Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic

137 Chapters 12–16 continue to examine the schism, events surrounding the Council of Mantua in 1064 until the deaths of Alexander and Cadalus, and, finally, the election of Hildebrand as Pope Gregory VII. It is in these subsequent chapters that the moves called to question at the end of chapter 11 are explained: to mask conspiracies. Stroll posits that the schism in the Church had not been about imperial control, rather, the conflict played out thus because of the personalities involved, and because of their political associations, actions and the intrigues of those surrounding them. It is to author’s credit that she goes into detail with the documents she has chosen and extrapolates the motivations, influences and personal associations of each figure carefully, even if she might be said to rely a great deal on primary texts. Though there might be a concentration on the figure of Hildebrand and his involvement, it is presented to show events from an innovative perspective rather than to rewrite the history of the politics surrounding the reform. She thus builds for the reader a picture of conflicting relations between pope and emperor in the years before the election of Gregory VII. The volume would benefit from more direct quotes within the text with a more critical address of them, e.g. the letters of Anno are cited in chapter 14, but the Latin quotations are only found in the footnotes. This book will be of value for political and religious studies historians as a resource for the study of this era of ecclesiastical reform, providing stimulating perspectives on the eleventh-century personalities surrounding the eleventh-century popes.