My Lord Bishop: Chronicles and the Construction of Episcopal Identity in Late Medieval England

ABSTRACT:

The article compares and contrasts late medieval models of episcopal identity in ‘local’ and ‘national’ chronicles. In the ‘national’ chronicles of Henry Knighton and Thomas Walsingham, bishops were constructed as models (both good and bad) of the exercise of sacral power as martyr saints, martial figures, and learned combatants of heresy. By contrast in the York Minster chronicle the model is much more based on the twelfth century “deeds of the bishop” tradition and is focussed on the relationship between the bishop and his mother church, so that the specifically ecclesiastical good lordship of the bishop looms large. However, both kinds of chronicle saw bishops as both peacemakers and defenders of the rights of the church.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Patricia H. Cullum is head of  Department of History and Politics at Huddersfield University since 2003. She is primarily interested in female lay piety, but have more recently been working on masculinity and especially secular clerical masculinity in the later middle ages.

SOURCE:

My Lord Bishop: Chronicles and the Construction of Episcopal Identity in Late Medieval England
By Patricia H. Cullum
In: International Journal of Regional and Local History, Volume 8, Number 1, May 2013 , pp. 40-53(14)
Publisher: Maney Publishing
DOI: http://dx.doi.org.ep.fjernadgang.kb.dk/10.1179/2051453013Z.0000000005