Dissertation Spotlight | The Power of the Populus

Steck, Andrew N. “The Concept of the Populus in Early Medieval Rome.” Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 2019.

In 799, several Romans assaulted Leo III (r. 795-816) during the procession for the Major Litany.[1] The assailants supposedly gouged out the pope’s eyes and cut off his tongue in an assault that symbolized the withdrawal of the consent and consensus of the Roman populus to the pope’s rule. Leo miraculously healed and escaped to Charlemagne’s protection at Paderborn. Sympathetic to Leo’s plight, the Frankish king gave the pope an armed honor guard for Leo’s return to Rome in late 799. In an important gesture intended to facilitate communal reunification, the Roman crowd received Leo with a ceremonial entrance (adventus) that signaled the pope’s re-integration into the Roman community and the Romans later celebrated Charlemagne’s arrival in November, 800, with a grand ceremonial entrance shortly before the pope crowned him as the first Western emperor since 476.

The Concept of the Populus in Early Medieval Rome analyzes how early medieval popes used the concept of the sovereign corporate body of Romans (populus) to legitimize their activities and build, or maintain, power from the start of the Laurentian Schism in 498 to the death of pope Formosus in 896. Fundamentally, this is a study of an important way that institutions build and maintain power examined through the lenses of the Roman people and the process of the ‘papalization’ of Rome. Textual sources, especially the quasi-official history of the papacy and record of papal donations known as the Liber Pontificalis, continuously link the papacy and the populus during these centuries, indicating that the papacy, despite being an ostensible monarchy, was dependent on a carefully-crafted rhetoric of the populus for legitimacy.[2] The invocation of the populus was obligatory, though not legally mandated, for legitimizing and justifying a wide range of papal activities. Furthermore, rhetorical uses of the populus demonstrate that the absence of the populus from rhetoric was as carefully-crafted and strategic as invocations were.

Papal rhetoric regarding the populus is most conspicuous in Roman sources, but Frankish sources provide important corroboration or clarification of the claims from Roman sources. The Liber Pontificalis was instrumentalized most heavily for this task and was distributed widely throughout Europe. When combined with other papal materials circulating throughout Europe, such as liturgical ordines or the papal formulary now called the Liber Diurnus, papal rhetoric created the appearance both that the popes controlled Rome’s populus and that the popes marshalled popular support in order to achieve their goals. I use Frankish sources throughout, especially the annales and decrees of governance such as the Constitutio Romana, to help analyze papal propaganda, as those sources will often attempt to directly deny or repudiate papal rhetoric.

This dissertation focuses on the populus as it appeared in structured, planned settings. Because the role of the people in late antique and early medieval papal policy has not previously been explored systematically, I instead used both crowd theory, especially the works of Elias Canetti and George Rudé,[3] and secondary literature about late antiquity that substantially feature crowds in creating my typology.[4] Collectively, these works reveal that spontaneous and violent gatherings are typically indications of systemic problems that reached a rupture point, which are of limited use for investigating the role of the people in papal policy. Structured meetings of the populus, even if they are chronologically irregular, reveal more clearly the systematic and propagandistic thought of the papal administration, and so demonstrate how the institution of the papacy used rhetoric and propaganda to build and maintain power.

Chapter One (“Populus Romanus”) establishes that the medieval connotations of the Roman populus are drawn directly from antiquity. The populus was an obligatory political body in the waning days of the Roman Republic that became increasingly detached from governance during the civil wars and political reordering of the third and fourth centuries, as emperors jealously hoarded power and dominated Roman politics. While examining the populus in late antiquity, I establish the ‘Christianization’ of the city of Rome, beginning in the fourth century with Constantine’s Christian building projects, as the forerunner of the papalization of Rome that occurred during the early Middle Ages.[5] At the dawn of the fifth century, the concept of the populus was the secular, corporate body of all Roman citizens that shifted to a concept of the corporate body of Christians, explicated particularly thoroughly in Augustine’s discussion of the populus christianus in book nineteen of the City of God (De civitate dei).[6] By the dawn of the sixth century, especially because of upheavals in the Roman world, the populus was an important actor in papal elections, ceremonial entries, and special religious functions.

