Reform Losers in the Roman Milieu at the Time of the Reform Papacy

• Applicant: Dr. Francesco Massetti
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 498307613

The transition from a collegially organized “episcopal church” to an increasingly hierarchically structured and Rome-centered “Papal Church”, which profoundly changed the entire Latin christianitas in the second half of the 11th century, also seriously affected the Roman church in its local dimension. The politico-military and ecclesiastical disputes implementating the Reform Papacy in the Eternal City, however, have been researched almost exclusively from the papal perspective, while the forces who were defeated in these conflicts, received little attention in historical research. In order to fill this considerable gap, the present investigation aims at focussing on urban und curial conflicts, which took place in Rom from the beginning of the Reform Papacy (1046) to the end of the Wibertine schism (1101).First of all, the Roman nobility lost its traditional control over papal election and many Roman clerics fell victim to the papal fight against simony. In a later phase, however, the hierocratic radicalization of Church Reform under Pope Gregory VII drove reform-oriented cardinals into the camp of the Reform Papacy’s opponents. These schismatic cardinals, who supported the antipope Clement (III), left behind a corpus of pamphlets, which reveals insights into their ecclesiopolitical and ecclesiological views. After changing fortunes, they were finally defeated in 1101, when the last antipope elected by them was publicly deposed and humiliated. Ultimately, the investigation should expose that also main protagonists of Church Reform suffered defeats: Humbert von Moyenmoutier and Petrus Damiani become central figures in the curia, but they were only able to partially implement their Reform concerns in the Roman milieu.In addition to the careful reconstruction of the causes of and developments during the conflicts, the study should also investigate the opposing strategies of legitimation and de-legitimation with a special focus on the rhetorical constructions of the Gregorian propaganda. The “theory of losers” by Sabine Graul and Marian Nebelin, which systematized and extended the reflection of Walter Benjamin on the “Defeated”, offers essential instruments for the deconstruction of partisan representations of Reform Losers. On this basis, the study is intended to emphasise that not all Reform losers opposed a moral Reform of the christianitas, as some of them rather expressed other Reform concerns, which partially deviated from the Gregorian views.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants