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Bought with the income of the
Richard S. Fellowes Fund
1914

THE BRITISH ACADEMY
Imperial Influences on the
Forms of Papal Documents
By
Reginald L. Poole
Fellow of the Acaderhy

[From the Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. VIII]

London
Published for the British Academy
By Humphrey Milford, Qxford University Press
Atiien Corner, E,C.
Pricfi One ^Shilling net.

IMPERIAL INFLUENCES ON THE FORMS
OF PAPAL DOCUMENTS
By REGINALD L. POOLE
FELLOW OF THE ACADEMY
Communicated October 31, 1917
The relations between the Papacy and the Empire on the one side
and the Prankish kings on the other during the eighth century form
a large and complicated subject for study. My present purpose is
only to show how the changes in those relations are reflected in the
forms of documents. I take first the manner of dating bulls. The
traditional rule had been to record the regnal year of the Emperor,
and it had been the practice that the election of a Pope should be
confirmed by the Exarch of Ravenna ; when therefore the Exarchate
was conquered by the Lombards in 751,i it might perhaps have been
expected that the Imperial date would disappear from Papal docu
ments. But in fact it was maintained, possibly from force of habit,
for. more than twenty years longer. The last instance in which it
has been found is in a solemn bull granted by Hadrian I to the
monastery of Farfa in 772, which concludes with the words
Data X. Kalendas Martii, imperantibus domno nostro piissimo
Augusto Constantino a Deo coronato magno imperatore anno liii.,
et post consulatum eius anno xxxiii., sed et Leone magno imperatore
eius filio anno xxi., Indictione x.^
How much longer the Imperial date continued in use cannot be
precisely stated. During the nine years following, though at least
twenty-three genuine documents of Pope Hadrian are preserved, they
are all letters of the simpler type which did not contain an elaborate
date.^ It is not until nearly the end of 781 that in place of the
1 The exact date is not recorded : see T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, vii.
(1899) 163. But the Farfa Chartulary contains a document of King Aistulf dated
at Ravenna, 4 July in his third year and the fourth Indiction, that is, in 761 :
Regesto di Farfa, ii. (1879) 33, no. 18.
¦" Ibid., p. 85, no. 90.
» These, all addressed to Charles the Great, are to be found in the Liber
Carolinus, last edited by W. Gundlach, in Monum. Germ. Hist., Epist. iii. (1892)
666-601. The letter to Archbishop Tilpin of Rheims, given by Flodoard, Hist.
Rem. Eccl. ii. 17, is also without date. Its genuineness has been disputed : see
Jaffe', Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, 2nd ed., no. 2411.
VIII ^

2 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
Imperial date we find the year of the Pope's pontificate, prefaced by
an entirely different formula. This appears in a letter of 1 December
781 addressed by Hadrian to Fulrad the archpriest and Maginar the
abbot conferring privileges on the monastery of St. Denis. The final
clauses here run as follows :
Scriptum per manum Theodori Notarii et Scriniarii in mense
Novembrio, indictione suprascripta quinta. Bene valete. Data Kal.
Decembris regnante Domino et salvatore nostro lesu Christo, qui
vivit et regnat cum Deo patre omnipotente et spiritu sancto per
immortalia saecula, anno pontificatus nostri in sacratissima beati
Apostoli Petri sede ^ Deo propitio decimo, indictione quinta.^
If the change was first made in that year, it may be connected with
Charles the Great's second visit to Rome at Easter, when two of his
sons were baptized by the Pope; but we cannot say for cei"tain that
it was not done seven years earlier, when Charles on his first visit to
the city also kept Easter there.
For more than one reason, to which I shall turn shortly, it may be
taken as certain that the change of the form of dating was adopted
under Prankish influences, and therefore most probably when the
Prankish king and his attendants were at Rome ; but emissaries were
passing backwards and forwards all through these years, and it may
have been by any one of them that the new form was suggested.
The innovation marked a change which was compatible with a closer
advance towards the Franks, but it need not be inferred that it was
designed to precipitate a breach with the Empire in the East. Indeed,
in this very year, 781, a daughter of Charles was betrothed to
Constantine VI. Placed as he was in the midst between two great
powers, Hadrian was no doubt gravitating towards the West; he
relied upon Charles for the maintenance and increase of his temporal
dominion. But ecclesiastical and other reasons forbade his provoking
the enmity of the Emperor. Hence, as it seems to me, he omitted
the Imperial date as an element in his documents on the supposition
that it had become obsolete when the Imperial authority in Upper
Italy was overthrown by the Lombards. No doubt such a theory
would be legally untenable : the Exarch was merely the representative
of the Emperor, and when he was displaced his authority reverted to
his master ; but as a fact that authority was never acknowledged by
the Popes after 781, and the Imperial date disappeared. Its place
was taken not by any words implying a recognition of the Frankish
' Printed sub die,
^ ^ Edited in Baluze's Miscellanea (ed. Mansi), iii (1762), 3 6, from the Paris MS.
Colbert 5034 (now Lat. 2777), assigned to the tenth century.

