Alcuin of York

by G. F. Browne

“Have always in mind Him who raised thee from a poor position and set thee as a ruler over the princes of His people. Know that thou art rather a shepherd, and a dispenser of the gifts of God, than a lord and an exactor.

“Have always in mind the very best features of the reign of your most noble predecessor Offa; his modest conversation; his zeal in correcting the life of a Christian people. Whatever good arrangements he made in the kingdom to thee by God given, let your devotion most diligently carry out; but if in any respect he acted with greed, or cruelty, know that this you must by all means avoid. For it is not without cause that that most noble son of his survived his father for so short a time. The deserts of a father are often visited on a son.

“Have prudent counsellors who fear God; love justice; seek peace with friends; show faith and holiness in pious manner of life.

“For the English race is vexed with tribulations by reason of its many sins. The goodness of kings, the preaching of the priests of Christ, the religious life of the people, can raise it to the height of its ancient honour; so that a blessed progeny of our fathers may deserve to possess perpetual happiness, stability of the kingdom, and fortitude against any foe; that the Church of Christ, as ordained by holy fathers, may grow and prosper. Always have in honour, most illustrious ruler, the priests of Christ; for the more reverently you are disposed to the servants of Christ, and the preachers of the word of God, the more will Christ, the King pious and true, exalt and confirm your honour, on the intercession of His saints.”

When Kenulf, this distant cousin of Ecgfrith, came to the throne, he looked into the matter of the archbishopric of Lichfield, and he took a view adverse to Offa’s action. He wrote to Pope Leo III a letter,[118] in which he put the points very clearly. His bishops and learned men had told him that the division of the Province of Canterbury into two provinces was contrary to the canons and apostolical statutes of the most blessed Gregory, who had ordered that there should be twelve bishops under the archbishop of the southern province, seated at London. On the death of Augustine of Canterbury, it had seemed good to all the wise men of the race, the Witangemote, that not London but Canterbury should be the seat of the Primacy, where Augustine’s body lay. King Offa, by reason of his enmity with the venerable archbishop Jaenbert and the people of Kent, set to work to divide the province into two. The most pious Adrian, at the request of the said king, had done what no one before had presumed to do, had raised the Mercian prelate to the dignity of the pallium. Kenulf did not blame either of them; but he hoped that the Pope would look into the matter and make a benign and just response. He had sent an embassy on the part of himself and the bishops in the previous year by Wada the Abbat; but Wada, after accepting the charge, had indolently—nay foolishly—withdrawn. He now sent by the hands of a presbyter, Birine, and two of his officers, Fildas and Cheolberth, a small present, out of his love for the Pope, namely, 120 mancuses,[119] some forty to fifty pounds, say not far off £1000 of our time.

Pope Leo addressed his reply to king Kenulf, his most loved bishops, and most glorious dukes. It was a difficult letter to write, for Kenulf had been very frank about the uncanonical action of Hadrian the Pope. Leo answered this part of Kenulf’s letter by stating that his predecessor had acted as he had done (1) because Offa had declared it to be the universal wish, the petition of all, that the archbishopric should be divided into two; (2) because of the great extension of the Mercian kingdom; (3) for very many causes and advantages. He, Leo, now authorized the departure from Pope Gregory’s order in so far as this, that he recognized Canterbury, not London, as the chief seat of archiepiscopal authority. He declared that Canterbury was the primatial see, and must continue and be viewed as such. I cannot find in his letter a definite declaration that he annuls the act of his predecessor, but that is the effect of the letter; nor does he declare that Lichfield is no longer an archbishopric. Kenulf, as we have seen, had sent him, out of his affection for him, a gift of 120 mancuses. But he reminded the king that Offa had bound his successors to maintain the gift to the Pope, in each year, of as many mancuses as there are days in the year, namely, he says, 365, as alms to the poor, and as an endowment for keeping in order the lamps [in the churches]. This is much more likely than the shadowy gifts of Ina, king of Wessex, to have been the origin of Peter’s Pence, a sum of money collected in England, at first fitfully and eventually year by year, and sent out to the Pope. The money was collected in the parishes of each diocese down to the time of the Reformation. It is a regular item in the churchwardens’ accounts of the earlier years of Henry VIII. Only a fixed amount of the whole sum collected was sent to the Pope, the balance being used for repairs in the several dioceses. We have a list prepared by a representative of a late mediaeval Pope giving £190 6s. 8d. as the amount received by him for the year, corresponding roughly to a normal 300 marks a year.

Offa’s money for the Pope went of course from Mercia. When Wessex became predominant, Ethelwulf, the son of Ecgbert and father of Alfred, made large gifts to Rome, and left by will 300 mancuses, 100 in honour of St. Peter, specially for filling with oil all the lamps of his apostolic church on Easter Eve and at cock crow, 100 in honour of St. Paul, in the same terms and for the same purpose in respect of the basilica of St. Paul, and 100 for the Pope himself. King Alfred also sent presents to Rome. From 883 to 890 there are four records of gifts from Wessex. After 890 we have no such record in Alfred’s reign; and in Alfred’s will there is no mention of the spiritual head of the Church of the West.

We learn from our own great historian, William of Malmesbury, that Kenulf wrote two later letters to Leo on this subject, and he gives us Leo’s reply.[120] Athelhard, the Pope says, has come to the holy churches of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, to fulfil his vow of prayer and to inform the Pope of his ecclesiastical mission. He tells the king that by the authority of St. Peter, the chief of the apostles, whose office though unworthily he fills, he gives to Athelhard such prelatical authority that if any in the province, whether kings, princes, or people, transgress the commands of the Lord, he shall excommunicate them till they repent. Concerning the jurisdiction which the archbishops of Canterbury had held, as well over bishops as over monasteries, of which they had been unjustly deprived, the Pope had made full inquiry, and now placed all ordinations and confirmations on their ancient footing, and restored them to him entire. Thus did Pope Leo III condemn the injustice of Pope Hadrian I. We had better have managed our own affairs, instead of paying to foreigners infinite sums of money to mismanage them.

Before we leave this strange episode of the creation of an archbishopric of Lichfield, it is of special local interest to us in Bristol, and to the deanery of Stapleton, that the chief Mercian prelate, Higbert of Lichfield, signed deeds relating to Westbury upon Trym and Aust on Severn, above the archbishop of Canterbury. This was in 794. Offa the king signed first, Ecgferth, the king’s young son, second, and then Hygeberht; Ethelhard of Canterbury coming fifth in one and fourth in the other. The first deed gave from the king to his officer Ethelmund, in 794, four cassates of land at the place called Westbury, in the province of the Huiccians, near the river called Avon, free of all public charges except the three which were common to all, namely, for the king’s military expeditions, for the building of bridges, and for the fortification of strongholds.[121] The other deed restores to the see of Worcester (Wegrin) the land of five families at Aust, which the duke Bynna had taken without right, it being the property of the see of Worcester. To make all safe, six dukes made the sign of the cross at the foot of this deed, which is, as we all know, the origin of the modern phrase ‘signing’ a deed or a letter. The dukes included Bynna himself.

Ep. 85. A.D. 797.