ABSTRACT
Europe in the tenth and early eleventh centuries was “a Europe of the bishops.”1 Put another way, “[t]he history of the church of Europe in the tenth and early eleventh centuries is essentially the history of many local churches, in which the dominant role in secular ecclesiastical and religious life was played by the bishops.”2 For a better understanding of the figure of the bishop, then, a better understanding is needed of the church as well as European society in these two crucial centuries of transition and transformation.
