The Golden Age of Episcopal Elections 1100-1300

Almost fifty years ago Robert L. Benson published a book on elections in the Roman Catholic Church.1 A few years later, he wrote an essay that complemented his larger work.2 Benson noted that from the beginning of Christian communities election was an important element in the selection of a bishop. The early church viewed the episcopal office as a position in which the entire Christian community had a stake. Although his letter had no influence or tradition in later ecclesiastical thought, Pope Leo I (440-461) summed up the consensus of the late antique church when he wrote to the bishops of Vienne that ‘those who lead us must be elected by all’.3 The sentiment must have been widespread in the early Christian world, but it entered medieval canonical jurisprudence only through a forged papal letter.4