Urban Space, Memory, and Episcopal Authority: The Bishops of Amiens in Peace and Conflict, 1073-1164

Abstract

"Urban Space, Memory, and Episcopal Authority: The Bishops of Amiens in Peace and Conflict, 1073-1164." Recently historians have begun to examine how medieval ecclesiastical authorities employed written sources to resolve disputed political and religious claims. The bishops of Amiens, often politically assailed in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, lacked an established narrative tradition of gestae or vitae providing them with ready exempla of episcopal authority. The prelates therefore articulated their connection with the community's sacred space and its powerful association with the collective memory of Amiens's founding bishopsaints. Studying the episcopal memorialization of urban space at Amiens demonstrates how religious authorities concurrently employed a variety of complementary media to publicize their bond with the community's saintly patrons, highlights how the bishops as progenitors and keepers of social memory exploited its connection to sacred space to serve their own ends, and demonstrates how manipulation of space could become an idiom of power in communities split among multiple and competing political interests.