Bishops, Clerks, and Diocesan Governance in Thirteenth-Century England: Reward and Punishment. By Michael Burger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. xvi + 313 pp. $99.00 cloth.

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Bishops, Clerks, and Diocesan Governance in Thirteenth-Century England: Reward and Punishment . By Michael Burger . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2012. xvi + 313 pp. $99.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesMichael Burger introduces his study of the medieval English church's episcopal administration by warning his readers to prepare some unavoidably piling up of detail (7). Indeed, his volume does describe so many trees that it can be a challenge to keep the forest in mind. But this piling, if unpleasant for some readers, is a virtue of the book. Burger's twenty-six pages of Sources Cited document a valiant attempt to track down every shred of primary and secondary material bearing on his subject.Burger's proposal is that England's bishops used carrots more than sticks to manage their clerks. The award of a benefice was a major carrot but (to mix metaphors) also a two-edged sword. Once given, its tenure was for the lifetime of its recipient. The secure income it guaranteed gave a clerk considerable independence of his bishop. In this a benefice was much like a fief, and Burger explores the extent to which ecclesiastical and secular administrators evolved similar strategies. Both benefices and fiefs were endowments intended to support servants, but the difficulty of revoking them lessened the threat of eviction that would have been useful for disciplining subordinates. Bishops had the added problem that too openly treating a benefice a payment for service might lead to a charge of simony. As the medieval era evolved, secular administrators looked for other ways to support their servants without permanently endowing them with the resources that generated their incomes. This led to what some scholars have (somewhat crudely) termed feudalism. Burger concludes his introduction by summarizing the topic of his book as an examination of bastard feudalism . . . episcopal style (11).Burger analyzes episcopal administration from the sometimes symbiotic and sometimes confrontational perspectives of both bishops and their clerks. Benefices were the episcopal carrots most desired by clerks, but carrots were not all on one side and sticks on the other. Bishops needed to attract educated men equipped to offer the carrot of loyal service. Because service could be onerous and even physically dangerous, the temptation to disobey might be strong. As noted above, a clerk's secure tenure potentially weakened his superior's ability to wield the stick of a threat of dismissal, but Burger points out that the tradition protecting occupants' rights to their benefices was supported by ecclesiastical administrators at all levels. Holding benefices of their own, they were wary of challenges to tenure that might backfire. The Church's elaborate system of courts of appeal (rising ultimately to Rome) offered sticks with which a clerk could threaten a bishop who attempted to evict him. Both bishops and clerks also devised strategies to game the system, and each found ways to manipulate the other with rewards or punishments. …