Abstract

The late eleventh century witnessed the growing assertion of the Roman pope's role as judge over ecclesiastical affairs. Yet, the institutional imagination behind these developments was more complex and fragile and less developed than is often assumed. Using three specific witnesses – Peter Damian; Atto, cardinal priest of San Marco; and Bruno, cardinal bishop of Segni – this essay reveals the focused, but idiosyncratic, attention that members of the Roman clergy paid to ‘the ecclesial imaginary’. These witnesses reveal that the Roman clergy's own consciousness of its place and power was hard won mental terrain that had continually to be reinforced and defended. They also reveal sustained effort to anchor this transformed institutional consciousness firmly in the authority of texts.

Keywords: exegesis, canon law, clerical cognition, Peter Damian, Bruno of Segni, Atto of San Marco

An important consequence of literacy in any society arises from the area of social organization. Relationships between the individual and the family, the group, and the wider community are all influenced by the degree to which society acknowledges written principles of operation. Literacy affects the ways in which people conceptualize these patterns of operations, and these patterns of thought inevitably feed back into the network of real dependencies.