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St. Oswald and the Tenth Century Reformation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Eric John
Eric John
Affiliation:
Lecturer in History, University of Manchester
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Extract

St. Oswald's part in the English revival of Benedictine monasticism usually known as the tenth century reformation was the subject of a classical study by the late Dr. Armitage Robinson, whose conclusions have gained very wide acceptance. Dr. Robinson was mainly interested in the part St. Oswald played in the conversion of Worcester cathedral into a fully Benedictine community. He drew a sharp distinction between the conduct of St. Æthelwold at Winchester and that of Oswald at Worcester.Accepting the usual opinion that Æthelwold expelled clerks from Winchester by violence and replaced them with monks, he argued that Oswald on the contrary was a gentle man who preferred to convert the Worcester community to monasticism gradually and made no expulsions. In his argument Dr. Robinson found himself greatly handicapped by the paucity of information in the few narrative sources relevant to the tenth century which were reasonably contemporary. He found himself forced to take into consideration post-Conquest hagiography and to discriminate within the conflicting details of late traditions. In spite of the poor character of the narrative evidence he thought, and he has carried most later scholars with him in this, that he could supply the defects of his narrative sources by what was mainly a statistical study of the witness-lists to the many charters issued in Oswald's name during his pontificate. It is upon his calculations that Dr. Robinson's theory in the end rests. It will be argued in this paper that the late traditions are of little value and that the witnesslists of Oswald's charters do not quite bear the weight Dr. Robinson put upon them. A rather different view of Oswald's pontificate will be suggested and by taking into account some allegedly contemporary evidence which Dr. Robinson, on reasonable grounds, ignored, some wider considerations relating to the establishment of the monks will be offered.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , October 1958 , pp. 159 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1958

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References

page 159 note 2 St. Oswald and the Church of Worcester, British Academy Supplemental Papers, v, London 1919.Google Scholar

page 160 note 1 Memorials of St. Dunstan, ed. Stubbs, W., London 1874, 303.Google Scholar

page 160 note 2 Op. cit., 2.

page 160 note 3 Sir Ivor Atkins put forward further evidence, Antiquaries Journal, XVII (1937)Google Scholar. The late Levison, Dr., England and the Continent in the Eighth Century, Oxford 1946, 258Google Scholar, was not altogether convinced by Dr. Robinson's arguments against these charters. It should be noted however that almost all of them have also been rejected, on other grounds, by Stevenson and Stenton. Further grounds for their rejection could still be put forward, but it is enough to note that some of the most dubious Worcester charters claim that the see was dedicated to St. Mary before 964, that no reasonably probable charter earlier than the time of Oswald mentions this dedication. It is also plain that charters fabricated on the model of authentic charters of the early period frequently alter the dedication from Peter to Mary; see C.S. 204, which speaks of a Worcester monastery: ‘quod constructum est in honore sanctissime virginis et matris domini nostri Jesu Christi Marie …“There is no doubt that C.S. 204 is a fabricated charter dependent on C.S. 203; Turner, C. H., Early Worcester MSS., Oxford 1916Google Scholar, xxxix. The authentic charter does not mention any monastery dedicated to St. Mary.

page 160 note 4 The Ramsey Chronicle, ed. Macray, 41 and 109 shows that Oswald did rule over two communities, Worcester and Ramsey. Oswald, until his death, was abbot of Ramsey as well as bishop of Worcester. It is possible that confused memories of this curious arrangement were partly responsible for the mistaken Anglo-Norman tradition of the two Worcester communities.

page 161 note 1 Wigorniensis, Florentii, Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed. Thorpe, B., London 1848, I. 141.Google Scholar

page 161 note 2 Hemming, , Chartularium, ed. Hearne, T., Oxford 1723, ii. 527.Google Scholar

page 161 note 3 de Gray Birch, W., C[artularium] S[axonicum], London 1885–9, no. 1243.Google Scholar

page 161 note 4 Hemming, ii. 530.

