Seminar: “Papal Communications with Female Rulers in the Anglo-Norman World”
Daniel Armstrong (Mellon Fellow, PIMS)
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the pope went from a figure largely disregarded beyond the walls of Rome to the highest authority on Earth. As a result, there was a striking shift in the relationship between the papacy and Europe’s rulers. The history of this transformation has so far been predominantly written as one of connections between men, with kings, leading churchmen, and noblemen at the centre of scholarly attentions on the papacy’s diplomatic relations. Yet there has been little consideration of papal relations with female rulers other than the occasional exceptional figure, such as Matilda of Tuscany. It is, therefore, time to include a wider range of elite women within our narrative of the medieval papacy’s transformation. There is a pressing need to fill this gap since recent work by the likes of Heather Tanner, Laura Gathagan, and Lois Huneycutt have called for the inclusion of medieval women into the main narrative of medieval history and with this inclusion the need the to reconstruct our understanding of ‘the operation of medieval power structures as a whole’.
In this seminar, I will introduce my new project which aims to consider papal communications by, with, for, and about female rulers in the Anglo-Norman World. I will provide an overview of the project and outline the three strands of investigation that I intend to pursue. Firstly, a comparative piece on Gregory VII’s communications with female rulers to set the project within a wider European context. Secondly, a consideration of Matilda of Scotland’s role in the English Investiture Controversy (1100-1107). Thirdly, an examination of the Empress Matilda and how the papacy viewed her claims to the English throne.
Image: British Library, Royal MS 14 B VI, fol. 5: Genealogical Roll of the Kings of England.