship between the pope and a king is one where the kingdom is called a feudum. This does not assume anything further about the relationship. I do not assume what a feudal—or protective—relationship is, and then apply it; I ask in what a relationship labelled by the word feudum (or its derivatives) consisted.
* * *
The most important prong of this study points towards power and government. Implicit or explicit in the idea of the papal monarchy is that the pope was an active ruler who sought to increase his power at the expense of both secular rulers and provincial bishops. For Walter Ullmann:
the crusades were […] a stepping stone in the direction of the eventual establishment of a fully fledged world government. But we should not […] assume that the crusades served as a model for the setting up of a papal world monarchy: the employment of brute force was a feature that did not gain much favour with the canonists. They preferred subtler methods, some of which would nowadays be termed the method of infiltration.
This ‘method of infiltration’ appeared ‘under the guise of protecting individuals subject to curial jurisdiction’, beginning in Innocent IV’s reign (1243–54).6 Thus, for Ullmann, and for others too (albeit more subtly), these relationships of protection or lordship were tools for the papacy to reach towards global dominion. Rudolf Schieffer, more recently, summarizing his papstgeschichtliche Wende (largely synonymous with ‘papal monarchy’), dated the beginning of an ‘active feudal policy of the popes, aimed at winning as many […] secular lords as possible for him [the pope] as vassals’ to Innocent III’s pontificate (1198–1216).7
Ullmann’s complex and remarkably consistent picture of a self-aggrandizing papal monarchy was painted mainly in colours drawn from the writings of canonists; the commentators on canon law. Ullmann, in fact, dismissed the value of papal letters as ‘too fact-tied and too concrete in their immediate application’ and (judged by their contents) motivated by ‘aggrandisement, lust for power, cupidity’.8 Ullmann’s student, Brian Tierney, did not always agree with the master’s picture of the papacy, but his canvases were populated by canonistic writings too.9
Fortunately, over the last few decades, attention has shifted to papal letters and documents. Ullmann’s complaint that papal letters and mandates give an impression of an aggressive and power-hungry papacy has been neatly reversed by the realization that papal letters were the products of a process in which the petitioner was king. Thus, papal letters and documents are the main sources for this study, but they have to be handled carefully. It is still the case that non-specialists tend to take papal letters as disinterested summaries of papal will. They are not.
In the 1970s, Ernst Pitz laid out his what he saw as the fundamental principles of Reskripttechnik—rescript government, the Medieval practice of ruling.10 Most papal documents—mandates ordering someone to do something, privileges granting favours—were issued in response to petitions presented to papal officials. Large parts of the letters were simply rewritings of the petitions. In general, the papacy tended simply to approve petitions, although sometimes the request was only approved in part. Once a papal document left the curia, there was no certainty that it would be enforced. Local ‘executors’ could be appointed, but they were not on salary and could hardly be compelled to carry out the task assigned. If a papal letter was ignored, all the beneficiary could do was to go back to the pope and ask him to send a command ordering the initial letter to be enforced. The beneficiary might actually decide not to try to enforce the letter. Sometimes the papal chancery would issue multiple different letters to a petitioner, so that the petitioner could choose which one to use.11
While Pitz received a fair amount of pushback on parts of his approach, most of his ideas have now gained at least some foothold.12 Work on papal letters, the papal chancery, and even the Crusades have confirmed the dominant role of petitions and petitioners as the engine of papal government.13 Therefore, while letters issued in the pope’s name are the main body of sources which I focus on, I interpret them overwhelmingly as indicative of the wishes and requests of petitioners and supplicants, rather than the pope’s will. In many cases, the specific wording and phrasing of the pope’s letter was taken directly from the petition or supplicatory letter.
Analysing letters from this perspective radically changes the traditional view of papal overlordship of kings. Instead of being a story of papal self-aggrandizement, the petitions and requests received by the curia limited and defined the scope of papal action. During the Aragonese succession dispute in 1134–62, the papal court reacted to supplications from the Knights Templar and the ruler of Aragon; the pope did not seek to enforce his own claims to authority. During the royal minorities in Aragon, England, and Sicily at the beginning of the thirteenth century, supplicants and proctors at the curia decided what involvement the curia would have. The petitioners set the agenda, for their own ends.
The relationships between popes and kings allowed rulers and their counsellors to make use of papal authority. Royal proctors presented petitions to the pope asking for something and the pope approved it by his apostolic authority. Sometimes other petitioners—including enemies of the king—might petition the pope, asking him, as the lord or protector of the kingdom, to issue letters in their interest, but not necessarily in the royal interest. During the minority of King James I of Aragon, Aragonese and Catalan magnates asked the pope to appoint a council to ‘assist’ the regent, for example. These petitions were normally approved, just as the pope would approve the petitions of royal proctors. However, petitioning at the curia was expensive, and favourable contacts amongst the papal courtiers were very useful. Thus, while in theory anyone could instrumentalize papal authority for their own ends, kings were the most effective petitioners, since they had the resources.
An increased emphasis on petitioners in pre-modern governance is not limited to the Medieval papacy. In 1977—at the same moment Ernst Pitz was putting forward a view of reactive papal government—Fergus Millar published his The Emperor in the Roman World, which demanded that scholars of imperial Rome focused more on the petitions and appeals. Millar’s judgement on the emperor—‘[a] very large proportion of his contacts with his subjects fell into a pattern which may be called petition-and-response’—would hardly be out of place in this book.14 Jim Holt and Tim Reuter both saw the importance of petitioners to twelfth-century Angevin and Staufen government respectively.15 Outwith Christendom, Marina Rustow has reassessed the importance of petitions to the governance of the Fatimid caliphate.16
The legacy of the modern state has meant that we have tended to assume that state and government institutions exist primarily (if not exclusively) to instantiate the wishes and commands of the ruler(s). I do not believe this is the case with pre-modern government. Recently, in both modern and pre-modern scholarship, there has been more interest in how subjects are able to ‘work’ central governments.17 My insistence on viewing petitions as the driver of government has much in common with that. Pre-modern states especially had limited ability to ‘see’ their subjects—to collect information on the great mass of people in the polity and act on them all with equal strength. Instead, governments relied on the willingness of subjects to seek out the king or pope and petition him for redress. It was therefore crucial for the state to be legible to its subjects—that subjects knew how to approach and use the government apparatus—given that subjects were hardly legible to the state.18
This need for the state—the central governmental apparatus—to be legible to subjects was surely manifested in the aids to petitioners which we find from the twelfth century onwards. The ‘little book on the forms of petitions’ written by a cardinal at the beginning of the thirteenth century was intended (apparently) to aid humble petitioners pursuing business at the curia.19 The appearance of curial proctors around the year 1200 allowed petitioners to hire a professional to guide their business through the organs of the papal bureaucracy.20 The various detailed accounts of prelates who conducted litigation before the pope might not have been intended as guidebooks, but they certainly show a deep interest in how to behave at the curia.21 Finally, the formularies produced by the papal chancery, penitentiary, and chamber for their own use were copied and disseminated by petitioners and litigants. There are now numerous manuscripts of these texts surviving in archives across Europe.22 In all of these ways, the pope’s subjects were doing their best to make the curia legible to them; to know how the pope’s court worked, and what they needed to do in order to get what they wanted.
