Freedom and Protection

Kriston R. Rennie is Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Queensland

• PrologueIntroduction 1 The road to protection2 Rome’s orbit3 Traditio Romana4 Making concessions5 The ‘fetters of feudalism’6 ‘Victory of the papacy’?EpilogueAppendix: Monastic exemption privileges in France, c. 590–c. 1100BibliographyIndex

‘There is much to admire in Freedom and Protection, which offers a welcome recapitulation of a century’s worth of highly technical scholarship—in English, French, and German—on the history of the relationship between the papacy and French abbeys in the early Middle Ages, through the lens of monastic exemption.’ Scott G. Bruce, Reading Religion, June 2019'Rennie has produced a valuable and engaging book that should be of interest to a wide audience. […] Freedom and Protection sheds new and interesting light on important questions that have not always received, particularly across such a long and early period of study, the scholarly attention they deserve.'H-France Review'As Rennie convincingly demonstrates, the symbiotic relationships that the popes developed with individual monasteries through exemption privileges are an important if underappreciated feature of the growth of papal authority over the course of the early Middle Ages.'Speculum