Alcuin of York

by G. F. Browne

CHAPTER V

The affairs of Mercia.—Tripartite division of England.—The creation of a third archbishopric, at Lichfield.—Offa and Karl.—Alcuin’s letter to Athelhard of Canterbury; to Beornwin of Mercia.—Karl’s letter to Offa, a commercial treaty.—Alcuin’s letter to Offa.—Offa’s death.

Although Alcuin was a Northumbrian, and his interests were naturally with that kingdom, he was at one time of his life more intimately concerned with the affairs of Mercia. It seems, on the whole, best to deal first with that part, as it can be to a certain extent isolated from his correspondence with Northumbria, and from his life and work among the Franks. The special events in Mercian history with which he was concerned are in themselves of great interest. They are—(1) the personal and official dealings between Karl and the Mercian king, and (2) the creation and the extinction of a third metropolitical province in England, the archbishopric of Lichfield.

We have to accustom ourselves to the fact that the Heptarchy, that is, the division of England into seven independent kingdoms with seven independent kings, no longer existed in Alcuin’s time. The land was divided into three kingdoms, Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. The rivers Thames and Humber were, roughly speaking, the lines dividing the whole land into three. Kent, to which we probably attach too much importance by reason of its being the first Christian kingdom, and of its having in its Archbishop the chief ecclesiastic of the whole land, was a conquered kingdom, the property at one time of Wessex, at another of Mercia. The South Saxons, our Sussex, had kings and dukes fitfully, and the territory was included in Wessex. The East Saxons, our Essex, had kings nominally, but belonged usually to Mercia. East Anglia was in a somewhat similar position, but held out for independence with much pertinacity and success till long after Alcuin’s time. The year 828, a quarter of a century after Alcuin’s death, saw the final defeat of Mercia by Ecgbert of Wessex, who had spent fifteen years in exile at the Court of Charlemagne in Alcuin’s time, from 787 to 802, when he succeeded to the vacant throne of Wessex by a very remote claim, as great-great-grand-nephew of the famous king Ina. No doubt he learned in those strenuous years, under the tutelage of Karl, the lessons of war which brought him into dominance here, another link between Karl and England which passes almost entirely unrecognized. The year 829 saw the peaceful submission of the great men of Northumbria to Ecgbert, at Dore, in Derbyshire, and their recognition of him as their overlord. The mistake of supposing that Ecgbert thus became sole king of England as a single kingdom is now exploded; but he was, roughly speaking, master of the whole, and as time went on the petty kings and kinglets disappeared. The time which this process occupied was not short. The thirty-first king of Northumbria was reigning in Ecgbert’s time, when his thegns made submission to Ecgbert; but fifteen more kings reigned in Northumbria, till Eadred expelled the last of them in 954. In like manner, we have the coins of some kings of East Anglia, and mention of other kings, as late as 905.

That is a digression into times a hundred and a hundred and fifty years after Alcuin. In his time, as has been said, the Heptarchy had for practical purposes been consolidated into three main kingdoms, Wessex, Mercia, and Northumbria.

This tri-partite arrangement of the seven kingdoms led to one of the most curious episodes of Alcuin’s time, and, indeed, of English history.

Offa, the ambitious king of Mercia, who reigned from 757 to 796, saw that there were two archbishoprics in England, one of which, Canterbury, was centred in a conquered kingdom; while the other, York, had only been created some twenty years before he began to reign. Bede had advised that the bishopric of York should be raised to an archbishopric, with Northumbria as its province, and on application made to the Pope the thing had been done. Each of the two archbishops, as Offa saw, received special recognition from the Pope in the grant of the pallium; a costly luxury, no doubt, but a luxury of honour and dignity, worth a good deal of money—which it certainly cost. There was no Emperor of the West in those days, some fourteen years before the elevation of Karl to an imperial throne; and the Pope was, by the mystery of his ecclesiastical position, and in the glamour of pagan Rome, the greatest personage in the then chaotic world of Western Europe.

