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The ‘Three Orders’ of society in Anglo-Saxon England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Timothy E. Powell
Timothy E. Powell
Affiliation:
University of Bath
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Extract

The first recorded use of the idea of the ‘Three Orders’ of society in an English context, and indeed it has been said, the first use of the idea in medieval Europe, is in King Alfred's ‘translation’ of Boethius's De consolatione Philosophiae. It contains a digression on the responsibilities of kingship in which Alfred, speaking as ‘Mind’ in a dialogue with ‘Wisdom’ reflects.

I wished for tools and resources for the task that I was commanded to accomplish, which was that I should virtuously and worthily guide and direct the authority which was entrusted to me. You know of course that no-one can make known any skill, nor direct and guide any enterprise, without tools and resources; a man cannot work on any enterprise without resources. In the case of the king, the resources and tools with which to rule are that he have his land fully manned; he must have praying men, fighting men and working men. You know also that without these tools no king may make his ability known. Another aspect of his resources is that he must have the means of support for his tools, the three classes of men.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 23 , December 1994 , pp. 103 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 King Alfred's Old English Version of Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiae, ed. Sedgefield, W. J. (Oxford, 1899)Google Scholar. Duckett, E. S., Alfred the Great (Chicago, 1956), p. 147Google Scholar, dates this work to post 893. There were, in fact, two Old English versions: a prose ‘translation’ and a later version using prose and verse. Neither are literal translations from Boethius's original but contain an element of commentary; both are ascribed to Alfred although no doubt he had assistance. The prose version is used here. Previous scholars have argued that Alfred was using a Latin commentary on Boethius to guide his work, probably that of Remigius of Auxerre; see Bolton, D. K., ‘The Study of the Consolation of Philosophy in Anglo-Saxon England’, Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 44 (1977), 33–78Google Scholar, and Godden, M. R., ‘King Alfred's Boethius’, Boethius: his Life, Thought and Influence, ed. Gibson, M. (Oxford, 1981), pp. 419–24Google Scholar. This view is criticized by Wittig, J. S., ‘King Alfred's Boethius and its Latin sources: a Reconsideration’, ASE 11 (1983), 157–98. It should be said that it has not been claimed that the Three Orders passage comes from Remigius or any other ‘continental’ Boethian translation or commentary.Google Scholar

2 ‘Tola ic wilnode þeah and andweorces to þam weorce þe me beboden was to wyrcanne; þæt was þæt ic unfracodlice ond gerisenlice mihte steoran and reccan þone anwald þe me befæst wæs. Hwæt, þu wast þæt nan mon ne mæg nænne cræft cyðan ne nænne anweald reccan ne stioran butan tolum and andweorce. þæt bið ælces cræftes andweorc þæt mon þone cræft buton wyrcan ne mæg. þæt bid þonne cyninges andweorc and his tol mid to ricsianne, þæt he hæbbe his lond fullmonnad; he sceal habban gebedmen and fyrdmen and weorcmen. Hwæt, þu wast þætte butan þissan tolan nan cyning his cræft ne mæg cyðan. þæt is eac his ondweorc, þæt he habban sceal to ðæm tolum þam þrim geferscipum biwiste’ (King Alfred's Old English Version, ed. Sedgefield, , p. 40)Google Scholar. The translation is that of Keynes, S. and Lapidge, M., Alfred the Great (Harmondsworth, 1983), p. 132.Google Scholar

3 Where ‘Three Orders’ is capitalized it should be understood to refer to the idea, where it is not, as in ‘three orders’, I am referring to the three groups themselves.

4 The most important of Dumézil's writings on this subject is Mythe et épopée I: L'ideologie des trois fonctions dans les épopées des peuples indo-européens, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1974).Google Scholar

5 Les Trois Ordres on l'imagination du féodalisme (Paris, 1978)Google Scholar. References hereafter are to the translation by Goldhammer, A., The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined (Chicago, 1980).Google Scholar

6 The Three Orders, p. 5.

7 Brown, E. A. R., ‘George Duby and the Three Orders’, Viator 17 (1986), 51–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 The Three Orders, p. 7.

