Abstract
In the wider history of medieval papal legation, the legatus ad causam is a recognizable but historically confused branch of representative government. In modern scholarship, this ecclesiastical office is often perceived as a prototype for the later offices of legatus natus (‘native legate’), legatus missus (‘legate who is sent’), and legatus e/a latere (‘legate from the side ’) — offices that came into play between the Carolingian and church-reforming eras (ninth to eleventh centuries). According to the important work of Richard Antone Schmutz, this legatine category represents the very ‘tap root of legation’, ‘the workhorse of early papal representation’,1 and the trunk from which ‘new branches of representation indeed grew’.2 Operating alongside the more specialized offices of apostolic vicar and apocrisiarius, this ‘old style’ model of representation gradually ‘absorbed the other roots and formed the trunk of medieval papal legation’, ‘furnished medieval papal legation with an example of subservience in the agent-principal relationship’, and ‘contributed flexibility to medieval legation’.3 Doubtless, this category constitutes a central part of legatine history, yet the evidence rarely points to anything beyond the forces at work, making the present chapter both necessary and challenging in its objectives. Exactly what official function the legatus ad causam served for the early medieval papacy and how its agents contributed to improving or widening communications between Rome and the Christian provinces are questions impelling the present investigation.
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Notes
R.A. Schmutz (1966) ‘The Foundations of Medieval Papal Representation’ (University of Southern California), pp. 137–138.
R. A. Schmutz (1972) ‘Medieval Papal Representatives: Legates, Nuncios, and Judges-Delegate’, Studia Gratiana 15, 444. See also
C. I. Kyer (1978) ‘Legatus and Nuntius as Used to Denote Papal Envoys: 1245–1378’, Mediaeval Studies 40, 473.
P. Richard (1906) ‘Origines des nonciatures permanentes: La répresentation pontificale au XVe siècle (1450–1513)’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 7, 52–70 and 317–338; See
F. Ganshof (1960) ‘Merowingisches Gesandschaftswesen’, in Aus Geschichte und Landeskunde. Forschungen und Dargestellen. Franz Steinbach zum 65. Geburtstag gewidmet von seinen Freunden und Schülern (Bonn: L. Röhrscheid), pp. 166–183.
K. Hamilton and R. Langhorne (1995) The Practice of Diplomacy: Its Evolution, Theory and Administration (London: Routledge), p. 25; cf.
D. E. Queller (1960) ‘Thirteenth-Century Diplomatic Envoys: Nuncii and Procuratores’, Speculum 35, 202.
Baldi Ubaldi Perusini in Usus Feudorum Commentaria Doctissima, p. 89; cf. D. E. Queller (1967) The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press), p. 9, n.32.
See P. Richard, ‘Origines des nonciatures permanentes’, 52–70 and 317–338; P. Richard (1905) ‘Origines de la nonciature de France: Nonces résidants avant Leo X, 1456–1511’, Revue des questions historique 78, 103–137; and Cf.
H. Biaudet (1910) Les nonciatures apostoliques permanents jusqu’en 1648 (Helsinki: Suomalainen tiedeakatemia).
A. H. M. Jones (1964) The later Roman Empire, 284–602. A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey. 2 vols (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing), I, pp. 144 and 480.
Cassiodorus, Variae, II.17; III.9 and 49; and IX.10. On the process of confirmation, see 7.11; cf. G. Maier (2005) Amsträger und Herrscher in der Romania Gothica: Vergleichende Untersuchungen zu den Institutionen der ostgermanischen Völkerwanderungsreiche (Stuttgart: Steiner), pp. 280–283; Jones, The Later Roman Empire, I, p. 258.
See ‘De defensoribus civitatum’, Codex Theodosianus, I 29.6–8; or the Breviarium Alaricianum I 10.1–3; or Codex Justianus, I.55.1. Cf. Novellae, XV.3.2; cf. H. Wolfram (1988) History of the Goths, trans. T. J. Dunlap (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 215;
M. F. Hendy (1988) ‘From Public to Private: The Western Barbarian Coinages as a Mirror of the Disintegration of Late Roman State Structures’, Viator 19, 29–78.