IMPERIAL INFLUENCES ON PAPAL DOCUMENTS 3
power but by the date of the year of the Pontificate. To this was
prefixed a formula which has no chronological reference but is
a simple statement of the Divine government. It has a long history
which deserves examination all the more since it now for the first
time is found as a part of the date at the end of a document, using
this word in its technical sense.
The formula runs, with some variations in detail, as follows :
regnante domino Deo et Salvatore nostro lesu Christo cum Deo
Patre et Spiritu sancto per infinita secula.
It is in substance identical with the words by which the records of
the Acts of Martyrs were habitually closed, and is of high antiquity.
We can trace it so early as in the letter of the Church of Smyrna
reporting the martyrdom of St. Polycarp in a.d. 155 or 156 :
paaiXfijoyTos Se eh roiis almvas 'Iijcrov XpiaTov' (S 17 So^a, Ti/x-ij,
fieyaXaxrvyr] , Opovos alSvios, diro yeyeds els yevedv' 'Aiifjv.^
The words are possibly an addition to the original text, but if so
they are a very early addition. They were deemed so appi-opriate,
we may almost say so necessary, for the termination of such Acts
that we find them added in other narratives. For instance, in the
Acts of the Scillitan martyrs, a.d. 180, they are absent from the
original Latin but appear in the Greek translation ; ^ and in the
Greek Acts of St. ApoUonius they are considered to be a later
insertion.^ But the wide diffusion of the formula* is evidence of its
antiquity, and the supposition of several modern scholars that it must
have been constructed subsequently to the invention of the reckoning
of the year of the Incarnation by Dionysius Exiguus early in the sixth
centuiy is based simply on a confusion of ideas, since it has no
chronological significance at all.*
The derivation of the formula is unquestionable, but how it came
to be introduced into documents is obscure. I do not know that it
was so used in Italy, but it is found in Anglo-Saxon charters from the
early part of the eighth century, and perhaps very much earlier ; and
' xxi., in Lightfoot's Apostolic Fathers, 2nd ed., 11. iii. (1889) 400.
* See J. Armitage Robinson, The Passion of St. Perpetua, in Texts and Studies,
I. ii. 107 ff. (1891).
' Kara Se rjficii ^aaiXeiovTOS tov Kvpiov r)iia>v 'lija-ov Xpia-rov, w fj fio'^a els tovs alSivas '.
Acta S. ApoUonii, § 47 b, p. 130, ed. E. T. Klette (1897).
* I had copied out a series of specimens from Ruinart's Acta Sincera Martyrum
(2nd ed., I7l7)> but need not print them as they are cited by Bishop Lightfoot,
op. cit. , II. i. 636.
" Cf. Lightfoot, p. 635. His remarks on p. 503 about the Acts of the Scillitan
martyrs need revision in the light of Dr. Robinson's later work on their text.