Papal lordship or protection allowed rulers, and petitioners more generally, to make use of papal authority. Supplicants could petition the pope. This is, of course, why rulers sought papal lordship or protection. Rulers were not reduced to vassalage by a self-aggrandizing papacy seeking world domination; rulers sought papal lordship to increase their own power and authority, or to strengthen and confirm their legitimacy.
One of the broader implications of my approach—emphasizing petitioners as the driver of papal government—is that the papacy ceases to be the enemy of monarchy or of the territorial state, and becomes instead a potential resource for kings and states (and, indeed, their subjects). The traditional narrative of European politics between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries is that the papacy and the empire fought over who would be the ultimate suzerain of Europe. The papacy won, and defeated the empire. But, while the papacy was distracted, it had ignored the consolidation of territorial monarchies in England and France—the precursors of modern nation states. By 1300, the universal pretensions of the papacy had been put down by the territorial monarchs of France and England.23 The pan-European papacy was thus an opponent of the burgeoning nation state and, in the end, its victim.
The conceptual approach in this book is that papal authority was placed in the service of petitioners. Relationships of overlordship and protection were sought out by rulers because they had the potential to contribute both to kings’ effective powers and also to their legitimacy. Hand in hand with a new papal–royal relationship went, implicitly or explicitly, recognition by the pope. It was an aspiring secular ruler who chose to approach the pope. Other options were sometimes available. In the mid-twelfth century, Portugal and Aragon-Catalonia seem to have desired recognition by Alfonso VII, ‘emperor of all Spain’, more than recognition by the pope.24 The rulers of Bohemia were raised to kingship by the German emperors, not the pope.25 In some cases, propagandists sought to claim that kingship was granted by angelic intervention.26 A new ruler sought papal approval in order to assert his independence from powerful neighbours—although in other cases, such as Portugal and Aragon-Catalonia in the mid-twelfth century, recognition from the regional hegemon was preferable to papal approval. Rulers chose who to approach based on a complex combination of interest; often they chose to approach the pope, but this was their decision, not the result of papal claims and ambition. If, as has been claimed not infrequently, the pope was head of a sort of Medieval League of Nations/United Nations/European Union (delete depending on when the author was writing), then it was so because the people of Christendom saw him as a useful legitimator.27 If, for any reason, the usefulness of papal approval was in doubt, then the pope’s authority fell through the floor.
On a more prosaic level, the primacy of petitions in papal government meant that these new relationships were opportunities for kings to instrumentalize papal authority to strengthen their own regimes. Through petitions, rulers could gain papal letters and mandates in their favour, thus building up royal power within the realm. Of course, subjects and enemies of kings who were vassals and protégés of the pope could also petition Rome—and were likely to get their requests heard and approved—but kings and their counsellors tended to be the most effective petitioners. As we shall see in chapter five, the count-bishops of Maguelone did use papal overlordship to stymie the state-building ambitions of the French kings, but the count-bishops were themselves trying to build a state (albeit a smaller one). Papal authority was a potential tool for state-building. The usefulness of papal authority to royal power has been noticed by Pascal Montaubin in another context: Pope Eugenius III’s protection given to the kingdom of France during Louis VII’s absence on Crusade allowed Abbot Suger, Louis’ regent, to exercise his office outside the royal domain, strengthening vestigial royal power over the wider kingdom.28 Papal protection strengthened regnal authority. The Medieval papacy, and papal overlordship of kings, were not forms of supranational sovereignty which incipient nation states needed to destroy before achieving their true destiny, but potential enablers for developing polities. The two were not in conflict, but intimately and symbiotically connected.
How should we reconcile this model of the papacy as a service industry with the ideology of the papal monarchy, with the statements of popes such as Boniface VIII that ‘it is necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff’? Or of Innocent III that the pope was ‘lower than God but higher than man’?29 How does it fit with the interpretation, which Ullmann spelled out, but with which the historiography was impregnated, that papal history is about the growth (and eventual decline) of ‘an idea’?
Monarch and Servant
The traditional picture of papal monarchy is based on the legal edifice of canon law, constructed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The pope—as ‘vicar of Christ’ and universal ordinary judge—possessed the plenitude of power. In the ecclesiastical sphere he was the ultimate judge, and certain matters were always reserved to him. In the secular world, the pope could act ‘case by case’. There were many reasons why the pope might have to intervene among the laity—if a dispute raised the possibility of sin; if a secular judge was neglectful; if one party had no temporal superior. Canonistic thought placed papal authority over all beings on (reasonably) secure foundations. The so-called papal monarchy depended on this structure.30
But while the canonists had justified papal action in various spheres and under various circumstances, this was not the same as offering a guideline as to how that authority should be used—how government should operate. Throughout this book the answer will become clear: papal letters explained that, because the pope was bound to the beneficiary in some way, the pope had a duty of care towards them. That duty of care was to be manifested in granting their petitions and requests. The authority of the pope—outlined in detail by the canonists—was, according to the papal understanding of their government, to be placed in the service of petitioners—even kings.
At the most basic level, the popes owed a general duty of service to all Christians. This duty was mentioned in every single papal letter and privilege: it was implicit in the pope’s title, ‘servant of the servants of God’ (servus servorum dei). Pope Innocent III, in a sermon, explained the origin of this title:
Jesus taught the apostles and us to lower ourselves […], saying ‘He that is the greatest among you shall be servant of all’ [Matt. 23.11/Mark 10.44], giving himself as an example: ‘Even as the Son of man is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister’ [Matt. 20.28]. This is why the greatest in the Church calls himself ‘servant of the servants of God’.31
The passage to which Innocent pointed (Mark 10.42–5) offered a principle of government:
But Jesus calling them [his disciples], saith to them: You know that they who seem to rule over the Gentiles, lord it over them: and their princes have power over them. But it is not so among you: but whosoever will be greater, shall be your minister. And whosoever will be first among you, shall be the servant of all (omnium servus). For the Son of man also is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a redemption for many.
