In medieval Europe, the death of a king could not only cause a dispute about the succession, but also a severe crisis. In times of a vacant throne particular responsibility fell to the bishops - whose general importance for the time around the first milennium has been revealed by recent scholarship - as royal counsellors and policy makers. This volume therefore concentrates on the bishops' room for manoeuvre and the patterns of episcopal power, focusing on the Eastern Frankish Reich and Anglo-Saxon England in a comparative approach which is not least based upon the research of a renowned medievalist, Timothy Reuter. His article about "A Europe of Bishops" ("Ein Europa der Bischöfe") is presented in English translation for the first time.

During the fourth century a.d., theological controversy divided Christian communities throughout the Eastern half of the Roman Empire. At stake was not only the truth about God but also the authority of church leaders, whose legitimacy depended on their claims to represent that truth. In this book, Carlos R. Galvao-Sobrinho argues that out of these disputes was born a new style of church leadership, one in which the power of the episcopal office was greatly increased. He shows how these disputes compelled church leaders repeatedly to assert their orthodoxy and legitimacy—tasks that required them to mobilize their congregations and engage in action that continuously projected their power in the public arena. These developments were largely the work of prelates of the first half of the fourth century, but the style of command they inaugurated became the basis for a dynamic model of ecclesiastical leadership found throughout late antiquity.

Focusing on the way bishops in the eleventh century used the ecclesiastical tithe - church taxes - to develop or re-order ties of loyalty and dependence within their dioceses, this book offers a new perspective on episcopacy in medieval Germany and Italy. Using three broad case studies from the dioceses of Mainz, Salzburg and Lucca in Tuscany, John Eldevik places the social dynamics of collecting the church tithe within current debates about religious reform, social change and the so-called 'feudal revolution' in the eleventh century, and analyses a key economic institution, the medieval tithe, as a social and political phenomenon. By examining episcopal churches and their possessions not in institutional terms, but as social networks which bishops were obliged to negotiate and construct over time using legal, historiographical and interpersonal means, this comparative study casts fresh light on the history of early medieval society.

Edited by Ludger K'orntgen and Dominik Wassenhoven.

We live in a world riven through with standards. To understand more of their deep, rich past is to understand ourselves better. The two volumes, Standardization in the Middle Ages. Volume 1: The North and Standardization in the Middle Ages. Volume 2: Europe, turn to the Middle Ages to give a deeper understanding of the medieval ideas and practices that produced--and were produced by--standards and standardization. At first glance, the Middle Ages might appear an unlikely place to look for standardization. The editors argue that, on the contrary, generating predictability is a precondition for meaningful cultural interaction in any historical period and that we may look to the Middle Ages to learn more about the historical, social, and cognitive processes of standardization. This multidisciplinary venture, which includes medievalists from the fields of history, intellectual history, art history, philology, numismatics, and more, as well as scholars of cognitive science, informatics, and anthropology, interrogates how medieval people and groups envisioned and enforced predictability, uniformity, and order, and how they attempted to obtain and maintain standards across vast distances and heterogeneous social and cultural structures.

This volume closely examines patterns of rhetoric in surviving correspondence by the Roman emperor Constantine on conflicts among Christians that occurred during his reign, primarily the ‘Donatist schism’ and ‘Arian controversy’. Commonly remembered as the ‘first Christian emperor’ of the Roman Empire, Constantine’s rule sealed a momentous alliance between church and state for more than a millennium. His well-known involvement with Christianity led him to engage with two major disputes that divided his Christian subjects: the ‘Donatist schism’ centred from the emperor's perspective on determining the rightful bishop of Carthage, and the so-called ‘Arian controversy’, a theological conflict about the proper understanding of the Son's divine nature in relation to that of the Father. This book examines a number of letters associated with Constantine that directly address both of these disagreements, exploring his point of view and motivations to better understand how and why this emperor applied his power to internal church divisions. Based on close analysis of prominent themes and their functions in the rhetoric of his correspondence, Pottenger argues that three ‘doctrines of power’ served to inform and direct Constantine’s use of power as he engaged with these problems of schism and heresy. Power and Rhetoric in the Ecclesiastical Correspondence of Constantine the Great is of interest to students and scholars of early Christianity and the history of the later Roman Empire.

This book explores a striking common feature of pre-modern ruling systems on a global scale: the participation of childless and celibate men as integral parts of the elites. In bringing court eunuchs and bishops together, this collection shows that the integration of men who were normatively or physically excluded from biological fatherhood offered pre-modern dynasties the potential to use different reproduction patterns. The shared focus on ruling eunuchs and bishops also reveals that these men had a specific position at the intersection of four fields: power, social dynamics, sacredness and gender/masculinities. The thirteen chapters present case studies on clerics in Medieval Europe and court eunuchs in the Middle East, Byzantium, India and China. They analyze how these men in their different frameworks acted as politicians, participated in social networks, provided religious authority, and discuss their masculinities. Taken together, this collection sheds light on the political arena before the modern nation-state excluded these unmarried men from the circles of political power.