The exceptionally valuable and important volume under review treats a text labeled Liber Pontificalis by Giovanni Vignoli in 1755. For many centuries the text bore other titles, usually containing something like gesta pontificum. Since at least the middle of the nineteenth century scholars of every stripe have consulted the Liber Pontificalis (hereafter LP) for information. LP’s greatest editor, Louis Duchesne, published numerous articles on aspects of the text but, altogether remarkably, relatively few subsequent scholars have actually looked at the text itself. There have been occasional articles (even one by me!) and the indispensable articles and edited volume of the late Dutch scholar Hermann Geertman. But 2020 has been an annus mirabilis: we have a major book by Rosamond McKitterick and the present volume. In what follows I shall offer brutally brief summaries of important and interesting chapters in this book. Permitting myself one generalization at the outset, I will say that the scholarship in this volume is absolutely exemplary.
After a fascinating opening essay by the eminent Klaus Herbers (which should be translated and widely distributed) the volume is organized into four sections: (1) Origin and Function(s) of the Earlier Text Versions; (2) From the City to the World: Sources and Bearers of Memory; (3) Context, Comparison, and Reception; (4) History of Research and Editions.
In his wonderful Introduction, which every student of papal and indeed European history should read, Klaus Herbers reflects on whether the papacy is a European institution. His answer is affirmative but he also, quite properly as an editor, sets up the papers to follow.
Andrea Antonio Verardi, whose views on LP are exceptionally important, pursues two themes: What is the most ancient tradition of the LP, and how does the text represent the pope and the city of Rome? This investigation inevitably leads him into the Felician and Cononian texts/excerpts/abridgements. Suffice it to say for all that follows that there is agreement that there were shorter texts but that there is disagreement about whether the shorter texts were derived from the longer or vice versa. András Handl explores what we might expect about pre-Constantinian authority. He has many instructive charts about what LP says about papal actions. He concludes that there is no evidence for a political or institutional papacy. Eckhard Wirbelauer explores sensitively how the Laurentian materials may be read. That sentence does not do justice to his exposition. Paolo Liverani discusses the Constantinian donations in the LP. Among other important points, Liverani says that the LP records must have come from papal or imperial archives. Stefan Heid looks at the striking ordination records in LP. His arguments and tables demand examination but his conclusion is that the numbers are plausible.
Here the volume turns from the city to the world. Rosamond McKitterick looks at the dissemination of LP. She makes many points (see her book) but perhaps the key one is that the fundamental manuscript tradition of LP is Frankish. Lidia Capo asks how the LP helps us understand how the papacy interacted with the secular powers of its age. She shows how cunning, selective, and tendentious the text can be. The distinguished Vera von Falkenhausen inquires about the way LP treats the Greek community in Rome: she is relatively positive on the topic (the author of this review would have been more negative but John Osborne’s new book has changed my mind!). In other words, Greek people and cultural expressions are more prominent than heretofore supposed. We know more about clerics than we do about laymen and she suggests that Greeks might have been a majority of the Roman clergy. Bruno Bon and François Bougard apply complex “stylometric” tools to look at what we might be able to learn about the authors of the LP. Their chapter actually focuses on the lives of Nicholas I and Hadrian II and tries to discern whether we can see in them the hands of Anastasius Bibliothecarius and/or John Hymonides. In the end we have no incontestable criteria. Perhaps there was a recognizable redactor. There are some parallelisms between the lives of Sergius II and Benedict III and there might be a connection with the second half of the life of Leo IV. In the end, all questions remain open. Veronika Unger studies the documents that might have been used in the compilation of LP and she asks whether LP might have been used in the preparation of other documents. Only the lives of Leo IV, Nicholas I, and Hadrian II refer explicitly to letters and there are some references to letters that are no longer extant. The use of papal privileges in LP is rare. The use of conciliar texts is unclear and ambiguous. The life of Nicholas I has the only clear reference to LP. We cannot say if LP was preserved in the chancery nor can we confirm that the vestararius inserted the building records into LP by someone made use of substantial documentation. Carola Jäggi examines LP as a source for early medieval church building with specific reference to textiles. Her chapter does not break new ground, only attempting--quite usefully--to survey scholarship from Beissel in 1894 through the work of Petriaggi, Croquison, Philipps, Osborne, Andoloro, and Bauer. She builds on Bauer’s argument that LP recorded papal evergetism to create an aesthetic experience of wealth and beauty. Michael Brandt uses the gemmed crucifix in the Sancta Sanctorum as a case study in how to think about LP’s almost countless accounts of jeweled objects and, more particularly, how to think about this rare extant item that is itself actually mentioned in LP. The cross was fabricated in Rome, probably of imported elements, perhaps as early as Honorius I.
Four studies follow which attempt to place LP in its literary context. Michel Sot revisits his thinking on the LP as the prototype for the whole genre of gesta episcoporum. It was. Most of the gesta bear no evidence that LP was available to their compilers, although the Auxerre text does mention LP. The whole genre reflected that in many dioceses there was “a general culture of the continuous list of bishops which celebrated their memory and put them in the service of ecclesiological, patrimonial, economic and juridical preoccupations of contemporaries” (380). Knut Görich and Stephan Pongratz shift focus to the twelfth century and to the work of Cardinal Boso, who wrote a series of lives between 1154 and 1178. At the time of the schism of 1130, Pandulf wrote some lives but there is no evidence that Boso knew them. What Boso did know, or believe, was that a legitimate pope had to contend with struggles and persecution. So his narrative is grounded in a succession of humiliations and exaltations. His treatment of the popes from John XII to Gregory VII was colored by his own experiences as a partisan supporter of the much abused Alexander III. Three themes dominate: papal rule over Rome; papal elections; and the position of the pope vis à vis secular rulers. In a way he tried to create a “Papstspiegel” that stressed character over competence and legitimacy over legality. Thomas Kieslinger looks closely at a manuscript from Erlangen university library that has, among other texts, a list of popes and emperors going back to antiquity. The famous Liber Censuum also has a papal list and it appears that that list plus LP were Erlangen’s sources. The Erlangen manuscript also has Gratian, and Kieslinger argues persuasively that its papal list was intended to facilitate the reading of Gratian. Stefan Bauer looks at LP in the Renaissance, which means that he emphasizes the work of Bartolomeo Sacchi, better known as Platina. This was papal history in humanist terms and it built upon all earlier versions of LP. Why did he write? Sixtus IV asked him to, secular rulers had not previously been sufficiently noted, and the Latin of all earlier versions needed polish.
Two concluding chapters take up the history of research and earlier editions. Andreas Sohn offers a readable and insightful personal and scholarly biography of Louis Duchesne, stressing the ironies in the academic and professional career of a simple Breton priest. Matthias Simperl notes the work of Geertman on the lives from Miltiades to John II but trains his focus on the editions of Mommsen and Duchesne. With charts and tables and close comparisons he lays out the strengths and weaknesses of the editions. Critical to understanding what has been done and what still might be done is the classification of the manuscripts.