The pope’s title (servant of the servants of God) was inspired by a biblical passage—or rather multiple similar passages from each of the synoptic Gospels—which outlined that a leader should be a servant, and should serve rather than be served.32 The importance of service ran through Innocent’s sermon on his own consecration. When Innocent preached on his consecration, he took as his central theme ‘[w]ho, thinkest thou, is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath appointed over his family, to give them meat in season’ (Matthew 24.45).33 The pope, of course, was the faithful and wise servant. When Innocent came to define ‘servant’, he explicitly linked it with Mark 10.42–5 and Luke 22.25–6 (a very similar passage).34 A further indication of the pope’s position as servant, according to Innocent, was Romans 1.14: ‘to the Greeks and to the barbarians, to the wise and to the unwise, I am a debtor’ (Graecis ac barbaris, sapientibus, et insipientibus debitor sum). Innocent described this as the ‘office of service’ (officium servitutis).
But in what way was the pope supposed to ‘serve’? What did ‘serving’ look like? Romans 1.14 allows us to tie the pope’s ‘office of service’ to actual papal letters, because Romans 1.14 was used to justify papal solicitude in many letters.35 It was the most basic level of the pope’s duty—he was a debtor to both the wise and the unwise, i.e. to everyone.
Pope Calixtus II, confirming the move of Nostell priory in Yorkshire: ‘[t]he authority of the Apostolic See—which makes us debtors to all (omnibus debitores)—exhorts us to strain to the advantage of Religious brethren’.36 Alexander III, telling the archbishop of Rheims to force a rich canon of Saint-Fursy de Péronne to return goods to the woman whom he had deprived: ‘because we should be debtors in their justice to all by the office of the Apostle enjoined on us (ex iniuncto nobis apostolatus officio omnibus in iustitia sua debitores existimus), we order that […]’.37 Sometimes—as in the first example—Romans 1.14 was part of the arenga, the formal justificatory section. But often, as in the second example, it crops up in papal mandates or letters which did not have an arenga. These letters might simply have a narratio (outlining the background to whatever case or incident prompted the letter; normally taken verbatim from the petition) and then a dispositio (the pope’s decision or instruction). In many letters the dispositio was justified with reference to Romans 1.14, to the papal debt and to the duty of service. Some papal letters explicitly described this duty to be a ‘debtor to the wise and unwise’ as the ‘office of service’ (officium servitutis), the same term Innocent used in his sermon, above.38
But, again, what did it mean to be a servant, to be ‘debtor to all’? Fortunately Pope Urban III can tell us: ‘from the apostolic office enjoined on us by God, to all the faithful of God we are debtors for the accomplishment of their just petitions [emphasis mine]’.39 At the most basic level, the pope was a debtor to everyone, as the ‘servant of the servants of God’. Because of that debt—that obligation—he was obliged to receive and approve the petitions and requests of all. The pope’s authority was intended to be used for the betterment of those who supplicated for it.
Beyond this general duty to all, the pope was bound even more strongly to some. Innocent III wrote to the bishop of Zamora, in Spain:
Beyond the debt of the pastoral office which makes us debtors to all, we love your person much more as you are more greatly endowed with the knowledge of letters, and are learned in both canon and civil law […].40
More relevant for this book are those special relationships which the pope had with kings. In 1095 Pope Urban II, granting a privilege to King Peter I of Aragon, told the king:
Although we are debtors to all the sons of Holy Church by the authority and benevolence of the Apostolic See, yet it behoves us to be more eager to hark to those persons who adhere more devotedly and familiarly to the Roman Church.41
Raymond-Berengar IV, who succeeded to the crown of Aragon by marrying Peter I’s niece, was told by Pope Adrian IV (1154–59):
Even if, by the office of the apostle enjoined on us by God, we are debtors in their justice to all the faithful of God, it behoves us especially to conserve in their rights—and approve their just petitions—those who, famous by power and nobility, are faithful to the Holy Roman Church and fervent in its service and devotion.42
Pope Honorius III (1216–27) wrote to Raymond-Berengar’s great-grandson, King James I of Aragon:
The office of enjoined service (servitutis officium) which makes us debtors to our most beloved son in Christ James, illustrious king of Aragon (as to other Christian princes) obliges us to him by a special bond. For, because he is a vassal of the Roman Church, we are held to offer aid to him not only against enemies of the Christian name, but even to show aid and favour to him against Christians, if necessity urges […].43
The pope’s particular relationships with the kings of Aragon, and Sicily, England, and elsewhere, meant that, in the rhetoric of papal letters, the pope had a particular obligation to approve the petitions he received from those kings. Overlordship and protection were reasons for the pope to grant royal requests, beyond the general debt which the pope owed to all. From the point of view of canon law, these special relationships constituted justifications for papal action, even in petitions and complaints which were more secular than spiritual.44
The justifications for the papal duty of care varied, indeed variation was useful. Some of Innocent III’s letters to Frederick II of Sicily said that Innocent’s special bond with Frederick was more important than the general debt of the papal office; but some letters put the general debt above special reasons.45 As we shall see, such choices were strategic. The best justification for papal solicitude might change at any moment, if the circumstances changed.
The idea of service—whether that was the general debt owed to all or a special duty owed to a more select few—was how papal government was conceived. The pope was a ‘servant of all’ and exercised the ‘office of service’.46 The duty of the papal office was to promote (whenever possible) the petitions he received. The Gospel of Mark and Paul’s letter to the Romans were the biblical underpinnings for responsive papal government.
Within this understanding, the legal unfolding of the pope’s plenitude of power is not merely compatible with government-by-petition, but integral to it. How could the pope serve the people, and their rulers, unless he had clear legitimate authority to act? Why would anyone send their requests to the pope unless they were sure his authority rested on a secure legal basis? Government based on petitions; an ideology of service; and the canon law edifice of the papal monarchy were three supporting sides of one pyramid.
