CASPAR, ERIK. – German Protestant historian, b. at Potsdam on 14 November 1879, d. in Berlin on 22 January 1935. After completing his secondary education, he attended the Universities of Heidelberg, Bonn, and Berlin, where he received his doctorate in 1902. Immediately afterward he began his scholarly activity as a collaborator on P. F. Kehr’s Italia Pontificia. From 1908 he was attached to the society of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, charged with preparing the critical edition of the registers of John VIII and Gregory VII, and a member of its governing committee from 1912; he was forced to interrupt his work for four years after the outbreak of the First World War. Returning to his studies, he was appointed professor of history at the University of Königsberg (1920–28), from which he moved to Freiburg (1929–30) and finally to Berlin (1930–35). From 1931 he directed the renewed Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte together with Seeberg.
In the meantime he conceived the plan for a major history of the idea of the papacy from its origins to the High Middle Ages and, in accordance with his usual method, addressed in introductory studies its most debated questions: ancient episcopal lists, the doctrine of primacy, and so forth (1926–28). His dream was realized in 1930, when the first of the four projected volumes of the Geschichte des Papsttums appeared, followed three years later by a second volume. The work, left unfinished by the author’s death, represents the final expression of C.’s scholarly maturity. Although of great value in certain respects, it nevertheless reveals serious defects that diminish its force. A pure historian, like Ranke, and free from metahistorical concerns, he wished to confine himself to the simple fact: how and what the papacy became. Yet the history of the idea that C. intended to write was falsified from the outset, because a strictly religious phenomenon was presented by him as a political force in conflict with other analogous forces—something that, for the purposes of the work, was entirely secondary.
Works. – A complete list of C.’s writings exceeds forty bibliographical entries; only the most important are cited: Roger II. und die Gründung der normannisch-sitzlichen Monarchie (Innsbruck 1904); Die Legatengewollt
der normannisch-sizilischen Herrscher im 12. Jahrh. (in Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 7 [1904], pp. 189–219); Die Chronik von Tres Tabernae in Calabrien (ibid., 10 [1906], pp. 1–56); Petrus Diaconus und die Monte-Cassineser Fälschungen. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des italienischen Geisteslebens im Mittelalter (Berlin 1909); Pippin und die römische Kirche. Untersuchungen zum fränkisch-päpstlichen Bunde im VIII. Jahrh. (there 1914); Das Register Gregors VII. (in MGH, Epp. selectae, II, there 1920–23); Primatus Petri. Eine philologisch-historische Untersuchung über die Ursprünge der Primatslehre (Weimar 1927); Registrum Johannis VIII. papae (in MGH, Epp., VII, Berlin 1928); Geschichte des Papsttums von den Anfängen bis zur Höhe der Weltherrschaft (2 vols., Tübingen 1930–33); Das Papsttum unter fränkischer Herrschaft (in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 54 [1935], pp. 132–264).