This book deals with public debate during the Investiture Contest (ca. 1040-1122). During this revolutionary struggle between the secular and the religious powers, polemical writers contributed to the arguably first 'public debate' in medieval Europe. A close reading of a selection of these polemics offers new views on the functioning of the medieval public sphere as well as how the public framework circumscribing the writers led to argumentative innovations. These include an increasing concern with interpretation and contextualisation, resulting in a more critical and probing intellectual community. Public debate during the Contest taught intellectuals how to argue in public and in that respect transferred a lasting legacy to the later Middle Ages and beyond.
Author(s): Leidulf Melve
Series: Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 154
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 786
City: Leiden
Preface
VOLUME I
Introduction
1. The dialogical approach
2. Public-sphere figurations
3. The Investiture Contest as a historiographical problem
Quantity, type and literary genre
The manuscript tradition
'Stand der Forschung': neglected areas and new departures
Chapter One. Structural changes in the public sphere during the Investiture Contest
Introduction
1. The public culture of the early period (1030 –1073)
The Carolingian and Ottonian departure
The early-period polemicists' view of public opinion
The function of public opinion in the struggle against anti-pope Cadalus
Public culture in perspective: popular and intellectual movements
2. Structural changes in the public sphere: the mid-period polemics
Public opinion according to the royal and papal chanceries
Polemical appeals to public opinion in the 1070s and 1080s
The period of transition in the 1090s
Public opinion according to the schismatic cardinals
3. Political-theoretical tracts and polemical poems in the late-period literature
Official letters, polemical treatises and public opinion
Polemical poems and Bruno of Segni's campaign
4. Public-sphere formation in the case of Pseudo-Udalric
Conclusion
Chapter Two. The early-period polemics and public-sphere formation: the De ordinando pontifice
Introduction
1. Justifying the polemical endeavour
2. Radicalising the criticism
3. The case of Pope Benedict IX
4. The moral-philosophical argument
5. Simony, moral theology and canon law
6. The case of Pope Gregory VI
7. Popularising the criticism
8. The episcopal tendency
9. The relationship between regnum and sacerdotium
10. The polemical encounter
11. The relationship between the sacerdotal and the secular hierarchies
Conclusion
Chapter Three. Polemical warfare in the papal and royal chanceries (1073–1082)
Introduction
1. Quantitative overview of distribution patterns
2. The first phase: colloquium secretum
The first encounter (1073–1075)
The polemical letter to King Henry IV (December 1075)
Spreading the reform message in Constance
3. The second phase: the propagandistic confrontation (1076)
Discourse in letter 12
Discourse in letter 13
Shattering the elitist public sphere
The papal response: the first polemical letter to Hermann of Metz
The propaganda campaign aimed at the German people
4. The third phase: the establishment of the semi-institutionalised public sphere
The struggle in Ravenna
The second polemic letter to Hermann of Metz
The royal answer
Conclusion
Chapter Four Gebhard, Wenrich, Manegold, and Guido debating the papal letter to Hermann of Metz
Introduction
1. Introduction: setting the communicative terms
2. The excommunication
3. Wenrich of Trier's approach to the excommunication
4. The excommunication and the power to bind and to loose
5. The power to bind and loose in canon law
6. 'Proceedings from history' and public opinion
7. The canon-law legitimacy of anti-pope Guibert of Ravenna
8. The oath: contextualising the oath
9. The moral-theological approach to the oath
10. The oath, perjury, and the 'royal bishops'
11. The release of the oath according to Wenrich
12. Guido of Osnabrück's approach to the oath
13. Conclusio: polemical targets and the question of audiences
VOLUME II
Chapter Five. Peter Crassus and the legal renaissance of the eleventh century (c. 1080–1084)
Introduction
1. The legal renaissance of the eleventh century
2. The Defensio: the literary structure and the introduction
3. Peter Crassus' conception of rationality
4. The dialogical moment: the Pataria
5. The legal 'right order' according to Crassus
6. The private side of Hildebrand's behaviour
7. The dialogical moment: the Saxons
The formal legal scheme: Crassus' conception of legal authority
The Roman-law defence of King Henry
The Roman orientation of Crassus
8. The dialogical moment: the judges
The formal framework: a 'just trial'
The discussion of the oath and the propagandistic zeal of Crassus
Convicting the Saxons
Conclusion
9. The reception of Roman law in the polemical literature
The use of references to Roman law in the early period
The mid-period: Crassus in perspective
Roman law among the late-period polemical writers
Conclusion
Chapter Six. The 'right order of the world' according to the Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda
Introduction
The first book
1. The prologue
2. The first historical argument: Carolingian history
3. The question of the power to bind and to loose
4. The first legal argument related to the excommunication
5. The second historical argument: the excommunication of Emperor Theodosius
6. The third historical argument: the excommunication of Emperor Arcadius
7. The second legal argument: the functional hierarchy
8. The release of the oath
Conclusion to the first book
The second book
9. Introducing the intellectual opponents: Pope Hildebrand and the Hirshauer monk
10. The first dispute with the Hirshauer monk
11. The election of anti-pope Guibert of Ravenna
12. Anti-king Rudolf, Pope Hildebrand, and the definition of the papal party
13. The textual and intellectual aspect of the 'right order'
14. The fifth historical argument
15. History and narration of contemporary events: the 1080s
16. The Gerstungen incident (1085)
17. Post-Gerstungen: history and narration of contemporary events
18. The dispute with Bernard of Hildesheim
19. The final encounter with the Hirshauer monk
20. The conception of rationality according to the Hersfeld monk
Conclusion
Chapter Seven The political-theoretical orientation of the late period: De investitura episcoporum (1109)
Introduction
1. The Roman renovatio: the legal argument
2. Linking theory and practice: the historical argument
3. 'Papal infallibility': the moral-theological argument
4. The polemical encounter
5. Investiture as a royal tradition: the custom argument
6. The caput populi argument
7. The functional hierarchies
8. Contemporary history addressed
Conclusion
Chapter Eight The public debate on the investiture question (1058–1122)
Introduction
1. The early- and mid-period discussion
2. The political-theoretical orientation of the late-period polemics
The royalist initiative, 1103–1111
3. The new papal spur: the pravilege of 1111 and its aftermath
Approaching the concordat of Worms (1112–1122)
Conclusion
1. The structural changes in the public sphere during the Investiture Contest
2. Discourse in the polemical literature
3. The Investiture debate in perspective
4. The medieval public sphere
Index
Index of Names
Index of Subjects
Bibliography
