Building episcopal authority in Medieval Castile: the bishops of the Diocese of Burgos (11th–13th centuries)

Abstract

This article aims to show how episcopal authority was built in the eastern part of the Kingdom of León (county of Castile), where a new kingdom and a vast diocese emerged in the mid-11th century. The monarchs of Castile empowered the strategic pre-urban town of Burgos in the northern Iberian Plateau as a single episcopal see, rather than the four that had existed in the área until then. The bishops were the agents that the monarchs needed in the long process that, from the destabilisation of the Visigothic diocese organisation caused by the Islamic invasion of the Iberian peninsula in the 8th century, led to the consolidation of episcopal power in the mid-13th century. The function and actions of the Burgalese bishops have been analysed in the three dimensions of their ecclesiastic authority and social significance: the patrimonial dimension (the bishop as the lord and owner of properties individually), the jurisdictional dimension and the pastoral dimension. This analysis has been able to establish three periods in the struggle of the Burgalese prelates: to define the territorial frame of their authority (the delimitation of the diocese boundaries), to recover the churches and jurisdictional rights (episcopal third and other ecclesiastic taxes) that were in the hands of the powerful Benedictine monasteries and lay people, and to affirm their hierarchical superiority over other diocese "potestates". The study has identified the main strategies used by the bishops to reach those objectives: the signing of agreements to resolve disputes, the addition of abbots of collegial churches to the cathedral chapter to control key areas in the diocese, and the acquisition of properties in those areas.