Dr Ben Wiedemann
Ben Wiedemann is a Fellow in History at Fitzwilliam College. He completed his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at University College London, and spent a year as a Doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, London. Ben came to Fitzwilliam College in 2018 as a Junior Research Fellow and is now the Steward and a Tutor for Postgraduate Students at Fitzwilliam. Ben is also a Bye-Fellow and Undergraduate Tutor at Lucy Cavendish College.
Ben’s research focuses primarily on the Medieval papacy. His first book – Papal Overlordship and European Princes, 1000-1270 – was published by Oxford University Press in 2022 and argued for seeing Medieval government as ‘petition-led’: primarily driven by external requests rather than by central policy. Ben is now working on the manuscripts of a text known as the Roman provincial, which attempted to outline the political geography of Medieval Europe in the form of lists of cities.
Contact
Tags & Themes
Fitzwilliam College Storey’s Way Cambridge CB3 0DG
Key publications
Monograph:
- Papal Overlordship and European Princes, 1000 – 1270 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022) Oxford Studies in Medieval European History
- Reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement (no. 6212; April 22 2022, by Robert Bartlett)
Articles and chapters:
- "Creeping up on the Roman Provincial", Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (2023), pp. 291-313.
- “Pater sanctissime: Petitions to the Pope in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries”, Archiv für Diplomatik 69 (2023), pp. 109-56.
- “Papal Finances in the Middle Ages”, Cambridge History of the Papacy, 2: The Governance of the Church, ed. J. Rollo-Koster, M. H. Eichbauer, R. A. Ventresca, M. Pattenden (Cambridge, 2025).
- “The Papacy and Money: ‘Blessings’ at the Curia in the Twelfth Century”, Law, Politics and Religion in Medieval Europe, c.1100-c.1350: Papers in Honour of Anne Duggan, ed. T. Baker (Turnhout, 2024).
- “The Joy of Lists: The Provinciale Romanum, Tribute and ad limina visitation to Rome”, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 116/1-2 (2021), pp. 61-97.
- “Quanto nobilius membrum: A Letter of Pope Gregory IX (1228)”, Manuscripta: A Journal for Manuscript Research 64/1 (Jan., 2020), pp. 127-41.
- “Papal Authority and Power during the Minority of Emperor Frederick II”, Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c.1000-1500, ed. T. W. Smith, Europa Sacra (Turnhout, 2020), pp. 67-77.
- “The Character of Papal Finance at the Turn of the Twelfth Century”, English Historical Review 133/562 (Jun., 2018), pp. 503-32.
- “Doorkeepers, the chamberlain and petitioning at the papal court, c.1150-1200”, Historical Research 91/253 (Aug., 2018), pp. 409-25.
- “Super gentes et regna: papal ‘Empire’ in the later eleventh and twelfth centuries”, Studies in Church History 54: The Church and Empire (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 109-22.
- “‘Fooling the Court of the Lord Pope’: Dafydd ap Llywelyn’s petition to the Curia in 1244”, Welsh History Review / Cylchgrawn Hanes Cymru 28/2 (Dec., 2016), pp. 209-32.
- “The papal camera and the monastic census. Evidence from Portugal, c.1150-1190”, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 126/2-3 (2015), pp. 181-96.
- “The kingdom of Portugal, homage and papal ‘fiefdom’ in the second half of the twelfth century”, Journal of Medieval History 41/4 (Dec., 2015), pp. 432-445.