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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
For he called pope Leo IX not pontifex but pompifex and pulpifex; the Roman Church a council of vanity, the church of the malignant; and the Apostolic See the seat of Satan.’ This hostile epitaph, and more in the same vein, was written in 1088, the year that Berengar died. They are perhaps unequal crimes: to call even a scion of the German aristocracy ‘not pope but a maker of pomp’ or (worse still) ‘pulp’, and to reject the entire Roman Church as an institution. The charges are based on Lanfranc’s indictment of twenty-five years before: that Berengar had ignored the judgements of pope and council and despised the testimony of the faithful throughout the ages, saying that in himself and his followers only was the true Church to be found on earth.
I am much indebted to Professor R. W. Southern for his criticism of this paper.
Page No 61 Note 2 ‘Nempe S. Leonem Papam non pontificem, sed pompificem et pulpificem appellauit; sanctam Romanam ecclesiam, uanitatis concilium et ecclesiam malignantium; Romanam sedem, non apostolicam, sed sedem satanae, dictis et scriptis non timuit appellare’: De multiplici damnatione Berengarii haeresiarchae, ed. Bouquet, Rec. Hist. France (1806), xiv, 35D-36A.
Page No 61 Note 3 For other, more derogatory, meanings see pompa, deceits of the devil (Augustine, De Symbolo, iv. 1); and pulpa, flesh as distinct from spirit (Isidore, Etymologiae, xi. i. 81)—hence ‘fleshmaker’, referring to the eucharistie words’Hoc est enim corpus meurn’.
Page No 61 Note 4 Lanfranc, De corpore et sanguine Domini, cap. 23 (PL, col. 412A).
Page No 61 Note 5 Durand, Martène et, Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum (1717), iv. 103B-CGoogle Scholar.
Page No 62 Note 1 Lanfranc, De corpore et sanguine Domini, cap. 4 (PL, col. 413A-B). Berengar’s letter may be the one printed in the apparatus to the Vita Lanfranci (PL, loc. cit., col. 63C-D).
Page No 62 Note 2 Lanfranc, De corpore et sanguine Domini (PL, col. 413C); Berengar, De Sacra Coena, viii (ed. Beekenkamp, pp. 11-12). Henry I was quick to notice Berengar: he had him examined at a council in Paris (October 1050) and received further advice from bishop Theoduin of Liège (summer 1050). See PL, CXLIX, 1422C- 1424B (council of Paris); PL, cxlvi, 1439B-1442C (Theoduin’s letter).
Page No 63 Note 1 Lanfranc, De corpore et sanguine Domini (PL, col. 413D); BerengarDe Sacra Coena, xi (ed. cit. pp. 16-18). Leo IX died in April 1054; and Victor 11 was not elected until September.
Page No 63 Note 2 See Halphen, L., Le Comté d’Anjou au xi’ siècle (Paris 1906), especially pp. 124-6Google Scholar; and for further details Macdonald, A. J., Berengar and the Reform of Sacramental Doctrine (London 1930), pp. 24 Google Scholar app., 25 app. Berengar’s letters are edited by Erdmann, C., Briefsammlungen der Zeit Heinrichs IV (Weimar 1950)Google Scholar.
Page No 63 Note 3 The story is told in Latouche, R., Histoire du comté du Maine pendant le x’ et le xi’ siècle (Paris 1910)Google Scholar = Bibl. Ecole Hautes Etudes, CLXXXIII, 28-9: cf. Erdmann, Briefsammlungen, no. 84.
Page No 64 Note 1 Halphen, op. cit. p. 128, 128 app. Geoffrey Martel married Agnes of Poitou, widow of William IX of Aquitaine and mother of the Empress Agnes of Germany,’in 1032. Lacking a direct heir, he repudiated Agnes to marry successively Grècie and Adela, both of the local aristocracy, and then finally the German Adelaide.
Page No 64 Note 2 For Berengar’s critics in Chartres see the letter cited p. 62 n. 2. above and Erdmann, Briefsammlungen, no. 88; in Fecamp, abbot John’s Confessio Fidei, rv, 5 (PL, ci, 1089C-D), written c. 1050, and the much more elaborate De corpore et sanguine Christi (PL, CXLIX, 1375-1424), written a few years later by the abbot’s cross-bearer, Durand.
