Download PDF | Julia Barrow - The Clergy in the Medieval World_ Secular Clerics, Their Families and Careers in North-Western Europe, c.800-c.1200, Cambridge University Press, 2015.
472 Pages
The Clergy in the Medieval World
Unlike monks and nuns, clergy have hitherto been sidelined in accounts of the Middle Ages, but they played an important role in medieval society. This first broad-ranging study in English of the secular clergy examines how ordination provided a framework for clerical life cycles and outlines the influence exerted on secular clergy by monastic ideals before tracing typical career paths for clerics. Concentrating on northern France, England and Germany in the period c.800–c.1200, Julia Barrow explores how entry into the clergy usually occurred in childhood, with parents making decisions for their sons, although other relatives, chiefly clerical uncles, were also influential. By comparing two main types of family structure, Barrow supplies an explanation of why Gregorian reformers faced little serious opposition in demanding an end to clerical marriage in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Changes in educational provision c.1100 also help to explain growing social and geographical mobility among clerics.
julia barrow is Director of the Institute for Medieval Studies and Professor in Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds.
Introduction
Opening remarks How did clerics build their careers in the western church in the Middle Ages? At what stage in their lives was the decision taken that they should enter the clergy, and who made this decision? Did they continue to maintain ties with their families, and if so, how? How were they trained for their roles in the Church? Attempting to answer these questions sheds light on central aspects of western European society: family networks, education, administration, pastoral care and ecclesiastical institutions. Unlike monks and nuns, however, whose career patterns and family background have attracted considerable attention,1 the clergy of the period from 800 to 1200 have suffered neglect, but unjustly so, on several counts: they were numerous, and their lives and activities were woven into those of the laity of the societies in which they lived. Moreover, though the majority had significance only as part of a larger whole, a sizeable minority were doers and thinkers, many at the forefront of the whole range of cultural developments.
No history of Europe in the central Middle Ages could overlook the contributions of – to take a few examples – Gerbert of Aurillac, Peter Abelard, Stephen Langton or Robert Grosseteste, all of them the products of a clerical formation and education.2 At the highest level of the clergy, all bishops, most of whom had built up their ecclesiastical careers as secular clerics, had at least some political influence, and many had appreciable political power.3 Rulers expected bishops to assist them as political advisers, and employed numerous other clerics lower down the hierarchy to act for them as scribes, attendants, envoys, propagandists, chaplains, physicians and almsgivers.4 The educational training undergone by clergy is also a necessary subject of investigation for those studying the culture and society of medieval Europe, and, while the intellectual, scholarly and literary dimensions of the process have been worked on by scholars for centuries and are reasonably well understood, the more practical aspects of obtaining an education have attracted rather less attention, even though they too helped to shape the careers of young clerics.5
Although ordination was what principally distinguished clergy from laity, education was another distinguishing feature, since it was required for clergy but not for laity. Here, however, (unlike ordination) the difference was not absolute, since laity could be educated, and even, in some cases, learned.6 Beyond this, clergy were visibly different, marked out from the rest of society by tonsure and dress.7 These visual and cultural differences between clergy and laity helped to underline the importance of the Eucharist. Only bishops and priests, members of the senior ranks of the clergy, could celebrate this, though clerics in lower grades assisted them.
Clerics are often confused with monks (an understandable confusion, given that monks can be ordained within the clerical grades),8 but the two are not synonymous. Clergy are those members of the Church who perform sacraments, or assist in their performance; their origins lie in the very earliest beginnings of the Church. From early on, clerical office was, to all intents and purposes, restricted to men;9 in the western church, although the grade of deaconess survived in a shadowy form and rites for it were copied into pontificals, it was in practice restricted to abbesses and did not allow them access to the altar.10 Monks make vows of obedience, stability and conversion, live under a Rule, renounce personal property and are supposed to withdraw from the world, but clergy can own property, do not necessarily have to live under a rule, and can engage with the world.11
The adjective ‘secular’, or ‘worldly’, began to be applied to the bulk of the clergy in the twelfth century, and at first it was used as a pejorative term to mark them off from those clerics who were trying to live a more monastic existence, following a rule, and who thus were called ‘regular clergy’, from the Latin word regula, meaning rule,12 though the ‘worldly’ jibe lost some of its edge after it had become widely accepted.13 Clergy faced criticism, often savage, from monks, who were irked by what they saw as clerical laxity (as opposed to monastic asceticism) and clerical disobedience (as opposed to monastic discipline). The harshest outbursts of criticism occurred at times when monasticism was being redefined, notably in the mid-tenth century and over the period from the end of the eleventh century to the early twelfth, but in general, throughout the entire period of existence of the Church, monastic authors have proclaimed their superior spiritual qualities vis-à-vis those of the clergy.14 The reason for this is easy to grasp: monks were members of communities with a strong sense of identity, to join which they had had to sacrifice individual freedom. Self-justification helped them to maintain morale, and an effective way of doing this was to attack possible rivals.
