Archbishops Ralph d'Escures, William of Corbeil and Theobald of Bec

Heirs of Anselm and Ancestors of Becket

Jean Truax

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351957526
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Theology & Religion
• Sous-sujet: History of Religion

The first two archbishops of Canterbury after the Norman Conquest, Lanfranc and Anselm, were towering figures in the medieval church and the sixth archbishop, the martyred Thomas Becket, is perhaps the most famous figure ever to hold the office. In between these giants of the ecclesiastical world came three less noteworthy men: Ralph d'Escures, William of Corbeil, and Theobald of Bec. Jean Truax's volume in the Ashgate Archbishops of Canterbury Series uniquely examines the pontificates of these three minor archbishops. Presenting their biographies, careers, thought and works as a unified period, Truax highlights crucial developments in the English church during the period of the pontificates of these three archbishops, from the death of Anselm to Becket. The resurgent power of the papacy, a changed relationship between church and state and the expansion of archiepiscopal scope and power ensured that in 1162 Becket faced a very different world from the one that Anselm had left in 1109. Selected correspondence, newly translated chronicle accounts and the text and a discussion of the Canterbury forgeries complete the volume.

PART I
The Archbishops and Their Careers

Chapter 1
Introduction: The English Church as Anselm Left It

The first two archbishops of Canterbury after the Norman Conquest, Lanfranc and Anselm, were towering figures in the medieval church, whose accomplishments are familiar to students of philosophy, theology and canon law as well as history. The sixth archbishop, the martyred Thomas Becket, is perhaps the most famous figure ever to hold the office. In between these giants of the ecclesiastical world came three less noteworthy men: Ralph d'Escures, William of Corbeil and Theobald of Bec. Avrom Saltman, who wrote the definitive biography of Theobald, referred to them as "the three ciphers between Anselm and Becket."¹ This is perhaps unduly harsh, for important trends, which had their roots in Anselm's pontificate, came to fruition during these men's tenures, with the result that when Becket was consecrated in 1162, he found a very different English church from the one that Anselm had left in 1109. By considering the careers of the three archbishops who came between these two as a unit, it should be possible to highlight certain crucial developments in the English church that are not so easily visible when considering a single pontificate.

Accounts of the careers of these three archbishops are available in the Dictionary of National Biography.² Only Archbishop Theobald has been treated in a full-length, scholarly biography, published by Saltman in 1969. Ralph d'Escures was the subject of an unpublished dissertation, and much information about him can be found in Donald Nicholl's biography of his great rival, Archbishop Thurstan of York.³ The best secondary source for the career of Archbishop William of Corbeil is an article by Denis Bethell.⁴ The correspondence of Archbishops Ralph and William has not survived; many of Theobald's letters have been published as part of the correspondence of John of Salisbury, who was his secretary for many years.⁵ The administrative documents from the pontificates of Ralph d'Escures and William of Corbeil appear in volume 28 of the English Episcopal Acta series.⁶ Archbishop Theobald's charters are published at the end of Saltman's biography and a new, expanded edition is in preparation by Martin Brett for English Episcopal Acta. As will be apparent from the list of abbreviations, most of the major narrative sources for the period are available in modern critical editions.

The usual cautions about working with medieval narrative sources must be reiterated here. The writers, who were generally monks or canons, composed their works for a purpose beyond that of merely recording events as they happened. They wrote with varying degrees of objectivity to entertain and instruct their audiences, to enhance the reputation of their houses, to praise local saints, to eulogize patrons or to take sides in a current dispute. For example Henry of Huntingdon wrote:

.... in the recorded deeds of all peoples and nations, which are the very judgements of God, clemency, generosity, honesty, caution and the like, and their opposites, not only provoke men of the spirit to what is good and deter them from evil, but even encourage worldly men to good deeds and reduce their wickedness.⁷

Writers like St. Anselm's friend and biographer Eadmer, an Englishman living in a newly Norman world, reflected post-conquest tensions in their works. And as those antagonisms faded into memory, new ones took their place as England chose sides in the civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda. William of Malmesbury in his later years showed himself a partisan of the Empress and dedicated his Historia Novella to her brother Robert of Gloucester. On the other side, the anonymous Gesta Stephani has been attributed to the bishop of Bath and Wells, Robert of Lewes, who saw his diocese overrun by the Angevins and was himself imprisoned for a time.⁸