Donation of Constantine
According to the infamous Donation of Constantine, in the fourth century, Emperor Constantine the Great gave the city of Rome and the Western Roman Empire to Pope Silvester I.47 Scholarly and popular books on the Medieval papacy have claimed that this forgery was the basis (or at least one foundation) of papal power.48 My intention is to ignore the Donation of Constantine. More than a century ago, Frank Zinkeisen, in a short and sensible article, pointed out that the eleventh-, twelfth-, and thirteenth-century popes referred to the Donation very rarely in their letters.49 There was, as Johannes Fried noted, no common opinion even amongst the Medieval canonists of the relevance of the Donation: if the emperor had conferred the Western Empire on the pope, could the emperor take it back? Could the emperor even give away regal authority?50 Luis Weckmann believed the Donation was the basis for an ‘omni-insular policy’ whereby, between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries, the papacy actively laid claim and sought to extend its sovereignty over all islands.51 Calling this argument imaginative is probably too kind—Johannes Vincke pointed out there are numerous cases of the papacy not claiming any authority over islands (let alone an authority based on the Donation), and plenty of examples of papal authority over mainlands. There were three cases in the eleventh and twelfth centuries when the papacy claimed, in its letters, authority over islands with reference to the Donation of Constantine (Lipari, Corsica, and Ireland). As Vincke suggested, the inclusion of the Donation here was probably a suggestion of the petitioners, who were looking for a legitimate title to these islands.52 There is no evidence that the Donation figured in a major or consistent way in papal–royal relations, although it is possible that it played a greater role in symbolic representation than in letters.53
Relationships between popes and kings were mainly constructed by mutual consent. Thus, the Donation—whereby the pope would be claiming authority over a king through the gift of a long-dead past emperor of a polity which no longer existed—was hardly an ideal tool. It is true that the essential idea of the Donation seems to have been quite widely known. It may have been a useful shorthand for papal power, as Magna Carta is a useful shorthand for liberty in twenty-first-century Britain and America. The Donation has been called the ‘Magna Carta of all titles of the papacy’.54 Perhaps, as with Magna Carta now, we might say of the Donation of Constantine in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: everyone had heard of it; no one had read it; in extremis a public figure might cite it to add historical legitimacy to their position; but no one was really motivated by it.
The Book: Chapter by Chapter
Rather than being organized primarily by geography, each chapter of this book is mainly built around a theme, looked at within particular chronological and geographical contexts. The themes of each chapter are all connected to traditional conceptions of feudo-vassalic relationships: investiture; homage; protection; vassalage; state-building; wardship; confiscation. The central arguments—of the development of distinct types of relationship, and the fundamentally reactive nature of papal government—run through each chapter.
The first chapter—Investiture—is the most geographically broad. It examines what changed between c.1070 and c.1150 in how papal–royal relations were conceived. In the eleventh century, the rulers of Norman Sicily, Aragon, Barcelona, Melgueil, and other secular lordships described their relationship with the pope in the same words which kings and emperors used to invest bishops. Some rulers were ‘invested’ by the pope; numerous rulers ‘accepted’ their lordship ‘from the pope’s hand’. Around 1100–22, it became accepted that, when kings ‘invested’ bishops, they were giving bishops their lands and powers derived from the king. In turn, this made papal investiture of secular rulers unacceptable. After the 1120s, if a pope invested a lord, then it would suggest that the pope actually owned the territory he was giving away. Kings did not like this suggestion, and so the relationships changed. The rulers of Sicily began to be crowned by archbishops from 1130. The relationship between the Holy See and Aragon shifted, and from the mid-twelfth century was clearly defined as being ‘protective’. Aragon entered the protection of St Peter.
Chapters two and three—Homage and Protection—begin where chapter one finishes. In the twelfth century the Norman rulers of Sicily and southern Italy performed homage to the pope a number of times. Because homage was supposedly the quintessential ‘feudal’ ritual, its appearance is assumed to mean that the Normans became vassals of the pope. It is more profitable, however, to examine rituals of submission—homage, oathtaking, prostration—as responding to the needs of the moment. Norman rulers might wish the pope to receive their homage because, by that receipt, the pope would be recognizing the legitimacy of their rule. Sometimes, as in 1120, it was the pope who wanted the Norman rulers to give him homage, because such ceremonies showed one pope’s widespread support against the claims of an antipope. The homages from the Normans to the pope are placed in the context of their times, rather than being seen as instances of a timeless feudal ritual.
Protection looks at how, in the twelfth century, certain papal–royal relationships began to resemble relationships between popes and favoured monasteries and ecclesiastic institutions: Aragon and Portugal were received into the ‘protection of St Peter’. Aragon even received rights of exemption from episcopal jurisdiction. Aragon’s relationship with the papacy came in handy between 1134 and 1162, when the kingdom faced a series of interrelated succession problems. During this period, the papacy was a resource for one or the other side. Chiefly, the curia was a source of legitimacy and a means for petitioners to put pressure on their enemies (by requesting papal letters ordering opponents to cease their opposition). The pope was here, as in many other places, responding to outside pressures rather than pursuing his own policy. The rulers of Aragon and Portugal looked to the pope for support when they thought his support might be useful. But not, for example, during a papal schism when both popes’ authority was disputed. It was the buyer (the king) not the seller (the pope) who decided when to initiate and use a relationship with the Holy See.
Vassalage, chapter four, takes us to the thirteenth century. King John’s decision to surrender England and Ireland to the pope and receive them back ‘as a fief-holder’, paying an annual census, introduced a new type of relationship into papal–royal relations. John, and his son, Henry III, were henceforth vassals (vassalli) of the pope and England was a ‘fief’ (feudum). This language was taken up by the curia. In 1219, the King of Man and the Isles, in consultation with the same papal legate who had negotiated John’s surrender in 1213, made the Isle of Man a papal fief. The king of Aragon was called a papal ‘vassal’ (vassallus) in 1222. Feudal language was spreading, though the agency of cardinals and courtiers who were familiar with the English kings.
At the same time, the county of Melgeuil, in the south of France, also became a papal ‘fief’ (feudum). Indeed, the first papal letter calling Melgueil a fief was issued the same month as King John’s surrender (May 1213). Chapter five—State-Making—follows the development of this feudal relationship between the pope and the bishop of Maguelone, who persuaded the pope to grant him Melgueil. The count-bishop was able to use the pope to legitimize his title to Melgueil, and thence to build up his power and authority within the county. The count-bishops dispatched petitions and complaints to Rome asking the pope to condemn enemies, order subjects to stay loyal, and have fortresses returned. The count-bishops sought to use papal overlordship to construct a polity independent of any other power. The pope’s authority was placed in the service of the bishop’s administration.
Chapter six moves to look at three cases of papal wardship. Wardship of an underage vassal is a right often attributed to lords in classic descriptions of feudo-vassalic relations. An absolute right to be guardian of a vassal-king has been invoked to explain Innocent III and Honorius III’s solicitude towards James I of Aragon, Henry III of England, and Frederick II of Sicily during their minorities. In all three cases, papal authority in these kingdoms has been assumed to be at its height when kings were underage. Wardship examines the reactive nature of papal lordship during these the minorities. Aragon is the base case, since there was only one major papal legation to the kingdom during James I’s minority, and hence papal authority was mediated mainly by letters issued in response to petitions from Aragon. Papal instructions did not reflect the concerns of the curia, but the requests and fears of the petitioners. Internal political infighting and factionalism were played out in papal mandates. There were legations to England and Sicily during the minorities of Henry III and Frederick II. In these cases the pope was able to defer some petitions he received to the legates on the ground. It is clear, however, that legates were only effective if they had been requested by, and had the support of, the royal government. There was also the risk that legates might ‘go native’. The justifications for papal authority during the minorities of James I, Henry III and Frederick II varied considerably. Papal letters certainly did not consistently invoke a supposed feudal duty for the pope to act as guardian. The curia and petitioners consulted to make sure that the best reason for papal solicitude was put forward in letters and mandates. Since petitioners changed (as did circumstances), the justifications found in letters varied too. Sometimes the pope’s general duty to care for all orphans was emphasized; sometimes the special relationship between a particular king and the pope was the reason why the pope was compelled to act. Even when an automatic right of papal wardship over underage kings was introduced in the second half of the thirteenth century, it was not always included in the feudal contracts which we find from 1250 onwards (Sicily, 1252–65; Aragon, 1283; Sardinia, 1297).
