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EPISCOPAL REGISTERS AND THE VISITATION
PROCESS IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE

IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

By

Edith Hilks Dolnikowski

A THESIS

Submitted to

Michigan State University

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of History

198“

ABSTRACT

EPISCOPAL REGISTERS AND THE VISITATION
PROCESS IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE

IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

By

Edith Hilks Dolnikowski

During the thirteenth century, the ancient practice of episcopal
visitation was revived by energetic popes, who wished to extend both the
administrative power of the Church and its ability to initiate moral
reform. Episcopal registers provide invaluable information about the
Justifications, procedures and consequences of visitations, since
bishops were the major agents of this activity. For this thesis, 8
small group of episcopal registers was selected from the body of
thirteenth-century English and French registers. These registers were
examined to determine how individual bishops carried out their
responsibility to visit regularly the religious houses in their
dioceses, and to what extent their efforts were successful. This
analysis reveals a fundamental dilemma in the late medieval Church: the
inability of even the most zealous bishop to solve moral and social
problems through a physically demanding, time-consuming and unwelcomed

administrative act.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge Dr. Richard E. Sullivan both for his
patient supervision of this thesis, and for introducing me to the topic
of episcopal visitation. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Stanley
Chojnacki, and Dr. Emily 2. Tabuteau. who offered me encouragement and
many helpful suggestions as I worked on this project. Finally, I would
like to thank my husband, Greg, who showed me how to prepare a Master's

thesis by completing his own.

11

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. THE SELECTION OF BISHOPS AND EPISCOPAL STAFF 21
III. THE VISITATION PROCESS 35
Iv. THE EFFECTIVENESS OF EPISCOPAL OF VISITATION 67
v. CONCLUSIONS 103
v1. NOTES 108
VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY 120

111

I. INTRODUCTION

The medieval Church was such a complex institution, and its records
so sporadically preserved, that it is difficult for students of the
present age to understand the nature of religious life in the Middle
Ages; yet it is the very complexity of the Church which compels
historians to study it. The literature which has survived from this
period clearly shows the centrality of the Church. not only in meeting
the spiritual needs of the people, but in organizing medieval society
politically. economically and culturally. Indeed. without the efforts
of the Church to preserve written documents and to educate the clergy,
most of the evidence which comes to us from the Middle Ages would have
been destroyed or might never have been written at all. The great
variety of contributions which the Church made to medieval society
cannot be denied. These many contributions serve, in fact, to explain
why the Church was for several centuries one of the most powerful forces
in Western Europe.

Despite the enormous strength of the medieval Church, however, its
expansion was limited by a number of factors. both external and
internal. Certainly political leaders throughout Europe tried, often
successfully. to harness the authority and bureaucracy of the Church for
their own ends. By the thirteenth century, the Church managed, at least
temporarily, to assert its independence from secular control under the
brilliant leadership of Pope Innocent III and his successors. After
having achieved this autonomy and acquired the wealth and military
support to defend it. the Church was left to deal with a distressing

inherent weakness: the fundamental contradiction between the Christian

values of peace and poverty and the presence of a wealthy and militant
ecclesiastical hierarchy. In broader terms, the Church faced a serious
dilemma by the thirteenth century because its evolution as a vital
component in the economic and political spheres of medieval Europe could
no longer be reconciled easily with its theological premises. Many
aspects of the religious history of the thirteenth and fOurteenth
centuries can be seen in terms of the Church's attempts to deal with
this contradiction.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the conflict between
religious theory and practice in the late Middle Ages by focusing on the
episcopal office, an office which symbolizes in some important ways the
precarious Juxtaposition of secular and religious interests which
prevailed in the thirteenth century. The medieval bishop was a man of
many roles. He was a civil servant, who was expected to advise and
serve his king in all matters of political policy and diplomacy. He was
a feudal lord, who administered his episcopal estates with care in order
to maintain an income appropriate to his high office. He served the
popes as a local official and tax collector in a vast ecclesiastical
bureaucracy. He was, moreover. a religious leader who was required to
offer the sacraments to his flock and to teach them how to live virtuous
lives through sermons. To add to this already tremendous burden, the
bishop was expected to visit the major religious houses in his diocese
at least once every three years in order to correct abuses and to
initiate refbrm.

Clearly, the episcopal office and the role which the bishop played
in the Church of the late Middle Ages cannot be understood completely

without a careful examination of each duty that a bishop was charged to

perfbrm. The limitations of time and space force us. unfbrtunately, to
study only one aspect of the episcopal office, the visitation process,
with the hope that such a specialized analysis will reflect bishops'
attempts to cope with people who refused to confbrm to the standards of
religious life. This analysis will be accomplished through an
examination of six episcopal registers from England and France dating
from the mid—thirteenth century to the beginning of fourteenth century.
Although each of the registers is highly individualistic. each
contributes to a larger picture of ecclesiastical structure and
religious discipline in the late Middle Ages; for while each bishop was
different and approached his duties in a distinctive way, all of them
faced the same recurring problems in their diocesan work.

Bishops in the thirteenth and fOurteenth centuries were both
prominent and powerful members of European society. and yet in many ways
were merely intermediaries in a vast administrative hierarchy. The
structure of ecclesiastical government. which had been complicated for
centuries by the legal. economic and spiritual ties which existed
between officials at various levels, became even more elaborate in the
thirteenth century as a result of the refbrm movement. Determined to
extend its legal JurisdiCtion throughout Europe. the papacy in the
twelfth and early thirteenth centuries sponsored a massive program of
codification of ecclesiastical law along the lines of the Roman system.
With such a tool at their disposal, thirteenth-century popes not only
could collect ecclesiastical taxes more efficiently. but could also take
advantage of the lucrative position of the Curie as the highest court of
appeal in Western Europe.

The right of the papacy to preside over a supreme court and to

collect revenues would have been little more than a theoretical
prerogative had the papacy not been able to rely on a well-developed
system of ecclesiastical government. The major organizational unit of
the medieval Church, the diocese, had emerged quite early in the history
of the institutional Church, but developed legally and politically
throughout the Middle Ages, so that by the thirteenth century it
represented one of the most sophisticated institutions in Western
society. Although dioceses varied greatly in geography, size and
population throughout Eurdpe, all of them shared certain characteristic
features.1 All of them were governed by bishops, who were in theory to
be elected freely by the canons of the cathedral chapter. Some of the
most bitter confrontations between Church and state during the Middle
Ages resulted from the kings' insistence on the right to influence the
choice of bishops. Since bishops almost always took on important state
functions upon elevation to the episcopate, kings clearly had a vested
interest in the selection process. Naturally, Church leaders, and
particularly the papacy, fought hard to remove the taint of secular
control in the selection of bishops. This theme of struggle between
Church and state over the episcopate carried over into the thirteenth
and fOurteenth centuries both covertly and overtly, and thus colored the
relationship of bishops to their spiritual and secular superiors
throughout the late Middle Ages.

Bishops also had to contend with their peers, not only as fellow
civil servants or advisers to the crown, but as participants in councils
for refbrm. The most troublesome relationship among bishops was that
between archbishops and their suffragans. The custom of grouping

several contiguous dioceses under the authority of the wealthiest or

most prominent province was practical from a bureaucratic point of view
because it provided opportunities for centralized administration. From
a personal standpoint, the elevation of one bishop over others
frequently led to Jealousies and tensions, especially when archbishops
were vigorous in exercising their legal preogatives over their
suffragans. Even the most tactful archbishops rarely managed to avoid
angry encounters with the other bishops under their Jurisdiction. Thus
bishops were routinely affected on professional and personal levels by
this particular aspect of Church administration.

The archiepiscopal office deserves some special consideration,
since all of the registers used for this study were complied by
archbishops. Although the office of the metropolitan had existed from
the days of the early Church, the nature and scope of the office was not
clearly defined in the Middle Ages. The archbishop was identified in
medieval society by the symbols of his office: the pallium and the
cross which was carried befbre him when he travelled within his
province. These symbols signified the metropolitan's primacy over his
suffragans. an authority granted to him by the pope. Beyond this vague
assertion of supremacy, the specific legal and Jurisdictional rights of
the archbishop were elusive. In general, the archbishop's power was
rooted in a combination of legal precedents and personal prestige. The
meat important legal preogatives of the archbishop were his superior
court and his right to make visitations throughout his province. The
issue of archiepiscopal visitation was a prominent one in the thirteenth
century because during this period metropolitans attempted to strengthen
this right by exercising it vigorously, while the visitands resisted the

increased activity Just as vigorously. The fact that archbishops Often

held maJor diplomatic or advisory positions in secular governments, or
held other ecclesiastical offices simultaneously with the archiepiscopal
office made the metropolitan a powerful figure in medieval society.
Nevertheless, it is difficult in the present day, as it was in the
thirteenth century, to define the office precisely.2 Some sense of the
complex nature of the office will emerge, however, in our discussion of
the metropolitan visitations of six prominent thirteenth-century
archbishops.

The connections between bishops and the religious within their
dioceses were complicated by the power which secular authorities
excercised over the clergy at all levels of diocesan administration.
The struggle between kings and popes over the investiture of bishops is
one of the most dramatic instances of secular interference in clerical
affairs, but such interference was not limited to the highest offices.
whereas royal interest in episcopal elections stemmed from the kings'
desires to see their loyal servants placed in positions of status,
secular intervention at lower levels of ecclesiastical administration
concerned issues of property or endowments of benefices. Medieval
custom encouraged secular lords to bequeath portions of their land to
the Church as evidence of their piety. These gifts greatly enriched the
parishes, monasteries, convents and other religious institutions which
received them, but the gifts also contributed to secular interference in
these institutions when the benefactors' heirs asserted their right to
participate in decisions concerning the use of the gift. If, for
example, a noble willed a portion of his property for the purpOse of
providing income for a clerical office, his family could claim the right

to select the candidates for that office. Not infrequently, noble

families selected their relatives for these benefices. so that the
families continued to benefit from property which technically belonged
to the Church. Since bishops relied on endowments to support many of
the costs of diocesan administration, they were obliged to consider the
wishes of the laity when vacancies occurred in most ecclesiastical
offices. The needs and concerns of ecclesiastical administration in the
Middle Ages, therefbre, cannot be separated neatly from the economic,
social and political prerogatives of the laity. Medieval bishops were
drawn into complex webs of secular interests to such an extent that we
cannot define easily the scope of their authority even at he lowest
levels of diocesan adminstration.

The administrative authority of bishops within their dioceses was
also thwarted by the presence of 'exempted orders'. The exempted orders
had special dispensation from the pope, and could legally refuse to
submit to the authority of anyone but the pope himself. The increasing
number of houses acquiring exempt status during the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries seriously undermined the ability of the episcopate
to administer and refbrm, while it strengthened the relative importance
of a papal authority too distant to monitor the exempted orders
properly, but too powerful for the bishops to challenge. We see, then,
that while ecclesiastical structure; in the late Middle Ages was
sophisticated and highly organized, it was also cumbersome in many ways.
Its most prominent officials often worked at cross purposes. It was
influenced inappropriately by secular furces. Still, the strength and
distinctive development of the Church in the thirteenth and feurteenth
centuries suggest that the institution of episcOpal visitation deserves

careful examination, for this institution helps us both to trace the

8

roots of the weaknesses of the medieval Church and to place those
weaknesses in the larger context of the Church's merits and successes.

For these reasons, we will begin a more specialized study of the
late medieval Church by focusing on the documents which provide the best
evidence for understanding how ecclesiastical administration was
conducted at the episcopal level. The registers of the bishops of
England and France from the mid-thirteenth to the beginning of the
fourteenth century provide enormous amounts of infOrmation about many
aspects of late medieval religious, social and political history. It
will be useful now to turn to a more detailed analysis of the uses,
value and limitations of episcopal registers as historical sources.

Since episcopal registers varied greatly in style, purpose and
content, it is difficult to generalize about them, but some of the more
prevalent characteristics of these documents should be explored with
some care. An episcopal register can be defined essentially as the
Journal or ledger which the bishop used to record his official
activities. These Journals often included cOpies of correspondence with
popes, kings or other bishops: lists of the people the bishop ordained
into holy orders: lists of clerics whom the bishop instituted into
vacant offices; cOpies of legal contracts which involved ecclesiastical
property: and notations concerning court cases and settlements
involving marriage or property disputes in which the bishop had served
as an intermediary. Bishops frequently included in their Journals lists
Of inJunctions against clerics who were found guilty of offences which
were discovered in the course of visitations. Somewhat more rarely, the
registers contained the itinerary of the bishop.

Episcopal itineraries are particularly useful historical documents

because they can be used to reconstruct many aspects of the compiler‘s
personality. Indeed, they can answer such questions as how much the
bishop traveled, and when he traveled; how large was his retinue and of
what was it composed; and how many days did he spend visiting religious
houses, serving the king presiding over courts, perfbrming sacraments,
entertaining dignitaries, or attending synods. In addition, the
itineraries often provide a daily account of the revenues which the
bishOp collected and spent. Financial records are especially
interesting because bishops held considerable property, collected taxes
and often incurred enormous debts.

Naturally, a well-kept and complete register provides a wealth of
infbrmation about the conditions which existed in the diocese and can
reveal much about the personality of its bishops. It must be
remembered, however, that registers were intended for practical and
immediate purposes; they were notebooks, not diaries intended for
posterity. Depending on the preferences of the bishop, his register
might be a single chronological account of all noteworthy episcopal
acts, or he might maintain several registers simultaneously, each
devoted to a particular classification of acts. Examination of the
original documents has also shown that entries were not usually made on
a daily basis, and that they were written down by scribes, either from
rough notes or under the dictation of the bishop. This method was
probably a reasonable alternative to daily record-keeping, since the
already cumbersome process for writing on parchment rolls would have
been much too awkward to perfbrm under intinerant conditions. The
process was, indeed, so arduous that bishops did not regularly keep

registers until the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Of the small

10

number of registers which were kept befbre this period, far fewer have
actually survived to the present day. The expansion of the practice of
keeping registers in the thirteenth century reflects a growing interest
on the part of ecclesiastical officials to rationalize the central
administration of the Church during this period. Thus, these registers
make a dual contribution to our understanding of the Church in the late
Middle Ages: as individual documents they provide specific infbrmation
about the strengths and weaknesses of ecclesiastical administration,
while their very presence indicates the overall tendency of the Church
to consolidate its power in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by
strengthening its bureaucratic structure.

We can see, therefbre, that whatever its form, an episcopal
register has the potential to tell us much about the financial, legal
and political characteristics of a particular diocese. In many
instances, these documents can be used in conjunction with other kinds
of records to determine the complicated relationships which existed
between bishops, secular lords, kings and other high religious
officials. For the purposes of this project, however, we will be
concerned chiefly with the evidence the registers provide about the work
of the bishop within his own diocese, particulary in his capacity of
visitor and religious refbrmer. Because all visitations were conducted
according to prescribed procedure, visitation records are repetitious,
and often seem perfunctory. If the reader is patient enough to compare
entries closely, the visitation records nevertheless contain a bounty of
infbrmation about the activities and attitudes of the clergy, as well as
their most common moral and administrative offenses. Indeed, the

repetitive quality of the registers, both in terms of the bishops'

11

observations and in their methods of attacking the most serious
offences, underscores the enormous amount of indifference which plagued
the late medieval Church and which rendered permanent moral reform
impossible. We will attempt to use the accounts of visitations to
investigate the roots and to describe the effects of this religious
apathy.

It should be noted, however, that like any other kind of primary
document from the Middle Ages, episcopal registers present problems for
historians attempting to evaluate them. The most obvious difficulty
that historians have with such sources is that they are fragmentary.
Many episcopal registers have not survived at all, and of those that
have survived, most of them have not survived completely intact. This
problem is particuarly troublesome in the case of bishops who recorded
different types of evidence in separate volumes, since the chances of
having all of a bishop's books survive seven centuries are small. Even
the work of the bishops who recorded their activities chronologically in
one or two volumes can present problems for the historian because in
most cases at least some deterioration of the parchment has occurred
over time. The historian, then, must often be content to piece together
a reasonable interpretation of a bishop's diocesan work by examining
carefully the register itself and comparing it to other contemporary
documents.

Another major problem which arises with episcopal registers is that
they must be evaluated from the perspective of the people who created
them, and this perspective is not always easy to recapture. Although
the registers were kept for practical reasons, they are nevertheless

documents which reflect the attitudes and personalities of their

12

compilers. Historians can infer much about the bishop's interests,
education, spirituality and conscientiousness if they have a good
understanding of the social conditons of the time in which the register
was written and are diligent about looking fer clues in the document.
They need to be careful, however, not to try to infer too much. It is
possible to get the impression that the state of the medieval Church was
much worse than it actually was when one merely accepts the evidence
given in the registers without qualifications. Two factors which
historians must consider when they analyse episcopal registers are the
high frequency of negative entries and the tendency of bishops to say
little about houses which they feund in good condition.

Bishops frequently recorded at great length the faults and abuses
which they encountered in the course of their visitations, and rarely
found a house which did not require some sort of correction. On the few
occasions when a visitor feund nothing amiss, he would in most cases
make a short notation that everything was in good order, and would not
describe the favorable qualities of the house in detail. When we
consider that notations in registers were primarily for future
reference, the obvious emphasis on the negative is understandable.
Bishops were not so interested in remembering how good a house was as in
how much it improved over the course of successive visitations. The
realization of this fact makes our interpretation of the contents of the
visitation documents more balanced and reasonable, since we do not
assume that a prelate never encountered good behavior. A more serious
problem is that the visitor could have been deceived easily by clerics
who conspired to keep the existence of abuses a secret from him. Even

worse, an unpopular monk might be falsely accused by his spiteful

13

brothers. Registers, therefbre, do not always provide a true
illustration of the state of affairs in a given religious house.3
Clearly, then, the problems which confront the historian who attempts to
evaluate visitation documents are real, but can be overcome in many
cases by recreating the perspective of the writer, despite the fact that
the physical destruCtion of documents or errors made by the original
writers complicate this kind of historical investigation.

It would be useful at this point to discuss briefly the specific
sources which were chosen for this paper. As has already been
mentioned, this paper is based primarily on six registers from English
and French archbishops from the mid—thirteenth to the early fourteenth
century. While all of these registers treat the issue of visitation,
they vary widely in terms of the amount of space devoted to describing
the visitation process. In all of the registers, however, there is
adequate evidence to determine how the bishop conducted visitations and
what kinds of administrative and disciplinary problems were prevalent in
his diocese.

Although late medieval episcopal registers are generally more
available for England than fer France, three of the six registers used
in this study are from France. In contrast to England, where historical
societies have subsidized the editing and publishing of episcopal
registers in discrete volumes, comparatively few French registers from
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries have been printed in a
systematic fashion. One reason for this phenomenon may be that
ecclesiastical records simply have not been as well preserved in France
as they have been in England. When French registers have been edited,

moreover, they have been published usually in historical Journals or as

14

appendices to monographs, so that they are difficult to locate through
conventional bibliographical methods. The few French registers which
have been published, however, are extremely valuable sources.“

The most famous register which has survived from thirteenth-century
France is the Journal of Odo Rigaldi, archbishop of Rouen from 12H?
until 1275. Odo's place of birth has been a subject of controversy, but
most modern scholars agree that he was born sometime between 1200 and
1210 in a region called Corquetaine near Paris. His father was a knight
and held considerable property in this area. Of the six children of the
Rigaldi family, three came to hold important ecclesiastical offices.
Odo began his religious career by studying at the University at Paris.
In 1236 he Joined the Franciscan order and continued his scholarship
under the direction of the renowned Alexander of Hales. Befbre becoming
archbishop of Rouen in 12fl7, Odo was chosen by the Franciscan General
Raymo to a commission intended to determine the proper interpretation of
the word 'poverty' in the Franciscan rule. Thus Odo brought with him to
the metropolitan office great personal knowledge of religious life and
theology.5

During the three decades of his episcopal service, Odo compiled an
amazingly detailed account of the state of the Church in his province.
Because Odo was so diligent about recording his activities on a regular
basis, and because he worked so tirelessly in his province to fulfill
all of his duties, his register is both remarkable and invaluable to
historians. It provides fascinating insights into all aspects of
episcopal administration and enhances our understanding of the spiritual

dimensions of the episcopate. Odo's perceptiveness and sensitivity in

conducting visitations, qualities apparent throughout the register, have

15

given us an opportunity to observe religous life in thirteenth—century
France in great detail. Because of the overwhelming significance of
this document, it has been edited and translated from Latin into English
by Sydney M. Brown and Jeremiah F. O'Sullivan.

Another French archbishop who has left to posterity an important
register is Simon de Beaulieu, Archbishop of Bourges from 128“ until
1291. Little, unfbrtunately, is known about the background and early
ecclesiastical career of Simon de Beaulieu. We can assume safely,
however, that he was well-trained in canon law and that he was a
prominent figure in late thirteenth-century France, since he was made a
cardinal by Pope Clement V, and had a reputation for being a skillful
litigant.6 Unlike Odo, Simon was much more interested in the legal and
administrative than in the spiritual aspects of the visitation process,
since his main goal as archbishop was to protect the dwindling
prerogatives of the see of Bourges.7 His register shows, however, that
he was not uninterested in maintaining moral discipline. Simon's
register serves, therefbre, as a useful contrast to that of Odo Rigaldi.
The register of Simon de Beaulieu was edited and published in Latin
during the seventeenth century along with many other documents of the
medieval Church by the French scholar Etienne Baluze. The text which
will be used fer this paper comes from the 1761 publication of Baluze's
Miscellanea, which was reedited by Jean Rardouin.8

The final French visitation register which we will examine for this
paper was written by Bertrande du Got, who was archbishop of Bordeaux
during the first five years of the fourteenth century. Like Simon de
Beaulieu, Bertrande du Got is known primarily for his ecclesiastical

career after his service as metropolitan. Bertrande du Got was elevated

16

to the papacy in 1305 and served the Church in this office as Clement V
for a decade. His archiepiscopal career is Of greater interest to us,
however, because he compiled a journal of the visitations which he
conducted in Bordeaux from May of 130“ until June of 1305. The
nineteenth-century French historian, Joseph F. Rabanis, discovered this
document while completing research for a book concerning the
relationship between Clement V and his king, Philippe le Bel. Rabanis
edited Bertrande's register, and the document appears in the appendix of
Clement !. gt Philippe lg_§gl.9 Although Rabanis used this register for
quite a different purpose than to investigate the effectiveness of
episcopal visitation, the register provides a wealth of information
concerning diocisan administration in late thirteenth- and early
fourteenth-century France.

