Between 1070 and 1150, northern French society underwent a historic change. Orthodox and heretical sects proliferated on the spiritual landscape and itinerant preachers roamed Europe's byways. Personal devotion to the Virgin Mary and Christ flourished. Concurrently, communal governments were established that demanded political and juridical autonomy from episcopal oversight. Christian spirituality diversified and urban communities innovated, with great consequence for the traditional authority of the era's ruling elite, the bishops.
The bishop, the highest ranking official of the local Catholic Chinch, exercised authority by virtue of his office. His authority was erected upon two foundations: a universal beliefin its necessity and a tradition ofrule inherited from Christ and the Apostles. To question, ignore, or reject one's bishop was to turn away from God, by whose grace the bishop ruled. As medieval men and women increasingly adhered to new civic and spiritual authorities, however, they inevitably challenged centuries of Church tradition and the ecclesiological assumptions of episcopal authority. For historians this development raises important questions: How do changing cultural values affect rulers'
claims to, and exercise of, authority? And how do traditional authorities respond when the people they rule begin to recognize other sources of authority as equally legitimate?
Drawing upon diplomatic evidence, hagiography, episcopal gesta, images, and liturgical texts, I examine the implications of religious and political change for the authority ofthe bishops in rive cathedral cities (Laon, Le Mans, Cambrai, Amiens, and Soissons). Bishops reacted in two ways. Individually, they projected their authority using images and media that resonated within the political and spiritual idiom ofthe local community. Collectively, the episcopate began in the early twelfth century to portray itself, through the composition and exchange of hagiographical texts and gesta, as a community specially imbued with both the traditional authority and spiritual qualities of its ancient predecessors and the apostolic values venerated by contemporary Christians. The bishops' experience demonstrates the flexibility of traditional modes of authority in the face ofcultural change, even as that authority became one among many that demanded the devotion of the people.