4 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
these unquestionably derived their form and structure from Italian
models. Here the words
Regnante domino nostro lesu Christo
are written at the head of the document ; they have nothing to do
with a date, but serve practicallj' as an alternative to the more usual
invocation In nomine domini nostri lesu Christi.
In no chai'ter of undoubted genuineness are they combined with
any date of time. I cannot therefore think that Pope Hadrian I took
the phrase from an Italian source, but he may have learned it from
the Frankish formulary of Marculf. This book is believed to have
been compiled about the year 700 ; it is more probably a little later,
and there is no certain trace of its having been used as a guide for
the writing of documents until 741.^ Here we find the formula
introducing a date by the year (apparently of the Incarnation), the
Regnal year, and the day, at the head of a will :
Regnante in perpetuo domino nostro lesu Christo, qualibet ^ anno
illo regnante rege illo, sub die illo.*
As the collection became current as a manual towards the middle
of the eighth century, it is likely that it was from it, directly or
indirectly, that Hadrian's clerks took the formula. They adopted
the whole clause, substituting the Pontifical for the Regnal year, and
introduced it at the place in which the Popes had been accustomed to
insert the date, namely, at the end of the document.
It is interesting to observe that a century later the formula Regnante
Christo was the specific mark of an interregnum. It was so used, in
the form Regnante imperatore domno Ihesu Christo,
by Pope John VIII on 3 October 875, during the interval between
the death of the Emperor Lewis II on 12 August and the coronation
of Charles the Bald at Christmas.* This may possibly have arisen
from Pope Hadrian's practice being regarded as indicating an inter
regnum between Byzantine and Frankish supremacy. In the tenth
century the formula appears not infrequently, especially in Burgundy,
when the succession was uncertain or disputed. But I cannot believe
that it was chosen with any signification of this sort by Hadrian. In
• See K. Zeumer, Formulae (Monum. Germ. Hist., Leg. v, 1886), pp. 33 f.
' Sic.
» ii. 17, ibid., p. 86.
* Cod. Diplom. Fuldensis, ed. E. F. J. Dronke (1850), pp. 279 f., no. 618.

IMPERIAL INFLUENCES ON PAPAL DOCUMENTS 5
the Anglo-Saxon charters of the time it is prefixed to a large number
of documents granted by kings.
It was not until nearly the end of the eighth century that the Pope
abandoned this formula and inserted the Regnal year of the Frankish
king in Italy. On 20 April 798 Leo III dated a document
domini Caroli excellentissimi regis Francorum et Langobardorum
et patricii Romanorum a quo cepit Italiam anno xxv.^
Then after Charles's coronation at Rome on Christmas Day 800 we find
the full date in the Imperial style. It runs something hke this, though
in the absence of originals the form is uncertain ; perhaps at first it
was not regular :
imperante nostro domino Carolo piissimo perpetuo Augusto a Deo
coronato anno tertio.^
This date not only appropriated the form used by the Eastern
Emperors, but it also led to a revival of the reckoning post consulatum
and made it equivalent to the Imperial year, e, g.
Imperante domino nostro piissimo perpetuo Augusto Karulo a Deo
coronato magno Imperatore anno primo et post consulatum anno
primo.^
This was not due to Frankish influence, for the Carolingians did
not assume the Consular title : * it was simply a mechanical repetition
of the formula as it had been in use down to 772 ; and, not under
standing the nature of the Consular dignity in the East, the Papal
clerks treated the date post consulatum as chronologically identical
with the Imperial year.
This mode of dating continued, except during two interregna, for
a little more than a century. It ceased with the eclipse of the Empire
in the time of Lewis III, who was blinded and driven out by Berengar
' A. Brackmann, Germania Pontificia, i (1911), p. 8, no. 7 (Jaffe, Reg. 2498) ;
from which the date has been inserted by a modern editor in another document
of the same date, Epist. Karolini Aevi, in Monum. Germ. Hist., Epist. v. (1899)
69, note h (Jaffe, Reg. 2495) : see Brackmann, 1. c, no. 8.
' To Fortunatus, Patriarch of Grado, 21 March 803 : set out by Andrea
Dandolo, Chronicon, vii. xiii. 25, in Muratori's Rerum Italicarum Scriptores,
xii. (1728) 153.
3 John VlII's bull for Tournus, 876, in J. von Pfiugk-Harttung's Specimina
Selecta Chartarum Pontificum Romanorum, i. (1885) 6.
* In one single instance Charles the Great used consulatus as equivalent to
imperium. This was in an Italian capitulary of 801, anno vera regni nostri in
Frantia XXXIII, in Italia XXVIII, consulatus autem nostri pnmo : Capitularia
Regum Francorum, ed. A. Boretius (Monum. Germ. Hist., Leg. ii), i. 204, no. 98
0883).

