Alcuin of York

by G. F. Browne

Ecgbert’s position in the sight of God, Bede says, will be very serious if he neglects to do as he advises, especially if he takes temporal gifts or payments from those to whom he does not give heavenly gifts. This last point Bede presses home with affectionate earnestness upon the “most beloved Prelate”. “We have heard it reported,” he says, “that there are many villages and dwellings, on inaccessible hills and in deep forests, where for many years no bishop has been seen, no bishop has ministered; and yet no single person has been free from the payment of tribute to the bishop; and that although not only has he never come to confirm those who have been baptized, but there has been no teacher to instruct them in the faith or show them the difference between good and evil. And if we believe and confess,” he continues, “that in the laying on of hands the Holy Spirit is received, it is clear that that gift is absent from those who have not been confirmed. When a bishop has, from love of money, taken nominally under his government a larger part of the population than he can by any means visit with his ministrations in one whole year, the peril is great for himself, and great for those to whom he claims to be overseer while he is unable to oversee them.”

Ecgbert has, Bede tells him, a most ready coadjutor in the King of Northumbria, Ceolwulf, Ecgbert’s near relative, his first cousin, whom Ecgbert’s brother succeeded. The [arch]bishop should advise the King to place the ecclesiastical arrangements of the Northumbrian nation on a better footing. This would best be done by the appointment of more bishops. Pope Gregory had bidden Augustine to arrange for twelve bishops in the Northern Province, the Bishop of York to receive the pall as Metropolitan. Ecgbert should aim at that number. It may here be noted that in this year of grace 1908 there are still only nine diocesan bishops in the Northern Province, besides the archbishop, and five of these nine have been created in the lifetime of some of us. Bristol knows to its heavy cost that Ripon was the first of the five.

But Bede points out, and here we come to very interesting matter, that the negligence of some former kings, and the foolish gifts of others, had left it very difficult to find a suitable see for a new bishop. The monasteries were in possession everywhere. It may be remarked in passing that all over the Christian parts of the world monasteries existed, even in those early times, in very large numbers. We know the names, and the dates or periods of foundation, of no less than 1481 founded before the year 814, in various parts of the world; and the actual number was very much larger than that, from what we know of the facts, especially in the East. In the time of Henry VIII, besides the monasteries which had been suppressed by Wolsey, Fisher, and others, as also the large number of alien priories suppressed at an earlier date, and besides all the ecclesiastical foundations called hospitals and colleges, more than 600 monasteries remained in this land to be suppressed.

There being, then, no lands left to endow bishoprics, there was, in Bede’s opinion, only one remedy; that was, the summoning of a Greater Council, at which an edict should be issued, by pontifical and royal consent, fixing upon some great monastery for a new episcopal seat. To conciliate the abbat and monks, the election of the bishop-abbat should be left to them. If it should prove necessary to provide more property still for the bishop, Bede pointed out that there were many establishments calling themselves monasteries which were not worthy of the name. He would like to see some of these transferred by synodical authority for the further maintenance of the newly-created see, so that money which now went in luxury, vanity, and intemperance in meat and drink, might be used to further the cause of chastity, temperance, and piety. Here in Bristol, with Gloucester close at hand, we need no reminder of the closeness of the parallel between Bede’s advice in 735 to King Ceolwulf and the actual course taken in 1535 by King Henry, and carried to completion by him in 1540-2, in the foundation of six new bishoprics on the spoils of as many great monasteries. Nor need it be pointed out that Bede’s proposal to suppress small and ill-conditioned monasteries was a forecast of the original proposal of Henry VIII.

Bede then proceeds to speak with extreme severity of false monasteries. It appears that men bribed kings to make them grants of lands—professedly for monasteries—in hereditary possession, and paid moneys to bishops, abbats, and secular authorities, to ratify the grants by their signatures; and then they made them the dwellings of licentiousness and excess of all kinds. The men’s wives set up corresponding establishments. Bede urged the annulment of all grants thus misused: again we seem to hear a note prophetic of eight hundred years later. To so great a pitch had this gone, that there were no lands left for grants to discharged soldiers, sons of nobles, and others. Thus it came to pass that such men either went beyond sea and abandoned their own country, for which they ought to fight, or else they lived as they could at home, not able to marry, and living unseemly lives. If this was allowed to go on, the land would be unable to defend itself against the inroads of the barbarians. Bede’s prophecy to that effect came crushingly true in Alcuin’s time, not fifty years after it was written. And here again we have a remarkable forecast of Henry VIII’s avowed purpose in the suppression of monasteries, that he must have means to defend his land against invasion. Thus the three arguments of Henry VIII, namely, that lands and money were needed for more soldiers and sailors, that lands and money were needed for more bishoprics, and that many of the religious houses did not deserve that name, were carefully set out by one whom we may call a High-Church ecclesiastic, eight hundred years before Henry.

