Clerical admonitio, Letters of Advice to Kings and Episcopal Self-Fashioning, c.1000–c.1200

This article uses letters of advice, outlining key principles of royal power, to explore how abbots and bishops in high medieval Europe sought to demonstrate compliance with widely shared norms about the role and nature of clerical counsel when interacting with kings. It will show that the type of the remonstrating cleric was deeply engrained in epistolary culture. While this expectation may not always reflect how dealings between prelates and rulers unfolded in practice, it nonetheless points to a pervasive framework of remonstration and admonition that was integral to high medieval European political and clerical culture.