Zielinska, Agata; (2021) Territorialization, the Papacy, and the Institutions of the Polish Church, 1198-1357. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis traces the development of the Polish church’s institutions as a result of their territorial behaviours and activities. While much historiography presents the Latin Church as a ‘state-maker,’ this thesis demonstrates how secular and religious practices and behaviours developed in tandem with one another. The initial fragmented nature of the Polish duchies allowed the episcopate to strengthen itself by providing a united front, supported by the papacy, in the face of ducal incursions. A consequence of this unity was that the duchies never lost the idea of a unified regnum to reflect the provincia, affecting the polity’s developments. This co-determination is concretised by analysing how the ecclesiastical and secular elites created distinctive but overlapping territories in a shared space, articulating and exercising their authority and power within them. The ability of the papacy, the episcopate, and the regular clergy to coexist within a space shared with one another and lay powers was possible because each made use of their territoriality at different levels: jurisdictional, administrative, agricultural, pastoral, disciplinary, and financial. They operated in distinctive ways which were recognised, repeated, and accepted. This process of institutionalisation was the result of pragmatic behaviours caused by competing and complementing interests and ideologies present in a shared space. The thesis is divided into two parts. Part One focuses on how the papacy contributed to the creation and consolidation of ecclesiastical territories in Poland. Chapter One traces how Innocent III and the Polish Archbishop Henryk Kietlicz set out the parameters for ecclesiastical territories in Poland at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and how these were used by the papacy to exercise its authority through crusading and inquisitorial tribunals. Chapter Two focuses on how papal envoys continued this process of creation and assertion of papal authority, progressing from one-off missions of legates in the thirteenth century to consistent, routine operations carried out by papal nuncios in the fourteenth, which allowed papal authority to permeate the Polish landscape. Part Two studies local negotiations of space, particularly in relation to secular powers. Chapter Three demonstrates that territorial practices, focused especially on agriculture, were the common foundation for the development of both lay and ecclesiastical lordship. Chapter Four analyses how the episcopate functioned within these co-determined spaces, projecting distinctive clerical status onto its territories. The Fifth and final chapter shows how the patronage of different religious orders expanded the ability of the papacy, episcopate, and lay lords to exercise their authority.

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