On two of the points mentioned by Bede in connexion with monasteries, it may be well to say a little more by way of illustration. The two points are, the hereditary descent of monasteries, and the principle on which the election of the abbat should proceed. To take the second first,—Bede is very precise on this point. He says that when a monastery is to be taken as the seat of a bishop, licence should be given to the monks to elect one of themselves to fill the double office of abbat and bishop, and to rule the monastery in the one character and the adjacent diocese in the other. We should have thought it would have been better to leave them free to elect some prominent churchman from the outside, than to limit their choice to one of themselves. And the exception for which arrangement was made points in the same direction of limitation. If they have not the right man in their own monastery, at least they must choose one from their own family, or order, to preside over them, in accordance with the decrees of the Canons. This strictness was traditional in Northumbria. The great founder of monastic institutions in the Northern Church, Benedict Biscop, who founded Monk Wearmouth in 674 and Jarrow in 685, was very decided about it. He would not have an abbat brought in from another monastery. The duty of the brethren, he said, when speaking to his monks on his own imminent decease, was, in accordance with the rule of Abbat Benedict the Great, and in accordance with the statutes of their own monastery of Wearmouth—which he had himself drawn up after consideration of the various rules on the Continent from the statutes of the seventeen monasteries which he liked best of all that he had seen—to inquire carefully who of themselves was best fitted for the post, and, after due election, have him confirmed as abbat by the benediction of the bishop. There is a great deal to be said in favour of this course, and there is a great deal to be said for more freedom of election. The case which comes nearest to it in our English life of to-day is that of the election of the Master of a College in one of the two Universities. In Cambridge the election—in two cases the appointment—is in every case open, in the sense that it is not confined to the Fellows of the College, and in very recent times there have been several cases of the election of a prominent man from another College, to the great advantage of the College thus electing.

The other point is of much wider importance, namely, the hereditary descent of monasteries and of their headship. Our Northumbrian abbat Benedict was very decided here also. The brethren must not elect his successor on account of his birth. There must be no claim of next of kin. He was specially anxious that his own brother after the flesh should not be elected to succeed him. He would rather his monastery became a wilderness than have this man as his successor, for they all knew that he did not walk in the way of truth. Benedict evidently feared that a practice of hereditary succession to ecclesiastical office might spring up. No doubt he had seen at least the beginning of this in foreign parts. It was no visionary fear, for in times rather later we have examples of ecclesiastical benefices, and even bishoprics, going from father to son, and that in days of supposed celibacy. We have plenty of examples of monasteries descending from mother to daughter later on in England; and in Bede’s own time he mentions without adverse remark that the Abbess of Wetadun (Watton, in East Yorkshire) persuaded Bishop John of Hexham to cure of an illness her daughter, whom she proposed to make abbess in her stead. Alcuin himself, as we have seen,[80] tells us quite as a matter of ordinary occurrence, not calling for any remark, that he himself succeeded hereditarily to the first monastery which he ruled, situated on Spurn Point, the southern promontory of Yorkshire. We cannot doubt that the evils naturally arising, in some cases at least, from hereditary succession to spiritual positions, had much to do with the intemperate suppression of the secular clergy and the enforcement of clerical celibacy. In considering the question as it concerned the times of Alcuin, we must bear in mind that we are dealing with times very long before the development of the idea of feudal succession.

It is interesting to note that the earliest manuscripts of the Rule of St. Benedict which are known to exist do not definitely lay down the precise rule that the person elected to an abbacy must be a member of the abbey or at least of the same order. The Rule was first printed in 1659 by a monk of Monte Cassino; and this print was carefully collated throughout with a manuscript of the thirteenth century at Fort Augustus for the edition published by Burns and Oates in 1886. Chapter 64 is as follows, taking the translation annexed to the Latin in that edition, though it does not in all cases give quite the force of the original.

“In the appointing[81] of an abbot, let this principle always be observed, that he be made abbot whom all the brethren with one consent in the fear of God, or even a small part of the community with more wholesome counsel, shall elect. Let him who is to be appointed be chosen for the merit of his life and the wisdom of his doctrine, even though he should be the last of the community. But if all the brethren with one accord (which God forbid) should elect a man willing to acquiesce in their evil habits, and these in some way come to the knowledge of the bishop to whose diocese that place belongs, or of the abbots or neighbouring Christians, let them not suffer the consent of these wicked men to prevail, but appoint[82] a worthy steward over the house of God, knowing that for this they shall receive a good reward, if they do it with a pure intention and for the love of God, as, on the other hand, they will sin if they neglect it.”