CASPAR, ERIK. - German Protestant historian, b. at Potsdam on 14 Nov. 1879, d. at Berlin on 22 Jan. 1935. After completing his secondary school studies he attended the Universities of Heidelberg, Bonn and Berlin, where he took his degree in 1902. Immediately afterwards he began his scholarly activity as a collaborator on P. F. Kehr's Italia Pontificia. From 1908 he was attached to the Monumenta Germaniae Historica society with the task of preparing the critical edition of the registers of John VIII and Gregory VII, and a member of its directing committee from 1912; he had to interrupt his work for four years after the outbreak of the First World War. Having returned to his studies, he was appointed to the chair of history at the University of Königsberg (1920-28), whence he moved to Freiburg (1929-30) and finally to Berlin (1930-35). From 1931 he edited, together with Seeberg, the revived Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte.
In the meantime he conceived the plan of a great history of the idea of the papacy from its origins to the early Middle Ages, and according to his usual method he tackled, in introductory studies, its most debated questions: ancient episcopal lists, the doctrine of the primacy, etc. (1926-28). His dream was able to be realized in 1930, when the first of the 4 projected volumes of the Geschichte des Papsttums saw the light, followed by a second volume three years later. The work, left unfinished by the author's death, constitutes the last expression of C.'s scholarly maturity. Of great value in certain respects, it nevertheless reveals serious defects that diminish its strength. A pure historian, like Ranke, and free from metahistorical concerns, he wished to limit himself to the simple fact: how and what the papacy became. Yet the history of the idea, which C. intended to write, was falsified from the outset, because a strictly religious phenomenon was presented by him as a political force in struggle with other analogous forces, which, for the purposes of the work, was entirely secondary.
Works. - A complete list of C.'s writings exceeds forty bibliography numbers; 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. (ibid. 1914); Das Register Gregors VII. (in MGH, Epp. selectae, II, ibid. 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).
Bibliography
Mario Scaduto