Finally chapter seven—Confiscation—explores another ‘feudal right’: a lord’s ability to deprive a fief-holder of his fief because of a failure to perform due service. John Watt called the pope’s right to depose a king the ‘primum caput of ecclesiastical superiority’.55 Others have suggested that the pope had a special right to depose kings who held their kingdoms as papal fiefs (such as Frederick II of Sicily).56 If there was any moment when the pope should have been able to use overlordship to achieve his own ends, it would be here, among the deposition of rulers. The idea that the pope could depose certain kings ‘feudally’ seems to have been introduced by King John in 1213. During the struggles between the papacy and Frederick II in the first half of the thirteenth century, feudal deposition lurked in the wings: Gregory IX, Cardinal Rainier of Viterbo, Innocent IV, and Hostiensis all thought about it. They did not all think the same way, however. In the second half of the century, in the feudal contracts with Sicily, Aragon, and Sardinia, it was established that a king who did not perform his feudal services—paying the tribute-census to the pope—would lose his kingdom. This was in contrast to the census paid by kingdoms under papal protection, non-payment of which did not provide grounds for deposition. In practice, however, the popes preferred not to use deprivation of fief, but deposed kings by their inherent authority to remove any and all rulers. It seems that, even in depositions of rulers, the pope did not use relationships of overlordship in his own interest.
There is not room to cover everything. However, I hope that the methodology and conceptual framework of this book can be applied to papal–royal relationships not discussed here. For example, in 1251 Mindaugas, grand duke of Lithuania, converted to Christianity and received the title of rex from Pope Innocent IV, as well as permission to be crowned into kingship by the bishop of Chełmno. Mindaugas is often said by this to have become a papal ‘vassal’ and Lithuania a ‘fief’.57 When we look at the letters from Innocent’s chancery to Mindaugas, we see this was not the case. We know that several polities—England, Sicily, Man, Melgueil—had been described as ‘fiefs (feuda) in papal letters by the mid-thirteenth century (chapters four, five, six, and seven). Lithuania was not so called in 1251. Instead Mindaugas was ‘admitted as a special son of Holy Roman Church’, his kingdom was ‘received into the right and property of St Peter’ and was to remain ‘under the protection and devotion of the Apostolic See’.58 By the end of this book, such language will be very familiar. The kings of Portugal and England were the pope’s special sons, and the Occitan lords of Anduze claimed to be Pope Innocent III’s ‘special men’ (chapters five and six). The terminology of protection can be found in papal relationships with, inter alia, Aragon and Portugal (chapters three and six). Being received into the ‘right and property’ of the Holy See can be found in both feudal and protective relationships (chapter one). Lithuania was not a papal feudum, however, unlike England and Sicily (chapter four). Mindaugas was also said to ‘hold’ (tenere) his kingdom from the Apostolic See, but even that description can be found in a papal letter to Aragon (chapter six). Consequently, it seems likely that Mindaugas and Lithuania were received into the protection of St Peter, as Aragon was, not into papal vassalage, as King John’s England was.
Why did Mindaugas seek papal protection (and baptism, and papal permission to be crowned), and why did he subsequently lose interest in papal legitimization? The traditional answers have (doubtless correctly) revolved around one-upping his rival, who was also seeking baptism, and the prestige of a papal crown, which increased Mindaugas’ status vis-à-vis his rivals and the Teutonic Order. In the end, Mindaugas did not actually gain much. In Mindaugas’ story—as in this book as a whole—the papacy was a storehouse of legitimation to be used by petitioners, and not an aggressive and expansionary overlord. The pope gave Mindaugas a crown when he asked, but was not able nor interested in playing an active role in Baltic politics. When Mindaugas turned against his former allies in the Teutonic Order, he also lost interest in the advantages which the papal curia could offer.59 More work needs to be done, of course, to cover Lithuania’s relationship with Rome, but the basic methodology and framework of this book can be applied there too.
Another coronation overlooked here is King Peter II of Aragon’s crowning by Innocent III in 1204.60 Although it is sometimes claimed that there was something ‘feudal’ about Peter’s coronation, it was just a coronation. Peter’s son, James I of Aragon, also wanted to be crowned by the pope in 1274. Not every king was crowned and anointed.61 What marked out a crowned and anointed king was not that he was a ‘vassal’ of the pope, but the very fact of coronation itself. Some might also bemoan the absence of sustained discussion of the regency government of Angevin Sicily in 1285–88, where one of the two regents was a cardinal-legate, and Popes Martin IV, Honorius IV, and Nicholas IV all had to buttress royal authority.62 It is already the case that this book roams around widely in both space and time; choices have to be made. Some things must be excluded. What remains will, I hope, be sufficient.
Papal Overlordship and European Princes, 1000–1270. Benedict Wiedemann, Oxford University Press. © Benedict Wiedemann 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192855039.003.0001
1 Walter Ullmann, Medieval Papalism: The Political Theories of the Medieval Canonists (Methuen: London, 1949), p. 121; Brian Tierney, ‘The Continuity of Papal Political Theory in the Thirteenth Century: Some Methodological Considerations’, Mediaeval Studies 27 (1965), pp. 227–245, at 239–242; see also Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages: A Study in the Ideological Relation of Clerical to Lay Power, 3rd edn. (Methuen: London, 1970 [1955]), pp. 331–343; Julien Théry, ‘Le triomphe de la théocratie pontificale, du IIIe concile du Latran au ponticat de Boniface VIII (1179–1303)’, Structures et dynamiques religieuses dans les sociétés de l’Occident latin (1179–1449), ed. M. M. de Cevins, J.-M. Matz (Rennes University Press: Rennes, 2010), pp. 17–31, at 24.
