We don't know about you, but when we think of a bishop, we think of the poet Elizabeth Bishop. Then we think of a chess piece. We're just weird like that, though. Most folks would think of a religious figure, someone with a great deal of authority and influence in a church.
Specifically, our speaker is a bishop in the Catholic church. He, too, is a man of influence and authority, but he seems a whole lot more interested in decorating than religion. The bulk of this poem, in fact, is simply directions to his sons about how to prepare his tomb once he dies.
Now wait a minute—did we say "sons"? Aren't bishops—and all Catholic priests—supposed to be celibate? It turns out that this bishop "knew" his sons' mother before he became a bishop. At first, he's a little fuzzy on how they're related: "Nephews—sons mine…ah God, I know not!" (3). Later, though, he starts to call them his "sons" exclusively: " My sons, ye would not be my death?" (36).
The bishop's past life is just the first indication we have that he's not your typical religious figure. Rather than devoting his dying breaths to God, he seems pretty hung up on some dude named Gandolf. First we learn that Gandolf was jealous of his lady friend, the sons' mother (line 5). Later, the bishop complains about how Gandolf cheated him out of a prime spot in the church for his tomb (lines 17-19). It seems like the way he'll get back at Gandolf—who is now dead, mind you—is by constructing a tomb that's so over-the-top stunning that it will shame Gandolf's resting place by comparison.
To pull this off, the bishop wants ornate carvings, a first-rate epitaph, and a ton of expensive materials. Among those, he wants a lapis lazuli stone that's as "Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape,/ Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast" (43-44). Say what? That's a pretty messed-up way to describe a decoration, as the bishop manages to offend both Jews and Christians in the same description. Just what does he want that stone for, anyway?
Oh, it's nothing special. It's just so that he can look like God holding the world in his palm (48). Yeah, something tells us that this bishop is starting to lose it a bit. That suspicion is confirmed when he mentions "Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount" (85). Not only does the bishop confuse Jesus with Saint Praxed here, but he also forgets that Saint Praxed—for whom his own church is named—is a she.
Throughout the poem, in fact, the bishop reveals himself to be a man fixated on material wealth, consumed by petty jealousy, and unconcerned with his religious responsibilities. You might wonder, as we do, why he never mentions heaven at all in his discussion of the afterlife. It's as though spiritual matters have been totally shoved aside in his mind in favor of how much he'll be owning poor, dead Gandolf in the Battle of the Tombs. And this portrayal, really, is kind of the point.
To understand what we mean, you have understand when and where this poem occurs. We say more about the poem's setting over in…well, "Setting," but it's important to note the part of the poem's title that tells us that we're in "Rome, 15—." At this time and place (specifically Renaissance Italy), the Catholic church was beset by a rash of corrupt clergy who used their positions of spiritual authority to feather their own worldly nests. The same point was made by the English critic John Ruskin, who famously declared that Browning had said as much in this one poem as Ruskin did in an entire three-volume study of the time period.
At the end of the day, then, we can take this self-absorbed, petty, and dying bishop as a kind of symbol of religious authority at its absolute worst. So if you found yourself hating this guy as you read the poem, congratulations. You were picking up what Browning was trying to put down.