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RELIGIOUS LIFE AND ORGANIZATION 411
soil. The thirteenth century by contrast was the time ofselection
and harvest, and the turn of the century between the two ages
gained a real significance from its coincidence with the pontiff
cate ofInnocent III and the celebration ofthe Fourth Lateran
Council, from the formal foundation of the universities, and
from the rise of the orders of friars. The papacy, indeed, as a
result of the vagaries of King John, had under Innocent III
acquired a great, if accidental and in some ways excessive,
interest in English affairs. This passed, and the reaction under
Edward I more than recovered the ground for the monarchy.
The real significance ofthe century lies not in the realm ofecclex
siastical
politics but in that of organization, administration,
and consolidation. The bishops of England, from the days of
Stephen Langton to those ofRobert Winchelsey, were for the
most part men trained in the schools; they were also, if consi
dered as a body, men of practical ability and upright character
which often approximated and sometimes attained to the high
level of sanctity. It was, therefore, a century ofdiocesan bishops
who, instructed in the canon law, and fortified by the ancient
powers of correction reaffirmed by the Council and by the
new precision ofsacramental legislation, worked methodically
throughout England at the task of establishing an educated,
respectable, and economically independent priesthood and of
providing preachers and confessors for the increasing popular
tion, both in the country and in the new urban centres. The
new tasks and the trained minds demanded tools and agents,
and the thirteenth century saw the bishop's household and the
diocesan courts take final shape, while the appearance ofofficial
registers and archives of every kind reflect and perpetuate the
new methods ofadministration. They deserve consideration in
somewhat greater detail.
Before the Conquest diocesan administrative machinery,
where it existed at all, was simple and primitive. The bishop
must always have had a few priests and other clerks who made
arrangements for him and assisted him in the ordinations, con^
secrations, and confirmations that he performed, and besides
the collection of charters that were his warrant for his see's