The reform of the Church cannot be read as a unique and one-way process. Linearity was indeed whatwas missing. Although it is undeniable that ecclesiastic institutions changed more between the eleventh andthirteenth centuries than in the previous hundreds of years, we should refer to this process resorting to the plural form “reforms”, a set of reforms. The reform consisted of different reforms of the ecclesiastical institutions which dialectically combined resulting in a radical change, which was not the result of a pre-established plot and had no single root. The reform of the papacy, the progressive acquisition of awareness of its universal authority and above all the creation of the pontifical primacy, was based on this multiplicity of ...