Abbot Hariulf of Oudenburg at the Curia of Pope Innocent II (1141): A Curial Drama
Zusammenfassung: Die Gesta des Abtes Hariulf von Oudenburg (gest. 1143), eine Aufzeichnung seines Besuchs in Rom und bei der päpstlichen Kurie, um den Kontrollansprüchen des Abtes von Saint-Médard zu widersprechen, gilt seit langem als eine Quelle, die Historiker*innen einen einzigartig detaillierten Einblick in die Abläufe der römischen Kurie jener Zeit gewährt. Aufbauend auf dieser eher prozessualen Ausrichtung wird in diesem Aufsatz argumentiert, dass der Text auch die Art und Weise offenbart, in der sowohl das Erzählen von Geschichten – die Art und Weise, wie der Bittsteller Ansprüche, Dokumente und Zeit miteinander verknüpfte – als auch die performative Leistung entscheidend zum Erfolg beitrugen. Hariulfs Bericht zeigt auch die entscheidende Rolle von Verbündeten und Gönnern bei der Durchsetzung der eigenen Ansprüche und die verschiedenen Möglichkeiten, wie eine solche Unterstützung geschaffen werden konnte.
Abstract: A record of his visit to Rome and the papal curia to oppose the claims of the abbot of Saint-Médard, the Gesta of Abbot Hariulf of Oudenburg (d. 1143) has long been regarded as a source that allows the historian a uniquely detailed view inside the operations of the Roman curia of the time. Building on this more procedural orientation, this essay argues that the text also reveals the way in which both storytelling – the way in which the petitioner wove together claims, documents, and time – and performance were also crucial contributors to success. Hariulf’s account also reveals the vital role of allies and patrons in advancing one’s claims and the diverse ways in which such support could be created.
Medievalists regularly encounter documents – papal letters, bulls, or reports of them in canonical materials or narrative texts – in which a pope issues a decree, renders a judgment, or decides a dispute between individuals or institutions.[1] Yet all too often, especially in the early and central Middle Ages, when the documentary culture of the see of Rome was in flux and the preservation of papal actions was variable, much, if not all, of the process leading to the eventual result remains unknown or glimpsed only partially and fleetingly. Even when several elements of a dispute or negotiation are preserved in an interlocking series of writings, and the historian can, as a result, obtain a greater sense of the situation, many of the intervening positions, the stakes, and the arguments, exchanges, questions, and the rhetorical gambits pursued – to say nothing of tones, gestures, and facial expressions – remain unknown behind the closed doors not only of documentary loss but also of narrative conventions. Occasionally, however, a document survives that unlocks those doors and allows the historian to witness more fully and vividly the human actions and interchanges that undergird and guide institutional life and decision-making.
Such documents are always precious but they are even more so at times of significant institutional change. In the history of the papacy, the late 11th and 12th centuries are such a period, witnessing not only the emergence of the pope and curia as a central force in the religious and political life of Christendom more broadly but also the establishment of the see of Rome as the ultimate court of appeal in a world increasingly structured by canon law and guided by documents.[2] In two important contributions, Dieter Lohrmann has identified and analyzed several texts from France in the central decades of the 12th century that open such doors,[3] and among the texts examined, the narrative of Hariulf, abbot of the monastery of Saint-Pierre in Oudenburg in Flanders, stands out both in the comprehensive picture that it offers of the process of curial appeal – from arrival in Rome to departure – and in the transcript-like account of the curial discussion.[4] Indeed, Ian S. Robinson has characterized this text as „the most detailed report of a judicial hearing in the papal curia during the 12th century,”[5] an assessment echoed by Lohrmann when he observes that the text takes the reader „unmittelbar in die Einzelverhandlung vor dem Papst.”[6] In their well-justified focus on its processual dimensions, scholars have attended less to other formal dimensions of the text that shed light on the method and intention behind Hariulf’s composition. This essay argues that the abbot’s decision to record events as a kind of drama – dialogue with named protagonists, gestures, and scenes – created a detailed record that not only revealed the central importance of social networks in successful papal business and how such alliances could be created but also demonstrated the power of performance itself – the combination of words, delivery, and gesture – in creating authority and trust at the papal curia.
