The commentary by Ralph Niger on the Books of Samuel and Kings survives in a single copy kept in the library of Lincoln Cathedral. In this work, Niger sets about providing a complex literal gloss on these historical books of the Bible, as well as using allegorical, tropological (or moral), and anagogical (referring to superior things) interpretations. The exposition of all possible literal meanings, with a view to etymology, and the lack of any systematic arrangement account for the unusual length of this commentary, which fills two volumes (MSS 25 and 26) of 188 and 174 folios respectively, the text being written in two columns of sixty lines each. The way Ralph Niger stacks up different layers of interpretation may baffle the reader, even when taking into account the rules of the genre, and his approach is often obscured by ambiguity. A number of indications, however, show that he conceived his commentary as dominated by tropological interpretation. In his universal chronicle, having just written about the prophetic writings of Joachim of Fiore and of Geoffrey of Auxerre, former abbot of Clairvaux, on the Apocalypse, he refers to this earlier work as Moralia Regum, among other works of his, including an epithome of the Old Testament, as well as commentaries on Chronicles and Ezra. In a general address to the Roman cardinals placed at the beginning of MS 25, he explains that since the varieties of governments find their origin in the morality of men, he has chosen from the start to study the moralia of kings, whose authority and example provide instruction for all others, as a community and as individuals. A few lines further down, he states that since the movements of the soul spring from morals, and since the rights of governments proceed from the movements of princes, he considers it a useful endeavour, in order to distinguish the one from the other, to discuss the moralia regum, for there is no doubt that governments (regiminum moderamina) are formed according to them. In both cases, Niger refers to the moral actions of kings. In the following sections of the commentary, however, moralia is used in wider contexts. For instance, in Book II, on 1 Sam 7, 5, Niger explains that having left the house of Sacred Scripture, Samuel taught moralia by the example of his life.

In recent years, historians of medieval administration have become increasingly interested in hierarchies of power and the delegation of power. A number of significant studies have focused on the administrative organization of the Church, covering such topics as papal legates and judges delegated by the papacy, or the conflicts provoked by the emergence of a new figure in the bishop's administration, the official. Analysis of the enhanced distinction between the power of order and the power of jurisdiction has also led to new approaches to the study of medieval ecclesiology. Equally, accountability has been the subject of growing interest, whether in the monastic world or more recently in the context of clerical administration. To some extent, this rich historiography reflects the existence of contemporary debates which led to a more precise vision of the internal structure of the Church, whether it concerned papal authority, or the respective areas of action of the bishop and the other dignitaries of the cathedral church – as illustrated by the conflict between Bishop Grosseteste and the chapter of Lincoln Cathedral between 1239 and 1245.

When it comes to the exercise of temporal power, however, complex theoretical arguments appeared later than in the Church. In the later Middle Ages and early modern period, civilian lawyers put into place a hierarchical conception of authority and power in the temporal field, based on the concept of imperium. In France, the most complex expression of this is found in the work of Jean Bodin (1530–96). As David Johnston has shown, in the treatise Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (1566), Bodin divided the authority of a magistrate into two parts: one was attributed to the magistrate by law, while he received the other by virtue of his office, a distinction Bodin borrowed from the Roman jurist Papinian. Bodin's aim was to limit the degree of merum imperium which any magistrate could claim to hold. In the Six livres de la république published ten years later, the agenda was different. In a conceptual framework that borrowed heavily from civil law, Bodin now aimed at defining the nature of sovereignty (which he identified with the concept of maiestas): this he did by determining which powers the sovereign could concede without any loss to himself.

Across medieval Europe, the distinction between authority (auctoritas or dignitas) and power (potestas) was at the heart of the theoretical reflection on powers, most especially in the form of the division between ecclesiastical authority and temporal power, inherited from Pope Gelasius. An alternative analysis distinguished implicitly between the power and authority held by the prince, and various forms of delegated power: in practice, lords or their representatives exerted power over localities and/or populations, but their legitimacy rested on the authority of a distant prince. In the case of kings, the personal nature of kingship raised specific questions about the continuity of authority and the risks created by the king's absence, incapacity or death. The growing separation between the person of the king and the dignity of the Crown may have helped resolve this issue. In England, the Boulogne Agreement of 31 January 1308 is usually considered as the first textual evidence of the clear separation between the Crown and the person of the king. However, earlier texts had already enhanced the perennial nature of the royal dignitas.

In fact, there were many instances when authority of various ranks and forms was absent: through legal minority, vacancy or physical or mental incapacity; under duress (by captivity or exile); or through conscious choice due to a plurality of business commitments or priorities beyond the physical jurisdiction of the individual(s) in power. These absences were experienced in various ways, and prompted a variety of responses. We might, of course, identify common legal principles and customs which evolved over time to respond to such crises or interregna, and to guide the appointment and management of proxy authority in ruling dynasties and governments, national and trans-national institutions (such as characterized both the secular and regular churches), and thus communities small and large (from individual households, families and businesses through wider associations such as guilds and on to towns and city states). However, given the huge variety of experiences across the many kingdoms, lordships and institutions of medieval Europe which have been highlighted by recent collaborative surveys of similar themes – such as hereditary succession or the development of office-holding and representative assembly – the editors of this present volume chose, quite deliberately, to set no very fixed parameters in inviting contributions which reflected as wide a geographical, socio-political and methodological spectrum as possible.