The three registers from England which I examined for this thesis
consist of two complete registers from York and one small excerpt of a
visitation register for the diocese Of Canterbury. Both of the York
registers have been edited and published under the direction of the
Surtees Society. The register of Walter Giffard, Archbishop of York
from 1266 until 1279, is arranged chronologically, with each year
divided according to the five dioceses of the province of York. Walter
Giffard was the eldest son of Hugh Giffard of Bayton, a man of
substantial wealth and rank, and Sibilla, coheiress of another prominent
land-holder, Walter de Cormeilles. Aside from our knowledge of Walter
Giffard's ancestry, we know little of his early life and education. He
was educated at Cambridge, and was elevated to the bishopric of Bath and
Wells in 126A. In 1265 he was made Lord Chancellor of England.

Although he officially resigned this position when the pope appointed

17

him to the see of York in 1266, he held a position in English society as
advisor to Henry III and Edward I until his death in 1279.10 His
register reveals much, not only about the state of religious life in
York in the late thirteenth century, but also about the demands of royal
service on an ecclesiastical official.

The other York register was compiled by John Romanus, who held the
see from 1286 until 1296. In many ways John Romanus is one Of
thirteenth-century England's most fascinating figures because of the
contradictions in his background and training. He was the son of a
treasurer of York, who was also a priest. Despite the fact that his
father was a priest, the legitimacy of John Romanus was not seriously
questioned, and he received several important ecclesiastical positions
in York from thirteenth-century popes. Although he was best known fer
his administrative work, he studied at both Oxford and at Paris. In his
years of service for the English Church, John Romanus amassed a large
fortune, which brought him a good deal of criticism: yet his great
talent for business and his vast administrative experience made him a
logical and acceptable choice for the see of York when it became vacant
in 1285.11 In his ten years of service in York, John Romanus compiled a
surprisingly large and detailed register which provides valuable
infermation about all aspects of the metropolitan Office in the late
Middle Ages. Indeed, his great administrative skill is revealed in the
register by the fact that the forms which he developed for various legal
transactions became standard throughout late medieval England.

The final English visitation document is an excerpt from the
register of John Pecham, archbishop of Canterbury from 1279 until 1292.

This document records the visitation of Canterbury diocese from 1292

18

until 129A, immediately after Pecham's death, was published originally
in the collection Archaeologia Cantiana. This excerpt was translated
into English when it was incorporated into English Historical

Documents12

and it is an example of an archdeaconal visitation on
behalf of a bishop. Like Odo Rigaldi, John Pecham enjoyed a
distinguished career as a Franciscan and as a scholar before his
elevation to the metropolitan see. Not only was Pecham well known for
his scholarship at Paris and Oxfbrd, but achieved the high honor of
appointment to the papal schools at Rome as lector in theology. When
the see of Canterbury became vacant in 1279, Edward I hoped to have his
chancellor fill the vacancy. The Pope diapproved of Edward's choice,
and appointed Pecham instead, despite Pecham's desire to continue his
academic career. Since Edward accepted Pecham willingly, and Pecham
agreed to serve in Canterbury, the new archbishop soon was able to begin
a long and fruitful career of legal and moral referm. His large
register, the first to survive from the see of Canturbury, is rich in
detail about the religious life in the thirteenth-century England.13 The
Canterbury visitation document reflects Pecham's diligence and deep
concern for moral refbrm in the medieval Church, which prevailed in
Canterbury even after Pecham's death. This document, along with the
others from York and France, illuminates episcopal administration and
the problems of visitions from many perspectives and therefore forms a
useful body for close historical analysis.

There are several Justifications for the selection of such a group
of registers fer analysis. First, they cover an appropriate span of
time. By examining registers from the second half of the thirteenth

century, we can look at the growth of the late medieval Church during a

19

perIOO of relative calm, between the late twelfth century and the
profound crisis of the Black Death of the mid—feurteenth century when
the papacy took great interest in directing ecclesiastical referm. By
choosing registers from both England and France, moreover, we can
explore a number of ‘issues which have bearing on episcopal
administration. We can compare the methods and circumstances of English
bishops to those of the French to assess the degree of centralization
which the late medieval Church achieved. On the other hand, the variety
of regions represented in this group of registers allows us to study the
effects of such non-ecclesiastical factors as geography, local
government and national affairs had on episcopal administration.
Because the vitality and efficiency of the Church was comparatively
great in England and France during this period, these registers reveal
some of the prevailing strengths and weaknesses of this immensely
powerful institution.

Indeed, the registers of bishops from France and England are
featured here because the dioceses represented in this group were
particularly diligent about compiling and preserving records: thus a
proportionately higher number of registers from these areas have
survived. Certainly other registers for the period in question have
survived and could have been included in this study. Since the object
of the study was to examine carefully a small number of primary sources,
the author attempted to choose documents which reflect as much as
possible diocesan administration in northwestern Europe in the
thirteenth century from the standpoint of the effectiveness of the
bishops and their special interests.

These registers, then, reveal at least one maJor aspect of

2O

ecclesiastical organization in the late Middle Ages: the bishop as a
visitor in his diocese. They provide, moreover, an excellent means for
determining how successful the episcopate was in maintaining order and
fostering moral reform. Since the registers were produced in England
and France, areas which seemed to have achieved relatively high
standards of religious behavior in thirteenth and feurteenth—century
Europe, they are particularly appropriate for the kind of analysis that
will be attempted here.1u These documents indicate that the extent of
success or failure of the late medieval Church to referm itself should
be examined from the standpoint of the successes and failures of its
most active administrators in carrying out their charge to refbrm. By
'focusing on the kind of training bishops generally received in the
thirteenth century, on the selection of bishops and diocesan staff, on
the theory of visitation and on the results of such pursuits as
described in the primary sources, one can begin to refine, and indeed
challenge in some instances, some of the traditional interpretations of

ecclesiastical history of the late Middle Ages.

II. THE SELECTION OF BISHOPS AND EPISCCPAL STAFF

Episcopal visitation was a complex administrative process which
demanded a variety of bureaucratic skills as well as a dedication to the
cause of refbrm. Since the attitudes and motives of bishops influenced
the manner in which they conducted all episcopal affairs, including
visitations, it is important to have some conception of how men were
selected fer the episcopal offiCe and how they were prepared to hold it.
In order to evaluate any bishop's success in perfOrming the task of
episcopal visitation, therefore, we must investigate how clerics were
trained for the episcopal office, how they were chosen for this office,
and in turn, how they chose the staff which would assist them in
executing their duties. Such factors as the social class, economic
status, political affiliations, education and religious training of a
candidate could affect both the candidate's chances for selection and
his ability to manage diocesan affairs after consecration. Because
dioceses varied widely in terms Of their size, population, culture and
political significance, no simple procedure existed for finding the most
suitable candidate fer a given see. It can be argued that the selection
of bishops was such an enormously controversial process during the
Middle Ages because the episcopal office required an individual who
could serve the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the state and the people with
equal proficiency. Clearly, there are few people in any age who could
fulfill completely those expectations. Nevertheless, the Church was
served throughout the medieval period by bishops who, however imperfect,
succeeded in keeping the central machinery of diocesan administration

functional.

21

22

In general, bishops in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were
highly educated men, and were expected to have received training both in
theology and in some kind of ecclesiastical or civil administration
befbre they were appointed to a see.1 The most prominent institution for
providing theological training fer the clergy was the university. By
the thirteenth century, the clergy could also receive significant
theological education in monastic institutions. The primary source for
administrative training was service for the royal court, which relied on
the Church to provide its administrative staff. High-born or
well-educated clerics provided talented administrators for the monarchy,
and were often rewarded for their service with appointments to vacant
sees. Most bishops in the late Middle Ages received training from at
least two of the three possible sources, but usually held primary
allegiance to only one. For this reason, historians have been able to
discover patterns in medieval ecclesiastical administration by
classifying bishops according to the institutions from which they
obtained the training fer the episcopate.

In his analysis of the English Church in the fourteenth century, W.
A. Pantin offers a list of six categories into which the bishops of the
thirteenth and feurteenth can be placed. These categories include civil
servants: scholars; religious: officials of the Roman Curia;

2 He

diocesan administrators and cathedral clergy: and aristocrats.
takes care to warn us, of course, that one person might belong to two or
more categories at once, depending on his previous career. In addition,
he briefly summarizes the composition of the English episcopate from
1215 until 1275. According to Pantin, eight of the seventy-eight

bishops who ruled between 1215 and 1272 were religious, forty-two were

23

diocesan administrators, at least thirty were recognized as scholars,
thirty-seven were diocesan administrators or members of cathedral
chapters, and one was a papal legate. Pantin notes the gradual trend
towards the appointment of administrators and magnates at the expense of
religious and scholar bishops. Indeed the number of religious who
became bishops was remarkably small, even though the Franciscan and
Dominican Orders were influencial, and several prominent cathedral
chapters were staffed by monks.3

Although the distinctions between the categories described above
often may be vague, it is clear that factors in a bishop's background
could influence his Judgments concerning episcopal matters. Bishops who
had come from a monastic order might be more inclined, for example, to
stress monastic referm in the course of their visitations than those
administrator-bishops who had learned to protect the legal and financial
rights of the episcopate. Bishops who had excelled as scholars might
likewise encourage their own interest in learning by maintaining more
rigid standards for examining candidates for offices and by being
generous about granting leaves of absence to clergy for study. As we
have seen, Odo Rigaldi and John Pecham, who had been not only
theologians of some repute but also Franciscan friars befbre their
elevation to metropolitan sees, took great care to encourage moral
referm throughout their dioceses as well as to keep unqualified clerics
out Of important religious offices. Their diligence in these areas is
amply demonstrated through their registers of visitation. On the other
hand, Simon de Beaulieu, with the instincts of an administrator and
magnate, emphasized the legal and financial aspects of his relationship

with the religious houses of Bourges far more than he stressed moral

24

refbrm.

This is not to say, however, that bishops routinely ignored aspects
of religious life which were not part of their immediate experience.
The decline in the number of scholar bishops in England in the
fourteenth century did not result in an episcopate which was illiterate
or indisposed to encourage scholarship. On the contrary, as historian
Kathleen Deeley suggests, the bishops of the early fourteenth century
were not only well educated themselves, but contributed a great deal to
the intellectual vitality ’of England through their own scholarly
interests, their work for the administration of learning in their
dioceses, and their endowment of learning." We must conclude, then, that
barring the existence of an occasional incompetent or narrow-minded
prelate, the episcopacy of the thirteenth-century England and France was
composed of well-educated men who received training from a variety of
secular and religious spheres. Indeed, it can be argued that the
difficulty bishops had in referming the clergy stems not from their
negligence or ignorance, but rather from their inability to devote the
kind of energy to the task which would have been required for its
success.

Having reviewed the sources of training fer late medieval bishops,
let us turn to a discussion of how bishops were actually chosen for the
positions which they held. It has already been mentioned that
variations in size, location, economic structure and political status
among the dioceses caused the specific administrative needs of each
diocese to be distinct. Because the bishop was expected to serve his
king, his pope and his flock simultaneously, many different interests

competed to influence the appointment of such an important official. In

25

theory, of course, the canons of each cathedral chapter elected bishops
without any interference from outside forces. By the thirteenth
century, however, ecclesiastical officials conceded that bishops were
chosen according to the wishes of kings and the papal Curia.

The issue of episcopal election had a long and bitter history in
the Middle Ages which reflects one of the central dilemmas of medieval
Christianity. As long as any ecclesiastical official functioned on
behalf of the state, the Church could not keep secular ferces from
attempting to control the election of bishops, abbots or priors; but
since the clergy was the major source fer literate administrators, the
state naturally relied on the clergy to fulfill its own bureaucratic
needs. For the most part, royal interests were taken into account in
the election of bishops throughout the Middle Ages, but the power of
kings to choose candidates for the episcopate waxed and waned in a
cyclical fashion. The reason for the cyclical pattern is that the
control of episcopal elections by kings or other powerful secular
magnates inevitably led to serious abuses which the Church was compelled
to eliminate. Of course, some lords and kings were conscientious about
recommending only qualified, dedicated clergy fer election. More often
rulers were inclined to appoint incompetent or immoral supporters to
episcopal offices, to sell offices to the highest bidder, or to allow
sees to remain vacant in order to collect diocesan revenue. According
to Margaret Deanesly, Church officials seemed convinced by the eleventh
century that many abuses in the Church stemmed originally from excessive
lay control.5

The ecclesiastical response to this problem was complex, and was

not ultimately successful in checking lay interference in Church

265

affairs. Throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries Church and state
clashed violently in Germany, England and France over the issue of
episcopal investiture. Although these confrontations ended in solemn
written agreements between popes and kings, the compromises which were
negotiated so carefully rarely resolved the real issues behind the
conflicts or managed to eliminate religious abuses. If anything, the
struggle for the authority to appoint bishops permanently undermined the
power of a diocese to referm itself, because the cathedral chapters were
forced to defer their right to episcopal elections to powers whose
political or economic interests usually did not reflect the needs of the
dioceses themselves.

In the thirteenth century the struggle between Church and state
also inhibited the movement for moral referm and administrative
consolidation. In regard to this issue, the British historian Sir
Maurice Powicke observes that ”[alny idea that the Church in the
thirteenth century was a united and efficient ferce, smoothly
concentrated like a machine for a single purposeful effort, is soon
dispelled by the records of litigation. In these it appears as a
sensitive and quarrelsome organism of vested interests and of rights
rooted in custom and privilege."6 Perhaps more than any other officials
in late medieval Europe, bishops were deeply entangled in the legal and
bureaucratic processes of late medieval social organization. It is no
wonder, therefbre, that their visitation records depict a system
overburdened with legal procedure and tainted by the failure to achieve
real refbrm.

Who, then, were the men who assumed such an awkward but vital task

in late medieval society? On the whole, the episcopate of the

27

thirteenth century was comprised of some of the best-educated persons
medieval society had to offer, although most of them were not scholars
or theologians in the in the technical sense. While some of these men
must have been sympathetic towards the new monastic orders of the
thirteenth century or to monasticism in general, few of them came from
monastic careers. The majority of late medieval bishops clearly came
from the ranks of royal administration, and were much more often
appointed than freely elected according to canonical procedures. Most
significant, thirteenth-century bishops were almost without exception
members of the noble classes. Children of wealthy and prominent
families clearly had advantages in the patronage system of episcopal
appointments during the late Middle Ages. Popes and kings feund such
children excellent candidates for ecclesiastical offices by virtue of
their economic and social status. They could, moreover, afford to
attend universities, and thus were well-prepared to enter the royal
bureaucracies. In some cases, wealthy candidates could purchase an
episcopal appointment, or at the very least secure rich endowments which
would allow them to win the king's favor through state service while
being supported by the Church.

Although the episcopate was quite clearly an elite group throughout
the Middle Ages, and many capable people were barred from episcopal
sevice because of their modest birth, medieval society did not question
the legitimacy of such elitism. Indeed, as the French historian
Augustin Sicard argues in his study of pre—Revolutionary French bishops,
people in the Middle Ages accepted the fact that the episcopal office
required men who could deal as equals with the powerful lay lords, and

that it deserved to be staffed by men whose heritage and cultural

28

sophistication merited the prestigious rank of diocesan administrator.7

The registers Of the six archbishops which we intend to examine all
reflect the aristocratic bearing of the prelate. Even those archbishops
who were fundamentally concerned with the welfare of the poor, tended to
view them from an aristocratic point of view. Because bishops were not
selected fer the purpose of serving the poor or of working with the
religious houses in their dioceses on a daily basis to bring about
referm, it is not surprising that even the bishops most sympathetic to
pastoral needs lacked the capacity to transfbrm medieval Christianity
into a cohesive and morally progressive institution. Indeed, the
episcopal registers clearly reflect the fact that bishops were often
unable or unwilling to devote most of their energies to referm through
episcopal visitation because they had not been selected for that
purpose.

Most bishops in the thirteenth century did manage to improve
religious life and ecclesiastical organization in their dioceses, at
least to some extent. The limited amount of progress which did occur
would have been impossible without the efforts of the episcopal staff.
The conflicting demands on a bishop's time made it difficult for him to
concentrate on any one task fer any length of time. Bishops, therefbre,
delegated authority to lower diocesan officals, who were trained to
perfbrm legal, financial and spiritual functions of the bishop's in the
event of his absence. Until the tenth century, when dioceses were
sparsely populated and episcopal administration was relatively simple,
the delegation of authority was impermanent and flexible. As the
population of the dioceses in England and France began to grow,

episcopal administration became increasingly sophisticated to meet the

29

growing needs of the Church. Thus by the twelfth century the delegation
of authority was a regular feature of diocesan structure, and specific
offices evolved, Just as the high offices of the state had evolved from

the basic duties of the king's household.8

The capacity of a bishop to
choose capable, dependable people fer diocesan offices could be a key
factor in his success or failure as an administrator, and could
profoundly affect his power to initiate refbrm through ‘episcopal
visitations. Even such diligent prelates as Odo Rigaldi, who insisted
on conducting as much of his diocesan business as he possibly could,
relied on a large group of trained scribes, lawyers and treasurers to
organize his affairs.

Episcopal staff can be divided into two general categories: the
diocesan officials and the bishop's household or 'familia'. Unlike the
familia, whose members could be chosen personally by the bishop,
diocesan officials were selected in a much more complicated way. By the
thirteenth century, diocesan administration was based on a system of
distinct offices which were separately endowed. Such a system assured
the continuation of basic diocesan functions in the absence of a bishop,
but only at the expense of the interference of benefactors, who thought
of endowments as their property, into ecclesiastical affairs. Bishops
reacted to the challenges of kings, popes and magnates to influence the
selection of diocesan officials by delegating authority to only a small
number of central bureaucrats.9 Bishops only rarely had the opportunity
to select even these officials without having to consult with a lay or
clerical patron. The discussion which follows will describe the

integral role diocesan administration played in the movement towards

refbrm through episcopal visitation. For good or ill, the bishop had to

3O

rely on clerics not of his own choosing to carry out some of the most
important functions of the see. He was indeed fbrtunate when his
diocesan officials were qualified and cooperative. Frequently, however,
such was not the case.

The central organ of episcopal administration in the thirteenth
century was the cathedral chapter. The chapter consisted of canons, who
by the eleventh century were each supported by endowments called
'prebends'. Throughout most of Europe the canons were men in secular
orders. In England, however, some of the cathedral chapters were
staffed by a community of monks. This peculiar custom originated in the

10 Whether

monastic structure which prevailed in the Anglo—Saxon Church.
the chapter was monastic or secular, its main functions, in theory, were
to elect new bishops, to govern the see during periods of vacancy, and
to advise and assist the bishop in all diocesan affairs. These
functions depended upon a certain degree of compatability between
bishops and their canons which did not usually exist in reality in the
late Middle Ages. As kings and popes usurped the canon's right to elect
their own bishOps, and as the canons struggled to maintain legal and
financial autonomy, the cathedral chapter came to have only a limited
role in the administration of the diocese.

After the bishop, the most important person in the diocese was the
archdeacon. The office of the archdeacon evolved slowly. Initially,
the archdeacon was the executive officer of the bishop's household, but
by the beginning of the thirteenth century, the archdeacon, like the
cathedral canons, had a well-defined sphere of influence and was

supported by a separate endowment. Thus the bishop could not simply

appoint a cleric to the positon when it became vacant or remove an

31

incompetent one because of the complicated legal status of the office.
The archdeacon had specific legal and spiritual duties to perfbrm on
behalf of the bishop. He supervised the clergy in his territory,
instituted clerics to benefices. held visitations in the years when
bishops did not visit, and held a court which dealt with ecclesiastical
matters within his territory.11

For various reasons, archdeacons were not always reliable as far as
the bishop was concerned. Because the bishop could not remove the
archdeacon and did not have time to supervise all of his activities, he
could not prevent the archdeacon from abusing his rights to collect
payments and pecuniary fines in lieu of attending to pressing diocesan
affairs personally. The bishop, therefbre, relied more often on two
other officers: the vicar general who did the routine work of the
diocese, and the official principal who held the bishop's main court.
In addition, the bishop employed bailiffs and senechals to administer
temporal landholdings, and could expect suffragans to take on his
spiritual responsibilities in his absence from the diocese. Frequently,
administrative problems arose which could not be solved by one officer.
In such cases, bishops would establish 2g Egg delegations. While royal
authorities preferred not to use this method, bishops seemed to prefer
it to the utilization of regular diocesan administrators, since
episcopal registers are full of examples of delegated commissions
conducting diocesan business.12

Finally, the rural dean served an important function in diocesan
administration as a liaison between the bishop and the local clergy. He
was usually elected by the resident clergy of a group of parishes, and

fellowed the bishop's specific instruction to deliver citations,

32

admonish absent clergy to reside, report on public penances, or attend
to other needs of the deanery. In England the rural dean Often
performed legal functions, while his continental counterpart, the
archpriest, did not participate in diocesan administration in a
Judiciary role.13 When we consider the nature of the diocesan staff, we
see that the thirteenth-century bishop had a fairly elaborate
bureaucracy at his disposal, but did not have the practical means to
control it very well. Thus the selection of diocesan staff, just as the
selection of the bishop, was a complicated affair that was frequently
entirely out of the hands of the people who actually conducted
ecclesiastical administration. Bishops nevertheless depended on this
staff to maintain diocesan government so that they could pursue their
pastoral duty to conduct regular visitations.

In one area the bishop did have real control over the selection of
his staff. This was in the area of the familia. Since the medieval
bishop spent a large part of his time travelling in his diocese, he
required a permanent staff to accompany him. A small percentage of the
familia generally consisted of servants who cooked and served meals,
cared fer the bishop's belongings and attended to the horses of the
bishop's entourage.1u In addition bishops brought with them many people
who served them as scribes, treasurers, legal advisors or personal
companions. Most of our evidence concerning the bishop's familia comes
from the list of witnesses which accompany the legal transactions which
are recorded in the episcopal registers.

