Episcopal Power and Ecclesiastical Reform in the German Empire: Tithes, Lordship, and Community, 950-1150

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Cambridge University Press, Aug 6, 2012 - History - 315 pages
Focusing on the way bishops in the eleventh century used the ecclesiastical tithe - church taxes - to develop or re-order ties of loyalty and dependence within their dioceses, this book offers a new perspective on episcopacy in medieval Germany and Italy. Using three broad case studies from the dioceses of Mainz, Salzburg and Lucca in Tuscany, John Eldevik places the social dynamics of collecting the church tithe within current debates about religious reform, social change and the so-called 'feudal revolution' in the eleventh century, and analyses a key economic institution, the medieval tithe, as a social and political phenomenon. By examining episcopal churches and their possessions not in institutional terms, but as social networks which bishops were obliged to negotiate and construct over time using legal, historiographical and interpersonal means, this comparative study casts fresh light on the history of early medieval society.
 

Contents

THE SOCIAL WORLDS OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL
34
TITHES BISHOPS AND SOCIETY IN FRANKISH
63
LUCCA
103
THE LEASING OF PIEVI
139
BISHOPS
179
THE STRUGGLE FOR TITHES IN AN
215
Bibliography
268
Index
305
Copyright

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About the author (2012)

John Eldevik is Assistant Professor of History at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. In addition to articles and reviews in a range of international journals, he is the author of Medieval Germany: Research and Resources (2006), a reference guide to medieval German history published by the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC.

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