Power of the Bishop’s Second Edited Volume – Call for Papers

Power of the Bishop’s Second Edited Volume: Call for Papers

Episcopal Personalities

The second volume ‘In the Hands of God’s Servants’: The Power of the Bishop and the Problem of Personality is being prepared, based on the conference Episcopal Personalities held at Cardiff University, 2015. We would like to invite submissions for this volume on the subject of personality and its impact in the formation, enhancement and undermining of the episcopal office across Britain, Europe and Asia Minor during the High Middle Ages. We particularly encourage interdisciplinary applications, and are interpreting the geographical range quite widely.

Submit essays of no more than 7500 words in length including footnotes and bibliography with a 30-40 word author bio to powerofthebishop@gmail.com by 1 October, 2016. Submissions should be in English.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

  • Problems with/Possibilities for interpreting a bishop’s personality from source material, with close readings of manuscripts or other sources (not limited to textual)
  • How episcopal personalities were projected/constructed, through art, liturgical music, architecture, material and visual culture
  • Discussions of personality traits as tropes – negative and positive/sinful and saintly – in literature, hagiography, chronicles and other source material
  • Discussions of visual representations of personality traits in stained glass and other artistic representations of medieval bishops in any visual media
  • Case-studies and comparisons of individual bishops, and the impact of their personality upon the formation, projection, enhancement or undermining of their position
  • The consequences of contrasting episcopal personalities in the development of monasticism or upon communities of secular canons
  • The impact of contrasting episcopal personalities in dealings with secular lords, kinship networks, friendship networks, etc.