Richard Lionheart and the Episcopate in His French Domains

Abstract

Richard Lionheart's historical reputation is primarily that of a warrior kingrex iWle bellicosus in one English chronicler's words-yet recent scholarship has sought to place the English ruler in the context of kingship.' Previous tests of Richard's personal involvement in governing his domains have concentrated on his kingdom of England, neglecting his Continental domains (with the exception of Normandy to some extent). The survival of masses of administrative records from medieval England makes it easier to evaluate the Lionheart's personal role in government there than in his Continental domains, which generated far fewer records, and historians have failed to extend their evaluation of Richard as an administrative monarch to his father's patrimony in the Loire River valley or to his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine's inheritance farther south. Indeed, no administrative records earlier than the Capetian take-