Epilogue

Abstract

The practice of monastic exemption changed forever in the late eleventh century. Most modern studies on the subject, in fact, begin their accounts with the pontificate of Urban II (1088–99). Paul Fabre is largely responsible for this enduring chronology and interpretive paradigm. He argued for the papacy’s intervention in a monastery’s spiritual affairs, which in turn marked a reversal of fortunes for the diocesan bishop, where previously he had maintained a foothold through the power of ordination. There is some truth to this claim, even if – as this book has demonstrated – the papacy’s involvement was a constant in monastic life and governance since the late sixth century. This landmark shift in monastic exemption practice nevertheless offers a fitting conclusion to this book. It signals a changing institutional and ideological character that provided a good constitutional model to twelfth-and thirteenth-century popes and canonists. The result was a decidedly more permanent dimension to monastic exemption, which served to define the papacy’s authority over secular and ecclesiastical authorities and the latter’s position within monastic communities. In this respect, exemptions from the late eleventh century came to be used as legislative expressions of the papacy’s proprietary rights – ties of dependency and promises of apostolic protection, whose special relationship provided monasteries with a profitable legal position....