The execution of papal justice in northern France, 1145--1198

This study explores the changes that occurred in papal government during the twelfth century that led to an increase in the practical authority of popes to affect the administration of individual monasteries and churches throughout Christendom. Popes began developing a network of representatives in places like northern France and looked to those delegates to investigate different claims, negotiate between parties, give judgments, and finally enforce decisions and punishments. In addition to examining the changes occurring at the top of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, this study also explores the lives and careers of the bishops, abbots, and other church officials who frequently served as the popes' representatives in twelfth-century France; it investigates the links that connected them to each other, to the pope, and to the secular powers. Although papal governance through judicial appeal was becoming more bureaucratic in the language of its correspondence and privileges, in practice the success of the system depended upon the personal ties between the papal court and its chosen delegates. This study focuses upon the cases of judicial delegation from the ecclesiastical province of Reims and the area around Paris. References to papal judicial delegation appear in the series Papsturkunden in Frankreich as well as in monastic cartularies, letter collections, and royal charters. Most of the documents needed for this study have been published, but some evidence from unpublished manuscripts preserved in the archives in Paris has also been incorporated. The dissertation questions the traditional view that popes of the twelfth century were largely reacting to problems brought to their attention instead of actively seeking to expand their jurisdictions, and instead argues that judicial delegation helped to facilitate the long-distance administration of the churches and abbeys of northern France. While the dissertation relies upon the study of legal documents and the methods of legal historians, at its heart it focuses upon more traditional, historical themes--the cultivation of power within the Church hierarchy, the local interactions between Church leaders and secular authorities, and finally an exploration of the kinds of problems facing monasteries and individuals in the twelfth century.