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Leo IV. and das Papsttum in der Mitte des 9.jahrhunderts: Moglichkeiten and Grenzen pdpstlicher Herrschaft in der spdten Karolingerzeit. By Klaus Herbers. [Papste and Papsttum, Band 27.] (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann. 1996. Pp. xii, 580. DM 390.)
Leo IV served as pope for eight years (847-855), almost two years longer than the average for his ninth-century colleagues. The account of his activities in the Liber Pontificalis at forty-nine pages in Raymond Davis's translation (The Lives of the Ninth-Century Popes [Liber Pontificalis/ [Liverpool, 1995]) comes in at more than twice the average length of entries for other ninth-century popes and is second only to that of Leo III (797-816). Yet, as Klaus Herbers points out several times in his impressive and meticulously researched book, Leo IV has been reputed among the least significant ninth-century pontiffs. Terms of office and numbers of words do not reputations make, but close study of sources and new historical approaches do. Herbers makes good use of the Leovita transmitted in the Liber Pontificalis and especially of the Leonine porlions of the Collectio Britannica, an eleventh-century manuscript containing excerpts from papal documents deemed useful in the Investiture Controversy. But Herbers also knows ninth-century Rome, the liturgy, the culture...