Reformatio or restauratio? The rehabilitation of Pope Gregory VII in Catholic historiography after Trent

Abstract

AbstractThis essay highlights the role played by Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073–85) in the confessional historiography of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A pivotal figure in ecclesiastical history, this medieval pope was the subject of lively historical debate. The Lutheran Magdeburg Centuries assessed Gregory as the best example of the increasing dominion of the Antichrist’s spirit in the Latin Church, and this view was generally shared by all Protestant scholars. The eleventh volume of the Annales ecclesiastici (Ecclesiastical Annals, 1605) by Caesar Baronio was the major attempt to rehabilitate Gregory’s status, in particular broadening the richness of contemporary sources. Baronio succeeded in creating a new critical account of Gregory. Contrary to the Protestant apocalyptic view, Gregory was not the symbol of the end of the first Christian millennium; instead, he safeguarded the apostolic purity of the Church. Baronio became a spokesman for the Doctrina Hildebrandina, a doctrine sanctioned by the decrees of the Council of Trent (1545–63) and reinforced by subsequent Catholic theologians. What emerges is, above all, a certain uniformity of historical method in all confessional parties. In addition, the pontificate of Gregory VII represented a crucial turning point in the Catholic interpretation of history as well as in the Protestant one.