2 Ullmann, Growth of Papal Government, p. 333; Karl Jordan, ‘Das Eindringen des Lehnswesens in das Rechtsleben der römischen Kurie’, Archiv für Urkundenforschung 12 (1932), pp. 13–110; Carl Erdmann, Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens, reprint (Kohlhammer: Stuttgart, 1955), pp. 347–362; idem, The Origin of the Idea of Crusade, trans. Marshal Baldwin, Walter Goffart (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1977), pp. 128–129, 216–224.
3 Johannes Fried, Der päpstlicher Schutz für Laienfürsten: Die politische Geschichte des päpstlichen Schutzprivilegs für Laien (11.–13. Jahrhundert) (Winter: Heidelberg, 1980); Alfons Becker, ‘Politique féodale de la papauté à l’égard des rois et des princes (XIe–XIIe siècles)’, Chiesa e mondo feudale nei secoli X–XII. Atti della dodicesima Settimana internazionale di studio (Vita e pensiero: Milan, 1995), pp. 411–446.
4 Stefan Weinfurter, ‘Die Päpste als “Lehnsherren” von Königen und Kaisern im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert?’, Ausbildung und Verbreitung des Lehnswesens im Reich und in Italien im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert, ed. Karl-Heinz Spieß (Jan Thorbecke: Ostfildern, 2013), pp. 17–40.
5 Elizabeth Brown, ‘The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe’, American Historical Review 79 (1974), pp. 1063–1088; Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1994).
6 Ullmann, Medieval Papalism, p. 121.
7 Rudolf Schieffer, ‘Die Reichweite päpstlicher Entscheidungen nach der papstgeschichtlichen Wende’, Das begrenzte Papsttum. Spielräume päpstlichen Handelns: Legaten, delegierte Richter, Grenzen, ed. Klaus Herbers, Frank Engel, Fernando López Alsina (De Gruyter: Berlin, 2013), pp. 13–27, at 22–23 (‘Doch von einer aktiven Lehnspolitik der Päpste mit dem Ziel […] möglichst viele […] weltliche Gebieter für sich als Vasallen zu gewinnen, kann vor der Zeit Innocenz’ III offenbar keine Rede sein’).
8 Ullmann, Medieval Papalism, pp. 80–81.
9 Brian Tierney, Religion, Law and the Growth of Constitutional Thought, 1150–1650 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1982), pp. 8–28.
10 Ernst Pitz, ‘Die römische Kurie als Thema der vergleichenden Sozialgeschichte’, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Bibliotheken und Archiven 58 (1978), pp. 216–345, esp. 235–237.
11 e.g., Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. James Robertson, 7 vols. (Longman: London, 1875–85), vii, p. 387.
12 Ullmann, interestingly, was favourable to Pitz, see Ullmann, ‘Short Notice: Pitz, Papstreskript und Kaiserreskript im Mittelalter’, English Historical Review 88 (1973), p. 620. Others less so, e.g. Fried, Päpstlicher Schutz, pp. 340–341.
13 Andreas Meyer, ‘Attention, No Pope! New Approaches to Late Medieval Papal Litterae’, Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, ed. Joseph Goering, Stephan Dusil, Andreas Thier (Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana: Vatican City, 2016), pp. 865–874; Patrick Zutshi, ‘Petitioners, Popes, Proctors: The Development of Curial Institutions, c.1150–1250’, Pensiero e sperimentazioni instituzionali nella Societas Christiana (1046–1250), ed. Giancarlo Andenna (Vita e pensiero: Milan, 2007), pp. 265–293; Jochen Johrendt, ‘Der Empfängereinfluß auf die Gestaltung der Arenga und Sanctio in den päpstlichen Privilegien (896–1046)’, Archiv für Diplomatik 50 (2004), pp. 1–12; Thomas Smith, Curia and Crusade: Pope Honorius III and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1216–1227 (Brepols: Turnhout, 2017), pp. 10–24.
14 Fergus Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (31 BC—AD 337), 2nd edn. (Duckworth: London, 1992 [1977]), p. 6.
15 James Holt, ‘The Writs of Henry II’, Proceedings of the British Academy 89 (1996), pp. 47–64, at 57–59; idem, ‘Ricardus Rex Anglorum et Dux Normannorum’, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 253 (1981), pp. 17–33, reprinted in idem, Magna Carta and Medieval Government (Hambledon: London, 1985), pp. 67–83, at 72–73; Timothy Reuter, ‘Mandate, Privilege, Court Judgement: Techniques of Rulership in the Age of Frederick Barbarossa’; idem, Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities, ed. Janet L. Nelson (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2006), pp. 413–431.
16 Marina Rustow, The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 2020), pp. 207–273, esp. 264–265. Even more broadly, see David Zaret, ‘Petition-and-Response and Liminal Petitioning in Comparative/Historical Pespective’, Social Science History 43 (2019), pp. 431–451.
17 Michael Szonyi, The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 2017); Stuart Corbridge, Glyn Williams, Manoj Srivastava, René Véron, Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2005); Philippa Williams, Bhaskar Vira, Deepta Chopra, ‘Marginality, Agency and Power: Experiencing the State in Contemporary India’, Pacific Affairs 84 (2011), pp. 7–23.
18 The language is that of James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed (Yale University Press: New Haven, 1998).
19 Rudolf von Heckel, ‘Das päpstliche und sicilische Registerwesen in vergleichender Darstellung mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Ursprünge’, Archiv für Urkundenforschung 1 (1908), pp. 371–511, at 502.
20 Patrick Zutshi, ‘Innocent III and the Reform of the Papal Chancery’, Innocenzo III: Urbs et Orbis, ed. Andrea Sommerlechner, 2 vols. (Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo: Rome, 2003), i, pp. 84–101.
21 E.g. Hugh the Chanter, The History of the Church of York, 1066–1127, ed., trans. Charles Johnson, rev. M. Brett, C. Brooke, M. Winterbottom (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1990), pp. 115–223; Thomas of Marlborough, History of the Abbey of Evesham, ed., trans. J. Sayers, L. Watkiss (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2003), pp. 265–377; Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt, ‘Visitor Experiences: Art, Architecture and Space at the Papal Curia c.1200’, Journal of Medieval History 44 (2018), pp. 294–310, at 298.
22 Michael Tangl, Die päpstlichen Kanzleiordnungen von 1200–1500 (Wagner: Innsbruck, 1894), pp. lxii–lxiii; Emil Göller, Der Liber Taxarum der Päpstlichen Kammer: Eine Studie über seine Entstehung und Anlage (Loescher: Rome, 1905), pp. 41–49; Benedict Wiedemann, ‘The Joy of Lists: The Provinciale Romanum, Tribute and ad limina visitation to Rome’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 116 (2021), pp. 61–97.
