Late Medieval Papal Legation
by Antonin Kalous
pp. 285, € 35,00 (Buy online with the 15% discount)
Viella, 2017
ISBN: 9788867289424
Late Medieval Papal Legation is a result of long term study
of papal legates in the late medieval period. Even though this crucial
institution of the reform papacy of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth
centuries kept its standards as designed in the classical canon law, it
was transformed according to the current needs of the papacy in later
periods. A substantial change came after the conciliar crisis and before
the radical transformation of the first half of the sixteenth century.
In the second half of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, papal
legates de latere, as cardinals, travelled all around Europe
in support of the recovered papal authority after the conciliar period
and before the outbreak of the German Reformation.
This volume attempts to systematise the changes of this specific
period in the development of the papacy. It is based on extensive
research in the Vatican Archives and Library, other Italian and
especially Central European archives and libraries, and published
sources of the period. The volume focuses on the terminology and theory
of papal legation, on the sources and expression of legatine authority
and on the system in relation to practical matters (ceremonial,
travelling, finance), and political, diplomatic and ecclesiastical tasks
and topics. The study of the legatine office is exceptionally complex
and ranges from high diplomacy and spiritual benefits brought for
distinct provinces, to the personal interests and involvement of
individual cardinals. This book tries to open discussion on research
that has only just started and needs to be developed as an integral part
of our understanding of medieval papal and European history.
Antonín Kalous is an associate professor of Medieval and Renaissance
history at Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic. His research
focuses mostly on ecclesiastical, cultural and political history of
late-medieval Central Europe and on papacy of the same period. With
Viella, he published The Transformation of Confessional Cultures in a Central European City: Olomouc, 1400-1750
(ed. by, 2015).