Clerics, more likely even when living in communities to have some individual existence of their own, produced a much smaller quantity of apologetic literature than monks, and these texts tended to explain the various features of the liturgy, a branch of writing to which monks themselves also made a sizeable contribution.15 The twelfth century produced considerable debate literature as monks and regular canons tried to define their own positions vis-à-vis each other and the rest of the clergy (the ‘secular’ clergy).16 Few clerics attacked monks in a sustained way, though the courtier–cleric Walter Map (d. 1209/10) wrote a counterblast against monkdom (monachia) and included this in his De Nugis Curialium. 17
It should be noted, however, that a surprisingly large number of monastic leaders, especially ones active in foundations and refoundations, had enjoyed a clerical formation, opting to become monks only in adulthood; evidently a clerical formation was better at encouraging initiative and qualities of leadership than a monastic one.18 The opening date chosen for this book, the turn of the eighth and ninth centuries, makes it possible to examine how the Carolingians shaped ecclesiastical institutions in western Europe for the rest of the Middle Ages. As far as a history of the clergy is concerned, the tenth century and much of the eleventh century can, indeed, be viewed as a continuation of the Carolingian era, the time when we can observe the full implementation of Carolingian innovations over the long term.19 However, sources for the clergy began to diversify from the tenth century on. Whereas for the pre-900 period the fullest sources tend to be prescriptive, for example the diocesan statutes of Hincmar (archbishop of Rheims 845–82) and his episcopal colleagues,20 after about 900 the range of charter material, especially charters issued by people other than rulers, begins to increase, almost imperceptibly in the tenth century but more noticeably in the eleventh and massively in the twelfth.21
The steep rise in documentation coincides roughly with the period when the process known as the ‘Gregorian Reform’ slowly got put into effect within the ecclesiastical institutions. The Gregorian Reform was the eleventh-century movement which demanded clerical celibacy and an end to the sale of ecclesiastical office, and in a wider sense (but this was an aim which was much less capable of achievement) the separation of the sacred from the secular.22 One of the principal results of this, though it was not one intended or desired by the leaders of the movement, was the tightening up of legal structures in the Church, which in turn necessitated a great increase in documentation and in education, especially in law.23 Although the principles of the Gregorian ‘Reform’ movement were spelled out in the late eleventh century, it was a long time before they were generally and fully accepted. Ending hereditary succession among the clergy was a slow process.24 However, by the opening years of the thirteenth century, many of the changes demanded by Gregory VII had been put into practice, and the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 show how, over a huge range of issues and with great attention to detail, the papacy was directing the activities of the Church.25 Many of the decrees of the Fourth Lateran concerned the clergy, and encouraged the intensive production of diocesan statutes intended further to regulate the behaviour of clergy, in the following decades.26 The early thirteenth century is a suitable point to close this study, since it marks the end of a period of development in ecclesiastical administration. In geographical terms, the areas studied here are principally France north of (roughly) the Massif Central, the kingdom of Germany, and England, with some attention to Scotland and Wales. The documentation available for southern Europe, particularly Italy, is vast, and the ratio of unpublished to published charters is much higher there than in more northerly areas of Europe. The time is not yet ripe for an overview of Italian clergy in the central Middle Ages, highly desirable though it would be.27 Apart from the volume of material, there are good reasons for splitting up the clergy of northern and southern Europe. Communities of cathedral clergy quite often became bodies of Augustinian, or regular, canons in southern France, Italy and Spain in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but rarely did so in northern Europe.28 They thus adopted a more monastic pattern of life and their inmates had much less scope to pursue individual careers. None of this is to argue, of course, that the two areas did not influence each other. Developments in Italy had a profound effect on northern Europe, and significant numbers of Italian clerics travelled there to find employment. Examples include Stephen of Novara in the tenth century, Lanfranc in the eleventh, Master Vacarius in the mid-twelfth century and many members of the chapter of York Minster in the late twelfth and the thirteenth centuries.29 Nor is it to argue that northern Europe itself formed a socially and culturally united whole; this was far from being the case, as will emerge in what follows.