23 Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State, new edn. (Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 2005 [1970]), pp. 44–57; Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 1050–1300, reprint (University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 1988 [1964]), pp. 2–3, 139–143, 150–153, 159–161. See also Brett Whalen, The Two Powers: The Papacy, the Empire, and the Struggle for Sovereignty in the Thirteenth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, PA, 2019), pp. 230–233.
24 Chapter three; Benedict Wiedemann, ‘The Kingdom of Portugal, Homage and Papal “Fiefdom” in the Second Half of the Twelfth Century’, Journal of Medieval History 41 (2015), pp. 432–445; idem, ‘The Character of Papal Finance at the Turn of the Twelfth Century’, English Historical Review 133 (2018), pp. 503–532, at 503–504.
25 Björn Weiler, ‘Crown-Giving and King-Making in the West, ca. 1000–ca. 1250’, Viator 41 (2010), pp. 57–87.
26 Weiler, ‘Crown-Giving and King-Making’, p. 62; Philippe Buc, ‘1701 in Medieval Perspective: Monarchical Rituals between the Middle Ages and Modernity’, Majestas 10 (2002), pp. 91–124, at 107–111.
27 Christopher Dawson, ‘The Sociological Foundations of Medieval Christendom’; idem, Medieval Essays (Sheed and Ward: London, 1954), pp. 49–66, at 64–65; Whalen, Two Powers, p. 232; Brent Nelsen, James Guth, Religion and the Struggle for European Union: Confessional Culture and the Limits of Integration (Georgetown University Press: Washington DC, 2015), pp. 40–61.
28 Pascal Montaubin, ‘Eugenius III and France: The Protected Protector’, Pope Eugenius III (1145–1153): The First Cistercian Pope, ed. Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt, Andrew Jotischky (Amsterdan University Press: Amsterdam, 2018), pp. 197–217, at 208–209, 216–217.
29 Tierney, Crisis of Church and State, nos. 69, 103, pp. 131–132, 188–189.
30 John Watt, ‘The Theory of Papal Monarchy in the Thirteenth Century: The Contribution of the Canonists’, Traditio 20 (1964), pp. 179–317; Ullmann, Medieval Papalism. For an overview of the continuing importance of canon law in ‘papal monarchy’, see Francis Oakley, The Mortgage of the Past: Reshaping the Ancient Political Inheritance (1050–1300) (Yale University Press: New Haven, 2012), pp. 183–199; Andreas Meyer, ‘Papal Monarchy’, A Companion to the Medieval World, ed. Carol Lansing, Edward English (Wiley-Blackwell: Chichester, 2009), pp. 372–396, at 384–386, 390–394. Cf. the critique in Christof Rolker, ‘Fournier’s Model and its Merits’, New Discourses in Medieval Canon Law Research: Challenging the Master Narrative, ed. idem (Brill: Leiden, 2019), pp. 4–32; Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1989), pp. 205–210, 568–577.
31 Innocent III, I sermoni, ed. Stanislao Fioramonti (Libreria editrice vaticana: Vatican City, 2006), no. B14, pp. 376–385, at 382. Others have also suggested the origin of the title lies in Mark 10, Léon Levillain, ‘Servus Servorum Dei’, Le Moyen Âge 40 (1930), pp. 5–7; Leonard Boyle, ‘Innocent III’s View of Himself as Pope’, Innocenzo III, ed. Sommerlechner, i, pp. 5–17; Boyle, ‘Diplomatics’, Medieval Studies: An Introduction, ed. James Powell, 2nd edn. (Syracuse University Press: Syracuse, NY, 1992), pp. 82–113, at 95; Meyer, ‘Papal Monarchy’, p. 377.
32 On these passages, see also Philippe Buc, ‘Principes gentium dominantur eorum: Princely Power Between Legitimacy and Illegitimacy in Twelfth-Century Exegesis’, Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status, and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. Thomas Bisson (University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, 1995), pp. 310–328.
33 Innocent, I sermoni, ed. Fioramonti, no. D2, pp. 610–623; Innocent III, Between God and Man: Six Sermons on the Priestly Office, trans. Corinne J. Vause, Frank Gardiner (Catholic University of America Press: Washington DC, 2004), pp. 16–27. It is telling that, from this sermon, Tierney translated only the sentences on the pope as ‘lower than God but higher than man’, rather than the parts on servanthood (Crisis of Church and State, no. 69, pp. 131–132).
34 Innocent’s quotation was mainly Luke 22.25-6 but replacing ‘let him become as the younger’ (fiat sicut minor) with ‘shall be the servant of all’ (erit omnium servus), from Mark 10.
35 Noted by Julien Théry, ‘Introduction’, Innocent III et le Midi, ed. idem, Michelle Fournié, Daniel Le Blévec (Privat: Toulouse, 2015), Cahiers de Fanjeaux L, pp. 11–35, at 20.
36 James Wilson, ‘Foundation of the Austin Priories of Nostell and Scone’, Scottish Historical Review 7 (1910), pp. 141–159, at 156.
37 Alexandri III Pontificis Romani epistolae et privilegia, no. 809, Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols. (Migne: Paris, 1841–65), [henceforth: PL], vol. 200, col. 742.
38 Die Register Innocenz’ III., ed. Othmar Hageneder, Anton Haidacher, Werner Maleczek et al., 11 vols. (Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Graz/Cologne/Rome/Vienna, 1964–2018), vii, no. 168, pp. 295–298; Innocentii III Romani pontificis regestorum siue epistolarum liber septimus pontificatus anno VII, Christi 1204, no. 168, PL 215, cols. 476–7; Die Register Innocenz, i, no. 512, pp. 747–748; Innocentii III Romani pontificis regestorum siue epistolarum liber primus, pontificatus anno I, Christi 1198, no. 512, PL 214, col. 474.
39 Urbani III papae epistolae et privilegia, no. 136, PL 202, cols. 1520–1.
40 Die Register Innocenz, i, no. 58, p. 87; Innocentii III regestorum siue epistolarum liber, 1198, no. 58, PL 214, col. 51.
41 Innocentii III Romani pontificis regestorum sive epistolarum liber decimus sextus, pontificatus anno XVI, Christi 1213, no. 87, PL 216, cols. 888–9.
42 Papsturkunden in Spanien, ed. Paul Kehr, Daniel Berger, Klaus Herbers, Thorsten Schlauwitz, 3 vols. (Weidemann’sche Buchhandlung/de Gruyter: Göttingen/Berlin, 1926–2020), i, no. 81, pp. 364–365.
43 Vatican City, Archivio Apostolico Vaticano, Reg. Vat. 11, f. 257v; La documentación pontificia de Honorio III (1216–1227), ed. Demetrio Mansilla (Instituto Español de Historia Eclesiástica: Rome, 1965), no. 404, pp. 298–299; Honorii III Opera omnia, ed. César Horoy, 5 vols. (Bibliothèque ecclésiastique: Paris, 1879–82), iv, no. 218, cols. 191–2; Regesta Honorii Papae III, ed. Pietro Pressutti, 2 vols. (Ex typ. Vaticana: Rome, 1888–95), no. 4043.