9 Ibid. pp. 7 and 101.

10 Dutton, P. E., ‘Illustre civitatis et populi exemplum: Plato's Timaeus and the Transmission from Calcidius to the End of the Twelfth Century of a Tripartite Scheme of Society’, MS 45 (1983), 79–119Google Scholar, sees the early fourth-century translation of and commentary on Plato's Timaeus by Calcidius as a hitherto neglected formulation of the Three Orders idea and one which may provide the ‘missing link’ between antiquity and the Middle Ages. However, the evidence is that this work only became widely known from the twelfth century. The Timàeus does indeed, as Dutton points out, portray a tripartite social division between rulers, soldiers and the rest. But this Platonic scheme cannot, as it stands here, be seen as a manifestation of the idea of the Three Orders. There is no priestly function present in this scheme, nor are ‘the rest’ defined by function. Furthermore, it is explicitly a model of social stratification, based on proximity to political power, rather than differentiation, an important distinction. Ironically there is an off-hand reference to something very much more akin to it in the Timaeus, in a section in which the speech of one Kritias is recorded. Kritias recalls an account which Solon gave of a discussion with an Egyptian priest. The priest says that Egyptian society was divided between priests, soldiers and labourers (Timaeus, ed. Klibansky, R., Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi, Plato Latinus IV (London, 1962), 16Google Scholar; Taylor, A. E., Commentary on Plato's Timaeus (Oxford, 1928), p. 24). When the Timaeus became a significant influence on medieval thought, however, it was the Platonic model that was noticed, not the Egyptian.Google Scholar

11 ‘L'Elaboration de la théorie des trois ordres chez Haymon d'Auxerre’, Francia 14 (1986), 27–43.Google ScholarOrtigues takes issue with Batany, J. (‘Des “Trois Fonctions” aux “Trois États”?’, Annales Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 18 (1963), 933–8)Google Scholar and Grisward, J. H. (‘Des trois fonctions aux trois états’, in Dumézil à la découverte des indo-européens, ed. Rivière, J.-C. (Paris, 1979), pp. 199–203)Google Scholar, who both view the Anglo-Saxon usage as the first. It should be noted that Duby, The Three Orders, p. 101, does suggest that Alfred could have been influenced by Haymo.

12 Ortigues, , ‘L'Elaboration de la théorie des trois ordres’, p. 34.Google Scholar

13 The Etymologiae of Isidore present a Platonic model along the lines described in n. 10.

14 Exposition in Apocalypsin, PL 117, col. 953; Rev. III. 14–22.

15 Ortigues, , ‘L'Elaboration de la théorie des trois ordres’, p. 41.Google Scholar

16 Goff, J. Le, ‘Les trois fonctions indo-européens et l'Europe féodale’, Annales Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 34 (1979), 1187–215.Google Scholar

17 ‘Le “baptême” du schema des trois ordres fonctionnels’, Annales Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 41 (1986), 101–26.Google Scholar

18 ‘Aliis belligerantibus, agricolantibus aliis, tertius ordo estis quos in partem priuatae sortis allegit, quanto rebus extrinsecis uacuos, tanto suae seruitutis functionibus occupandos. Utque alii pro vobis duras conditiones subeunt uel militiae uel laboris, itidem uos illis obnoxii persistitis ut eos orationum et officii instantia prosequamini’: PL 124, col. 1254.

