The English Church, 940-1154

H.R. Loyn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138166417
• eBook ISBN: 9781317884712
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This book discusses the development of the English Church during a rich and turbulent two centuries of European history. It provides a comprehensive survey covering the late Anglo-Saxon period through the Norman Conquest and right across the Anglo-Norman period. Professor Loyn addresses major themes in medieval history. He begins with the pre-1066 period looking at the great Benedictine monastic revival; he looks at the role of the Church in the Conquest itself; the evidence of the Domesday Book and then considers the activities of the Church in the turbulent years of the Conqueror's successors. The book concludes with a discussion of doctrine, belief and ritual.

CHAPTER ONE

The English Church: Monastic Reform in the Tenth Century

We start with a comment on one special feature of church life which is vital to understanding. It must be recognised that evidence for the state of the Church in England in 940 is patchy and hard to assess, and yet in one respect is reasonably straightforward. Thanks to King Alfred and his immediate successors, it had survived with one at least of its essential attributes unharmed. Episcopal government still existed, substantially intact. This is vastly important for the health of the Church and also provides justification for our initial chapter on the monastic revolution. For the tenth-century reformation owed its essential strength to the support of the kings, Edmund and then Edgar primarily, and to the active support of the bishops. To historians accustomed to ecclesiastical history at a later period in the Middle Ages this sometimes comes as a surprise. Only too often the records speak of quarrels, sometimes violent, between monks and bishops, of great abbeys such as St Albans, for example, or Westminster, or St Augustine’s, Canterbury, struggling to release themselves from episcopal jurisdiction or at the least to relax the pressure. In the tenth century this was not so. The monastic revival depended upon active positive support from the bishops. Without Dunstan at Canterbury, Aethelwold at Winchester and Oswald at Worcester it would not have taken the dramatic shape it achieved.

The succession to the archbishopric of Canterbury was unbroken, and in 940 that prestigious office was held by the long-serving bishop, Wulfhelm, who had been translated to Canterbury from Wells in 923. York was in a more perilous state. Wulfstan I had been archbishop since 931, and continued in possession of the see until his death on 26 December 956, but the need to come to terms with resurgent Scandinavian power caused him to make many apparent compromises and clouded his later reputation. The southern bishoprics had been reorganised after the Danish wars of his father’s reign by King Edward the Elder (899–924) in the first decade of the tenth century so as to provide one bishopric for each shire; and succession turned out to be continuous for Wells (909) for Somerset, and for Crediton (909) for Devon (initially with Cornwall), though complications arose with the later presence of bishops who acted independently for a Cornish see. Winchester (Hampshire), Ramsbury (Wiltshire), Sherborne (Dorset) and Selsey (Sussex) conformed to the general pattern. Canterbury and Rochester looked after the spiritual needs of Kent, while London cast its jurisdictional shadow not only over Middlesex, but also over tracts of what we later came to know as the Home Counties, in Essex, Hertfordshire, and even south of the river Thames into Surrey. Elsewhere north of the Thames in territory still under English control the situation was complicated. In Western Mercia, Hereford and Worcester survived, Worcester as a comparatively wealthy, powerful see. A measure of its importance can be judged by the fact that Coenwald, who was bishop there for nearly thirty years (929–56), was succeeded by two of the most prominent men in early English church history, by St Dunstan (957–59) and then by St Oswald (961–92). Dorchester-on-Thames was a special case. Originally a West Saxon see, by the reign of King Alfred it was regarded as the centre of a Mercian see. A somewhat shadowy though important bishop exercised authority there in the 940s and early 950s, Oskytel (or Osketel), a man of Danish origins who was translated to the archbishopric of York, probably late in 956. Further north, as one might expect, episcopal succession becomes obscure because of the political turmoil of the age. Interpretation of the available evidence depends largely on the view taken of the nature of Danish settlement in northern and eastern England.

