The Transition from Carolingian to Ottonian Rule

The hybrid role of the episcopacy in medieval Germany has long puzzled those from regions further west. As the Cistercian monk Caesarius of Heisterbach (ca. 1180-1240) makes clear in his treatise of edification for his community's novices, the Dialogue of Miracles, medieval observers no less than modern Western scholars found it difficult to imagine a bishop as a military leader (Dux) and urban lord (Stadtherr) in addition to his ministry as a spiritual shepherd.

Caesarius’ supply of only three bishops who had successfully combined piety, priesthood, and princely rule suggests an awareness of the rarity with which this ideal was ever achieved. And the point is especially poignant when one notes that Caesarius nestled this passage as a chapter (27) within a Distinctio on repentance, which he earlier (in Chapter 1) celebrates with the aphorism: “The least contrition obliterates the greatest guilt, and perfect contrition certainly removes guilt and punishment simultaneously.” The monks of Heisterbach surely recognized the risks their bishops took in assuming temporal power, with most of the pontiffs hoping at best for divine forgiveness of their guilt with expiation still to come in the next life and at worst risking the loss of salvation for failing to even repent.