19 A point made by Ortigues, , ‘L'Elaboration de la théorie des trois ordres’, p. 43.Google Scholar

20 Ed. Holder-Egger, O., MGH, SS 15.1 (Hanover, 1887), 513Google Scholar, cited by Guilhiermoz, P., Essai sur l'origine de la noblesse en France au moyen âge (Paris, 1902), pp. 370–4Google Scholar, and Duby, , The Three Orders, pp. 96–7.Google Scholar

21 The monk Grimbald was probably the most influential. He was a protegé of Fulco, archbishop of Rheims, and came to England in around 887: see Grierson, P., ‘Grimbald of St. Benin's’, EHR 55 (1940), 529–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Dubuisson, D., ‘L'Irlande et la théorie médiévale des “trois ordres”’, Revue de l'histoire des religions 188 (1975), 35–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Ibid. pp. 54–7.

24 An initial assessment of Dubuisson's case is in Powell, T. E., ‘Clerical Involvement in Warfare in Pre-Gregorian England and Ireland’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Birmingham Univ., 1989), pp. 257–64.Google Scholar

25 I therefore am not sure that there is nearly enough evidence for K. Leyser's suggestion that the idea of the Three Orders was commonplace in Francia in the ninth and tenth centuries. Certainly many of the associated concepts with which the idea became linked were present, and Leyser offers convincing evidence that one such – the social eminence being accorded the military lower aristocracy through a redefinition of their role in Christian terms – was being developed. But this process did not require the existence of an idea of the Three Orders: Leyser, K., ‘Early Medieval Canon Law and the Beginnings of Knighthood’, in Institutionen, Kultur und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter, ed. Fenske, L. et al. (Sigmaringen, 1984), pp. 549–66, at 554.Google Scholar

26 For accounts of the life and work of Ælfric, see White, C. L., Ælfric: a New Study of his Life and Writings (Boston, MA, 1898)Google Scholar; Gem, S. H., An Anglo-Saxon Abbot (Edinburgh, 1912)Google Scholar; Clemoes, P., ‘Ælfric’, in Continuations and Beginnings: Studies in Old English Literature, ed. Stanley, E. G. (London, 1966), pp. 176–209Google Scholar; Hurt, J., Ælfric (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; John, E., ‘The World of Abbot Ælfiic’, in Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society, ed. Wormald, P. (Oxford, 1983), pp. 300–16.Google Scholar

27 He was also concerned to maintain theological orthodoxy; see Gatch, M. McC., Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric and Wulfstan (Toronto, 1977), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

28 For the dating of Ælfric's writings I am following Clemoes, P., ‘The Chronology of Ælfric's Works’, in The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of their History and Culture, ed. Clemoes, P. (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 212–47.Google Scholar

29 This noble family founded the monastery of Eynsham for Ælfric to lead as abbot in 1005.

30 Although Gatch, , Preaching and Theology, p. 13, stresses the fact that Ælfric did not believe all learning to be suitable for the laity.Google Scholar

31 Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, W. W., EETS os 76, 82, 94 and 114 (London, 1881–1900).Google Scholar

32 Clemoes, , ‘The Chronology of Ælfric's Works’, pp. 243–4.Google Scholar

33 ‘Is swa-ðeah to witenne þæt on þysre worulde synd þreo endebyrdnysse on annysse gesette. þæt synd laboratores, oratores, bellatores. Laboratores synd þa þe urne bigleafan beswincaþ. Oratores synd þa ðe us to Code geðingiað. Bellatores synd þa ðe ure burga healdað and urne card beweriað wið onwinnendne here. Nu swincð se yrðllincg embe urne bigleofan and se woruld-cempa sceall winnan wið ure fynd and se Godes þeowa sceall symle for us gebiddan and feohtan gastlice wiþ þa ungesewenlican fynd. Is nu forþy mare þæra muneca gewinn wiþ þa ungesewenlican deofla þe syrwiað embe us þonne sy þæra woruld-manna þe winnað wiþ ða flæsclican and wið þa gesewenlican feohtað. Nu ne sceolon þa woruld-cempan to þam woruld-licum gefeohte þa Godes þeowan neadian fram þam gastlican gewinne forðan þe him fremað swiðor þæt þa ungesewenlican fynd beon ofer-swyðde þonne ða gesewenlican and hit bið swyðe derigendlic þæn hi Drihtnes þeowdom forlætan and to woruld-gewinne bugan þe him naht to ne gebyriað’: Ælfric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, II, 120–2 (no. 25).Google Scholar

34 ‘Næs nan halig godes þeowa æfter þæs hælendes þrowunga þe æfre on gefeohte his handa wolde afylan’: Ibid. p. 124.

