As a subgenre of medieval history, microhistories are notoriously tricky to balance: if they are too narrow and deeply focused on a small region, books are passed over by scholars looking for comparanda or the liber novus in their field; if they are too ambitious in their attempt to connect some local occasion to broader currents, they risk appearing like the undergraduate paper that begins with “throughout all of human history” and lacks any sense of droll self-effacement. In his 2023 contribution to Routledge’s Microhistories series, Andrew G. Miller strikes a careful balance between local and parochial historiography and an awareness of wider events. The result is a useful, if intentionally restrained, volume about the conflict between Bishop Oliver Sutton of Lincoln and John St. John, a royal household knight of Edward I of England. The two magnates engaged in a direct and protracted struggle to appoint their favorites--a nephew and a son, respectively--to the vicarage of the parish church of Thame, with all of its attendant boons, prebends and privileges.
The volumes chapters are mostly concerned with narrating the back-and-forth of the conflict between the two homines magni, but the project does helpfully begin with a formal introduction and a first chapter laying out the landscape and the dramatis personae. The introduction lays out many important questions of format for the sources deployed in the work, examines the nature of the positions that were being contested, the roles of verbal and physical violence, and the ways in which the conflict mapped out onto the wider history of England. The first chapter then sketches the biographical details of the contestants, paying special attention to their wider network of familiares and the places where they were especially strong. Following these, the next five chapters study the three separate protracted instances of violent conflict over whose candidate would hold a wealthy benefice in the far south of the diocese of Lincoln, the final endgame of the attacks and suits and counterattacks, and the resolution and royal arbitration of the conflict as a whole.
Miller’s greatest strength in the volume is his patient attention to the diplomatic of the case, especially the rolls from the royal court and the ecclesiastical archival material. Working from this base of evidence, his careful reconstruction of the episcopal itineraries of Oliver Sutton situates much of the conflict in the lived space of 1290s England, permitting a more careful deployment of that evidence to work out what happened and when. Although this attention to the episcopal cause positions him on the “side” of the Suttons, his treatment of John St. John (and the wider royal household of Edward I and the magnates of contemporary England) never appears overtly or problematically biased against the St. John cause. Indeed, the volume’s secondary focus on constructed and perceived masculinities--defined differently for clergy and laity--makes many of the distinctions between the parties more subtle. Modern scholars, indeed, have more in common (usually) with bookish medieval churchmen than they do with thirteenth century warriors, so some of this bias may be a kind of occupational hazard.
Where the volume is perhaps at its weakest is that, as a microhistory, the consulted comparanda are narrow themselves. To a degree, this is by design: the examined details of a comparison are often more fruitful when the subjects are closer since so much is held in common. However, the use of French or English comparisons and the absence of material from much of the mediterranean world make the direct application of this microhistory more challenging. Where, for instance, was the work of Loud or Bruzelius for Norman and Angevin Sicily? Peter Linehan’s work on the Church in Iberia appears, but only his 1971 Spanish Church and the Papacy, rather than the more influential History and the Historians of Medieval Spain. Of course, some of this is perhaps an unfair criticism by degrees: microhistories do best when they remain focused, but the overt Anglo-French preference in the comparative material limits the accessibility of the material for use by scholars seeking other connections to their own work. One wonders whether this book’s bibliographic heritage would have been richer in a series that was less constrained by the norms of microhistorical scholarship.
Scholars of Medieval England will find this book useful. Scholars of the Medieval Church will find this book useful. Scholars of patronage, legal culture, or masculinity will find parts of this book useful. Miller’s work is careful and thoughtful, at times a bit humorously self-referential, but his book makes a pleasant contribution to the wider study of the tack-and-gibe of the development of the medieval church. As a historian of the medieval Iberian church, I can imagine using this book for research moving forward, but I suspect that the closer one’s research gets to late thirteenth century England, the more useful the book will actually become. This is a normal thing, and more than enough praise for a perfectly useful book, especially for a microhistory.