Filed with 60.11.2 Christianity · Related: 60.11 Religion · 60.23 History
Core difference
Freeman’s The Closing of the Western Mind treats bishops mainly as late-antique political, social, and doctrinal power brokers inside the Roman Empire after Constantine.
Bartlett’s The Making of Europe treats bishops/bishoprics mainly as institutional units of Latin Christendom’s expansion in the High Middle Ages: dioceses, sees, papal obedience, Latin liturgy, territorial organization, and Roman uniformity.
So: Freeman = how bishops became powerful within the Christian Roman state.
Bartlett = how bishoprics mapped, organized, and expanded Latin Christian Europe.
Charles Freeman —
The Closing of the Western Mind
Freeman focuses especially on the fourth to seventh centuries, with heavy emphasis on the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. His table of contents shows chapters on Constantine, fourth-century bishops, Ambrose, Eastern Christianity from 395–600, and Catholic Christianity in the West from 395–640.
For Freeman, bishops undergo a dramatic status change after Constantine. In the early fourth century, under Diocletian, bishops were still vulnerable to persecution. By 325, Constantine was hosting bishops at Nicaea and integrating them into imperial politics. Freeman describes this as a “dramatic reversal” in which bishops gained patronage, wealth, prestige, and access to the machinery of state.
The bishop becomes a civic authority figure, not merely a religious teacher. Freeman says bishops came to have a stake in “good order,” and when traditional city elites and western imperial government weakened, bishops often took control. Their hierarchy also came to mirror the Roman political hierarchy: provincial capitals became seats of metropolitan bishops, who supervised other bishops in the province.
Freeman also stresses bishops as administrators and social managers. They mediated tax and military exemptions, represented cities to imperial officials, calmed riots, defended cities, protected or managed the poor, controlled begging licenses, oversaw charity, and sometimes restrained Christian mobs. He summarizes the office as combining spiritual leader, patron, estate manager, builder, law-and-order official, city representative, and protector of the poor.
Doctrinally, bishops are central but not fully autonomous. Freeman presents councils like Nicaea as gatherings of bishops under imperial auspices, with Constantine dominating the process because he wanted unity and public order. Bishops helped define doctrine, but emperors often set the political framework and enforced orthodoxy.
Freeman’s basic claim: bishops became a new governing elite of late antiquity. Their rise helped bind Christianity to wealth, social order, imperial authority, and doctrinal enforcement.
Robert Bartlett —
The Making of Europe
Bartlett’s book covers 950–1350, stated directly in the title page. His bishop discussion begins with “The Spread of Bishoprics 950–1300,” where he uses bishoprics as a measurable way to track the expansion of Latin Christendom.
For Bartlett, the key unit is not simply the individual bishop but the bishopric/diocese. A bishopric is concrete: it has an incumbent bishop, usually a cathedral, a named diocese, clerics, saints, endowments, churches, and territory. Bartlett says bishoprics are useful because they can be named, counted, and mapped.
He treats bishoprics as the cells of Latin Christendom. Every part of Christendom was supposed to belong to a defined see, and no place was supposed to be outside episcopal jurisdiction. Bishops ordained priests, confirmed the faithful, and acted as judges; if bishops disappeared, Bartlett says, the Church would soon disappear.
Bartlett’s time frame is later than Freeman’s, but he does look backward. He notes that ancient Christianity was city-based, so the oldest bishoprics reflected the Roman civic world. But as Christianity spread into non-Roman and non-urban regions like Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England, episcopal organization adapted: bishops could be tied to peoples or regions before becoming fixed city-based dioceses. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Latin norm of territorial, city-based episcopacy was re-established.
Bartlett also links bishoprics to frontier expansion. In eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and the Baltic, new bishoprics were signs that Latin Christendom had pushed outward. For example, he describes tenth- and eleventh-century Scandinavian sees, Danish bishoprics, the organization of Denmark’s church, and the later creation of archbishoprics in Sweden and Norway.
In Chapter 10, Bartlett shifts from bishoprics to the papacy. Latin Christendom is defined by both rite and obedience: Latin liturgy and recognition of Roman authority. One bishop, the bishop of Rome, becomes superior to all others. From the mid-to-late eleventh century, papal power becomes more enforceable, ritual uniformity more real, and Latin Christians increasingly define themselves through obedience to Rome.
By the early thirteenth century, papal authority is operating through letters, legates, councils, and bishops. Bartlett notes that over 400 bishops came to Rome for the Lateran Council of 1215, while papal legates governed, intervened, and even led military-political projects.
Bartlett’s basic claim: bishoprics were the institutional skeleton of Latin Europe. They measured, organized, and standardized the spread of Roman Christian authority across Europe.
How they differ
| Issue | Freeman | Bartlett |
|---|---|---|
| Main period | Late antiquity, especially 4th–5th centuries; extends to about 640 | High Middle Ages, especially 950–1350; bishopric spread 950–1300 |
| Main setting | Roman Empire and post-Roman late antique world | Expanding Latin Christendom: Iberia, east-central Europe, Scandinavia, Baltic, British Isles |
| Main focus | Bishops as powerful civic, social, doctrinal, and political figures | Bishoprics as territorial institutions and units of Christian expansion |
| Key transformation | From persecuted clergy to wealthy, elite, semi-governmental authorities | From older/local/non-urban arrangements to standardized territorial dioceses under Rome |
| Relationship to state | Bishops become incorporated into imperial administration and public order | Bishops/bishoprics operate within papal monarchy and Latin Christian expansion |
| Role of Rome | Rome’s bishop has symbolic claims, but limited practical doctrinal impact early on | Bishop of Rome becomes the superior bishop; papal authority becomes central and enforceable |
| Big thesis | Bishops helped Christianity become tied to authority, orthodoxy, hierarchy, and the suppression of independent rational inquiry | Bishoprics helped create a uniform Latin Europe through dioceses, liturgy, law, papal obedience, and frontier expansion |
Bottom line
Freeman is explaining the birth of episcopal power: how bishops became elite managers of cities, doctrine, charity, order, and imperial religion in late antiquity.
Bartlett is explaining the medieval deployment of episcopal institutions: how bishoprics became the territorial grid by which Latin Christendom expanded, standardized, and Romanized Europe.
Put simply: Freeman’s bishops are rulers inside a Christianizing empire; Bartlett’s bishoprics are the infrastructure of a Christianizing Europe.