Page No 65 Note 1 See Tritz, H., ‘Die hagiographischen Quellen zur Geschichte Papst Leos IX’, Studi Gregoriani, iv (1952), 194–353 Google Scholar, especially 352.
Page No 65 Note 2 Lanfranc, De corpore et sanguine Domini, cap. 2 (PL, CL, 409D-412B).
Page No 65 Note 3 For Lanfranc’s book of canon law see Brooke, Z. N., The English Church and the Papacy (Cambridge 1931), cap. 5 Google Scholar; cf. Ivo, Decretum, 11. 10 (PL, CLXI, 161B) and Gratian, Decretum, 111. ii. cap. 42 (ed. Friedberg, 1, 1328-9).
Page No 65 Note 4 Lanfranc, De corpore et sanguine Domini, cap. 3 (PL, CL, 412B-D); cf. Berengar, De Sacra Coena, iv (ed. Beekenkamp, pp. 4-5).
Page No 66 Note 1 Berengar witnessed several charters in this period for St Julian, Tours and for Marmoutiers. See for example Denis, L. J., Chartes de S.Julien de Tours 1002-1227 (Le Mans 1912), no. xxxv = Arch. Hist. Maine, xii, fase. 1–2 Google Scholar.
Page No 66 Note 2 A papal legate came to Anjou in 1067: see Erdmann, , Briefsammlungen, no. 91, pp.157-9.Google Scholar Alexander II’s letters regarding Berengar are mentioned, but not quoted, in the De multiplia damnatione, p. 36A: see p. 61 n.2. Four such letters were discovered and published by Bishop, Edmund, ‘ Unedirte Briefe zur Geschichte Berengars von Tours’, Historisches Jahrbuch: Görresgesellschaft, 1 (1880), 272-5Google Scholar: but see Erdmann, C., ‘Gregor VII und Berengar von Tours’, Qu. und Forsch, aus Ital. Archiv. und Bibliotheken, xxvii (1937-8), 48–74 Google Scholar (who thinks that these are forged), and Capitani, O., ‘Per la storia dei rapporti tra Gregorio VII e Beren gario di Tours’, Studi Gregoriani, vi (1961), 99–145 Google Scholar (who defends their authenticity).
Page No 66 Note 3 De corporis et sanguinis Domini ueritate in Eucharistia (PL, CXLIX, 1427-1508).
Page No 66 Note 4 Archbishop Maurilius (1055-67) in a council held at Rouen recognized this formula: ‘Credimus.. .panem in mense Dominica propositum panem tantummodo esse ante consecrationem; sed in ipsa consecratione ineffabili potentia diuinitatis, conuerti naturam et substantiam panis, in naturam et substantiam carnis; carnis uero non ullius alterius, sed illius quae concepta est de Spiritu sancto, nata ex Maria Virgine’ (F. Pommeraye, Sanctae Rotomagensis Ecclesiae Concilia (Rouen 1677), 74). The date of Maurilius’s council is probably 1063. For Poitou (1075) see Schieffer, Th., Die päpstlichen legaten in Frankreich (Berlin 1935). 87-8Google Scholar.
Page No 67 Note 1 Gregory VII, Register, v. 21: ‘De Berengario, unde nobis scripsistis, quid nobis uideatur uel quid disposuerimus, fratres, quos tibi remittimus cum praedicto cardinali nostro, nuntiabunt.’
Page No 67 Note 2 Martène et Durand, Thes. Nou. Anec. (1717), iv, 103 Google Scholar.
Page No 67 Note 3 Martène et Durand, Thes. Nou. Anec. (1717), iv>, 103E–109E ,+103E–109E>Google Scholar: cf. Gregory VII, Reg., vi, 17a.
Page No 67 Note 4 For these letters, which are not in Gregory’s Register, see Jaffé, P., Monumenta Gregoriana (Berlin 1865), 550 Google Scholar, 564 = nos 24 and 36. No. 36, to Ralph,archbishop of Tours and Eusebius, bishop of Angers, is the more important.
Page No 68 Note 1 MGH, Const., 1, 119, no. 70.