35 Councils and Synods with other Documents relating to the English Church. I 871–1204, ed. Whitelock, D. et al. , 2 vols. (Oxford, 1981) I, 242–55 (no. 45)Google Scholar. The ‘private’ letter is abbreviated hereafter as Past. L. 2a; the first and second Pastoral Letters (in English) are abbreviated Past. L. I and Past. L. II (Councils and Synods, ed. Whitelock, et al. I, 191–226 and 255–302 respectively) and that in Latin Past. L. 2.Google Scholar

36 ‘Suspicor non latere almitatem tuam tres ordines fore in ecclesia Dei: laboratores, bellatores, oratores. Ordo laboratorum adquirit nobis victum, et ordo bellatorum debet armis patriam nostram ab incursibus hostium defendere, et ordo oratorum, id sunt clerici et monachi et episcopi, qui electi sunt ad spiritalem militiam, debent orare pro omnibus et servitiis seu officiis Dei semper insistere et fidem catholicam predicare et sancta charismata dare fidelibus. Et omnis qui ad istam militiam ordinatur, etsi antea secularia arma habuit, debet ea deponere tempore ordinationis et assumere spiritalia arma’ (Ibid. p. 252).

37 See Grundy, L., Books and Grace: Ælfric's Theology, King's College London Med. Stud. 6 (London, 1991), esp. 267.Google Scholar

38 Loomis, G., ‘Further Sources of Ælfric's Saints Lives’, Harvard Stud. and Notes in Philol. and Lit. 13 (1931), 1–8, at 3.Google Scholar

39 Bolton, W. F., ‘The Alfredian Boethius in lÆfric's “Lives of Saints” I’, N&Q 19 (1972), 406–7.Google Scholar

40 Duby regards Ælfric's choice of words as particularly puzzling: Oratores and bellatores are common enough words in the Latin literature of the period but the word laboratores (or its root) is rare (The Three Orders, p. 104).

41 Sigeweard is possibly to be identified as the thegn Siweard who witnesses diplomas of Æthelred II; see Keynes, S., The Diplomas of King Aethelred ‘the Unready’ 978–1016 (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 132–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 The Old English Version of the Heptateuch, Ælfric's Treatise on the Old and New Testament and his Preface to Genesis, ed. Crawford, S. J., EETS os 160 (London, 1922), 71–2.Google Scholar

43 Ibid.: ‘Witan sceoldon smeagan mid wislicum geþeahte, þonne on mancinne to micel yfel bið, hwilc þæra stelenna þæs cincstoles wære tobrocen, and betan þone sona. Se cinestol stynt on þisum þrim stelum: laboratores, bellatores, oratores. Laboratores sind þe us bigleofan tiliað, yrðlingas and æhte men to þam anum betæhte. Oratores syndon æe us þingiað to Gode and cristendom fyrðriað on cristenum folcum on Godes þeowdome to ðam gastlican gewinne, to þam anum betæhte us eallum to þearfe. Bellatores sindon þe ure burga healdað and eac urne eard, wið þone sigendne here feohtende mid wæmnum, swa swa Paulus sæde, se þeoda lareow, on his lareowdome: Non sine causa portal miles gladium, etc, “Ne byrð na se cniht butan intingan his swurd. He ys Godes þen þe sylfum to þearfe on ðam yfelum wyrcendum to wræce gesett”. On þisum þrim stelum stynt se cynestol, and gif an bið forud, he fylð adun sona þam oðurum stelum to unþearfe gewiss. Ac hwæt gebyrað us embe þis to smeagenne? þis sceolon smeagan þe þæs giman sceolon’.

