Reporting on the Synod of Ponthion in 876, the Annals of St Bertin describe the Emperor Charles the Bald entering the ecclesiastical proceedings with a papal legate by his side. All the bishops and other clergy, we are told, were ‘clothed in their ecclesiastical vestments’.Footnote 1 A description of the venue is also provided: ‘the whole interior of the building and the seats were covered in fine cloths, and in the very heart of the synod in full view of the imperial throne the Holy Gospels were placed on a lectern’.Footnote 2 The legate in question, Bishop John of Toscanella, delivered the Kyrie eleison and recited a prayer which opened the proceedings. The first official matter of business was for him to ‘read out the letters sent by the pope, including, notably, a letter concerning the primacy of Ansegis archbishop of Sens’.Footnote 3 Over the next few weeks the council members heard various appeals to the pope in Rome, convened an audience for matters affecting the Frankish realm and ultimately issued its rulings. On the ninth hour of the last day, the emperor entered the synod once again, ‘clad in the Greek fashion and wearing his crown, led by the papal legates clad in the Roman fashion and by the bishops wearing their ecclesiastical vestments, with everything else arranged as it had been on the first day when the synod began’.Footnote 4 After more pomp and circumstance, two further papal legates – Bishops Leo of Sabina and Peter of Fossombrone – were presented with gifts and sent back to Rome.
This episode offers a glimpse into the ceremonial reception of papal legates. A rare example from the early Middle Ages, its details imply an orchestrated procedure, conciliar custom and pageantry that was familiar to contemporaries. While the subject of legatine ceremonial is relatively unknown in theoretical and canonical literature before the thirteenth century, the silence in earlier sources does not preclude existing ordines in the selection, ‘sending forth’ (legatio) and ultimate reception of papal legates. As this article suggests, there are earlier references from which a more precise, distinctive and normative portrait can be formulated. Together, these customs, principles, gestures and symbols reveal a ‘shared discourse’Footnote 5 or ‘ritualised interaction’,Footnote 6 which helped to legitimate and preserve ecclesiastical and political order.Footnote 7 This ceremonial and ritual character, it is further argued, played an integral role in shaping contemporary obedience to papal legates, whose symbolic and politically communicative interactions defined this ecclesiastical office for the Middle Ages. By examining the legate's classification and performative nature, vesture and insignia, and the ritual significance of credence letters as explanatory provisions for his authority and reception, this article sheds new light on the formative practice of medieval papal legation and diplomacy.
Classification and performance
Medieval papal legates were active performers in the medieval ‘art of communication’ and representation.Footnote 8 From the origins of this representative office in the fourth century they provided a connecting link between Rome and the various Christian provinces. The categorisation of this ecclesiastical office into distinct branches (for example, apocrisiarius, nuncius, legatus missus, legatus natus, legatus a latere), with varying powers of delegated (Roman) jurisdiction, however, is a development more formally attributed to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.Footnote 9 Indeed, the taxonomy of papal legation is a field well traversed by medieval canonists from this era. It took centuries to develop the finer and legalistic rhetoric constituting this ecclesiastical office, whose theoretical framework and basis of legitimate authority took shape in Gratian's Decretum (c. 1140), in addition to the subsequent glosses and commentaries of numerous Decretists and Decretalists.Footnote 10 With sophisticated considerations on aspects of classification, immunity, jurisdiction, province, authorisation, reception, supervision, Roman legal concepts, ‘fullness of power’, ‘share of responsibility’ and much more, it was during this period that ‘legation’ became professionalised and formalised in the law and legal terminology.