The political story underlying such settlement is clear enough. Scandinavian princes, supported by Danish armies and by fresh groups of immigrants, mostly Danish with a strong Norwegian presence in some areas, continued in command of territories north and east of Watling Street from 878 (the date of the treaty of Wedmore between King Alfred and Guthrum) until the end of the second decade of the tenth century. Initially pagan, they were for the most part quickly converted to Christianity. Even so, severe dislocation took place in church government during those critical generations, accompanied naturally by heavy losses in wealth. Such dislocation had a permanent effect on the ecclesiastical geography of England. After 918 (some would say 912 or 914) the political initiative passes into English hands. The story then becomes one of steady West Saxon success, a virtual reabsorption of the Danelaw with sporadic eruption of renewed Scandinavian attack and temporary Scandinavian success. Eastern Mercia and East Anglia appeared to be securely back in English hands by 940. Northumbria was more volatile and Scandinavian kings ruled at York until the defeat of Eric Bloodaxe in 954. Socially and legally the effects of the invasions proved permanent and there is every justification for referring to the whole area in the east and north of England as the Danelaw. Twelfth-century law books recognised that England was subject to three laws, those of the West Saxons, the Mercians, and the Danes.

Within the Danelaw the episcopal pattern was permanently altered. In East Anglia, Dunwich and Elmham had been the respective centres for Suffolk and for Norfolk. From about 870 there is a break in episcopal lists not to be repaired until the middle of the tenth century. Theodred, bishop of London 909/21–55, at one stage late in his period of office, was in charge of Suffolk with a cathedral at Hoxne. It is possible that Norfolk also lay under his jurisdiction. Later in the tenth century a new cathedral was built at North Elmham, of relatively modest size, a centre for an unbroken succession of bishops whose diocese covered the whole of East Anglia. After the Conquest the diocesan centre moved first to Thetford (1072) and then to Norwich (1095). Changes in Eastern Mercia were more dramatic. At the onset of the Danish invasions there were two bishoprics, at Leicester and in Lindsey. Danish success, initially pagan, and the setting up of army headquarters in the area later to be known as the Five Boroughs (Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln and Stamford), entailed a withdrawal of episcopal activity to the south, to Dorchester-on-Thames. There were attempts in the tenth century, as the Danes were converted, to set up a bishop with special responsibility for Lindsey, but in practice the bishop of Dorchester in Oxfordshire remained in control from the Middle Thames to the Humber, a huge diocese for its age. This arrangement was confirmed in its peculiarities after the Norman Conquest, when the Normans moved the bishop back to Lincoln from Dorchester c.1072 without any attempt to partition the diocese. Further north there was even more simplification. York survived as an archbishopric, though impoverished. In the middle of the century there was some revival in both its political and financial standing. Nottinghamshire was added to its sphere of control, and endowments granted which included a massive estate based on Southwell in Nottinghamshire and other property at Satter and Scrooby near the Yorkshire border. From 972 an imaginative effort was made to combine the wealthy West Mercian see of Worcester with the archbishopric of York, a combination which appeared to work well until 1016. Subsequent attempts to perpetuate this uncanonical arrangement persisted until later in the Confessor’s reign, though, as we shall see, direct intervention by the Pope in 1061 put an end to this combination, which from the episcopal point of view had created a complex of land and authority to rival even the Dorchester/Lincoln see. More dramatic was the fate of the historic northern see of Lindisfarne. Subject to the full fury of Viking attack, Lindisfarne became untenable during the Alfredian period. After much wandering, well chronicled with a fund of good stories, the precious relics of St Cuthbert were taken to safety at Chester-le-Street, where bishop Eardulf (883–99) set up his see. For the best part of a century this remained the episcopal centre, until it was finally transferred to the great natural fortress of Durham in 990. With knowledge of bishops at Hexham fading away into obscurity from the late ninth century and the succession to Lichfield itself doubtful until Bishop Cynesige was translated there from Berkshire in 949, it must be confessed that episcopal presence in the north of England depended almost entirely on York and the traditions of St Cuthbert for long stretches of the tenth century. It is hard to imagine how the basic episcopal functions were carried out without a degree of improvisation and disregard of some of the stricter canonical requirements concerning confirmation and general supervision of the clergy.

