History of the Medieval Papacy

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.

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zing what had become a wretchedly corrupt ecclesiastical system. Meanwhile, some cardinals, like some secular rulers, sought ecclesiastical authority independent of papal authority, and the papacy sought to entrench itself as the overriding ecclesiastical authority within the church just as much as it sought to establish spiritual authority over secular authority outside the church. In this regard, Robinson cites Bernard of Clairvaux's rather prevaricating attitude toward the relationship of pope to cardinals: "Presumably Bernard saw no discrepancy between the statements that the cardinalate was divinely ordained and that the cardinals had no power save that granted to them by the pope" (p. 40). One may infer that internal rivalries between cardinals and pope were something that the Church could absorb and work out. Underlying this was the more important point that church authority in general was divinely ordained and therefore took precedence over secular authority. The solution appears to have been for the cardinals to assume the role of high-management factotum for the papacy (which appointed and was elected by cardinals in any case), by implication the Church itself, and by extension (as one knows from the prominence of s
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2269
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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