The structure of this book The aim of this book is to examine the entry of boys and men into the clergy and the various stages of the careers they formed once there. Fundamental to these questions are, first, an understanding of the clerical office itself and, second, an understanding of the ways in which clerical life was influenced by monasticism. Accordingly, Chapter 2 deals with the clerical office and its relation to the clerical life cycle, and Chapter 3 with the creation of rules for clerical life and with the wider question of monastic attitudes to the clergy. These two chapters aim to explain the ground rules under which clerical careers operated. The remaining chapters deal with the relationship between clergy and their families, the fostering of young clerics, education, the work of clerics in courts and households, clergy in cathedrals and collegiate churches, and parish clergy.
The clerical office (Chapter 2) had been long established by the outset of our period, but some adjustments in how it operated and how it was bestowed are visible in the period from 800 to 1200, and these are worth exploring for the light they shed on clerical life cycles. Entry into the clergy was effected by ordination, which was not a one-off event but a series of rites conducted at intervals usually spread over about two decades, though canon law allowed that this could be greatly speeded up for adult recruits to the clergy. But although canon law allowed this and although entry of both children and adults is visible in late antiquity and the very early Middle Ages, by the outset of our period adult entry into the clergy had more or less disappeared. The reasons for this, and even more the consequences of this, are worth exploring for the light they shed on western medieval society between the eighth and the twelfth centuries, in particular the influence that parents could exercise over their children’s futures and also the consequences of child entry into the clergy for the pattern of education. Another shift is visible in the later eleventh century when grades of ordination cease to be mentioned as much as they had been in hagiographies, biographies and charters. Here too is a pointer to educational developments. Similarly, tonsure, the visible sign of being a cleric, ceases to be mentioned much in narrative sources from the later eleventh century onwards, though references to it in administrative sources continue. Also of significance when reflecting on grades of ordination is the question of which grade clerics found it convenient to remain in without attempting further progression (it was not necessary to progress through all the grades, and many clerics stopped before reaching the priesthood). Discussion of the opportunities open to priests, deacons, subdeacons and so on over the 800–1200 time span helps to explain some features of the internal organisation of churches and also of clerical careers. Looking over the shoulders of the secular clergy were their regular colleagues, monks, and, from the mid-eleventh century, regular canons as well, and these are the subject of Chapter 3. Since it was normal for monks in the western church to be ordained from the ninth century onwards (indeed, there are several examples of monks being ordained before this point), there was much overlap between monks and clergy in terms of sacramental and liturgical provision; monks, who were more vigorous in promoting their own cause, found it useful to upbraid clergy for what they saw as failings, and at intervals throughout our period clergy came under pressure to be more like monks. This led to the creation of a variety of rules for clerics living in communities, some composed in the eighth and ninth centuries, and with further work in the eleventh century, when the fourth-century Rule of St Augustine was revised and considerably expanded. Monastic pressure on clergy was also manifested in demands from the tenth century onwards for individual churches run by secular clergy to be taken over by monks, a process which (when successful) limited opportunities for secular clerics. Examining this development from the point of view of the latter rather than (as has been more normal hitherto) their adversaries helps to provide some fresh insights into the powers of patrons and pressure groups over the period from c.900 onwards. The chronology of the monastic pressure points on the clergy is also worth attention. Having set out the clerical framework and the responses it excited among the regulars the book proceeds to examine three facets of the early careers of clergy. Chapter 4 examines the relationship of clerics with their immediate families. Unsurprisingly, parents were the relatives with the most influence over young clerics, including the decision about entry into the office. This was true whether the fathers of future clerics were themselves clerics or were laymen. This question needs careful reflection. First of all, is it safe to assume (as some recent general studies of the eleventh and twelfth centuries have done) that clerical marriage and hereditary succession were widely accepted down to the later eleventh century and beyond and that they did not meet with serious opposition until the Gregorian Reform?30 After all, moves to prevent clergy from marrying after ordination in the higher grades had been routine in canon law since the early fifth century. Examination of the family networking of high-ranking clerics over the period from 800 to 1100 shows a rather different picture in Francia and most of its successor states, apart from some peripheral areas, notably Brittany. By and large, the secular aristocracy seems to have embraced clerical celibacy with enthusiasm