Papal Rome in the Middle Ages

“Papal Rome” is an idea constructed through Rome’s physical topography and the built environment that enabled popes to govern Rome and its environs, and to project power outward. Rome cannot be called a papal city until the eighth century, but throughout the Middle Ages, the papacy’s control was regularly challenged and marginalized. The idea of Rome, its ideological, political, and religious significance, central to papal authority, was intertwined with Rome’s shifting and refashioned topography. Papal authority relied on a history invented in the early Middle Ages, and re-invented in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. To create “papal Rome,” popes rebuilt portions of Rome, and reshaped and reimagined Roman topography, the physical reality of Rome, and that idea, in turn, reshaped Europe and the Mediterranean. The Roman aristocracy and communal movement would draw from and attempt to redirect that symbolic topography as they challenged papal authority for control of the city.