44 E.g. Brian Tierney, ‘Tria quippe distinguit iudicia… A Note on Innocent III’s Decretal Per venerabilem’, Speculum 37 (1962), pp. 48–59, at 52 14n (lands subject to papal jurisdiction); von Heckel, ‘Das päpstliche und sicilische Registerwesen’, p. at 502 (Crusader protection); Walter Bower, Scotichronicon, ed., trans. Donald Watt, Norman Shead, Wendy Stevenson et al., 9 vols. (Aberdeen University Press: Aberdeen, 1987–98), vi: Books XI and XII, pp. 160–163, 172–173, 276 (lordship); Anglo-Scottish Relations 1174–1328: Some Selected Documents, ed. Edward Stones (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1970), pp. 182–185 (vassalage).
45 Chapter six; Benedict Wiedemann, ‘Papal Authority and Power during the Minority of Emperor Frederick II’, Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c.1000-c.1500, ed. Thomas Smith (Brepols: Turnhout, 2020), pp. 67–76.
46 There is a distant echo here perhaps of Michel Foucault’s pastoral government, although seen from a rather different perspective, cf. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977–1978, ed. Michel Senellart, trans. Graham Burchell (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 123–130, 147–156, 163–180. See also Joseph Canning, ‘Power and the Pastor: A Reassessment of Innocent III’s Contribution to Political Ideas’, Pope Innocent III and His World, ed. John Moore, Brenda Bolton, James Powell, Constance Rousseau (Ashgate: Aldershot, 1999), pp. 245–253.
47 Das Constitutum Constantini, ed. Horst Fuhrmann (Hahn: Hanover, 1968), MGH Fontes iuris X. On origins, see Nicolas Huyghebaert, ‘Une légende de fondation: le Constitutum Constantini’, Le Moyen Âge 85 (1979), pp. 177–209.
48 E.g. Oakley, Mortgage of the Past, p. 185; Brett Whalen, The Medieval Papacy (Palgrave-Macmillan: Basingstoke, UK, 2014), pp. 1–2; John Julius Norwich, The Popes: A History (Chatto and Windus: London, 2011), pp. 14–15.
49 Frank Zinkeisen, ‘The Donation of Constantine as Applied by the Roman Church’, English Historical Review 9 (1894), pp. 625–632.
50 Johannes Fried, Donation of Constantine and Constitutum Constantini: The Misinterpretation of a Fiction and its Original Meaning (de Gruyter: Berlin, 2007), pp. 11–33.
51 Luis Weckmann, Las bulas Alejandrinas de 1493 y la teoría política del papado medieval: Estudio de la supremacia papal sobre islas 1091–1493 (Universidad Nacional Autónoma: Mexico City, 1949). Second edition published as Constantino el Grande y Cristóbal Colón: Estudio de la supremacía papal sobre islas 1091–1493 (Fondo de Cultura Económica: Mexico City, 1992).
52 Johannes Vincke, ‘Luis Weckmann, Las bulas Alejandrinas de 1493 y la teoría política del papado medieval’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Kanonistische Abteilung 36 (1950), pp. 462–465. See also Charles Verlinden, ‘Weckmann. Las bulas Alejandrinas de 1493 y la teoría política del papado medieval’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 29 (1951), pp. 588–596.
53 Mary Stroll, Symbols as Power: The Papacy following the Investiture Contest (Brill: Leiden, 1991), pp. 31–32; eadem, Calixtus II (1119–1124): A Pope born to Rule (Brill: Leiden, 2004), pp. 181–182, 415–421; Ian. S. Robinson, The Papacy, 1073–1198: Continuity and Innovation (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1990), pp. 23–26, 309–312.
54 ‘Magna Charta aller Ansprüche des Papstthums [sic]’, Josef Langen (d.1901), quoted by Horst Fuhrmann, ‘Das frühmittelalterliche Papsttum und die konstantinische Schenkung. Meditationen über ein unausgeführtes Thema’, I problemi dell’occidente nel secolo VIII (Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo: Spoleto, 1973), pp. 257–292, at 260–261.
55 Watt, ‘Theory of Papal Monarchy’, pp. 191, 223.
56 Whalen, Two Powers, pp. 188–189; David Abulafia, Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1988), p. 373.
57 Rasa Mažeika, ‘When Crusader and Pagan Agree: Conversion as a Point of Honour in the Baptism of King Mindaugas of Lithuania (c. 1240–63)’, Crusade and Conversion on the Baltic Frontier 1150–1500, ed. Alan Murray (Routledge: London, 2001), pp. 197–214.
58 Vetera monumenta Poloniae et Lithuaniae gentiumque finitimarum historiam illustrantia, ed. Augustin Theiner, 4 vols. (Typis Vaticanis: Rome, 1860–64), i, nos. 101–106, pp. 49–51.
59 Mažeika, ‘When Crusader and Pagan Agree’, pp. 197–214.
60 On which, see Damian Smith, ‘Motivo y significado de la coronación de Pedro II de Aragón’, Hispania 60 (2000), pp. 163–179.
61 Rudolf Schieffer, ‘Die Ausbreitung der Königssalbung im hochmittelalterlichen Europa’, Die mittelalterliche Thronfolge im europäischen Vergleich, ed. Matthias Becher (Jan Thorbecke: Ostfildern, 2017), pp. 43–80; The Book of Deeds of James I of Aragon, trans. Damian Smith, Helena Buffery (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2003), pp. 365–366; Peter Linehan, ‘Utrum reges Portugalie coronabantur annon’, A politica portuguesa e as suas relacoes exteriores, 2o Congresso historicao de Guimares, 3 vols. (Universidade do Minho: Guimares, 1997), ii, pp. 387–401; Marc Bloch, ‘An Unknown Testimony on the History of Coronation in Scotland’, Scottish Historical Review 23 (1926), pp. 105–106.
62 On which, see Jean Dunbabin, ‘Cardinal Gerard of Parma as Co-ruler in the Kingdom of Sicily, 1285–1289’, Authority and Power, ed. Smith, pp. 167–180; Andreas Kiesewetter, ‘Die Regentschaft des Kardinallegaten Gerhard von Parma und Roberts II. von Artois im Königreich Neapel 1285 bis 1289’, Forschungen zur Reiches-, Papst- und Landesgeschichte. Peter Herde zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Karl Borchardt, Enno Bünz, 2 vols. (Hiersemann: Stuttgart, 1998), i, pp. 477–522.