Book contents
- Corruption, Protection and Justice in Medieval Europe
- Corruption, Protection and Justice in Medieval Europe
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Maps and Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Additional material
- Introduction
- 1 The First “Medieval” Advocates
- 2 Putting Down Roots in Ninth-Century Francia
- 3 The “Aristocratization” of Post-Carolingian Advocacy
- 4 Elite Competition at the Turn of the First Millennium
- 5 The Limits of Church Reform
- 6 Pigs and Sheep, Beer and Wine, Pennies and Pounds
- 7 A History of Violence
- 8 Weapons of the Not-So-Weak
- 9 The Murder of Archbishop Engelbert
- 10 Widening the Lens
- 11 The Emperor as Vogt, ca. 1000–1500
- 12 From Lordship to Government?
- 13 Reframing the History of Violence
- 14 Crossing the False Divide
- 15 A Cultural History of the Rapacious Advocate, or: William Tell’s Revenge
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Index
5 - The Limits of Church Reform
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 October 2022
- Corruption, Protection and Justice in Medieval Europe
- Corruption, Protection and Justice in Medieval Europe
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Maps and Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Additional material
- Introduction
- 1 The First “Medieval” Advocates
- 2 Putting Down Roots in Ninth-Century Francia
- 3 The “Aristocratization” of Post-Carolingian Advocacy
- 4 Elite Competition at the Turn of the First Millennium
- 5 The Limits of Church Reform
- 6 Pigs and Sheep, Beer and Wine, Pennies and Pounds
- 7 A History of Violence
- 8 Weapons of the Not-So-Weak
- 9 The Murder of Archbishop Engelbert
- 10 Widening the Lens
- 11 The Emperor as Vogt, ca. 1000–1500
- 12 From Lordship to Government?
- 13 Reframing the History of Violence
- 14 Crossing the False Divide
- 15 A Cultural History of the Rapacious Advocate, or: William Tell’s Revenge
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
This chapter focuses on the period between roughly 1050 and 1150, when calls to reform the Church and religious life swept across Europe. The new religious orders that emerged in this period, including the Cistercians, Premonstratensians and Augustinian canons, all sought to limit the influence of secular authorities over their communities. Nevertheless, this chapter argues that – especially in the German-speaking lands – church advocacy was already too entrenched a feature of society for these new orders to ignore it or effectively control it. Someone needed to provide protection and exercise justice over the numerous estates these new foundations were receiving, and nobles had already come to rely on the position of advocate as an effective means of asserting their influence over monasteries and churches. As a result, while Church reformers increasingly sought in this period to regulate and place limits on advocates’ responsibilities, they were unable to prevent high-ranking nobles from accumulating large numbers of church advocacies in their own hands.
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- Corruption, Protection and Justice in Medieval EuropeA Thousand-Year History, pp. 108 - 129Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022