The Bishop Reformed

In the period following the collapse of the Carolingian Empire up to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the episcopate everywhere in Europe experienced substantial and important change. How did the medieval bishop, unquestionably one of the most powerful figures of the Middle Ages, respond to these and other historical changes? In this volume of interdisciplinary studies drawn from literary scholarship, art history, and history, the editors and contributors propose less a conventional socio-political reading of the episcopate and more of a cultural reading of bishops that, especially, is concerned with issues such as episcopal (self-)representation, conceptualization of office and authority, cultural production (images, texts, material objects, space) and ecclesiology/ideology.