According to the British historian C. R. Cheney, the witnesses of
episcopal documents can be classified in three general categories. The

first group was composed of chaplains (capellani). Bishops usually

33'

included two or three chaplains in his familia. Bishops also brought
with them a large number of clerks (clerici) to serve in their
chanceries and exchequers. For the purposes of theological and legal
advice, men of academic status (magistri) were included in the
familia.15 Adding to this group the occasional presence of diocesan

officials or other dignitaries, the bishop's familia was clearly large,
heterogeneous and versatile. Since the custom of travelling with large
retinues was burdensome to the houses which had to provide shelter and
food fer the bishop and his familia at their own expense, a canon was
included in the Fourth Lateran Council to limit the number of an
archbishop's mounted attendants to fifty.16 It is not surprising that
bishops and archbishops chose to have large familia, not only for the
sake of prestige and convenience, but because they could influence
personally the composition of the familia in ways they could not hope to
influence the selection of other diocesan officials.

If the selection of bishops and their staff in the late Middle Ages
reveals anything about the medieval Church, it is that the complex
network of private interests which governed eccesiastical promotions
interfered with the process of centralization and refbrm. Even after
the papacy asserted more control over episcopal appointments, diocesan
administration did not necessarily benefit, because popes were usually
more interested in making strategic compromises than in finding the most
respectable and dedicated candidate for diocesan offices. These
conditions naturally hindered the process Of moral reform, although they
did not render it impossible. Since the people who attained the
episcopal office in the thirteenth century were educated and competent

administrators, they had the capacity to sustain the functions of

34

diocesan government. More important, these prelates showed the capacity
to utilize a bureaucracy over which they had only incomplete control to
help them to meet the administrative requirements of the diocese as well
as to provide some of the pastoral needs of their flocks. Clearly,
bishops were not selected primarily on they basis of their talent to
refbrm religious life within their dioceses: yet their training
prepared them at least adequately to perfbrm the the task of episcopal
visitation, one of the most powerful tools available to the medieval
Church fer achieving refbrm. As we turn to a more detailed study of
episcopal visitation we should keep in mind the fact that bishops and
their diocesan staff considered the reSponsibility to conduct
visitations only one of the many responsibilities of diocesan and
secular administration for which they had been chosen to undertake, and
that the ultimate failure of referm through visitation was due in no
small measure to the pressures placed on them by the episcopal office

itself.

III. THE VISITATION PROCESS

Episcopal visitation in the second half of the thirteenth century
served an important function for the medieval Church, not only within
the dioceses themselves, but for the Church as a whole, because it
combined administrative and spiritual elements into one procedure. It
provided, therefbre, a convenient method fer the Church to employ in its
efforts to centralize ecclesiastical power and to establish a program of
moral refbrm throughout Europe. The success of this method depended,
however, on cooperation among the papacy, the episcopate, the diocesan
officials and the clergy, as well as a certain degree of understanding
on the part of secular lords who had acquired legal rights to control
ecclesiastical property. Since cooperation and understanding among
these groups were more often lacking than present in the thirteenth
century, the path toward spiritual and administrative referm was often
difficult when it was not blocked entirely.

Indeed, the visitation documents which have survived from this
period show quite clearly that one of the major Obstacles to spiritual
or administrative refbrm originated in the isolation of religious houses
within dioceses and the subsequent lack of adequate episcopal
supervision. This chapter is intended to investigate the visitation
process in England and France in the thirteenth century in order to
explore the strengths and weaknesSes of the system, which in turn can
help us to assess the state of religious life in England and France
during this period. This investigation will be accomplished through an
analysis of the theory of visitation, the procedures involved in this

act, the most common methods for determining the spiritual and

35

36

administrative health of religious houses, the most frequently occurring
abuses and the techniques employed for the correction of these abuses.
We shall see that in spite of the zeal of many thirteenth-century
prelates, the real achievements of the visitation process were limited.

The institution of episcopal visitation as a pastoral and
administrative process had a long and complex history. During the
Carolingian period, theologians and ecclesiastics began to express the
need for the Church to investigate regularly the state of religion on a
local level. At the beginning of the tenth century, the basic
principles of visitation, as well as a list of questions which were to
be asked during a visiation, were combined in the 25'synodalibus causis
of Reginon of Pram. Although bishops were to be the primary agents of
visitation, archdeacons, archpriests and abbots also were permitted to
undertake certain types of visitation. Since visitors had the privilege
of collecting a visitation tax, or procuration, visitations were
unpopular from the early days of this custom.1

Despite the pecuniary benefits of visitation, the episcopate did
not take much interest in it during the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
because the papacy did not insist that bishops conduct visitations and
because the burdensome nature of'medieval travel discouraged them from
pursuing this kind of activity. Episcopal visitation was revived in the
thirteenth century when popes Innocent III, Honorious III and Gregory IX
tried to impose this task on bishops as a way of counteracting the decay
of monasticism. At first, these popes hoped to refbrm monasticism
simply by strengthening the various monastic orders. They chose the
Cistercian Order as their model for refermed monasticism because the

Cistercians displayed a capacity fer centralized organization; thus,

37

they assumed that the refermation of a few prominent Cistercian houses
would spread fairly quickly to minor houses. They were disappointed to
find, however, that the vast number of Benedictine houses in Western
Europe could not be refbrmed along the lines of the Cistercian model
because there was too little uniformity among the Benedictine houses to
organize them effectively. The popes therefbre turned to episcopal
visitation as an alternative method for instituting monastic reform.2

In addition to its pastoral function as an institution of
communication between the hierarchy of the Church and local religious
communities, visitation had an administrative function which was in
practice much more controversial. Especially in the case of
archbishops, the act of visitation could be used to great advantage from
an administrative standpoint. As French historian Pierre
Andrieu—Guitrancourt has observed, ”le droit de visite n'existe pas seul
et, on l'aura remarqué, il est trop gtroitement lié’ aux autre
pérogatives métropolitaines pour qu'on le puisse étudier indépendamment;
c'est, en effet, un acte du juridiction superiéure et du Juridiction
aussi bien gracieuse que contentieuse. . . ."3 The archbishop, indeed,
could interpret his visitation rights so broadly that he could justify
any order which he might issue for the purpose of correcting an abuse,
or an interference in the jurisdiction of a suffragan. By the time of
Innocent III, a program of limiting the independence of monastic orders
was clearly taking shape, and included as its central component the
expansion of episcopal jurisdiction over them. Under this program, the
pope insisted that diocesan synods be held yearly for the purpose of
determining policies regarding monasticm, which the bishop would then

carry out in his visitations." This program, as one can imagine,

38

produced a good deal of discontent within the dioceses. It might have
been more effective than it actually was, however, had the popes not
undermined the authority of the episcopate by exempting orders from
episcopal supervision and by encouraging clerics who were dissatisfied
with episcopal Justice to appeal to Rome.5

Closely connected to the administrative justification fer episcopal
visitation is its legal justification. If we remember that bishops took
on many political and administrative roles in medieval society, we can
understand why they wished to guard their right to enter the religious
houses of their dioceses, collect procurations and issue injunctions.
When a bishop could assert his right to visit a house and demand
procuration, he set a legal precedent for all subsequent visitations of
that house. So important was this legal right that bishops often
collected full procurations from extremely poor houses in order not to
lose the right to visit in the future, and then remitted all or a large
portion of the fee. Indeed, aside from the basic legal framework behind
episcopal visitation, the most prominent legal issue was that of
procuration. Originally, procuration simply involved the right of the
bishop to receive foOd and lodging fer himself and his retinue. In
time, the custom of payment in kind evolved into payment in money, which
was more convenient for religious houses and more lucrative for the
bishops. Once money payments became standard, the papacy could profit
from episcopal visitations, because papal delegates had the right to
make visitations on behalf of bishops and to claim one half of the
acquired revenue fer the papal treasury.6 The controversy which arose

over procurations stemmed from the fact that bishops could abuse the

right, either by demanding feed fer an unnecessarily large retinue or by

39

collecting a tax larger than the foOd and lodging would have cost the
house. In both cases, legal attempts to eliminate these abuses were
thwarted.7 The real legal battle over visitation occurred in a different
sphere as religious houses sought legal protection through papal
exemption and bishops fought bitterly to retain their prerogatives.

We see, therefbre, that by the thirteenth century, episcopal
visitation was a complex and controversial institution pastorally,
administratively and legally. Its diverse nature has been summarized
cogently by the French historian Noel Coulet, who observes: ”[lla visit
fournit une connaissance directe de la situation matérielle, spirituelle
et morale de paroisses et des maisons religieuses, permit un contrale de
l'execution des ordres donnés et de l'observation des 1013 de l'Eglise,
offre l'occasion d'un contact avec le clergé qui en simule et entretient
le zBle et la fidelité. Elle est instrument de pastorale et moyen de
gouvernement."8

When we move beyond the theoretical aspects of visitation, however,
our task becomes more difficult because we must now attempt to interpret
the visitation documents and to derive valid conclusions from them. We
have seen that by the middle of the thirteenth century episcopal
visitation was a well-developed procedure with a prescribed method of
inquiry. In examining the registers ‘themselves, it is nevertheless
crucial to remember that such records are not simply administrative or
legal, but also human documents which reflect the particular attitudes
and interests of the visitor.9 It is appropriate, therefbre, not only to
describe the procedure fer visitation in general, but also to explore
some of the variations in the visitation practices of the six prelates

whose registers we intend to examine.

40

Since the evidence for analysing the visitation procedure is
scanty, historians have been forced to attempt to determine the most
common practices by synthesizing English and continental sources.
Naturally, variations existed depending on the conscientiousness of the
bishop and the specific circumstances of the visitation, but in general
bishops adhered to a fairly rigid schedule of activities. Befbre the
bishop arrived at the religious house he usually sent a warning letter
to its superior cleric in order to assure the presence of the leader
during the visitation. Occasionally the bishop would require the
witness to return a certificate which promised that the house would
accept the visitor. On the day of the visitation, the bishop and his
retinue would arrive at the house, forming a procession which would be
received by the leader of the house. The bishop would then be taken to
the chapter house where he preached a sermon. These sermons often
combined scriptural lessons with an exposition of the bishop's right to
conduct visitations. After the sermon, the bishop and the leaders of
the house discussed the legal and financial aspects of the visitation.
Finally, when the house was cleared of spectators who had come to see
the bishop, the bishop and his staff would begin to examine the members
of the community.10 After examining the inhabitants as thoroughly as
time would permit, the bishop commented on his findings to the entire
community. He might offer advice to the community or admonish the
leader for lax discipline or mismanagement. In cases of individual
abuses, the bishop could order fermal or infbrmal punishment to the
person who had committed the crime. At this point the bishop and his
retinue could retire, or they might leave in order to conduct

visitations in neighboring houses. Records of the visitations were kept

41

carefully, probably in the form of brief notes, and then incorporated
into the bishop's official register at a later date.

The evidence for the generalizations above comes from the close
analysis of individual entries from the visitation documents. For our
purposes, the register of Odo Rigaldi provides an excellent starting
point because of the thoroughness and sensitivity of this particular
archbishop. Indeed, G. G. Coulton acknowledges the special significance
of this document when he states: “it may almost be said that this book
yields more real insight into medieval conditions, under detailed
examination, than all of the rest of our [English] registers put
together."11 One reason for the unique quality of Odo's register is the
attention he paid to describing his activities. The entry concerning
Odo's visitation of a suffragan on 21 January 12fl9 not only confirms the
existence of a basic visitation procedure but provides some interesting

infermation about Odo's dedication to the task of visitation:

We came to Lisieux and were received by the chapter with a
procession and the church all decorated. We delivered a
sermon to the chapter gathered or convoked in the bishop's
palace. There we exercised our right of visitation and
inquired whether the bishop carried out his episcopal duties.
The canons replied that he had not celebrated Mass in the
cathedral of Lisieux during the past year: they do not know
what he may do elsewhere, and they say that he is unable to
exercise such of his episcopal functions as dedicating
churches, consecrating the chrism, blessing nuns and the like.
. . . This day our expenses were borne by the bishop.
JANUARY 152. We received procuration from the chapter of
Lisieux.

42

Odo's inquiry reflects his concern for maintaining basic ecclesiastical
functions throughout his province, as well as his insistence on keeping
careful records of his financial transactions. From the time of his
elevation to the episcopate in 1247 until his departure for the Crusades
in 1269 Odo conducted visitations regularly, consistently and

thoroughly, despite the rigors of medieval travel and illness which

plagued him throughout his prelacy.13

Other archbishops, of course, referred to their visitation
procedures regularly throughout their registers, although in most cases
this infbrmation was presented in a standard form which did not vary
from visitation to visitation except in date and place. The renowned
legalist and administrator Simon de Beaulieu, for example, used
essentially the same form, including a letter of announcement, for all
of his visitations. The form which he used to announce and record

visitations has been preserved in this entry from the year 1284:

SIMON Dei gratia Bituricensis Archiepiscopus, Aquitaniae
Primas, dilectis in Christo filiis Abbati A conventui de
Anglia Pictavensis diocesis salutem in Domino. Burdegalensem
provinciam Jure nostrae primatiae visitantes, hac instanti die
dominica post festum beati Matthaei Apostoli A Evangelistae ad
locum vestrum intendimus 'declinare. Unde vobis mandamus ut
nobis A familiae nostrae dicta die necessaria praeparetis.
Datum die Martis praecedenti anno Domini MCCLXXXIV.

Die igitur dominica post festum beati Matthaei Apostoli A
Evangelistae dictus Dominus Bituricensis Archiepiscopus
veniens de abbatia Fontis Gombaudi parrochiae de Fongombaut
Buturicensis diocesis, ubi sabbato praecedenti sacros
celebraverat ordines A praedicaverat, Burdegalensem intravit
provinciam, Abbate Angliae se quinto in equitaturis veniente
obviam Domino per1leucam A ampliers, A salutante Dominum cum
hilaritate vulus.

43

Hereafter, Simon proceded to describe the results of his investigation
of the house and recorded the recommendations which he made to its
leader.

Similarly, Bertrande du Got used essentially the same form for
describing his visitation practices. Although he did not include
references to letters of announcement in his Journal, he recorded his
activities in detail. The thirty-ninth entry of the Journal, which was
made in June 1304, provides a good example of Bertrande's method of

recording visitations:

Agen- Le 39 port quil seroit aussy alle en la ville d'Agen et
illec recu processionnellement par leuesque et chappittre de
lad. ville avecq son train aux despens dud. seigneur evesque
et le lendemain auroit celebre messe annonce la parole de Dieu
confirm et baille tonsgre a plusieurs et y fait sejorn au
despens du chappitre.
Like Odo and Simon, Bertrande mentioned the procession, and indicated
that he preached a sermon. A much more regular feature of Bertrande's
visitations, however, is his emphasis on the sacraments which he
perfbrmed in the course of his visitations. This emphasis should not
imply that Bertrande was more diligent about perfbrming sacraments than
the other archbishops, or that he was less concerned with the financial
and legal aspects of visitation simply because he did not choose to make
note of these matters at any length. He obviously preferred to list all
of his activities in a standard form rather than to elaborate on them in
each entry. Because visitation documents are so subjective, it is
difficult to make broad statements concerning the attitudes and aims of

a particular prelate without consulting corroborative evidence. We can

begin to discover, however, what was routine in thiriteenth—century

44.

visitations by looking fer similarities in various registers. Likewise,
we can assume that the differences reflect, at least to some degree, the
interests, preferences and goals of individual prelates.

The visitation records for the English archbishops of the
thirteenth century tend to support Coulton's somewhat dreary assessment
of them. The bulk of the registers of Walter Giffard and John Romanus
are devoted to legal transactions, orders, licences, injunctions and
presentations. In both registers, there is evidence that these men were
diligent about making visitations. This evidence comes chiefly from
letters Of announcement and injunctions against guilty clerics. In the
register of Walter Giffard, the entries concerning visitation are quite
thorough in listing the offences which the archbishop discovered and the
advice which he offered, but they do not describe the procedures he uSed
in conducting visitations. The Canterbury visitations of the 1290's
were recorded in the same manner.

In the register of John Romanus, visitation announcements appear
frequently and often follow a regular form, just as did those of Simon
de Beaulieu. The notice of John Romanus to Southwell in June of 1287 is

an example of the type of announcement which he generally sent:

1045. 2 kal. Julii (June 30, 1287). Lanum. Visitacio
cleri et populi prebendarum Suwell. Dilectis in Christo
filius, capitulo nostro Suwell. Quia clerum et populum
ecclesiae et prebendarum vestrarum Suwell. die Veneris
proxima post instans festum translacionis beati Thome Martiris
intendimus per Dei graciam visitare, devocioni vestre
injungimus et mandamus quatimus citetis peremptorie de
singulis prebendis vestris vicaros et presbiteros qui in
eisdem ministrant, ac tres vel quatuor viros fidedignos de
tenentibus ecclesie et prebendarum vestrarum Suwell., quos
ceteris preferat opinio commendato, quod predecto die Veneris
temptestive coram nobis compareant in prefata ecclesi
Suwell., visitacionem nostram, etc., ut supra est in an 8 j
anno in visitacione cleri et populi prebendarum Ryponie.

45

In this announcement, John Romanus not only warned Southwell of his
impending arrival, but instructed the community as to how to prepare for
his visit. Although his announcements were much more specific and less
formal than those of Simon de Beaulieu, their existence in his register
reflects his attention to the preliminary procedures of the visitation
process, despite the absence of regular descriptions of his activities
during the visitations which he conducted. His register, when compared
with those of the other prelates, indicates that episcopal registers
were flexible and subjective records of an activity which was a regular
feature of European society in the thirteenth century.

The most important aspect of episcopal visitation was, however, the
investigation of the clergy. The bishop was expected to preach, perfbrm
sacraments and settle legal disputes, but his primary role was to referm
his flock morally and administratively. Since religious life in the
thirteenth century was rich in the variety of institutions which existed
to serve the people, bishops could not use the same standards for every
religious house or parish which they visited. The variations in the
wealth, prominence and functions of these institutions required the
bishop to have a thorough knowledge of the legal connections, economic
basis and religous practices of each house he intended to visit. The
type and severity of offences which he encountered in the course of his
visitations, moreover, could influence the bishop's choice of a means of
investigation. Usually, in fact, bishops used several methods
concurrently.

Because episcopal visitation of the secular clergy was different in
some significant ways from that of monastic orders, it will be useful to

examine the basic differences between secular and regular clergy in the

46

medieval Church. The maJor distinction between secular and regular
clergy is that the secular clergy served the laity through direct
ministry, while the regular clergy were supposed to live separately from
the secular world in groups which organized their spiritual and social
behavior on the basis of a rule. Although both types of clergy
experienced some of the same problems and were exposed to the same
temptations, their essential functions in medieval society were quite
distinct. Because the bishop was by the definition of his office the
highest secular cleric in his diocese, he was obliged to take special
care to discipline the secular clergy, even if his background and
religious inclinations were monastic. Of course, no bishop or
archbishop could hope to visit every parish in his diocese or province,
simply because they were so numerous. Instead, bishops visited the
rural deans, and instructed them to maintain discipline in the parishes
within their deaneries. Such a charge was not a simple task, even for a
diligent dean, since the dean had little inherent authority, and
generally accomplished his duties through example and persuasion rather
than by ferce. He had little control even over his schedule for
visiting his parishes, since the bishop generally decided such matters
for him.17

The episcopal visitation of the dean was therefbre a significant
aspect of the bishop's ministry. When the bishop examined the dean he
not only asked questions of the dean himself but sought witnesses from
the community to confirm the reputation of the dean. As we have seen
from John Romanus' notice of visitation, bishops could request to have a
group of clergy and lay people present at the time of the visitation,

whose testimony could help the bishop to determine the efficiency or

47’

morality of minor Church officials. In the case of rural deans, the
bishops were generally most concerned about how well the dean
disciplined parish priests. He asked, for example, whether the priests
resided in their parishes, perfbrmed the sacraments regularly and
correctly, cared fer vestments, service books and chalices, served the
poor, and led reasonably moral lives. The following excerpt from Odo
Rigaldi's register reflects indirectly the kind of relationship which

existed between bishops and deans:

October 2. At Paris. This day, and by our order, we had
made an examination of the investigation done by the dean of
Valmont touching the life, morals, way of life, and other
attributes of Robert of Ros, a priest presented to Saints'
Church. The investigation revealed that the said priest had
received his [Holy] Orders from an outside bishop without
receiving permission from the bishop of his own diocese, and
for thig reason we were unwilling to admit him to the said
church.

In this case, the dean had the responsibility of determining the
character and legal standing of the priest before Rigaldi's arrival, but
he had no authority to act on his own.

In the visitation records of Canterbury diocese we see that deans
not only lacked authority, but had many administrative duties in

addition to their pastoral responsibilities. The visitation record for

Newchurch in 1294 states that:

'48

[a] mandate had been issued to sir John, rector of Seymeton,
dean of Lymene, to summon the clergy of his deanery to inquire
into the vacancy of the church of Newcherche in the gift of
the King of England.

The dean appeared and asserted that he had been so much
occupied in certain arduous business relating to the subsidy
for the Holy Land that he had not been able to reduce his
certificate to writing, but confessed that he had received the
mandate with due reverence, and asked to cerify b; word of
mouth that he had duly cited the following persons ....

Clearly, the life of rural deans must have been marked by a certain
amount of frustration, since bishops relied on them so heavily but gave
them little independent authority. Successful visitations and sound
financial administration in any diocese depended in large part on the
diligence and skill of the rural dean. Indeed, much of the evidence
which we have about the state of the clergy in the Middle Ages comes
indirectly from the labors of these officials. Bishops could hardly
have discovered and corrected as many abuses as they did without the aid
of the deans.

