Struck by a divine blow! Divine and human agency in representations of conflict resolution by early medieval bishops, 500--1150 C.E

This dissertation tells the story of divine intervention and the role it played in supporting a widespread ideal of early medieval episcopal authority. The amalgamation of human agency with divine intervention is a key facet of an episcopal model of authority that dominated Western European urban ecclesiastical historiography, and particularly the genre of gesta episcoporum (“deeds of bishops”), from 500 C.E. to 1150 C.E. Early medieval bishops understood divine agents—saints, the Holy Spirit, Christ and God himself—as active forces of change working on behalf of the episcopal collective to provide political, economic and social stability in the urban environments that they saw as their rightful earthly domain. This cultural definition of the bishop at work is expressed in an intellectual framework of historiography in gesta form that prevailed from 500 to 1150 C.E.;Authors from a wide variety of geographic settings used these gesta to commemorate, and more importantly to perpetuate, what they felt was the most important feature of an episcopal legacy: a bishop's prerogative to resolve political, religious and social conflicts at both the local urban level and on a broader regional playing field. The gesta discussed here include Gregory of Tours' sixth-century Frankish Decem Libri Historiarum, the seventh-century Visigothic Vitas Sanctorum Patrum Emeretensium , Agnellus of Ravenna's eighth-century Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis, Flodoard of Reims' tenth-century Historia Remensis ecclesiae, and William of Malmesbury's Gesta pontificum Anglorum. The authors of these gesta promoted an idealized version of episcopal authority in conflict resolution by adopting a shared model of commemoration based on the late-antique Roman Liber pontificalis ("book of the Pontiffs"). The frequent appearance of gesta in a number of royal and urban contexts demonstrates a shared perception of episcopal roles throughout Western Europe despite contextual differences on the ground in actual exercise of power. These instances of divine agency on behalf of bishops augmented or stood in for secular standards of direct, and very human, political and military might for bishops who operated in times of simultaneous urban and regional conflict.