| “Ðis is seó gerǽdnes ðe Byrhtelm biscop and Æðelwold abbud hæfdon ymbe hira landgehwerf: ðæt is ðonne ðe se biscop gesealde ða hída æt Cenintúne intó ðǽre cyricean æt Abbendúne tó écan yrfe; and se abbud gesealde ðæt seofontyne hýda æt Crydanbricge ðán biscope tó écnesse, ge on lífe ge æfter lífe; and hí eác ealra þinga gehwyrfdon ge on cwican ceápe ge on óðrum, swá swá hí betwihs him gerǽddon. And ðis wæs Eádwiges leáf cyninges; and ðis syndon ða gewitnessa. Ælfgifu ðæs cininges wíf, and Æðelgyfu, ðæs cyninges wífes módur, Ælfsige biscop, Osulf biscop, Coenwald biscop, Byrhtnóð ealdorman, Ælfheáh cyninges discþegn, Eádríc his bródur.” | |
| “This is the agreement that bishop Byrhthelm and abbot Æðelwold made about their exchange of lands: that is then, that the bishop gave the hides at Kennington to the church at Abingdon for an eternal inheritance; and the abbot gave the bishop the seventeen hides at Crida’s bridge, for ever both during life and after life: and they also exchanged every thing upon the lands, both live stock and other, as they agreed between them. And this was by leave of king Eádwig; and these are the witnesses: Ælfgyfu the king’s wife, and Æðelgyfu, the king’s wife’s mother, bishop Ælfsige, bishop Oswulf, bishop Coenwald, Byrhtnoð the ealdorman, Ælfheáh the king’s dapifer, Eádríc his brother.” | |
The Latin abstract of this important document is as follows:—“Dominus autem abbas Æðelwoldus commutationem eiusdem terrae, id est Cenintun, concedente eodem rege, egit apud Brihtelmum episcopum. In cuius vicissitudine ipse episcopus accepit illam villam quae appellatur Crydanbricge. Testes autem fuerunt huius commutationis Ælfgifa regis uxor, et Æðelgifa mater eius, Ælfsige episcopus, Osulfus episcopus, Kenwald episcopus, et multi alii.” The date of this document is 956, in which year Eádwig came to the throne, and therefore certainly subsequent to the coronation, the celebrated scene of Dúnstán’s insolence. The prelates and nobles present were Ælfsige bishop of Winchester, Oswulf bishop of Ramsbury, Cénwald bishop of Worcester, Byrhthelm bishop of London, Æðelwald then abbot of Abingdon and afterwards the celebrated bishop of Winchester—the Father of the Monks, as he was called; Byrhtnóð the ealdorman an equally decided patron of the monastic order; Ælfheáh no less a man than the dapifer regis, or seneschal of Eádwig’s house. This then was not a thing done in a corner, and the testimony is conclusive that Ælfgyfu was Eádwig’s queen. It is also beyond doubt that, in the year 958, Oda separated Eádwig from his wife on the ground of their being too nearly related: one of the MSS. of the Saxon Chronicle says clearly, “Her on ðissum geare Oda arcebiscop tótwǽmde Eádwi cyning and Ælfgyfe, forðám ðe hí wǽron tó gesybbe.” Chron. Sax. an. 958. And Florence of Worcester, drawing from an independent authority, but evidently confused by the slanderous tales which had been spread of Eádwig, confirms the Chronicle, saying:—“Sanctus Odo Doruberniae archiepiscopus regem Westsaxonum Eádwium et Ælfgivam, vel quia, ut fertur, propinqua illius extitit, vel quia illam sub propria uxore adamavit, ab invicem separavit.” Flor. Wig. an. 958. William of Malmesbury speaks of her as “uxor, proxime cognata” (Gest. Reg. § 147, i. 223), but soon after calls her ganea and pellex in choice monkish style. Wendover and Paris are even more insolent in their phraseology, but still there is the unlucky admission of a marriage:—“Huic [sc. Eádwig] quaedam mulier inepta, licet natione praecelsa [certainly very high birth indeed if Ælfgyfu was too near a relative of the king] cum adulta filia per nefandum familiaritatis lenocinium adhaerebat, ut sese vel filiam suam sub coniugali titulo sociaret.” Wendov. i. 404. They go on to insinuate that there was an improper familiarity between the king and both the women. With this I am not at all concerned: Eádwig may have been a disorderly young prince, as there have been other disorderly young princes,—as his much-belauded brother Eádgar was in the highest degree. The ladies may have been more than commonly depraved. But it may be observed that our general experience is not in favour of a wife’s permitting her husband to be guilty of lascivious conduct towards another woman in her presence, or of a married daughter’s conniving at her husband’s irregularities with her own mother. Not a word have we of this disgusting insinuation in the Chronicle, or Florence,—himself a monk,—or Æðelweard, or Huntingdon: and the two latter speak of Eádwig in terms very far removed from those in which the adherents of Dúnstán’s cause have chosen to characterize him:—“Quin successor eius Eáduuig in regnum, qui et, prae nimia etenim pulchritudine, Pancali sortitus est nomen a vulgo secundi. Tenuit namque quadriennio per regnum amandus.” Æðelw. Chronic. iv. 8. “Rex autem praedictus Edwi non illaudabiliter regni infulam tenuit. Edwi rex anno regni sui quinto cum in principio regni eius decentissime floruerit, prospera et laetabunda exordia mors immatura perrupit.” Hen. Hunt. lib. v. We must be excused for preferring this sort of record to the interested exaggerations of such biographers as Bridferð, whom the remainder of his work proves to have been either a very weak and credulous person or a very great rogue, or—as not unfrequently happens—perhaps both at once.
