The thirteenth century saw the triumph of the Gothic style in architecture in the building of great cathedrals all across Europe, a phenomenon much celebrated by modern art historians. The material support offered to ecclesiastical institutions is probably most often explored by historians with regard to aristocratic patronage and to donations made in connection with the preparations for a 'Good Death'. The Fourth Lateran Council, for example, apparently dealt with the issue by decreeing that all sacraments had to be administered for free, contrary to customary practice. The papacy not only tried to control lay payments to local churches more vigorously but ecclesiastical expenditure also became the object of scrutiny and legislation in the thirteenth century. The earliest English examples show that initially bishops who approved such grants considered them to be temporary and required owners to attend parish services as well. One document from the city hospital in Vienna can illustrate the new directions of material support.

The history of the church in Europe in the tenth and early eleventh centuries is essentially the history of many local churches, in which the dominant role in secular ecclesiastical and religious life was played by the bishops. Parish churches are associated not only with smaller units of a city, such as those created by Bishop Burchard in Worms in the early eleventh century, and with areas in the countryside, but also with individual lords' estates, the so-called Eigenkirchen. The charters witness to contact being maintained between the papacy and churches in England, France, Spain and Germany as well as in Italy and Rome itself. Ever since their first bishop, Anskar, had preached the Gospel in Denmark and Sweden, the bishops, in the way Adam of Bremen tells their story, directed their energies towards establishing the church in Scandinavia. The conciliar decisions of the tenth century overall have a clear and acknowledged debt to Carolingian church councils.