Plenitude of Power: The Doctrines and Exercise of Authority in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Robert Louis Benson

'I study power' - so Robert Louis Benson described his work as a scholar of medieval history. This volume unites papers by a number of his students dealing with matters central to Benson's historical interests - ecclesiastical institutions and administration, emperorship and papacy, canon law, and political ideology. Ranging from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages, the contributors discuss the political uses of hagiography, the suppression of heresy, the juridical authority to bind and loose, church administration of the ordering of society, the territorial limits of jurisdiction, charity and power, natural law theory, and the historiography of political theology. A final chapter presents a reflection on Benson's skills as a historian.