Chapter Two (“Electio et Consecratio”) argues that the participation of the Roman populus was obligatory for the election of popes and textual descriptions of the populus were central to papal efforts to establish elections as a means of maintaining independence in the eighth and ninth centuries. Justinian’s attempts to dominate the Italian peninsula and the overall transition from Roman to Germanic domination caused several contentious elections and impositions by outside powers. There are virtually no mentions of elections again until discussions of crowd participation began again in earnest in the late seventh century, when the popes began using descriptions of elections in the widely-circulated Liber Pontificalis to declare Rome’s independence from the Byzantine imperial administration. I therefore argue that electoral legitimacy became a means of securing independence instead of appealing to the emperor for electoral approval. In the early ninth century, after the Carolingians attempted to gain control over the Roman electoral process through such means as the Constitutio Romana, the papacy emphasized the participation of the populus in consecrations and de-emphasized participation in elections.[7] Furthermore, my discussion of elections establishes the elements of a ‘proper’ election and argues that historians can use deviations from or obfuscations of the ‘proper’ elements to determine which popes might have had an uncanonical path to the Petrine throne.[8]

Chapter Three (“Adventus in Romam”) argues that textual representations of the populus in ceremonial entries, especially adventus, indicates the consent and consensus of the papacy, and the enthusiasm with which the ceremony was performed indicates the enthusiasm of the papacy for its alliances with the rulers of Christendom. Entrance ceremonies were an effective way to welcome rulers into communion with the Roman populus and the pope. Some adventus, such as that of Constans II in 663, followed ceremonial tradition with scrupulous correctness, while others, such as that of Charlemagne in 774, incorporated ceremonial flourishes and a larger participating population. In 663, the papacy was increasingly wary of the Byzantine alliance, while in 774, the papacy desperately needed Charlemagne’s aid against the Lombards, and so the manner in which the Romans accepted foreign rulers into the Roman community is legible through the recorded details of the ceremony. The populus also became important component parts of both the built environment and soundscape(s) of the ceremonies, and so can also be analyzed in spatial terms. The adventus of the Frankish king Lothar II (r. 855-869) concludes the chapter, for he received no entrance ceremony after meeting with emperor Louis II (r. 844-875) and pope Hadrian II (r. 867-872) to discuss his famous divorce from Waldrada. The virtually tactile silence he encountered demonstrates the extent to which the populus communicated consent.

Chapter Four (“Processio pro populo”) argues that the participation of the populus was also obligatory for irregular religio-liturgical events, especially for communal penance. The events under consideration in this chapter range from the penitential letania septiformis ordered by Gregory I (r. 590-604) to the exorcism of a basilisk under Leo IIII (r. 847-855). Though the populus was also responsible for participating in celebratory events, such as the discovery and translation of the head of St. George under Zacharias I (r. 741-752), I argue that nearly all irregular ceremonies were a result of negative events and were reflective of contemporaneous anxieties. Seventh-century processions reflect a fear of natural events, while eighth- and ninth-century processions reflect fears of political and territorial aggression, especially in the form of the Lombards. Even several processions of thanksgiving were only temporary respites from the pressures of possible invasion. As such, this chapter establishes the populus as an important way to understand how the popes used the idea of community to combat political and religious pressures.

In conclusion, The Concept of the Populus in Early Medieval Rome uses the Roman populus to analyze an important way in which the institution of the papacy built and maintained power. Historians have written extensively about the Christianization of Rome in late antiquity and the papalization of Rome in the early Middle Ages, because they are important processes for understanding the transition from Rome as the city of the emperors to Rome as a city of the popes. Papal rhetoric utilizing the concept of the populus aided in the papalization of the city, for the papacy must be able to claim control of its own people in order to claim fully the ability to bind other churches to it doctrinally. To project this institutional power more broadly, textual sources were instrumentalized and disseminated to non-Roman audiences, especially to the Franks. In so doing, the institution of the papacy utilized the rhetoric of the populus in order to legitimize its activities and extend its regnal power in Christendom.