as far as their younger sons were concerned, as a useful strategy for limiting the numbers of heirs in subsequent generations, and parents sought reinforcement from brothers already in ecclesiastical careers to guide the careers of their young nephews. The role of the clerical uncle was a significant one during the Middle Ages. Father–son clerical dynasties certainly existed – chiefly in the British Isles, Brittany and eleventh- and twelfth-century Normandy – but outside these areas not at a high enough social level to be influential. Clergy were influenced not only by their parents and their uncles but also by their siblings, and the relationships between clerics and their brothers and sisters help to shed light on the varying patterns of inheritance operating across northern Europe in the high Middle Ages. Where family property was supposed to be shared among siblings clerics were least likely to have freedom of manoeuvre in career terms. Not only biological kin but also artificial kin helped to guide the earlier years of clerics in our period, and this is the subject of Chapter 5. Boys of good family in the earlier Middle Ages were expected to be fostered in their teens by their fathers’ overlords, a system that ensured the military training of the aristocracy and also provided rulers and other senior figures with hostages for the good behaviour of the fathers of their young charges. Although the system was essentially designed for boys intended for a military career, boys intended for ecclesiastical careers were swept up into it also, though this could impose some difficulties for them, as fosterage had to be combined with ecclesiastical education. Literacy, like ordination and tonsure, was one of the determining features of clerics. Education in letters was a requirement for them, and the role of education in clerical careers is discussed in Chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 6 looks at the range of schools available across this period and also at less ‘official’, less formal patterns of education. One-to-one teaching was often practised in sparsely populated areas of western Europe in the earlier Middle Ages, and could be viewed as a sort of clerical apprenticeship. Schools were not numerous between the seventh century and the later eleventh century; they tended to be run by monastic or clerical communities, and although entry to them was by no means limited to inmates of these churches, in practice parents might feel pressured into promising to hand over their boys, very young, not merely to be educated but to become monks or canons. From the end of the eleventh century onwards the number of schools expanded; competition between them made the educational system rather freer and, even more significantly, higher schools emerged in the early twelfth century, offering a wider range of opportunities to high-fliers than had hitherto been available. Chapter 7 examines schoolmasters (who were clerics) and their career paths, before moving on to look at the school curriculum and finally at the effects of education on clerics. Education increased social and geographical mobility, especially after c.1100, partly thanks to the expansion in the number of schools, and partly thanks to the development of higher schools, which aimed to open up advanced study to the more ambitious among the clergy. However, this was not equally true across all areas of northern Europe, and regional comparisons show significant variations in clerical career paths. The final three chapters look at opportunities available to clerics once they had received an education. Chapter 8 deals with chaplains and other clerics in the households of rulers, magnates and bishops. Scholarship on household chaplains has tended to concentrate on their role in writing charters, but this was only one of the tasks they were supposed to perform and not necessarily a time-consuming one. Liturgical duties appear to have been their primary responsibility. The forms of patronage available to household chaplains are worthy of examination, too, as they give us insight into how rulers built up networks of supporters, and into how clerics made their early moves up the career ladder. Chapter 9 looks at the clergy serving cathedrals and collegiate churches. The liturgical responsibilities of these organisations required large forces of clergy; some cathedral communities had over seventy or eighty canons. The complexity of their operations grew steadily throughout our period. As a result, bishops were usually happy to allow cathedral chapters increasing independence, and the dignities (offices) in these churches became administrative positions of some importance, often a good preparation for episcopal office. Being a cathedral canon gave a cleric an established income and from quite early on it might be possible for canons to be absent from their churches if required for royal service. By the twelfth century, absenteeism and pluralism were built into the system in England and much of northern France, allowing cathedral canons the opportunity to pursue a variety of activities. Their absence could be more than compensated for by employing vicars choral and chaplains to undertake the bulk of the liturgy. Chapter 10 looks at the roles of clerics serving local churches. To do this, it is necessary to look at the development of minor local churches into what became the parish system – a tidy network of churches across western Christendom supplying pastoral care to the faithful. The very varied beginnings of local churches meant that the forms of patronage also varied, and it is necessary to understand these in order to find out about the clerics who were appointed to serve these churches.
