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Over the course of his career in the ecclesiastical courts of Normandy and England, Peter of Blois found himself ideally positioned to observe the successes and failures of the Church’s leaders. He arrived in Normandy during the culminating years of the Becket controversy, and corresponded with (and sought the patronage of) several major players in the dispute who would shape the future of the clergy as the dust cleared. Soon after Henry II did penance at Avranches and the pope absolved him of his role in Becket’s death, Peter came to England and for two decades watched as a kind of normalcy returned, with all concerned wishing to avoid further ideological strife. The election of Richard of Dover, a relatively uncontroversial choice, to Canterbury in 1173 epitomized the period’s pervasive antipathy toward further quarreling.1 Within this climate of exhaustion and uncertainty, Peter of Blois could appreciate both the idealism of the reformers and the practical efficiency of Angevin administration . Drawing on various traditions of thought on Churchstate relations, he outlined the proper relationship between clergy and administration in terms that recognized the difficult position of the Anglo-Norman church under the Angevins. Like Richard of Dover, in whose household he served for a decade , Peter steered clear of controversy, and encouraged spiritual reform of the clergy through a monastic-ascetic program very much 5 In Search of the Ideal Bishop 176 1. For general accounts of the ecclesiastical history of this period, see Henry MayrHarting , “Henry II and the Papacy 1170–1189”; Raymonde Foreville, L’église et la royaut é en Angleterre sous Henri II Plantagenet (1154–1189) (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1943), esp. 327–564; W. L. Warren, Henry II; C. R. Cheney, From Becket to Langton: English Church Government 1170–1213 (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1956); and David Walker,“Crown and Episcopacy under the Normans and Angevins,” Anglo-Norman Studies 5 (1982): 221–33. In Search of the Ideal Bishop  177 in line with the thought of Bernard of Clairvaux and other reformers. His program for episcopal duty transcended his personal loyalties, but also reflected his position in a complex web of ecclesiastical politics. Although he never became a bishop himself, Peter took a keen interest in the episcopacy and how it should serve its king and protect its people. Peter’s letters of exhortation, admonition, and rebuke to English, Norman , and French bishops present the problem of authority most clearly of all his writings. What is (and was) one to make of the spiritual warnings issued by an oft-frustrated archdeacon to some of the most important men in the Church? It seems little short of impudent presumption for Peter to remind England’s highest-ranking ecclesiastics of their obligations . He clearly felt a compelling need both to encourage reform and to represent himself as in tune with the ideas of the great reformers. John of Salisbury usually reserved barbed or indignant letters for his equals, or else wrote them on behalf of Archbishop Theobald, while Peter, who had no major office or universally recognized sanctity to add severity to his words, imparted spiritual urgency to his letters by alluding to Scripture and reiterating the tenets of ecclesiastical reform. Making liberal use of both biblical citations and the ideas of the schools, Peter wrote as magister and minister to his flock, that is, his audience.2 Although Peter attached himself to some of Becket’s opponents early in his career, his writings on clerical and episcopal duties never coalesced into a running polemic for a particular party. He did assume the standard distinction between regnum and sacerdotium that had made its way, with modifications, from Gelasius to Gregorian polemic to canon law collections . As he did when discussing clerical court service, Peter outlined a practical theology for the good Christian shepherd, expressing antagonisms in terms of dangers to the soul rather than competing institutions or theories. This focus on the personal, rather than the political, aspects of episcopal duty may be to some degree a product of twelfth-century England’s complex ecclesiastical politics. W. L. Warren argued that the Becket conflict itself is ultimately most easily comprehensible as a clash of personalities rather than an irreconcilable difference of theological ideals.3 Charles Duggan, among others, countered that Becket viewed 2. For the Scholastic ideals that influenced this discourse, see Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants, 1:161–74; and Buc, L’ambiguité du livre. 3. Warren, Henry II, 517:“Yet it was the manner...

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