page 161 note 5 Historians of the Church of York, ed. Raine, J., London 1879, i. 435.Google Scholar

page 161 note 6 Op. cit., 37.

page 161 note 7 B.M. Harley MS. 7513.

page 161 note 8 The best discussion of C.S. 1135 is to be found in Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, Cambridge 1897.I hope to publish shortly a detailed examination of the authenticity of this charter.Google Scholar

page 162 note 1 This translation of amplificavit may be defended with reference to Levison, op. cit., 200, quoting Goscelinus, Translatio Augustini, ii. 25, 6: ‘Foris hoc regiis amplificavit possessionibus, intus decoravit regiis ornatibus.’

page 162 note 2 ‘Unde nunc in presenti monasterium quod predictus reverendus episcopus Oswaldus in sede episcopali Weogreceastre in honore sancte dei genetricis Marie amplificavit et eliminatis clericorum neniis et spurcis lasciviis religiosis dei servis monachis meo consensu et favore suffultus locavit. Ego ipsis monastice religionis viris regali auctoritate confirmo et consilio et astipulatione principum et optimatum meorum corroboro et consigno ita ut jam amplius non sit fas neque jus clericis reclamandi quicquam inde quippe qui magis elegerunt cum sui ordinis periculo et ecclesiastici beneficii dispendio suis uxoribus adherere quam deo caste et canonice servire. Et ideo cuncta que illi de ecclesia possederant [cum] ipsa ecclesia sive ecclesiastica sive secularia tam mobilia quam immobilia ipsis dei servis monachis ab hac die perpetualiter regie munificen [tie j]ure deinceps possidenda traco et consigno …’ The text is taken from Harley MS. 7513 and the gaps are filled from the later inspeximus of this charter, PRO.C. 53/99, no. 25.

page 162 note 3 K[emble], , C[odex] D[iplomaticus], London 1839–1848, no. 637.Google Scholar

page 162 note 4 Robertson, A. J., Anglo-Saxon Charters, Cambridge 1939, no. xlii.Google Scholar

page 163 note 1 Hemming, ii, 460: Levison, op. cit., 263. I am indebted to Mr. P. H. Sawyer for drawing my attention to this charter in this connexion.

page 163 note 2 See my forthcoming paper ‘The Liberty of Oswaldslow’.

page 163 note 3 See Cheney, C. R., English Bishops’ Chanceries, Manchester 1950, chapter 1. Episcopal acta were, of course, very little studied when Dr. Robinson wrote.Google Scholar

page 164 note 1 Hemming, i. 265.

page 164 note 2 Antiquaries Journal, XX (1940).Google Scholar

page 164 note 3 Chron. Monast. Abingdon, ed. Stevenson, J., London 1858, ii. 257: ‘Venit ergo predictus servus Dei ad locum sibi commissum, quem statim secuti sunt quidam clerici de Glastonia … congregavit sibi in brevi spatio gregem monachorum, quibus ipse abbas, jubente rege, ordinatus est.’ Ælfric is referring to Æthelwold's removal from Glastonbury to Abingdon and since the clerks all came with him from Dunstan's Glastonbury, we must suppose that clerici and monachi are here used indifferently.Google Scholar

page 164 note 4 Kemble was the first to offer a serious defence of the view that St. Oswald never ejected clerks from Worcester but converted the existing community gradually. His views are printed by Birch as an appendix to an Oswald charter, C.S. 1243. Kemble's view was not deeply considered, his arithmetic is inaccurate and his inspection of the Oswald charters only casual. He placed the weight of his argument on a late Oswald charter, K.C.D. 615, which is unique in describing about half of the witnesses as monks and most of the rest as clerks. But, as Dr. Robinson pointed out, we cannot put any weight on this charter just because it is unique. But, in any case, Oswald's witnesses simply show no consistency of title. One of K.C.D. 615's monks, Æthelric, is described as clericus in other charters of the same year; two more of these monks become deacons in other contemporary charters.