Quite apart from the possession of the pallium, the constitutional position of an English archbishop was very great. In our days it is sometimes asked about a wealthy man, how much is he worth. In Anglo-Saxon times that question had a direct meaning and a direct answer. Men of all the higher grades at least had their money value, a very considerable value, which any one who put an end to any of them must pay. While the luxury of killing a bishop was as costly as killing an ealdorman, that is, an earl, an archbishop was as dear as a prince of the blood. The bishop or earl was worth 8000 thrimsas, the thrimsa being probably threepence, say five shillings of our money, or £2000 in all; that was what had to be paid for the luxury of killing a bishop; the archbishop or royal prince rose to 15000 thrimsas, nearly twice as much, say £3750 of our money; it does not sound quite enough to our modern ears. The king was put at £7500. For drawing a weapon in the presence of a bishop or an ealdorman, the fine was 100 shillings, say £100 of our money; in the case of an archbishop it was 150 shillings, half as much again. In the laws of Ina, for violence done to the dwelling and seat of jurisdiction of a bishop, the fine was 80 shillings, in the case of an archbishop 120, the same as in the case of the king. This was not the only point in which the archbishop was on the same level as the king; his mere word, without oath, was—as the king’s—incontrovertible. A bishop’s oath was equivalent to the oaths of 240 ordinary tax payers. In the case of the archbishop of Canterbury at the times of which we are speaking, there was added the fact that the royal family of Kent had retired to Reculver and left the archbishop supreme in the capital city, as the bishops of Rome had been left in Rome by the departure of the emperors to Constantinople. In Archbishop Jaenbert’s time the royal family of Kent practically came to an end, as a regnant family, at the battle of Otford, near Sevenoaks, in the year 774, when Mercia conquered Kent. Archbishop Jaenbert of Canterbury is said to have proposed that he should become the temporal sovereign of Kent, as well as its ecclesiastical ruler, after the then recent fashion of the bishop of Rome, and to have offered to do homage to Karl, king of the Franks, for the kingdom. If that was so, we can well understand the determination of the conquering and powerful Offa to abate the archbishop’s position and his pride.

Kent was but an outside annex of the Mercian kingdom proper. It had been subject to other kingdoms; it might be so subject again. The Lichfield bishopric was the real ecclesiastical centre of Offa’s kingdom, and he determined to have an archbishop of Lichfield, and to have him duly recognized by the Pope. A visit of two legates of the Pope, accompanied by a representative of the King of the Franks, in the year 785, gave the opportunity.[97] Offa had already punished Jaenbert by taking away all manors belonging to the See of Canterbury in Mercian territories; and he now proposed that the jurisdiction of Canterbury should be limited to Kent, Sussex, and Wessex, and that all the land of England between the Thames and the Humber should become a third metropolitical province, under the archiepiscopal rule of the bishop of Lichfield. The synod at which this proposal was made is described in the Saxon Chronicle as geflitfullic, quarrelsome-like; but in the end, Offa’s proposal was accepted. Pope Adrian gave his sanction and the pall. William of Malmesbury, with his usual skill and his wide experience, gives the explanation of this papal acquiescence in so violent a revolution in ecclesiastical matters: Offa, he says, obtained the papal licence by the gift of endless money, pecunia infinita, to the Apostolic See; which See, he adds, never fails one who gives money. That was the judgement of a historian after 250 years’ additional experience of the secret of Roman sanction. The Pope of the time, it should be said, was a man of much distinction, Adrian or Hadrian I, a friend of Offa and of Karl. We shall have a good deal to say about the grants of Karl, and of Pepin his father, to the papacy, in another lecture.

There is a letter extant[98] from Pope Adrian I to Karl, written before the creation of the Mercian archbishopric, in which the Pope says he has heard from Karl of a report that Offa had proposed to persuade him to eject Adrian from the Papacy, and put in his place some one of the Frankish race. The Pope professes to feel that this is absolutely false; and yet he says so much about it that it is quite clear he was anxious. Karl had told him that Offa had not made any such proposal to him, and had not had any thought in his mind except that he hoped Adrian would continue to govern the Church all through his time. The Pope adds that neither had he until that time heard of anything of the kind; and he does not believe that even a pagan would think of such a thing. Having said all this, in Latin much more cumbrous than Alcuin’s charmingly clear style, he enters upon a long declaration of his personal courage and confidence whatever happened. “If God be with us, who shall be against us.”

We must, I think, take it that there had been some hitch in negotiations between Offa and Adrian, and that Offa, with the outspoken vigour of a Mercian Angle, had in fact gone far beyond Henry VIII’s greatest threats, and had declared to his counsellors that if Adrian was not more pliable, he and Karl would make some one Pope who would have first regard to the wishes of the Angles and the Franks.

Ep. 43. 787-796.

Now it was Alcuin who had brought together Karl and Offa in the first instance, and had brought about their alliance. And on a later occasion when they quarrelled he made them friends again. We do not know what active part, if any, Alcuin took in the matter decided at the quarrelsome-like synod. But we have plenty of evidence that he highly approved of the reversal of Hadrian’s act by his successor Leo III, with the assent, and indeed on the request, of Offa’s successor Kenulf. He corresponded with Offa in a very friendly manner, as indeed Offa’s general conduct well deserved. Here is a letter from him, in response to a request from the king that he would send him a teacher. “Always desirous faithfully to do what you wish, I have sent to you this my best loved pupil, as you have requested. I pray you have him in honour until if God will I come to you. Do not let him wander about idle, do not let him take to drink. Provide him with pupils, and let your preceptors see that he teaches diligently. I know that he has learned well. I hope he will do well, for the success of my pupils is my reward with God.