We should not assume, however, that the relationship between
bishops and deans was necessarily repressive, or that the bishop
performed only a punitive function during visitations. On the contrary,
bishops provided many useful services for the clergy: they ordained new
clerics, gave permission for leaves for study, received resignations
from benefices. and absolved penitent sinners.20 In addition, the
visitations of secular clergy brought the bishop into contact with the
people, as he confirmed children, blessed cemeteries and churches, and
listened to confessions.21

Episcopal visitation of the regular clergy differed from those of

the secular clergy primarily from the standpoint that monastic orders

were expected to live under a kind of spiritual and administrative

49

discipline which could never be expected of the laity. The usual
procedure for conducting a visitation of a monastery or convent began
with the examination of the entire chapter by addressing questions to
the assembly. This was followed by the private interrogation of as many
members of the house as was possible. The bishop would often delegate
trusted members of his familia to conduct some of these private
interrogations. When too many clerics were present to examine them
singly, they were examined in small groups. This kind of investigation
was called an inquisitio: it was not, however, a formal inquisition
because its purpose was only to inquire into the state of the house and
not to determine the guilt of of an accused cleric or to try him.22
During these interrogations, the religious were asked to reveal the
names of people in the community who had sinned, and to comment on the
financial and spiritual health of the house. The bishop could also ask
to see the financial records, service books and other religious
paraphernalia of the house in order to determine whether the house was
conscientiously maintained. When these examinations were complete, the
bishop would confer with his familia befbre deciding what kind of
disciplinary action was appropriate or whether more extensive
investigations were necessary.

Since bishops rarely commented specifically on every aspect of
visitation, our understanding of the visitation process is based on a
composite analysis of the best visitation records. In a sense, we
reconstruct the most common procedures by looking fer common features in
many visitation records. For this kind of study, Odo Rigaldi's register
is particularly useful because his visitation entries were unusually

thorough. An entry such as the one for the visitation of the priory at

50

St. Aubin in March 1259 can therefore reveal much information:

This very day we visited the nuns' priory at St. Aubin,
after we had pronounced God's word. Sixteen nuns were there.
The prioress was away. At our last visitation we forbade them
to receive or give the veil to anyone without our special
mandate. However, despite our command, they had received as a
nun and bestowed the veil upon a certain girl, to wit, the
daughter of Sir Robert, called Malvoisin, knight. When we
asked them why they had presumed to do this, they replied that
urgent necessity and poverty had so compelled them, and that
in consideration of their consent, the father of this girl had
given and endowed them with an annual income of one hundred
shillings, and they had a letter to prove this. They added
that they had done this without the consent of the prioress.
We, realizing and considering that they had not done this
without vice and greed and of depraved simony, subsequently
ordered the dean of Bray, by letter patent, to admonish, as
the law requires, the said nuns to remove this girl from their
house before Ascension Day and, having taken the veil from
her, to return her to her father's house. Upon the prioress
we enjoined and caused her to have enjoined a penance which
seemed expedient because she had allowed such a crime, and
likewise 2upon the nuns for their boldness in undertaking such
a matter.

This entry shows that Rigaldi's visitation procedure included the three
distinct phases which have been delineated above. He began his
visitation by convening the chapter and preaching a sermon. Then, after
referring to his notes concerning the priory, he investigated the moral
and financial state of the house. Finally, he assessed the nature of
the abuses which he had discovered and gave suitable punishments for
them. By examining such entries as this, we see that administrative
patterns emerge which reveal the standard practices and objectives of
episcopal visitation in the Middle Ages.

No one was more aware of the deficiencies of this system of this
inquiry than the bishop. Not only was there the danger of conspiracy
either to protect a powerful individual or incriminate falsely an

unpopular one, but even sincere testimony could be inaccurate or

51

exaggerated. Such problems undoubtedly prompted Odo Rigaldi to make the

following statement regarding his visitation of Lisieux:

We found Richard Faiel to be ill famed of the wife of Richard
the tailor. Called before us, they promised to behave
themselves better in the future. Item, we did not believe
some ogner stories which were told us about some of the
others.
In spite of the limitations, however, bishops were compelled to use
these methods in their attempts to learn about the state of religious
life in their dioceses. A major factor in the failure of bishops to
reform the Church in the thirteenth century must rest in the inability
of even the most zealous prelates to confirm and eliminate the abuses
which plagued the secular and regular clergy.

What were the major moral and administrative abuses which the
archbishops discovered and attempted to remedy? The moral abuses varied
widely in severity from negligence in observing the monastic rule to
sorcery or heresy. Most of the administrative problems were associated
with the mismanagement of monastic property, either through the
ignorance or the corruption of the clergy. When conducting visitations,
bishops in the late thirteenth century used the statutes of Pope Gregory
IX as their guide for assessing the state of religious life in the
monasteries. These statutes, which had been issued in 1234, were
intended specifically for the reform of the Benedictine, Cluniac and
Premonstratensian Orders, but contained advice which was appropriate in
a much broader context. The essential message of the Statutes was that
all monks should lead lives characterized by obedience, continence and

poverty. Moreover, religious leaders were required to provide 'frequent

and particular explanation' of these concepts for all those decided to

52

be monks.25

More specifically, the Statutes called for regular
confession and communion, the abolition of private property, the proper
care of all monastic property, and the removal of all beculars from the
monastery. Abbots were forbidden to sleep and eat in private quarters
on a regular basis. The monks were asked to announce publicly in
chapter the violations of the rule committed by their brothers in order
to maintain a high state of morality within the house. Most important,
the Rule of the Order was to be read in chapter at least three times a
year.26 Although the Statutes do not require anything more strict than
to adhere to the Rule of St. Benedict, many monks and abbots complained
of their severity. Nevertheless, both in England and France, the
Statutes took on the status of a monastic constitution. In 1249 the
English bishops decreed that the Statutes of Gregory IX, together with
other reforming legislation, should be publicly read at regular

intervals,27

while Odo Rigaldi required the abbots in Rouen to read the
Statutes in the vernacular at least once a year.

Unfortunately, bishops could not reform the Church merely by
insisting that the clergy listen to the ideals of monasticism, even if
they had been able to enforce the command to read the Statutes. By the
thirteenth century monastic life had become so lax that indulgence on
the part of the religious was almost possible to eradicate. The
archiepiscopal registers abound in examples of monasteries and convents
whose major abuses were in the form of negligence of certain features of
the Benedictine rule. Two characteristic examples of monastic

indulgence appear in the register of Odo Rigaldi. On his visit to the

priory at Le Désert in October 1256, Odo noted that:

53

Six Benedictine monks from the abbey of Troarn are there.
They do not confess often enough: we enjoined them to correct
this. They have no copy of the Rule; we enjoined the prior
to get one or to have one written out. They do not observe
the fasts of the Rule; we urged them to correct this. They
eat meat freely; wsaabsolutely forbade them to eat meat save
as the rule permits.

In the following year, Odo observed at the convent at St. Armand that:

[florty-five nuns are there as well as four girls who have
been promised that they would be received before any others.
They have seven maidservants. Silence is badly observed,
especially in the monastery and in the dormitory. The abbess
does not eat in the refractory; whenever she eats in her own
chamber she always has certain ones as her companions, and
does not call the others for such recreation. When the nuns
are in the infirmary, they have no one to read the Divine
Office to them. We enjoined the abbess not to be ready or
lenient in granting permission to the nuns to undertake
traveling, but to be stern and to give them permission to go
only for a definite time. We forbade them to appoint any
almoness or to give alms without consent. Item, we forbade
them to 2§eceive anything from their relatives without
permission.

In these instances the offences were not so much the products of
immorality as they were symptoms of the disintegration of the rigor of
the monastic rule. Several factors underlay this laxness. One of the
most perplexing problems of medieval monasticism was that the
monasteries became repositories for people who were considered unable to
fulfill secular social roles. This is particularly true of the sons and
daughters of lords who could not provide for them in any other way but
to place them into religious orders at an early age. While it would be
unfair to imply that many inhabitants of monasteries were not truly
committed to a religious vocation or that young children could not grow
up to embrace the monastic tradition, it is clear that many of these

people considered the monastery a prison and tried constantly to

54

30 Another factor which contributed to

circumvent its restrictions.
laxness was the aristocratic backgrounds of the inhabitants of religious
houses. Even though the monastic rule and canon law prohibited the
acceptance of money from people who wished to become monks or nuns, the
practice thrived, and the religious life was effectively limited to the

more affluent classes.31

Endowments also influenced the complexion of
monastic population. It was difficult for the Church to instill in the
aristocratic clergy the value of poverty when they had been taught to
enjoy the private luxuries of a noble life. Finally, although
monasteries became increasingly wealthy in the thirteenth century
through generous gifts and general economic prosperity, they did not
experience a corresponding increase in spirituality. If anything,
greater wealth encouraged greater indulgence and ambivalence towards the
rule.32

It is not surprising that the indulgent atmosphere which surrounded
monastic life encouraged much more serious moral offences. These
Offences included such crimes as assault, thievery, dishonesty and
usury, crimes which occurred far more often than ecclesiastical officals
cared to admit. The most common crime, however, was incontinence on the
part of the priests, monks and nuns. While celibacy had been an ideal
of the Church at least since the _days of Pope Gregory the Great,
significant progress in the realization of that ideal had not taken
place by the twelfth century. The great twelfth-century canonist
Gratian was dedicated to the principle of clerical celibacy, and he
reasserted it forcefully in his Decretals.33 In the course of the

thirteenth century bishops worked hard to eliminate its non-observance

but encountered resistence both from secular and regular clergy. The

55

deep frustration which these prelates felt as they tried to contain
immorality is reflected in Walter Giffard's entry concerning his

visitation of Felley priory in July 1270:

Item, quia per Radulphum de Codenore, super fornictione
graviter diffamatum, scandalum turpiter suscitatur, precipimus
quod idem Radulphum claustrum non exeat nisi in comitiva
prioris vel subprioris, donec per gestum suum ac
conversationem laudabilem et honestam hujusmodi scandalum
sOpiator, ac a nobis gratiam metuerit exeundi.

Item, quia Robertus Barry quedam bona de domo subtraxit, et
cum mulieribus frequentius conversator, quoram pretextu
inhonesta predicantur de ipso, volumus et precipimus, quod
similiter~ in claustro se teneat pacifice, suum sequens
conventum, in nullo existens officio, donec de sua
melioratione et vitae honestate consisterit per indicia
manifesta, et a nobis gratiam obtinuerit ampliorem.

Item, quia filius Willelmi de Dounham nimis frequentur
ingreditur ad patrem suum, ac idem W., paterno ductus affectu,
aliqua quae domi possent prodissa committit filio, matri quae
in venico habitat defenda, sitque suspicio quod sicut canis ad
vomitum ita redeat at peccatum, precepimus quod idem una cum
aliis claustrum non exeat, sed conventum sequantur ut degfit,
donec suscipio, incontinentae hujusmodo penitus auferatur.

Another offense which was less common than incontinence, but no
less serious, was violence. The causes of violent encounters between
abbots and monks, among the clerics, and among the lay people varied
considerably, but such actions were clear violations not only of the
Rule but of basic tenets of the Christian faith. Bishops therefore
punished violent behavior severely whenever they discovered it. The

attitude of the bishops towards such behavior is reflected in the record

of Bertrande du Got's visit to Cessac priory in October 1304:

56

archeuesque auroit aussy visite le prieure de Cessac pres le
Mont de Dome et y fait tous actes ace requis et necessaires et
le lendemain jour de lundy istre monte a leglise de Mont Dome
et apres avoir ouy messe avoir annonce la parole de Dieu au
peuple avoir confere la confirmation et tonsure a plusieurs et
pour ce que led. prieur de Cessac auroit refuse de recevoir
led. seigrieur comme il debvoit et a cause de la violence
quil avoit use avecq armes et violent injure faite avec
effusion de sang au cimitiere dudit prieure en les personnes
de messire Helie de Bosco, presbytre et chappelain dudit
archeuesque fust par icelluy seig. archeuesque excommumie 3%
denonce pour excommunie avecq les denommez leures complices.
Despite harsh punishments, however, violence was not noticeably reduced.
When members of religious communities are unable to settle disputes in a
peaceful fashion, we can assume that the state of religous life is less
than healthy. The presence of such violence in the late medieval Church
reveals the decadence of religious life as well as the futility of the
reform movement.

The most serious moral crime of the late medieval Church was
heresy. Heresy, of course, is a broad term which encompasses everything
from an excessive belief in superstition to the profession of an
unsanctioned theology. Although heresy had always been considered a
threat to the Church, it took on an even greater significance in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as a result of the cultural and
institutional evolution of Western European society. As we have already
seen, the Church sponsored a major reform movement during this period in
order to consolidate its administrative and spiritual power. A key
feature of this movement was its great emphasis on the codification of
religious law, despite the fact that Christian theology presented many
36

contradicitons and insoluble problems. While the codification process
succeeded in establishing clear-cut legal policies for the Church, it

also created a system of canon law which discouraged free thought and

57

inquiry on controversial theological matters. Because the Church
vigorously enforced conformity to the codified law, many intellectuals
faced ostracism or severe punishments for exploring ideas which might
not have been considered heretical a century earlier.

Another aspect of the issue of heresy is related to the decline of
monastic discipline during the thirteenth century. It is not surprising
that Church plagued by indulgent, corrupt or poorly trained personnel
would alienate or offend certain segments of the population. Some
people fell into old patterns of superstition, which involved various
types of sorcery. In some areas, entire communities embraced heretical
religions, often in part to protest the hypocrisy and cruelty of their
religious and secular superiors. Perhaps the best example of this kind
of behavior was the outbreak of Catharism in Southern France in the late
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Although the Church fOught against
this threat bitterly, the heresy was not destroyed quickly or without
great violence.37

Of course the Church was especially concerned when the clergy was
found guilty of heresy. The August 1286 mandate of John Romanus to the
rector of Birkin to find a heretical monk indicated that the problem of

heresy was both real and a matter of serious concern to Church

officials:

58

Litteras ad revocandum apostatam qui fuerat de Ryevalle.
Domino Roberto de Everingham, rectori ecclesie de Byrken.
Accepimus, non est dudum, quod quidam Godefredus (sic) Darel,
qui a religione et ordine Cisterciensi, quem in monasterio de
Ryevalle professus fuerat, apostatavit, ut dicitur, in
seculari habitu probosius Jam vagatur, maleficiis et
incantacionibus nefariis inserviens, per que et quas plebem
Dominicam decepit fidemque ecclesie reicit in proprae salutis
dispendium et orthodoxorum scandalum, proth dolor, manifestum.
Cum nostro itaque incumbat officio errantes oviculas ad
recitiudinis similitam meditacione sollicita revocare,
devocioni tue committimus et mandamus quatinus vias prefati
apostate scrutari studeas diligenter, ipsumque caute repertum
nobis presentare procures, ut, viso vulta morbosi pecoris,
premissa investigemus plenius, et, quatenus saluti pregécti
vagi expedere viderimus, ordinemus consularis de eodem.
The fact that such a scandalous situation could exist in thirteenth-
century monasticism suggests both the need for moral reform and the
obstacles which inhibited it.

Just as prevalent as moral decadence, and no less annoying to
episcopal visitors, was poor administration on the part of abbots and
priests. If these local officials could not maintain discipline and
manage Church property, the bishop would find it extremely difficult to
rely on them to make necessary reforms or to collect ecclesiastical
taxes. One corrupt prior or abbot, in fact, could create more tension
and inefficiency in a religious community than could many recalcitrant
monks. As a result of mismanaging monastic property, many abbots were
unable to provide adequate food, clothing and shelter for their monks.
This negligence led, in turn, to quarreling among monks, either because
they had to compete for the fruits of the house, or because they
struggled over how to remove the offending abbot from the monastery.
The fact that monks had little control over such conditions as famine,

sickness or poverty, whether their misfortunes were the result of

incompetence of abbots or acts of nature, led to unproductive discontent

59

and apathy.39 Since bishops could not always ensure the appointment of
good personnel, they looked for corruption during their visitations and
punished it severely when they discovered it. An excerpt from an entry
in the register of Simon de Beaulieu reveals the kind of problems that

bishops encountered with local officials in the late thirteenth century:

Super quo dicti Prior A capitulum Domino regratiantes, ipsi
Domino conquesti sunt de.familia sua, eo quod expenses factas
non ita rigide computataverant ut debuissit, A prout ipsi
computaverant secundum ipsorum assertionem, A ita gravebantur
ut in grossis carnibus A polletura A palia A in foeno: quibis
post multorum reSponsa, finaliter Dominus respondid quod si

crederent minus fideliter compuatum fuisse, venerent ipsi vel
mitterent Pictavis dum ipse praesens esset, A ipse
libentissime faceret fideliter computare; praefertim e38 sua

familia, cujius intererat computare, jam praecessisset.
Simon and his episcopal colleagues obviously hoped that warnings and
threats could achieve adequate reform in certain cases. The existence
of mismanagement and corruption was bound to continue, however, as long
as monasticism remained decentralized. When heads of houses enjoyed
autonomy and lacked regular supervision they could not be forced to
become efficient managers.u1
Another pervasive admnistrative abuse in the thirteenth-century
Church was the presence of uneducated or poorly educated people in
official ecclesiastical positions. Since the Fourth Lateran Council,
bishops were required to see that clerks who were promoted to
ecclesiastical offices had been properly prepared for their duties. The
most common method for determining the qualifications of a candidate to
a benefice was for the bishop to examine him in the presence of the

patron and other suitable witnesses.”2 Bishops frequently recorded the

events of the examinations in their registers as the following passage

60

from Odo Rigaldi's register suggests:

This day, that is to say, the Tuesday before Pentecost [1253].
we examined Geoffrey, cleric, presented to St. Richard's
church at Harcourt, on the passage: omnia autem aperta pp
nude sunt eius oculis. Asked what part of speech aperta was,
he replied, "A noun"; asked if it might be any other part of
speech, he said, ”Yes, that is to say, a participle." Asked
from what verb it was derived, he said, ”From this verb:

eperio, aperis, aperii, aperire, aperior, aperieris, etc.”
Asked for the formation of compati, he said "Compatire from

ppm and patio, pates, patu , patere, patend , patendo,
patendum, passum, passu, patiens, passurus, patior, pateris,
passus, patendus." Asked what pateo, pates, meant, he answered
"To open or to suffer." Asked what part of speech obsgue was
he said, "A conjunction"; asked what kind, he said "Causal.”
Examined in chant, he did not know how to sing without
solfeggio or note, and he was even discordant in solfeggio or
note. We therefore, both because of his insuffiency, and
because after an investigation which we had caused to be made
about him, he was found to be ill reputed of incontinence and
of quarrelsomeness, did not think he should be admitted to the
said church. Those present were: Brother Osmond; Brother
Walter of Menieres; Brother Roger, his relative, all Friors
Minor: Ralph, priest at Deville; Master Maur, our physician:
Master Peter of Aumale; Stephen, pgiest at Blenelle; and
Everard, son of the count, our clerks.

 

Odo was clearly concerned not only about the candidate's knowledge of
Latin, but about his ability to perform the Mass and his personal
character. Because the candidate did not meet Odo's standards, he was
rejected. In other cases prelates might accept the candidate on the
condition that he study for a period of time before beginning his
ministry. Such provisions were necessary when patrons presented young
candidates who had not yet even taken minor orders. The unfortunate
result of this practice is that it allowed clerics to receive endowments
from a benefice which they did not serve and in which they did not
reside. We see, therefore, that the bishops faced a serious dilemma
when choosing personnel. They could allow an unqualified cleric to hold

an office or they could require him to study at the expense of having a

61

benefice improperly administered. In either event, the potential for
abuse and mismanagement was great.

The result of non-residence and mismanagement was the physical
deterioration of Church property. Competent bishops, therefore, did not
forget to examine the buildings, books, vestments and other provisions

44

of the houses which they visited. Considering their constant attempts

to encourage Church officials and parishioners to keep Church property
in good condition, the bishops must have been frustrated by the large
amount of destruction which they encountered. The visitation of the
church of Fairfield of Canterbury diocese in 1294 reveals the extent of

deterioration which could be found at the end of the thirteenth century:

A frontal for the high altar is lacking, because there is
only a poor carpet before the same.

A cloth is required for the lecturn, because the one that
is there is very dirty and in poor condition.

There is an antiphoner which is of no use or value and a
legend of no value.

They lack a psalter, manual, processional, ordinal,
collecter and martyrology.

The church was never dedicated, and the altars in the
chancel are of wood badly put together, also the walls of the
chancel are in bad condition because they are full of holes in
the lower parts: moreover, the churchyard is dedicated, but
not the church, because it is of wood and daub.

The oil has not been changgd this year, the church font has
no lock as it ought to have.

The unfortunate aspect of this kind of negligence is that while bishops
could identify it, they could do little to reverse or prevent it. Even
though many religious houses thrived in the thirteenth century, the
presence of negligent officials and poorly managed houses seriously
undermined the quality of religious life both morally and

administratively.

Although bishops in the thirteenth century had to be cautious in

62

making judgments concerning these abuses, they did not hesitate to
correct clear violations of the Statutes of Gregory IX or other overt
offences. Bishops employed several different methods of correction
which varied in severity depending on the seriousness of the offence.
When a bishop discovered a certain amount of disorganization in an
otherwise healthy parish or monastery, he usually offered informal
advice or warnings to the offenders. The instructions were then
recorded in the register so that the bishop could refer to he notes upon
the next visitation in order to assess the progress of the house. In
regard to his visitation of the priory of Mont-Deux-Amants in December

1256, Odo Rigaldi made the following notation:

We visited there, finding twelve canons. We enjoined them to
read the Rule through at least once a week....The sick are ill
provided for: we enjoined them to correct this. We
particularly enjoined the subprior to be diligent in visiting
the sick and to make provisions for them as the illnes of the
patient seemed to render expedient. They do not get their
clothing as soon as they need it, for it is given to apem
after too long a delay: we enjoined them to correct this.
In this instance, the failings of the house were the result of
carelessness, not of grave sin. Odo obviously believed that the
problems in this house could be easily resolved if its inhabitants could
be persuaded to be more attentive to the practical needs of the house
and if they would spend more time studying the Rule.
More serious Offences incurred more formal penalties. These
penalties could involve large groups of people or a single cleric,
depending on the nature of the offence. According to French historian

Paul Adam, bishOps often charged entire parishes with the responsibility

of repairing ruined churches by imposing heavy fines if the parishoners

53

did not comply with his orders, and by promising indulgences if they
did."7 The visitation of Brookland parish in the diocese of Canterbury

confirms Adam's assertion:

The church is badly covered, the gutters and timber are
rotten. Wherefore the parishioners are summoned, and because
it is said that they are liable, it was enjoined on the
wardens that they should cause all the said defects to be
repaired before the next visit of the 1°53 [?commissary] to
the marsh under pain of twenty shillings.