It must be remembered that these writers were members of religious institutions, whether as monks or regular or secular canons, and were not usually present to observe the events that they recorded, depending instead on second-hand accounts of current events. We know from their works that Orderic Vitalis, William of Malmesbury, Eadmer and Hugh the Chanter did travel, but even this did not mean that they were always in a position to observe high-level negotiations.⁹ As William of Malmesbury himself wrote regarding his account of the reign of Henry I:

... resolved as I am not to trust dubious authorities, yet being a man remote from the mysteries of the court, I am ill-informed about his greater achievements, and can lay my hands on little; with the resultant risk that what I write will fall far short of what I should like, and I shall make him seem a lesser man by omitting many of his exploits.¹⁰

Further complicating matters, manuscripts were routinely shared between religious houses and chroniclers frequently copied from one another, so the fact that one source tells the same story as another does not necessarily constitute an independent verification of the facts.¹¹

Furthermore, as we will see again in Chapter 4 when discussing medieval forgeries, the standard of truth was not as objective as it is today. Because they were writing for a worthy purpose, the chroniclers felt free to enhance certain events and to suppress others.¹² Medieval writers sought to make their compositions conform to earlier models like the histories of Suetonius or the Life of St. Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus, and material might be borrowed from other sources or constructed to fit the pattern.¹³ Inventing conversations to illustrate a point was a well-recognized technique. Documents could be similarly concocted, and as Marjorie Chibnall has pointed out, these might even become the basis for later forgeries.¹⁴ Thus we will see that writers like Eadmer and Hugh the Chanter, who took opposite sides in the Canterbury-York primacy dispute, often gave quite different versions of the same events. Despite this, today we unhesitatingly label their works as history and Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, which tells the story of King Arthur, as fiction.¹⁵ But in the twelfth century, the lines between archival records, history, hagiography and fiction were blurred and the distinction would not have been so clear, either to the writers or their readers. Source material is never as complete or definitive as a medievalist would like, but sufficient information remains to piece together a fairly complete account of these three archbishops.

The job that Ralph d'Escures, William of Corbeil and Theobald of Bee took on was, to say the least, challenging on many fronts. The archbishop of Canterbury not only was responsible for the administration of the vast estates of the archdiocese and the spiritual direction of its inhabitants, but also, as we shall see, played a significant role in the politics of the realm. The archbishop of Canterbury was one of the largest landholders in England, with revenues in the Domesday Book for 1086 of £1750. The majority of Canterbury's estates lay in Kent, but the see held significant estates throughout the southeastern shires of England. An estimated 25-30 percent of Canterbury's lands lay outside the diocese at the time of the conquest. Archiepiscopal properties in Middlesex accounted for almost one-third of the shire.¹⁶ As was usual in all English bishoprics, such revenues were divided between the bishop and the cathedral chapter, an arrangement which protected the monks from financial mismanagement by the bishop and prevented them from becoming destitute when the revenues of the see fell into the king's hands during an episcopal vacancy. In Canterbury's case, it is estimated that £1170 belonged to the archbishop and £580 to the monks. Despite this division, the archbishop was responsible for the administration of both sets of properties, with the cathedral chapter only gradually gaining the right to administer its own lands.¹⁷ In addition to the revenue from his estates, a bishop's income included fines derived from the administration of justice, a share of the revenues of the collegiate churches of the bishopric, synodal dues levied against the churches in his diocese and payments made to the cathedral church for such services as burials and the provision of the chrism blessed by the bishop on Holy Thursday.¹⁸

All bishops, but especially the archbishop of Canterbury, bore a heavy burden of responsibility in return for their great wealth and power. They were the administrators of their estates, responsible for the granting and revoking of leases, the collection and accounting of revenues and the administration of justice on their lands, just like any secular lord. In addition their ecclesiastical responsibilities included the supervision of the morals and preaching of the clergy of their dioceses, the care of the poor and the recruiting of candidates for the priesthood. Many sacramental functions could only be performed by a bishop, including ordinations, the dedication and consecration of sacred vessels, churches, monastic houses and graveyards, the blessing of the heads of religious houses and the administration of the sacrament of confirmation to the laity.¹⁹ A bishop presided over several different types of courts, a typical honor court concerned with the administration of secular justice upon his estates and ecclesiastical courts concerned with the morals of the laity, especially in matters of marriage; with offenses by the clergy and with the property and rights of churches within the diocese. Bishops also held diocesan synods at which they encouraged and instructed the clergy and settled disputes.²⁰ The archbishop of Canterbury bore an especially heavy burden in this respect, since his duties also included the supervision and instruction of his suffragan bishops.

The archbishop was f...