FOR THE most part, post-Conquest narratives convey the impression that there were only two types of bishops in late Anglo-Saxon England: pious monastic bishops and worldly secular ones. This dichotomy emerges clearly in the stock portraits analyzed in chapter 1, particularly in the writings of the monk-historians. While most medievalists recognize these characterizations as topoi, they have nevertheless crept into the modern historiography of the Church because of a curious lack of interest in non-monastic bishops, either individually or as a group, or in the so-called secular activities of the episcopate. Only a few modern historians of early medieval England have evinced any real interest in exploring the dimensions of episcopal power in the secular as well as the spiritual realm. Yet Anglo-Saxon bishops, like all early medieval bishops, regularly exercised power in a variety of secular arenas, and contemporary sources reflect little, if any, discomfort with either the theory or the practice. Only the participation of bishops and other clerics in warfare seems to have engendered any comment. Ælfric of Eynsham, for one, wrote that the fight of bishops was a spiritual one, and that they would do more harm than good by abandoning the fight against spiritual enemies in favor of earthly ones. Ecclesiastical canons are also reasonably clear in their condemnation of warrior clerics, bishops included. Likewise, an eleventh-century tract known as the Northumbrian Priests’ Law fines priests for bringing weapons into church. And later, two versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle would say of Leofgar, bishop of Hereford, that:

It is unclear, however, if proscriptions against participation in warfare were mere rhetorical conventions or widely held convictions. The assignment of an unworldly prelate to the Welsh marches in the reign of Edward the Confessor was perhaps tantamount to a death sentence, and it is more reasonable to suppose that Leofgar was chosen for this dangerous assignment precisely because he was a competent military leader.