page 165 note 1 Op. cit., 18.

page 166 note 1 We know that Wynsige had been a Worcester clerk before he was converted to monasticism and sent to Ramsey, yet he never attests any Worcester charter before 977.

page 166 note 2 Crawford, S. G., Speculum Religionis: Essays … presented to C. G. Montefiore, London 1929Google Scholar, and Fisher, D. V. J., Cambridge Historical Journal, X (1952).Google Scholar

page 166 note 3 Hamilton-Thompson, Dr. pointed out (Bede Essays, Oxford 1935, 98 n. 2) that the Vita has a passage which is difficult to interpret in any other way than that Oswald expelled clerks from Worcester at some point in his pontificate. See H.C.Υ., i. 462: ‘De loco in quo ejus pontificalis cathedra posita est, quid referam, quidque dicam? Nonne in eo quo quondam mansitabant diacones et struciones, fecit Deo servire monachos?’Google Scholar

page 166 note 4 H.C.Υ., i. 426. No date is assigned to this assembly in the Vita Oswaldi but since we are told that.Æthelwold persuaded the king to expel clerks from monasteries and replace them with monks, it is reasonable to connect the Vita here with the Parker Chronicle, sub anno 964, which records the expulsion of the clerks from Winchester. It was so taken by Flor. Wig., i. 140.

page 167 note 1 H.C.Υ., i. 427.

page 167 note 2 H.C.Υ., i. 425.

page 167 note 3 H.C.Υ., i. 424.

page 167 note 4 Æthelwold too had his interest in gaining the ear of the king. The process of eliminating the ‘lascivious clerks’ from Winchester seems to have begun 21 February 964. Æthelwold imported monks from Abingdon who entered the church as Mass was ending, taking their cue from the communion antiphon for the day, Ælfric, Vita Æthelwoldi, Chron. Abingdon, ii. 260. The clerks were then offered the choice of receiving the monastic habit or exile from the church of Winchester (and its endowment). It is usual to ascribe all this to the same day 21 February 964, Knowles, Monastic Order, 41 but the Vita Æthelwold does not necessarily support this opinion. It quotes the communion antiphon and then tells us that the monks decided to delay no longer. Since the next sentence claims that the king sent down one of his great men Wulfstan of Dalham who had royal authority to expel recalcitrant clerks, it is clear that the monks and Æthelwold must have appealed to the king in the meantime. The appeal and the decision seem to me likely to have taken up more than a single day, further the Vita Æthelwoldi neither confirms nor denies this, it affords a means of dating the beginning of the process only. Eadmer in his life of Dunstan, Memorials, 212, claims that the clerks appealed to the king and that their suit was heard in a council at Winchester. (A similar story is told in Osbern's Life, op. cit., 113 except that the provenance of the litigious clerks is not given.) I have not found Eadmer's source for this information. It seems reasonable to suppose however that the Easter synod of 964 was decisive for the conversion of Winchester as well as Worcester and that the community of interest between Oswald and Æthelwold was very close.

page 168 note 1 The nature of the assembly has been somewhat obscured by an attractive suggestion of Dr. Knowles, which however I believe we must resist. In the Monastic Order in England, Cambridge 1949, 42 he suggested that the Regularis Concordia was promulgated in the Easter assembly described by the Vita Oswaldi. Miss Duckett, St. Dunstan of Canterbury, London 1955, 159, adopted this suggestion and concluded that: ‘it was the action of Oswald which prompted and pushed forward his friends to those deliberations which gave form and lasting life to their work, an action entirely in keeping with his character.’ But the Vita says nothing of the business of the Easter assembly other than that it was to do with the expulsion of the clerks and their replacement by monks. The Concordia itself (ed. Symons, Proem c. 2 and 3) suggests that the expulsion of the clerks, the main business of the 964 assembly, had taken place some time ago. Another passage (Procm, c. 4) confirms this suggestion.