By the time Hariulf wrote of his visit to the curia, he was not only an experienced monastic leader but also an accomplished historian. Born ca. 1060, Hariulf became a monk at the monastery of St Riquier in Ponthieu and eventually composed in several phases the Gesta ecclesiae Centulensis, a history of the monastery from its foundation in 645 CE to the late 11th century.[7] Commissioned by his brethren to recover their house’s history, Hariulf mined the monastery’s library and archive, using many different documents and works in different genres to reconstruct the centuries-long story. It was an experience with close reading and documentary detection that would serve him well during his curial visit. He left Saint-Riquier in 1104–1105 to assume the abbacy of Oudenburg, a monastery founded by Bishop Arnold of Soissons in 1070 and dedicated to St Peter.[8] There, too, Hariulf dug into the monastery’s past, this time to compose a life in honor of its holy founder, Arnulf of Soissons.[9] Thus, when in 1139 or 1140, the monastery of Saint-Médard made its claim – affirmed by papal authority – to control over Saint-Pierre’s, Hariulf was well-prepared to use the monastery’s own history to resist such an effort.
Having learned that Saint-Médard secured papal confirmation through an in-person petition,[10] Hariulf decided that his case, too, would have to be made not via letter but in person. This decision alone – made when he was already eighty years old – signaled his perception of the importance to success at the curia of “being there” and of the social dimensions of curial business along with those that might be considered more legally substantive. In part, the importance of “presence” stemmed from what Hariulf had learned from others was the importance in curial business of giving gifts to the right people (including the pope) at the right time in order to win allies, that is to say, bribery. He therefore came equipped with extra resources to make these gifts.[11] On the advice of a friend and local bishop, Simon of Noyon, he also came with a clear sense of precisely whom he needed to see to advance his case: Cardinal Haimeric, papal chancellor and perhaps the most powerful member of the curia, after the pope.
From the outset of the encounter, Haimeric was struck by Hariulf’s age, and when the abbot intimated that he believed it necessary to offer gifts to the pope and others, Haimeric was quick to correct his perception:
That your old age does honor to all, and your speech is easy and calm, pleases us very much, and therefore we warn you and wish with the utmost zeal that we work with you completely so that through you everywhere a good smell shall be spread, and that that unfair report that is quickly spreading everywhere may begin to be extinguished through you so that, just as it has hitherto been said ‘Everything is for sale in Rome’, from now on it shall be said: ‘All things are most just in Rome’.[12]
Desirous of a favorable outcome, Hariulf had initially acted upon the perception of Rome as the place where justice was for sale, a public perception that Haimeric clearly knew.[13] Yet, in an instant, Haimeric seems to have decided that, precisely because of his venerable aspect and his qualities as an orator, Hariulf would be the ideal spokesperson for a new image of Rome as the home of impartial – and more importantly, uncompensated – justice. In exchange, Haimeric would be his ally in the curia.[14]
True to his word, Haimeric introduced Hariulf to the curia where, again, the pope, the cardinals, and civic leaders all remarked on his age. Indeed, Hariulf leveraged their surprise to enhance the gravity of Saint-Médard’s injustice: only a matter of the utmost gravity – and, by implication, a matter about which he was most confident – would have moved him to undertake this journey. Falsifying a document and delivering it through underlings required little effort or risk. By contrast, that the abbot himself, at so advanced an age, had undertaken the long and perilous transalpine journey to make his case in person before the pope – his venerable presence itself served as a kind of authentication of the truth of his claim.