Sources Since clergy were by definition supposed to be literate, and in practice usually were, primary sources mentioning or describing them survive in greater numbers, proportionately, than those mentioning medieval laymen and -women.31 Research for this book is principally based on charters, narrative sources and letters, but has also drawn on liturgical compilations and administrative sources other than charters. Clerics figure frequently in narratives, often forming the subject matter. This is particularly true of biographical writing: bishops figure very numerously among the subjects of Lives written in this period,32 and their biographies often trace the clerical cursus honorum quite carefully.33 With a few exceptions, most of them had had an exclusively clerical training;34 indeed, several of those who had been monks before becoming bishop, such as Lanfranc, had begun their careers as clerks.35 Similarly, some Lives of monastic figures show clerical training at the outset. John of Gorze’s early (and unsatisfactory) educational experiences were clerical; Æthelwold and Dunstan began their education as clerics.36 Authors of episcopal Lives of this period can be either clerical or monastic; as such, they show some differences of approach,37 but more similarities, probably partly to please their intended audiences. The usual intended audience of an episcopal Life consisted of his successor and his cathedral chapter.38 Cathedral chapters were also the chief audiences for (and often supplied the authors of ) diocesan histories, usually termed Gesta Episcoporum (Deeds of Bishops), which were made up of short biographies of each of the bishops who had held a particular see.39 Episcopal Lives and Gesta Episcoporum were produced in greatest quantities in the empire and the western parts of the old Carolingian heartlands in the tenth and eleventh centuries; thereafter they both, especially the biographies, spread out over a wider geographical area.40 At the same time, autobiography, though never frequent, became a little more common.41 Here too clergy made their mark. Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum contains rather more detail about his early life as a clerk than it does about his subsequent existence as monk and abbot.42 Gerald of Wales’s De invectionibus and many of his other writings, almost all of which contain autobiographical material, are informative about the life of the higher clergy in south Wales in the later twelfth century.43 Information about clergy in political histories is much more sporadic, but nonetheless useful, as for example Henry of Huntingdon’s comments about the canons of Lincoln Cathedral in the early twelfth century.44 Narratives of the foundation of monastic or Augustinian houses can also be revealing: the Restoration of the Monastery of St Martin, Tournai traces the conversion of a cleric, Master Odo, scholasticus of Tournai, first to the Augustinian life, and then to the monastic one.45 Meanwhile a counterblast to the regulars can be found in the Chronicle of Waltham Abbey, which traces the history of a collegiate church of secular canons that was turned into an Augustinian abbey by Henry II in the 1170s in partial expiation for the murder of Thomas Becket.46 Miracle collections can also be a rewarding source of stories about clergy: one of the richest sources for late twelfth-century Cologne and its numerous clergy is the Dialogue of Miracles of Caesarius of Heisterbach, a Cistercian novicemaster who had been a boy canon at the collegiate church of St Andreas in Cologne.47 Many of the higher clergy were prolific letter-writers. Writing letters was an important part of clerical life:48 through them, long-standing friendships and acquaintances could be maintained, new contacts could be created, pleas could be made on behalf of protégés,49 character statements could be provided,50 short treatises could be composed on any number of subjects, kings and queens could be flattered and cajoled, and rhetorical skills could be displayed.51 Rhetoric was an important part of the clerical education, at least for the wealthier clergy, and one of its principal branches was dictamen, training in the correct drafting of letters and charters so that the authors of these would marshal their arguments and persuasive pleas in the right order and use the most appropriate vocabulary to win over their chosen audience.52 Although most medieval letters would have been ephemera and it is probably safe to assume that the vast majority of what was written has subsequently been lost, enough letters survive to give us some impression of the significance they had for clerics. Several clerics of our period were so proud of their literary abilities that they kept copies of outgoing correspondence and then formed letter collections which they had copied and circulated as literary works – Arnulf of Lisieux, John of Salisbury, Peter of Blois and the Augustinian Stephen of Tournai53 – while in other cases pupils made collections.54 Liturgical writings help to explain much of the framework of clerical activities, but are relatively little drawn on for this book, which concentrates on clergy in the world rather than on clergy in the choir or the sanctuary. Nevertheless there was a certain overlap between worldly and spiritual arrangements. The cycle of feasts (in the liturgical sense) in the ecclesiastical year could be reflected (as at Bamberg Cathedral, for example) in detailed lists of ingredients for the feasts (in the gastronomic sense) held to celebrate them.55 Such lists might name the groups of estates which would be expected to provide the food required for each meal.56 Elaborate endowments were made for anniversary prayers and services at cathedrals and other major churches right across Europe.57 In consequence, churches would record the names of the dead in necrologies or obit books, in which individuals would be entered under the day of the month on which they had died, often with a record of the financial arrangements made to