6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
of Friuli in 905 ; ^ and when Berengar was crowned Emperor ten
years later it was not resumed. The restoration of the Empire by
Otto the Great in 962 was naturally soon followed by the restoration
of the Imperial date, without however the mention of the Post Consu
latum, in Papal documents ; we find it under John XIII,^ but it did
not last beyond the reign of Henry 11.^ When the series of German
Popes began under Henry III we might have expected that the date
would be uniformly admitted. But it was not so. Under Clement II
indeed we find two documents in 1047 bearing a simple Imperial date,
with no honorific titles;* but when Bruno bishop of Toul became
Pope in the following year, as Leo IX, he definitely abandoned it.
This is all the more remarkable because he was a great organizer of
his Chancery. But it will be remembered that, though he was elected
at Worms, he declined to assume the Pontificate until he had been
formally accepted at Rome.
After this time the Imperial year is found only on two occasions.
One of these is in a document of the Antipope Guibert of Ravenna,
otherwise Clement III, who was set up by the agency of the Emperor
Henry IV. He is not recognized as a Pope, and the document
therefore does not concern us.* The other occasion occurred at
^ The last known instance is found in a, document of Sergius III of 904,
Imperante domno piissimo perpetuo Augusto Ludoinco a Deo coronato magno impera
tore anno IIII, et post consulatum eius anno IIII, Indictione VIII: Migne, Patrol.
Lat. cxxxi. 972 (Jaffe, Reg. 3533).
' It appears in a bull of Leo VIII dated 9 December 964 (a mistake for 963),
which is preserved in a late mediaeval transcript and printed by Dr. von Pflugk-
Harttung, Acta Pontificum Romanorum Inedita, ii (1884), no. 81. But this docu
ment has long been suspected (see Jaffe', Reg. 3700), and is now condemned as
spurious : Brackmann, Germania Pontificia, i. 15, no. 32.
' Dr. Bresslau's statement (which I repeated in my Lectures on the History of
the Papal Chancery, p. 49, 1915) that the Imperial year of Conrad II seems to
be used by the Pope only once, and that when the Emperor was in Italy
(Handbuch der Urkundenlehre, i. 837, ed. 1, 1889), rests on a mistake. The one
example cited (Jaffe', Reg. 4080) is a mere abstract of a bull for Cluny (Chartes
de Cluny, no. 2798, vol. iv, 1 f., 1888). It ends with the following clauses :
Domnus Humbertus episcopus Valentinensis propria manu hoc firmavit
Domnus Wigo frater ipsius similiter propria manu hoc firmavit
Anno primo consecrationis domni Conradi imperatoris.
The date is obviously that of the confirmation by these Burgundians, not that of
the bull itself. Dr. Bresslau's error is the more remarkable since he devoted
special attention to the document in his Jahrbucher des Deutschen Reichs unter
Konrad II, ii. (1884) 489.
* Anno domni dementis secundi pa^ae primo, domni Henrici tertii imperatoris
similiter primo : Migne, cxlii. 585 f. (Jaffe, Reg. 4150).
" Anno dominice incamationis LXXXVI, imperante Heinrioo tertio liomanorum
Augusto, anno imperii eius ii, with no Pontifical year: Mittarelli, Annales
Camaldulenses, iii. (1758) 40.

