OXFORD STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN HISTORY General Editors john h. arnold patrick j. geary and john watts Medieval Rome Stability and Crisis of a City, 900–1150 CHRIS WICKHAM 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries # Chris Wickham 2015 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2015 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2014934069 ISBN 978–0–19–968496–0 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. For Leslie, again Acknowledgements I am, as usual, very grateful for the help of friends while writing this book. Sandro Carocci and Marco Vendittelli, the real experts, gave me advice from the start, and read the whole book for me; I could not have finished it without their detailed critiques. Alessandra Molinari read and critiqued Chapter 3 and Leslie Brubaker Chapter 6; for critiques of parts of chapters I am also indebted to Caroline Good- son, Alessia Rovelli, Emanuela Montelli, Lila Yawn, and Emanuele Conte; the discussions I had with all these framed my understanding of the city. I had further help, in the form of advice and information, offprints, bibliography, or all three, from Frances Andrews, Ermanno Arslan, Giulia Barone, Antonio Berardozzi, Federico Cantini, Cristina Carbonetti Vendittelli, Michael Clanchy, Robert Coates-Stephens, Marios Costambeys, Paolo Delogu, Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri, John Doran, Lisa and James Fentress, Sergio Fontana, Patrick Healy, Hagen Keller, Mauro Lenzi, Conrad Leyser, Isa Lori Sanfilippo, Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur, Federico Marazzi, Maria Laura Marchiori, Oren Margolis, Jean-Marie Martin, Roberto Meneghini, Giuliano Milani, Emanuela Montelli, Laura Moscati, Cecilia Palombelli, Susanna Passigli (who opened up for me the Jean Coste archive at a critical moment), Anna Rapetti, Serena Romano, Riccardo Santangeli, Julia Smith, Lucrezia Spera, and Laura Vendittelli. I am indebted also to Sue Bowen and Philippa Byrne for the typing, Emily Winkler for the index, and to Harry Buglass for the maps. In Rome, I was helped constructively by the guardians of all the archives I visited, not excluding those several, not cited here, which turned out to have nothing unpublished in them; and by the librarians of a dozen libraries. I am particularly grateful here to the library of the École Française de Rome, which was my primary research library from start to finish and which is a wonderful place to work in. It must finally be noted here that the text of the book is essentially the same as that of Roma medievale. Crisi e stabilità di una città, 900–1150, published in 2013 by Viella editrice of Rome; only a few small changes and additions have been made to it for the English version. I wrote this book while being Chair of the History Faculty Board (Head of Department) in Oxford, in 2009–12. It was fascinating to be doing two such very different, but equally stimulating, things at once. I do not think it was that experience which explains the rather greater stress on political action in this book than in most of my prior writing, as that was part of my project from the start; but I do think it at least partly explains the favourable write-up in the book of Innocent II, one of the most hard-nosed, cynical, and devious popes of my entire period of study. Birmingham July 2014 Contents List of Maps xi List of Illustrations xii List of Popes xiii Abbreviations for Primary Sources and Journals xv A Note on Names xix 1. Grand Narratives 1 The Problematic 1 The Problem of Sources 5 The Problem of the Historiography 13 A Political Framework for Roman History 20 2. The Countryside and the City 35 The Land of Castles 42 The Agro Romano 52 The Vineyard Belt 89 Conclusion 107 3. The Urban Economy 111 The Urban Fabric 112 The Urban Economy 136 Macroeconomic Problems 168 4. Urban Aristocracies 181 The ‘Old Aristocracy’ and the Ancien Régime of Rome, 900–1046 186 The ‘New Aristocracy’ 220 Rome’s Aristocracies in an Italian Context 252 