IN 1939, Professor Frank Barlow produced the first of his distinguished biographies of great figures of the central Middle Ages. As a biography as such it is short, for it constitutes part of the introduction to his edition of the letters of Bishop Arnulf of Lisieux. Like Professor Barlow's later biographies, it sets its protagonist in a broad cultural context, as well as establishing his career in church and government. As the young Arnulf spent formative years as a clerk in the household of Geoffrey of Lèves, bishop of Chartres, this chapter sets out to expand on Professor Barlow's perceptive comments as to what, in the making of Arnulf, that might have meant, by looking at Geoffrey's world, and Geoffrey's cultural context. But with Geoffrey, we confront the central theme of this volume, the problems and limitations of medieval biography, since rarely has someone of such contemporary prominence been so elusive to historians.

Geoffrey was bishop of Chartres from 1116, in succession to the formidable St Ivo, until his death in 1149. These were turbulent years in the northern French church, as ecclesiastical reform and political power struggles became inextricably mixed. From the mid 1120s to the mid 1130s, the Capetian kingdom hovered on the verge of civil war.