IMPERIAL INFLUENCES ON PAPAL DOCUMENTS 7
perhaps the most tragic moment in the history of the Papacy. In
1111, when the violence of Henry V had reduced Paschal II to
abject submission and compelled him to perform the coronation in
St. Petei-'s, the Pope retired to an obscure spot on the Island in the
Tiber, and there two days later perforce concluded his bulls
Datum Romae in insula Lycaonia per manum lohannis sanctae
Romanae ecclesiae diaconi cardinalis ac bibliothecarii vice domni
F[riderici] archicancellarii et Colouiensis archiepiscopi, xvii Kal.
Mail, indictione iv, incamationis dominicae anno mcxi., pontifi
catus autem domni P[aschalis] secundi papae anno xii, imperio
vero H[enrici] quarti imperatoris anno primo.^
Before leaving these chronological details, I will mention another
point in which Imperial influence is unmistakable. This is the em
ployment of the year of the Incarnation. Though the system of
reckoning from the Annus Domini was devised as early as 525, it was
not until just two hundred years had elapsed that it was brought into
currency by the publication of the Venerable Bede's treatise de Tem-
poruni Ratione. From that time it became an established element in
the dating of charters in England, but in England onljr. It passed to
the Continent by the means of Anglo-Saxon missionaries and scholars.
St. Boniface took it with him into the Frankish kingdom.^ But it
does not appear to have been I'egularly employed in the Royal Chan
cery until the last quarter of the ninth century,' from which time it
became a fixed element in diplomas. The Popes never adopted it
until after the Imperial coronation of Otto the Great in 962. Three
years later John bishop of Narni was elected at the Emperor's nomi
nation. This Pope, John XIII, was grievously mishandled by the
Romans and driven into exile ; but in the following year, when it was
known that Otto was on his way to Italy, he was hurriedly recalled.
Otto took terrible vengeance on John's adversaries in Rome, and for
the rest of his Pontificate he was unmolested. It was during these
years, when the strength of the Empire was most vigorously exercised,
that the Pope introduced into his bulls not only, as we have seen, the
dating by the Imperial year, but also the dating by the year of the
Incarnation in the form which had become established in the Imperial
' Udalrici Codex, cli (iu Jaffe's Monumenta Bambergensia, 1869, p. 279),
calendared in Jaffe's Reg. 6291.
' See Carloman's capitulary of 21 April 742 : Capitularia Regum Francorum,
i.24. " Bresslau, Handbuch der Urkundenlehre, i. 839 (ed. 1) : Giry, Manuel de
Diplomatique (1894), p. 89. An isolated diploma of earlier date is an original
of Pippin II, King of Aquitaine, dated 839, which is preserved among the
archives of Solignac at Limoges : see the Bibliotheque de I'i^cole des CharteSj
Ixii. (1901) 716.

8 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
Chancery.^ It was not, however, uniformly inserted in Papal docu
ments until Leo IX made a fresh reorganization of his system eighty
years later. Here and elsewhere I speak only of the more solemn
form of Papal document, the Privilegium, for the features on which
I comment are not found in simple letters.
I return now to the eighth century and to Hadrian I. When this
Pope abandoned the Byzantine Imperial date and substituted the year
of his Pontificate, he made also a great change in the form in which
the date was expressed. His object was plainly to distinguish the
responsibility of the scribe for the correctness of the text of the docu
ment from that of a higher official for the fact that it had the Pope's
authority. He therefore introduced a Scriptum at the end of the
text, and then, after the Pope had written his Subscriptio, added the
Datum of the official, I quote an example of 1 November 782 :
Scriptum per manus lohannis scriniarii in mense Octubrio in
dictione supradicta sexta. -|- Bene valete.
Data Kalendas Novembris per manus Anastasii scriniarii regnante
domino Deo et Salvatori lesu Christo cum Deo Patre omnipotent!
et Spiritu sancto per infinita secula. Anno Deo propitio pontifi
catus domni Adriani in apostolica sede undecimo. indictione
sexta.^
It is not unlikely that this division of the date into two parts was
suggested by the double date which was one of the first marks of
orderly method set up by King Pippin in the Frankish Chancery.
There, it is true, the division rested on a different principle. The
Datum, as in the Papal form, certified the authority for the docu
ment ; and it was followed by the Actum, which registered the place
where the business was done. But though the Datum had been used
by the Popes for centuries and the Scriptum may now have been
introduced from an Italian source, it is under Hadrian, when Frankish
influences were coming in, that we first find the combination of the
two elements.
But the introduction of the name of the higher official of the
Chancery gave an opening for the adoption of an organization which
1 There is evidence of this between 968 and 970. See an example of 17 Decem
ber 970, in Muratori's Antiquitates Italicae, iii. (1740) 236. The insertion of this
date has been attributed to Leo VIII. But it is not found in the document
(Jaffe, Reg. 3702) as printed in Baluze's Miscellanea (ed. Mansi), iii. 6, where it
breaks off imperfectly in the Scriptum. ITie date is taken from a modem
collection of transcripts in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Lat, 12762.
^ Recited in a corrupt text in a notarial act of 1053 relating to St. ApoUinaris
in Classe at Ravenna : Mittarelli, Ann. Camaldulenses, i (1756), app. iii (Jaffe,
Reg. 2437).