CHAPTER IX.
THE CLERGY AND MONKS.
The almost total absence of documentary evidence leaves us in great doubt as to the condition of the church in England previous to the organization brought about by Theodore. It is nevertheless probable that it followed in all essential points the course which characterized other missionary establishments. The earliest missionaries were for the most part monks; but Augustine was accompanied by clerics also[[902]], and in every case the conversion of a district was rapidly followed by the establishment of a cathedral or a corresponding ecclesiastical foundation. These were at first central stations, from which the assembled clergy sallied forth to visit the neighbouring villages and towns, and preach the tidings of salvation: the necessities of daily provision, the attainment of greater security for their persons, the mutual aid and consolation in the perils and difficulties of their task, all supplied motives in favour of a cœnobitical mode of life: monks and clerics were confounded together through the circumstances of the adventure in which they shared; nay the very administration of those rites by which the imagination of the heathen Saxons was so strongly worked upon, could only be conducted on a sufficiently imposing scale by an assemblage of ecclesiastics. To this must be added the protection to be derived from settling on one spot, in the immediate neighbourhood of a royal vill, and under the safeguard of the royal power: for though the residences of kings were rarely in cities, yet their proximity offered much more secure guarantees than the outlying villages and clearings in the mark; even as the general tendencies of courtly life were likely to present fewer points of opposition than the characteristic bigotry of heathen, i. e. rural populations. This combination of circumstances probably led at an early period to that approximation between the modes of life of monks and clerks, which at the close of the eighth century Chrodogang succeeded in enforcing in his archbishopric of Metz, but which had been attempted four centuries earlier by Eusebius of Vercelli[[903]]. Both the Roman and Scottish missionaries followed the same plan, which indeed appears to be the natural one, and to have been generally adopted on all similar occasions, whether in ancient Germany, in Peru or in the most modern missions of Australia or New Zealand. In Beda’s Ecclesiastical History, which in these respects no doubt was founded upon ancient and contemporary records, we frequently read of prelates leaving their monasteries (by which general name churches as well as collections of monks are designated) to preach the Gospel and administer the rite of baptism in distant villages[[904]]. But this system had also inconveniences of no slight character; the distance of the converts from the church, the necessity for daily superintendence and continual exhortation on the part of the preacher, the very danger and fatigue of repeated journeys into rude, uncultivated parts of the country, must have soon forced upon the clergy the necessity of providing other machinery than they as yet possessed. The multiplication of centres of instruction was the first and greatest point to be ensured; whereby a more constant intercourse between the neophyte and the missionary might be attained. This had long been secured in other countries by the appointment of single presbyters to reside in single districts, under the general direction of the bishop; or, where circumstances required it, by the settlement of several presbyters under an archipresbyter or archpriest, who was responsible for the conduct of his companions. And as the district of the bishop himself commonly went by the name of a diocese or parish, both these terms were applied to denote the smaller circuit within which the presbyter was expected to exert himself for the propagation of the faith, and the due performance of the established rites, and to perform such functions as had been entrusted to the ministers of the faithful, for the better management of the ecclesiastical affairs of the congregation. The custom of the neighbouring countries of Gaul offered sufficient evidence of the practicability of such an arrangement, which had long been in use in older established churches: we may therefore readily suppose that so beneficial a system would be adopted with all convenient speed in England. As long as the possessions of the clergy were confined to a small plot whereon their church was built, and while they depended for support upon the contributions in kind which the rude piety of their new converts bestowed, the bishops could naturally not proceed to plant these clerical colonies of their own authority: though, as soon as they became masters of vills and manors and estates of their own, they probably adopted the plan of sending single presbyters into them, partly to discharge the clerical duties of their station, partly to act as stewards, administrators or bailiffs of the property, the proceeds of which were paid over to the episcopal church, and laid out at the discretion of the bishop[[905]]. But the zeal of the people could here assist the benevolent objects of the clergy. The inconvenience of having a distance to traverse in order to attend the ministrations of religion, the desire to aid in the meritorious work of the conversion, the earnest hope to establish a peculiar claim upon the favour of Heaven, nay perhaps even the less worthy motives of vanity and ambition, disposed the landowner to raise a church upon his own estate for the use of himself and his surrounding tenants or friends. From a very early period this disposition was cultivated and encouraged; and the bishops relinquished the patronage of the church to the founder, reserving of course to themselves the canonical subjection and consecration of the presbyter who was ordained to the title. During the seventh century this had become common in the