Eight hundred years ago, in 1204, sixty years of Angevin rule in Normandy came to an end when King John failed to defend the duchy against Philip Augustus, king of France. This dramatic change of the ruling dynasty in what had been a central region of the Angevin empire has been much discussed among historians. In particular the extent to which John's own behaviour contributed to the events of 1204 has been controversial. The judgements ranged from James Holt's view that the structure of the Angevin empire was the major reason for its collapse, to John Gillingham's verdict that King John was an incompetent ruler badly mishandling the opportunities given. During the past decades scholars assessing John's scope of action at the eve of 1204 have paid particular attention to the question of his financial resources. The question of his relationship with the Norman bishops, by contrast, has only very recently been re-addressed. The matter seemed to have been settled in 1922, when Sidney Packard concluded in his article on ‘King John and the Norman Church’ that ‘the Norman Church was an important factor in the complex situation which made the loss of Normandy inevitable; at the very least, the Norman Church willingly permitted that event to take place’. Subsequent scholars came to no substantially different conclusions: the Norman church welcomed a ruler promising less harsh treatment; considering the whole of the Angevin dominions, Odette Pontal even concluded that ‘l'épiscopat manifeste son esprit de corps contre la tyrannie de Jean sans Terre’.