IMPERIAL INFLUENCES ON PAPAL DOCUMENTS 9
was directly borrowed from the system of the Empire. Down to the
eighth century the whole business of drafting and executing Papal
documents had been in the hands of the College of Notaries, a body
of men who were entirely bound up with the traditions of their office.
It was natural that a Pope who proposed to introduce changes in his
system should wish to employ a secretary — for such he really was —
who was personally dependent upon him. Hadrian took the pre-
Uminary step of appointing a Librarian — previously the Library to
gether with the Archives had been in the charge of one of the higher
Notaries — but it was not until the first quarter of the ninth century
that the Librarian is found to have been employed to add the date to
documents. Thenceforward the Librarian was in fact the head of the
Chancery, though there are a few instances of one of the chief Notaries
taking his place.^ It was he who regulated all the details connected
with the production of the Pope's documents. The system, as we
might expect in a period when the Papacy rarely exerted itself to go
outside the traditional track, was conducted in a conservative spirit,
and underwent no marked change until the revival of the Empire by
Otto the Great. The documents were still written in the Curial
handwriting, an artificial and highly intricate development of the
ancient Cursive. But when Otto secured the election of John XIII,
the same Pope who revived the Imperial date and introduced the year
of Grace into his bulls, a conspicuous alteration was made in the
writing of the Datum. While the entire text of the document con
tinued to be written in the Curial hand, the certificate of the Libra
rian was written in that beautiful delicate character, the Caroline
Minuscule, which had been in use in the North for not far short of
two centuries.^ This distinction of handwriting between the docu
ment itself and the Datum was retained until the Curial hand silently
died out early in the twelfth century. What is of interest here is that
the Minuscule was brought in under a Pope who owed his position
specifically to Imperial influence, and to whom was due the adoption
of two distinct notes of time, both derived from the Imperial Chancery.
But the Librarian had not yet assumed the Imperial title of Chan
cellor. Even under Otto III and Silvester II, when great attention
was paid to ceremonial forms, there is no trace of a Chancellor. He
suddenly emerges for a brief space, two years after Silvestei-'s death.
' See my Lectures on the Papal Chancery, pp. 65 f.
' See a facsimile of part of a bull for Bologna, 15 April 967, in Pflugk-
Harttung's Specimina, i. 8. Mabillon, de Re Diplomatica (ed. 1709), p. 444,
gives a remarkable specimen from a bull for St. Remigius at Rheims, 23 April 972
(Jaffe, Reg. 3763), which is entirely written in Minuscule. This appears to be
a unique exception.

