This article examines the inquisition against Botulf, the only person known to have been executed for heresy in medieval Sweden. It analyses the tactics of evasion that Botulf employed to escape detection and apprehension by tapping into common conceptions of the Eucharist to gloss his dissent. Through a close reading of the sentence in its historical, cultural and liturgical context, the article argues that it not only records a unique case in medieval Sweden, but that it performs clerical and elite identities by drawing on biblical and liturgical topoi, as well as antiheretical rhetoric to depict Botulf as a ‘membrum diaboli’.

This article examines the failed reform of the abbey of Grestain by Arnulf, bishop of Lisieux (r. 1141–81). Faced with a disobedient abbot, in whose absence the monks had resorted to violence and murder, Arnulf saw an opportunity to stamp his authority on his diocese by turning the monastery into a house of canons regular. Arnulf’s policies were shaped by the example of his older brother John, bishop of Sées (r. 1124–44), and his uncle and predecessor in his own bishopric John of Lisieux (r. 1107–41), as well as his mentor Geoffrey of Lèves, bishop of Chartres (r. 1116–49). A close reading of Arnulf’s letters demonstrates that Arnulf's conception of religious leadership and his representation of the crisis at Grestain were formed not only by familial networks, but also by the wider social and educational ideals of the eleventh and twelfth centuries filtered through the Victorines.