As the physical embodiment of the pope, the legate connected Rome (caput) with its members (membra) through the execution of justice. With a connection to St Paul's letter to the Romans (xii.4–5) and Justinian's Codex (9.8.5), later medieval canonists like Hostiensis (Summa Aurea, lib. i, c.2) and Bernard of Parma (Glossa Ordinaria ad x 1.30.9 and vi 1.15.1) cemented this allegory into the lexicon of papal representation. With judicial, jurisdictional and representative implications foreshadowing the later ambassadorial office of early modern Europe, the central issue remained ‘the honor and dignity of the principal’.Footnote 11 This was precisely the thinking of Azo of Bologna (1150–1230) on the subject in Roman law, when he defined the representative (nuncius) as ‘he who takes the place of a letter’. In this way, ‘he is just like a magpie, and an organ, and the voice of the principal sending him, and he recites the words of the principal’.Footnote 12
The pope and his legate were thus considered one and the same. Identification – or solidarity – with the apostolic see in Rome explains the ceremonial's fundamental and pluralistic purpose.Footnote 13 In diplomatic terms, it was not just the legate's actions and words that influenced the direction and potential outcome of political negotiations. The formalities and symbolism of his ‘uniform’ and entry into a Christian province, city or town, church council, royal court, monastery etc., were further performative attributes and characteristics of his authority to govern, rule and administer in the name of St Peter.Footnote 14 Rituals of legatine dress and procession in particular not only ingratiated a foreign papal representative into local and regional ecclesiastical affairs; they also provided what Philippe Buc described as a qualitative and quantitative measurement for ‘the respective power of two parties in a political relationship’.Footnote 15 That is, they conditioned personal ties with the clergy and laity through the diffusion of judicial practice and canonical norms. These core/inherent values have not been lost over the centuries. As Henry Kissinger wrote about diplomacy more generally, ‘the way negotiations are carried out is almost as important as what is negotiated’. The ‘choreography of how one enters negotiations, what is settled first, and in what manner is inseparable from the substance of the issues’.Footnote 16
This diplomatic reality emphasises the ceremonial's performative nature. As a Roman agent, the legate was a symbolic manifestation of immediate papal presence and power.Footnote 17 He, like the pope whom he represented in Rome, maintained an important liturgical-political-communicative role, whose entry and reception (intra et extra muros) bear a connection to imperial/Roman and early medieval papal traditions.Footnote 18 From the earliest Ordo Romanus I (early eighth century), which describes the stational liturgy preceding the papal mass, we can begin to grasp the ritual importance and application of ceremonial as la mise en scène.Footnote 19
There is every reason to assume the development of a similar custom among the pope's representatives. Greeted, in the first instance, by a delegation of ecclesiastics and important laymen outside the city walls (occursus), a legate descends from his (white) horse and recites a prayer before the procession into the city begins (adventus). By such means a political space was initiated and the dialogue officially commenced.Footnote 20 The cortège would have joined him in the singing of Psalms, the antiphon and the litany of saints, before making their way to the local church council arena, where he formally addressed the gathered ecclesiastics (adlocutio). Followed in procession by acolytes and defensores (both on foot), the legate – just like the pope, if he were himself present – was trailed on horseback by the deacons and other high officials of his administration.Footnote 21 The possible size of a legate's entourage, the number of accompanying horses and even the primary language(s) of communication (i.e. Latin and/or the vernacular) are further considerations that would have conditioned his reception.Footnote 22
The procession was a political foreground to the business at hand. Its ritual structure projected a strong and memorable public image of papal authority, rendering its abstract notion both ‘visible and concrete’.Footnote 23 As an extension of governmental operations, moreover, ceremonial activity of this nature reflected political circumstances and ambitions.Footnote 24 As Pascal Montaubin has shown, its ritual complexity ‘was a form of non-verbal and dynamic propaganda, rich in symbolism’.Footnote 25 For the papal legate, this elaborate ceremony paved the way for his legitimate reception; as an essential preparatory step in the ensuing political communications, it transposed local politics by implying a tacit social and political consensus.Footnote 26 The entire visual display affirmed the ideological and political superiority and honour of Rome, through ritualised and liturgicised means.Footnote 27 The composition and organisational hierarchy of his followers, too, in addition to the rhythm of the ceremonies, fulfilled expected and ancient protocols: unwritten rules that were known to observers and participants through their repetition and experience over the centuries.Footnote 28
