In the forty-fifth volume of this venerable series, editor Brian Kemp presents the acta of two contiguous bishops, Jocelin of Wells (1206-1242) and Roger of Salisbury (1244-1247), who straddle the period of change in the diocese from a combined episcopate of Bath and Glastonbury to one of Bath and Wells. Indeed, Bishop Jocelin was the person responsible for the enhancement of Wells into cathedral status, and the return of Glastonbury to its monastic origins.
The volume is divided between an extensive introduction, the acta themselves, and a series of appendices: amendments to the Bath and Wells volume of the Fasti ecclesiae; a list of dataries for both bishops; their itineraries; and newly-found additions to volume X of English Episcopal Acta, which published the acta of the diocese between 1061 and 1205 under the editorship of Frances M. R. Ramsey (1995). The very useful introduction is itself divided into small subsections: biographies of the two bishops, a description of their households, the format of the acta, and the editorial conventions used by the editor. A lot of information is crammed into the relatively concise seventy-three pages of the introduction.
With respect to the acta, Kemp introduces his transcriptions with information about the provenance of each document, as well as a detailed description of it. Contextual information is provided after the transcription of most acta. Kemp does not abbreviate the documents, except those which, like the inspeximuses included in the volume, repeat information at length.
Like the other volumes in the series, the documents reproduced provide interesting information on the business of the diocese at particular moments in its history. Bishop Jocelin, associated as he was with Wells, was determined to raise the church of St. Andrew to episcopal status, from which it had been reduced during the episcopate of the first post-Conquest bishop, John of Tours (1088-1122). In order to do so, he had to placate Glastonbury, which had been elevated to episcopal status by Jocelin's predecessor, Bishop Savaric (1192-1205). Glastonbury returned to abbatial status in 1219--a number of documents chronicle this process (nos. 48 to 62). Jocelin's lengthy tenure as bishop also provides the reader with a picture of the bishop as political actor, in part because of the lacunae in the document record, which reflect some of his conflicts with King John--he went into exile between 1210 and 1213--and his rehabilitation in the early years of Henry III's reign. Scholars of medieval diocesan structure will find the ways in which Jocelin enriched the church of St. Andrew in anticipation of its elevation to be fascinating. Jocelin's patronage of particular monastic foundations, in particular those of the Carthusians, is reflected in his 1229 inspeximus of Countess of Salisbury, Ela Longespeye's, foundation charter for the charterhouse of Hinton, which she founded in honor of her late husband, Earl William (no. 75). Another inspeximus outlines the complicated process by which the advowson of Painswick church, a relatively modest grant, came into the possession of Llanthony Priory in the twelfth century (no. 91a): a revealing series of documents that scholars of relations between the medieval baronage and the church would find illuminating.
Bishop Jocelin's lengthy episcopate resulted in a robust, if discontinuous, series of documents that map his influence in the region between the Severn estuary and the south Somerset and Dorset coasts. Bishop Roger of Salisbury's much shorter tenure--barely three years--resulted in far fewer total acta, but within a far more concentrated period. Of greatest interest here might be the settlement of matters that had to be ironed out between the churches of Bath and Wells--in particular the process of electing a bishop--at the moment when the two cathedral churches were subsumed into one diocese (no. 186). A series of documents, numbers 201 to 207, outline the ways in which the income to maintain Wells cathedral would be directed. Comparatively more acta involving laypeople and temporalities of the diocese survive for Bishop Roger's tenure than for Bishop Jocelin--fifteen for the latter over the course of thirty-six years in comparison to eleven over three years for the former--but this could easily be the result of changes in recordkeeping by the middle years of the thirteenth century rather than a particular episcopal interest in the patronage of laymen and -women on the part of Bishop Roger.
This is a solid, workmanlike volume with excellent English descriptions of the Latin acta, a benefit for the growing number of students of medieval history who do not have a good command of Latin. Although the best use of the documents edited in this collection is probably to compare them to similar collections in the series rather than to consider this as a standalone work, some general takeaways might be made on the basis of the acta housed here. The dearth of documents focusing on temporalities in the diocese limits the utility of the volume for researchers interested in relations between laypeople and the religious community of the diocese. In particular, the number of women who figure in these acta is unusually small. Only Countess Ela of Salisbury and Countess Cecily of Hereford, granddaughter of Hugh de Lacy, one of the founders of Llanthony Priory, figure as significant patrons. Family relationships in general are difficult to tease out of these documents, with the exception of Bishop Jocelin and his brother, Hugh of Wells, who was archdeacon of Wells during his brother's episcopate. In contrast, the acta reveal the energies of one longlived and vigorous bishop--Jocelin--and the initial steps of a quite different bishop--Robert--to reinforce the business of his predecessor. It could be quite useful to compare, as Kemp engages, in a general way, in his introduction, the actions of Bishop Jocelin and those of his episcopal peers such as Richard Poore of Salisbury and others. This might be especially interesting in the context of the volatile period between 1210 and 1245, when so many political upheavals were churning in the kingdom. It would also seem that there was no great love lost between archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton and Bishop Jocelin, although no great conflict, either, as Jocelin apparently took pains to keep well away from the baronial conflicts that resulted in Magna Carta, despite his exile. Jocelin's neutrality might have served him better than Archbishop Stephen's activism, because he seems to have figured in the maintenance of the realm and education of the young king during Henry III's minority. This series of possibilities could, too, be useful as a comparison with his peers.
Thus, like the other volumes in the series, Kemp's edition of the acta of Bath and Wells in the first half of the thirteenth century provides interesting fodder for speculation about the business of the church in England at a particular time and in a particular place.