La simonia: un bilancio storiografico e nuove prospettive

The article intends to offer a historiographical review of the ‘classic’ subject of simony – i.e. of the purchase and sale of ecclesiastical offices – through a reasoned review of articles and interventions that (in the absence of a systematic study, given that there is no monograph dedicated to simony) make the approach to the question problematic and suggest new research hypotheses. Studies on the subject, even when they cover a wide time span, are subject to a strong conditioning: they are in fact based on a historiographic and interpretative paradigm of which ecclesiastical and religious history has long been captive, a top-down approach that focuses almost exclusively on condemnations of simony or on theological debate. Little attention is paid to the praxis, for the mechanisms and protagonists of the exchanges. The research conducted so far focus almost exclusively on certain historical periods, those with a very high rate of condemnations, such as the 6th to 7th centuries and especially the 11th century. The article intends to problematise the issue and historiographical approaches to the topic by introducing a reflection on new research paths and new methodologies to investigate a social mechanism, that of exchange, which characterised all medieval centuries and geographically extensive areas.