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‘AD Sedem Episcopalem Reddantur’: Bishops, Monks, and Monasteries in the Diocese of Worcester in the Eighth Century*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Martin Ryan
Martin Ryan*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

Alas! brother, alas! For almost everywhere in this land the rule of regular life falls away and the secular way of life thrives.

Alcuin of York’s famous lament to Abbot. Æthelbald of Wearmouth-Jarrow at the end of the eighth century could serve as a neat summary of the traditional scholarly picture of eighth-century Anglo-Saxon monasticism: a movement in near-terminal decline with falling standards in religious observance and monasteries increasingly coming under secular control. The bishops of Worcester have been seen by many scholars as taking a leading role in the fight-back against this creeping secularization. It was not, however, that they played a key role in the drafting of conciliar legislation or that they produced texts condemning the lax standards of Anglo-Saxon monasticism. Rather, successive bishops of Worcester have been seen, since the eighteenth century at least, as challenging secularization through the property strategies they adopted. In order to challenge lay lordship, secularization and declining monastic standards the bishops of Worcester in the eighth century were, in Brooks’ words, ‘attempting, with mixed success, to persuade lords to bequeath their family monasteries to the see of Worcester’. This allowed the bishops to have greater control over the monasteries in tbeir diocese than existing legislation would otherwise have permitted. The bishops could directly intervene in the affairs of these monasteries and impose their own abbots and staff. As Thacker argues, the bishops of Worcester were attempting to ensure ‘independent proprietary monasteries were brought under their control and put in the charge of priests from the episcopal familia.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 43: Discipline and Diversity , 2007 , pp. 114 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2007

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Footnotes

*

Numerous individuals have read and commented on various versions of the material in this paper and their input has improved it immeasurably. My thanks and gratitude go to all of them: Nick Higham; Conrad Leyser, Paul Fouracre; Barbara Yorke; Alex Rumble; Kate Cooper and the indefatigable members of the University of Manchester Centre for Late Antiquity; Hannah Williams; Julia Hillner. Last, but certainly not least, Rosa Vidal Doval: ‘Dáme os teus bicos i os teus brazos ábreme’.

References

1 Alcuin, Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, E., Epistolae Karolini Aevi II MGH, Epistolae 4 (Berlin, 1895), 18–481, no. 67 Google Scholar: ‘Heu, frater, heu, quia paene ubique regularis vite in hac terra cadit normula et secularis vitae crescit formula’. All translations are my own. Blair, J., The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford, 2005), 124–5 Google Scholar, has suggested ‘by “secular” Alcuin [may] have meant the life of priests as against that of nuns and monks’. Given the lines that follow this one in the letter (‘Et quod pessimum est, ipsi structores multis in locis fiunt destructores, et edificatores dissipatores. Et hoc est, quod per prophetam dictum est, “Ipsi enim pastores erraverunt.”’) such an interpretation would seem to me, however, to force too negative an opinion of the life of the secular clergy onto a man who had, after all, spent his youth as part of the cathedral community at York It is possible that Alcuin is making reference to the comfortable and luxurious way of life in the secularized monasteries through a pun on ‘for mula’, a pattern or way of doing things but also a type of chair or bench suitable for relax ation (see, for example, Gregory of Tours, Libri historiamm X, bk 8, ch. 31, in B. Krusch, ed., Gregorii Turonensis Opera, 2 vols, MGH Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 1 [Hannover, 1937]’ 1: 398, line 1), though this usage seems to have been relatively restricted.

2 See, for example, Godfrey, J., The Church in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1962), 163–6 Google Scholar or Brooks, N., The Early History of the Church of Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066 (London, 1984), 177–80 Google Scholar. For recent discussion, see Cubitt, C., Anglo-Saxon Church Councils C.650-C.850 (London, 1995), 110–22 Google Scholar and Blair, The Church, esp. 79–134.

3 Green, V., The History and Antiquities of the City of Worcester and Its Suburbs, 2 vols (London, 1796), 1: 24–5 Google Scholar. For more recent comment, see Sims-Williams, P., Religion and Literature in Western England, 600–800 (Cambridge, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at, for example, 140–1 and Wormald, P., ‘Charters, Law and the Settlement of Disputes in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Davies, W. and Fouracre, P., eds, The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1986), 149–68 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 157.

4 Brooks, Early History, 179.

5 Thacker, A., ‘Monks, Preaching and Pastoral Care in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, in Blair, J. and Sharpe, R., eds, Pastoral Care Before the Parish (London, 1992), 137–70 Google Scholar, at 165.