44 On the life and work of Wulfstan, see Bethurum's, D. introduction to her The Homilies of Wulfstan (Oxford, 1957), pp. 24–87.Google Scholar

45 Cooper, J. L., The Last Four Anglo-Saxon Archbishops of York, Borthwick Papers.38 (York, 1970), 4–5. She regards the point as impossible to settle one way or the other. One must agree, but the silence on the subject is telling. If he were in monastic orders one would expect to find evidence of the fact.Google Scholar

46 Illustrated by Ælfric's use of the word ‘monk’ where ‘cleric’ would seem more correct.

47 ‘Ælc riht cynestol stent on þrym stapelum þe fullice ariht stent: an is Oratores, and oðer is Laboratores, and ðridde is Bellatores. Oratores sindon gebedmen, þe Gode sculan þeowian and dæges and nihtes for ealne þeodscipe þingian georne. Laboratores, sindon weorcmen, þe tilian sculan, þæs ðe eall þeodscype big sceall libban. Bellatores syndon wigmen, þe eard sculon werian wiglice mid wæpnum. On þyssum ðrym stapelum sceall ælc cynestol standan mid rihte on cristenre þeode. And awacie heora ænig, sona se stol scylfð; and fulberste heora ænig, þonne hrysð se stol nyðer, and þæt wyrð þære þeode eall to unþearfe. Ac staþelige man and strangie and trumme hi georne mid wislicre Godes lare and mid rihtlicre woruldlage: þæt wyrð þam þeodscype to langsuman ræde’: Die ‘Institutes of Polity, Civil and Ecclesiastical’, ein Werk Erzbischof Wulfstans von York, ed. Jost, K. (Bern, 1959), pp. 55–7.Google Scholar

48 This is the theme of his masterpiece of 1014, the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, ed. Whitelock, D., rev. ed. (Exeter, 1976).Google Scholar

49 Brooks, N. P., The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (Leicester, 1984), p. 246, dates the vita to 1004 × 1005; Lapidge (cited below, n. 51) suggests a date in the early 990s.Google Scholar

50 ‘aut omnem humanum ordinem trifarie paratum in proprio soliditatis proposito verbo vitae firmaret vel exemplo’: Memorials of St Dunstan, ed. Stubbs, W., RS (London, 1874), p. 49 (ch. 37).Google Scholar

51 ‘B’ is tentatively identified by M. Lapidge as Byrhthelm, a deacon who may have served as one of Dunstan's personal secretaries; see ‘B and the Vita S. Dunstani’, in St Dunstan: his Life, Times and Cult, ed. Ramsay, N. et al. (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 247–59.Google Scholar See also Brooks, ‘The Career of St Dunstan’, ibid. pp. 1–23.

52 And furthermore, even when explaining the three orders' roles in the vernacular, he does not adopt Alfred's terminology.

53 Loomis, ‘Further Sources of Ælfric's Lives’, suggests that the item alia was added by Ælfric as ‘an apology for the martial tone of the preceding [homily]’.

54 Not, in this case, just monks; he goes out of his way to identify the secular clergy with the order of oratores possibly to correct the impression made in his homily on the Maccabees.

55 Past. L. I, ch. 80; Past. L. II, ch. 189; Past. L. 2, ch. 178.

56 ‘Early Medieval Canon Law’; see, though, above, n. 25.

