The Church of Worcester from the Eighth to the Twelfth Century

Ivor Atkins

doi:10.1017/S0003581500074886

The Church of Worcester from the Eighth to the Twelfth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2012

Ivor Atkins

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Very divergent views have been held about the constitution of the Church of Worcester in the centuries before Oswald established the Benedictine Rule. The ideas of eighteenth-century historians are perhaps of little importance to-day in the light of our further knowledge, for in the last fifty years the attention of an increasing number of scholars has been turned upon the investigation and elucidation of the history of that church, and much light has already been thrown upon its dark spots. But for a time there was considerable confusion, and it was a little hard to see where the truth lay, so various were the views put forward by investigators.

Type: Research Article
Information: The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , October 1937 , pp. 371 - 391

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003581500074886 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1937

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^{page 372 note 1} Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, iii, 604–6.

^{page 372 note 2} D.C.B. 1882, iii, 916.Google Scholar

^{page 372 note 3} Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton. Four other leaves of the ‘Oswald’ Cartulary are to be found in B.M. Nero E. 1 (ff. 181–4). The Middleton leaf came between ff. 182 and 183. For the Bible fragments see also Turner, , Early Worcester MSS., Oxford, 1916, pp. xli–xliiGoogle Scholar.

^{page 373 note 1} Middleton Charters, Hist. MSS. Commission 1911, Charters IV–VII, pp. 203–7.Google Scholar

^{page 373 note 2} Early Worcester MSS., O.U.P., 1916, p. xl.Google Scholar

^{page 373 note 3} Ibid., p. xxviii.

^{page 373 note 4} British Academy, Supplemental Papers, 1919.Google Scholar

^{page 373 note 5} Op. cit., p. 7.

^{page 373 note 6} Ibid. p. 10.

^{page 374 note 1} Hemming, , Cartulary, p. 280.Google Scholar It is certain that Hemming uses the words seruus dei only in the sense of a monk.

^{page 375 note 1} Hemming, pp. 210, 199 (genetrici).

^{page 375 note 2} Hemming, p. 239.

^{page 375 note 3} The ‘Oswald’ cartulary version of the 982 lease reads usui monastico in Wigracestre restituatur in the passage referred to.

^{page 376 note 1} Examples of this continuity of description may be seen in the following Latin charters, A.D. 855 (H. 436), 872 (H. 229), 969 (H. 132), 996 (H. 190–1).

The phrase appears with the same persistence in A.-S. documents throughout these three centuries, where the Latin familia is rendered by the word hired in one of its many forms.

Thus we find:

743–745 Milrede… 7 his pæm halegan hirede… (where the words halegan hirede are a form of the Latin sancta familia of contemporary charters) (Earle, , Land Charters, pp. 41–2).Google Scholar

991. Oswald … 7 þæs arwurden hiredes (H. 195, 21, 13–15, Add. Ch. 19799).

It is used too in Worcester documents as early as the ninth century of communities definitely monastic, e.g. of Bredon. 841… donabo Eanmundo venerabili abbati et ejus familie (H. 458).

^{page 377 note 1} Their abbots are often described as alumni of the Worcester Church.

^{page 377 note 2} Smith's, Baeda, p. 764Google Scholar (from the original then in the hands of Lord Somers). See also Hemming, pp. 21–2.

^{page 378 note 1} Hemming, p. 68. A few years later Bishop Egwin laid down the condition that the rule of monastic life should always be observed there (ut semper ibi cenobialis vite statuta serventur). Middleton Charters, p. 201.

^{page 378 note 2} Bede, , Hist. eccl. I, xxiii.Google Scholar

^{page 378 note 3} Hickes, , Thesaurus, 169.Google Scholar

^{page 378 note 4} Hemming, p. 384.

^{page 378 note 5} Hemming, p. 442.

^{page 378 note 6} Earle, , Land Charters, p. 41.Google Scholar Said by Earle to be ‘our earliest example of a genuine charter wholly in Saxon’ (but thought spurious by Stevenson).

^{page 379 note 1} Hemming, pp. 36–9; Nero E. 1, f. 389.

^{page 379 note 2} Hemming, pp. 466–7; Earle, , Land Charters, pp. 52–3Google Scholar.

^{page 379 note 3} There is still extant an interesting letter from Mildred to Lul, an English bishop in Germany, written after the death of St. Boniface whom the Worcester bishop had visited a little time before. It may be read in an English translation in The English Correspondence of Saint Boniface (London, 1911), pp. 206–9.Google Scholar In this letter Mildred describes himself as seruus seruorum dei, a form of description generally associated with Papal use, but used also by other English bishops in the eighth century. We find it used by Bishop Wulstan as late as 1089.