Frankish empire, and Theodore followed, or introduced, the same rule in this country[[906]]. Whether under this influence or not, we find churches to have so arisen during his government of the English sees, whose sole archbishop he was. Beda incidentally mentions the dedication by John of Beverley of churches, for Puch and Addi, two Northumbrian noblemen, and these were no doubt private foundations[[907]]. We still possess various regulations of Theodore, and of nearly contemporary prelates, which refer to such separate churches, proving how very general they had become, and how strictly they required to be guarded against the avarice or other unworthy motives of the founders, and the simoniacal practices both of priest and layman. In the thirty-eighth chapter of his Capitula[[908]] we find the following directions:—“Any presbyter who shall have obtained a parish by means of a price, is absolutely to be deposed, seeing that he is known to hold it contrary to the discipline of ecclesiastical rule. And likewise, he who shall by means of money have expelled a presbyter lawfully ordained to a church, and so have obtained it entirely for himself; which vice, so widely diffused, is to be remedied with the utmost zeal. Also it is to be forbidden both to clerks and laics, that no one shall presume to give any church whatever to a presbyter, without the licence and consent of the bishop.” These churches frequently were granted to abbeys or to the bishops themselves; and in the latter case they were served by priests especially appointed thereunto from the cathedral[[909]]. At this early period when tithes were not demandable as matter of right, and when the founders of these churches were already betraying a tendency to speculate in church-building, by claiming for themselves the altare or produce of the voluntary oblations of the faithful, the bishops found it necessary to insist that every church should be endowed with a sufficient glebe or estate in land: the amount fixed was one hide, equivalent to the estate of a single family, which, properly managed, would support the presbyter and his attendant clerks. Archbishop Ecgberht rules[[910]]: “Ut unicuique aecclesiae vel una mansa integra absque alio servitio attribuatur, et presbyteri in eis constituti non de decimis neque de oblationibus fidelium nec de domibus, neque de atriis vel hortis iuxta aecclesiam positis, neque de praescripta mansa, aliquod servitium faciant, praeter aecclesiasticum: et si aliquod amplius habuerint, inde senioribus suis, secundum patriae morem, debitum servitium impendant.” And this regulation, though probably already established by custom, obtained the force of law in the Frankish empire, by a constitution of Hludwich in 816[[911]]. This glebe-land the bishop seems not to have been able to interfere with, so as to alienate it from the particular church, in favour of another, even when both churches were within his own subjection[[912]].
But although many churches may have arisen in this manner, a large proportion of which gradually found their way into the hands of bishops and abbots, and although these last may have erected churches, as the necessities of the case demanded, in the various districts over which they exercised rights of property, the greater number of parish-churches (plebes, aecclesiae baptismales, tituli maiores) had probably a very different origin. It had been shown that in all likelihood every Mark had its religious establishment, its fanum, delubrum, or sacellum, as the Latin authors call them, its hearh, as the Anglosaxon no doubt designated them[[913]]; and further, that the priest or priests attached to these heathen churches had lands—perhaps freewill offerings too—for their support. It has also been shown that a well-grounded plan of turning the religio loci to account was acted upon by all the missionaries, and that wherever a substantial building was found in existence, it was taken possession of for the behoof of the new religion. Under such circumstances it would seem that nothing could be more natural than the establishment of a baptismal church in every independent mark that adopted Christianity, and that the substitution of one creed for the other not only did not require the abolition of the old machinery, but would be much facilitated by retaining it. It is in this manner then that I understand the assertions of Beda and others, that certain missionary prelates established churches per loca, such churches being certainly not cathedrals[[914]] or abbey-churches. There cannot be the least reason to doubt that parish-churches were generally established in the time of Beda, less than half a century after the period to which most of the instances in the notes refer[[915]]: and it is not very probable that they were all owing to private liberality. In a similar manner probably arose the numerous parish-churches which before the close of the eighth century were founded, especially by the English missionaries, on the continent of Europe[[916]]. Thus in the seventh century in England the ecclesiastical machinery consisted of episcopal churches served by a body of clerks or monks,—sometimes united under the same rule, and a sufficient number of whom had the necessary orders of priests, deacons and the like; probably also churches served by a number of presbyters under the guidance of an archipresbyter or archpriest[[917]], bearing some resemblance to our later collegiate foundations; and numerous parish-churches established on the sites of the ancient fanes in the marks, or erected by the liberality of kings, bishops and other landowners on their own manorial estates. The wealthy and powerful had also their own private chaplains, who performed the rites of religion in their oratories[[918]], and who even at this early period probably bore the name of handpreostas, by which in much later times they were distinguished from the túnpreostas, village or parochial priests[[919]].