“I am greatly pleased that you are so intent upon encouraging study, that the light of wisdom, in many places now extinct, may shine in your kingdom. You are the glory of Britain, the trumpet of defiance, the sword against hostile forces, the shield against the enemies.”

It is only fair to Offa to say that this was not mere flattery. It is clear that in the eyes of Karl and Alcuin, Offa was the one leading man in the whole of England, the most powerful Englishman of his time, and of all the kings and princes the most worthy.

To Athelhard, the archbishop of Canterbury,[99] who succeeded Jaenbert, Lichfield still being the chief archbishopric, Alcuin wrote a remarkable letter, considering the humiliation of the archbishopric:—

Ep. 28. A.D. 793.

“Be a preacher; not a flatterer. It is better to fear God than man, to please God than to fawn upon men. What is a flatterer but a fawning enemy? He destroys both,—himself and his hearer.

“You have received the pastoral rod and the staff of fraternal consolation; the one to rule, the other to console; that those who mourn may find in you consolation, those who resist may feel correction. The judge’s power is to kill; thine, to make alive....

“Remember that the bishop[100] is the messenger of God most high, and the holy law is to be sought at his mouth, as we read in the prophet Malachi.[101] A watchman[102] is set at the highest place; whence the name episcopus, he being the chief watchman,[103] who ought by prudent counsel to foresee for the whole army of Christ what must be avoided and what must be done. These, that is the bishops[104], are the lights of the holy church of God, the leaders of the flock of Christ. It is their duty actively to raise the standard of the holy cross in the front rank, and to stand intrepid against every attack of the hostile force. These are they who have received the talents, our King the God Christ having gone with triumph of glory to His Father’s abode; and when He comes again in the great day of judgement they shall render an account....

“Admonish most diligently your fellow-bishops[105] to labour instantly in the word of life, that they may appear before the judge eternal, glorious with multifold gain. Be of one mind in piety, constant in equity. Let no terror of human dignity separate you, no blandishments of flattery divide you; but join together in unity in firm ranks of the fortress of God. Thus will your concord strike terror into those who seek to speak against the Truth; as Solomon says,[106] ‘When brother is helped by brother, the city is secure.’

“Ye are the light of all Britain, the salt of the earth, a city set on a hill, a candle high on a candlestick....

“Our ancestors, though pagans, first as pagans possessed this land by their valour in war, by the dispensation of God. How great, then, is the reproach, if we, Christians, lose what they, pagans, acquired. I say this on account of the blow which has lately fallen upon a part of our island, a land which has for nearly 350 years been inhabited by our forefathers. It is read in the book of Gildas[107], the wisest of the Britons, that those same Britons, because of the rapine and avarice of the princes, the iniquity and injustice of the judges, the sloth and laxity of the bishops, and the wicked habits of the people, lost their fatherland. Let us take care that those vices do not become the custom with us in these times of ours.... Do you, who along with the Apostles have received from Christ the key of the kingdom of heaven, the power of binding and loosing, open with assiduous prayer the gates of heaven to the people of God. Be not silent, lest the sins of the people be imputed to you: for of you will God require the souls which you have received to rule. Let your reward be multiplied by the salvation of those in your charge. Comfort those who are cast down, strengthen the humble, bring back to the way of truth those who wander, instruct the ignorant, exhort the learned, and confirm all by the good examples of your own life. Chastise with the pastoral rod those who are contumacious and resist the truth; support the others with the staff of consolation. And, if you are unanimous, who will be able to stand against you?”

Ep. 14. A.D. 790.

Alcuin could be exceedingly outspoken in his letters, as we have seen. But he could also be very cautious, even—perhaps we should say especially—in a matter on which he felt deeply. In a letter to the Irish teacher Colcu he remarks that he did not know what he might have to do next. The reason was that something of a dissension, diabolically inflamed, had arisen between Karl and Offa, the Mercian king, and had gone so far that each forbade entry to the other’s merchants. “Some tell me,” he says, “that I am to be sent to those parts to make peace.”

The reason for the quarrel was a curious one. Karl had proposed that his son Charles should marry one of Offa’s daughters. Offa had made a supplementary proposal that his son Ecgfrith should marry Karl’s daughter Bertha. This is said to have been considered presumptuous by Karl, and he showed his annoyance by breaking off the friendly relations which had existed between them.

