Richard Kay - The Council of Bourges, 1225: A Documentary History

Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West

General Editor: Brenda Bolton

About the series

In the last generation an important transformation has taken place in the study of the Medieval Church in the Latin West. This new focus has moved away from a narrow concentration on single religious themes to introduce a greater cultural awareness. Recent cross-disciplinary studies on the Churchs rules on consanguinity provide a case in point while other research has benefited from theological, political or literary perspectives.

The new Ashgate series Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West will contain some of the most innovative work from this area of current research and will be drawn not only from more established scholars but also from those who are younger. The series, therefore, will contribute much new work, approaching the subject with vertically throughout the period from c. 400 to c. 1500 or horizontally throughout the whole of Christendom. The series is conceived as primarily monographic but may also include some collected essays on themes of particular relevance and the significant of individuals. The aim will be to draw authors from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, but all will share are commitment to innovation, analysis and historical accuracy.

About the book

Never before had France had a church council so large: almost 1000 churchmen assembled at Bourges on 29 November 1225 to authorize a tax on their incomes in support of the Second Albigensian Crusade. About one third of the participants were representatives sent by corporate bodies, in accordance with a new provision of canon law that insisted, for the first time ever, that there should be no taxation without representation.

Basing himself on the rich surviving records, Professor Kay paints a skilful portrait of this council: the political manoeuvering by the papal legate to ensure the tax went through, and his use of this highly public occasion to humiliate members of the University of Paris; and, on the other hand, his failure to win a permanent endowment to support the papal bureaucracy, the bishops effective protests against the popes threat to diminish their jurisdiction over monasteries, and a subsequent taxpayers revolt that challenged the validity of the tax. The book also draws out the importance and implications of what took place, highlighting the councils place at the fountainhead of European representative democracy, the impact of the decisions made on the course of the Albigensian Crusade, the reform of monasticism, and the funding of the papal government which was left to rely on stop-gap expedients, such as the sale of indulgences. In addition, the author suggests that the corpus of texts, newly edited from the original manuscripts and with English translation, could be seen as a model for the revision of the conciliar corpus, most of which still remains based on eighteenth-century scholarship that challenged the validity of the tax. The book also draws out the importance and implications of what took place, highlighting the councils place at the fountainhead of European representative democracy, the impact of the decisions made on the course of the Albigensian Crusade, the reform of monasticism, and the funding of the papal government which was left to rely on stop-gap expedients, such as the sale of indulgences. In addition, the author suggests that the corpus of texts, newly edited from the original manuscripts and with English translation, could be seen as a model for the revision of the conciliar corpus, most of which still remains based on eighteenth-century scholarship.

Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West

General Editor: Brenda Bolton

Other titles in the series:

Michelle Still

The Abbot and the Rule

Religious life at St Albans, 12901349

Gillian R. Knight

The Correspondence between Peter the

Venerable and Bernard of Clairvaux

A semantic and structural analysis

Sylvia Schein

Gateway to the Heavenly City

Crusader Jerusalem and the Catholic West (10991187)

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Adrian IV, the English Pope (11541159)

Edited by Robert C. Figueira

Plenitude of Power

The doctrines and exercise of authority in the Middle Ages