6 For a list of monasteries likely to have come under the control of Worcester by c.800, see Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature, 169. The early charters in the archive of the episcopal seat at Selsey are similarly dominated by grants to smaller religious foundations that later came under episcopal control. See Kelly, S. E.,Charters of Selsey (Oxford, 1998), xxx–xxxi Google Scholar. I have used term ‘monastery’ in this paper rather than the term ‘minster’ that is sometimes preferred by Anglo-Saxon scholars as whilst ‘monastery’ may have misleading connotations for the Anglo-Saxon period, the term ‘minster’ is likely to have as many misleading connotations for non-specialist readers. For discussion of the terms, see Blair, The Church, 3–4 and for a recent and important reconsideration of monasteries and churches in this period, see C. Cubitt, The Clergy in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, HR 78 (2005), 273–87.

7 Brooks, Early History, 180.

8 Though note the important caveat about the geographical distribution of the evidence highlighted by Blair, The Church, 115–16.

9 The now classic statement is A. Thacker, ‘Bede’s Ideal of Reform’, in Wormald, P., Bullough, D. and Collins, D., eds, Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to]. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1983), 130–53 Google Scholar. For a detailed consideration of these issues in one of Bede’s exegetical works, see DeGregorio, S., ‘Bede’s In Ezram et Neemiam and the Reform of the Northumbrian Church’, Speculum 79 (2004), 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Goffart, W., L‘Histoire ecclésiastique et l’engagement politique de Bède’, in Lebecq, S., Perrin, M. and Szerwiniack, O., eds, Bède le Vénérable entre tradition et postérité (Lille, 2005), 149–58 Google Scholar, esp. 150–1. The theme is discussed more generally by O. Szerwiniack, L‘Histoire ecclésiastique ou le rêve d’un retour au temps de l’innocence’, ibid., 159–76.

11 On the tone of the letter, see, for example, Musca, G., Il Venerabile Beda storico dell’alto medioevo (Bari, 1973), 347 Google Scholar: ‘c’è il tono paterno ed affettuoso, ma anche la serietà di chi ha da dire cose gravi’.

12 Bede, Espitola ad Ecgbertum, in Plummer, C., ed., Venerabilis Baedae Opera Historica, 2 vols (Oxford, 1896), 1: 405–23.Google Scholar For discussion, see Musque, Beda, 345–56, Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature, 115–29 and Blair, The Church, 100–8.

13 Boniface, Espistolae, in M. Tangl, ed., Die Briefen des heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus MGH Epistolae Selectae 1 (2nd edn, Berlin, 1955), no. 78.

14 Council of Clovesho, AD 747, in Haddan, A.W. and Stubbs, W. S., eds, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 3 vols (Oxford, 1869–71), 3: 362–76 Google Scholar, canon five, for lay-controlled monasteries, canon nine for the behaviour of the clergy, and canon twenty: ‘ludicrarum artium receptacula, hoc est, poetarum, citharistarum, musicorum, scurrorum’.

15 As is illustrated, for example, by the differing attitudes of Bede, Boniface, and the Council of Clovesho of 747 to what should be done about monasteries under secular control. For discussion, see Thacker, ‘Monks’, 165 and Cubitt, Church Councils, 105.

16 Stark’s observations on the ‘myth of past piety’ are also pertinent, see Stark, R., ‘Secularization, R.I.P.’ Sociology of Religion 60 (1999), 249–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Blair, The Church, 90–1.

18 Council at Rome, AD 679 in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, 3: 131–5: ‘ut Episcopi vel quicunque ecclesiastici ordinis religiosam vitam professi sunt, armis non utantur, nee citharoedas habeant, vel quaecunque symphoniaca, nee quoscunque jocos vel ludos ante se permittant’. The acta of this council survive only as part of a post-Conquest vita of Arch bishop Theodore by Goscelin of St Benin, see Vollrath, H., Die Synoden Englands bis 1066 (Paderborn, 1985), 77 Google Scholar n. 152. For discussion of the authenticity or otherwise of the acta, see Gibbs, M., ‘The Decrees of Agatho and the Gregorian Plan for York’, Speculum 68 (1973), 213–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Birch, W. de G., ed., Cartularium Saxonicum: a Collection of Charters Relating to Anglo-Saxon History, 3 vols (London, 1885–93), 1: 156 Google Scholar, listed as 1429 in P. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968) with revisions by Kelly, S., at http://www.trin.camc.uk/sdk13/chartwww/eSawyer.99/eSawyer2.html [hereafter Sawyer], accessed 4 July 2005.Google Scholar

20 This initial transaction can be dated to the period 674–704, see H. P. & Finberg, The Early Charters of the West Midlands (2nd edn, London, 1972), 3 2.

21 For dating, see Cubitt, Church Councils, 265.

22 ‘cartam […] primtivo vel per furta vel quolibet modo fraudulenter auferendo subripere praesumpsit’.