Both groups of people and individuals could be punished through the use
of injunctions. InJunctions were formal complaints made by the bishop,
which either imposed a penalty on the offenders or promised that a
penalty would be imposed if the the offender did not reform his behavior
within a specific period of time. Bishops often used the form of the
injunction to list the abuses of a house so that its inhabitants would
have a clear understanding of its deficiencies. An excerpt from a long
list of injunctions, which Walter Giffard issued to a house of canons,

illustrates this function of an injunction:

In nomine Domini, Amen, etc. Compertum est per
inquisitionum, factam ut decuit in conventu, quod ea quae in
proxima visitatione nostre tam ore quam littera corrigi
precepimus et servari, in nostri contemptum et non modicum
domus dispendium animarumque periculum, adhuc penitus remanent
incorrecta, immo expernicioso negglectu inobedientur videntur
esse rejecta, maxime cum excessus pristinos hactenus
continuari peteat evidenter. Ob quod prius injuncta, secundum
quod ea in scriptis dedimus, volumus recitari et ea per
singula precepimus observari, contemptum premissum teliter
puniendo, ut scilicet ad honestatem et decorem (gig) ordinis
et carnalium affectuum repressionem, carnibus in refractorio
feriis non utantur; et donec omnia sic negglecte ad stratum
debitum reducantur, semel singulis mensibus in secunda feria
presens scripture, upg cum priori, publice coram omnibus in
capitulo perlegatur.

64

Injunctions were also used to punish individuals who had committed
serious moral crimes. In the case of the canon William of Durham of

Felley priory, Walter Giffard issued this injunction:

Item, compertum est quod Willelmus de Dunham de Rosa,
muliere quedam, filium suscitavit, quia freqeuntur ingreditur
domum, et ea quae ibi potest adquirere defert matri suae, quae
habitat in vicino, et suscipio est quod dictus Willelmus per
filium suum intermedium copiam habeat matris suae, et quod
canis ad vomitum, redeat ad peccatum. Ne, igitur, religionis
honestas per telem insolentiam penitus corruat et succumbat,
precipimus quod idem claustrum suum nonexeat, donec suspicio
incontinentiae penitus auferatur. Quod si precepto nostro
presumpserit contraire, ipsum ad aluid monasterium

transferemus, et ipsum etiam 5alias puniemus quod elii
delinquere decetera formidabunt.
Many injunctions called for punishments which were harsher than simply
confining a monk to the cloister or sending him to another monastery.
Bishops had the power to suspend or excommunicate clerics who were
guilty of gross immorality, or who were too incompetent or corrupt to
administer a benefice even marginally well. Although bishops were
forced to rely on inefficient methods of investigation, they clearly had
strong deterrents at their disposal when they were certain that they had
uncovered grave sin. The frequent use of the injunction in the
thirteenth century registers suggests that bishops were prepared to
punish the offences which they encountered to the extent that their
inquisitional methods, and sense of fairness and propriety would permit.
Bishops also had specific methods for correcting administrative or
financial abuses. These methods fell into three general categories.
First, the bishop might try to limit the freedom of the leader of the
house to spend the house's income by insisting that the entire house be

consulted before any major transaction was completed: by providing for

65

the safe custody of the common seal; by appointing a few treasurers
from the house who would be jointly responsible for receipts and
expenditures; or by providing for the regular presentation of
accounts.51 In more serious cases of mismanagement, the bishop could

require an episcopal licence for business transactions, or appoint a
guardian (ggggpg) to supervise the temporal affairs of the house.52 In
the case of the church of Kirkby Moorside, John Romanus appointed a
guardian not so much to assist the vicar in financial matters as to help

to carry out his duties in the midst of infirmity:

466. 6 kal. Dec. (Nov. 26, 1286). Wilton'. Thome,
rectori ecclesie de Barton' in Rydale. Convertentes pie
consideracionis intuitum ad statum vicarii de Kirkeby
Moresheued, qui senii importunitate frangitur et visus
privacione afficitur,adeo quod cure sue, set nec sufficere
poterit sibi ipsi, te, de cujus circumspecta industria plene
confidimus, predicto vicario et vicarie sue in custodem et
coadjutorem canonicum preficimus per presentes, quod onus tibi
injungimus assumendum: proviso quod, deductis sumptibus
necessariis, tam circa personam alendam quem circa alia
contigencia faciendis, de bonus residius nobis fidgliter
responeas, ut de hiis de utilitatem ecclesie disponamus.

It is evident that bishops were aware of the difficulties of
contemporary administration and were innovative in finding ways to help
clerics to solve their own administrative problems.

The continued presence of moral and administrative abuses in the
late thirteenth century suggests, nevertheless, that the methods of
episcopal visitation were not adequate to the task of eliminating
immorality and inefficiency from the Church. Indeed, as G. G. Coulton
points out, even such men as Odo Rigaldi and John Pecham were forced to
diminish certain punishments in order to prevent the crimes from

54

becoming public scandals. The six archiepiscopal registers provide

66

invaluable insights into the justifications, processes and limitations
of episcopal visitation in the late Middle Ages. Through them we see a
system which relied on the personal integrity and energy of high
ecclesiastical officials, who were often thwarted in their attempts to
reform by a society which regarded the financial and legal prerogatives
of the Church with Jealousy, and attempted to limit them. If any fact
emerges from our discussion of the visitation process, however, it is
that bishops easily could have spent their entire careers on the single
task of 'reforming through visitation. Considering the numerous other
demands on their time, it is remarkable that these prelates as much as

they did to reform the medieval Church.

IV. THE EFFECTIVENESS OF EPISCOPAL VISITATION

Despite the diligent labors of the episcopate in the second half of
the thirteenth century, the Church failed to achieve its goal of
complete moral and administrative reform of religious life. The work of
the episcopate was not entirely futile, however. Evidence exists to
show that the bishops' efforts to educate the clergy, encourage
preaching and improve the administration of religious houses achieved
some notable successes. Unfortunately, this progress seems rather
limited and sporadic in light of the more common tendencies toward
ambivalence and indulgence on the part of the clergy. The roots of this
situation of restricted reform in the midst of spiritual and
administrative stagnation lay in certain inherent problems in the late
medieval Church, which the reform movement was not intended to solve.
Because bishops were intimately involved in the process of reform, their
visitation registers provide a valuable resource for investigating the
extent of the effectiveness of the reform movement.

How can we assess the effectiveness of episcopal visitation as
expressed in the registers? In general, three methods yield important
information concerning the progress of the late medieval Church. The
most obvious approach is to compare the entries which were made for a
particular house during a bishop's career. This method has the
advantage of illustrating the effectiveness of a single bishop. Its
major disadvantage is that it depends entirely on the quality of the
register which is being analyzed. The register of Odo Rigaldi, who made
some kind of notation for nearly every visitation he conducted, is more

useful than the registers of Walter Giffard and John Romanus, who

57

68

usually commented on a visitation only when injunctions had to be
issued.

In Episcopal Visitation pf Monasteries ip_the Thirteenth Century,

 

C. R. Cheney attempts to assess the effectiveness of the visitation
process in curbing a specific list of abuses by studying Odo Rigaldi's
register systematically. Cheney notes, as we have noted before, that
Rigaldi possessed extraordinary pastoral talents and displayed a fine
character. Moreover, he conducted diocesan affairs efficiently. His
register reveals his remarkable consistency and diligence during his
long career as archbishop of Rouen, since Odo recorded his visitations
in great detail. According to Cheney's calculations, Rigaldi visited at
least forty-nine houses of regular clergy six times each during his
twenty-one years as archbishop; he visited forty-five of these more
than ten times each. Cheney therefore concludes, quite reasonably, that
Rigaldi's register provides adequate evidence for estimating the state
of monastic clergy in Rouen in the mid-thirteenth century and for
assessing Rigaldi's success in eliminating abuses.1

To assess Rigaldi's sucess, Cheney divided the archbishop's prelacy
into three seven-year periods (1248-1255, 1255-1262, 1262-1269), and
counted the incidents Of specific offences in each of the three periods.
Since Rigaldi made approximately the same number of visitations in each
period, the periods can be compared directly. The offences which Cheney
considered include: the ignorance of the Rule and the Statutes:
discipline (monks not accusing each other in chapter): failure to
follow the Rule (ownership of property, incontinence, lack of silence);
lone monks: irregularities in common life and claustration: and the

neglect of the infirmary. Cheney also examined such aspects of monastic

69

life as the administration of houses, the observance of food
regulations, almsgiving and monastic debt. By comparing the aggregate
number of each of the abuses in all three periods, Cheney reached some
interesting conclusions about the state of monasticism in the thirteenth
century. His statistical analysis shows that the frequency of abuses
declined during the course of Rigaldi's prelacy. In some cases
Rigaldi's successes were dramatic. The number of houses which did not
possess a copy of the Rule decreased from forty-eight to eleven between
1248 and 1255. It was easier, of course, for Rigaldi to insist that
monks obtain copies of these documents than it was for him to ensure
that the monks would follow their instructiOns. Rigaldi had more
limited success in forcing the regular clergy to accuse each other in
chapter. The number of injunctions concerning this matter dropped from
thirty in the first period to nineteen in the second period. Incidents
of incontinence also declined from forty-two in the first period to nine
in the third period. The number of injunctions against the ownership of
private property actually increased, however, from twenty-one in the
first period to thirty-four in the third period.2

Cheney concluded that Rigaldi deserves most of the credit for the
moderate improvements in clerical life which occurred during his
prelacy; certainly the archbishop worked tirelessly to achieve them.
The fact that Rigaldi invested so much effort into the visitation
process and yet obtained only slight results in curbing the most

significant abuses led Cheney to this rather dark conclusion:

7O

[IJf from the handling [of the data] one impression deeper
from the rest has been left it is, surely, that the
archbishop's chief obstacle was passive unspirituality in the
cloister. Rigaud could enforce administrative reforms, he
could have the Rule written and read; but the little self-
indulgences of the religious, their private stores, their meat
for meals he could not prevent.... The long persistence of
the evils and the repetition of injunctions shows the
opposition against which he contended. Only a strong external
force continually returning could make an impression upon a
disordered monastery, however zealous its head might be. To
emphasize the amount of success which Rigaud's efforts
rewarded is not to forget the limitations always operative.
The archbishop could got make religion flourish: he could
prevent its worse decay.

In its remarkable detail, Rigaldi's register reveals the crucial
importance of bishops to the reform movement of the late Middle Ages.
This register and others from the second half of the thirteenth century
show further that the forces which interfered with the bishop's ability
to make visitations inhibited the success of the reform movement as a
whole.

The registers of Walter Giffard and John Romanus are appropriate
for the second method: the comparison of entries concerning a
particular house from the registers of two or more bishops. Again, this
method is most effective in examinations of dioceses for which there is
a history of consistently detailed visitation registers. The province
of York is remarkable for the volume of diocesan material which was
collected and preserved from the Middle Ages. According to English
historian A. Hamilton Thompson, however, the voluminous York series "is
concerned almost entirely with diocesan business, and that business is
largely formal and rehearsed at great length with endless repetitions."u
This tendency to repeat may stem in part from the relatively
unsophisticated nature of York diocesan administration. Although the

province of York covered a vast territory, it consisted of only three

71

rather impoverished sees, and thus never had the opportunity to develop
the kind of substantial system of central administration which had
evolved in Canterbury.5 The register of Walter Giffard and John Romanus
reflect the habit of the registrars to include in the permanent record
only those documents which might be necessary in the future, to renew,
confirm or revise diocesan litigation.6 Thus a great deal of interesting
and potentially useful information has been lost to us. Although it is
possible to use the registers of Walter Giffard and John Romanus in a
comparative analysis, these documents generally lack substantive
information on any but the most notorious houses. Needless to say, in
areas in which ecclesiastical archives have suffered from neglect or
destruction, this method is unreliable.

When a series of episcopal registers has been preserved, the second
method can be used with some reservations. The register of Walter
Giffard and John Romanus show clearly that many of the problems which
Giffard identified in the 1270's remained uncorrected in thirty years
later. Two visitations of Bolton priory reveal this lack of progress.
In December 1271 Giffard visited Bolton priory, and noted that among

other abuses:

Item compertum est quod Johannes de Pontifracto, celarius, non
est multum utilis in officio, et quod plures sunt in conventu
magis ad illud idonei. Item compertum est quod silentum in
ecclesie, claustro, dormitorio, refractorio, non bene
servatur. Item quod infirmi fratres non bene procurantur, nec
secundum exigentiam ordinis humaniuts visitantur. Item quod
Johannes de Ottele, licet professus novicius, tamen non reddit
servitum suum cordetenus juxta morem disciplinae regularis.
Item quod celarius et subcelarius, quando vacare possunt, non
intersunt divinis officiis nec collationibus quae fiunt in
conventu, ct quod frequenter post refractorio lautius quem
ceteri fuerent....Item compotus de communibus rebus et
administgationibus per obedientiarios non redditur in
communi.

72

This excerpt suggests that the monks of Bolton priory regularly
disobeyed the Rule and that the priory was inefficiently administered.
John Romanus' visitation of the same priory in July 1286 shows that

the monks had made little progress in the preceding fifteen years:

Noverint, etc., quod, cum nos, Johannes, etc., officii nostri
debitum prosequuento, idibus Julii, anno gracie M°CC°
octogesimo sexto, priorem et conventu de Bolton' in Cravene,
in suo caitulo, pastorali sollicitudine visitaterimus, ac
domum ipsam gravi ere alieno invenerimus oneratum, quod a
domus eJusdem humeris comode executi non poterit: nec bona
monasterii in proprios usus venient, que ante visitacionem
nostram in hujusmodo quibusdam singularibus personis de gremio
pro separato victu fuerat assignata. Nos, communi utilitate
eJusdem collegii pensata quam singularium personarum
quarumlibet privatis comodio censuimus preferendam,
provisiones et assignaciones de bonis prefati monasterii,
quibuscumque personis eJusdem collegi sub quavis forma
concessas, de consensu prioris, omnium eciam singulorum de
gremio, revocavimus, irritatavimus, et annullavimus, ad
revelacionem uberem depressipnis notorie qua domus non
mediocriter affligitur memorata.

These two evaluations of the same house clearly indicate that bishops
had difficulty in removing administrative inefficiency and violations of
the Rule from houses which were consistently mismanaged. The comparison
of entries concerning the same house from several registers might be a
useful method for examining the effectiveness of visitation in a
particular area over a long period of time.

Despite the advantages of the second method, however, it is
inappropriate for this thesis for several reasons. The second method
naturally limits the historian to an investigation of a few isolated
regions within a single diocese or province. While such a study might
offer many insights into the problems and administrative features of the
houses which have been mentioned most often in the registers, the result

of the study would have only a narrow application. A more significant

73

problem is rooted in the fragmentary nature of the evidence. Since the
archbishops of York did not include much material on visitations in
their registers, and since few bishops provided any more than one
substantive account of any but the most notorious houses, the historian
would find it difficult to reconstruct a representative view of
religious life during the Middle Ages using the second method. The
registers used in this thesis were produced in different areas, and vary
in style, purpose and length. While they are similar enough for us to
draw conclusions about the visitation process fOrm them, they are not
similar enough for an analysis based on tracing developments within
specific houses. The comparison of records within a single see forces
the historian to restrict the use of contemporary registers from other
sees to the secondary role of corroborating the evidence of the primary
registers. Because I intend to explore the issue Of the effectiveness
of episcopal visitation on a wider scale than either the first or the
second method can provide, I must turn to a broader method of analysis.

The third technique for assesing the effectiveness of episcopal
visitation involves a synthesis of a variety of registers which were
compiled during a relatively large period of time. This method is based
on the assumption that a variety of documentation serves to enrich and
refine the conclusions which have been derived from the analysis of
primary sources. As Coulton argues in his study of thirteenth- and
fourteenth-century monasticism, ”monasticism had the same ideal
everywhere in the West, and its practice so nearly the same from country
to country that the burden of proof lies not upon the writer who would
illustrate English by French conditions, but upon him who would forbid

such illustrations. . . . Common sense seems to suggest that, where

74-

witnesses are fairly unanimous, their testimony is not weakened but
strengthed by their variations of time and place. . . ."9 The same
argument would be valid for the secular clergy as well. The synthetic
method has good potential for assisting us in understanding episcopal
visitation because it allows us to incorporate any pertinent information
from a variety of registers as long as we take into account the
distinctive character of each register. Clearly, this method permits
the historian to chart advances or reverses in medieval religious life
on a much broader basis than is possible with the other methods. Even
more than with the other methods, however, interpretive skill is
essential in the synthetic approach, so that the differences and
similarities among bishops' registers can be assessed accurately. In
the context of this study, the synthetic approach involves identifying
the forces which might have limited the effectiveness of visitation, and
then using a variety of contemporary sources to determine the extent to
which these forces actually impeded visitation. Using the registers
which I have described in previous chapters, I hope to show that one of
the most crucial forces which inhibited major reform through visitation
was inherent in the episcopal office itself. We shall see that while
bishops had the capacity to improve religious life, and actually
succeeded in some limited respects, the demands of the office, the
personal failings of the bishops and the pressures placed on bishops by
the Church diverted bishops from their responsibilities to reform their
flocks.

Since the registers chosen for this study vary greatly in terms of
style, length and purpose, all three methods for determining the

effectiveness of episcopal visitations can be used to good effect. It

75

is important to remember the problems which stand in the way of making
firm conclusions based on any of these documents. The registers contain
lacunae and errors. Bishops, moreover, were inclined to emphasize the
negative discoveries rather than to dwell on the achievements of
respectable houses. Nevertheless, we should not minimize the value of
episcopal registers to broaden our understanding not only of the
effectiveness of episcopal visitation as a means for reform, but also
the vitality of the thirteenth century reform movement as a whole.

The reform movement which was initiated by thirteenth— and
fourteenth-century prelates had many facets. Although many of the
reformers' objectives could not be met, some aspects of the reform
movement were more successful than others. One of the most progressive
elements of thirteenth century religious reform was its emphasis on an
educated clergy, since in essence knowledge is the basis of any
substantial reform. We have already seen how Odo Rigaldi tried to place
qualified and literate people into vacant offices. The level of
education of thirteenth-century clergy is difficult to evaluate because
scholars do not agree on the implications of the primary evidence and
because many bishops commented more on the moral failings than on the
ignorance of the clergy. After analysing the episcopal registers of
medieval England, John R. H. Moorman has concluded that the majority of
the clergy received very little instruction. In fact, some must have
been almost completely illiterate, despite the Church's constant efforts
to maintain a high standard of education for priests and monks.10 The
registers certainly abound in examples of clerics who did not possess
the necessary books to conduct services, could barely read Latin, and

had only a limited understanding of theology. It is easy to assume,

76

therefore, that the efforts of the Church to reverse this kind to
ignorance were futile for the most part.

The nature of episcopal registers prevents the historian from
gaining any real insight into the methods the Church employed to educate
its clergy. Since no formal system of seminary training existed in the
Middle Ages, we must assume that most clerics prepared for careers in
the Church either by serving a beneficed cleric or by attending a
university or school. Since bishops often granted permission for
priests to leave their parishes to study at a university, we must assume
that most bishops encouraged the clergy to be educated.11 In September
1268, for example, Walter Giffard gave the rector of the church of
Thorenton permission to study theology for three years as long as he
could assure that his parish would not be neglected (ita quod dicta
ecclesie debitis non fraudetur officiis, et animarum cure in ea

nullatenus negligatur).12

In May 1293, John Romanus not only allowed the
rector of Brandesburton to leave his parish to study, but specified that
the fruits of the parish would continue to go to the rector.13 Clearly,
these bishops recognized the importance of an educated clergy, and
attempted to make clerical study possible. The registers provide little
direct evidence to suggest that bishops checked to see whether priests
actually attended universities during their leaves of absence.

Despite the bishops' willingness to support clerical education,
their registers reflect negligence involving religious books. The

visitation of Fairfield church in Canterbury diocese reports that:

77

There is an antiphoner which is of no value, and a legend
of no value.
They lack a psalter, "manual, processional, ordinal,
collecter and martyrology.
Likewise, Odo Rigaldi complained continually of the poor state of the
service books in the religious houses which he visited. These incidents
suggest that many clerics in the late Middle Ages did not know how to
care for books, and imply that some priests and monks did not value or
were unaware of the contents of these books. Although the registers of
medieval bishops do not provide enough evidence to determine the exact
state of clerical education, they obviously provide some indirect
insight into this facet of medieval religious life. The bishops
acknowledged the existence of unqualified clergy, and attempted to
correct this problem when they encountered it. What they failed to see,
however, was the need for a consistent and thorough program of training
for all clergy.

Some historians have turned to other kinds of evidence to trace the
state of the clergy in the later Middle Ages. Manuals to assist parish
priests and friars to preach became more common in the late thirteenth
and early fourteenth centuries. In addition, episcopal legislation
reflects a tendency on the part of the clergy to place a new and greater
emphasis on theological matters in their mandates to priests. The
constitutions which were established in 1240 by Walter de Cantilupe,
Bishop of Worcester, were devoted in part to the duties of a priest to
understand certain theological concepts and to include such information
in frequent sermons 'for his parishoners. One portion of the
constitutions enjoins priests to act according to a specific

instruction:

78

Scientque sacerdotes ea, quae exiguntur ad verae
confessionis poenitentiae sacramentum. Et quia observatio
decalogi necessaria est fidelibus ad salutem: exortamus in
Domino sacerdotus, et pastores animarum, ut sciant decalogum,
id est decem mandate legis Mosaicae, quae populo suo sibi
subjecto, frequenter praedicent, et exponent. Sciant quoque,
quae sunt septum criminalia peccata, quae populo praedicent
fugunda. Sciant etiam saltem simpliciter vii ecclesiastica
sacramentas quae sunt. Habeat etiam saltem quilibet eorum
fidei simplicem intellectum secundum quod continetur in
psalmo, qui dicitur "Quicunque vult," et tam in majori, quam
in minori 5symbolo; ut in his plebem comissam noverint
informare.

