The church in Western Europe from the tenth to the early twelfth century (review)

Reviews 315 Tellenbach, Gerd, The church in Western Europe from the tenth to the early twelfth century (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993; paper; pp. xix, 403; R R P AU$49.95. It is generally taken for granted that the 'Gregorian reform' of the eleventh century was a decisive turning-point in the history of the medieval church. Historians like Walter Ullmann, and many others, have argued that the reform programme of Pope Gregory VII led to the emancipation of religious institutions from customary lay control and created a strictiy hierarchical church of the clergy, separate from lay society and superior to it and under the control, and direction of the pope in Rome. Gerd Tellenbach begs to differ. Distilling sixty years' research and writing into this book, he urges scepticism about such claims and puts forward an interpretation of the eleventh-century church which is founded in 'life as it was lived' rather than in the statements of great popes and theologians. H e is especially concerned to look beyond labels and clich6s which tend to be used loosely and anachronistically. While the heart of Tellenbach's work is the 'revolution' of Gregory VII and his immediate successors, he prepares the ground with an analysis of the 'structures of religious beliefs' in the preceding 150 years. H e characterises the church as, for the most part, a parochial and diocesan reality, with the papacy focussed mainly on Roman affairs and exercising only a spiritual and symbolic prestige. It would be largely anachronistic, he feels, to talk of the papacy 'rating the church' in this period. Also covered in some detail is the role of sacral kingship within the church, as well as the necessarily close links between the clergy and the world of property and income. A m o n g the other anachronisms which Tellenbach dismisses are the idea that popular piety and 'official' religion can be separated, the view that Cluny and its associated monasteries constituted a religious order and a precursor of Gregorian reform, and the tendency to regard the theory of the three orders (oratores, pugnatores, laboratores) as an accurate model of social structures of the time. Tellenbach is also sceptical about the extent to which this period can be characterised as morally degenerate and more prone to simony than earlier ones. While acknowledging the radical nature of Gregory's ideas about the role of the papacy in the church, Tellenbach emphasises the 'tragedy' of his pontificate. Gregory's claims to obedience were largely ignored and he left the papacy in a state of confusion and schism. His vision was 'naive and 316 Reviews unrealistic', and its fulfilment was made impossible by the realities of the papacy's lack of control over regional synods and local power structures, and over the development of canon law. There were also serious limits on the extent to which ideas could be propagated within the church. Gregory was unable to enforce clerical celibacy or to exclude kings from the selection of bishops. The existence of a coherent 'reform programme' is doubtful, and Gregory's inflexibility with the Emperor Henry IV had more to do with a demand for absolute obedience than with differing views over the investiture of bishops. His successors were more pragmatic and realistic. Tellenbach's determination to untangle the messier, more complicated realities of history from the tendency to believe the theoretical pronouncements of its major actors is appealing and persuasive. Whether his case is entirely convincing is another matter. Despite the length of this book, there are times when more evidence of a specific and detailed kind is needed to prove a contentious point. There is little attempt to examine the effects of Gregory's ideas and actions in the longer term, in the period after 1125. At the very least, however, Tellenbach forces us to question seriously the received assumptions about 'Gregorian reform' and 'papal government', instead of taking them for granted. In many ways, the book is an extended meditation on the nature of 'the church' in medieval Europe, rather than a textbook history of the period. Based on the 1988 German edition, with slight revisions, it assumes a fair...