Lo, I have set thee this day over the nations, and over the kingdoms.’
(Jeremiah 1.10)
Between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries, those words were frequently
quoted in papal correspondence. The pope—the successor of St Peter—had been
placed, by God, above peoples and above kings. That the pope saw himself, and
was seen by many, as supreme lord of all Christians is a commonplace in accounts
of the period. In most tellings, this was a source of conflict. Kings and emperors—
effective rulers of their own territories—could never bear the idea that they might
be subject to a distant priest. Hence Emperor Henry IV’s dispute with Pope
Gregory VII; hence King John of England’s battle with Pope Innocent III; hence
Emperor Frederick II’s wars against Gregory IX and Innocent IV. This is the tale
of the so-called ‘papal monarchy’ and its opponents.
But that story can be turned on its head. This book examines specific relationships between popes and kings, points when a king placed himself under the
lordship of the pope, or sought the ‘protection of St Peter’—a formal relationship
whereby a realm received defence from the prince of the Apostles and his
successor. These relationships were not forced on kings, but sought by them.
Secular rulers were not resisting the pretensions and claims of Rome; rather they
desired to receive the pope as guardian or lord.
The reason why is simple: having a special relationship with the pope meant
that kings were able to use papal authority—the pope’s position ‘over the nations,
and over the kingdoms’—for their own purposes. Secular rulers could send
petitions to the pope asking him to grant their requests. Thus, perhaps counterintuitively, papal overlordship could actually contribute to the strengthening of
royal power in a kingdom, rather than undermining royal independence.