UC Berkeley

“Bishops and Their Rights: the Archdiocese of Bari in the Central Middle Ages” examines how a local church and its bishop in Apulia navigated relations with the papacy and an array of secular rulers as well as between them. To do so, it traces the archdiocese’s acquisition, defense, and reconsolidation of its property and fiscal rights from its origins in the early Middle Ages to the late thirteenth century. Several patterns emerge through the examination of the see’s property and rights: first, new secular rulers were most generous with the local church; second, papal influence and authority generally increased in the region after 1000CE; third, and most importantly, the bishop and the local church were active players in both of these phenomena. This dissertation makes three critical contributions to our understanding of the medieval church and southern Italy. First, it challenges an established periodization that undergirds the study of the region. The practice of dividing the history of southern Italy based on the ethnicity of the ruling class has limited our understanding of the south’s development. While recent historiography has been more attentive to continuities between regimes, the emphasis is often limited to the question of secular political administration. “Bishops and Their Rights,” on the other hand, looks beyond the conventional paradigm and traces the development and defense of the bishop’s resources across traditional periods. Second, this dissertation makes a significant methodological contribution to our understanding of the medieval church. It diverges from standard top-down histories of the Church, which, drawing on papal and royal sources, recount the vicissitudes of papal-royal relations. Integrating local documents, my dissertation, in contrast, presents a bottom-up and textured history of how papal and royal ambitions operated on the ground. In other words, it is a case study of a large archdiocese and how the archbishops of Bari navigated monumental changes occurring at the heart of the kingdom. In doing so, it treats the archbishop as a vector through which we can see a local community's relations to ruling authorities. Lastly, by focusing on the experience of bishops and their local communities, my dissertation offers a new understanding of a critical period of political and social change. The southern dioceses and their bishops have long been overlooked due to their modest wealth and minimal role in secular government, unlike their counterparts in northern Italy. Still, as leaders of their religious communities, prelates held a central role in medieval society, acting as crucial intermediaries between local communities and the centralized system of rule. While many dioceses left behind few documents, if any at all, Bari holds a trove of documentary sources. Ultimately, “Bishops and their Property” contributes to a more dynamic and inclusive portrait of how local communities adapted to the significant changes during the Central Middle Ages.