ABSTRACT
The 'top-down' model for explaining the conversion of Europe to Christianity, and the subsequent maintenance of the religion amongst the population, may involve the power of secular rulers but it surely must involve also the power of the Church as an organisation. This chapter focuses on bishops, including the bishop of Rome, or the pope, who appear in the sources as men of great power and influence in the world as well as in the Church itself. The popes' claim to succession to St Peter was only part of a wider process by which bishops and popes associated themselves with saints and their relics, sought to use belief in them as tools of power. The cult of saints had originated in the time of the persecutions. The importance of the cult of saints is perhaps most evident in the change which it produced in attitudes to the dead.
