Joëlle Rollo-Koster. Raiding Saint Peter: Empty Sees, Violence, and the Initiation of the Great Western Schism (1378). Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2008. 288 S. $129.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-90-04-16560-1.
Reviewed by Volker Leppin (Theologische Fakultät, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena)
Published on H-German (July, 2008)
A New Look at the Great Schism
In this book, the author aims to contest the commonplace view of the elections that initiated the Great Schism of western Christianity, initiated by a rivalry between a Roman pope and a rival claimant at Avignon. While the accepted narrative describes Roman powers struggling against anti-Roman powers, which led to French domination of the papacy, Joëlle Rollo-Koster suggests that the overt violence accompanying the election of Urban VI was not related to this specific conflict, but rather an extreme, but not singular, expression of violence as ritual component of papal elections. Without any question, this provocative perspective reveals the analytic possibilities of the cultural turn in humanities when applied to a crucial point of the medieval historical narrative. What Rollo-Koster demonstrates is, indeed, that pillaging, robbery, and looting always figured in the rites of choosing a new pope.
Most parts of the book demonstrate this point explicitly. The first chapter describes the problem of the empty see. The death of a pope set into action a whole ensemble of administrative and also liturgical efforts to handle the interregnum. Most of the choices involved in these efforts were organized clearly to add a degree of certainty to the inherent instability of an interregnum. One element of these regular practices was the commission of acts of violence as a kind of robbery of something that, in another stage of the rituals, could be given back as a gift and expression of charity: the stationary possessions of the deceased pope. From this perspective, looting both by members of the pope's household and the poor of the city was seen as a legitimate form of participation in negotiating the interregnum.
While chapter 1 overflows with source material that the author handles quite carefully, the second chapter offers a more theoretical approach, applying anthropological theories about liminal phenomena. The location of the book within the methodological framework of historical anthropology is not altogether fruitful. Of course the definition of liminal phenomena fits what Rollo-Koster describes about papal interregna on a basic level, given that interregna, like liminal phenomena, are "in-between" situations. But the advantages of employing this term rather than resorting to a classical sociological analysis of interregna remain unclear. This methodological chapter is thus isolated from the other parts of the book. The third chapter, which presents evidence that looting in the context of papal elections had a venerable history at Rome and thus should be seen as normal, presents mostly material that the author published previously as an essay in 2005. Many readers may find it easiest to begin the book by reading this strong chapter.
The fourth and final chapter brings us then to proof for the book's argument about its main topic: the violence around the papal elections of 1378. Following the thread of the work, Rollo-Koster shows that it, too, was normal. It took on extreme forms, however, because of the special situation--the long vacancy in Roman eyes that stemmed from the Avignon exile and the resulting need Romans felt to underline their traditional right of ritual participation in the selection of the successor. In contrast to this mood, papal elections had gradually developed a practice that involved decision-making behind closed doors, which deepened the boundaries between the papal electors and the people of the city. This tension--and not so much the national tensions between Italian and non-Italian cardinals--made violence a significant component of the concurrent election of Clement VII shortly after that of Urban.
Rollo-Koster's point about violence is both interesting and important, although her argument makes it hard to explain why the non-Italians in the College of Cardinals saw this violence as illegitimate, while the Italians found it normal. A full account of these allegiances has been neglected in the entire historiography of the election, not just Rollo-Koster's work. In any case, in light of Rollo-Koster's work, the historiography of the schism may no longer ignore the ritual elements of the associated violence.
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Citation:
Volker Leppin. Review of Rollo-Koster, Joëlle, Raiding Saint Peter: Empty Sees, Violence, and the Initiation of the Great Western Schism (1378).
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
July, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14783
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