The transmission of Roman heritage and authority is significant in this regard. Precisely because legates operated outside of Rome, ceremonial had to convey a symbolic and charismatic connection to the eternal city, to its ancient imperial and spiritual traditions, to the many Apostles and martyrs.Footnote 29 The basic model echoes Clifford Geertz's analysis of symbolic governance, which saw ‘ritual’ as a way for elites to ‘justify their existence and order their actions in terms of a collection of stories, ceremonies, insignia, formalities, and appurtenances that they have inherited or, in more revolutionary situations, invented’.Footnote 30 Combining legal and symbolic principles, therefore, legatine ceremonial was an outward acceptance of Rome's (inward) sacred authority – an explicit and implicit reception of papal status and sovereign power.Footnote 31 To participate in its mystique was to affirm that ‘majesty is made, not born’.Footnote 32 It was an acknowledgement of ‘symbolic possession’, manifest in a foreign territory through ‘ritual signs of dominance’.Footnote 33 It was also a recognition/appreciation of allocated powers (deference), which tied the legate to its institutional centre (Rome), while justifying and reinforcing his position in the ecclesiastical-political order.Footnote 34
Vesture and insignia
This authoritative character ultimately shaped the legate's reception. What the legate wore in this setting ostensibly mattered, because he embodied the pope in person through his physical likeness in dress.Footnote 35 To be sure, the legate's attire is a particularly prominent indicator of his juridical status, honour, dignity and authority.Footnote 36 Although descriptions of the legate's vesture and insignia derive predominantly from post twelfth-century sources, their late medieval and Renaissance imprimatur evokes earlier ceremonial traditions. Mapping their inheritance here offers an initial framework for, and necessary preamble to, interpreting the legate's ritual practice and reception in the centuries prior to the twelfth.
The donning of distinctive vestments represented a critical, outward manifestation of papal communication and power, serving to exalt the legate's status in distant Christian territories.Footnote 37 According to Thangmar's vita of Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim, recording the southern Saxon synod of Pöhlde in 1001, a cardinal-priest (later archbishop of Ravenna) and legate (‘vicarius domini apostolici’) named Frithericus was ‘clothed with the complete apostolic insignia as the pope himself would go forth, while horses adorned the door of the apostolic sedan in the Roman custom’.Footnote 38 Although nowhere explicitly mentioned, this is considered the earliest possible reference to a legate carrying a mitre. This headdress formed a regular part of the pope's vestments from the middle of the tenth century, becoming a prerogative of bishops from the first half of the twelfth.Footnote 39 That it also became part of the legate's attire is suggested by Pope Leo ix, who in 1053 granted this permission (‘quod est insigne Romanorum’) to his legate, Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen.Footnote 40 Five forged documents referring to the ninth-century legation of Ansgar (831–65) to northern Germany, dated 846–c. 943/5, further suggest the legate's right to bear a cross and wear the mitre (‘ius mitrae crucisque portandae’).Footnote 41 As customs of ecclesiastical office, they constituted part of the legate's procedural operations and overall representative powers.
Matthew Paris provides a rare visual depiction of this power dynamic almost two centuries later. His mid thirteenth-century Chronica majora (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, ms 16, fo. 107, and British Library, London, ms Royal 14, CVII, fo. 126) contains the earliest visual representations: two illuminations of a legate clad in red vestments and a mitre (auriphrygiate) – with golden pieces and gems as a substitute for the papal tiara – presiding over a council of bishops in London (1237).Footnote 42 As a political manifestation of spectacle, the legate's attire – in these colourful manuscript images as in reality – represents ‘a visualization for the people of a governing authority’.Footnote 43 As an extension of supreme Roman authority, law and justice, moreover, it ‘makes the absent present and transcends the limits of time and space’. Through the ceremonial process of dress, the legate's true identity is theoretically forgotten.