For there can be no doubt that the ideal of church government still depended greatly on the order of bishops. Within its limits and inevitable obscurities the surviving evidence points firmly in that direction. Episcopal lists, supported by royal charters, provide basic information about succession to sees, and there was clear expectation that formal canonical practice, as understood in its day, should be observed. Appointment rested in practice in the hands of the king and his close advisers, and bishops tended to come from aristocratic backgrounds. There appears to have been little gross scandal. Bishops were expected to be celibate during their tenure of office. The two most fruitful sources of recruitment were from the royal chaplains and, as the Benedictine Reformation took hold, from the monasteries. Once the bishop-elect was chosen, presumably normally at the royal court, the acquiescence of the clergy was achieved in the form of presentation of the candidate at a formal synod. Steps were then taken towards consecration at a ceremony well hallowed by custom and the law of the Church. The symbols of office, the ring and the crozier, were handed over by the king with the metropolitan in attendance. Two fellow bishops were expected to be present in support for the conduct of elevation to episcopal rank. All was public and theoretically well ordered. Reality was surely different, and matters were conducted in a more haphazard fashion. The consistent elements in the proper making of a bishop were royal approval and public demonstration at a recognised centre, royal court or archiepiscopal see, and also at the diocesan centre.

Election and ratification of election of an archbishop was a matter of greater complexity. This was where an European dimension had to be taken into account, and the authority of Rome brought into play. The custom was firmly established in the English Church that the archbishop of Canterbury, the successor of St Augustine, should receive his symbol of office, the cloak known as a pallium, from the Pope at Rome. No fewer than nine out of the fourteen archbishops of Canterbury who were in office between 925 and 1066 are known to have made the long, perilous journey to Rome, and one at least, Aelfsige of Winchester, designated archbishop-elect of Canterbury in 959, died of cold when crossing the Alps. St Dunstan in 960–61, soon after his highly irregular succession to Canterbury in the lifetime of Byrhthelm, his immediate predecessor, used his visit to Rome frankly for political purposes. Byrhthelm had been a monk at Glastonbury under Dunstan and gave way gracefully to Dunstan and King Edgar; and yet doubts must have been sown in many men’s minds. Dunstan used the extra prestige that came from his reception of the pallium at Rome to effect a reorganisation of the episcopate, and also relied on papal support in implementing change to the composition of the cathedral clergy. Even so, the journeying was not popular. A letter has survived from the early eleventh century in which the English bishops protest against the necessity of going to Rome. It is true that their objection lay chiefly on the sums of money, Peter’s Pence and other ad hoc payments, which accompanied visits to Rome: payments that under the zeal of reforming impulse they associated with the sin of simony. But by and large the machinery for the selection and confirmation of the metropolitan spiritual leaders of the English Church was firmly established, and ran smoothly in orthodox grooves. In this respect England was a loyal part of the Western Church, seeking and finding guidance from the Pope at Rome.¹

The functions of the bishops, once appointed, diocesan as well as metropolitan, were laid down in many of the legal documents that have survived from the age, especially in the writings of the homilist and statesman Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York (1002–23). A bishop was a great man, normally drawn from the aristocratic and learned classes. Enough interest was shown in his position by the literate to leave us what is at the very least an ideal picture of what his office entailed and how he was expected to behave.

Sources of such knowledge are three-fold. Law codes issued in the names of the later kings included much material relating to bishops, sometimes embodying the conclusions of what were virtually ecclesiastical synods. The codes known as Edgar I and Ethelred V and VI (Wulfstan’s work) provide telling examples.² The astonishingly full and complex piece of political and social theory written by Wulfstan that we now know as the Institutes of Polity contains sections dealing directly with the rights and duties of a bishop.³ A short, compressed anonymous tract, Episcopus, surviving from a period late in the Anglo-Saxon age but based on Wulfstan’s work and probably from his pen, treats specifically of the role of a bishop.⁴

It is the last of these sources, Episcopus, that probably gives the best flavour of the high theory behind episcopal office. A bishop was expected to be an active supporter of just behaviour both in spiritual and in worldly affairs. Instruction of the clergy so that they should be able to recognise justice and apply it to the secular world was placed foremost among the bishop’s duties. Peace and reconciliation are his prime objectives and, to effect that aim, he is to work closely with secular judges. He was to ensure proper procedure in the taking of oaths and the conduct of the ordeal. He was not to suffer the use of false measures or unjust weights. Significantly this duty was to apply both in the countryside and in the town. These practical matters are given priority in the tract before the homiletic material which follows in the rhythmic prose associated with Archbishop Wulfstan, though full measure is then given to that material in fine pastoral style.

