ABSTRACT
Religious authority was an essential feature of the medieval episcopal office. This chapter offers an analysis of a thirteenth-century Latin text entitled Dialogus miraculorum - The Dialogues of Miracles (DM), which was written by the Cistercian monk Caesarius of Heisterbach in the diocese of Cologne, Germany. Conceptions of religious masculinities were never homogenous, however, and narratives often conveyed arguments or disputes between the religious. The chapter focuses on how intra-religious disagreements, while a significant indicator of the polylithic nature of medieval attitudes to authority, were also, in and of themselves, a way of consolidating particular religious identities. In Caesarius's DM, members of the church hierarchy are criticised primarily for behaving like their secular peers. Born around 1180 in Cologne or in its surrounding environs, Caesarius entered the Priory of Heisterbach at around the age of 19. The appropriate uses of authority and power were intrinsically tied to contemporary ideas about religious leadership.