10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
If the adoption of the title was due to Imperial influence, we can only
surmise that it was an afterglow of the day of Imperial splendour ;
for in 1005 there was no Emperor, and the Pope was in the hands of
a civic faction at Rome. Nor was the title continued.^ In 1042,
however, Benedict IX, one of the Tusculan Popes, definitely estab
lished it ; from that time the responsible head of the Chancery was
styled Librarian and Chancellor of the Holy Apostolic See.^ The
title borrowed from the Empire led to further inroads on the old
Papal system.
The revolution in the Papacy caused by the masterful intervention
of the Emperor Henry III in 1046 was soon followed by a notable
change in the whole appearance of the Pope's bull. The first two
Popes who were brought in from the Empire lived less than a year,
with an interval of Tusculan anarchy between them ; but Leo IX,
who was elected in 1048, had full range for impressing his personality
on the system which he was called upon to administer. Of the im
portance of his ecclesiastical and political activity this is not the place
to speak : I have only to deal with the manner in which Leo, a man
of high intellectual cultivation and of an artistic temperament, re
formed the aspect of his documents. Down to his time authority was
given to them by the Pope's Subscriptio. Now a Subscriptio accord
ing to Roman tradition did not mean the signing of his name. It
consisted of a final greeting, a farewell ; ^ and its form had gradually
settled down to the words Bene Valete written in Capitals, and
preceded by a Cross. This Subscriptio was, at least in part, written
by the Pope's own hand. The effect was clumsy, and the big Capitals
made an unpleasing contrast to the Datum written in a shapely
Minuscule. Almost immediately after his accession Leo determined
to reconstruct his Subscriptio.* He separated the Cross from the
Bene Valete, and placed them on the left and right at the foot of the
document. Between the limbs of the Cross he inserted his name ;
and he surrounded it by a double circle in which was written a text
from the Psalter. This is known as the Rota. On the right hand he
contracted the Bene Valete into a Monogram, in which the letters of
the words were compressed into a rectangular framework. Both
Rota and Monogram were written very large and stand out as the
' Papal Chancery, pp. 69 f.
' Ibid., pp. 62 f.
' Cf. C. G. Bruns, Die Unterschriften in den Romischen Rechtsurkunden,
in the Sitzungsberichte der K. Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (philos.
und hist. Klasse), 1876, pp. 53 ff.
* See Papal Chancery, pp. 99 ff.

IMPERIAL INFLUENCES ON PAPAL DOCUMENTS 11
conspicuous features of the document. Part of the Rota was written
in the Pope's own hand ; the rest was completed by a notary.
The Monogram is unquestionably derived from that which repro
duced the Emperor's name in his diplomas. It was first used by
Charles the Great and assumed various developments as it became
necessary to reduce such unmanageable names as Cuonradus and
Heinricus into a compact figure. The original basis was certainly
a Cross with the letters of the name worked into and round it ; but
this model was not always observed. The Monogram M'as matched
by the Seal imposed on the face of the document. I cannot say that
the two features, the Monogram and the Seal, balanced one another,
for the places in which they were inserted were irregular.^ But there
were these two striking features, and Leo IX determined to trans
plant them in a better form into his documents. He could not take
the seal, because his leaden seal was always pendent upon strings or
ties. So he invented the Rota, which had the same shape as his seal
and like it was surrounded by two circles. The seal on its two faces

bore the inscription leonis

IIII .V.

papae ; but the Rota was a single

figure, and so the Pope wrote the words short, Leo P. Having thus
indicated his name on the left hand of his bull, there was no reason
to repeat it on the right hand ; besides, the words Bene Valete
were a time-honoured form which could not be abandoned. He
therefore constructed a Monogram out of these words. The two pic
torial elements, the Rota and the Monogram, were written of the same
size and placed so as to match exactly on each side of the document
below the Scriptum. Thus he took the whole idea from the Imperial
diploma, but very greatly improved on his model.
Soon afterwards, probably in June 1049, Leo took the important
step of appointing the Archbishop of Cologne Arch-Chancellor of the
Apostolic See. The Archbishop was already by virtue of his office
the Imperial Arch-Chancellor of Italy; he now became Papal Arch-
Chancellor of Rome as well.^ But though this was a mark of the
harmony which subsisted at the time between Pope and Emperor, it
led to no practical consequences ; for the Archbishop was content
with the new dignity and with the emoluments which were attached
to it, and never exercised his Roman functions except by deputy.
• See W. Erben, Kaiser- und Konigsurkunden, in Erben, Schmitz-Kallenberg,
and Redlich's Urkundenlehre, i. (1907) 166 f. A specimen of Henry III of
1043 is reproduced in Monumenta Graphica, v. ii.
» Once before, in 1023, an Archbishop of Cologne had been made Librarian,
but it does not seem that this was more than a personal mark of honour.

