military purposes. As bishop, he was an imperial elector, and one of his first acts was to help elect the Count of Holland as the anti-Staufen king of Germany. He was allowed to remain in minor orders ‘in order to engage more freely in the affairs of the church in Germany’ - that is, lead troops in battle. He was also given dispensations to grant tithes to papal supporters, to keep benefices vacant and appropriate the proceeds to raise troops. He had expert clerks and a full-time deputy to carry out the essential work of the diocese while, for twenty-five years, he carried out his political and military duties. From his Episcopal registers, he appears a model diocesan. In fact he was a scoundrel, and eventually, when the Staufen were smashed, he lost his usefulness: in 1273, Gregory x accused him of sleeping with abbesses and nuns. fathering fourteen bastards in twenty-two months, and providing all of them with benefices. Disgraced, he reverted to his natural bent, and became a brigand. | Such men were exceptions. The trouble with most bishops, under the royal-papal carve-up, was that they were worldly and mediocre. Often they were absentees, on royal or papal business. But even if they were not officials, they were rarely active diocesans. This was not always their fault. Bishops were expected to move in great state. An Episcopal visitation thus became a serious financial burden for the inferior clergy. Odo Rigaud, the Archbishop of Rouen 1247-76, was an exemplary prelate by the standards of his time. But he travelled with a mounted retinue of eighty, and in 1251 this led to a joint protest to the Pope from all the bishops of Normandy. William of Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, was another notorious offender on this score, though the chief complaint about him was the number of his hounds and hawks (hawks had a specially expensive diet). The visitations could be carried out by vicars-general or archdeacons: but they were liable to offend just as grievously. Innocent Ill was told the Archdeacon of Richmond took with him ninety-seven horses, twenty-one hounds and three hawks. Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, laid down a maximum scale: an archbishop could not have more than fifty men and horses: bishops thirty; archdeacons seven and no hounds or hawks for any of them. The scale was never adhered to. Things were just as bad 200 years later. When Archbishop Kempe of York was criticized for visiting his diocese for only two or three weeks at a time, at intervals of ten to twelve years - this was in the mid fifteenth century - he replied that he tried to enter one archdeaconry, which none of his predecessors had visited for 150 years, but was told it was too poor - would he accept a composition instead? As a matter of fact, it is not at all clear that medieval man wanted a really devoted episcopate. The Carolingian idea that Church and State should combine to enforce Christian morals lingered on; attempts to bring it to life were not popular with any element in society. Strictly speaking, the bishop had the right to carry out Episcopal visitations among the laity as well as the clergy. He could enter the house of a lord and hold court there about the owner's morals; or subject an entire village to a sexual and financial inquisition. Robert Grosseteste, the devoted and courageous mid thirteenth century Bishop of Lincoln - perhaps the most admirable of all the medieval diocesans - actually took the Christian society, and his duties to it, seriously. In 1246-8, he carried out a thorough visitation. Among the questions he put to local panels was: Whether any layman is notoriously proud or envious or avaricious or liable to the sin of slothful depression, or rancorous or gluttonous or lecherous.' This seems to have been the most thoroughgoing effort to raise and enforce moral standards of which we have record; and so unusual as to seem intolerable. The reaction of the secular authorities was characteristic. In 1249 the bishop was summoned to appear in person before the king, to ‘show cause for his forcing unwilling men and women, under pain of excommunication, to come before him to give evidence on oath to the grievous prejudice of the crown’. The king complained that such gatherings interrupted the lawful activities of his Subjects and prevented them from performing their duties. The bishop got no support from the Pope, who deplored his moral enthusiasm, and once had a dream in which Grosseteste upbraided him and 'smote him a tremendous blow with his staff’ Most bishops would not soil their hands with lay visitations. For the enforcement of the moral law they developed the office of rural dean. He dealt with (ocal cases of fornication, Slander, non-payment of 35