English Episcopal Acta, Volume 40

These volumes are part of the English Episcopal Acta project, designed to edit all documents issued by bishops in England from the Norman Conquest to the advent of Episcopal registers in each individual diocese. These two volumes complete the work for the diocese of Norwich, which included the most heavily populated and richest region of medieval England and contained a very large number of religious houses. The present volumes contain 375 episcopal charters and letters (in addition to 830 published in the previous Norwich volumes). A substantial introduction contains short biographies of the three bishops and details of their household, and a discussion of the very varied subject-matter and the diplomatic formulae of the acta. A series of appendices contain, inter alia, earlier acta recently located, references to acta now lost and to the use of the Episcopal seal, and itineraries of the bishops. Along with other volumes in this series, this collection both illustrates the changing mechanisms of church government in the 12th and 13th centuries, and provides a view of English church and society, from relations with the crown through the regulation of religious houses, to parochial organisation, unattainable before the systematic collection of such documents.