Prima della tempesta. Vescovi riformatori della prima metà del secolo XI

The fifty-year period separating Anselm of Besate's Rethorimachia from Donizone's Vita Mathildis saw the triumph of the great marquis dynasties (first and foremost the Canossa and the Arduinici of Turin) and the simultaneous decline of that episcopal world which, at least from the Carolingian age onwards, had instead established itself as an autonomous and superior entity within the Italic kingdom, first and foremost thanks to its culture and its ability to interact with the imperial court, so as to constitute an effective transmission belt within the Italic kingdom, so as to constitute an effective transmission belt also with the families of origin. Thus the tangle of institutional connections between the imperial court, the official apparatus, local powers, dioceses and monasteries, which in the first half of the 11th century had allowed local communities to effectively structure themselves around complex and strongly shared symbolic heritages, progressively entered into crisis.