PIMSPontifical Institute
of
Mediaeval Studies

Peter M Michelli comes to PIMS from the University of California Berkeley, where he earned his PhD in History and Medieval Studies under the supervision of Maureen C. Miller. His dissertation, “Bishops and Their Rights: the Archdiocese of Bari in the Central Middle Ages,” examines how a local church and its archbishops in the Kingdom of Sicily navigated shifting relationships with the papacy and a series of secular authorities as well as between them. It does so through the lens of church property, power, and privileges as the archdiocese grew in stature and importance in the Norman and Angevin period.  At PIMS, he is working on the publication of his first book, an expansion of the dissertation, which incorporates a comparative framework situating developments in Bari within the wider ecclesiastical landscape of southern Italy and Sicily. He is also working on an article that reassesses the relationship between Charles of Anjou and the local church in southern Italy.