provide prayers.58 Canons of the church in question were expected to make suitable arrangements for their commemoration. Lists of living inmates and benefactors, known as libri vitae after the Book of Life in Revelation, tended usually to be a feature of monastic rather than of clerical communities, but could often include clergy from elsewhere.59 Administrative sources provide by far the largest body of material for the study of the clergy in the high Middle Ages. Most valuable for all areas are charter collections, which can be used to build up bodies of information about clergy serving churches on particular groups of estates or the canons and minor clergy of particular cathedrals or collegiate churches. Since the body of surviving charter material for the whole area is so vast, especially in the twelfth century, this study will concentrate on materials in print. For most of this period the overwhelming majority of charters are land grants, which convey information about clergy usually only incidentally, for example if they occur as witnesses or (occasionally) as grantors or beneficiaries; grants of land to cathedrals quite often reveal the internal administrative structures of these institutions and sometimes also shed light on the careers and family relationships of individual canons. Quite often, and increasingly so towards the end of our period, grants made to cathedrals were made by their own canons, especially to set up their own anniversary services in advance of their deaths.60 These documents are particularly revealing about clerical family networks, and so too, from the early thirteenth century, are written wills, which bishops began to expect their clergy (and eventually also better-off laity) to make to dispose of all property whose disposition would not otherwise be accounted for by common or customary law: in practice this meant most moveables.61 Increasing in number throughout this period are charters recording the grants of churches or other forms of ecclesiastical property, such as tithes, which can shed light on the clergy serving these churches. From the late eleventh century onwards, ecclesiastical strictures against secular ownership of churches tightened and quite a few landowners, finding themselves unable to benefit much financially from the patronage (advowson) of parish churches, gave away their rights to monastic houses.62 During this period it became necessary to obtain episcopal approval for such grants, and numbers of episcopal charters rose.63 Soon after this, bishops began to be concerned that the monastic houses were abusing their position by taking over the rectories of these churches, extracting far too much money from them, and leaving too little for the vicars – that is, the clerics serving them – and had to regulate the system by insisting that monasteries could only obtain rectories by licence.64 Often, especially by about the end of the twelfth century, bishops specified how the church income should be split up between monastery and vicar.65 These sources often name the clergy involved and are also useful for explaining the income the latter would receive. The preservation of charters is uneven: major churches such as cathedrals and monasteries were best at keeping archives, and as a result much of the material which survives was issued in favour of ecclesiastical institutions, or else concerns property which eventually ended up in the control of such bodies. The latter frequently compiled collections of the charters they had received and had them copied into books known as cartularies.66 Charters in this form (copies made by the beneficiary rather than by the issuer) were not authenticated and were thus not suitable for presenting as evidence in lawcourts; the point of gathering them together in cartularies was to create a useful reference tool, often containing references to the locations of the originals in the archive.67 A cartulary rarely contains copies of more than a minority of the charters received by an institution,68 and different institutions applied a variety of criteria for selection, sometimes recording the principal title deeds for particular estates, or the results of legal disputes, or providing information on the endowments for anniversary services, or listing grants in the chronological order in which they were made.69 Publication of charters, like their preservation, is uneven, both regionally across Europe and in the selection of materials for publication. Furthermore, the selection and organisation of material for publication also shows regional variation. While the publication of cartularies, sometimes with the addition of original charters, is frequent in France, Belgium and the United Kingdom, it has traditionally been less favoured in Germany. More characteristic there are editorial compilations (Urkundenbücher) of all the charters concerning a particular geographical area, or else associated with a major church.70 Compilations of this sort for episcopal churches contain charters concerning the episcopal estates as well as the property of the cathedral chapter.71 Another form of editorial compilation, long practised in respect of royal and papal charters, brings together all items issued by one single person or authority. For England, Wales and, to a growing extent, France, this is now being carried out for charters issued by bishops of a particular diocese.72 Compilations of episcopal acta are of considerable value for the study of the clergy, because of the duty incumbent on bishops of regulating the lives and activities of the latter. Estate inventories (polyptychs) and related fiscal records, where available, can be informative about clergy.73 For English clergy in the eleventh century much information can be gleaned from Domesday Book,74 which allows us to observe a network of clergy at a variety of social levels, and in particular at the higher levels gives us some information about their income and patronage networks.
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