It would appear that Alcuin’s attitude was suspected by the Mercian king to be unfavourable to the English view of the quarrel, and the presbyter Beornwin, to whom Alcuin had written a letter not known to have survived, was set to write to him a fishing letter, in which it would seem that he suggested unfriendliness on Alcuin’s part. Alcuin’s reply is a non-committal document.

Ep. 15. A.D. 790.

“I have received the sweet letters of your love...

“Would that I were worthy to preach peace, not to sow discord; to carry the standard of Christ, not the arms of the devil. I should never have written to you if I had been unwilling to be at peace with you and to remain firm as we began in Christ.

“Of a truth I have never been unfaithful to King Offa, or to the Anglian nation. As to the utmost of my power I shall faithfully keep the friends whom God has given me in France, so I shall those whom I have left in my own country....

“As time or opportunity affords, my very dear brother, urge ever the will of God upon all persons: on the king, persuasively; on the bishops, with due honour; on the chief men, with confidence; on all, with truth. It is ours to sow; it is God’s to fructify.

“And let no suspicion of any dissension between us remain. Let us not be of those of whom it is said: I am not come to send peace but a sword. Let us be of those to whom it is said: My peace I give unto you, My peace I leave with you.

“I have written a very short letter, for a few words to a wise man suffice.”

The dissension was rather one-sided, for it appears that Offa continued to write friendly letters to Karl. In the end, Karl replied in a more than friendly letter, which is on many accounts well worth reproducing entire. It is the earliest extant commercial treaty with an English kingdom. The date is 796, four years before he became emperor.

Ep. 57. A.D. 796.

“Charles, by the grace of God King of the Franks and Lombards and Patricius of the Romans, to his dearest brother the venerated Offa, King of the Mercians, wishes present prosperity and eternal beatitude in Christ. To keep with inmost affection of heart the concord of holy love and the laws of friendship and peace federated in unity, among royal dignities and the great personages of the world, is wont to be profitable to many. And if we are bidden by our Lord’s precept to loose the tangles of enmity, how much more ought we to be careful to bind the chains of love. We therefore, my most loved brother, mindful of the ancient pact between us, have addressed to your reverence these letters, that our treaty, fixed firm in the root of faith, may flourish in the fruit of love. We have read over the epistles of your brotherliness, which at various times have been brought to us by the hands of your messengers, and we desire to answer adequately the several suggestions of your authority.” It is clear that there were a good many of Offa’s letters unanswered.

“First, we give thanks to Almighty God for the sincerity of catholic faith which we find laudably expressed in your pages; recognizing that you are not only very strong in protection of your fatherland, but also most devoted in defence of the holy faith.

“With regard to pilgrims, who for the love of God and the health of their souls desire to visit the thresholds of the blessed Apostles, as has been customary”—here again we see the reason of the reputation of Rome—“we give leave for them to go on their way peaceably without any disturbance, carrying with them such things as are necessary. But we have ascertained that traders seeking gain, not serving religion, have fraudulently joined themselves to bands of pilgrims. If such are found among the pilgrims, they must pay at the proper places the fixed toll; the rest will go in peace, free from toll.

“You have written to us also about merchants. We will and command that they have protection and patronage in our realm, lawfully, according to the ancient custom of trading. And if in any place they suffer from unjust oppression, they may appeal to us or our judges, and we will see that pious justice is done. And so for our merchants; if they suffer any injustice in your realm, let them appeal to the judgement of your equity. Thus no disturbance can arise among our merchants.”

Karl evidently felt that the next point was the most difficult of all to handle successfully. He had given shelter and countenance to Mercians who had fled from Offa, and sought protection at his court. Ecgbert, who afterwards conquered Mercia, was among the exiles from Wessex.

“With regard to the presbyter Odberht, who on his return from Rome desires to live abroad for the love of God, not coming to us to accuse you, we make known to your love that we have sent him to Rome along with other exiles who in fear of death have fled to the wings of our protection. We have done this in order that in the presence of the lord apostolic and of your illustrious archbishop—in accordance, as your notes make known to us, with their vow—their cause may be heard and judged, so that equitable judgement may effect what pious intercession could not do. What could be safer for us than that the investigation of apostolic authority should discriminate in a case where the opinion of others differs?”

This is a typical example of the use made of a pope when monarchs disagreed.

“With regard to the black stones which your reverence earnestly solicited to have sent to you, let a messenger come and point out what kind they are that your mind desires. Wherever they may be found, we will gladly order them to be given, and their conveyance to be aided.” [108]

Then comes in very skilfully a complaint that the Mercians have been exporting to France cloaks of inadequate length.

