Princes of the Church brings together the latest research exploring the importance of bishops’ palaces for social and political history, landscape history, architectural history and archaeology. It is the first book-length study of such sites since Michael Thompson’s Medieval Bishops’ Houses (1998), and the first work ever to adopt such a wide-ranging approach to them in terms of themes and geographical and chronological range.
Including contributions from the late Antique period through to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it deals with bishops’ residences in England, Scotland, Wales, the Byzantine Empire, France, and Italy. It is structured in three sections: design and function, which considers how bishops’ palaces and houses differed from the palaces and houses of secular magnates, in their layout, design, furnishings, and functions; landscape and urban context, which considers the relationship between bishops’ palaces and houses and their political and cultural context, the landscapes and towns or cities in which they were set, and the parks, forests, and towns that were planned and designed around them; and architectural form, which considers the extent of shared features between bishops’ palaces and houses, and their relationship to the houses of other Church potentates and to the houses of secular magnates.
Table of Contents:
List of figures
List of plates
Preface
1 Introduction: Researching the Palaces of Princes of the Church David Rollason
PART I: PROJECTING IMAGES OF POWER
2 Thomas Wolsey as the Ideal Cardinal and his Palace of Hampton Court Margaret Harvey
3 Late Antique Episcopal Complexes: Bishop Eufrasius and his Residence at Poreč (Croatia) Jaqueline P. Sturm
4 The Political and Cultural Significance of the Bishop's Palace in Medieval Italy Maureen C. Miller
5 ‘A Mere Domestic Life’: Catherine Talbot in the Georgian Episcopal Home Michael Ashby
6 Auckland Castle in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: the Palace and Princely Power Ria Snowdon
7 Bishops’ Residences, Saints’ Cults, and the Legacy of Sacred Authority in the Medieval Dioceses of St Andrews and Glasgow Penelope Dransart
PART II: PALACES, FORESTS, AND PARKS
8 Pre-Conquest Regalian Roots of Episcopal Forests and Chases Graham Jones
9 English Bishops’ Hunting Rights, Hunts, and Hunting Grounds John Langton
10 Deer Parks and Masculine Egos: Knights, Priors, and Bishops in the Medieval North of England Andrew G. Miller
11 The Bishop of Durham's Park at Auckland Castle in the Middle Ages J. Linda Drury
PART III: PALACES AND THE WORK OF THE BISHOP
12 English Bishops’ Itineraries, c. 700-c. 1200 Julia Barrow
13 How to Travel with a Bishop: Thirteenth-Century Episcopal Itineraries Philippa M. Hoskin
14 Bishops’ Houses in Medieval London John Schofield
15 Why so Many Houses? The Varied Functions of the Episcopal Residences of the See of Winchester, c. 1130-c. 1680 John Hare
16 Evidence Regarding Bishops’ Use of Hall and Chamber in Later Thirteenth-Century England, with Observations Regarding Notarial Influence Michael Burger
17 The Gatehouse and Precincts of the Bishop’s Palace at Exeter Richard Parker
PART IV: DESIGN, FUNCTION, AND DECORATION
18 Ubi papa ibi Roma: the Bishop of Rome’s Residence in the Fourteenth Century: Avignon Gottfried Kerscher
19 Exeter Bishop’s Palace Stuart Blaylock
20 En Route and in Residence: Integrating Documentary and Archaeological Evidence for the Itineraries and Residences of the Medieval Bishops of Durham Caroline Smith and C. Pamela Graves, with Matt Claydon and Mark Randerson
21 Auckland and Durham Castles in the Eighteenth Century Richard Pears
22 Bishop Hurd’s Library at Hartlebury Castle Christine Penney
23 Auckland and Durham Castles in John Cosin’s Time Adrian Green
24 Bishop Hugh of Le Puiset’s Great Hall at Auckland Castle: Its Place in English Twelfth-Century Architecture Malcolm Thurlby
25 St Davids Bishop’s Palace and its Remarkable Roofscape Rick Turner
References
Index
About the Author :
David Rollason studied for his first degree at Balliol College, Oxford, where he sat at the feet particularly of J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, Peter Brown, and Henry Mayr-Harting; then for his PhD at the University of Birmingham, under the supervision of Wendy Davies and R. H. C. Davis, and – informally – of Philip Rahtz. After a year at the Collẻge de France, supervised by Georges Duby, he was appointed lecturer in history at the University of Durham in 1977. He retired in 2010 and remains Emeritus Professor, his most recent publication being The Power of Place: Rulers and Their Palaces, Landscapes, Cities, and Holy Places (2016) – the outcome of his 2010-13 Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship.
Review :
"Editor David Rollason and his team are to be congratulated on a major contribution towards the mature understanding of historic buildings in their social and intellectual contexts. So too is Jonathan Ruffer, the munificent rescuer and benefactor of Bishop Auckland, to whom Princes of the Church is appropriately dedicated."
- John Blair, University of Oxford, Reading Religion
