In 1214, King John issued a constitution granting freedom of election to the English Church; henceforth, cathedral chapters have been, theoretically, to be allowed to decide on their very own bishops, with minimum intervention through the crown. blameless III proven this constitution and, within the following 12 months, the proper to electoral freedom used to be restated on the Fourth Lateran Council. consequently, lower than Henry III and Edward I the English Church loved anything of a golden age of electoral freedom, within which the king may possibly impact elections, yet eventually couldn't keep watch over them. Then, in the course of the reigns of Edward II and Edward III, papal keep an eye on over appointments was once more and more asserted and from 1344 onwards all English bishops have been supplied through the pope.

This booklet considers the idea and perform of unfastened canonical election in its heyday below Henry III and Edward I, and the character of and purposes for the following transition to papal provision. An research of the theoretical proof for this topic (including canon legislation, royal pronouncements and Lawrence of Somercote’s extraordinary 1254 tract on episcopal elections) is mixed with a attention of the skill through which bishops have been created in the course of the reigns of Henry III and the 3 Edwards. The altering roles of a number of the individuals within the appointment method (including, yet no longer constrained to, the cathedral bankruptcy, the king, the papacy, the archbishop and the candidate) are given specific emphasis. furthermore, the English scenario is put inside a eu context, via a comparability of English episcopal appointments with these made in France, Scotland and Italy.

Bishops have been principal figures in medieval society and the conditions in their appointments are of significant historic significance. As episcopal appointments have been additionally touchstones of secular-ecclesiastical kin, this e-book for this reason has major implications for our figuring out of church-state interactions throughout the 13th and fourteenth centuries.