The emphasis on the emerging body of popular theology and on the proper
instruction of priests reflects the desire of the episcopacy to use the
clergy as a tool for wider moral reform in the Church.

The best way to assess this intention is to determine the extent to
which the episcopal mandates were carried out. Although the primary
sources do not reveal directly the extent of improvement in clerical
learning, they reveal it indirectly through the evidence they provide
concerning preaching. Some historians have argued that sermons were
rare in the thirteenth century, but the increasingly large number of
episcopal instructions to priests and examinations of clerics suggests
that the amount of pastoral preaching must have increased as well.
Indeed, D. W. Robertson argues that there is evidence to show that in
ordinary parishes, priests regularly delivered sermons on Sundays and
feast days.16 The work of the parish priest was supplemented, indeed
some would argue circumscribed, by the activities of friar preachers.
Even though the friars were organized into monastic orders and did not
hold regular pastoral offices, they were carefully selected and
rigorously trained to preach about the same topics which bishops
17

enjoined the parish clergy to master.

The registers which were selected for this study do not provide

79

much evidence to show that bishops Specifically encouraged parish
priests to preach sermons. Perhaps bishops considered the moral state
of the clergy a more pressing matter than their ability to preach, or
assumed that virtuous and competent priests would not need to be
reminded to preach to their parishioners. The enthusiastic support
which bishops gave to mendicant orders reflects, however, their desire
to supplement the work of parish priests. By the second half of the
thirteenth century, the Franciscan and Dominican Orders, with their
highly educated and well-trained friars, exerted enormous influence
throughout Western Europe. Both Odo Rigaldi and Walter Giffard referred
to friars, particularly the Dominicans, as 'Preachers'18 and accorded
the friars great respect. Indeed, Rigaldi, who had begun his
ecclesiastical career as a Franciscan, often dined and lodged with
friars on his Journeys. The entries in Giffard's register which concern
mendicant orders indicate that he took great interest in the activities
of the friars. In January 1270, for example, Giffard gave the friars of
Mount Carmel at Gloucester permission to build an oratory, obviously
with the intention of allowing the friars to settle in this area.19 Not
only did Giffard allow the friars to build religious structures, but he
permitted them even more substantial privileges. Giffard's decision to
grant the Friars Minors the right to hear the confessions of Cistercian

nuns indicates his willingness to extend their pastoral duties beyond

the realm of simple preaching:

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W. permissione, etc. dilectis in Christo filiabus,
priorissae de Hanepol ac priorissae de Appleton, necnon et
aliis priorissis eJusdem ordinid per Ebor. diocesim
constitutis, salutem, etc. Cura nostri officii pastoralis non
excetat et inducet super gregum dominicum nobis commissum
circa ipsius salutem jugiter cogitare. Cum igitur nostrum sit
vobis de confessoribus uliliter providere, vobis mandamus,
firmiter injungentis, quatinus Fratres Minores [et
Predicatores], qui in ecclesie Dei fulgent velud spendor
firmamenti, ad vestras confessiones audienas, sicut hactinus
fieri consuevit, non obstante inhibitione ex parte abbatum
Cisterciensis ordinis vobis facts, recipere studeatis, quia
dicti abbatis in vos nullam habent jurisdictionem ordinarium,
vel etiam delegatum. Quare vobis inhibemus, sub pene
canonicai districtionis, ne dictis abbatibus decetero
intendatis vel eorum injuncti seu mandate absque nostre
licentia in posternum admittatis. Quod si secus geritis,
contra vos cum servitete juris viriliter procedemus.20

Even though the mendicant orders were still relatively new organizations
by the late thirteenth century, they clearly captured the attention and
admiration of ecclesiastical leaders. It is likely that bishops looked
to friars to assist them in their task of upgrading religious life on
the local level, at first simply through preaching, but ultimately
through assuming the other pastoral duties of the parish priest. The
registers say little about the tensions which must have arisen between
friars and priests by the end of thirteenth century. They suggest
strongly, however, that bishops consistently favored the work of the
friars even though their encouragement of the friars resulted in the
decline of the prestige of the secular clergy.

The growth of interest in preaching in the thirteenth century is
reflected also in the development of the sermon as a literary form.
Historians of medieval literature point out the usefulness of examining
the documents which preachers used to assist them in the writing of
sermons, as well as the texts of actual sermons which have survived. G.

R. Owst has commented on the power of preaching to convey the

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21 The

theological precepts of scholars and prelates to the popular mind.
combination of episcopal mandates to perish priests, mendicant preaching
and the intellectual activity of the universities resulted in the
expansion of inspirational literature in the thirteenth century which
was intended, in the words of French historian E. J. Arnould,
”instruire, aussi completement, mais surtout aussi simplement que

22 To these forms we must add the

possible, 1e bas clergé et le peuple."
episcopal sermon. Although it would be misleading to suggest that
bishops succeeded in reforming all of the problems of ignorance among
the clergy, the registers show that they considered the sermon a vital
tool for educating the clergy and people. Episcopal sermons served not
only to instruct the clergy in theological matters, but also to provide
the parish priest with a model for effective preaching. If we can Judge
the amount of episcopal preaching which occurred in the late Middle Ages
by the number of times bishops referred to this act in their registers,
bishops must have given sermons on a fairly regular basis. Both Simon
de Beaulieu and Bertrande du Got mentioned sermons in practically every
entry which involved visitations. Since neither bishop included any
information about the contents of their sermons, we cannot assess
exactly what messages they attempted to convey to their listeners.

Odo Rigaldi's register provides more information on this matter,
because Rigaldi regularly distinguished between sermons given in Latin
and those given in the vernacular. He remarked, for example, that in
August 1264 he preached in the cathedral of Rouen on the occasion of the
vigil of the Assumption.23 Two years later, Rigaldi made the following

notation concerning his visitation Of Rouen Cathedral:

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With God's grace we came to the cathedral at Rouen to
exercise visitation. In the chapter house we preached a
sermon in Latin to the canons, chaplains, and clerks—choral,
and especially to the holders of the benefices in the said
church whom we had collected there by meapfi of a letter which

we had sent to the hebdomdary about this.
Rigaldi did not comment on the content of these sermons, but we can
assume that they were directed toward an audience whose knowledge of
Latin and ecclesiastical affairs was sophisticated. Rigaldi did not
indicate that any of the sermons which he gave in parishes and
monasteries were in Latin. He no doubt intended these vernacular
sermons for people who did not know Latin and whose grasp of theological
concepts was more limited, since his audiences at many visitations
included uneducated members of the lay community. His insistence that

abbots have the Statutes of Gregory XI translated into French25

implies,
moreover, that he recognized the educational deficiencies of the clergy.

While such medieval documents as episcopal registers rarely tell
the historian exactly what he wishes to know, they provide subtle
insights into many complex issues. The high frequency of references to
episcopal sermons in the registers and the suggestion that bishops
adapted the form of the sermon to suit a variety of audiences shows that
bishops regarded the sermon as a vital todl for communicating with their
flocks. Bishops who conducted regular visitations, in fact, probably
added significantly to their ability to correct moral and administrative
abuses through effective and appropriate sermons.

As we have seen through C. R. Cheney's study of Odo Rigaldi,
basic moral reform also occurred to a limited extent as a result of

regular episcopal supervision of the moral and administrative integrity

of the clergy. Even the historians who deny any real improvement in the

83

Church in the thirteenth century acknowledge Rigaldi's successes. After
a careful examination of the register, C. Q. R. Jenkins argues even more
strongly than Cheney that Odo successfully diminished such crimes as
incontinence, drunkenness and neglect of duty as a result of his
vigorous visitations, and concluded that Odo's endeavors had a
measurable positive effect on the moral and administrative abuses of

thirteenth century Rouen.26

In spite of the continued presence of
immorality and inefficiency in the Church, both England and France
produced a fine group of energetic and diligent bishops in the
thirteenth century. They undoubtedly had a positive effect on the
clergy simply because they encouraged regular contact between the clergy
and bishops. The work of these bishops reflects a vitality in the late
medieval Church which should not be minimized even in the midst of
serious structural problems. Indeed, we need to be reminded of the fact
that the Church was not isolated, but was a complex institution in a

quickly changing society.27

The leaders of the reform movement deserve,
therefore, to be acknowledged for their achievements which were
engineered under extremely difficult conditions.

On the other hand, the successes of the bishops were not complete
enough for us to disregard the fact that bishops continued to encounter
grave sin and administrative mismanagement throughout the thirteenth
century. Although identifying all of the causes fOr clerical immorality
is beyond the scope of this project, I would like to propose that
restrictions on the bishop's ability to conduct regular visitations was
one of the most serious reasons for the failure of the late medieval

reform movement. The reasons for the bishops' failure to reform

religious life through visitation can be traced to a variety of sources

84

originating both within the Church and outside of it.

One of the most obvious obstacles to reform was simply the
unrelenting demands of the episcopal office. On the most basic level,
thirteenth-century bishops were expected to serve a society which often
confused the theoretical meaning of the episcopal office with the actual
duties which the office entailed. As historians Marion Gibbs and Jane

Lang point out, the episcopacy was steeped in lofty ideals:

The bishop within his diocese was as the Pope to the whole

Church. He should be like Moses, the type of true prelate,

who, from contemplating God on Mount Sinai, came down to help

and teach His people, or again, to use the more common

illustration,he should be as the 'Pastor', guiding and feeding

and watching over his flock night and day, and prepared to

suffer for it. In other words, the bishops must practice the

vita contemplative 52 active, a life of prayer and fasting and

meditations and a life28spent in his diocese, visiting,
reforming, and preaching.

Since these criteria required the prelate to be personally devout,

knowledgeable in theology, and capable of conducting the ordinary

business of a diocese, the demands of his office were immense.

Unfortunately, most kings viewed bishops not as pastors, but as servants

of the realm, and therefore placed demands on bishops which were

completely removed from their theoretical pastoral function.29 The

variety of forces which competed for a bishop's attention naturally

prevented him from performing each element of his office well at all

times. In the case of reform through visitation, one could argue that

even basic competence was not sufficient to make significant progress.

The most diligent and zealous bishops found it difficult to include

thorough, regular visitation in their schedules.

Bishops were frequently called away from their diocesan

85

responsibilities by secular business of various kinds. Odo Rigaldi, for
example, often left his diocesan work to serve on the Norman Exchequer;
in addition, he was a member of the Parlement of Paris and served on the
council of Louis IX.30 Between September 1259 and July 1260 Rigaldi
participated actively in the negotiations between Louis IX and Henry III

of England. On 3 December 1259 Rigaldi noted that:

In the apple orchard of the kink of France, in the presence of
the kings of France and England, and of many herons and
prelates of both realms, we read aloud and made public the

agreement made between the two kings. And here the king of
England did homage to the king of France.3

Rigaldi's prominent role in this important political encounter suggests
that his duties in thirteenth-century France were not limited to
ecclesiastical matters and that he attended to his secular duties with
the same diligence which he applied to the metropolitan office.
Certainly these responsibilities to the state must have drawn him away
from visitations on occasion.

The registers of Walter Giffard and John Romanus indicate that
archbishops also spent much of their time sorting out legal problems
which occurred in their provinces. A typical example of the kind of
legal question which concerned an archbishop appears in Giffard's letter

to the archdeacon of Bath in 1266:

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Sue magistro H. de Corebrigge, officiali, salutem, etc. Si
controvers iam habitam super ecclesie de Gameleston nostrae
dioc., ad quem dilectus filius Rogerus de Denecastria
presentatur, cujius inquisitionem aperuimus et inspeximus,
contigerit per resignationem adversarii sui ad eandem ex
adverso presentati, aut alias legitme sedari eidem R.
custodiam prefatae ecclesiae nomine nostgp committatis ad
nostrae beneplacitum voluntatis. Valeatis.
Giffard and Romanus must have spent a considerable amount of their time
deliberating over such questions as the custody of churches, given the
frequency of this type of entry in their registers. The legal
administration of a province, like state service, required highly
trained and respected personnel. The registers show that archbishops
were qualified for these duties and, to their credit, took them
seriously. We can see, however, that these activities could easily pull
prelates away from other responsibilities which were more closely
related to the process of reform.

Bishop were thwarted not only by the demands of their office but by
the rigors of medieval travel. The problems of travel were particularly
acute for archbishops, who had to visit several dioceses. When we
consider the primitive state of roads in the thirteenth century, the
difficulty of obtaining protection from the elements, and the vast
distances which had to be covered on horseback, it is easy to see that
the process of visitation could be burdensome and unpleasant. Even when
a bishop was willing to attempt a full visitation of a diocese, the
great number of religious houses forced him to limit the amount of time
he spent at each house. On occasion, conditions were poor enough to
place the prelate in actual peril. The possibility of being in a
serious accident while travelling is reflected in Odo Rigaldi's entry

for February 14, 1253: "At Bergamo, and this day we crossed the [River]

87

Adige at Trezzo, but not without danger."33 When poor weather and roads
did not completely stop a bishop from conducting visitations, they could
slow his progress so such a degree that his ability to visit most of the
houses in his diocese was severely restricted.

A more serious demand on bishops which limited the power of bishops
to conduct visitations was secular interference into ecclesiastical
affairs. By the thirteenth century some positive efforts had been made
by papacy and canoniSts to reduce the rights of laymen to invest
ecclesiastical office as if they were feudal land grants. As early as
the First Lateran Council in 1123, the Church attempted to abolish the
custom Of clerics receiving payments in money or kind for performing
religious rites.3u The intention was, of course, to redefine
ecclesiastical property in spiritual rather secular terms. The
registers of thirteenth-century bishops indicate, however, that these
attempts to check the secularization of the clergy were only partially
successful. Instead of placing the selection of candidates for
benefices solely in the hands of the clergy, the canonists restructured
the system of appointment. Under the new system, laymen could no longer
appoint clerics to any offices which carried with them spiritual
authority. The laymen who had simply appointed candidates in the past
were required by the thirteenth century to undergo a more complicated
procedure of presenting a candidate, and then waiting for the bishop
either to reject him or to admit and induct him into office.35 It is
clear, however, that bishops did not escape the control of secular
interests entirely, because they were forced to take into consideration
the desires of influential lords. When bishops had to struggle even to

place qualified candidates in ecclesiastical offices, their difficulties

88

in initiating reform must have been enormous.

The most common kind of secular interference in ecclesiastical
affairs involved the right of secular lords to present candidates to
vacant benefices. In many cases the candidates had not even been
ordained before their benefactors presented them. Since bishops did not
usually choose to challenge the presentations except in cases of gross
negligence on the part of the candidate, they were forced to provide
interim clerics to vacant benefices until the candidates were old enough
to be ordained. Thus John Romanus issued a mandate in July 1289 to
induct William, son of Roger, to the church of Friston on the condition
that he be prepared for the priesthood and be legally ordained.36

Bishops also had to contend with the attempts of barons to seize
the property of religious houses. In February 1295, for example,
Romanus was forced to issue a mandate against Henry de Percy to prevent
him from molesting the canons of Healaugh for trying to obtain their
rights.37 Indeed, the inherent tension between barons, who resented the
wealth and legal privileges of the clergy, and the bishops, who had a
responsibility to maintain the integrity of ecclesiastical property, led
to bitter exchanges between the two factions. In Normandy, this
struggle reached such proportions that Odo Rigaldi summoned his
suffragans in September 1257 in order to draw up a Specific list of
grievances against the barons to be submitted to the king. Their

complaints against the secular courts included the following clauses:

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First, they cite bishops or cause them to be cited by one
sergeant, albeit they are in the habit of being cited by four
knights. Let this be referred to the king.

Item, they seize clerics although they are not discovered
in the very act of committing the offence. Let justice be
done.

Item, they do not wish to bring to Justice or seize
excommunicated clerics, at the mandate of their bishops or
their officials. Let this be referred to the king.... Item,
they are unwilling that agents of the bishops be present at
the summons of the king38albeit they attended formerly. Let
the king be approached.

These complaints not only illustrate the attempts of secular lords to
get in the way of ecclesiastical administration, but explain why bishops
spent so much time immersed in legal matters. With this kind of secular
interference in diocesan affairs, it is not difficult to understand how
bishops might have been distracted from their pastoral responsibilities.

Thus far, we have assumed that the episcopate of the thirteenth
century was comprised of honest, diligent men, who were confronted with
great obstacles from within the Church and from the secular elements if
society. We must not overlook the fact, however, that bishops could be
as prone to immorality as any other cleric; indeed, given the pressures
of the episcopal office and the financial and political influence of it,
we may wonder that more bishops in the thirteenth century were not
dicovered to be immoral or negligent. Obviously, personal weaknesses of
a bishop could disrupt his ability to conduct any sort of diocesan
business, but episcopal immorality was particularly destructive for the
process of visitation, since it severely undermined the authority of the
bishop to suggest reforms. According to Coulton, John Pecham complained
in 1279 of a contemporary bishop who had been provided a see despite his

notorious incontinence. NO evidence exists from this period to show

that any bishop was deposed or forced to resigned his office. Coulton

90

argues further that in all of the countries in Western Europe in the
late Middle Ages there were frequent complaints about prelates who were
"precluded by their own sins from all effective correction of their
flocks."39

The effect which episcopal immorality could have on conscientious
priests and monks is reflected in the lamentation of Tritheim, a late

medieval abbot:

I am a liar, or the contumacious are often rebuked by the
contumatious [visitors], the foul are accused by the foul, who
thereby thinks to have escaped from his accomplice as though
it were not enough to have consented with him . . . . They
condemn outwardly that which they do in secret . . . often the
avaricious rebukes the covetous, the lecher rebukes the
immodest. . . . What think ye, Fathers, can deceivers of this
sort be found among the visitors themselves? I dare not say;
yet I know by experience. Many say many things; few show
forth what they say in deed; they avail not to reform
themselves pad their own, and they strive to compel others to
observance.

With so little respect and trust between the religious and their
bishops, the suggestive power of the visitation process to reform often
must have been severely curtailed.

Even when bishops were not guilty of such grave sins as
incontinence, they could often be accused of living luxuriously, in
direct opposition to the ideal of their office. Since the episcopate
was drawn primarily from the nobility, bishops were imbued with the
extravagant tastes of secular courts. The papacy did not discourage the
opulence of the bishops, but instead fostered it by bringing them to the
brilliant court of Rome.In Not only did such indulgence reflect poorly
on the integrity of the Church hierarchy, but it also encouraged bishops

to neglect their diocesan responsibilities. Certainly when they were

91

attending courts, they were not present in their dioceses to make
regular visitations, give spiritual guidance to the clergy, provide the
sacraments and secure the proper administration of the diocese.

The extravagant tastes of medieval prelates also led to serious
financial problems. In order to maintain a standard of living
appropriate to their prestigious positions in the Church and to secure
their influence with the civil government, bishops frequently used for
their personal use revenues which were necessary to the administration
of their dioceses.“2 In addition to their inordinate expenses, their
inefficiency in keeping financial records and balancing accounts created
difficulties for them. Because prelates spent their treasuries as
lavishly as secular lords, but lacked the administrative machinery and
income to sustain such expenditures, their resources became more and
more dissapated.n3

In the six registers which we have examined for this study,
episcopal debt seems to be the most consistent and most serious source
of neglect. Although bishops received considerable income from their
courts, from procurations and from tithes, they also expended a large
part of it in the basic administration of their dioceses. Even a frugal
and unpretentious prelate such as Odo Rigaldi spent great sums of money
during his visitations and other travelling. Providing for a large
household and travelling throughout Rouen was certainly expensive. Odo
also relinquished a substantial portion of his income by remitting
procuration income to needy houses, as is suggested by a letter recorded

in his register in July of 1250:

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To all who may see this letter, Philip, prior of Les
Biards, in the diocese of Avranches, greeting in the Lord. Be
it known to you that when the Reverend Father Eudes, by God's
grace archbishop of Rouen, visiting his province, demanded
procuration from our priory by reason of his visitation, we
did not deny it to him so far as our resources allowed: but,
pleading the privilege of poverty, we begged him to spare us
this fee, and he, moved by our prayers and consideratfiuof our
poverty, graciously remitted the fee on this occasion.

Since Odo was more concerned about practicing his legal right to visit
than in collecting procurations, he could be moved to charity when the
burden of the tax seemed too onerous, even at the expense of the
episcopal treasury.

Not all bishops depleted their treasuries primarily in
administrative and charitable pursuits. Walter Giffard of York, for
example, was plagued by debt throughout his thirteen years of service.
Much of his income went directly to Rome to expedite his business there.
In order to pay for his proctors in the Curie, Giffard began to borrow
money from Italian merchants, which in turn intensified his financial
problems. He was burdened further by the unpaid debts of his

predecessors.“5

His personal extravagance contributed no small part to
his financial troubles. His register, in fact, contains numerous
references to gifts which he made to his relatives. To his sister,
Alice de Mandeville, alone Giffard gave gifts of money on four separate
occasions. In July of 1271 Giffard not only gave his sister an
expensive present, but paid for her Journey from Guilford to

46

Churchdown. Giffard also accrued large debts as a result of his large

household expenses. Because he was already heavily in debt, these
lavish expenditures must have been a great source of embarrassment for
him, especially since he was incapable even of repaying the debts Of his

47

predecessors. We should not assume from this description of Giffard's

93

financial difficulties that the archbishop was notoriously immoral or
negligent. This illustration of episcopal debt shows, however, that the
personal weaknesses of bishops could interfere with diocesan
administration by paralysing the effectiveness of the episcopal treasury
and by damaging the reputation of the see. Not only did debt-ridden
bishops provide poor examples to their flocks, but their concerns over
financial administration could distract them from their pastoral duties.
Even when bishops were not entirely to blame for their financial
difficulties, their inability to keep their dioceses out of debt
severely diminished their power to make significant moral and
administrative reforms through visitation.