57 One might also note in passing R. Abels's observation that ‘tenth- and eleventh- century [English] glosses studiously avoid terms connoting social rank when defining words such as bellator, belliger, or even miles’ (Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1988), p. 65).Google Scholar

58 Albeit fleetingly in a sentence also condemning clerical marriage — ‘The Church is the priest's wife, and he has not rightly any other; for neither a wife nor Warfare of this world in any way befits a priest, if he wishes to obey God’: Die ‘Institutes of Polity’, ed. Jost, , p. 114.Google Scholar

59 Wulfstan's Canons of Edgar, ed. Fowler, R., EETS os 266 (London, 1972), xxviii.Google Scholar

60 Ibid. pp. 10–11 (ch. 46).

61 See his homily of c. 1000 for the Sunday after Ascension which is devoted to the king's role in maintaining the well-being of the kingdom: Homilies of Ælfric. A Supplementary Collection, ed. Pope, J. C., 2 vols., EETS os 259 and 260 (London, 1967) I, 372–92.Google Scholar

62 Godden, M. R., ‘Money, Power and Morality in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE 19 (1990), 41–65, at 55–6.Google Scholar

63 Duby, , The Three Orders, p. 103.Google Scholar

64 The evidence is reviewed in Powell, ‘Clerical Involvement in Warfare’.

65 Lordship and Military Obligation; the study of military obligations in pre-Conquest England is of course an area of considerable debate. Abels's study is unlikely to be the last word but in the present context his conclusions are not likely to understate the military obligations of clergy.

66 Thus Abels stresses the idea of the Three Orders as illustrating a clear distinction between those who worked and those who fought (Lordship and Military Obligation, pp. 132–4).

67 Past. L. II, chs. 189–91 (and also Past. L. 2, chs. 178–84).

68 Ibid. chs. 194–7 (and chs. 183–6). One can gain an insight into how the incident of Peter cutting off Malchus's ear (John XVIII. 10) could be viewed as a heroic (if inappropriate) act in the Old Saxon poem The Heliand (ed. Scott, M. (Chapel Hill, NC, 1966), at p. 167).Google Scholar

69 Past. L. II, ch. 84.

70 Ibid. chs. 147–8.

71 Angelsächsische Homilien und Heiligenleben, ed. Assmann, B. (Kassel, 1889), pp. 13–23 (no. 2)Google Scholar; Early English Homilies, ed. Warner, R., EETS os 152 (London, 1917), 3.Google Scholar

72 Wulfstan's Canons of Edgar, ed. Fowler, , p. 17 (ch. 68b).Google Scholar This is reiterated in Æthelred's law-code of 1014 (VIII Æth. 28), which bears the unmistakable stamp of Wulfstan's authorship (The Laws of the English Kings from Edmund to Henry I, ed. Robertson, A. J. (Cambridge, 1925), pp. 117–29).Google Scholar

73 Wulfstan's Canons of Edgar, ed. Fowler, , p. 17 (ch. 68a).Google Scholar

74 This was suggested to me by N.P. Brooks.

75 Prinz, F., Klerus und Krieg im früheren Mittelalter: Untersuchungen zur Rolle der Kirche beim Aufbau der Königsherrschaft, Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 2 (Stuttgart, 1971)Google Scholar; and Prinz, , ‘King, Clergy and War at the Time of the Carolingians’, in Saints, Scholars and Heroes: Studies in Medieval Culture in honour of Charles W. Jones, ed. King, M. H. and Stevens, W. M., 2 vols. (Ann Arbor, MI, 1979) II, 301–29.Google Scholar

76 The clergy were also involved in warfare simply through praying for victory and supplying soldiers from their estates.

77 Prinz, , Klerus und Krieg, pp. 37–49Google Scholar. See also Dam, R. Van, Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul (Berkeley, CA, 1985).Google Scholar

78 Prinz, , Klerus und Krieg, pp. 48–50.Google Scholar

79 See also Werner, K. F., ‘Important Noble Families in the Kingdom of Charlemagne’, in The Medieval Nobility, ed. Reuter, T. (Amsterdam, 1978), pp. 137–202, at 146–7Google Scholar. Recently this process has been illuminated by a study of Frankish hagiography: Fouracre, P., ‘Merovingian History and Merovingian Hagiography’, Past and Present, 127 (1990), 3–38.Google Scholar

