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CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA 203
tenets of papal ideology (Panovsky, 1951; Evans, 1948). The construction of
churches towering above their pastoral flock symbolized the looming presence of
God over all aspects of life. Sculpture, paintings and glass windows that depicted
the divinity of Christ and the macabre tortures of hell served a similar purpose:
they were a reminder of God’s omnipotence in both the earthly world and the
afterlife. As Pope Gregory I commented, the illiterate ‘could at least read by
looking at the walls what they cannot read in books’ (quoted in Innis, 1950, p.
124).
The bizarre superstitions that encumbered popular medieval devotion were not
all imposed from above. In part they derived from participation by a superstitious
laity. But they had their origin in the sacred magic proclaimed and administered
by the medieval Church and were tolerated by the often sophisticated incumbents
of the papacy as the expression of simple piety binding God and his children
closer together (Thomas, 1973). They served the wider purpose of maintaining
the ecclesiological conception of the universe that legitimized papal imperialism.
Indeed, the conscious ideological ‘work’ that sometimes went into the
elaboration of religious ritual is clearly revealed, for instance, by successive
modifications made in the liturgical orders of the coronation of the Holy Roman
Emperors in the west, a ritual of central importance since it was intended to
remove the papacy still further from the authority of the emperors in the east by
establishing a western emperor. Scrupulous care was taken to ensure that the
ritual investment of the western emperor clearly designated his subordinate
status to the pope. Following the coronation of the first western emperor,
Charlemagne, the papacy introduced a new rite, the anointing of the emperor
with holy oil, in order to symbolize the central theme of papal propaganda that
imperial power ‘descended’ from God through the mediation of the papacy. At
the next coronation (A.D. 823) yet another new feature was introduced—the
giving of a sword to the emperor by the pope—to stress that the role of the
emperor was to defend and protect the pope and carry out, through physical force
if necessary, his will as a filius-defensor. And finally, to avoid any possible
ambiguity and misunderstanding (such as the notion that the emperor was
consecrated an autonomous priest-ruler), coronation ceremonies by the eleventh
century utilized a liturgically inferior grade of oil, which was used to anoint the
emperor, not on the head as before, but on his right arm and between his
shoulder-blades. These and other innovations, involving the introduction of new
symbols, gestures and prayer-texts, were graphic ways of expressing to an
illiterate nobility through one ritual the complex theoretical ideas of papal
hierocracy (Ullmann, 1970).
In addition to non-verbal techniques of communication, the ecclesiastical
authorities actively proselytized their congregation through conventional
methods. Priests reached in aggregate a mass audience through
sermons delivered in vernacular languages; the legatine system reached all
corners of Europe, and papal legates addressed vast crowds during their tours.
The law administered through the ecclesiastical courts both embodied and