In spite of the demands of the episcopal office and the presence of
prelates who were either immoral of inefficient, the reform movement
might have achieved greater success, had the Church itself not presented
structural and theoretical obstacles to pastoral reform through
episcopal visitations. The source of these obstacles is rooted in the
fact that the Church in the late Middle Ages served a variety of
functions which were not inherently spiritual. Having evolved
simultaneously with the other political, legal and economic institutions
of Western Europe, the Church had acquired a number of feudal
characteristics by the thirteenth century which came in conflict with
the traditional diocesan structure of the Church. This conflict is
nowhere more evident than in the debate which raged over the exempted
orders. Since the pope was the vicar of the entire Church, he had a
theoretical right to place any religious house under his personal
Jurisdiction. Popes excercised this right from time to time since the

days of Gregory I (590-604). By the thirteenth century, however, the

94»

papacy adopted a more rigorous policy towards exemption which allowed a
large number of houses to petition for the right to be free of episcopal

supervision."8

Several reasons exist to explain this change. First, and
most basic is the fact that popes could claim for Rome all of the
revenues which would have gone to bishops as procuration fees by sending
papal delegates to conduct visitations. A more subtle justification for
exemption was that the papacy could use this practice to limit the
independent prerogatives of bishops, and thus centralize the economic
aspects of ecclesiastical administration. The popes argued, moreover,
that by assuming the reSponsibilities of supervising religious houses,
they could limit the influences of secular lords who were prone to use
ecclesiastical revenues for scandalous purposes.“9

Unfortunately, the practice of exemption did more than centralize
the economic and spiritual authority of the papacy. By diminishing the
power of bishops to supervise houses in their diocese, exemption
undermined the process of episcopal reform. The exempt houses were not
only visited infrequently by papal representatives, but they could
legally refuse even to hear a bishop's informal advice. As early as the
mid-twelfth century, bishops were already complaining of the
consequences of exemption. In a letter to pope Alexander III, the

archbishop of Canterbury asserted that the exemption of Malmesbury abbey

had

95

destroyed the yoke of obedience, wherein was our one hope of
salvation and the remedy for former transgressions. Abbots
loathe to have a corrector of their excesses; They embrace
the loose licence of impunity and relax the yoke of claustral
discipline to full freedom of desire. Hence it cometh to pass
that the revenues of almost all the monasteries have been
given up for a spoil and a prey. For the abbots, outside,
pander to the cares of the flesh. . . caring for naught so
long as there be peace in their own day; meanwhile the
cloisters, as a folk without a head, spend their time in sloth
and idle words, nor have they a president to bend them to the
fruit of a better life: nay, if you heard their tumultuous
contentions, you woulgothink that the cloister differed little
from the marketplace.

As the number of exemptions and other legal challenges to the bishops'
right to conduct visitations increased in the thirteenth century, the
ability of prelates to supervise moral and administrative reform became
increasingly restricted.

The frustration which bishops experienced as a result of exemption
emerges in Odo Rigaldi's entry concerning the priory of St.
Martin-de—Belleme, a dependent priory of Marmoutier. Honorius III

granted a bull to Marmoutier in April 22, 1220 which exempted the abbey

and its priories from procuration because of its adherence to Cluny.51

By the time of Rigaldi's prelacy. the struggle had expanded well beyond
the mother house. Rigaldi recorded the following entry concerning his

attempted visitation of St. Martin-de-Belleme in January 1255:

Since by common and customary right it is within our power
when visiting the diocese of Siez to visit all religious
places, and to receive procuration from them, we turned aside
and visited the priory of St. Martin-de—Belleme, and we
warned, and by this writing still warn, the authority the
prior and monks of the said place to receive us under the
authority of common law, and to answer us about the state of
their house. Item, we warned, and by this present writing
still warn, the prior and monks that they should recieve us
for the visitation and procuration of the priory of St.
Leonard-de—Belleme, especially since the bishop of Siez is
reported to receive procurations in these two places, and the
prior, Geoffrey by name, says that he holds the administration

96

of both priories.52

Since many religious houses could claim exemption because of their
association with a house with papal exemption, bishops saw their sphere
of influence dwindle. A bishop could not insist upon visitations of
houses claiming exemption until he proved that his customary rights
superceded the rights of the priory. Even when bishops eventually
managed to assert their rights to make visitations, they lost
opportunities to enter religious houses and correct abuses within them.
Indeed archbishops could be questioned, much to their distress, on the
right to visit their own chapters, as this 1294 letter from John Romanus

suggests:

Mirabilia, ne dicamus inania, que scripsistis nobis,
vehementem dant materiam admirandi, presertim, cum de jure
communi quociens necesse fuerit, nobis nostros liceat subditos
visitare, ac privilegium, quod asseritis expiratum, nobis
nostro perpetuo sit concessum, ad convocandum vestros
confratras, per certum nostrum et necessaria cause quem vobis
in adventu exponemus aliis nostris quas vobis misimus insertis
litteris, rejectis motivis vestris frivolis, ad salutem
animarum vestarum53affectu paterno visitacionis intendimus
officium exercere.
We should not doubt, therefore, that the willingness Of religious houses
to refluse visitations, whether their refusals were legally justifiable
or not, seriously disturbed archbishops, and destroyed the possibility
of their making regular and fruitful visitations in many cases.
Thus the attempts of the papacy to extend its prerogatives by
resorting to sophisticated canon law interfered fundamentally with the
diocesan system of administration. Had the papacy substituted an

alternative system, the reform movement might have continued

successfully. As it was, the Church relied on bishops to carry out

97

reform while it undercut their power to do it, which led, obviously, to
their ineffectiveness to reform through visitation.

Another aspect of this conflict between the social and spiritual
functions of the Church in the late Middle Ages is reflected in the
increasingly strained relations between various levels of the
ecclesiastical organization. A dramatic illustration of this problem
can be seen in the bitter struggle between bishops who attempted to
assert their Jurisdictional rights and leaders of religious houses who
were willing at times to come to blows to prevent such assertions. By
the thirteenth century, episcopal rights and responsibilities had lost
the theological simplicity which had surrounded them in the days of the
Early Church. Bishops were no longer so much important spiritual
teachers and leaders in their dioceses as they were feudal magnates of
the Church. The bonds between bishops and their subordinates were no
longer merely confined to spiritual and administrative matters, but were
entangled in innumerable legal and economic considerations and
privileges. Abbots, priors, bishops and archbishops all defined their
offices, at least in part, in terms of the amount of property which they
controlled, and each official fought vigorously for the rights to
control ecclesiastical property or to make legal decisions, deSpite the
fact that all ecclesiastical property was owned, theoretically, by the
whole Church, and that conflicts within the Church were, theoretically,
to be solved in a peaceful manner free of treachery and bitterness.

The confrontations which Odo Rigaldi had with his suffragans
suggest that even the Church's highest officials often refused to accept
each others' ecclesiastical rights and responsibilities. Rigaldi

routinely enraged his suffragans by his insistence on the right to visit

98

his suffragans' dioceses at will, and by his custom of listening to
appeals of cases which had not been heard in the episcopal courts. In
July 1253 Rigaldi's suffragans made a formal complaint by sending the

archbishop the following letter:

Lord Archbishop, you have aggrieved and are aggrieving the
suffragans of the province of Rouen by absolving provisionally
and without any knowledge of the case of their subjects who
assert that they have appealed to you from them [the
suffragans] or their officials contrary to Justice, by
usurping to yourself power of this kind and thereby weakening
their Jurisdiction and prejudicing ecclesiastical authority,
whereas none of your predecessors used this power; and you
have again usurped this power after an appeal made on their
behalf from you to the Apostolic See because you revoke
without Jurisdiction the sentences imposed by them and their
officials by appealing such cases to yourself or to your
court, or you reduce such sentences contrary to the spirit of
the Constitution of Rheims.... On account of these
grievances, and lest you should attempt further such, I
William, their proctor,5flppeal to the Apostolic See on their
behalf and seek apostoli.

In order to defend archiepiscopal rights, Rigaldi made a journey to Rome
in the winter of 1253. During his stay in Rome, the Pope forbade
Rigaldi from hearing appeals which had by-passed his suffragans, and
denied the archbishop the right to absolve those who had been
excommunicated by his suffragans or their archdeacons. The Pope
affirmed Rigaldi's right to visit his province as he p1eased.55

An equally disturbing example of uncooperativeness in the late
medieval Church is that of Bertrande du Got, who had many violent
encounters with ecclesiastics when he tried in 1304 to visit the diocese

of Bordeaux after a six year lapse.56

His visitation of the priory of
Cessac, as we have seen, shows the deep antagonisms which existed in the
late medieval Church in graphic terms: ('led. prieure de Cessac auroit

refuse de recevoir led. seigneur comme il debvoit et a cause de la

99

violence quil avoit use avecq armes et violent injure faite avec
effusion de sang au cemitiere dudit prieure eu les personnes de messire
Helie de Bosco, presbytre et chappelain dudit archeuesque fust par
icelluy seig. archeuesque excommunie et denonce pour excommunie avecq
les denommez leur complices.')57 When we can find evidence of churchmen
coming to blows over the issue of Jurisdiction, we must conclude that
the structure of the Church in the late Middle Ages was far from
conducive to reform. How, indeed, could bishops maintain regular
contact with religous houses which so badly needed guidance, when
priors, archdeacons, fellow bishops and the Pope himself repeatedly
stood in the way of the visitation process?

This conflict even affected the Church at the local level. As the
English historian Colin Platt notes, the drive towards protecting
ecclesiastical property succeeded in separating priests from their
congregations. Certainly the bishops having a genuine desire to reform
the Church, encouraged priests to learn to perform a more sophisticated
liturgy and to lead purer lives. An even greater threat to the Church
in the minds of late medieval ecclesiastics was the possibility that
immoral priests could deprive the Church of its property. In this
regard, Platt contends that "[i]f marriage had had no such consequence
as children, it could very well have survived in the Church. It was the
clerical family that presented the danger, far more than the parish
priest's lust for his wife."58 The work of theologians and canonists to
Justify and foster the practice of clerical celibacy in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries served not only to elevate the priest above his

congregation in a spiritual sense, but to tie him more completely than

ever before to the legal and administrative control of the Church.59

100

Walter Giffard's injunction against married priests from serving at the
altar, which was issued to Snaith Church in August 1270,60 like similar
injunctions of the other archbishops, suggests that priests were called
upon to separate themselves in certain fundamental ways from the customs
of their parishioners: any suggestion that priests might be influenced
by worldy behavior would taint them and their sacramental acts. Of
course, many priests rejected this ideal and often ignored the episcopal
injunctions against married priests. Bishops therefore called frequent
diocesan councils in order to determine ways to proceed with moral
reform in the parishes where episcopal injunctions yielded limited
success.61 Clearly, the reform movement initiated by the papacy and
engineered by the episcopate succeeded in reorganizing the Church
structurally. It is less clear that this movement brought about
substantial moral reform.

On 1 April 1269 Odo Rigaldi visited the abbey at Corneville for the
thirteenth time in twenty years. Even by Rigaldi's rigorous standards,
this frequency of visitation can be considered admirable. Yet if we
examine the last entry concerning Corneville we might wonder how much he

had accomplished for all of his diligence. He reports:

With God's grace we visited the said abbey of Corneville,
where there were eight canons in residence; eleven were
outside in Obediences. There was none with cure of souls in
the parishes of Corneville or Ameriville, nor had there been
for many days, due to the carelessness and negligence of the
prior. This much displeased us. We then ordered the abbot to
see to it that these places had in them priests charged with
the care of souls within forty days, or that otherwise we
would place secular priests in them.... They had no prior:
we ordered the abbot not to delay in promoting someone as
prior, and to receive some good youths or lettered clerics and
to gown them as speedily as he could decently do so, in order
to augment the number of canons and bring it up to at least
twelve, and thus embellish the divine cult. Item, that he
should make better provision for the sick than had been made,

101

especéglly to procure some serving lad who should attend

them.
What this entry points out in a specific way is the general mood of
dissatisfaction which late thirteenth-century archbishops expressed
about the moral and administrative health of their provinces. Bishops
fought continuously for the right to make visitations, perhaps Often to
the extent that Jurisdictional struggles distracted them from the actual
process of reform. Even a prelate of such a high character as Odo
Rigaldi could rarely hope to visit any house more than a dozen times in
two decades, and could not expect that such supervison to bring about
substantial improvements. If the effectiveness of episcopal visitation
is so questionable for the best prelates that the medieval Church could
produce, we might well wonder how less capable or diligent prelates
fared. While episcopal registers do not explain every reason for the
decline in religious life in the late Middle Ages, they show
convincingly that the personal limitations of bishops, in conjunction
with the limitations of the episcopal office itself, contributed greatly
to the failure of bishops to achieve lasting reform through the
visitation process.

The evidence which has survived concerning episcopal visitation in
the thirteenth century is difficult to assess, not only because of the
inherent difficulties of examining primary sources from the Middle Ages,
but because the record of effectiveness of episcopal visitation is
mixed. In the areas of administrative consolidation, some real
achievements might have occurred as the result of episcopal supervision.
The registers do not reflect a significant improvement of morality or

efficiency in most religious houses, despite the fact that the entire

1(32

hierarchy of the Church was mobilized for the purpose of reform in the
thirteenth century. One important cause of the ineffectiveness of
episcopal visitation lies in the dilemma of the episcopal office. Even
when prelates were truly dedicated to lives of poverty and service to
the Church, which was not the most common case by any means, the
competing demands of the episcopal office, and the struggles which
bishops faced in maintaining their rights to visit and reform religious
houses severely diminished their chances to succeed in their reforming
endeavors. The failure of the reform movement in the thirteenth century
can be linked, of course, to prelates who were not perceptive or
dedicated enough to the task before them. A more fundamental obstacle
to reform was that the movement was rooted not in the flexible,
sensitive approach of the traditional Christian community, but in the
artificial constructs of canon law which was imposed upon the religious
from above.63 The complicated social and political entanglements of the
episcopal office made bishops willing to do their best to attempt basic
reform in their dioceses, but not to take steps which would threaten the
traditions of their office.6u In essence, the legal enforcement of
reform through episcopal visitations, diocesan councils and papal
decrees could not hope to succeed in a society which had not been
inspired by a rebirth of spirituality in the Christian people. This
being absent, the general ineffectiveness of the reform movement is both

understandable and regrettable.

V. CONCLUSIONS

The registers of the six archbishops which we have examined in this
study have shown the complexity and frustrations of religious life in
the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The issue of
episcopal visitation provides an effective focus for analysing the
problems of the Church during this period because the act of episcopal
visitation was a point of intersection for a variety of powerful
political, social and ecclesiastical interests. Visitations were
conducted by officials who were chosen and trained for many duties which
were not associated with religious reform. Rulers relied so heavily on
bishops to perform the administrative and diplomatic functions of their
kingdoms that the selection of bishops was usually a major political
issue. It is not surprising, therefore, that thirteenth-century bishops
found it difficult to balance their responsibilities to the state
against their spiritual obligations to their flocks.

Thirteenth-century bishops were also servants of their popes, and
were forced thereby to operate within a large and cumbersome
bureaucracy. The attempts of the papacy to consolidate its power within
the Church and to launch an ambitious program of reform did not work in
the best interests of the bishops because they were expected to be the
central agents of the reform and yet were asked to relinquish the
prerogatives which could have helped them to enforce the new papal code
of reform. Indeed, bishops discovered in this period that even such
basic rights as visiting the houses in their dioceses and appointing
competent candidates to diocesan offices were being assumed increasingly

by the papacy or by powerful secular lords. Even those bishops who were

1(3)

104

sincerely dedicated to the task of reforming the secular and regular
clergy must have been frustrated by the political and ecclesiastical
policies which seemed to be at odds with the fundamental goals and
intentions of the reform movement.

The bishops, moreover, usually found themselves in the awkward
position of challenging the accepted standards of medieval society
whenever they attempted any kind of vigorous reform. Priests and abbots
were more inclined to consider a bishop's counsel or admonition as an
unwelcomed interference into their temporal business than as a
reasonable display of concern on the part of their spiritual father.
Even when bishops managed to maintain peaceful relationships with the
regular and secular clergy within their dioceses, they frequently
engaged in conflicts with the laity. Not only did the nobility resent
the wealth of the Church, which had grown considerably because of the
previous generosity of the nobility towards the Church, but the emerging
bourgeoisie objected to the ability of clerics to enter into commercial
enterprises without legal risk because they were protected by benefit of
clergy.1 In the face of rapid economic and social change throughout
Western Europe, bishops were expected to sustain the power of the Church
in spite of the numerous legal and financial challenges to their own
authority by papal and secular forces.

All of these conditions affected the bishop's capacity to conduct
effective visitations. Prelates who had learned to value luxury and
secular power before their elevation to the episcopal office were not
inclined to adopt the ideals of poverty, meditation and frugality after
they became bishops. Such bishops not only provided poor models for

their spiritual children, but also could actually disrupt diocesan

105

administration through inefficient financial management. Other
prelates, who were too preoccupied with civil service or who found the
process of conducting visitations too arduous, could neglect their
responsibilities by delegating unqualified officials to take on the
task, or by avoiding the task entirely. In these cases, the people of
the dioceses lacked both administrative direction and spiritual
rejuvenation through moral reform and the regular participation in
certain sacraments. The bishops who were willing to take their diocesan
responsibilities seriously were confronted with a bewildering amount of
opposition from priests, monks, abbots, suffragans, lords and popes, in
short from nearly all elements of society.

Nevertheless, the fact that we have found registers from this
period which reflect an interest in episcopal visitation indicates that
the episcopate was willing at least partially to carry out the reform
program of the papacy. Such particularly diligent bishops as Odo
Rigaldi and John Pecham succeeded in keeping the condition of the Church
from deteriorating as a result of moral and administrative abuses in
their provinces, although neither of these men rooted out every source
of vice or even temporarily checked the erosion of religious life within
their sees. The registers of the other four archbishops do not reveal
remarkable successes in these areas, despite the fact that all of these
prelates devoted time and energy to the visitation process. The major
realization which emerges from all of the registers is that these
archbishops were consistent in their attempts to guard archiepiscopal
prerogatives, and that all of them were willing to accept far less than
perfection from the houses which they visited in order to prevent

scandal or the complete rejection of their authority. The inefficient

1(36

methods of inquiry, their personal sense of practicality and Justice,
and their precarious legal authority permitted no other course of
action.

In spite of their efforts, the task of reforming religious life was
beyond the scope of episcopal power by the end of the thirteenth
century. No prelate could counteract the theological and spiritual
decay of the monastic ideal without reversing the growing materialism of
late medieval society. The legalistic solutions to the problems of
immorality and negligence which had been established by the papacy could
not transform a society which was no longer committed spiritually to the
ideals of traditional monasticism. Indeed, one of the central causes of
the ineffectiveness of reform through episcopal visitation was the
attempt of the Church to use traditional methods and traditional
standards when neither the methods nor the standards were appropriate
for Western Europe's more advanced social structures.

The failure of the reform movement in the late Middle Ages must be
viewed in terms of the central dilemma of the medieval Church: the
inability of religious leaders to differentiate between the social and
the spiritual functions of religious institutions. The efforts of the
papacy to create an ecclesiastical government which was more powerful
than any secular state indicates that the Church was as prone as any
other medieval institution to develop along political and administrative
lines instead of along spiritual and theoretical lines. The Church
could not exercise control over its own huge bureaucracy without
limiting the intellectual, spiritual and structural flexiLlity which had
characterized the early Church and which was inherent in the concept of

a Christian commonwealth. Because the goals of the papacy were

107

inconsistent with its methods, the program could not have succeeded in
meeting its specific demands.

To the extent that the revival of episcopal visitation in the
thirteenth century was intended to eliminate ambivalence, inefficiency
and immorality in the clergy and people of Western Europe, this method
failed to achieve its purpose. The registers from this period reflect
little substantial improvement of religious life in any form. The
registers reveal a condition, however, which permanently changed the
religious and social development of Western Europe. The daily notations
of thirteenth-century bishops point out the coexistence of old and new
attitudes which fostered confusion and bitterness at the time but which
led ultimately to the intellectual and religious traditions of the

modern age.2

Bishops and other ecclesiastical officials were probably
unable to discern the fundamental causes of the frustrations and
struggles which they faced in the course of their duties, but their
registers illustrate the inherent conflicts in the Church in great
detail. Although we cannot praise these men for reforming late medieval
religous life or inspiring a return to the ideals of the Benedictine
Rule, we must acknowledge their contributions to our understanding of
the underlying forces of late medieval Christianity. Simply by
recording routinely their visitations these prelates have provided to
historians information which may be in fact more enlightening and useful

in the present age than it was to the prelates of the thirteenth

century.

VI. NOTES
I. Introduction

1 Margaret Deanesly, in A History'pflppg Medieval gppgph (London:
Methuen and Company, 1969), comments on the variations in size and
customs in dioceses throughout Europe. These variations include
significant differences in ecclesiastical government as well as regional
differences in the celebration of festivals (p. 187).

2 Robert Brentano, 2255 Metropolitan Jurisdictions ‘ppg. [pppl
gpggpp Delegate (1279-1296) (Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1959), pp. 2-3.

3 G. G. Coulton, §i!g_Centuriestf Religion, Volume II (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1927), pp. 267-268.

4 Bibliographical references for the French registers used in this
thesis, along with some references to secondary literature on the topic
of visitations were found in Noel Coulet's "Les visites pastorales,” in
Fasc. 23 of Tzalogie g2 sources pp 3923 Egg occidental, ed. L.
Genicot (Brussels and Turnhout, Belguim: Institute d'6tudes mdhiévales,
1967).

5 Jerimiah F. O'Sullivan. ed., 193 Register o_f £95105 9; m.
trans. Sydney M. Brown (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964).
p. xvi.
6 L. de Lacger, "La primatie et la pouvoir métropolitain de

l'Archequue du Bourges au XIIIe si!cle,' Revue d'histoire

1(38

1(39

Ecclesiastigue, 26 (1930), p. 51.

7 J. de Bascher, "La chronologie des visites pastorales de Simon
de Beaulieu, ArchevKue de Bourges, dans la premiére et la deuxilme
Aquitaine 3 la fin du XIIIe siéole," Revue d'histoire de l'Eglise de

France, 58 (1972), p. 74.