Bishops were to offer spiritual protection against the wiles of the Devil to the people entrusted to their care, to teach them to distinguish the false from the true, to co-operate with secular rulers in suppressing evil acts. Their example was to be followed by all priests. They were all to share the basic Christian duty of not harming fellow Christians, not the powerful the weak, not the exalted the humble, not the office-bearer (the scirman) the subject, not the lord his men – nor indeed his slaves. An idealised picture of a just society begins to emerge in a context where a bishop was under obligation to work positively for the creation of such a society in which even the slaves would work willingly for their lords. The tract presents a typical mishmash of theoretical and practical. It reverts to the practical by stating no measuring-rod shall be longer than the standard, and that all measures and weights shall be equal! In case of dispute the bishop had the deciding word. The homiletic element comes heavily into play at the end of the tract when the reader is reminded that we are all God’s creatures (nydpeowan), and have a duty to be merciful to those subject to us, in the same way as we might expect mercy at the Last Judgement.

There is a great danger that an excessive weight of homiletic exhortation, evident in the apparent secular legislation of the period as well as in the more openly spiritual codes, can lull us into an attitude of mind where we dismiss it all too easily as pious platitudes. Yet behind all this insistence on the religious element lies harsh reality. The numerous surviving royal codes of law from the reign of King Edmund onwards, notably those of King Ethelred, are the products of a society anxious, at times desperate, to set up a pattern of an ordered peaceful community in which the bishops would play a leading and dignified part. They were not men withdrawn from society but an integral part of it, empowered to sustain the moral order and also to ensure that the lands and property of the Church were safeguarded. They ranked among chief counsellors of the kingdom, and were expected to attend the royal councils and to give their advice. They, or their representatives, were also expected to attend the shire courts throughout their dioceses, and to play an active part there, sharing the presidency of the courts with the ealdormen. In return they were allotted a high wergeld, or blood-price, on a footing with an earl. Theirs was an authoritative role within the diocese. Of all legal procedures the formal oath and ultimate recourse to the ordeal were key matters. The clerisy supervised by the bishop played an essential part in ensuring that oaths were properly sworn or the ordeal properly conducted. Penalties such as the imposition of penance or the threat of excommunication involved episcopal action either directly or through the sanction given by immediate subordinates. Anglo-Saxon bishops were busy men, massively influential in political as well as in spiritual life.

Wulfstan confirms this picture again directly in what is in its way a theoretical masterpiece, his tract that generally goes under the title of the Institutes of Polity. He was well qualified to speak on such matters. A native of the Danelaw, he was trained as a monk at Ely, a true product of the first generation of the Benedictine Reformation. His contact with the Danelaw gave him extra insight and extra political strength, and it was Ely which was finally chosen as his burial place, in spite of his success and active life elsewhere. As bishop of London by 996 and then as archbishop of York (1002–23), with also tenure as concurrent bishop of Worcester (1002–16), he had full and plentiful knowledge of the cares and responsibilities of episcopal office from the inside. He was also no mean scholar and theorist, relying in his own analysis of the bishop’s office on the statements of earlier scholars, notably those embodied in the treatise known as the Pseudo-Egbert, which incorporated the advanced thinking characteristic of canonical thought during the Carolingian Renaissance. Wulfstan in person combined the knowledge of a scholar with the skill (and occasionally the pomposity) of a homilist, and the experience of a man who had found himself at the centre of political af...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Editor’s Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 The English Church: Monastic Reform in the Tenth Century
• 2 Reform and its Impact on the English Church: The Age of Aelfric and Wulfstan
• 3 The Church c. 1016–66: King Cnut to Edward the Confessor
• 4 The Norman Conquest
• 5 Domesday Book: Ecclesiastical Organisation at the End of the Eleventh Century
• 6 The Anglo-Norman Church: The Sons of the Conqueror, 1087–1135
• 7 The Reign of Stephen
• 8 Doctrine, Belief and Ritual
• Bibliography
• Index