Negotiating Secular and Ecclesiastical Power

How was medieval Europe held together? People of dissimilar occupations and economic interests, living in widely separate parts of western Europe, came to recognise and act upon a common set of cultural beliefs. This framework of shared social customs and values, that is distinctively medieval and European, arose from the interaction between secular and ecclesiastical power, but these developments can no longer be convincingly viewed as arising solely from events such as the Wars of Investiture and the Fourth Lateran Council. The historiography of this study shows that the medieval mental framework was not solely concerned with the great struggles between Rome and lay rulers, but neither can we assume that local communities were islands of cohesion in a wider world of chaos and conflict. The case studies presented demonstrate how texts were used as weapons by ecclesiastical authorities in defining their relationships with lay powers. Other studies here focus upon how land and kinship was used to define the social relations between the laity and the clergy. The concluding section concentrates upon the solution of conflicts. 

L. Milis; Preface 
H. Teunis; Secular and Ecclesiastical Power in the Central Middle Ages: An Introduction

Part One: Texts as Tools of Power
J. Potter; The De Libertate Beccensis: Context and Analysis 
K. Ugé; Relics as Tools of Power: The Eleventh-Century Inventio of St. Bertin 
T. Lemmers; Chaos and Order in Guibert of Nogent's Monodiae 
B.-M. Tock; The Political Use of Piety in Episcopal and Comital Charters of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries

Part Two: Land and Kinship
C. Senecal; Bishops as Contenders for Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England: the Bishopric of East Anglia and the Regional Aristocracy 
A. Wareham; Kinship and the Social Order in England and Normandy 
H. Tsurushima; The Fraternity of Ramsey Abbey