His auspicious entry and the patronage of Haimeric gave Hariulf entry to the Lateran. But it did not guarantee action – that took persistence and presence which he demonstrated by showing up every day and growing so familiar with pope and cardinals that, when he worried openly about his growing expenses, they invited him to eat with them.[15] Yet, it also took the cardinals’ explicit and renewed intervention to get Hariulf’s case on the curial agenda, nine days after his arrival.[16]
In his Gesta, Hariulf presents his audience with pope and curia as a trial transcript or drama, with verbatim dialogue and speeches, characters clearly identified, and gestures and reactions recorded. Hariulf’s account, in essence, took his readers behind the closed doors of the pope’s chamber and revealed the dynamic, sometimes unpredictable, nature of a hearing and the elements that might bring success or failure. In Hariulf’s case, the drama of his appeal occurred in three acts of quite different qualities: Hariulf on the attack, Hariulf on the defense, and a supportive, yet indeterminate, resolution.
In the first “scene” Hariulf opens his case with an extended parable describing his own circumstance in the language of marriage, a parable that he then explicates in detail. He then challenged the pope’s actions in favor of Saint-Médard, claiming that they had been based on ignorance and misrepresentations. At points, Hariulf portrays himself as remarkably frank, asserting: “But how could I bear such inhuman and scandalous action and such unbearable injury that I saw and knew that the sacred ears of the highest pontiff were so infected by the hiss of mendacity that it sent a letter from the pinnacle of the Roman summit to ends of the region of Flanders, a letter, I repeat, devoid of truth, full of falsehood, and sounding forth everywhere the dishonor of the sender?”[17] Though, to be sure, he exonerates Innocent II from culpability by claiming that the pontiff had been deceived, his indictment of the papal document itself could not be more complete. Indeed, at another point, his simultaneous exaltation and disparagement of papal authority led Haimeric and the pope to caution him against saying too much and thereby causing offense.[18]
Interestingly, when the pope requests that the papal letter in question be read out, it is Hariulf himself, not a member of the curia, who reads it out, suggesting that the curia had not yet developed its own system for recording papal decisions and business. For both investigation and documentation, the curia relied on its petitioners and litigants to produce evidence even about its own actions.
The second “act” in Hariulf’s curial drama opens with a reversal: the pope required Hariulf to demonstrate that the critical claim on which all else hinged – that Oudenburg ought rightly to be subordinate to Saint-Médard – was erroneous. This subordination might derive from two sources, personal and institutional. Hariulf dealt with the first easily, showing clearly that he had never been a monk at Saint-Médard but that his monastic career prior to his abbacy at Saint-Pierre’s of Oudenburg had been lived exclusively at Saint-Riquier en Ponthieu.[19] Yet, Oudenburg’s institutional independence from Saint-Médard was less clear, for in fact the founder of Oudenburg, Bishop Arnulf of Soissons, had been a monk of Saint-Médard early in his life.[20] When the pope seized upon this early connection as the justification for Saint-Médard’s claims, Hariulf was prepared with a meticulously constructed (but also carefully edited) history of Arnulf’s path to the foundation of Oudenburg: objecting that the pope’s reasoning was flawed “because the chronological order of events runs differently. Indeed, we implore you that it please you to hear – and we may be permitted to recount – the narrative sequence of the affair, because otherwise you shall not find an idea of the truth.”[21] Originally a knight, Arnulf adopted the eremitic and then monastic life, achieving a reputation for sanctity. Eventually promoted to the bishopric of Soissons, he intervened in a dispute between Robert of Flanders and several clerics at the request of the pope. In recognition of Arnulf’s peacemaking role, Robert and several other princes elected to donate the land of Saint-Pierre’s directly to Arnulf for a cell but, Hariulf noted, the holy man refused to receive property from a layman. Robert therefore inducted the Bishop Radbod of Tournai as an intermediary who then founded for Arnulf, on the advice of his clergy, not a cell but a full abbey, specifically with the purpose of rendering Saint-Pierre’s an independent monastic house. Hariulf complemented his narrative by producing the foundation documents themselves before the curia, a move that led both pope and curia to a seeming consensus in favor of Hariulf. Yet the question remained: how would the decision of the curia be enacted and, in particular, how could it be enacted so as to avoid this venerable abbot of Oudenburg (or any future abbot) having to journey to Rome to plead their case.
