The purpose of this research is to examine Part I of I.S. Robinson's history of the medieval papacy, The Papacy, 1073-1198: Continuity and Innovation. The plan of the research will be to set forth the overall pattern in which information emerges in the work, and then to discuss the principal points of interest and analysis that arise throughout. As appropriate, reference will be made to the effectiveness Robinson's method and the persuasiveness of his point of view.
In order to understand the significance of The Papacy as a modern history of the medieval Church in the larger context of European medieval history, it is useful to examine the style that Robinson uses to convey his ideas. His thesis is set forth in the introduction, wherein he explains the two parts of the work. Part I is subtitled "The Papal Government," and Part II, as the contents show, is subtitled "The Papacy and the Secular Powers." In the first part of the book, Robinson explores in detail the constituents of the Church in general and the Papacy in particular as institutions that were emerging or more exactly finding their way into the overall organizational scheme of European history and administration. In the second part of the book, as the introduction notes, Robinson deals with the relationship between this duly constituted institutional framework and the other important institution of medieval Europe, the nation-state, as it was beginning to emerge out of feudalism.
Robinson cites a comment by the influential medieval cleric Bernard of Clairvaux in which a theory of the papacy was put forward. The pope, Bernard wrote, "must rule not the people of this or that city or region or kingdom . . . not one people but all people . . . the universal Church spread throughout the world, made up of all the churches" (p. ix). This comment (c. 1150) is an important aspect of the positioning of Robinson's design for his history, inasmuch as the description of t...