1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910809261603321

Autore

Halfond Gregory I.

Titolo

Bishops and the Politics of Patronage in Merovingian Gaul / / Gregory I. Halfond

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca, NY : , : Cornell University Press, , [2019]

©2019

ISBN

1-5017-3932-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (220 pages)

Disciplina

274.4/02

Soggetti

France - Politics and government - To 987

Episcopacy - History

Merovingians

Church and state - Gaul

Bishops - Political activity - Gaul

Bishops - Gaul - Temporal power

France Church history To 987

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Map -- Introduction -- 1. Episcopal Service to the Court -- 2. Royal Patronage and Its Benefits -- 3. Unity in Disunity: The Limits of Corporate Solidarity -- 4. Disunity in Unity: Territorial Integration and Its Effects -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Following the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire, local Christian leaders were confronted with the problem of how to conceptualize and administer their regional churches. As Gregory Halfond shows, the bishops of post-Roman Gaul oversaw a transformation in the relationship between church and state. He shows that by constituting themselves as a corporate body, the Gallic episcopate was able to wield significant political influence on local, regional, and kingdom-wide scales.Gallo-Frankish bishops were conscious of their corporate membership in an exclusive order, the rights and responsibilities of which were consistently being redefined and subsequently expressed through liturgy, dress, physical space, preaching, and association with



cults of sanctity. But as Halfond demonstrates, individual bishops, motivated by the promise of royal patronage to provide various forms of service to the court, often struggled, sometimes unsuccessfully, to balance their competing loyalties. However, even the resulting conflicts between individual bishops did not, he shows, fundamentally undermine the Gallo-Frankish episcopate's corporate identity or integrity. Ultimately, Halfond provides a far more subtle and sophisticated understanding of church-state relations across the early medieval period.