8 De Bascher, p. 81. The complete reference for this edition of
Simon's register is: Etienne Baluze, ed., Acta visitationis

 

provinciarum Burdegalensis 53: Bitericensis, £a_c_t_a_ g _S_i_pg_n_e_ 1e Belle—loco
Archiepiscopo Bituricensi, Aguitainiae PrimateI 'pp pppp Christi
MCCLVXXXIV ppgpg ‘pg ‘ppppp ‘MEQXQE, in Miscellanea, t. 1 (Paris: J.
Riciomini, 1761), pp. 267-392.

9 Joseph F. Rabanis, ed., "Journal de la visites pastorales de
Bertrande du Got du 17 Mai 1304 au 22 Juin 1305,” in Clement ‘!_ £2
Philippg‘lgnggl (Paris: Auguste Durande Librairie, 1858), pp. 147-199.

1° William Brown, ed., III: Register 9; m Giffard, m

Archbishop [22"22551 1266-1272, Vo1ume 109 of Surtees Society
Publications (Edinburg: Blackwood and Sons, 1904), pp. i-v.
‘1 Background for John Romanus was derived from the introductions
of the two volumes of his register. The bibliographical references for
his register are as follows: 3115 Register 5g Jppp .l_e_ Romeyn, Egg
Archbishop pf ng§5_ 1286-1296, Part 1, Volume 123 of Surtees Society
Publications (London: Bernard Ouaritch, 1910): and I 5 Register 25
m 35 RomeynI 1.233 Archbishop 2; 1911‘; 1286-1226, Part II, Volume 128
of Surtees Society Publications (London: Andrews and Company, 1917).

12 "Episcopal Visitation of a Diocese: Cantebury Diocese,

110

1292-1294," ed. Harry Rothwell in English Historical Documents, Volume
III (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1975). pp. 705-722.

13 Maurice Powicke, ng_ Thirteenth Century: 1216-1307 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1962), pp. 469-470.

14 Coulton, Five Centuries‘pg Religion, II, pp. x-xi.

15 Coulton discusses this problem at great length in Volume II of
his major study of the medieval Church. In a chapter entitled ”Monastic
Capitalism" (pp. 18-33), Coulton asserts that the moral crisis of the
late medieval Church can be traced to the evolution of a worldly,
profit-oriented attitude in Western monasticism which was impossible to

reverse by the thirteenth century.

II. The Selection of Bishops and Episcopal Staff
1 W. A. Pantin, ng_ English Church'ip the Fourteenth Century
(Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1962), p. 13-14.

2 Pantin, p. 9.

3 Pantin, p. 10. Although I have not encountered an analysis of
French bishops in the thirteenth century which is comparable to Pantin's
analysis of English bishOps, the more general sources concerning
thirteenth-century French history suggest that Pantin's generalizations
can be applied to the French Church as well.

4 Kathleen Edwards, “Bishops and Learning in the Reign of Edward
II," gppppp Quarterly figgigg, 138 (1944), p. 58.

5 Deanesly, pp. 98-99.

6 Powicke, p. 468.

7 Augustin Sicard, L'ancien plgpgéwgg France: lg! évggues pyppp
lg revolution (Paris: Librairie Victor Lecoffre, 1962), pp. 6-7.

8 Robert E. Rodes, Ecclesiastical Administration ip_ Medieval

England (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), p.

101.
9
Rodes, p. 100.
‘0 Rodes, p. 101.
1‘ Rodes, pp. 102-103,
12

‘3 Rodes, p. 104.

14 Oscar Darlington, 1‘35 Travels _o_f 9gp Rigaud (Philadelphia:

University of Pennsylvania Press, 1940), pp. 40-41.
15 C. R. Cheney, English Bishop's Chanceries: 1100-1250

(Manchester: Manchester Unniversity Press, 1950). PP. 9-11.

16 Darlington, p. 34.

III. The Visitation Process
1J. Gaudement, "Le gouvernment de l'e’glise a l'e’poque
classique,” in Histoiregpgpitg; m institutions pg l'église g;
occident, Volume 10, ed. Gabriel Le Bras (Paris: Sirey, 1955). pp.
130-131.

2 C. R. Cheney, Episcopal Visitation ‘2; Monasteries‘ip‘gpg

Thirteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1931). PP.

112

17-19.

3 Pierre Andrieu-Guitrancourt, L'archevapue Epppp‘gigppg‘gp‘lp'yig
_d_e l'église pp L123 _s_i_e‘pl_e_ d'aprBs _l_e_ 'Registrum Visitationum' (Paris:
Librairie du Recueil Sirey, 1938), p. 118.

4 Cheney, Episcopal Visitation, pp. 21-23.
5

6

Cheney, Episcopal Visitation, p. 23.
W. E. Lunt, Papal Revenues ip_ppg_Middle Ages, Volume 1 (New

York: Columbia University Press, 1934), pp. 109-110.

7 Rodes, pp. 137-138.

8 Coulet, p. 21.

9 G. G. Coulton calls this kind of interpretation the 'realistic
theory' in “The Interpretation of Visitation Documents," English

Historical Review, 29 (1914), p. 22.

1° Cheney, Episcopal Visitation, pp. 55-61.

1‘ Coulton, "Interpretation of Visitation Documents,” p. 30.

‘2 O'Sullivan, pp. 69-71.

‘3 S.

14

Brown, "Eudes Rigaud," Moyen E e, Ser. 3, 2 (1931), p. 175.

Baluze, p. 267.

‘5 Rabanis, pp. 156-157.

16 Surtees Society, Volume 123, p. 365.

17 Gabriel Le Bras, L'église ‘gp‘lg village (Paris: Flammarion,

1976), p. 240.

‘8 O'Sullivan. p. 366.

19 En lish Historical Documents, Volume 3, p. 721.

20 Andrieu-Guitrancourt, pp. 148-149.

113
21 Olga Dobiache-Rojdistvensky, L3 35 paroissiale 215119531;
§1I13_gi§plg (Paris: Librairie Alphonse Picard et Fils, 1911), p. 79.
All of the registers which I have examined for this thesis indicate that
archbishops devoted much time and energy to these activities. Even the
registers of Walter Giffard and John Romanus, which do not contain so
many complete entries on visitation as the others, contain numerous
references to presentations, leaves of absence, confirmations and
consecrations.

2 Cheney, Episcopal Visitation, pp. 76-79.
23

24

O'Sullivan. p. 411.

O'Sullivan. p. 71.

25 The. Statutes _o_f Pope Gregory _I_X_ _o_p the Reformation 92 t1); Monks

of the Order of St. Benedict, in O' Sullivan, p. 737.

25 Statutes, pp. 737-746.

27 David Knowles, The Religious Orders 1p, England (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1948), pp. 11-12.

28 O'Sullivan. p. 291.

29 O'Sullivan. p. 321-322.

30 Eileen Power, Medieval English Nunneries: 1275-1535 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1922), pp. 25-27.

31 Power, pp. 16-17.

32 Coulton, Five Centuries 32 Religion, Volume 2, pp. 20-21.
33 Jean Gaudement, ”Gratien et le célibat ecc16Siastique," in Lg

société ecclésiastique dens l'occident médiéval (London: Variorum

Reprints, 1980), p. 341.

114

34 Surtees Society, Volume 109, pp. 314-315.

35 Rabanis, p. 166

36 Gabriel Le Bras, Introduction .é l'histoire .93 ‘lg pratigue
religieuse gp_ £52235, Volume 1 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de

France, 1942), p. 40.

37 Yves Dossat, "Catharisme et Gascogne,” in Eglise‘gp hérESie pp

France pp XIIIe siEcle (London: Variorum Reprints, 1982), p. 149.
38 Surtees Society, Volume 123, p. 158.
39 John R. H. Moorman, Church Lifelgp England ip_the Thirteenth

Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946). PP. 250-252.

40 Baluze, p. 269.

1 Knowles, p. 55.

"2 Marion Gibbs and Jane Lang, Bishops ‘ppp Reform: 1215-1272

(London: Oxford University Press, 1934), p. 162.

“3 O'Sullivan, pp. 174-175.

44 L. Delisle, ”Le clergé normand au XIIIe siécle,” Bibliotthue

pg.l'JCOlelppp chartes, Ser. 2, 3 (1846), p. 489.

“5 gpggish Historical Documents, Volume 33. p. 716.

“6 O'Sullivan, p. 295.

Sirey, 1964), p. 285.

“8 En lish Historical Documents, Volume 3, 715.

“9 Surtees Society, Volume 109, pp. 317-318.
50 Surtees Society, Volume 109, p. 320.

51 Power, p. 217.

115
52 Power, p.228.
53 Surtees Society, Volume 123, p. 160.

5" Coulton Five Centuries‘pg Religion, Volume 2, p. 339.

IV. The Effectiveness of Episcopal Visitation

1 Cheney, Episcopal Visitation, p. 151. Like other historians of
this topic, Cheney assumes that conditions in Rouen reflect conditions
in contemporary England.

2 Cheney, Episcopal Visitation. These figures are listed in
Appendix I (pp. 168-174), and are discussed qualitatively in Ithe last

chapter of the book (pp. 149-167).
3

u

Cheney, Episcopal Visitation, p. 167.
A. Hamilton Thompson, 1 5 English Elppgy‘ppg‘ppplp Organization
_ip 5.3 L333 M15 .A_g_e_s, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947). p. 9.

5 Rodes, p. 108.

6 Thompsom, p. 9.
7

Surtees Society, Volume 109, p. 145.

Surtees Society, Volume 123, p. 56.

9 Coulton Ely5_Centuries‘p£ Religion, Volume 2, p. x.
O Moorman, p. 90.

‘1 Surtees Society, Volume 109, p. 1.

12 Of the registers which I examined, the following contain

references to leaves for study: Odo Rigaldi's, John Romanus's and Simon

Beaulieu's. Such references occur with varying frequency within the

1‘16

registers. The fact that 10 of the first 106 entries in Walter
Giffard's register concerned leaves for study indicates that the
practice of granting such leaves was a regular feature of
thirteenth-century ecclesiastical administration. These entries were
made between 30 August 1268 and 18 September 1270 (Surtees Society,
Volume 109, pp. 1-31).

13 Surtees Society, Volume 128, p. 71.

1“ En lish Historical Documents, Volume 3, p. 146.

15 22221112. Wilkins, 1. P- 667. Quoted in D. W. Robertson,
”The Frequency Of Preaching in Thirteenth Century England," Speculum, 24

(1949). p. 380.

16 Robertson, p. 388.

17 William A. Hinnebusch, I 5 Early English Friars Preachers (Rome:

S. Sabinae, 1951), p. 267.

18 O'Sullivan, p. 659.

19 Surtees Society, Volume 109. PP. 92-93.

20 Surtees Society, Volume 109, p. 295.

21 G. R. Owst, Literature gpg’ Pulpit .ip Medieval England

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), p. 3.

22 E. J. Arnould, 1.3 mg; péchés: My; littérature
religieuse Ippglo-normande (Paris: Librairie E. Droz, 1940), pp.
27-28.

23 O'Sullivan, p. 563.

2" O'Sullivan, p. 643.

25 O'Sullivan, p. 86.

11'?

26 C. Q. R. Jenkins, "A Thirteenth Century Register: Odo,

Archbishop of Rouen,” Church Quarterly Review, 101 (1925). PP 89-90.

27 Gabriel Le Bras, Institutions ecclésiastique 93 lg chrétiéhte

médiévale (Paris: Bloud and Gay, 1959). p. 44.

28 Gibbs and Lang, p. 1.

29 Gibbs and Lang, pp. 1-2.
30 O'Sullivan provides a detailed summary of Rigaldi's state
service in his introduction, pp. xxxiv-xxxvi.

3‘ O'Sullivan, pp. 396-397.

32 Surtees Society, Volume 109, p. 175.

33 O'Sullivan, p. 196.

34 G. W. O. Addleshaw, Rectors, Vicars and Patrons in Twelfth

39g Early Thirteenth Century Canon Egg (London: St. Anthony's Press,
1956), pp.4-5.
35 Addleshaw, pp. 18-21.

36 Surtees Society, Volume 123, p. 87.
37

38

Surtees Society, Volume 123, p. 136.
O'Sullivan, pp. 327-328.

39 Coulton, Five Centuries‘pg Religion, Volume 2, p. 259.

40 From Chronicon coenobii hirsaugiensis, p. 420. Quoted in

Coulton, p. 259.

"1 Adam, p. 206-207.

“2 Adam, p. 208.

"3 Sicard, p. 117.

44 O'Sullivan, p. 96.

us
46
In
is

118

Surtees Society, Volume 109. Pp. xii-xiii.
Surtees Society, Velume 109, p. 115.
Surtees Society, Volume 109, p. xvi.

Edouard Fournier, Nouvelles recherches sur les curies, chapitres

££_univ6rsités pg l'ancienne (glise‘gg_ France (Paris: 86minaire des

missions etrangEres de Paris, 1942), p. 99.

"9
50
51
52
53
54
55
198.
56
57
58

Fournier, p. 108.

Quoted in Coulton, Eiyg|Cenuries‘p£ Religion, Volume/2, p. 248.
O'Sullivan, p. 104.

O'Sullivan, p. 258.

Surtees Society, Volume 128, p. 17.

O'Sullivan. pp. 176-177.

The papal decision is summarized by O'Sullivan in a note, p.

Rabanis, pp. 50-51.

Rabanis, p. 167. See also Chapter III, p. 57.

Seeker and Warburg, 1981). p. 51.

59

Edouard Privat, pp, religion pepulaire ‘gp_Langpedoc pp XIIIe

siAcle.§‘lp meitiéigp_ XIVe siEcle (Toulouse: Cahiers de Fanjeaux,

6O

Surtees Society, Volume 109, p. 323.

61 L'église ppulp village, p. 243.

62

O'Sullivan, p. 716.

63 Gibbs and Lang, p. 178.

119

64 Gibbs and Lang, p. 179.

V. Conclusions

1 Robert Fawtier, [pg Capetian 5.2182 23: m, Lionel Butler and
R. J. Adams, trans. (London: Macmillan and Company, 1960), pp.
211-212.

2 Steven Ozment, Egg ‘pgg'pg Reform, 1250-1550: pp Intellectual
ppg Religious History 25: 5335 Medieval ppp Reformation ‘Eppppg (New

Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1980), p. 137.

VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Primary Sources

Baluze, Etienne, ed. ‘5332 visitationis previnciarum Burdegalensis'gg
Bituricensis, Egg 5 §_i_m_ep_e_ 1e Belle-loco Archiepisgpe
Bituricensi, Aguitainiae Primate,'pp'pppp Christi MCCLVXXXIV ppgpe
‘pp.ppppp‘flggggp, In Miscellanea, t. 1. Paris: J. Riciomini,
1761, pp. 267-329.

Douglas, David C., ed. ”Episcopal Visitation of a Diocese: Canterbury
Diocese, 1292-1294." In English Historical Documents, Volume 3.
London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1975. pp. 705-722.

O'Sullivan, Jeremiah, ed. 1‘35 Register 25 Mgfippgp. Sydney
Brown, trans. New York: Columbia University Press, 1964.

Rabanis, Joseph F., ed. “Journal de la visites pastorales de Bertrande
du Get du 17 Mai 1304 au 22 Juin 1305." Appendix of Clement !_ pp
Philippe ‘lgp‘ggl. Paris: Auguste Durande Librairie, 1858, pp.
147-199.

The, Register pg MEI. Giffard, Egr—dArchbisheppixoLk (1266-1279).
William Brown, ed. Volume 109 of Surtees Society Publications.
Edinburg: Blackweed and Sons, 1904.

flip Register e_f Je_hn_ LeRemeyn, MArchbishepgleflg (1286-1296),
Part I. Velume 123 of Surtees Society Publications. London:
Bernard Quaritch, 1910.

Eye, Register ‘2; John ‘lg Remeyn, Lord Archbishop'pg‘Yerk (1286-1296).

120

121

Part II. Volume 128 of Surtees Society Publications. London:

Andrews and Company, 1917.
II. Secondary Sources

Admn, Paul. 1.2 _v_i_g pariessiale g m _ap L11 _si_3¢_:_l_e_. Paris: Sirey,
1964.

Addleshaw, G. W. O. Recters, Vigpppippg Patrons $2 Twelfth ppgwgpgly
Thirteenth Century gpppp Egg. London: St. Anthony's Press, 1956.

Andrieu—Guitranceurt, Pierre. L'archevfique §_L§ie_s m 5_t_ _l_a yi_e _d_e
l'église pp gglgguplgplg. Paris: Librairie du Recueil Sirey,
1938.

Arnould, E. J. Egnppppglmgpp péchés: ‘éppgg‘gg littérature religieuse
Ippgle-nermande. Paris: Librairie E. Droz, 1940.

Brentano, Robert. 2255 Metropolitan Jurisdiction app. ‘gpppl
Judges-delegateI 1279-1296. Les Angeles: University of California
Press, 1959.

Cheney, C. R. English Bishops' Chanceries: 1100-1250. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1950.

. Episcopal Visitatiens ‘2; Monasteries ip the Thirteenth

 

Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1931.

Coulet, Neel. ”Les visites pastorales." In Typplegie‘ggp sources pp
ppygp‘agg occidental. L. Genicet, ed. Brussels and Turnheut,
Belguim: Institute d'études médiévales, 1977.

Coulton, G. G. Five Centuries ‘21 Religion, Volume 2. Cambridge:

122

Cambridge University Press, 1927.

Darlington, Oscar. T_he_ Travels e_f 9gp R_i_gpu_. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1940.

Deanesly, Margaret. A. History ‘25 'ppg Medieval Church: 540-1500.
London: Methuen and Company, 1969.

Debiache-Rejdistvensky, Olga. Ep yi_e_ pariessiale $9522.29 925L113
£32213. Paris: Librairie Alphonse Picard et Fils, 1911.

Dossat, Yves. Egg; _e_t_ hérce’sieemeflLepgge. London:
Variorum Reprints, 1982.

Fawtier, Robert. 1113 Capetianflpgpgfm. Lionel Butler and R.
J. Adams, trans. London: Macmillan and Company, 1960.

Fournier, Edouard. Nouvelles recherches 'lgp curies, chapitres ‘5;
universit‘s _d_e l'ancienne églipp 95m. Paris: 86minaire des
missions etrangzres de Paris, 1942.

occident. London: Variorum Reprints, 1980.

. kg, seciét‘ ecclésiastigue dens l'occident m‘di‘val.

 

London: Variorum Reprints, 1980.

Gibbs, Marion and Jane Lang. Bishops ppg Reform: 1215-1272. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1964.

Hinnebusch, William A. {Ippngpply_English‘Eplpgp Preachers. Rome: S.
Sabinae, 1951.

Knowles, David. 1h; Religious $223.5. 1;; England. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1950.

Le Bras, Gabriel. Histeire pp dreit‘gpp institutienes gpil'église‘gp

123

eccident, Volume 10. Sirey, 1955.

. Institutienes ecclésiastique gg_ lp_chr6tient6 médiéval.

 

Belguim: Bloud and Gay, 1959.

. Introduction A l'histoire 95 gppratigue religieusegp

 

France, Volume 1. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1942.

 

. L'6glise 53 lg village. Paris: Flammarion, 1976.

Lunt, W. E. Lapel Revenues 33 gig _M_i_¢_1d_l£ A_ge__. New York: Celunbia
University Press, 1934.

Moorman, J. R. H. M ELI} _i_n_ England pp t_h£ Thirteenth Century.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1945.

Owst, Gerald R. Literature and [plpigfllp_Medieval England. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1933.

Ozment, Stephen E. _I 3 egg 2; ReformI 1250-1550: pp_Intellectual|ppg
Religious History p_fL_a_3.£ Medieval and Reformation m. New
Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1980.

Pantin, W. A. Ipp. English gppppp'ip.ppg_Feurteenth Century. Netre
Dame, Indiana: University of Netre Dame Press, 1962.

Platt, Colin. ngugpplpp_Churches‘p£ Medieval England. London: Seeker
and Warburg, 1981.

Power, Eileen. Medieval English Nunneries. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1922.

Powicke, Maurice. ng_ Thirteenth Century: 1216-130 . Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1962.

Rabanis, Joseph F. Clement !. pp, Philippg lg Bel. Paris: Auguste

Durand Librairie, 1858.

124»

Rodes, Robert E. Ecclesiastical Administration 2! Medieval England.
Netre Dame, Indiana: University of Netre Dame Press, 1977.

Sicard, Augustin. L'ancien _c_l_eI_g_e’ g; m, Volume 1. Paris:
Librairie Victor Lecoffre, 1912.

Thompson, A. Hamilton. mEnglishggggypngOrganizatienip

pp; Later Middle Age . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947.

III. Periodical Literature

Brown, S. "Eudes Rigaud.” Mgg. Ser. 3. 2 (1931). 167-194.

Coulton G. G. “Interpretation of Visitation Documents.” English
Historical figyigy, 29 (1914), 16-40.

De Bascher, J. "Le chronologie des visites pastorales de Simon de
Beaulieu, ArchevSoue de Bourges dans la premidre et la secende
Aquitaine : la fin du XIIIe siéciem 3319.: d'histoire g3 l'église
93m. 58 (1972). 73-89.

Delisle, L. "Le clergé nermande au XIIIe s13cle." Bibliethégue‘gg
l'étele‘gg chartes, Ser. 2, 3 (1846). 479-499.

Edwards, Kathleen. ”Bishops and Learning in the Reign of Edward II.”
£22525 Quarterly 35313:, 138 (1944). 57-86.

Jenkins, C. Q. R. 'A Thirteenth Century Register: Ode, Archbishop of
Rouen.” Qppgpp_Quarterly{§pyggg, 101 (1925), 80-125.

Lacger, L. “La primatie et la pouvoir métrepolitain de l'ArchevChue du
Bourges au XIIIe sitcle.” figypg d'histoire eccl‘siastigpg, 26
(1930), 43-65, 269-330.

125

Robertson, D. W. ”The Frequency of Preaching in Thirteenth Century
England.” Speculum, 24 (1949). 376-388.