Andrea Lostumbo

Doktorand in der mittelalterlichen Geschichte

Research Project

The Mediterranean of Paschal II. Ecclesiology and crusade at the beginning of XII century (1098-1118)

The project aims to study the pontificate of Paschal II, analyzing his epistolary and providing a new calendar of letters. A “Mediterranean” view will be used, capable of merging in a unified discourse the individual areas of interest, in this case: the Italic peninsula, the Iberian peninsula, and the Crusader States (under construction). The focus of the thesis will be the identification of Paschal II's ecclesiology, with particular attention to the crusade dimension. Precisely the latter appears difficult to define: the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 and the subsequent success of Urban II's iter ierosolimitanum are not enough to define the concept of crusade, nor the ecclesiology behind it. The hypothesis that is proposed here, is that the crusade experience, fully developed under Ranier of Bleda in the construction of the crusader territories overseas, is nothing but a violent declination of the libertas ecclesiae. Therefore, it can be studied in synopsis with similar events: the question of the Roman aristocracy and the control of Rome's urban territory, the “war of the patriarchs” in Jerusalem and the relationship with Byzantium, and finally the problem of the Iberian dioceses. If Libertas ecclesiae constitutes, in its declinations, the fil rouge running through the research, the libertas of the Ecclesia Romana, that is, the Petrine primacy, will be a fundamental element in the course of the work, with the aim to reinterpret the figure of the reforming pope Paschal II, beyond the reform.