7 - Between Plena Caritas and Plenitudo Legis: The Ecclesiology of the Norman Anonymous

Summary

The Norman Anonymous – written sometime between 1096 and 1106 in the cathedral city of Rouen – is a prime example of a medieval Latin text that is better known than read. It is most commonly presented in accounts of medieval political thought as one of the more articulate statements about sacred kingship. The unknown author constructed an ingenious argument that the Christian king is more an heir to Christ than a priest because the priest sacramentally represents only the humanity of Christ, whereas a king represents the divinity of Christ the King. Given the assumption in the medieval world that the divine is always superior to the mundane, this line of argument clearly identified the king as the highest authority in medieval society. Moreover, when this position is taken in concert with how the texts treat the papacy, the Norman Anonymous also appears to be a vociferous and radical rebuttal to the so-called ‘Gregorian’ reforms that had only begun to surface some fifty years earlier in Rome. Thus, many modern scholars have categorized the Norman Anonymous as a polemical, anti-Gregorian, and ‘royalist’ text without necessarily querying whether these labels fully represent the entire text. That kingship is sacramentally superior to ecclesiastical authority is indeed a fascinating theological argument. It is instructive to note, however, that the discussions of the relationship between kingship (regnum) and priesthood (sacerdotium) account for a minority of the texts in the entire collection.