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Starting from the example of Gregory VII, who, accused by imperial publicists of being animated only by his personal desire for power, replied that he had always conformed to God’s will, it can be observed that in the institutional sphere the theme of desire was treated with great caution and the terminology relating to it was used very cautiously, due to their strong charge of subjectivity. Beyond and above the desires of individuals, institutions could only function as a mirror of an order of the cosmos that only found its ubi consistam in the divine will. The link between institutional change and individual desire left too wide a margin of ambiguity between proprium commodum and communis utilitas, which was always considered superior to the interests of individuals.

The perception of the phenomenon by the historiography of reformed monasticism has recently changed because, having lost the historiographical moralism that permitted the use of evaluative and apologetic logics, the vision of the so-called ecclesiastical reform 0 struggle for investiture, now understood as a revolutionary process that invested European society as a whole. The overcoming of the opposition between new monasticism and traditional monasticism led to a more fluid and dialectical vision of the transformations that affected the forms of the 11th monastic life. The participation of Avellanites, Camaldolites and Vallombrosans in the reform initiatives of the papacy was very intermittent and differentiated, and their supraregional expansion only occurred when, from the beginning of the 10th century, the fury of the Gregorian age were replaced by processes of institutional stabilisation that were not necessarily guided by the papacy, but which allowed the experimentation of instruments of supra-local coordination of religious communities. Precisely in this context Atto of Pistoia, which synthesises in itself the ability to stabilise and to make it compatible with the ecclesiastical local system.

To the monolithic conception of the "Gregorian" reform, always the same from 1046 to 1122, a much more articulated vision has been substituted which tends to highlight the specificity of the various reform proposals of individual popes during the period considered. The German historiography on Investiturstreit, which focuses on the political aspect of the history of relations between the papacy and the empire, has extended the chronology of reference at least up to the Ottonian age, highlighting the reform projects present within the imperial court, which often they also involved the papacy. In Italy this tendency clashed with the resistance of the historiographic paradigm of the "iron century" crisis, fueled by the perception of a corrupt papacy because it was at the mercy of the Roman aristocracy. Only in recent years the valorization of popes like John XV has allowed to overcome this black legend of the papacy, opening significant horizons for the study of specific projects of pontifical reform already in the tenth century. Recent studies in Italy have instead tried to observe the metamorphosis of papal reform programs in the first half of the twelfth century: for example, the two opposing popes during the schism of the Pierleoni differed only for political reasons or had also different reform projects elaborated on basis of different ecclesiologies?

Summary of the main phenomena characterising the vast and articulated reform process of the 11th century, interpreted in the light of the category of the hidden revolution.