Memory, 'Corruption', and Reform: The Roman Church, 860-960

记忆、“腐败”和改革：罗马教会，860-960

• 批准号: AH/E001289/1
• 负责人: Conrad Leyser
• 金额: $ 3.56万
• 依托单位: University of Manchester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2007 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FE001289%2F1
• 关键词: Memory; Corruption; Reform; Roman; Church

The project for which I seek funding looks to change the way we think about the medieval Church, and about its priests in particular. In the popular imagination, the Middle Ages are an age of faith, and by the same token, an age of hypocrisy. We assume that the church hierarchy, and above all the papacy, exerted a towering and intimate power over the people, a moral authority systematically abused, which regularly served to corrupt its holders. The canonical contemporary witness here is Liudprand of Cremona (d. ca. 972), whose extraordinary account of the Roman Church has set the terms of all subsequent discussion. His story begins with the so-called 'Synod of the Corpse' in Rome (897), at which the body of Pope Formosus was put on trial and thrown into the River Tiber. This ghastly charade is seen by Liudprand to have initiated the 'Pornocracy', a period in which the Roman Church was dominated by the lusts, political and physical, of one family, the House of Theophylact, and its female dynasts in particular. Popes begat popes, and the Lateran Palace became little more than a brothel: in the two millennia of papal history, only the Borgias are seen to have exerted a more malign influence. It was not, however, so. For all their magnetic allure, Liudprand's tales of scandal cannot be allowed to stand unquestioned, especially in the current context of the ill-informed but high-stakes debates about the sexuality of the clergy.It has in fact long been recognized that Liudprand's account is a partial one, but we have yet to understand what use to make of it. As one scholar has succinctly put it, Liudprand was a traitor: in the late 950s, he abandoned his local patron to attach himself to the Saxon king Otto I, who was soon to make himself new lord of Italy and of Rome, taking the title of Holy Roman Emperor. Liudprand's lurid account of papal vice must be understood as an attempt to legitimate Otto's takeover and his own switch of allegiance. For all that, we should not discard his testimony altogether: on closer examination, I argue, he does reveal more about the Roman church than unfounded rumour. If we return to the posthumous trial of Pope Formosus, we find that his accusers (even in Liudprand's tendentious account) had a serious point to make. The charge against Formosus was that he could not become pope because he was already a bishop of another local see (Porto). As his enemies pointed out, the council of Nicaea (325) had forbidden bishops to move from see to see. His defenders, however, countered with other precedents, citing letters of Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) to support their arguments. They lost the political battle, but continued to make their views known for some two decades after the Synod of the Corpse; and then their cause was taken up by Liudprand. My argument is that the debate over episcopal transfer is a sign of an underlying transformation of the clergy in this period. Thanks in part to the stabilization of Latin Europe under the rule of Charlemagne and his successors, and then again under Otto, being a bishop was an increasingly professionalized responsibility. An episcopal job market developed, in which ambitious churchmen sought to attract the attentions of those with the power to pull them from obscurity onto a European stage (Liudprand being a classic example). But such mobility, and the might of the patrons behind it, threatened local communities, who did not wish to be treated as staging posts for career bishops. The demand for a celibate priesthood, I argue, was a symbolic way for these communities to express their concern about 'institutional promiscuity' and the abuse of episcopal authority. To some, clerical celibacy seemed as though it might provide a solution to the dangers of a 'globalized episcopate'. That celibacy might itself become part of the problem/as is so clear tomany modern audiences - is another story.

我寻求资助的项目旨在改变我们对中世纪教会的看法，特别是对牧师的看法。在大众的想象中，中世纪是一个信仰的时代，同样，也是一个虚伪的时代。我们假定，教会的等级制度，尤其是教皇，对人民施加了一种高耸而亲密的权力，一种系统地滥用的道德权威，经常用来腐化其持有者。典型的当代证人在这里是Liudprand克雷莫纳（d。约972），其罗马教会的非凡帐户已设置的所有后续讨论的条款。他的故事始于罗马（897年）所谓的“尸体主教会议”，在这次会议上，教皇福尔摩苏斯的尸体受到审判，并被扔进台伯河。刘德普兰德认为，这种可怕的把戏引发了“色情统治”，在这一时期，罗马教会被一个家族的欲望所控制，政治和身体，Theophylact家族，特别是女性王朝。教皇生教皇，拉特兰宫变成了一个妓院：在两千年的教皇历史中，只有博尔吉亚家族被认为施加了更恶劣的影响。然而，事实并非如此。尽管柳德普兰德的丑闻故事有着巨大的吸引力，但也不能让它们不受质疑，尤其是在当前关于神职人员性取向的辩论信息不灵通但风险很高的背景下。事实上，人们早就认识到，柳德普兰德的说法是片面的，但我们还不知道它有什么用。正如一位学者简洁地指出的那样，柳德普兰德是一个叛徒：在9世纪50年代后期，他放弃了他的当地赞助人，投靠了撒克逊国王奥托一世，奥托一世很快就成为意大利和罗马的新领主，并获得了神圣罗马帝国皇帝的头衔。柳德普兰德对教皇恶行的耸人听闻的描述必须被理解为试图使奥托的接管和他自己的效忠转变合法化。尽管如此，我们不应该完全抛弃他的证词：我认为，经过仔细研究，他确实揭示了更多关于罗马教会的信息，而不是毫无根据的谣言。如果我们回到教皇福尔摩苏斯死后的审判，我们会发现他的指控者（即使是在柳德普兰德的倾向性叙述中）有一个严肃的观点。对福尔摩沙的指控是，他不能成为教皇，因为他已经是另一个地方见主教（波尔图）。正如他的敌人指出，理事会的尼西亚（325）已禁止主教从看到看到。他的辩护者，但是，反击与其他先例，引用信件教皇格雷戈里大（d。604)来支持他们的论点他们输掉了这场政治斗争，但在尸体会议之后的二十年里，他们继续发表自己的观点;然后，他们的事业被柳德普兰德所接受。我的论点是，关于主教调任的争论是这一时期神职人员潜在转变的标志。部分由于查理曼及其继任者统治下的拉丁欧洲的稳定，然后再在奥托统治下，主教是一个越来越专业化的责任。一个主教就业市场发展起来了，雄心勃勃的牧师们试图吸引那些有能力把他们从默默无闻中拉到欧洲舞台上的人的注意（柳德普朗是一个典型的例子）。但是，这种流动性，以及背后的赞助人的力量，威胁到当地社区，他们不希望被视为职业主教的中转站。我认为，对独身牧师的要求是这些社区表达他们对“制度性滥交”和滥用主教权威的担忧的象征性方式。对一些人来说，神职独身似乎可以解决“全球化主教”的危险。独身本身可能成为问题的一部分，这一点在现代观众中是如此明显，但这是另一回事。