Winner of the John Gilmary Shea Prize of the American Catholic Historical Association

This book explores the relationship between the papacy and reform against the backdrop of social and religious change in later tenth and eleventh-century Europe. Placing this relationship in the context of the debate about ‘transformation’, it reverses the recent trend among historians to emphasise the reform developments in the localities at the expense of those being undertaken in Rome. It focuses on how the papacy took an increasingly active part in shaping the direction of both its own reform and that of society, whose reform became an essential part of realising its objective of a free and independent Church. It also addresses the role of the Latin Church in western Europe around the year 1000, the historiography of reform, the significance of the ‘Peace of God’ as a reformist movement, the development of the papacy in the eleventh century, the changing attitudes towards simony, clerical marriage and lay investiture, reformist rhetoric aimed at the clergy, and how reformist writings sought to change the behaviour and expectations of the aristocracy. Summarising current literature while presenting a cogent and nuanced argument about the complex nature and development of reform, this book will be invaluable for an undergraduate and specialist audience alike.

Focusing on how the papacy took an increasing role in shaping the direction of its own reform and that of society itself, this text also addresses the role of the Latin Church in Western Europe and how reformist writings sought to change the behaviour and expectations of the aristocracy.

This fascinating collection of sources, translated for the first time in English and assembled in one accessible volume, show the startling impact of papal reform in the eleventh century and its consequences. An essential collection for students of medieval history.

Medievalists have long taught that highly emotional Christian devotion, often called ‘affective piety’, appeared in Europe after the twelfth century and was primarily practiced by communities of mendicants, lay people and women. Emotional monasticism challenges this view. The first study of affective piety in an eleventh-century monastic context, it traces the early history of affective devotion through the life and works of the earliest known writer of emotional prayers, John of Fécamp, abbot of the Norman monastery of Fécamp from 1028–78. Exposing the early medieval monastic roots of later medieval affective piety, the book casts a new light on the devotional life of monks in Europe before the twelfth century and redefines how medievalists should teach the history of Christianity.

This book explores how bishops used the medieval tithe as a social and political tool in eleventh-century Germany and Italy.

The Transformation of a Religious Landscape paints a detailed picture of the sheer variety of early medieval Christian practice and organization, as well as the diverse modes in which church reform manifested itself in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. From the rich archives of the abbey of the Holy Trinity of Cava, Valerie Ramseyer reconstructed the complex religious history of southern Italy. No single religious or political figure claimed authority in the region before the eleventh century, and pastoral care was provided by a wide variety of small religious houses. The line between the secular and the regular clergy was not well pronounced, nor was the boundary between the clergy and the laity or between eastern and western religious practices. In the second half of the eleventh century, however, the archbishop of Salerno and the powerful abbey of Cava acted to transform the situation. Centralized and hierarchical ecclesiastical structures took shape, and an effort was made to standardize religious practices along the lines espoused by reform popes such as Leo IX and Gregory VII. Yet prelates in southern Italy did not accept all aspects of the reform program emanating from centers such as Rome and Cluny, and the region's religious life continued to differ in many respects from that in Francia: priests continued to marry and have children, laypeople to found and administer churches, and Greek clerics and religious practices to coexist with those sanctioned by Rome.