The thirteenth-century Italian canonist, Hostiensis (d.1271), elaborated on this theme. In his commentary on Pope Innocent iii’s Decretal (Lectura ad X 5.33 de privil. c.23 Antiqua), he noted that the legate regularly and necessarily wore the papal insignia, which included ‘red vestments, gilded shoes, a horse with white reins and similar things’.Footnote 44 An earlier account from Raynaldus’ Annales ecclesiastica in 1213 mentions a legate sent to Constantinople (Pelagius), clothed in red shoes and garments, with similarly-coloured cloak and horse bridle.Footnote 45 (This account is also recorded by the Byzantine chronicler, Georgius Logotheta.Footnote 46) That this right belonged exclusively to select representatives of the apostolic see was an idea expressed under Pope Innocent iv, who explained to the Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1248 that his legates a latere took priority.Footnote 47 This interpretive precedent appears also in Pope Nicholas iii’s privilege to his legate in the kingdom of Hungary (1278), Bishop Philip of Fermo, connecting the special grace of apostolic authority de facto with the wearing of its insignia.Footnote 48
Hostiensis also added the provision that the apostolic insignia could only be worn by legates de latere ‘who cross the sea’ (‘ex quo transit mare’) and ‘no other’ (‘non aliter’), unless they have been granted special privileges.Footnote 49 This distinction clearly influenced Pope Clement v, who in 1307 appointed Cardinal Gentilis as his legate to Hungary, Poland, Croatia, Serbia and Dalmatia. This figure was instructed to ‘represent our person, adorned with the customary insignia of legates de latere who cross the sea’. The pope conceded his apostolic authority, with special grace, so that Gentilis could ‘freely use said insignia only within said kingdom in the prosecution of the office of legation’.Footnote 50 In a situation involving multiple legates, Hostiensis explained that only legates sent from the pope's side (de latere) could display the apostolic insignia.Footnote 51 This particular interpretation implies a restriction of the legate's plena potestas, which is seemingly dependent on his whereabouts in Christendom. It also suggests an established hierarchy of legation, in which the authority of the lesser representative (papal) agent would lapse in the presence of a greater one.Footnote 52
No matter how it is interpreted, the legate's arrival was a pre-conditioned ritual. The earliest official ecclesiastical ruling on legatine procession comes from a Decretal (Antiqua) issued at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 (X 5.33.23). The fifth canon from this council gave patriarchs permission to carry the cross ‘before them in procession’, except in Rome or anywhere that the pope or one of his legates ‘wearing the insignia of the apostolic dignity’ was present.Footnote 53 In the wider context of the council, this canon addressed the status of the five ecclesiastical patriarchs, ranking Rome as the highest authority in Christendom.Footnote 54 In specifying the legate's role, it also served to distinguish the rank and status of the pope's representative, emphasising their ‘common identity’.Footnote 55 The first known processional ordo, furthermore, comes from the Pontificale of William Durantis (1237–96), which outlines the rules and expectations for receiving a bishop or legate (‘Ordo ad recipiendium processionaliter prelatum vel legatum’).Footnote 56 Elaborating on earlier sources, it offers more precise details on the liturgical elements comprising the ceremony, including the exact wording of the antiphon and Oratio.Footnote 57
Descriptions become more thorough as the Middle Ages progress. The Ordo Romanus XIV,Footnote 58 copied in the ceremonial book of Jacopo Stefaneschi, noted that when the cardinal-legate
exits the territory of the city or place in which the pope resides with his cardinals, he must immediately remove the common cloak and wear a scarlet mantle and red hat [‘cappam rubeam de scarleto et biretum rubeum’], which is used for the entire legation; and, when he enters the aforesaid territory, he should immediately cease to make the sign [of the cross] and remove the red mantle and red hat, and assume the common mantle and hat such as the other cardinals are wearing, and then enter the curia in the way just described … Pay attention, moreover, that the cross is not carried in front of the legate [‘legatus’], nor in front of the messenger [‘nuntius’].Footnote 59
The most detailed description of the legate's appointment, departure and return to Rome, and use of the papal insignia comes from a book of ceremonies attributed to the second half of the fifteenth century (ms Vat. lat. 4737). Innocent viii initiated a reform of papal ceremonials in 1485. The final version of the Ordines (known as Caeromoniale Romanum) was completed in 1488 by the pope's Master of Ceremonies, Agostino Patrizi Piccolomini, and his colleague, Johannes Burckard.Footnote 60 Canonists, too, weighed in on the practice as an established custom in the fifteenth century, with interpretations from Andreas de Barbatia (1400-–9) (Tractatus de cardinalibus legatis a latere), Petrus Adrianus Gambarrus (1480–1528) (Tractatus de officio atque auctoritate legati de latere) and G. Villadiego (Tractatus de origine ac dignitate et potestate sanctae R. eccl. cardinalium). Less concerned with the legal faculties or exercising of legatine power, these fifteenth-century works discussed key issues concerning the insignia legatorum, namely the legate's exit from Rome, entry into his province, procedures for meeting rulers (emperors, kings and princes), liturgical obligations and practices, rules for audience and dress and customs for chancery practices.