page 169 note 1 Monastic Order, 52.

page 169 note 2 C.S. 641.

page 169 note 3 Abingdon Chronicle, ii, 256.

page 169 note 4 Ibid., 257.

page 169 note 5 Stenton, F. M., Early History of Abingdon, Oxford 1913, 50–1.Google Scholar

page 169 note 6 Dom Thomas Symons in the introduction to his admirable edition of the Concordia, by which he has placed every student of the Anglo-Saxon Church in his debt, writes on p. xxix: ‘True the monasteries are represented in the Concordia as being dependent for their well-being on the royal power; but this was doubtless a manner of speaking.’ I think we must take the Concordia quite literally here. The author of C.S. 1135 interestingly includes ‘Julian the apostate, oppressor and persecutor of the Church’ with more conventional damnable and damned examples in the anathema of the charter. This was presumably intended as a hint to Edgar's successors.

page 170 note 1 Hemming, ii. 530.

page 171 note 1 Essays presented to Tout, Manchester 1925, 10 f.

page 171 note 2 Op. cit., 106.

page 171 note 3 Op. cit., 104. Twenty years later a member of the Canterbury community speaks, C.S. 402, of ‘my brother monks’.

page 171 note 4 Alcuin takes it for granted that English monks had their own ‘houses’. Writing to the monks of Wearmouth at the turn of the century, he says: ‘Magna est apud Deum communis oratio et magna caritatis communio. Et multo est melius, cum fratribus communiter orare, manducare et dormire, quam in speciali habitatione solum cum periculo manere. ‘Epistolae, M.G.H. Epistolarum, tom, iv, no. 284. About ten years earlier Alcuin warned the bishop of Lindisfarne and his monks that they ought not to play dice or drink ‘in domibus’ (Ep. 21). It is plain that Alcuin took it for granted that monks would have their own houses and it is their abuse which he warns against.

page 172 note 1 The meagre sources for Edgar's reign seem to emphasise the importance of maintaining the integrity of monastic endowments in a way easily understandable if the tenurial implications of the conversion of Worcester were general. Attempts were made to prevent individuals alienating estates from their churches. The vernacular account of the establishment of the monasteries which is certainly early and probably by Æthelwold, D. Whitelock, English Historical Documents, i. 846, instructs abbesses not to give God's estates to their relatives or to ‘secular great persons’ and concludes: ‘Let whatever among the possessions of the churches is given to the eternal Christ stand for ever.’ Æthelwold might have had simply the conduct of abbesses as custodians of their church's property in mind but the Concordia specifically forbids abbots and abbesses from making wills. (I have defended this interpretation of the passage in question, ante, vi, 1955), 150 n. i. The right to bequeath, or the lack of it, is a decisive criterion for distinguishing between corporate tenure and tenure in proprios usus. Æthelwold almost certainly wrote the Concordia as well as the vernacular account, see Downside Review, lxxiv (1956), 175. It is worth pointing out that the early charters of Cluny, Fleury and other continental reformed houses make the replacement of tenure quasi propria by communalising of the endowment one of the principal objects of the reform. This was pointed out and discussed by Sackur, Die Cluniacenser, Halle 1892, i. 52.

page 172 note 2 It may be possible to explain on these lines the curious fact that the English monasteries as a whole stood up to the second wave of Viking invasions so much better than the first. In any case it is always ‘secular tyranny’ and never the Vikings that the Edgarian sources blame for the decadence of monasticism. Abbot Ælfric in his pastoral letter (Thorpe, B., Ancient Laws and Institutes, London 1840, ii, 372)Google Scholar insists that regular monks have all their property in common as their abbot directs them. He emphasises the same point in his homily on the deposition of St. Martin: Thorpe, B., Homilies of Ælfric, London 1844–6, ii, 506.Google Scholar