Debating Papal History, c. 250–c. 1300

Responsive Government and the Medieval Papacy

D. L. d'Avray

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009597487
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

The papacy is the oldest surviving government in human history, yet the forms and roles of papal authority remain contested in scholarship. Debating Papal History offers a reinterpretation of papal history from the third to the thirteenth century, through an extensive series of case studies with translations of supporting documents. D.L. d'Avray argues against interpretations of the papacy which focus on a top-down imposition of power, suggesting instead that papal authority was primarily responsive, invoked to resolve uncertainty arising from different ecclesiastical subsystems, and interlinked with the roles of other non-ecclesiastical powers. The study brings together late Antique and Medieval history while also transmitting the findings of non-English scholarship in the field. Debating Papal History aims to inspire fresh thinking and discussion, rendering original documents newly accessible and presenting a vivid corrective to conventional understandings of the papacy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Imprints page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations and Conventions
• Introduction
• Case 1: Constantine and the Papacy
• Case 2: The Canon of the Bible
• Case 3: A Late Antique Decretal and the Carolingian Church (416)
• Case 4: Gelasius I and the Idea of Hierarchy (494)
• Case 5: The Episcopal and Monastic Systems (c. 600 to c. 800)
• Case 6: Marriage of Priests in the Mid-Eighth Century (1 April 743)
• Case 7: An Eighth-Century Questionnaire Sent to the Apostolic See
• Case 8: The Donation of Constantine and Its Afterlife (750–800 and 1236)
• Case 9: Privilege for Offa of Mercia and His Queen (772–795)
• Case 10: Nicholas I Reports on His Deposition of Two Archbishops (863)
• Case 11: Spiritual Kinship, Marriage, and Baptism in the Late Carolingian Era
• Case 12: Bad Latin in the Tenth-Century Papal Entourage
• Case 13: John XIII Raises Magdeburg to Metropolitan Status, as Asked by the Emperor Otto I (967)
• Case 14: An Early Eleventh-Century Attempt to Launch a Crusade (1010)
• Case 15: The Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and a Man Who Had Killed His Son
• Case 16: Encyclical on the Papal Reform Council of 1059
• Case 17: The Dictatus papae of Gregory VII (1075)
• Case 18: The Concordat of Worms (1122)
• Case 19: Bastard Sons of Priests and Routinization of Dispensation (1161–1181 and 1234)
• Case 20: Reform Legislation and the Complexity of the Social World
• Case 21: Baptism in the Second Decretal Age
• Case 22: Early Papal Indulgences
• Case 23: Vernacular Bible Reading (9 December 1199)
• Case 24: Templars as Victims (8 March 1200)
• Case 25: Monastic Exemption in the Thirteenth Century
• Case 26: Lay Patronage as an Ecclesiastical System
• Case 27: Rival Metropolitans
• Case 28: Papal Provisions
• Case 29: Papacy and Lepers
• Case 30: The French Monarchy and the Papacy in the Late Thirteenth Century
• Case 31: Boniface VIII as ‘Symphoniste’
• Epilogue
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index