The Byzantinization of the Roman Church under Innocent II (1130-1143)

From the third quarter of the eleventh century, Gregory VII and his successors increasingly claimed imperial attributes and authority-a development ascribed to the 'Investiture Contest' and its fallout, with any Byzantine influence dismissed as heavily mediated. This chapter argues that popes did, in fact, look directly to contemporary Constantinople for models. During lulls in the struggles with the German emperors, the main threat came instead from internal divisions within the Roman church and the city of Rome. In this context, Innocent II reimagined the ancient past of the Roman empire and the legacy of Constantine the Great in ways that were indebted to the transformation of Byzantine political culture by the Komnenoi. Traceable in texts like Benedict's Liber politicus, the programme of ceremonial Innocent sponsored-and the responses it occasioned-had an impact on the medieval papacy's vision of itself that was still profound in the early thirteenth century.