“But, as you have intimated your desire as to the length of the stones, our people make demand about the length of cloaks, that you will order them to be made to the pattern of those which in former times used to come to us.

“Further, we make known to your love that we have forwarded to each of the episcopal sees in your kingdom, and that of king Æthelred [of Northumbria, again no mention of Wessex], a gift from our collection of dalmatics and palls, in alms for the lord apostolic Adrian[109], our father, your loving friend, praying you to order intercession for his soul, not in doubt that his blessed soul is at rest, but to show faith and love towards a friend to us most dear. So the blessed Augustine has taught that pious intercessions of the church should be made for all, asserting that to intercede for a good man is profitable to him that intercedes.” That is a remarkable way of putting it.

“From the treasure of secular things which the Lord Jesus of gratuitous pity has granted to us, we have sent something to each of the metropolitan cities. To thy love, for joy and giving of thanks to Almighty God, we have sent a Hunnish belt and sword and two silk palls, that everywhere among a Christian people the divine clemency may be preached, and the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be for ever glorified.”

The Hunnish belt and sword and silk robes were part of the great spoil which Karl took in the year 795 when he conquered the Huns, destroyed their army, and put their prince to flight. The spoil included fifteen wagons loaded with gold and silver, and palls of white silk, each wagon drawn by four oxen. Karl divided the plunder between the churches and the poor.[110]

The gifts of Karl to the king and bishops of Northumbria were withdrawn under sad conditions, to which we must return in the next lecture. This is what Alcuin wrote to Offa, immediately after Karl’s letter was written:—

Ep. 58. A.D. 796.

“Your reverend love should know that the lord King Charles has often spoken to me of you in a loving and trusting manner. You have in him an entirely most faithful friend. Thus he sent messengers to Rome for the judgement of the lord apostolic and Ethelhard the archbishop. To your love he sent gifts worthy. To the several episcopal sees he sent gifts in alms for himself and the lord apostolic, that you might order prayers to be offered for them. Do you act faithfully, as you are wont to do with all your friends.

“In like manner he sent gifts to King Æthelred and his episcopal sees. But, alas for the grief! when the gifts and the letters were in the hands of the messengers, the sad news came from those who had returned from Scotia[111] by way of you, that the nation had revolted and the king [Æthelred] was killed. King Charles withdrew his gifts, so greatly was he enraged against the nation—‘that perfidious and perverse nation,’ as he called them, ‘murderers of their own lords,’ holding them to be worse than pagans. Indeed, if I had not interceded for them, whatever good thing he could have taken away from them, whatever bad thing he could have contrived for them, he would have done it.

“I was prepared to come to you with the king’s gifts, and to go back to my fatherland.” This was from three to four years later than his latest visit to our shores. “But it seemed to me better, for the sake of peace for my nation, to remain abroad. I did not know what I could do among them, where no one is safe, and no wholesome counsel is of any avail. Look at the very holiest places devastated by pagans, the altars fouled by perjuries, the monasteries violated by adulteries, the earth stained with the blood of lords and princes. What else could I do but groan with the prophet,[112] ‘Woe to the sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers; they have forsaken the Lord, and blasphemed the holy Saviour of the world in their wickedness.’ And if it be true, as we read in the letter of your dignity, that the iniquity had its rise among the eldermen, where is safety and fidelity to be hoped for if the turbid torrent of unfaithfulness flowed forth from the very place where the purest fount of truth and faith was wont to spring?

“But do thou, O most wise ruler of the people of God, most diligently bring thy nation away from perverse habits, and make them learned in the precepts of God, lest by reason of the sins of the people the land which God has given us be destroyed. Be to the Church of Christ as a father, to the priests of God as a brother, to all the people pious and fair; in conversation and in word moderate and peaceable; in the praise of God always devout; that the divine clemency may keep thee in long prosperity, and may of the grace of its goodness deign to exalt, dilate, and crown to all eternity, with the benefaction of perpetual pity, thy kingdom—nay, all the English.

“I pray you direct the several Churches of your reverence to intercede for me. Into my unworthy hands the government of the Church of St. Martin has come. I have taken it not voluntarily but under pressure, by the advice of many.”

Offa died in the year in which this letter was written, and his death brought great changes in Mercia. Excellent as Offa had in most ways been, we have evidence that the Mercian people were by no means worthy of the fine old Mercian king. In reading the letter which contains this evidence, we shall see that Offa had a murderous side of his character. In those rude days, chaos could not be dealt with under its worse conditions by men who could not at a crisis strike with unmitigated severity.