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The Simony Crisis of the Eleventh Century and the ‘Letter of Guido’

2021; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 73; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0022046921000063

1469-7637

Charles West,

Historical and Religious Studies of Rome

The Epistola Widonis , or ‘ Letter of Guido ’, is a key source for the simony debates of the eleventh century, since it is usually considered the first major text to cast doubt on the validity of simoniacal ordinations. After examining the grounds for the letter's conventional dating to c . 1031 and attribution to Guido of Arezzo, this article makes the case for instead locating the letter's origins in the 1060s, and explores the implications of a re-dating for the dynamics of the eleventh-century ‘moral panic’ about simony.