[1] The Major Litany (Letania Maior) is a procession celebrated annually on April 25 in observance of the Litany of the Saints and replaced the traditional Roman procession of Robigalia. For details about this event, see Joseph Dyer, “Roman Processions of the Major Litany (litaniae maiores) from the Sixth to the Twelfth Century” in Roma Felix- Formation and Reflections of Medieval Rome, ed. Éamonn Ó Carragáin and Carol Neuman De Vegvar (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2016): 112-137. For an analysis of Leo’s assault, see Matthias Becher, “Karl der Groβe und Papst Leo III: Die Ereignisse der Jahre 799 und 800 aus der Sicht der Zeitgenossen” in 799, Kunst und Kultur der Karolingerzeit: Karl der Groβe und Papst Leo III. in Paderborn, bd. 1 (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1999): 22-36.

[2] The Liber Pontificalis is the best source of information for early medieval Rome, but several important details about the source, ranging from origin date to usage, are fiercely debated by scholars. For usage and origins, see Deborah Deliyannis, “The Roman Liber Pontificalis, Papal Primacy, and the Acacian Schism,” Viator 45, no. 2 (2014): 1-16; Rosamond McKitterick, “The Representation of Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Liber Pontificalis” in Old Saint Peter’s, Rome, ed. Rosamond McKitterick, John Osborne, Carol M. Richardson, and Joanna Story (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013: 95-118. For recensions and manuscript stemma, see Herman Geertman, “La genesi del Liber Pontificalis romano. Un processo di organizzazione della memoria” in Liber, Gesta, histoire: Ecrire l’histoire des évêques et des papes, de l’Antiquité au XXIe siècle, ed. F. Bougard and M. Sot. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009: 37-107.

[3] Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, trans. Carol Stewart (New York: Continuum Books, 1962); George Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1959).

[4] Especially Timothy E. Gregory, Vox Populi: Popular Opinion and Violence in the Religious Controversies of the Fifth Century A.D. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1979); Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976); Christopher Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). Also of use is the introduction in Mark Harrison, Crowds and History: Mass Phenomena in English Towns, 1790-1835 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

[5] The details of the methods and time scale of the Christianization of late antique urban spaces are contested by scholars. See especially, Jacob Latham, “From Literal to Spiritual Soldiers of Christ: Disputed Episcopal Elections and the Advent of Christian Processions in Late Antique Rome.” Church History 81, no. 2 (June, 2012): 298-327; Nathanael Andrade, “The Processions of John Chrysostom and the Contested Spaces of Constantinople,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 18, no. 2 (Summer, 2010): 161-189; John Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development and Meaning of Stational Liturgy (Rome: Oriental Institute Press, 1987); G.W. Bowersock, “From Emperor to Bishop: The Self-Conscious Transformation of Political Power in the Fourth Century A.D.,” Classical Philology 81, no. 4 (Oct., 1986): 298-307.

[6] Sancti Aurelii Augustini episcopi De Civitate Dei libri XXII, ed. Emanuel Hoffman, CSEL 40 (Prague: F. Tempsky, 1899), see especially 19.17, 19.21, 19.23-24. See also Jeremy Duquesnay Adams, The Populus of Augustine and Jerome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), passim; Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967): 287-339; Karl Löwith, Meaning in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949): 160-174.

[7] The Constitutio Romana was a Carolingian imperial decree that granted the Carolingian dynasty broad powers over the city of Rome. While pope Eugene II (r. 824-827) accepted the decree on behalf of the Roman Church, his successors generally did not concede the stipulations of the decree. See Ottorino Bertolini, “Osservazioni sulla ‘Constitutio Romana’ e sul ‘Sacramentum cleri et populi romani’ dell’824” in Studi Medievali in onore di Antonino de Stefano (Palermo: Società siciliana per la storia patria, 1956): 43-78.

[8] The specific details varied from election to election, however electoral accounts in the Liber Pontificalis included, among other things, the groups responsible for the election, the manner in which the election took place, a statement of acclamation, and, eventually, a statement regarding consecration.

Andrew N. Steck is currently adjunct assistant professor of history at the University of Iowa. He is currently completing an article about the ecclesiology of early medieval Rome and another about the Concilium Romanum of 769.