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2 results

  • 2 - The History of Papal Diplomatics

  • D. L. d'Avray, University College London
  • Book:
    The Power of Protocol
    Published online:
    20 July 2023
    Print publication:
    10 August 2023, pp 14-37

  • Summary

    Diplomatics as a discipline begins in the seventeenth century with an argument between a Jesuit and a Benedictine monk about the authenticity of charters. The Benedictine’s seminal treatise De Re Diplomatica gave the discipline an identity, the core of which is preserved in treatises on ‘pure’ Diplomatics, and also specifically on papal Diplomatics, up to the present day. The discipline’s boundaries did not remain static, however, and already in the eighteenth century a tradition of applying Diplomatics to substantive historical problems had begun. After World War II Heinrich Fichtenau defined the contours of applied Diplomatics.

The Power of Protocol
  • Diplomatics and the Dynamics of Papal Government, c. 400 – c.1600
  • D. L. d'Avray
  • Published online:
    20 July 2023
    Print publication:
    10 August 2023
  • How did the papacy govern European religious life without a proper bureaucracy and the normal resources of a state? From late Antiquity, papal responses were in demand. The 'apostolic see' took over from Roman emperors the discourse and demeanour of a religious ruler of the Latin world. Over the centuries, it acquired governmental authority analogous to that of a secular state – except that it lacked powers of physical enforcement, a solid financial base (aside from short periods) and a bureaucracy as defined by Max Weber. Through the discipline of Applied Diplomatics, which investigates the structures and settings of documents to solve substantive historical problems, The Power of Protocol explores how such a demand for papal services was met. It is about the genesis and structure of papal documents – a key to papal history generally – from the Roman empire to after the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, and is the only book of its kind.