Communicating Papal Authority in the Middle Ages

223 Pages·2023·11.393 MB·English

by  Minoru Ozawa, Thomas Smith, Georg Strack

Communicating Papal Authority
in the Middle Ages
This book bridges Japanese and European scholarly approaches to
ecclesiastical history to provide new insights into how the papacy conceptu-
alised its authority and attempted to realise and communicate that authority
in ecclesiastical and secular spheres across Christendom. Adopting a broad,
yet cohesive, temporal and geographical approach that spans the Early to
the Late Middle Ages, from Europe to Asia, the book focuses on the differ-
ent media used to represent authority, the structures through which author-
ity was channelled and the restrictions that popes faced in so doing, and
the less certain expression of papal authority on the edges of Christendom.
Through 12 chapters that encompass key topics such as a ntipopes, artis-
tic representations, preaching, heresy, the crusades, and mission and the
East, this interdisciplinary volume brings new perspectives to bear on the
medieval papacy. The book demonstrates that the communication of papal
authority was a two-way process effected by the popes and their support-
ers, but also by their enemies who helped to shape concepts of e cclesiastical
power.
Communicating Papal Authority in the Middle Ages will appeal to research-
ers and students alike interested in the relationships between the papacy and
medieval society and the ways in which the papacy negotiated and expressed
its authority in Europe and beyond.
Minoru Ozawa is Professor of Medieval History at Rikkyo University,
Japan.
Thomas W. Smith is Keeper of the Scholars and Head of Oxbridge ( Arts and
Humanities) at Rugby School, UK.
Georg Strack is Professor of Medieval History at Philipps-Universität
M arburg, Germany.
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Communicating Papal Authority in the Middle Ages
Edited by Minoru Ozawa, Thomas W. Smith and Georg Strack
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Studies-in-Medieval-History-and-Culture/book-series/SMHC
Communicating Papal Authority
in the Middle Ages
Edited by
Minoru Ozawa, Thomas W. Smith
and Georg Strack
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Minoru Ozawa,
Thomas W. Smith, and Georg Strack; individual chapters,
the contributors
The right of Minoru Ozawa, Thomas W. Smith, and Georg Strack
to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of
the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-42091-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-42093-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-36117-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003361176
Typeset in Times New Roman
by codeMantra
Contents
List of Figures vii
List of Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction 1
MINORU OZAWA, THOMAS W. SMITH AND GEORG STRACK
PART I
Representations of Papal Authority 11
1 Authority at a Distance: Popes, Their Media, and Their
Presence Felt in the Frankish Kingdom 13
SHIGETO KIKUCHI
2 Imitatio Christi in Papal Synodal Sermons, 1095–1274 31
GEORG STRACK
3 John XXII as a Wavering Preacher: The Pope’s Sermons and
the Norms of Preaching in the Beatific Vision Controversy 46
YUICHI AKAE
4 Franciscan Identity and Iconography in the Assisi Tapestry
Commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV 62
ALESSANDRO SIMBENI
PART II
Structural Restrictions and Challenges to Papal Authority 81
5 Crisis and Antagonism: Contending Popes as a Challenge to
Papal Authority 83
HARALD MÜLLER
vi Contents
6 Papal Communication and the Fifth Crusade, 1217–21 100
THOMAS W. SMITH
7 ‘Having one little wolf at the papal court is not enough’: The
Limits of Papal Authority in Milanese Affairs in the
Mid-Fifteenth Century 116
JESSIKA NOWAK
PART III
Papal Authority on the Edges of Christendom 129
8 Why Did a Viking King Meet a Pope?: Cnut’s Imperial
Politics, Scandinavian Commercial Networks, and the Journey
to Rome in 1027 131
MINORU OZAWA
9 Papal Contact with the Mongols: Means of Communication in
the Thirteenth Century 145
MAMORU FUJISAKI
10 Dei et ecclesiae inimicus: A Correspondence between Pope
Gregory IX and John III Batatzes 159
KOJI MURATA
11 Medieval Heretics in the East: A Heresiological Label for
Bosnian Bogomils/Patarenes in the Thirteenth Century 173
HISATSUGU KUSABU
12 The Papacy and Crusading in the Far North?: A Forgotten
Religious Frontier of Medieval Latin Christendom 186
TAKAHIRO NARIKAWA
Index 201
Figures
4.1 Flemish manufacturing, The Franciscan Tree, wool and
silk, c. 1476, Assisi, Basilica of St Francis, Treasury
Museum. Image courtesy of Marcello Fedeli, Spoleto,
2013. Reproduced by permission of the Archivio
fotografico del Sacro Convento di S. Francesco, Assisi, Italy 66
4.2 Lignum vitae (Tree of Life), produced at the Cistercian
monastery of Kamp, Germany, late thirteenth century,
New Haven, CT, Yale University, Beinecke Library,
MS 416, fol. 1v. Image via the Beineke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, generously provided without
copyright restrictions 71
4.3 Taddeo Gaddi, Lignum vitae (Tree of Life), fresco, c.
1340, Florence, Santa Croce, refectory, south wall. Image
via Wikimedia Commons, generously provided without
copyright restrictions 73
4.4 Giotto di Bondone (?), Lignum vitae santi Francisci (The
Franciscan Tree), fresco, c. 1303, Padua, St Anthony,
friary, locutory, north wall (photograph taken before
painting was detached in 1979). Image reproduced by
generous permission of the Centro Studi Antoniani, Padua 74

Contributors
Yuichi Akae is a Professor at the Faculty of Letters, Keio University, Tokyo,
where he teaches western history. His research involves themes and
texts in the religious and intellectual history of western Europe from the
thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, with a particular focus on preach-
ing. His publications include a monograph, A Mendicant Sermon Collec-
tion from Composition to Reception: The ‘Novum opus dominicale’ of John
Waldeby, OESA (Brepols, 2015).
Mamoru Fujisaki is Associate Professor of Medieval Mediterranean History
at the University of Tokyo and was previously an Associate Professor at
Sophia University, Tokyo. His research focuses on the institution of the
medieval Roman curia and European-Mongol relations in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. His first Japanese monograph, The Formation
and Development of the Papal Curia in the Middle Ages (2013), won the
Herend Prize of the Collegium Mediterranistarum.
Shigeto Kikuchi is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Human-
ities and Sociology, the University of Tokyo, where he teaches European
medieval history. His research interests centre on the Carolingian age.
A revised version of his PhD dissertation which was accepted in 2013
by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München was published in 2021 as
his first monograph, Herrschaft, Delegation und Kommunikation in der
Karolingerzeit. Untersuchungen zu den Missi dominici (751–888) (MGH
Hilfsmittel 31).
Hisatsugu Kusabu is Professor of History at Osaka Metropolitan Univer-
sity, where he teaches pre-modern European and Byzantine history. He
is also the Director of the Urban Culture Research Center in the Gradu-
ate School of Literature and Human Sciences. His PhD on ‘Comnenian
Orthodoxy and Byzantine Heresiology in the Twelfth Century: A Study
of the “Panoplia Dogmatica” of Euthymios Zigabenos’ was awarded by
the University of Chicago in 2013.
Harald Müller is the Chair of Medieval History at the RWTH Aachen Uni-
versity. His research interest focuses on Renaissance humanism and on