Bishop and Chapter in Twelfth-Century England

Book excerpt: This book is the first detailed examination on a comparative basis of the economic and political relations between the bishops and their cathedral clergy in England during the century and a half after the Conquest. In particular, it is a study of the structure and historical development of the mensal endowments and the redistribution of wealth which led, in the course of time, to the establishment of the chapter as a largely independent body with substantial political power. A description of the constitutional importance of the mensa and its treatment in recent scholarly writing is followed by a discussion of property rights and liberties in the church and the role of the bishop in ecclesiastical and civil government. The core of the book consists of an analysis based on contemporary sources of the episcopal and capitular organisation in each of the ten monastic and seven secular sees.