12 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
Still, the formal annexation of the headship of the Papal Chancery to
the see of Cologne gives the impression that at the beginning of
Leo's pontificate it was intended to unify the administration of the
Empire and Papacy in a way which had hardly been attempted before
even during the reign of Otto III.
It is easy to exaggerate the significance of these features in their
system which the Popes borrowed from the Empire. Their source is
manifest, but their real meaning is apt to be misunderstood. In the
eighth century the Popes were led by the political conditions of the
time to welcome the protection of Charles the Great and all that it
implied; but the Empire on which they depended crumbled away,
and in the tenth and eleventh centuries they found themselves in an
unenviable situation. Their administrative activity was hampered by
the oligarchy of the College of Notaries. If they sought an escape
from it, they fell into the hands either of a wild city faction or else of
the lawless Counts of Tusculum. If they were to gain any indepen
dence, they must be masters in their own house ; they must establish
a business office over which they could exert personal control. They
therefore first set up a Librarian, and then wishing to give him a more
imposing title borrowed that of Chancellor from the Empire. The
changes made under Otto the Great were no doubt forced upon, rather
than originated by, the Papacy. They consisted of new formulae and
of a reformed handwriting. But the tradition set on foot by the intro
duction of the Minuscule handwriting enabled the Pope gradually to
emancipate himself from his traditional surroundings ; for the Roman
notaries could not write in that character. The freedom thus acquired
was extended when the Pope was no longer permanently established
in the city of Rome. Leo IX was the first Pope for ages past who
went on his travels.^ During a pontificate of five years he hved
hardly more than six months in the city. Naturally, when he departed
the Roman notaries were left behind ; the tradition was broken ; and
even when Leo was resident in Rome he sometimes avoided the
' Since John VIII spent half a year, from May to November 878, in different
parts of France and Burgundy, no Pope had quitted Italy, with the exception of
Benedict VIII, who was absent for a month in Germany in 1020. The alleged
visit of Benedict IX to Marseilles in 1040 is open to suspicion, though it must
be admitted, with Delisle (see the Revue des Socie'te's Savantes, 2nd series, v. 634,
1861), that there is no proof that the Pope did not go to Gaul in that year. The
positive evidence is contained in the act of consecration of the church of St. Victor
at Marseilles, on 16 October 1140, which is drawn up in the name of Benedict IX,
the Archbishop of Aries, and other prelates. It is last printed in Gallia Christiana
novissima, Marseille, pp. 64-7, 1899, with a defence of its genuineness by J. H.
Albaues.

IMPERIAL INFLUENCES ON PAPAL DOCUMENTS 13
employment of the old staff.^ The former system might reappear
from time to time, owing to special circumstances ; but it was more
and more passing out of use, and with the early part of the twelfth
century the Pope is found managing his affairs by means of officials
all of whom he appointed himself.
From that time there is no further question of Imperial influence
upon the Papal system. What influence there was flowed in the
opposite direction. It was the perfect regulation of the Papal Chan
cery, in all that concerned form and style and legal exactness, that re
acted upon the Imperial lands, as upon the rest of Western Europe.
When the class of notaries public, a specifically Italian institution,
made its way into Germany, it diffused the methods which had been
slowly evolved at Rome ; and Italy furnished the model from which
the Imperial scribes learned the refinements of their art.
' See Papal Chancery, p. 66.

Oxford
Pointed bf Fi3e(Jet|«:k Hall, at the Uniyfersity Press

9173

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