Letters of credence and their ritual significance
Scattered narrative descriptions complement these legal and procedural sources. They also highlight one obvious and immediate truth: the ritualised dimension of apostolic representation, which developed alongside the ecclesiastical office's judicial character in the early and high Middle Ages, has left very few explicit sources before the thirteenth century. The later interpretations of ceremonial practice are useful up to a point, but they can only ever approximate to earlier precedents.Footnote 61 In the absence of explicit ordines, therefore, it is necessary to rely on what evidence does exist. ‘Credence letters’, to cite one prominent example, were regularly employed by the papacy as a mechanism of formal exchange. Functioning first and foremost to introduce the pope's legates in distant Christian lands, these legal documents provided the first means of contact between the papacy in Rome and a designated third party. They underscore an important and prevailing diplomatic tradition of representation, direct ties to the sacred authority of the sender (i.e. the pope in Rome) and a symbolic connection to his jurisdiction as the basis of their authority.Footnote 62
These papal communications also formed an implicit part of the legate's ceremonial departure.Footnote 63 Their inherent instructions confirmed the legate's a priori knowledge and the objectives of his mission, which were characteristically outlined in person in Rome, where the legate was briefed and prepared in situ for business. Writing to Count Lambert of Spoleto in 878, for example, Pope John viii commended his ‘faithful’, ‘reverend’ and ‘devout’ legates, namely Bishops Gaudericus of Velletri and Zacharias of Anagni – ‘deliciosos et consiliarios nostros’. Their function was quite literally to ‘relate the words … which are lacking in the letters’.Footnote 64 In so doing, the pope was providing a trusted mediator and interlocutor between Rome (the centre) and Frankish nobles (the periphery). As Rome's ‘faithful of friends’ (‘fidelem familiarium’), to whom the pope enjoined his own words to be related in person transalpinus, these clerics were asked and expected to receive every message related in person through this representative.
On the solemn occasion of his appointment, a legate was invested with apostolic powers, briefed on diverse matters that were not explicitly recorded on parchment, and ultimately empowered to act as the pope's alter ego in financial, juridical, spiritual and temporal matters.Footnote 65 His selection for this representative office expressed the pope's confidence in his abilities to perform the necessary tasks. The ceremonial in this sense triggered the legation, specified the operational parameters or ‘contours of the mission’ (geographic, temporal, spiritual, juridical) – sending forth a representative who, as a loyal servant to the apostolic see, was expected to return to Rome when the mission was complete.Footnote 66
A legate's reception was prepared by this ceremonial practice. Never as explicit as might be hoped, late Carolingian-era sources nevertheless illustrate Rome's expectations about the welcoming of its papal legates abroad. These provide us with some indication about what may have been customary (or not) in the late ninth century. We tend to know more from instances when these assumptions of ceremonial were trespassed or contravened; the ritual overstepping of political boundaries only reinforces the existence of some established norm. Indeed, there was ostensibly no need to record their rituals in any great detail, unless contentious or unusual circumstances made it necessary to do so. In his letter to Charles the Bald in 870, for example, Pope Hadrian ii criticised the Frankish king for receiving his papal legates (missi) at the monastery of Saint Denis ‘in the custom of the kingdom’Footnote 67 (‘more regali’), which suggests that his chosen representatives were not afforded the priority or dignity assumed by his own office. According to the contemporary Annals of St Bertin, ‘the pope's envoys arrived with letters addressed to Charles and to the bishops of his realm forbidding him with terrible imprecations to touch the realm of the late Lothar which rightly belonged to Lothar's brother the emperor’.Footnote 68 Charles became angry, possibly because the legates’ criticism was aired at the public mass, but also because their arrival coincided with a special moment in the monastery's liturgical cycle – the feast day of St Denis (9 October).Footnote 69
