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Bishops in the Medieval Empire: New Perspectives on the Church, State and Episcopal Office
Author(s) -
Eldevik John
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
history compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.121
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 1478-0542
DOI - 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2011.00805.x
Subject(s) - bishops , empire , politics , state (computer science) , roman empire , medieval history , middle ages , power (physics) , history , ancient history , classics , law , political science , sociology , physics , algorithm , quantum mechanics , computer science
Through the mid‐20th century, most historical research on bishops and the episcopate in early medieval Germany and the Holy Roman Empire was carried out within a conceptual framework known as the Imperial Church System ( Reichskirchensystem ), a merging of the early medieval church and royal government. The Reichskirchensystem grew out of a tradition of 19th century political history which took as its primary concern the evolution of the modern constitutional state and viewed the church and its personnel – namely bishops – as mostly negative influences on those processes over time. In the post‐war period, new approaches to constitutional and social history in the German academy prompted scholars to recast bishops as aristocratic elites and focus on the way they exercised lordship, or Herrschaft . More recently, studies of the episcopacy in Germany have embraced a variety of interdisciplinary methods and new approaches to medieval sources and begun to explore the ways bishops construed their power as a unique sphere of authority within the political and social worlds of the Middle Ages.