23 Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature, 132.

24 Ibid., 140.

25 Sawyer, 1255 (Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, 217). The list of donations to Worcester printed by Dugdale similarly describes the bequest to Hrothwaru as made ‘licentiâ Eguini episcopi’, but this detail may simply be summarizing Sawyer, 1255, see W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum..., 3 vols (London, 1655–73), 1: 137.

26 See, for example, John, E., Land Tenure in Early England: a Discussion of Some Problems (London, 1960), 43 Google Scholar or Wormald, P., Bede and the Conversion of England: the Charter Evidence (Jarrow, 1984), 21–3.Google Scholar

27 Reynolds, S., ‘Bookland, Folkland and Fiefs’, Anglo-Norman Studies 14 (1992), 211–27 Google Scholar, at 217.

28 See, for example, the extended series of transactions concerning land at Peppering in what is now West Sussex: Sawyer, 44 (Kelly, Charters of Selsey, no. 5).

29 Yorke, B., Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1990), 163–4.Google Scholar For similar statements, see, for example, Sheehan, M. M., The Will in Medieval England: from the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to the End of the Thirteenth Century (Toronto, 1963), 91–3.Google Scholar

30 A. Scharer, Die angelsächsische Königsurkunde im 7. und S. Jahrhundert (Vienna, 1982), 33.

31 The most oft-cited example is in Bede, Historia abbatum, in Plummer, C., ed., Baedae Opera Historica, 2 vols (Oxford, 1896), 1: 364–87 Google Scholar, ch.11. For brief discussion, see Blair, The Church, 90 n. 56, and Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, 164.

32 For the authenticity of this document, see Frantzen, A.J., The Literature of Penance in Anglo-Saxon England (Brunswick, NJ, 1983)Google Scholar, 82 and for the manuscript tradition of the text and a discussion of dating, see Bullough, D. A., Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation (Leiden, 2004), 230–1 Google Scholar

33 Ecgberht of York, Succinctus dialogus ecclesiasticae institutionis, in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, 3: 403–13, at 408: ‘Venerabilis congregatio unum ex duobus eligat, quem sibi præesse desiderat, et hic cum Consilio Episcopi loci constituatur abbas.’

34 As seemed to have been understood by the Rule of Benedict, see J. Neufville, ed. and trans., La Règle de Saint Benoît, 6 vols (Paris, 1971–2), at, for example, chs 65, 69–71.

35 Coates, S., ‘Ceolfrid: History, Hagiography and Memory in Seventh- and Eighth- Century Wearmouth-Jarrow’. Journal of Medieval History 25(1999), 69–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 The calendar is edited by Borst, A., Die karolingische Kalenderreform, MGH Schriften 46 (Hannover, 1998), 254–98 Google Scholar. The Wearmouth-Jarrow connection is outlined by Böhne, W., ‘Das älteste Lorscher Kalendar’, in Knöpp, F., ed, Die Reichsabtei Lorsch: Festschrift zum Gedenken an ihre Stiftung 764, 2 vols (Darmstadt, 1977), 2: 171–220 Google Scholar, at 174–6 who also, at 175, notes the absence of Ceolfrith and Sigfrith. For discussion of the relationship between Phillips 1869 and its Wearmouth-Jarrow exemplar, see, for example, Borst, A., Dos Buch der Naturgeschichte: Plinius und seine Leser im Zeitalter des Pergaments (Heidelberg, 1994), 127–8 Google Scholar and idem, Die karolingische Kaienderreform, 247–52. For criticism of Borst’s work, see Meyvaert, P., ‘Discovering the Calendar (Annalis Libellas) Attached to Bede’s Own Copy of De temporum ratione ’, AnBoll 120 (2002), 5–64 Google Scholar, whose conclusions were, in the main, supported by Bullough, D. A., ‘York, Bede’s Calendar and a Pre-Bedan English Martyrology’, AnBoll 121 (2003), 329–55 Google Scholar. For Borst’s response to these and other critiques of his thesis, see Borst, A., Der Streit um den karolingischen Kalender, MGH Studien und Texte 36 (Hannover, 2004)Google Scholar

37 See, for example, Scharer, Königsurkunde, 17 and, with specific reference to the Withington dispute, Vollrath, Die Synoden, 134. Earlier views on the production of Anglo-Saxon charters are usefully summarized by Drogereit, R., ‘Gab es eine angelsächsische Königskanzlei?’ Archiv für Urkundenforschung 13 (1935), 335–436, at 335–40.Google Scholar

38 Wormald, ‘Charters’, 153.

39 This idea of charters as a means of replacing memory and fixing one particular version of events is explored in detail by Foot, S., ‘Reading Anglo-Saxon Charters: Memory, Record or Story?’, in Tyler, E. M. and Balzaretti, R., eds, Narrative and History in the Early Medieval West (Turnhout, 2006)Google Scholar. I am very grateful to Professor Foot for allowing me to read a version of this paper prior to publication; my debt to it will be immediately apparent.