Legatine ceremonial could minimise the damage in this regard, offering a ritualised mechanism for maintaining political and diplomatic harmony. Although Hadrian's legates had angered Charles, the king eventually agreed to their terms – which included releasing his youngest son, Carloman, from prison – before ensuring the legates’ safe return to Rome. The laity's role in guaranteeing safe conduct presented one preeminent dimension to legatine operations in distant/foreign lands.Footnote 70 Diplomatic niceties of this nature were part and parcel of a legate's reception: unwritten rules that governed the limits of papal representation. In 876 Pope John viii chastised Count Boso of Vienne over the wrongful detention of his legates (‘apocrisiarii et missi’), Cardinal-Bishops John and Peter, who were sent in haste to Frankish lands with the assurance of the emperor's ‘divine’ protection.Footnote 71 Acting ‘against the glory of the apostolic see’, the count presumed to impede their travels, which can be interpreted as contrary to expected custom and operational (jurisdictional) freedom. Based entirely on the pope's reaction, it can be assumed that his legates were accustomed to better treatment. Employed under Pope Hadrian ii, having gained experience in the imperial courts of Charles the Bald and his brother, Louis ii, these legates were probably the same figures as were sent to Charles in Saint Denis six years earlier.Footnote 72
Prior experience of this nature was prudent and politically advantageous. But recognition alone of the ceremonial rules, procedures and rituals which governed a legate's reception did not guarantee acceptance of his vested authority. Through increasing experience prior to the twelfth century, however, clearer connections were being drawn between the expectation and manifestation of obedience to the pope's representatives. This pragmatic consideration is fundamental to comprehending the true nature of a legate's reception in the lands to which he was sent.
Reception and obedience to legatine authority
The symbolism of legatine ceremonial is understandably key to its interpretation. Any infringement of its rituals presented a direct challenge to Rome's authority, whose theoretical basis informed the legate's activities and jurisdictional parameters. In 1077 Archbishop Manasses i of Reims (c. 1069–80) openly and defiantly refused to accept the judgement and authority of Gregory vii’s legate to France, Bishop Hugh of Die (archbishop of Lyon from 1082 to 1106). Charged with simony at the legate's Autun council (1077), the archbishop was later deposed for refusing to attend Hugh's Lyonnais council in 1080.Footnote 73 Manasses's main contention was the legate's ‘ultramontane’ status, which is to say his non-Roman training and orientation. The archbishop argued for the legitimacy of someone ‘born at Rome, or educated from childhood in the Roman Church, or promoted to some office within it’.Footnote 74 The pope rebuked the archbishop by justifying the plenipotentiary powers assigned to ‘anyone of whatever nationality [gens] on whom the Roman pontiff enjoins’ a legation.Footnote 75 He also defended the papacy's right to grant privileges ‘in respect of matter, person, or time, which, if necessity or greater benefit shall so require, may licitly again be altered in these respects’.Footnote 76
The arguments surrounding this case are steeped in ecclesiology. The status, custom and tradition of both ecclesiastical sees influenced their respective actions. The court poet for the archiepiscopal see of Reims, Fulcois of Beauvais, wrote in the late eleventh century that Reims and Rome were ‘equals’.Footnote 77 As John Ott observed, Manasses was depicted here ‘as a partner of standing and dignity with the Pope, possessed of similar temperament, and deserving of the same consideration the Pope enjoys within his own city’.Footnote 78 Manasses's allegiance to Gregory was thus based on his see's rich heritage and long-standing history of political friendship with Rome. The presence of a papal legate in his diocese ostensibly complicated this relationship. There is no doubt that Manasses considered Hugh's ecclesiastical status as problematic; as bishop of Die, an insignificant suffragan to the diocese of Lyon, the legate was in the precarious position of judging his superiors. It was this position which no doubt emboldened the archbishop to challenge the legate's authority to summon a council and issue judgement. Whatever the case, Manasses's faithfulness to the papacy was very quickly undone by his actions and political rhetoric.
In the strict eyes of the law, the archbishop of Reims was contesting established ecclesiastical norms. His unwillingness to accept the legate's authority carried heavy political and judicial overtones. Gregory found Manasses's justifications absurd.Footnote 79 Furthermore, the pope had a clear view of legatine authority and was experienced in dispatching trusted figures to accomplish Rome's business. The legate's right to intervene, mediate and issue judgement in the name of the pope was firmly ascribed in canonical literature of the twelfth century. Its position and legitimacy was directly founded on the legate's likeness and connection to the power base in Rome.Footnote 80 Serving to protect the representative from violation of any sort, this legislation was intended to ease the burden of his reception in distant provinces. While not yet fully formulated in the canon law, legates were deserving of the same ceremony and treatment owing to their principal.