Though Hariulf may have wished the matter to be resolved there and then, the pope and curia had another, more local solution in mind – the case would be heard again and decided in France by three French prelates, thereby rooting the final judgment in the local soil of ecclesiastical power and authority.[22] The final act of Hariulf’s curial drama thus centered on who, properly, should serve in this role. Both pope and Hariulf had strong ideas about whom each could trust; they were also constrained by other factors: one was too sick, another busy with other papal business, another too far away, another too close, still another had made a special arrangement with the pope to be exempt from such tasks. Eventually, despite lingering doubts about bias, Hariulf agreed upon three: the abbot of Morigny, the bishop of Arras, and the abbot of Prémontré.[23] With this agreement set, Hariulf went away and the appropriate letters were composed.
Yet, just as all seemed settled, Hariulf faced one final curial challenge: as he retrieved the papal letters, Innocent asked him suddenly whether he was aware of anything that subjected Saint-Pierre’s Oudenburg to Saint-Médard, reminding him that he would soon be dead and face judgment. With all watching his response, the abbot recalled rising and answering spontaneously:
Lord father and shepherd of all the world, listen, I beg, and attend to me: Truly by that solidity of faith upon which Peter was founded when he said: ‘You are Christ, son of the living God,’[24] I have never known or recognized the justice of Saint-Médard in this case. For because I consider it most certain that St Médard was a precious confessor of the Lord, why would I diminish or deny his property, when I know that it would bring about my damnation? Far be it from me […] far be it from any Christian, to think that I am occupied with such great madness.[25]
He thus used the very sanctity of St Medard – and the consequences of dishonoring the saint – to resist the claims of the monastic community that guarded his relics. The speech concluded, Cardinal Haimeric personally affirmed his credibility, remarking:
Truly, lord, although he did not plan that speech in advance, he has most honorably satisfied you and your entire curia. We therefore judge that his cause should be considered true and just because he explained the reasons for his case before you and your curia not in a manner full of doubt but one full of light and did not stumble into any byways of verbiage but each of his words ran along a straight path.[26]
In essence, Haimeric argued to pope and curial colleagues that Hariulf should be believed both because he had been able to present a full and clear accounting of his monastery’s position, without gaps and with ample supporting documentation, and because he did so in a rhetorically seamless and effortless way, despite being required to respond extemporaneously to pointed questions, including Innocent II’s final challenge. Truth became manifest not only in substance but through performance.
In concluding his account, Hariulf recorded the pope’s wish that the abbot greet a variety of the pope’s friends on his way home. Such a matter may seem extraneous to the business of the monastery’s liberty. In fact, this part of the narrative documented a critical aspect of the curial visit and were another way in which Hariulf’s authority and the truth of papal favor would be strengthened through performance, this time of the intimate role of papal legate of friendship.[27] This iter amicitiae thus not only served Innocent II’s wish for transalpine communication with French friends, it also expanded Hariulf’s own network of allies with individuals tied to and favored by the pope and the awareness of his side of the dispute among those best positioned to aid him.
Hariulf’s account of his experience at the Roman curia under Innocent II offers a clear and full picture of the process of appeal in the mid-12th century. Yet, it is a particularly valuable witness because the abbot preserved memory of not only words spoken and documents presented but also a record of the interpersonal dynamics and relationships outside and within Rome, gestures, and the passage of time that contributed to the success or failure of an appeal or petition. The repeated mention of Hariulf’s venerable age and its positive effect on curial sympathy as well as the careful scrutiny of the coherence and delivery of his answers and his ability to respond spontaneously to challenges combine to show that in the drama of curial business, although the script was important, the personal charisma of the actor (a complex compound of age, physical appearance, voice, confidence, and more) and the quality of the performance itself played critical roles in establishing the authority of one’s position and gaining the support that would further one’s cause.[28]
[1] It is a pleasure to acknowledge here the wonderful contributions of my colleague and friend, Professor Dr. Sabine von Heusinger as a scholar and teacher. Since we first met in California as she meticulously investigated questions of labor in canonical treatises at the Robbins Collection at the Law School of University of California, Berkeley, she has inspired me with her work ethic, her commitment to and skill in seeing the big questions at the heart of individual documents and narratives, her creativity, and her wonderful sense of humor.
