Ecclesiastical Reform in Historiographical Context

Abstract

The article initially discusses recent approaches to ecclesiastical reform and the Investiture Contest. In particular, it discusses the extent to which recent scholarship's concern with "power," "local units," "social aspects," "discourse," and "gender" has undermined earlier master narratives -accentuating as these did the unity of reform. The last part of the article argues for the need to establish new master narratives and puts forward a few suggestions in that respect.In a word, the turbulence of this period carried with it so many disasters, so many schisms, so many dangers of soul and of body that it alone because of the cruelty of the persecution and its long duration would suffice to demonstrate the unhappy lot of our human wretchedness. 2These words, from the pen of the 12th century historian Otto of Freising, encapsulate the Investiture Contest, with its surrounding reform movement, as a period of "human wretchedness." The "turbulence," "disasters," and "schisms" emerging in the wake of the attempt to liberate the church were, according to Otto, the inevitable results of the church transgressing its position within an Augustinian world order. Yet, Otto's harsh moral-theological verdict constitutes only one of many historical interpretations of the period. From contemporary and near-contemporary observers to the most renowned interpretations of the 19th and early 20th century -first and foremost, those of Auguste Fliche and Gerd Tellenbach 3 -the predominating tendency has been to derive unified interpretations from one or two characteristic features of the period. Fliche and Tellenbach were both concerned with the institutional history of the high medieval church, but whereas Fliche focused on popes and the reform of the papacy in the last part of the 11th century, Tellenbach emphasized the Investiture Contest rather than the reform movement and the extent to which the Contest accentuated authoritynotions of how to reconstitute "the right order of the world."In recent decades, these master narratives -emphasizing different forms of unity -have come under scrutiny from new narratives and approaches to the thematic complex involving the reform movement and the Investiture Contest. In the following, I will initially discuss recent scholarship with a particular emphasis on the dialog between older master narratives and new narratives in terms of what I call "the pluralization of ecclesiastical reform." Thereafter, I will ref lect on the need for new interpretive frameworks by presenting a few challenges and suggestions for further research.

Flodoard of Rheims and the historiography of the tenth‐century West

“…Hamilton, ). At the same time, the value of reform as an analytical concept is now a subject of considerable debate (Barrow, ; Leyser, ; Melve, ; Miller, ). Can one speak of reform without falling into teleology?…”