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The Transformation of a Religious Landscape: Medieval Southern Italy, 850-1150 
(Cornell University Press, 2006; a Volume in the Series "Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past," Edited by Barbara Rosenwein)

Awarded the 2007 Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize for best book in Italian History
by the Society for Italian Historical Studies

This book examines the drastic changes in the religious life and exercise of ecclesiastical authority that resulted from the Norman conquest of southern Italy and the reform program carried out by the archbishop of Salerno and the abbey of the Holy Trinity of Cava.  Chronologically it covers the period from c. 849, the date the Principality broke away from Benevento and became an autonomous kingdom, to c. 1130, when King Roger II unified southern Italy and Sicily under a single ruler.  Geographically it concentrates on the core regions of the Principality, meaning the modern-day province of Salerno that stretches south to include both Cilento and the Valley of Diano.

The first part of the book discusses the decentralized ecclesiastical system in the Lombard Principality of Salerno up through the mid-eleventh century.  Unlike Carolingian regions of western Europe, it had no single political or religious leader claiming authority over churches or religious life.  Instead community houses, built by individuals, families, or groups of citizens from small villages, dominated the ecclesiastical landscape.  These religious houses served the needs of the local community and neither the prince nor the bishop of Salerno took much interest in the foundation, administration, or supervision of these churches.

Not surprisingly the de-centralized ecclesiastical system of Salerno produced diverse religious practices.  Documents specifically stated that priests and abbots were to officiate in houses according to local custom, and religious practices differed not only  from one town to another but also from church to church within the same town or region.  Clerical lifestyles and duties also differed from one place to another, and clerics often combined the functions of monk, priest, and deacon.  As in other areas of southern Italy and Sicily, the Principality of Salerno had both Latin and Greek foundations as well as religious houses that combined the two traditions.  Even the line between the clergy and laity was often blurred.

The second part of the book discusses how two ecclesiastical powers, the archbishop of Salerno and the abbey of Cava, transformed the ecclesiastical system of the Principality of Salerno in the eleventh century through the creation of ecclesiastical hierarchies.  Both the archbishops and abbots built and took over numerous religious houses in the region, placing the foundations and their clergy under their direct authority.  The duties of clerics became better defined and clerical orders more differentiated.  Although private religious foundations continued to provide pastoral care in both city and countryside, by the twelfth century the majority of important churches and monasteries in the province of Salerno went under the authority of either the cathedral church or the abbey of Cava.

The archbishops and abbots all espoused ideas that mirrored the doctrines of papal reformers in Rome.  The province of Salerno clearly participated in the European-wide reform movement, often referred to as the Gregorian Reform, that radically transformed the Catholic Church beginning in the second half of the eleventh century.  Nonetheless, the main force behind ecclesiastical reorganization came from local prelates and clerics, with the popes serving more to legitimize and uphold privileges  than to create them.  Moreover, the archbishops and abbots had to face local realities that came into direct conflict with reformist ideals, in particular a long tradition of clerical marriage and a vast number of lay-owned houses.  In the end, many of the goals of papal reform did not take hold in Salerno.  Laymen continued to build and administer churches and to participate in ecclesiastical appointments, clerics continued to follow local traditions, and priests continued to marry and have families.  In addition, Greek clerics and Greek religious practices endured well beyond the medieval period.  Thus church reformers in Salerno  followed the larger trends of the Gregorian movement while at the same time maintaining the region's own unique traditions and customs.