40 See, for example, Lapidge, M., ‘Some Remnants of Bede’s Lost Liber epigrammatum ’, EHR 90 (1975), 798–820 Google Scholar, at 816.

41 Sawyer, 1255 (Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, 217).

42 Bucge is similarly absent from the description of Withington in the list of grants to Worcester discussed above in n. 25.

43 For dispostive, see John, Land Tenure, 168–77, who was expanding on the views of Brunner, H., Zur Rechtsgeschichte der Rlömischen und Germanischen Urkunde (Berlin, 1880; repr. Aalen, 1961)Google Scholar. For evidentiary only, see, for example, D. Whitelock, ed. and trans., EHD 1 (2nd edn, London, 1979), 375–6.

44 Sawyer, 1187 (Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, 313).

45 The charter does not specifically state that there was a monastery at Westbury-on-Trym but that the place name is given as ‘West mynster’ in Sawyer, 1187, and Æthelric’s inheritance is later described as ‘monasterium quod nominatur Westburhg’ (Sawyer, 1433 [Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, 379]) makes it reasonably certain this was the case. Moreover, when Westbury was originally given to Æthelric’s father, Æthelmund, it was named in the charter ‘Uuesthurg’: that by the start of the ninth century it was named ‘West mynster’ strongly suggests a monastery had been established diere in the interim, see Sawyer, 139 (Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, 274).

46 ‘ut liber essem terram meam atque libellas dare quocunque volui’.

47 ‘quasi ante pacti sumus et pacifici fuerimus ad invicem’.

48 ‘ut habeat suam diem et postea reddat ad Weogornensem aecclesiam’.

49 ‘habeat protectionem et defensionem contra Berclinga contentione’. Contentio also appears to have carried the sense, by the later ninth century at least, of a lawsuit and such a translation here is at least possible, see Concilium Triburiewe, ch. 35, ed. A. Boretius, MGH Captilularia regum Francorum 2 (Hannover, 1890), 206–49, at 234, line 4.

50 ‘sit libera cum libris et ruris ad elegandam patrocinium ubi placitum sibi fuerit’.

51 Sawyer, 1433 (Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, 379). ‘inter Heabertum episcopum et illam familiam æet Berclea de hereditate Æöelrici filii Æöelmundi hoc est monasterium quod nominatur Westburhg’.

52 ‘Æöelricus ante praecepit ut ad Weogernensem aecclesiam redderetur’.

53 Wormald, ‘Charters’, 155 and 157.

54 Ibid., 155 and Wormald, P., “The Age of Offa and Alcuin’, in Campbell, J., ed., The Anglo-Saxons (London, 1982; repr. 1991), 101–28 Google Scholar, at 123. For Ceolburh as the abbess of Berkeley, see John of Worcester, Chronicon ex chronicis, in Darlington, R. R., McGurk, P. and Bray, J., ed. and trans., The Chronicle of John of Worcester, vol. 2: The Annals from 430–1066 (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar, sa 805.

55 Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature, 176.

56 Ibid., 157.

57 Vollrath, Die Synoden, 134–41, see also Cubitt, Church Councils, 69–74.

58 Cubitt, ibid., 39–44, quote at 42.

59 For a list of the synods of the seventh and eighth centuries, ibid., 22–3.

60 The now classic discussion is F. M. Stenton, The Supremacy of the Mercian Kings’, EHR 33(1918), 433–52 but for important caveats, see Dumville, D. N., ‘The Terminology of Overkingship in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, in Hines, J., ed., The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Period to the Eighth Century: an Ethnographic Perspective (Woodbridge, 1997), 345–73 Google Scholar, at 346.

61 For details, see Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature, 156, 171, 227, 238–9, and also Blair, The Church, 116.

62 Thacker, ‘Monks’, 165.

63 See, for example, Sawyer, 1413 (Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, 283).

64 As may have been the case with Abbot Ceolfrith’s grant recorded in Sawyer, 1411 (Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, 220), as Worcester’s control of Ceolfrith’s monastery was later contested by King Offa of Mercia.

65 See, for example, Sawyer, 1413 (Birch, Cartuiarium Saxonicum, 283).

66 On which see, mutatis mutandis, M. Innes, State and Society in the Early Middle Ages: the Middle Rhine Valley, 400–1000 (Cambridge, 2000), 25–9.

67 As Blair notes ‘bishops were also aristocrats, and what is presented as diocesan reform could have contained elements of aristocratic encroachment’, The Church, 117.