Rejecting the legate's authority was thus a serious breach of protocol – a disarming of his physical presence and inherent power to represent the apostolic see. The issue of ecclesiastical status mattered greatly in the dispute. Its importance suggests that legatine ceremonial – the idea of making visible the invisible power of Rome – did not always serve its primary (basic) function. Simply put, high-ranking ecclesiastical figures like Manasses saw right through the reception rituals of dress and procession to the status and authority of the man standing before them. Without a strict obedience (deference) to Rome, legatine ceremonial was nothing more than pomp and circumstance. Notwithstanding its customary public, ritualised and liturgical role, it could be easily ignored as a distraction to core business.
The consequences of so doing influenced local, regional and papal politics and communication. The record for the legatine council of Issoudun (1081) notes that the canons of Saint Martin at Tours were excommunicated for driving out their archbishop, Ralph of Tours. Writing in 1082–3, Pope Gregory vii urged them ‘to make due satisfaction for so great a crime and to take steps to restore our brother the archbishop with honour to his church’. Lest he ‘confirm the sentence of anathema’ against them, and decree that they ‘are subject to apostolic punishment’, the pope demanded that the canons show reverence to their superior, ‘restore in full the property of the archbishop and of the canons of Saint-Maurice’ and ‘for the future to pay due reverence to our legates, and to be vigilant and zealous to keep yourselves away from the excommunicate Count Fulk and from all excommunicates’.Footnote 81
A re-evaluation of this case fifteen years later reveals a far more complicated scenario, which began with a challenge to the legatine ceremony of adventus. According to a bull issued by Pope Urban ii in 1096, the canons of Saint Martin were excommunicated for not having received the papal legate, Bishop Amatus of Oloron (archbishop of Bordeaux, 1089–1101) in solemn procession (‘non ab hac ecclesia processionis solemnitate susceptus’).Footnote 82 (Curiously, there is no mention of his co-convenor, Hugh of Die.) In a propagandist work most likely written for the pope in about 1096, the canons claimed that Gregory vii had furnished their monastery with liberties, which did not require them to provide his legate (or any other representative of the apostolic see) with a solemn procession.Footnote 83 The account recalls legatine visits to the monastery under Popes Leo ix, Victor ii and Nicholas ii as a basis for comparison with Amatus’ contrary behaviour and unrealistic expectations. The canons’ account, moreover, claimed to be citing from Gregory vii himself, who reportedly declared that many of his predecessors – Gregory, Sergius, Stephen, Adeodatus, Leo – ‘established Saint Martin free and undisturbed from all custom and subjection, and they confirmed these things so that the church would never be placed under the domination of any pontiff, because of the dignity of [Saint Martin] the worthy confessor’.Footnote 84
Owing directly to this purported heritage and connection to Rome, the canons of Saint Martin rejected the adventus as something outside their community; that is, the ritualised interaction was incongruent with how they perceived themselves in the world and/or how they perceived their relationship with Rome.Footnote 85 It was, to borrow Buc's expression, an object for contention, against which the canons were impelled to react.Footnote 86 ‘At that time’, according to one contemporary account,
by the advice of the sons of priests who were canons at the church of Saint-Maurice [the cathedral], all concord between the bishop of the city and the clergy of Saint Martin was destroyed … But this discord arose out of the jealousy of their city, so that they did not make processions to us, nor we to them, as was established by ancient custom. That same year Archbishop Ralph and the legate Amatus excommunicated the Tourangeaux and the people of Anjou from all Christian office. And we, the canons of Saint-Martin, celebrated the mass at Saint Julian on the first day of rogations, against their will, and on the second day at Saint Mary of Beaumont, and we made all the stations, just as the ancient custom prescribes. Moreover, William Bassus, the chaplain of Saint-Martin, excommunicated Ralph, the enemy of God.Footnote 87
