Rome 600-900: Past and Present

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Rome 600-900: Past and Present is a new history of the city based on a thorough re-assessment of the evidence. The city of Rome is central to most broad reconstructions of European history, and the period between the sixth and the tenth centuries is accepted as having been crucial in its development. But while historians of Rome have noted numerous inconsistencies in their evidence and in the messages drawn from it, the city's position in wider history has remained relatively simple: ceasing to be the capital of an empire, in those centuries Rome became instead the city of the popes. Recent work on individual aspects of Rome's history in the early middle ages, and the evidence for it, underlines the necessity for a revised synthesis that incorporates this work into a new overarching account that based on a critical appraisal of the sources.The traditional story of rising papal domination relegates to more minor roles two sets of people whose influence on the city's history, I will argue, was decisive: the rulers of the Frankish and Byzantine empires and their followers, and the vast majority of the population of the city itself, lay and clerical. It is the self-identification of the latter, in particular, that indicates Rome's true political and ideological position in these centuries. We have to be quite careful to discern their voices in sources written either outside the city - and often in association with Franks and Byzantines - or by papal writers. The latter emphasize the association of Rome's citizens with St Peter, the city's first bishop. But Romans themselves patronized the cults of other martyrs, built and staffed their own churches, and included a cadre of officials that developed a unique profile in this period. Rome's changing identity was therefore not simply a question of the city of Romulus becoming the city of St Peter, however weighty the transformation that that change signifies. It was in fact, and uniquely in this period of European history, a forum for distinct and often competing identities and associations.