80 Prinz, , ‘King, Clergy and War’, p. 304Google Scholar. One recalls J. M. Wallace-Hadrill's observation on the Frankish noble – ‘for such a one, Frankish life was war’ (‘War and Peace in the Early Middle Ages’, TRHS 5th ser. 25 (1975), 157–74, at 162).Google Scholar

81 See ch. 2 of the Concilium Germanicum of 742; MGH, Leges 2.1 (Hanover, 1837), no. 10.

82 Prinz, , Klerus and Krieg, pp. 66 and 69.Google Scholar

83 Ibid. pp. 85–9.

84 Ch. 70: ‘et omnimodis dicendum est presbyteris et diaconibus, ut arma non portent, sed magis se confidant in defensione Dei quam in armis’ (MGH, Leges 2.1, no. 22).

85 Prinz, , Klerus und Krieg, pp. 106 and 118Google Scholar; Nelson, J. L., ‘The Church's Military Service in the Ninth Century: a Contemporary Comparative View?’, Stud. in Church Hist. 20 (1983), 15–30, at 23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

86 Prinz, , Klerus and Krieg, p. 126. Prinz notes that Hincmar is alone in condemning rather than commending Wala's behaviour.Google Scholar

87 It is not, of course, coincidental that the monastic clergy, taken as a whole, were less enthusiastic. Many, though of high birth, had been brought up in a monastic environment in which the martial values of their peers were less important in shaping their outlook on life.

88 Ed. Traube, L., MGH, PLAC 3 (Berlin, 1886), 220 (no. 66)Google Scholar; Prinz, , Klerus und Krieg, pp. 125–6.Google Scholar

89 Nelson, ‘The Church's Military Service in the Ninth Century’. The idea is introduced by Hincmar claiming rather curiously, and most erroneously, that the English church gave no military service because of its poverty.

90 See, for example, John, E., ‘Orbis Britanniae’, in his Orbis Britanniae and the Anglo-Saxon Kings (Leicester, 1966), pp. 1–63Google Scholar; Loyn, H. R., ‘The Imperial Style of the Tenth Century Anglo-Saxon Kings’, History 40 (1955), 111–15Google Scholar; Loyn, , ‘Church and State in England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, in Tenth Century Studies: Essays in Commemoration of the Millennium of the Council of Winchester and ‘Regularis Concordia’, ed. Parsons, D. (Chichester, 1975), pp. 94–102.Google Scholar

91 See above, n. 61.

92 Ælfric may not be alone; see, for instance, D. Bethurum's observation, with particular reference to the work of Archbishop Wulfstan, that in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries we see a reaction against the close allying if not actual merging, earlier in the tenth century, of the secular and the ecclesiastical spheres (The Homilies of Wulfstan, pp. 71–6). This had owed something to ninth-century Carolingian reform synods, which were a major influence on the ecclesiastical legislation of the monastic reform in England. See, for example, Stafford, P., Unification and Conquest: a Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London, 1989), pp. 184–7.Google Scholar

93 Duby is not unaware of this problem; thus he does realize that Æfric's use of the Three Orders differs from Wulfstan's. I would question whether he adequately considers the implication of this difference.

94 Duby, , The Three Orders, p. 5.Google Scholar

95 Oexle, O. G., ‘Die “Wirklichkeit” und das “Wissen”. Ein Blick auf das Sozialgeschichtliche Oeuvre von Georges Duby’, HZ 232 (1981), 61–91.Google Scholar

96 Ibid. pp. 69–70.

97 My thanks are due to Nicholas Brooks, Peter Harper, Avril Powell and Chris Wickham for advice and comments on earlier versions of this paper, and to Janet Nelson for her comments and for letting me see a draft of her forthcoming paper, ‘The Political Ideas of Alfred of Wessex’, in Kings and Kingship, ed. Duggan, A. (London, forthcoming).Google Scholar