Western Church : history of dioceses & clergy

En 2017 paraissait dirigé par Monique Maillard-Luypaert Alain Marchandisse et Bertrand Schnerb et avec pour sous-bassement un colloque organisé à Lille et Tournai par ces mêmes historiens un volume qui sous le titre Évêques et cardinaux princiers et curiaux (XIVe-début XVIe siècle). Des acteurs du pouvoir apportait un ensemble de contributions notamment biographiques sur cette figure paradigmique de l’homme d’Église appelé à exercer une action politique d’envergure parce qu’il est issu d’un milieu familial qui l’y prédestine ou parce qu’il sert à la cour un prince un roi un pape. Sous une bannière commune – Église et État – un second colloque cette fois organisé à Versailles s’est voulu à la fois le prolongement et l’aménagement conceptuel du premier à une époque plus récente la période moderne voire le début des temps contemporains. Le présent volume en renferme les actes. Ils s’insèrent dans cinq volets spécifiques : Rome son clergé de cour et celui des autres États ; le conseil politique ; les chapelles princières ; les confesseurs princiers et les clergés de cour dans le monde chrétien catholique ou non.

In the years 816-819 a series of councils was held at the imperial palace in Aachen. The goal of the meetings was to settle a number of questions about ecclesiastical organization. These issues were hotly debated throughout the Christian Roman Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries and then reinvigorated by the renewal of empire under Charlemagne and his son Louis the Pious. At the centre of the ensuing debate stood the distinction between monks and monastic communities on the one hand and the so-called clerici canonici and their communities on the other. Many other reforms were proposed in its wake: the position of the episcopacy needed to be renegotiated the role of the imperial court needed to be consolidated and the place of every Christian within the renewed Carolingian Church needed to be redefined. What started out as a seemingly straightforward reorganisation of the religious communities that dotted the Frankish ecclesiastical landscape thus quickly turned into a broad movement that necessitated an almost complete categorization of the orders of the Church. The contributions to this volume each zoom in on various aspects of these negotiations: their prehistory their implementation and their influence. In doing so previously held assumptions about the scope the goals and the impact of the ‘Carolingian Church Reforms’ will also be re-assessed.

Bishops were powerful individuals who had considerable spiritual economic and political power. They were not just religious leaders; they were important men who served kings and lords as advisers and even diplomats. They also controlled large territories and had significant incomes and people at their command. The nature of the international Church also meant that they travelled and had connections well beyond their home countries were players on an increasingly international stage and were key conduits for the transfer of ideas.

This volume examines the identities and networks of bishops in medieval Europe. The fifteen papers explore how senior clerics attained their bishoprics through their familial social and educational networks their career paths relationships with secular lords and the papacy. It brings together research on bishops in central southern and northern Europe by early career and established scholars. The first part features five case-studies of individual bishops’ identities careers and networks. Then we turn to examine contact with the papacy and its role in three regions: northern Italy the archbishopric of Split and Sweden. Part III focuses on five main issues: royal patronage reforming bishops nepotism social mobility and public assemblies. Finally Part IV explores how episcopal networks in Poland Sigüenza and the Nidaros church province helped candidates achieve promotion. These contributions will thus enhance of our understanding of how bishops fit into the religious political social and cultural fabrics of medieval Europe.

The question of personality is a problematic one beset by complications of cultural distance the layers of the past and the limitations of the source material.

Recognising these difficulties this volume draws together character sketches based upon historical narratives and a range of sources including architecture liturgical manuscripts chronicles and hagiographical material to show a multifaceted range of means by which historians can construct reconstruct and deconstruct episcopal power through the person of the bishop.

Building on a previous volume of essays Episcopal Power and Local Society in Medieval Europe 900-1400 which examined the construction augmentation and expression of episcopal power in local society this second volume seeks to uncover the impact of the personalities behind that power. Through essays dealing with the construction of cultural and political personalities the shadows they cast and the contexts that forged them this volume brings to life the careers of bishops across medieval Europe from c. 900 to c. 1480. This geographical range and broad time span throws up the similarity in applications and bene ts of interdisciplinarity which can be applied to ecclesiastical history and presents a fascinating range of case studies for consideration.

The medieval bishop occupied a position of central importance in European society between 900 and 1400. Indeed medieval bishops across Europe were involved in an assortment of ecclesiastical and secular affairs a feature of the episcopal office in this period that ensured their place amongst the most influential figures in their respective milieux. Such prominence has inevitably piqued the interest of modern scholars and a number of important studies focusing on individual aspects of the medieval episcopal office have emerged notably in recent years. Yet scholarly attention has often been drawn towards the careers of extraordinary bishops men whose renown was often due to their involvement in both ecclesiastical and secular activities that took them beyond the borders of their dioceses. As a result there has been a tendency to overlook the significance of the function of the episcopal office within local society and in particular the way that this context shaped episcopal power.

The purpose of this volume is to examine the foundations of episcopal power in medieval Europe by considering its functioning and development at the level of local society. This collection of essays derives from papers delivered at a conference at Cardiff University in May 2013 and is divided into three sections focusing on the construction of episcopal power in local society the ways in which it was augmented and the different forms through which it was expressed. The essays have a broad geographical scope and include studies focused on English French Italian and Icelandic dioceses.