Vice nostra. Vescovi di Parma con funzioni di legati e giudici delegati papali nei secoli XII e XIII

In the XII and the XIII centuries the medieval papal monarchy has undergone a major development. Its evolution has not only an institutional but also, and above all, an ecclesiological nature (the conception of the papal role and its symbolic implications, the relationship between papal and episcopal powers, the influence of the papal authority in the religious life, etc.). For the historians one of the most relevant observation points is the change of the role of bishops in the Church’s government. During the XII and the XIII centuries, in fact, bishops gradually lost some of their functions in the diocese’s administratio in favour of the papal authority. The pope, at the same time, started to delegate government functions to papal legates and judges delegate in order to maintain the control over the peripheral dioceses. Sometimes just the bishops held these types of office. The case study described in this paper draws on the ecclesiastical history of Parma’s diocese in the centuries above mentioned. It intends to demonstrate that a necessary condition for obtaining offices of papal legates or judges delegate was to share not only the political directives of the Holy See but also its ecclesiological design. Among the parmesan bishops, in fact, some of them – like Bernardo degli Uberti (1106-1133), Lanfranco (1136-1162) and Opizzo Fieschi (1194-1224) – who held functions of papal legates and judges delegate in Emilia and Lombardy, were the most faithful supporters of the papal policy and conception of the Church.