Mapping the Miraculous: Saints and Travel during the Age of Reform

Some historians have characterized eleventh-century Church reform as a “Papal Revolution.” The figure of pope that we recognize today was born of this revolution. During the eleventh century, many lay people and even several important bishops criticized certain clerics as spiritually deficient. This was the moment the College of Cardinals was formed, and clerical marriage was declared unlawful. Historians have studied the polemical debate between partisans extensively, but we know less about how their ideas on reform spread and how they were interpreted. Whereas traditional approaches advocated a neat linear evolution for the process, which spread across Europe from Rome, more current scholarship underscores the localized character of reform movements and maintains that the pope became a monarch due to grassroots movements to address corruption in the clergy that did not originate in Rome, but that finallyreachedRome. This paper locates the origins of widespread reform in the pan-European revival of hermiticism; specifically, it will discuss the lives of two Saints and their work as reformers on the ground. Saint Romuald (c. 950-1027) and Saint John Gualbertus (c. 985- 1073) have long been recognized for their contributions to eleventh-century reform. Using digital approaches to visualize information contained in their vitae (Geographic Information Systems), this presentation refutes the idea that monastic reform focused on stability; rather, it argues thattravel and movement of monks, clerics, and relics, and the construction of communication networks made the success of these reformers possible.