The bishop was a figure of unparalleled importance in the tenth and eleventh centuries, as he married the advantages of his noble birth to the sacramental and pastoral role of bishop, drawing upon the resultant range of powers to intervene in all areas of life. Scholarship on the episcopate in this period, however, has tended to cluster around two themes: the role of bishops in the fragmentation of the Carolingian Empire and the critiques of these bishops levied by certain church reformers. This book moves beyond these subjects and examines the full scope of bishops' activities in southwest...

In the period following the collapse of the Carolingian Empire up to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the episcopate everywhere in Europe experienced substantial and important change, brought about by a variety of factors: the pressures of ecclesiastical reform; the devolution and recovery of royal authority; the growth of papal involvement in regional matters and in diocesan administration; the emergence of the "crowd" onto the European stage around 1000 and the proliferation of autonomous municipal governments; the explosion of new devotional and religious energies; the expansion of...