Episcopal acta in Normandy, 911–1204: the Charters of the Bishops of Avranches, Coutances and Sées

Summary

The launch of the British Academy’s English Episcopal Acta (EEA) project in 1973, and the publication of its first volume in 1980, along with the further forty-one that have since come to press, have helped to revolutionize our understanding of the English Church in the High Middle Ages. Whereas previous generations of scholars interested in such documents had been forced to rely upon scattered, outdated and very often difficult-to-access published and unpublished material, those working today can depend upon a body of meticulously edited texts collected together in a single series that, upon its completion, will answer the call famously made for such an undertaking by Sir Frank Stenton in 1929. Although similar rallying cries have been made elsewhere in Europe, including France, where the charge has been led most notably by Michel Parisse, the response has unfortunately not always been quite as systematic as that in England. Of those regions whose acta have been frequently consulted but comparatively neglected, that of Normandy stands out. Its episcopate was home to some of the most important figures in the Anglo-Norman world (Odo of Bayeux, Arnulf of Lisieux, Walter of Coutances, etc.), while its archives, despite the upheavals of the French Revolution and the Second World War, often boast collections as rich as any of those across the Channel. Yet, until the beginning of the twenty-first century, the acta of only one of the duchy’s seven dioceses, that of Bayeux, along with those of one particular prelate, namely Hugh of Amiens, archbishop of Rouen (1130–64), had been the subject of a critical edition, with both works remaining so far unpublished.

Recent years, however, have witnessed a resurgence of scholarly interest in the acta of the bishops of Normandy. Not only are editions currently under way for the three dioceses that are the subject of this article, but colleagues in France and the United States are also working to collect and edit the acta of the other bishops of Normandy active during this period, with the Presses universitaires de Caen having committed, in principle at least, to publish the resulting volumes both in print and online.