As early as the fifth century the fourth general council (Chalcedon, an. 451) had laid down the rule that the ecclesiastical and political establishments should be assimilated as much as possible[[920]]; and as the central power was represented by the metropolitans and the bishops, so the subsidiary authorities had their corresponding functionaries in the parish priests, priests of collegiate churches and their dependents. We possess a curious parallel drawn by Walafrid Strabo in the earliest years of the ninth century, on this subject. In his book De Exordiis Rerum Aecclesiasticarum (cap. 31), he thus compares the civil and ecclesiastical polities: “Porro sicut comites quidam Missos suos praeponunt popularibus, qui minores causas determinent, ipsis maiora reservent, ita quidam episcopi chorepiscopos habent. Centenarii qui et centuriones et Vicarii, qui per pagos statuti sunt, Presbyteris Plebei, qui baptismales aecclesias tenent, et minoribus praesunt Presbyteris, conferri queunt. Decuriones et Decani, qui sub ipsis vicariis quaedam minora exercent, Presbyteris titulorum possunt comparari. Sub ipsis ministris centenariorum sunt adhuc minores qui Collectarii, Quaterniones, et Duumviri possunt appellari, qui colligunt populum, et ipso numero ostendunt se decanis esse minores. Sunt autem ista vocabula ab antiquitate mutuata,” etc[[921]].
Both in spiritual and in temporal matters, the clergymen thus dispersed over the face of the country were accountable to the bishop, whose vicars they were taken to be, that is to say, in whose place (“quorum vice”) they performed their functions. The “presbyteri plebei” or parish priests had the administration of all the sacraments and rites, except those reserved to the bishop,—such for instance as confirmation, ordination, the consecration of churches, the chrism, and the like: these were denied them, but they could baptize, marry, bury, and administer the communion. And gradually, as matter of convenience, they were invested with the internal jurisdiction, as it was called,—the “iurisdictio fori interni,”—that is to say confession, penance and absolution, but solely as representatives and vicars of the bishop[[922]].
It was this gradual extension of the powers of the presbyter that destroyed the distinction between the collegiate churches served by the archpriest and his clergy, and the church in which a single presbyter administered the daily rites of religion. The word parochia which at first had been properly confined to the former churches, became generally applied to the latter, when the difference between their spiritual privileges entirely vanished.
In the theory of the early church, the whole district subject to the rule of the bishop formed but one integral mass: the parochial clergy even in spirituals were but the bishop’s ministers or vicars, and in temporals they were accountable to him for every gain which accrued to the church. This he was to distribute at his own discretion; it is true that there were canons of the church which in some degree regulated his conduct, and probably the presbyters of his cathedral, his witan or council, did not neglect to offer their advice on so interesting a subject. To him it belonged to assign the funds for the support of the parochial clergy, out of the share which was commanded to be set apart for the sustenance of the ministers of the altar: to him also it belonged to apportion the share which was directed to be applied to the repairs of the fabric of the churches in his diocese; and he also had the immediate distribution of that portion which was devoted to the charitable purposes of relieving the poor and ransoming the enslaved,—a noble privilege, more valuable in rude days like those than in our civilized age it could be, even had the sacrilegious hand of time not removed it from among the jewels of the mitre.
Occasionally, no doubt, the parochial clergy, though supported by their glebe-lands, had reason to complain that the hospitality or charity of the bishop, exceeding the bounds of the canonical division, left them but an insufficient remuneration for their services: and more than one council found it useful to impress upon the prelate the claims of his less fortunate or deserving brethren[[923]]: but on the whole there can be little question that piety on the one hand and superstition on the other combined to supply an ample fund for the support of the clerical body; and that what with free-will offerings, grants of lands, fines, rents, tithes, compulsory contributions, and the sums paid in commutation of penance, the clergy in England were at all times provided not only with the means of comfort, but even with wealth and splendour. The sources and nature of ecclesiastical income will form the subject of a separate chapter.