K. Sessa (2012) The Formation of Papal Authority in Late Antique Italy: Roman Bishops and the Domestic Sphere (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 119.
R. Davis, in his translation of LP, p. 123 (glossary); cf. J. R. C. Martyn (2003) ‘Six Notes on Gregory the Great’, Medievalia et humanistica 29, 7.
Ibid., 8.16; cf. Gregory the Great, Dialogi, 3.20.3; R. Rizzo (2008) Papa Gregorio Magno e la nobiltà in Sicilia, Biblioteca dell’Officina di studi medieval (Palermo: Officina di studi medevali), pp. 248–249.
For some examples, see Fulbert of Chartres, Ep. 112, PL 141:258; Rodulfus Glaber (1989) Historiarvm libri qvinqve = The Five Books of the Histories, eds and trans. J. France and N. Bulst. (Oxford: Clarendon Press), book 2, c.7; Peter Damian, Opusculum quartum, PL 145:67; Honorius of Autun, Gemma animae sive, book 4, c.73, PL 172:718; The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis (1969–1980), ed. and trans. M. Chibnall. (Oxford: Clarendon Press), book X, c.19; Pope Alexander III, Ep. 62, PL 200:133.
On this papacy’s contribution to early missionary activity, see R. E. Sullivan (1955) ‘The Papacy and Missionary Activity in the Early Middle Ages’, Mediaeval Studies 17, 46–106.
D. Obolensky (1994) ‘Principles and Methods of Byzantine Diplomacy’, in Byzantium and the Slavs (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press), p. 14.
Bede, Ecclesiastical History, III.4. For Augustine, see Ecclesiastical History, II, 2–3 and Pope Gregory I, Register, 6.51–59. See also R.A. Markus, ‘Gregory the Great and a Papal Missionary Strategy’, Studies in Church History 6: The Mission of the Church and the Propagation of the Faith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). pp. 29–38;
I. Wood (1994) ‘The Mission of Augustine of Canterbury to the English’, Speculum 69, 1–17.
G. Demacopoulos (2008) ‘Gregory the Great and the Pagan Shrines of Kent’, Journal of Late Antiquity 1, 353–369.
Pope Gregory III, Ep. 43, MGH Epistolae 3, p. 291; cf. T. Schieffer (1954) Winfrid-Bonifatius und die Christliche Grundlegung Europas (Freiburg: Verlag Herder), pp. 153–154.
H. Ollendiek (1976) Die päpstlichen Legaten im Deutschen Reichsgebiet von 1261 bis zum ende des Interregnums. Historische Schriften der Universität Freiburg Schweiz (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag), p. 24; cf. Schieffer, Winfrid-Bonifatius und die Christliche Grundlegung Europas, p. 174.
W. Hartmann (1989) Die Synoden der Karolingerzeit im Frankenreich und in Italien (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoningh), pp. 292–293.
Pope Paschal I, Ep. 11, MGH Epistolae 5, p. 70; cf. A. Winroth (2012) The Conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), p. 105.
Ibid., c.xvi, pp. 22–23; cf. Vita Anskarii, c. 13, MGH SRG 55, p. 35. For a recent argument against Gregory IV’s role, see E. Knibbs (2011) Ansgar, Rimbert and the Forged Foundations of Hamburg-Bremen (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 137–173.
S. A. Schoenig (2009) ‘The Papacy and the Use and Understanding of the Pallium from the Carolingians to the Early Twelfth Century’ (Columbia University), p. 110; cf.
K. Herbers (1996) Leo IV. und das Papsttum in der mitte des 9. Jahrhunderts, vol. 27, Päpste und Papsttum (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann), pp. 344–346.
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Rennie, K.R. (2013). Towards Standardization. In: The Foundations of Medieval Papal Legation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137264947_4
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