Author Description

This volume contains the proceedings of an international conference on the diplomatics of medieval papal documents held in 2019 at the German Historical Institute in Paris. From the pontificate of Alexander III (1159-1181) at the latest, direct appeals to the Roman curia, permitted even to lay people, reinforced the pope’s jurisdictional primacy and contributed to the proliferation and wide distribution of papal acts, which numbered some 30,000 by the end of the twelfth century. The papers deal with a number of topics touching on papal history, including new techniques for the analysis of papal acts and regional variations in their issuance. Particular attention is paid to France, whose papal charters the German Historical Institute in Paris is analyzing in the Gallia Pontificia.