This challenge to the reception of legates raises two fundamental issues. First, it suggests an existing ceremonial for legatine councils by the late eleventh century, which began with the pope's representative leading the group of gathered ecclesiastics into the meeting place. The council arena was the legate's principal operating theatre. As the papacy's ‘representative organ’,Footnote 88 this legal venue provided the setting for the promulgation of canons, debates on church doctrine, ecclesiastical administration, episcopal elections and consecration and dispute settlement.Footnote 89 It gave witness to the manifestation of Roman authority, an effective indication of the extension of medieval papal governance.Footnote 90 It might be imagined, then, given the evidence for legatine ceremonial, that Amatus of Oloron was ‘clad in the Roman fashion’, perhaps wearing the papal red and mitre, and bearing the cross in front of him as he entered the conciliar proceedings at Issoudun. The experience and frequency of papal legates in this legal-representative arena was presumably matched by some developed procedural and liturgical ordines.Footnote 91 While very few glimpses into the protocol of an early medieval legatine council are extant, the Pseudo-Isidorian ordo attributed to the seventeenth council of Toledo in 694 is the closest and most plausible contemporary description.Footnote 92 Once again, the description from Ponthion in 876 offers a rare narrative glimpse into the interactions and exchanges of the church council. Procedural measures of the sort related in the acta (as recorded in the Annales Bertiniani) demonstrate a visible pattern of legatine ceremonial for the early Middle Ages.
The canons’ refusal to receive a legate in procession presents a second issue, which is more difficult to comprehend. On the one hand, it might be interpreted as an overt rejection of apostolic authority – a slap in the face of diplomatic protocol and political negotiations. Such actions might be viewed as an assertion of monastic rights, based entirely on the false claims of an exemption privilege which granted the monks’ autonomous status. Harking back to privileges allegedly granted under Gregory vii, the canons of Saint Martin challenged the legate's presence and representative power over them. The basis of their claim was not dissimilar from Manasses's justifications. The biggest difference, however, was not a distancing from Roman authority, but rather a more direct claim to its protection through the judicial and spiritual means of exemption.
The pope was forced to compromise. Urban ii ultimately revoked the sentence of excommunication after determining that the canons maintained a special privilege (privilegia) obligating them only to receive in procession the pope, the king of France and the archbishop of Tours.Footnote 93 In hindsight, this might be viewed as a failure to uphold earlier papal judgement. In weakening the reception of his legates in this monastery, Urban imposed limitations on his own authority to govern in distant Christian provinces. It has been further suggested that the pope lost face in his negotiations with the canons of Tours – a ‘loss of dominance’ that excluded the archbishop's role in the monastery's liturgical life (for example, visitation).Footnote 94 Even though the pope sided with the authority of his legates, the canons’ story was convincing enough to sway his judgement in their favour. They misrepresented Gregory vii’s role in the early 1080s in a bid to secure their own institutional freedom from the archbishop of Tours almost fifteen years later. From the seemingly innocuous matter of legatine procession, the canons of Saint Martin secured a new measure of freedom from outside interference.
The example of Ponthion, with which this article began, also provides a fitting conclusion. It shows the existence and recognition of the pageantry which opened the council proceedings: its structural and legal force ostensibly facilitated the conciliar outcome. Working side-by-side with the emperor towards mutual objectives, the pope's legate demonstrated a delicate balancing of procedure and business, ensuring a fair representation of the apostolic see alongside the interests of all those gathered at the council. When the emperor, the papal legates and the bishops came together on the final morning – each clad in their respective vestments – it was a show of ceremony befitting a royal synod. The legate's political, diplomatic and judicial role was defined by his physical presence, the theoretical power-base on whose behalf he was acting, the visible and invisible characteristics of his ecclesiastical office. What mattered most was the ecclesiastical office that he occupied. In theory, his upbringing, training, ecclesiastical rank and status were dimensions of office superseded by his legatine appointment.
The delivery of this authority, however, no matter how far from the political and spiritual centre in Rome, and its contemporary respect and meaning in practical terms, was clearly represented through the power and symbolism of ceremonial. The reception of legates – ritualised and liturgicised – was a pre-condition to this central form of political communication. As a process of interaction and exchange, it served to forge relations with Rome, creating and preserving norms in an historical era before written rules.