[2] The literature on the history of the papacy and Roman curia during the eleventh and 12th centuries is vast and ever increasing. Important studies include Klaus Ganzer, Die Entwicklung des auswärtigen Kardinalats im hohen Mittelalter. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Kardinalkollegiums vom 11. bis 13. Jahrhundert, Berlin 1963; Klaus Ganzer, Das Römische Kardinalkollegium, in: Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche della “Societas Christiana” dei secoli XI-XII. Papato, cardinalato ed episcopato. Atti della 5a settimana internazionale di studio. Mendola, 26–31 agosto 1971, Milano 1974, pp. 153–181; Edith Pásztor, Curia Romana, in: Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche della “Societas Christiana” dei secoli XI-XII. Papato, cardinalato ed episcopato. Atti della 5a settimana internazionale di studio. Mendola, 26–31 agosto 1971, Milano 1974, pp. 490–504; and Werner Maleczek, Das Kardinalskollegium unter Innocenz II. und Anaklet II., in: Annuarium Historiae Pontificiae 19 (1981), pp. 27–78. For an excellent and nuanced synthesis, see Ian S. Robinson, The Papacy, 1073–1198. Continuity and Innovation, Cambridge 1990, passim, and more recently Chris Wickham, Medieval Rome. Stability and Crisis of a City, 900–1150, Oxford 2015, pp. 385–419.
[3] Dietrich Lohrmann, Berichte von der Kurie über den Erwerb umstrittener Prozeßmandate und Privilegien (12.–13. Jahrhundert), in: Das Papsttum und das vielgestaltige Italien. Hundert Jahre Italia Pontificia, ed. by Klaus Herbers and Jochen Johrendt, Berlin 2009, pp. 311–330, and Dietrich Lohrmann, En consistoire avec le pape Innocent II: la relation d’Ulger, évêque d’Angers (début 1136), in: Revue d’histoire de l’église de France 96 (2010), pp. 277–88.
[4] Hariulf’s account, titled Gesta Hariulphi, abbatis sancti Petri Aldenborgensis, contra abbatem santi Medardi Suessionensis Roma in presencia pape et cardinalium, forms part of a larger, later chronicle, the Chronicon Aldenburgense maius is available in several editions: Chronique du monastère d’Oudenburg de l’ordre de Saint-Benoît (Recueil de chroniques, chartes et autres documents concernant l’histoire et les antiquités de la Flandre-Occidentale, 1e série: Chroniques des monastères de Flandre 5), Ghent 1843, pp. 1–81 at 51–64, repr. in Patrologia Latina 174, ed. by Jaques-Paul Migne, Paris 1854, cols. 1544–54; Ernst Müller, Der Bericht des Abtes Hariulf von Oudenburg über seine Prozeßverhandlungen an der römischen Kurie im Jahre 1141, in: Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 48 (1930), pp. 97–115 with the edition at 101–15. Engl. trans. with commentary in: Bruce Brasington, Order in the Court: Medieval Procedural Treatises in Translation (Medieval Law and Its Practice, 21), Leiden 2016, pp. 61-80. Translations are my own. On the text, see Renée Nip, The Dispute of Hariulf of Oudenburg and the Abbey of Saint-Médard: a Convenient Confusion of Names, in: Media Latinitas. A Collection of Essays to Mark the Occasion of the Retirement of L.J. Engels, ed. by Renée Nip [u.a.], Turnhout 1996, pp. 275–280; Thomas Haye, Hariulf von Saint-Riquier in Rom (1141), in: Thomas Haye, Lateinisch Oralität. Gelehrte Sprache in der mündlichen Kommunikation des hohen und späten Mittelalters, New York/Berlin 2005, pp. 83–94; and Claudia Zey, Hariulf von Oudenburg und der usus curiae im Prozess vor Papst Innozenz II. (1141), in: Stilus – modus – usus. Regeln der Konflikt- und Verhandlungsführung am Papsthof des Mittelalters, ed. by Jessika Nowak and Georg Strack, Turnhout 2019, pp. 97–117.
