The Bishop Reformed: Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages (review)

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article.Although its focus is on one level of the order of ministry, this book is a wide-ranging survey, encompassing analysis of canon law, liturgy, religious art and the political structures of the post-Carolingian period. Its geographic range is similarly diverse, covering the British Isles to Croatia.The contributors, mostly from American universities, explore the period they describe as the 'Central Middle Ages', meaning the period from the final collapse of the Carolingian Empire to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). Their studies of episcopal power are situated in a range of social, political and religious changes which characterize Western Europe in this period, including the development of municipal governments and city states, the concomitant development of papal power, and the development of new orders and monastic rules.The editors locate their book in a recent historiographical context that has privileged the voices of women and minorities, voices silenced by hierarchies, including episcopal hierarchies. This book does not so much reassert a traditional focus on institutions and elites (although many of the chapters deal strictly with kings, emperors and noblemen