Rome and the Invention of the Papacy: The Liber Pontificalis by Rosamond McKitterick

Abstract

Reviewed by: Rome and the Invention of the Papacy: The Liber Pontificalis by Rosamond McKitterick Carmela Vircillo Franklin Rome and the Invention of the Papacy: The Liber Pontificalis Rosamond McKitterick Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. 288. ISBN: 978-110-883682-1 In this multifaceted and wide-ranging book, eminent historian of Carolingian Europe Rosamond McKitterick brings together her studies on early medieval Rome and its Liber pontificalis, the series of papal biographies composed in the early sixth century, and continued into the papacy of Stephen V (885–891). Rome and the Invention of the Papacy interprets the Liber pontificalis as a deliberate project originating within the papal court and with the full participation of the popes, a response to the political map put in place after the fall of the western Roman Empire. The Liber's primary goal was to consolidate Rome's new image as a Christian capital, constructed both visibly and intellectually over the pagan city, whose bishops replaced the emperors in power. The story of this text as told in McKitterick's narrative begins with a discussion of its much-debated origins, its pagan and Christian models, and the foundational biography of the Apostle Peter. McKitterick continues then to the chronicle's representation of the physical city renovated by Constantine's building program, and the chronicle's role in the creation of doctrine and liturgy, and of legal and ecclesiological institutions. The final chapter (Chapter 6) investigates how, through its various redactions and abbreviations, and its extensive manuscript transmission, the Liber pontificalis served as a crucial instrument by which the new image of Rome and of its popes [End Page 542] was communicated and exploited in the rest of Italy and abroad. This brief overview is but a meager summary of the rich variety of topics covered in this book. McKitterick joins scholars such as Hermann Geertman, Lidia Capo, Andrea Verardi and Clemens Gantner, who, since the late twentieth century, began to challenge the consensus on the Liber pontificalis's origins and development enshrined in the critical editions published by Louis Duchesne and Theodor Mommsen in the last decade of the nineteenth century. McKitterick's perspective, as she states clearly, departs from earlier approaches which have considered the papal chronicle as an outgrowth of local concerns, of ecclesial and doctrinal controversies and schism, such as the Laurentian and Acacian schisms of the late fifth and early sixth centuries, and of the establishment of Rome's episcopal primacy and the correct order of the apostolic succession. While Mommsen's approach to the Liber pontificalis was completely philological (tellingly, he offered no commentary), Duchesne, a Roman Catholic priest, was keenly invested in the political and ecclesiological implications of the text and its reception even into modern times, as his massive edition and extensive publications illustrate. McKitterick's book, in its attention to the origins and transmission history of the text of the Liber and its impact on a comprehensive range of subjects, continues Duchesne's tradition. McKitterick's strategy utilizes a double approach. One is to interpret the Liber pontificalis from its own internal narrative, as illustrated, for example, by her novel consideration of the role of the people of Rome as a key protagonist of the chronicle (Chapter 2). The other approach is from perspectives provided by the historical contexts of its varied reception, as, for example, in her account of Carolingian liturgists' appreciation of Rome's historical position in liturgical development (Chapter 5). While painting a fuller panorama of the historical and political contexts in which the papal chronicle was composed and received, the details of the text and of its manuscript transmission are sometimes inaccurate. Thus, the oldest surviving member of the E-class of manuscripts, Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, Vat. lat. 3764 (E1), is wrongly attributed to the scriptorium of the Abbey of Farfa, rather than to Rome as shown by Paola Supino Martini, Roma e l'area grafica romanesca. Secoli X-XII (1987). Additionally, the oldest surviving complete manuscript of the A-class manuscripts, Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS 490, is not, as asserted here, the source of the other manuscripts of this class, as illustrated in both Duchesne's...