^{page 380 note 1} Hemming, pp. 88–90.

^{page 380 note 2} This is early for an allusion to clerks.

^{page 380 note 3} H. 54–6.

^{page 380 note 4} Eccles. Councils, iii, 545–8; K.C.D. 1024.

^{page 380 note 5} Hemming, pp. 23–4. Middleton Charters, pp. 204–6.

^{page 381 note 1} Hemming, p. 410.

^{page 381 note 2} Smith's, Baeda, p. 770.Google Scholar

^{page 381 note 3} Hemming, p. 166.

^{page 382 note 1} Smith's, Baeda, pp. 771–2.Google Scholar

^{page 382 note 2} Hemming, p. 195.

^{page 382 note 3} Add. Ch. 19799 (Earle, p. 242).

^{page 382 note 4} Hemming, pp. 29–30.

^{page 382 note 5} Hemming, pp. 333–4.

^{page 383 note 1} Hemming, pp. 164–5. The charter is wrongly dated 954.

^{page 383 note 2} Memorials of Dunstan, introd. xxxiv.

^{page 383 note 3} Memorials of Dunstan, p. 195.

^{page 384 note 1} See Crawford, S. J., ‘Speculum religionis’ in Essays and Studies presented to C. G. Montefiore, pp. 99–111.Google Scholar

^{page 384 note 2} For this ‘Life’ see Historians of York (R.S.), i, 399.

^{page 385 note 1} Historians of York, i, 424.

^{page 385 note 2} ‘Sunt denique in provincia Merciorum quae Wicisca(?) dicitur septem monasteria constructa quae sub regimine tanti pontificis stabant constitutis a rege patribus’ (Hist. of York, R.S., i, 439).

^{page 385 note 3} A recent writer states that Bath passed from Mercia to Wessex in the time of Alfred (Symons, , The Grammar School of K. Edward VI, Bath, pp. 29–39)Google Scholar.

^{page 386 note 1} See various contributions by the Rev. Taylor, C. S. in Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Arch. Soc., amongst others, vol. xviii, pp. 125, 128Google Scholar.

^{page 386 note 2} Hist. of York, i, 439.

^{page 387 note 1} In the Ramsey foundation charter of 974 (B.C.S. 1310) the three abbots attest together.

^{page 387 note 2} Or perhaps by 966, if we can trust an entry in a later hand in the Winchcombe Annals (Tiberius A iv) which records under this year that Germanus was then made abbot by Oswald. But the earliest appearance of Germanus in charters is in 972.

^{page 387 note 3} B.C.S. 1282 and 1284. The Worcester charter has not come down in a complete form; except for the enumeration of properties, it is practically identical with that of Pershore. Both are starred as of doubtful authority by Kemble, but the Pershore charter was accepted by Bond and is printed without comment in his B.M. Facsimiles, iii, 30.

^{page 388 note 1} Hist. of York, i, 435.

^{page 388 note 2} Chronicle, i, 189; Worc. Ann. iv, 369 (where the date given is inaccurate).

^{page 389 note 1} Life of Æthelwold in Abingdon, Chronicle (R.S.), pp. 257–8Google Scholar.

^{page 389 note 2} For synod of 1092 see Anglia Sacra, i, 542–3.

^{page 389 note 3} Hemming, pp. 341–2, and Worcester Cath. MS. Register 1 (quoted in Hemming, p. 515).

^{page 390 note 1} Alric was living as late as the reign of William I, see Hemming, p. 266.

^{page 390 note 2} Translation from St. Oswald and the Church of Worcester, p. 4.

^{page 390 note 3} Hemming, p. 343.

^{page 391 note 1} Memorials of Dunstan, p. 197. But the bishop's chair was not removed until the end of Oswald's episcopate, or perhaps even until the time of his successor, bishop Adulf, for in one of the last of Oswald's leases it is stated that the pontifical seat is in the church of St. Peter. The lease is given in Hemming (p. 232), who, following the ‘Oswald’ cartulary, dates it in error 965. The list of witnesses shows that it belongs to the year 991.

^{page 391 note 2} Historians of the Church of York, ii, 23–4.

^{page 391 note 3} Ibid., p. 38. The statement is corroborated by Florence of Worc. sub. 992.

^{page 391 note 4} Ramsey, Chronicle (R.S.), p. 41–2.Google Scholar

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