Through careful analysis of the Romanesque cathedral of Molfetta (in Apulia, southern Italy), Williams demonstrates how the commercial boom of the medieval Mediterranean changed the way churches were funded, designed, and built.

The essays collected in this volume explore the power of the medieval bishop through the neglected and problematic lens of personality, tackling the construction and presentation of medieval personalities by historians and medieval writers in an interdisciplinary manner.

This book challenges long-held assumptions over New Rome’s meteoric growth in ecclesiastical standing, offering in their place a fundamentally different reading of the early Constantinopolitan episcopate during the two landmark councils of 381 and 451 and the seven tumultuous decades between them.