The origins of this collection of thirteen essays lie in the AHRC project conference, ‘A Prosopographical Study of Bishops’ Careers in Norther Europe’, held in Aberdeen in 2017. The editor has brought together a team of contributors from across Europe with papers that range over a broad chronological span, to take readers from England to Iceland, from Sweden and Norway to Poland, from the Iberian Peninsula to Italy and Croatia via France, in pursuit of questions relating to how bishops negotiated all their roles – spiritual, economic, managerial, political – as well as the often conflicting demands of the secular powers and the papacy.

The essays fall into four broad themes: cohorts of bishops; episcopal networks; individual bishops; bishops and the papacy. Within each part, the reader encounters different chronologies, geographies and methodologies. In the first, Katherine Harvey begins with the suspicion voiced by both medieval and modern commentators on thirteenth-century English bishops who had one thing in common: they were courtier bishops, typically seen as owing their promotion to the king's favour as a reward for their service. In her careful and detailed analysis, she demonstrates that – contrary to the interpretation of traditional scholarship – cathedral chapters did not always oppose such appointments, as they saw that, in a Church that increasingly demanded administrative expertise from its leaders, they too had much to gain from such appointments. Hermínia Vasconcelos Vilar remains in the thirteenth century, but shifts the focus to Portugal, and the long-standing disputes (1268–89) between the Portuguese kings, Afonso iii and his successor, and the bishops of the kingdom. The motives and actions of the bishop are analysed through discussion of their individual and collective backgrounds. Nepotism – however we are to see it – was, as Stefano G. Magni argues, a powerful ‘set of actions that influenced social change’ (p. 77); it allows the historian to investigate aristocratic attitudes to kinship and collective identity within various dioceses in fourteenth-century northern and central Italy. Of the four essays in part i, the one with the broadest chronological span is that by Christine Barralis, who examines the thirty-two bishops who held the French see of Meaux between 1197 and 1510. Through consideration of social and geographical origins, education, royal service (or lack thereof) she is able to argue for the changing status of the occupants of the see over the period studied.

Part ii turns to the subject of the importance of episcopal networks. Jacek Maciejewski examines the importance of family connections in smoothing the way for those aspiring to episcopal office, vacancies for which might open up unexpectedly. Through detailed analysis of the kinship groups of various bishops of Polish sees in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, he argues that the degree of familial influence was profound, although personal determination to succeed in gaining an episcopal appointment should not be discounted, as in the career of Jan Muscata, bishop of Cracow (1294–1320, though with periods spent in exile). Aída Portilla González draws on the twenty-eight volumes of chapter records from the cathedral of Sigünza (Castile), covering the years from 1416 to 1512, to reconstruct the social networks of members of the cathedral chapter. What emerges is a detailed analysis of the agents behind the promotion of three hundred provisions to cathedral prebends, and the relative importance of the bishop; bishop and chapter; chapter; pope; and monarch. Steinar Imsen focuses on the metropolitan see of Nidaros (Norway) with its eleven dioceses, around 1,900 parish churches (by about 1300) and forty-four monasteries, and relations between the archbishop and his suffragans. At the core of this paper is the exercise of archiepiscopal authority, the implementation of reform and the control over ecclesiastical appointments.

Part iii contains studies of individual bishops: Alberto Scolari, bishop of Volterra (1261–9) (Jacopo Paganelli); Pedro Pérez de Monroy, bishop of Salamanca (1310–24) (Fernando Gutiérrez Baños); and Luis de Acuña, bishop of Burgos (1456–95) (Susana Guijarro). These complementary essays pick up on themes discussed in earlier papers, such as networks of kinship, family and patronage, but also demonstrate the engagement of bishops in the political contexts in which they operated: rural Tuscany, the kingdom of Castile as it cultivated papal contacts, leading, inter alia to the failure of the local oligarchy to secure its own candidate for the bishopric of Salamanca; and Castile in a time of political crisis and economic stability, in which the bishop of Burgos steered a course between political elites and the Church to achieve his goal of reform.

Part iv contains three essays relating to contacts between bishops and the papacy, the first two concerning episcopal appointments and the third the nature of contacts between bishops and the papacy more generally. Fabrizio Pagnoni considers those in northern Italy during the pontificate of John xxii (1316–34), giving the reader detailed analysis of the appointments made by papal provision and its impact on the nature of the Italian episcopate. In a broader chronological survey, Mišo Petrović considers appointments to the archbishopric of Split between 1294 and 1426, arguing for the complexities of competing interests among local clergy and secular elites. Finally, Kirsi Salonen examines the contacts between the bishops of the Swedish province of Uppsala (the archbishop of Uppsala and six suffragans) and the papacy between about 1450 and 1527. Detailed investigation of papal records allows for an analysis of how frequently, and for what reasons, these churchmen travelled to Rome. The reader will find in this volume a rich discussion of interrelated themes, with fresh perspectives on this important group of churchmen in their diverse contexts.