The increased interest in religion as a phenomenon and its various cultural contexts is encouraging a focus on the relationship between religion and politics. However, the political relevance of the religious and the interdependence between political and religious spheres has always been a major area of medieval research. The articles in this volume consider not only the principle inseparability of both spheres as previously established by research, but also the beginnings of a differentiation and relative autonomy of religion and politics within the framework of a comparison between Germany and the United Kingdom. This allows the identification of restrictions within the research traditions that are due to national histories and points to ways of overcoming these restrictions.

In medieval Europe, the death of a king could not only cause a dispute about the succession, but also a severe crisis. In times of a vacant throne particular responsibility fell to the bishops - whose general importance for the time around the first milennium has been revealed by recent scholarship - as royal counsellors and policy makers. This volume therefore concentrates on the bishops' room for manoeuvre and the patterns of episcopal power, focusing on the Eastern Frankish Reich and Anglo-Saxon England in a comparative approach which is not least based upon the research of a renowned medievalist, Timothy Reuter. His article about "A Europe of Bishops" ("Ein Europa der Bischofe") is presented in English translation for the first time."

Die erhohte Mobilitat im Hochmittelalter leistete einen Beitrag zur Europaisierung Skandinaviens. Der Autor geht der Frage nach, welchen aktiven Anteil die Skandinavier an diesem Integrationsprozess hatten. Dazu wahlt er einen prosopographischen Zugriff: Die Sammlung aller in nordeuropaischen und sonstigen Quellen uberlieferten Personen, die aus Skandinavien stammten und es mindestens ein Mal verlassen haben, ergibt einen Katalog von 855 Personen, 617 Reisen und 1152 Reiseteilnahmen. Die in den Quellen gefundenen Wege und Stationen der Reisenden werden abgeglichen mit einem ausfuhrlichen Itinerar des islandischen Monchs Nikulas von Munkathvera, der um 1150 eine Reise nach Rom und Jerusalem unternahm und daruber einen ausfuhrlichen Bericht in altnordischer Sprache verfasste. Der Autor untersucht ausserdem anhand eines Fallbeispiels, welche kulturellen Transferleistungen durch die Reisen angestossen wurden."