The Middle Ages played an important role in the religious life of the faithful, through the cult rendered to the martyrs and the confessors. In parallel with changes in conceptions of sainthood, there was a significant shift both in the development of the idea of sanctuary and in the geographical distribution of sanctuaries. Until the Carolingian period, there seem to have been relatively few places that were considered holy by the Christians of the West and that attracted large numbers of pilgrims. Increased control over the cult of saints by the hierarchy was accompanied by a process of verification, and hence definition, by the papacy on behalf of the Roman Church. The modernisation of the Roman sanctoral was one of the principal manifestations of this new attitude to the cult of saints on the part of the church. Historians still debate the reasons for the explosion of the Marian cult in the final centuries of the Middle Ages.

William's idea of the return to the golden age recalls the words in which Peter Damian had described the reform of the papacy forty years before:' the golden age of the apostles is now restored'; 'the golden age of David is renewed'. To supporters of the reform papacy the golden age of the church was that ancient period in which the faithful had built and endowed churches and showered their wealth on the clergy. The Pauline idea of reform influenced the early medieval monastic conversion to religion and played a significant part in the monastic reform movements of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. The ideal of the regular canonical life for the secular clergy was championed by the principal figures of the papal reform movement. The Gregorian reform was an attempt to restore not only the spirituality and standards of conduct of that golden age but also the material conditions and even the physical appearance of the churches.

Descriptions of the structure of the church in the period 1073-1216 often drew an analogy with secular government. Bernard of Clairvaux, the most influential writer on papal authority in the twelfth century, eschewed monarchical language but expressed the supremacy of the Roman church through a range of alternative images. The Roman church is 'the head of the world through whom the keys and judgement-seats are granted to all bishoprics'. Huguccio concluded that the Roman church instituted all prelates, whatever their ecclesiastical dignity or office. The years 1073-1216 saw the pope firmly established as supreme judge not only of all men but also of the law itself. The holy Roman church confers right and authority on the sacred canons, but she herself is not bound by them, because she has the right of making the canons. The pope's right to confer privileges on ecclesiastical institutions and his right to cancel such privileges equally revealed his dominion over the law.

This chapter emphasizes the administrative underpinning that allowed a strengthened papacy to emerge at the end of the twelfth century under Pope Innocent III as the single most influential political and spiritual institution of Latin Christendom. The Lateran palace also served as administrative centre of the Roman church as well as of her temporal properties: the duchy of Rome and the patrimonies of the see of St Peter. From a very early period the popes were more than just bishops of Rome. Their position of leadership in the rest of Christendom, with regard to jurisdiction going back to the council of Sardica which allowed deposed bishops and other clergy to appeal to the Roman see, brought with it the frequent use of emissaries or legates as papal representatives, for instance at ecumenical councils. In the early twelfth century the college of cardinals included three ranks: bishops, priests and deacons.

The expression 'Apostolic Fathers' corresponds to an idea of seventeenth century origin. The primitive Christian literature takes a variety of forms, but by far the most frequent form is that of the letter. In the Roman-Hellenistic world letters were a common, if not frequent, means of communication among ordinary folk, for personal or business purposes. Of the letters in the New Testament, fourteen were traditionally attributed to Paul. Of these, the unquestionably genuine ones are 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon, Galatians and Romans. The term 'gospel' eventually came, in early Christianity, to identify works of widely differing sorts. The Valentinian Gospel of Truth appears to be a sermon or treatise. The Gospel of Thomas is an anthology of sayings of Jesus. Among the Apostolic Fathers, some of the characteristics of the apocalyptic literature are shared by The Shepherd of Hermas, which stems from the Roman Church of the early second century.

The papacy was a unique sort of monarchy in that it claimed jurisdiction in both spiritual and temporal affairs. This chapter discusses a characteristic feature of thirteenth-century papal government: the use of general councils as a major instrument of policy. There were three of them: Lateran IV (1215); Lyons I (1245); Lyons II (1274). Between the accession of Innocent III in January 1198 and the death of Boniface VIII in October 1303, eighteen popes ruled the Church. Popes were elected to succeed St Peter. They were heirs to all that authority which Christ had assigned to the leader of the Apostles when he appointed him as head of his newly founded Church. Innocent III was no mere theorist of papal leadership. He was also its leading thirteenth-century exponent. Innocent IV was very much Gregory IX's man. He had served in his curia throughout his working life by rising steadily through the ranks of the papal judiciary,.

This chapter provides the understanding of papal history in the areas of political symbolism and manifestations of public authority and sheds some light on the economic life of papal Rome. The assumption of territorial rule and the entry of the local Roman nobility into the clergy brought about an increase in the routine business and a refinement of the structures of the Roman church. The Roman church also exercised significant jurisdiction and influence in and around Rome in ways that were only marginally connected to the spiritual functions of the church. In the ninth century, the popes began to reassert themselves. Gregory IV, for example, explicitly quoted Gelasius in a letter dated 833 to some Frankish bishops. Gregory, on his arrival in Francia, claimed that he had come to restore the peace of the Christian world, while the bishops told him he had no business sitting in judgement upon the emperor.