Folia Canonica 5. (2002)
STUDIES - Kenneth Pennington: Bishops and their Dioceses
12 KENNETH PENNINGTON Papal appointments and translations of bishops profoundly changed the relationship of a bishop to his diocese from the thirteenth century on. From the earliest church the canons that regulated episcopal translations dictated that bishops could be moved only “for the good of the community (utilitas ecclesiae) and in case of necessity.” These concepts entered the canonical tradition very early and remained until very late. Although the words were still used in the thirteenth century they conceal the fundamental changes in episcopal authority and ecclesiastical geography. At the same time that bishops consolidated their jurisdictional powers within the boundaries of a diocese and at the same time as diocesan boundaries become clearly defined in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the traditional bonds between the bishop and his flock were transformed. The rhetoric remained; the reality did not. From the historian’s point of view it is remarkable how little opposition there was to this constitutional change within the church. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries I have found little criticism. Dante Aligheri placed Andrea dei Mozzi in Hell because he was a sodomite. Andrea had been a notoriously bad bishop in Florence. Dante wrote:13 colui potei che dal servo de’ servi fu trasmutato d’Arao in Bacchiglione, dove lasciô li mal protesi nervi (He who the Servant of Servants translated from Florence to Vicenza where he left his abused sinews). Pope Boniface VIII translated Andrea from Florence to Vicenza because of his sins. We can guess from these lines what Dante thought of this translation - if not all translations - but we can only imagine what the people of Vicenza thought. One of the Vicenzan bishops, Biagio da Leonessa, was translated to Rieti in 1347 While bishop of Vicenza, Biaggio became embroiled in the politics of the region, attacked the powerful Scaligeri family, abandoned his episcopal see in 1339 for the epsicopal palace in Padua, and was suspended from his office in 1345 by Pope Clement VI. Clement, however, found bad behavior no barrier to becoming a pastor of other flocks. He translated Biaggio to Rieti in 1347. Biaggio remained bishop of Rieti until he died in 1378.14 The papacy translated Andrea and Biaggio to less important sees for political and moral reasons. This may have reflected a certain kind of necessity, but as one chronicler described Biaggio he was “un affamato lupo verso le pecore,” like a starved wolf among the sheep, in Vicenza. One may not stretch the truth too much by imagining that the people of Rieti may have had their doubts about Biaggio. Biaggio’s only merit was that his home town of Leonessa was in the reSwift and Strong: Essays on Inferno XV, Lawrence, Kansas 1978, 115 has listed translated bishops of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 13 Canto 15, lines 112-114. 14 Brentano, New World (nt. 12), 170-172.
