ABBOTS AS HUMAN RESOURCES IN TENTH- AND ELEVENTH-CENTURY ITALY

Italian monasticism of the tenth and eleventh centuries featured abbots who were not only important human resources for their communities, but constantly projected their action on to wider horizons, acting first in the context of the Church under the Empire, then putting their skills at the service of the reformist group that was getting ready to destroy that mutual cooperation. Gregory VII and his immediate predecessors had no doubts about the need to involve the abbots in their struggles, for they were particularly gifted as leaders. This transfer of human resources was definitely not painless and in the second half of the eleventh century the great monastic leaders at whom we have looked questioned whether monastic reform could converge with the reform of the wider Church. The answers to this question were often contrasting, just as the reactions of the communities to which these religious belonged differed, as did also the forms of their institutional memory.