Bishops, Community and Authority in Late Roman Society

When the bishop Hydatius found himself held hostage in Gallaecia, a Roman province in the northwestern Iberian Peninsula, by a band of Sueves in the year 460, he deployed his experience as an ambassador for his congregation and used his captivity as a tool for negotiating peace. As this example shows, bishops held considerable economic, political, and social power in the early Middle Ages. The exp...