This paper stems from a project which aims at providing a general study of texts reflecting on power in England in a ‘long thirteenth century’. In particular, it examines the way commentators on Scripture considered themes such as political legitimacy and limits to temporal power, the kingdom and the idea of community, or the way power ought to be exercised. Although they probably expressed the majority view, the systematic questioning of Scripture led them to depart from available norms and discourses and progressively to construct new patterns of reference. In this context, the notion of uncertainty may help renew our understanding of political ideas in thirteenth-century England and in particular highlight the contribution of relatively neglected or lesser authors.

The life and works of Thomas Docking

Among these is Thomas Docking, a Franciscan of the Oxford convent. Thomas Docking, or Thomas Good, probably came from the village of Docking (Norfolk). He is mentioned for the first time in the correspondence of Adam Marsh, in a letter dated from 1251, in which Marsh asks the provincial minister, William of Nottingham, to assign to Thomas Docking the Bible that used to be in the possession of ‘P. of Worcester’, deceased. Marsh praises Docking for ‘his upright and most gracious life, the clarity and perspicacity of his intellect, his outstanding progress in learning, and his ready and eloquent speech’. At the beginning of the 1250s Docking may still have been a young brother; on the other hand the loan of a Bible was perhaps meant to facilitate his exegetical work. He is mentioned in later sources as a doctor in theology and became the seventh lector of the Oxford convent; he was probably active there in the mid 1260s, before moving to the convent of Norwich. But in 1269 he took part in the controversy between the Dominicans and the Franciscans in Oxford on the issue of the gifts made to the Franciscan convent. This is the last we hear about him and he may have died a short while later.

Docking established his reputation as an exegete. He is mentioned as the author of a biblical grammar and of commentaries on Job and on the Sentences, but these texts have not survived. The works that have come down to us are his commentaries on Isaiah, Deuteronomy, the Pauline epistles (incomplete) and Luke, as well as a quaestio on Job.

The reign of Louis IX (1226–70) was marked by an ambitious policy of reform within the French kingdom as well as by a number of significant initiatives in the context of relations with the other European states – illustrated by Louis as a king of peace – and the Muslim world, in particular the renewal of the crusade. Louis also deliberately cultivated an image close to contemporary models of sanctity. After the death of the king at Tunis, this image was taken up and developed by several authors in the context of the procedure that eventually led to his canonisation in August 1297 and then as part of the policy of ideological reinforcement of the French monarchy at the turn of the century.

The ‘Teachings’ that Saint Louis delivered for the sake of his heir and successor Philippe hold a significant place in this construct. This famous text contains prescriptions concerning the spiritual life of the prince – including the choice of his confessors –, his moral behaviour, the protection he ought to give the Church, the company he must keep, his duty of obedience to the pope. Other articles deal more specifically with the government of the kingdom: the king should cut the expenditure of his household and control his agents, he should not wage unjust wars and, if he must go to war, he should limit the impact of military action on populations. Also, he ought to be a just and merciful judge, he should redress all wrongs (even if the decision is not favourable to him), and outlaw blasphemy and heresy in his kingdom.

By convening in Paris, the 2009 meeting broke with precedent: this was the first Thirteenth-Century England conference to be held outside the British Isles. We very much hope that this will set a precedent, and that in future other meetings, too, will reflect by their venue the degree to which England formed part of a larger cultural, political, religious, economic and social whole. In 2009, the specific occasion for crossing the Channel was the 750th anniversary of the Treaty of Paris, the agreement in which Henry III surrendered his claim to Normandy, Anjou and Poitou, and which inaugurated a period of relative and, though temporary, nonetheless largely unparalleled calm in dealings between the rulers of England and France. This context is reflected in the papers published here, many of which focus on dealings between the kingdoms of England and France and their inhabitants, with a separate group of papers specifically on the Treaty of Paris and its aftermath. Yet, in keeping with the traditions of the conference, the venue did not determine the range of topics discussed.

The papers on the Treaty of Paris, which sat at the heart of the conference and are published here as a self-contained group, reflect the variety of ways in which the Treaty and its associated history, especially its later history, can be addressed. Daniel Power considers the ways in which an Anglo-Norman aristocracy struggled to elide their dynastic ambitions with the machinations of high politics in this period. The movement of familial land and access to it was constrained by the claims of the separated English and French states; while the Treaty of Paris did not occasion a final rupture and in fact served to ease some cross-Channel management of family lands, the futures of English and French dynasties were frequently quite discrete by the later thirteenth century. This Anglo-Norman tension over rights and property is also evident in William Chester Jordan's paper, in which he discusses the significance of the dispute concerning the status of the small Gloucestershire priory of Deerhurst following its purchase by Earl Richard of Cornwall in 1250 from the French abbey of St Denis, of which Deerhurst had been a dependency since the days of Edward the Confessor.