5. Medium Elites and Church Clienteles: The Society of Rome’s Regions in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries 259 Medium Elites 260 Three Roman Regiones 277 Social Networks in the City of Rome: Parishes, Clienteles and Informal Associations 306 6. The Geography of Ritual and Identity 321 The Ritual Construction of Rome 321 Past and Present in Rome’s Self-image 348 7. The Crisis, 1050–1150 385 Fall and Rise of a Judicial System 386 The Rules of Politics in Rome, 1050–1150 409 x Contents Political Expedients in the Crisis Decades 420 The Social Origins of the Commune 434 Bibliography 458 Index 489 List of Maps 1. The territorium S. Petri xx 2. The land of castles xxi 3. The Agro romano xxii 4. Rome outside the walls xxiii 5. The urban centre of Rome xxiv 6. The regions of Rome xxv 7. The principal churches of Rome xxvi 8. Classical and secular buildings xxvii 9. Some processions in Rome, c.1140 xxviii List of Illustrations 3.1 The Foro di Nerva in c.900, as reconstructed by Inklink 119 3.2 Forum ware (ceramica a vetrina pesante) jug (brocca), ninth or tenth century, Foro di Nerva 147 3.3 Twelfth- or thirteenth-century house on via S. Angelo in Pescheria 159 4.1 The Casa dei Crescenzi, side 236 4.2 The Casa dei Crescenzi, front 236 6.1 S. Clemente, lower church: S. Alexis fresco 355 6.2 S. Clemente, lower church: donor portrait of Beno di Rapiza, Maria 356 6.3 S. Clemente, apse mosaic 358 6.4 S. Clemente, apse mosaic: figures of lay workers macellaria and their family 359 6.5 S. Maria in Trastevere, apse mosaic 360 6.6 S. Maria in Trastevere, apse mosaic: Pope Innocent II 360 6.7 SS. Quattro Coronati, external apse 362 Picture credits: 3.1–2: Roberto Meneghini and Riccardo Santangeli Valenzani, I fori imperiali (Roma, 2007), reproduced with permission; 3.3, 4.1–2, 6.5–7: Leslie Brubaker; 6.1–4: Monastero di S. Clemente. List of Popes, 872–1216 (only those popes of the crisis century who had very little recognition in Rome have original names and offices added) John VIII (872–82) Benedict VII (974–83) Marinus I (882–4) John XIV (983–4) Hadrian III (884–5) John XV (985–96) Stephen V (885–91) Gregory V (996–9) Formosus (891–6) John XVI (997–8) Boniface VI (896) Silvester II (999–1003) Stephen VI (896–7) John XVII (1003) Romanus (897) John XVIII (1003–9) Theodore II (897) Sergius IV (1009–12) John IX (898–900) Benedict VIII (1012–24) Benedict IV (900–3) John XIX (1024–32) Leo V (903) Benedict IX (1032–45, 1045–6, 1047–8) Christopher (903–4) Silvester III (1045) Sergius III (904–11) Gregory VI (1045–6) Anastasius III (911–13) Clement II (1046–7) Lando (913–14) Damasus II (1048) John X (914–28) Leo IX (1049–54) Leo VI (928) Victor II (1055–7) Stephen VII (929–31) Stephen IX (1057–8) John XI (931–6) Benedict X (1058–60) Leo VII (936–9) Nicholas II (1059–61) Stephen VIII (939–42) Alexander II (1061–73) Marinus II (942–6) Honorius II, Cadalo bishop of Parma – Agapitus II (946–55) (1061 72) John XII (955–64) Gregory VII (1073–85) Leo VIII (963–5) Clement III (1081–1100) Benedict V (964) Victor III, Desiderio abbot of Montecassino – John XIII (965–72) (1086 7) Benedict VI (972–4) Urban II (1088–99) Boniface VII (974, 984–5) Paschal II (1099–1118) xiv List of Popes Theodoric bishop of Silva Candida (1100) Lucius II (1144–5) Albert bishop of the Sabina (1102) Eugenius III (1145–53) Silvester IV, Maginulfo archpriest of Anastasius IV (1153–4) S. Angelo in Pescheria (1105–11) Hadrian IV (1154–9) Gelasius II (1118–19) Alexander III (1159–81) Gregory VIII, Mauricio bishop of Braga Victor IV (1159–64) – (1118 20) Lucius III (1181–5) – Calixtus II (1119 24) Urban III (1185–7) Honorius II (1124–30) Gregory VIII (1187) Anacletus II (1130–8) Clement III (1187–91) Innocent II (1130–43) Celestine III (1191–8) Celestine II (1143–4) Innocent III (1198–1216) Abbreviations for Primary Sources and Journals AASS Acta sanctorum AM Archeologia medievale ASF Archivio di Stato di Firenze, fondo documentario ASF Rocchettini di Fiesole Archivio di Stato di Firenze, fondo documen- tario, Fiesole, S.