Articles:
 

Pastoral Care as Military Action: The Ecclesiology of Archbishop Alfanus I of Salerno (1058-85)
in The Bishop Reformed: Studies in Episcopal Culture and Power in the Central Middle Ages, ed. John Ott and Anna Trumbore (Ashgate, 2007)

During his reign as archbishop, Alfanus I not only rebuilt the cathedral church of Salerno on a lavish scale, but he also established new cathedral churches in four cities of his archdiocese and turned three ancient Sees into suffragans of Salerno's archdiocese.  An avid reformer, with ties to both Montecassino and Rome, Alfanus sought to to build up a network of bishoprics directly under his control, not so much with the goal of providing pastoral care to rural communities, whose inhabitants continued to be served by community houses and proprietary foundations, but with the aim of complementing the pursuits of the secular rulers of Salerno, first Prince Gisolf II and then Duke Robert Guiscard, and integrating archiepiscopal power more fully into the political structures of the Principality of Salerno.  For Alfanus, political as well as religious leaders had a duty to protect the local population, and all seven cathedral churches (in Sarno, Nusco, Acerno, Policastro, Marsico, Cassano, and Martirano), located in cities of strategic and political significance, served important military purposes.  Not only did they house the relics of saints, whose supernatural powers could be harnessed in times of trouble, but, perched high on top of their cities with views of the major strategic roads leading into the Principality, they also doubled as watchtowers and fortresses.  Thus the reorganization of the archdiocese of Salerno and the construction of new cathedral churches under the leadership of Archbishop Alfanus I had interlinking political, military, and spiritual goals.


Religious Life in Eleventh-Century Salerno: The Church of Santa Lucia in Balnearia
Haskins Society Journal XIII (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002)

The church of Santa Lucia was typical of religious houses found in the Principality of Salerno in the eleventh century.  First of all it was a small family foundation, built, supported, and administered by two brothers and a group of "parentes" who lived nearby the church. It was also a community house, serving the religious needs of the small village of Balnearia. In addition, the house was a joint undertaking by members of the clergy and laity and it was free from archiepiscopal control. Thus the administration of Santa Lucia was in the hands of the founding family and surrounding community.

Likewise the career of Raidolfus, the priest who founded and officiated in Santa Lucia, was typical of that of other clerics in the region of Salerno . He served in a small, family foundation that was administered autonomously by the owners and clergy appointed. He had a wife and children, and he owned property over which he exercised the same rights as other laymen did. He also combined the duties of abbot and priest. Thus Raidolfus's lifestyle did not differ much from that of the laity, nor did it embody the ideals of papal reformers who were active in Italy at the time.

The church of Santa Lucia was also part of the consolidation trend characteristic of the mid-eleventh to mid-twelfth century. The charta libertatis from 1050 shows the church participating in a newly strengthened diocesan system in which the archbishop asserted power, albeit limited, over the clergy. Then sometime in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, Santa Lucia was donated to the church of San Nicola of Gallocanta, which in turn was absorbed by the abbey of Cava over the course of the first half of the twelfth century. Thus Santa Lucia passed out of the hands of the original founding family after only two generations, and by the twelfth century it was no longer a family-controlled religious house but part of the formidable Cava empire.


Territorial Lordship in the Principality of Salerno, 1050-1150
Haskins Society Journal IX (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2001)

While English-speaking historians have often relied on the term "feudalism" to describe the Middle Ages, Italian ones have traditionally used the concepts of "territorial power" and "particularism." Vaccari, Mor, Bognetti, and more recently Tabacco have claimed that with the breakdown of Carolingian power, lay lords and bishops usurped rights formerly exercised by the Lombard king and his officials. They built castles, a process referred to as "incastellamento" in Italian, and began to assert territorial authority over cities and their territories, bringing about a period of "feudal anarchy" for Italy.

My own research on Salerno has shown that, unlike the term "feudalism," "territorial lordship" has a more meaningful application. In eleventh and twelfth-century Salerno, local lords began to construct centers of power, building fortified centers (castra) where they exercised authority over the population and economy of a specific territory. These lords collected taxes on land and commerce and received services from the local population. They exercised judicial authority over the inhabitants, deciding disputes which arose among them and limiting their freedom of movement. But interestingly enough, the construction of territorial lordships in Salerno did not result from a fragmentation of political power.  Rather it occurred alongside the centralizing program of the Norman dukes and later kings, which meant that the two were not antagonistic, but complementary.