[5] Robinson, The Papacy (as n. 2), p. 189.
[6] Lohrmann, Berichte von der Kurie (as n. 3), p. 316.
[7] On Hariulf and his history, see Thomas Ledru, Hariulf de Saint-Riquier: un moine historien de la fin du XIe siècle: in Questes 36 (2017), pp. 19–41, and Brigitte Meijns, Art. “Hariulf”, in: Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. by Graeme Dunphy, Leiden/Boston 2010, pp. 754–55.
[8] Hariulf died in 1143.
[9] Renée Nip, Life and Afterlife: Arnulf of Oudenburg, Bishop of Soissons and Godelieve of Gistel. Their Function as Intercessors in Medieval Flanders, in: The Invention of Saintliness, ed. by Anneke Mulder-Bakker, New York/London 2002, pp. 58–76. Nip has edited relevant texts in Lisiardus, Hariulfus, Vitae, Miracula, Translatio et alia Hagiographica sancti Arnulphi episcopi Suessionensis, ed. by Renée Nip (Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis 285), Turnhout 2015.
[10] Müller, Der Bericht (as n. 4), p. 105.
[11] Ibid., p. 102.
[12] Müller, Der Bericht (as n. 4), p. 102.
[13] Josef Benzinger, Invectiva in Romam. Romkritik im Mittelalter vom 9. bis zum 12. Jahrhundert (Historische Studien, Heft 404), Lübeck/Hamburg 1968, pp. 74–76, 91–94, 105–115. For a vivid example of the growing association between the curia and corruption, see Tractatus Garsiae or the Translation of Relics of SS. Gold and Silver, ed. and trans. by Rodney Thomson, Leiden 1973.
[14] Müller, Der Bericht (as n. 4), p. 102. It is worth noting that to ensure the purity of Hariulf’s process, Haimeric threatened to block the abbot’s appeal in every way if he offered even the smallest bribes.
[15] Ibid., pp. 103–04.
[16] Ibid., p. 104.
[17] Ibid., pp. 105–107.
[18] Ibid., p. 106.
[19] Ibid., p. 108.
[20] On Arnulf, who lived 1040–1087, see Nip, Life and Afterlife (as n. 9).
[21] Ibid., pp. 108–110. For a convincing discussion of Hariulf’s finessing of certain details (such as the fact that Arnulf the founder and Arnulf the first abbot were different people) and omission of others, see Nip, The Dispute (as n. 4).
[22] Nip, The Dispute (as n. 4), p. 279 suggests that Innocent II may have chosen to defer the decision because he remained in doubt. This is possible but does not fully credit the curia’s fear that, in the absence of local support, the monastery of Oudenburg would continue to be afflicted by Saint-Médard’s claims.
[23] Ibid., pp. 112–13.
[24] Matt. 16.16.
[25] Ibid., p. 114.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid., pp. 114–115. That the abbot knew that he was entering unfamiliar social circles is shown by his request for a kind of password by which Hugh of Prémontré might verify Hariulf’s legitimacy.
[28] Hariulf’s emphasis on the curia’s attention, and ultimate respect for, his age may bear witness to medieval prejudices about the abilities of the elderly. This text thus raises the issue of ageism—i.e., negative prejudices about older people—in the Middle Ages. I am grateful to Eva-Maria Cersovsky for commenting on this point.
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Empfohlene Zitierweise / Suggested Citation: William L. North, Abbot Hariulf of Oudenburg at the Curia of Pope Innocent II (1141): A Curial Drama, in: Festschrift für Sabine von Heusinger, hrsg. von Julia Bruch, Eva-Maria Cersovsky und Andreas Lehnertz (Mittelalter. Interdisziplinäre Forschung und Rezeptionsgeschichte, Beihefte 5,2), S. 114–122, DOI: https://doi.org/10.26012/mittelalter-34569.
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