Anglo-Saxon sources reveal that papal privileges (documents granting or confirming special rights) were highly regarded in early medieval England, but until now they have failed to receive sustained scholarly attention. This carefully researched, artfully written, complex, sometimes boldly provocative study is an important contribution that expands on the pioneering works of Levison and Holtzmann. Papal privileges form a unique source genre spread throughout Europe, offering an opportunity to compare how they functioned within various regions. The sixty-seven English privileges from the 7th to the 11th century (extant or lost, authentic or forged) compose a small fraction of the European corpus, but considering them within this larger picture illuminates what made England different. Savill builds on diplomatics but goes much further, to probe the so-called “special relationship” between England and Rome.
The book falls into two parts. In the first, the author begins (Chapter 2) by describing privileges not simply as texts, but as material objects, social processes, and cultural events. He traces their story from petitioner to pope and back. Key to their effectiveness are concepts prominent in recent literature: “recipient influence,” “documentary landscapes,” and “horizons of expectation,” which focus on the reception of privileges within the world of the beneficiary. This chapter would make an enlightening introduction to papal diplomatics. Savill then (Chapter 3) provides a catalogue of all known papal privileges for England up to 1073, with information on manuscript transmission and some commentary—a solid, significant resource for scholars.
The second part is a series of case studies, a necessary approach because each period used privileges in new ways under changed circumstances. Chapter 4 (c. 680–c. 730) illustrates the value of a recipient-centered methodology that examines how privileges had an impact and were locally employed. Privileges placing English monasteries under “Roman jurisdiction” were not forerunners of full-fledged exemption, nor an imitation of Continental practices, but a means of solving problems as the episcopate was greatly enlarged under Archbishop Theodore. Chapter 5 (c. 770–c. 830) elucidates a surge in privileges at the request of the Mercian kings. This was a period when privileges were used the most effectively but, oddly, left the least evidence. Nevertheless, the way Savill reconstructs a coherent story out of fragments and fairy tales and shows that later gaps and distortions were actually proof of the power of privileges is fascinating and convincing.
In Chapter 6 (c. 960–c. 1000), the author wonders why English privileges, despite royal interest in a relationship with Rome and trends elsewhere in Europe, seem scarce and inconsequential. He claims that Anglo-Saxon England never adopted the post-Carolingian legacy, and the kings pursued opposing foreign and domestic policies: seeking Roman prestige abroad, but unwilling to make papal authority felt at home. To them, the popes were more ancient figures of reverence than ecclesiastical administrators of relevance. The sudden burst of privileges in Chapter 7 (1049–1073) coincides with the advent of the reform papacy and reflects a brief English attempt to participate in post-Carolingian culture, persuasively proven by an influx of Continental churchmen with connections to the reform hotbed of Lotharingia. The Anglo-Saxons, however, had no pre-existing demand or context for receiving such a papally focused movement, and so its impact was temporary.
The overall history, for Savill, is a varied one of “fits and starts,” neither continuous nor neat. It cannot be shoe-horned into a linear, inevitable papal narrative, but must attend to the perspective of the periphery, where the meaning and success of papal privileges depended on regional circumstances. This study has broader implications for both England and Rome. The author advocates for an English Sonderweg, distinct from Europe and its Carolingian inheritance; in his judgment, the Anglo-Saxons were interested in Rome, but not in the systematic incorporation of papal laws and documents. Rome meant different things to different cultures, and the papacy was an essentially responsive institution; it provided rich materials (including privileges) that could be used experimentally to deal with local situations. But papal power was dependent on and limited by the “perceptions, expectations, traditions, and contingent political practices” of the various regions; thus, we must study societies to understand the papacy.
This is a serious work that deserves to be taken seriously. In doing so, one can occasionally disagree with particulars without denigrating the value of the research; a few such reservations follow.
The author rightly argues that arguments about silence should not be rejected as arguments from silence. But his reluctance to count lost pallium privileges (56n2)—despite their enormous likelihood, given customary Western practice and later English sources—may skew some conclusions, for example, that a “sub-category of papal diploma concerned with visual self-representation” was “newly emerging” in the mid-eleventh century (243), or that by the same period “virtually no privileges appear to have been acquired for over two hundred years” (264). Similarly, although he maintains that Robert of Jumièges did not acquire any privileges (261), Remigius of Dorchester’s profession to Canterbury soon afterwards indicates that Robert had received a pallium, almost certainly with a privilege.
When pallium privileges were preserved, moreover, Savill may too quickly dismiss their unique features, which might modify Chapter 6’s argument or bolster Chapter 7’s. John XII’s privilege for Dunstan is not “singularly unexceptional,” manifesting “rigid conservatism” by following the formula “almost word for word” (193–194), but shows some interesting tweaks, including hints of recipient influence. Alexander II’s privilege for Thomas of York is not “entirely conventional” (101) but represents a new, streamlined wording only loosely based on the formula, with characteristics in vogue in the papal chancery of the time.
The author proposes that the Cerdicings wanted to “assert their place upon [the] ‘international’ stage at Rome” while distancing themselves from papal politics (196–197), which would explain why English archbishops customarily went to Rome to receive the pallium. But if these prelates were “invested before European-wide audiences”—where presumably their privileges were read aloud—would they not desire documents that paralleled Continental examples? Just as Catalonian monasteries, “by acquiring comparable privileges… may have sought to assert themselves as distant equals to the likes of Fulda or Montecassino, with their regional patrons as players on that grander, extra-imperial stage” (209), would not a lack of “comparable privileges” have damaged the Cerdicings’ standing on that stage?
Savill is hesitant to envisage that the English had recourse to the papacy for judgment in greater matters, for example, episcopal translations (196, 254) or diocesan reorganizations (239). One need not presume an activist papacy, however, to believe that the English themselves, who were quite familiar with canon law, would want a papal stamp of approval on arrangements that might have seemed canonically questionable at home. Likewise, the lack of English interest in later Carolingian canon law (215–216) may not be so telling. Continental emphasis on new “papal canon law” should not be overstated since most collections still relied on traditional material and only rarely included decrees of more contemporary popes. An increasing Continental canonical orientation to Rome is doubtful; Pseudo-Isidore’s support for distant, often weak papal authority was a clever way for Continental bishops to circumvent overbearing metropolitans, and anyway did not constitute the mainstream of 9th-century canon law.
Finally, the author is right to depict a mainly reactive papacy to which local churches would appeal or petition for their own purposes, a papacy preoccupied with Rome itself (279–280). But this general pattern varied, and there are certainly examples of early medieval popes who had broader goals and actively exercised influence beyond Rome (however imperfectly realized). Some popes adroitly exploited the opportunities offered when they were approached for favors. When considering where the initiative lay, it may be more useful to imagine a two-way tension than a one-way street.
But these are simply attempts at continuing an intriguing conversation, profitably arising from this many-layered, stimulating study.
