Register of Gregory VII

The register is the papal chancery’s own book of outgoing letters and synod records for the pontificate of Gregory VII. It is cited by book and number, so that 4.12 is the twelfth entry of the fourth book; entries numbered with a letter, such as 2.55a or 3.10a, are pieces that stand in the register without a number of their own. Erich Caspar, who edited the text for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, treated the Vatican manuscript as the original register kept in Gregory’s lifetime.

It is direct evidence for what Gregory wrote and decreed, and it is one side’s evidence. The letter to the German princes about Canossa (4.12) is a report by one of the two principals to allies who had reason to be displeased with what he had done. The Dictatus papae (2.55a) is a list of twenty-seven sentences with a heading and nothing else: no addressee, no date of its own and no statement of purpose.