The English Church in the Middle Ages

by William Hunt

His banishment, 956.

Soon after the accession of Eadwig, in 956, Dunstan incurred the wrath of a powerful enemy. At his consecration feast the boy-king left the hall for the society of a young lady named Ælfgifu and her mother, Æthelgifu, who wished to make a match between him and her daughter. The great men were wroth at this slight on themselves and on the kingly office, and sent Dunstan to bring Eadwig back to the hall. Now there was some connexion between Eadwig and Ælfgifu that would have made their marriage unlawful, and when Dunstan saw them together his zeal for purity was aroused; hot words passed between him and the girl’s mother, and he forced the king to return to the banquet. In revenge Æthelgifu procured his banishment. He found shelter in the abbey of St. Peter at Ghent, where for the first time he saw the rule of St. Benedict fully carried out. While he was there, the people of the north revolted from Eadwig, and chose his younger brother Eadgar as king. Oda took advantage of this revolt to separate Eadwig from Ælfgifu, whom he had by this time married, and it is said that either she or her mother—the story is late and uncertain—was cruelly slain by the insurgents. This revolt of England north of the Thames and the division of the kingdom have little or no ecclesiastical significance, for Oda continued Eadwig’s subject until his death. Eadgar, the “king of the Mercians,” called Dunstan back to England, and he was raised to the episcopate. The circumstances of his elevation illustrate the unsettled state of the custom as regards episcopal elections. Although no see was vacant, the witan decreed that he should be made bishop, and he appears to have been consecrated accordingly. Dunstan archbishop, 960-988.Shortly afterwards the bishop of Worcester died, and Dunstan was appointed his successor. A few months later he received the bishopric of London, which he held along with Worcester. In 959 Eadwig died, and Eadgar became king south of the Thames. Then Brithelm, bishop of Wells, who had been appointed archbishop by Eadwig, was sent back to his old diocese, and by the counsel of the witan Dunstan was chosen archbishop in his stead.

Seculars and regulars.

During the reign of Eadgar the secular clergy were driven out of many of the monasteries south of the Humber, and their places were taken by monks who lived according to the rule of St. Benedict. The chief movers in this change were Æthelwold, who, at Dunstan’s request, was made bishop of Winchester; Oswald, bishop of Worcester, who had been a monk of Fleury, and had learnt the Benedictine rule there; and the king himself. Dunstan, though he approved of the movement, did not take any active part in it, and did not disturb the secular canons of his own church. Pope John XIII. wrote to Eadgar, expressing his pleasure at his zeal and authorising the proceedings of Æthelwold. In the north no such change was made, and though Oswald was elected archbishop of York in 972, he did not attempt to turn out the clerks there. While the seculars who were expelled from the monastic churches were, as a rule, married men, no general persecution of the married clergy took place. It was unlawful for a man in the higher orders to marry, and if a married man took these orders, he was bound to put away his wife. But the marriage of the clergy prevailed too widely to be attacked with vigour or success, and though celibacy was the rule of the Church, no effectual measures were taken to enforce it. The only penalty pronounced against the married priest in the canons for which Dunstan is responsible is, that he should lose the privilege of his order; he ceased to be of “thegn-right worthy,” and had no higher legal status than that of a layman of equal birth.

Dunstan’s ecclesiastical administration.

The general character of Dunstan’s ecclesiastical administration may be gathered from the laws and canons of Eadgar’s reign. The laws mark a step in the history of tithes, for they contain the first provision for enforcing payment by legal process, by the joint action of civil and ecclesiastical officers, and they declare the right of the parish priest in certain cases to a portion of the payment made by the landowner, independently of any distribution by the bishop. When a thegn had on his estate of inheritance a church with a burying-ground, it was ordered that he should give one-third to the priest; if his church had no burying-ground, he might give the priest what he pleased. The payment of Peter’s pence is also commanded. It is evident from the canons that Dunstan endeavoured to make the clergy the educators of the people; priests were to teach each his own scholars, and not take away the scholars of others; they were to learn handicrafts and instruct their people in them, and to preach a sermon every Sunday. The laity were to avoid concubinage and practise lawful marriage. And both in continence, and in every other respect, the necessity of raising the clergy to a higher level of life than that of the society round them was fully recognized; they were not to hunt, hawk, play at dice, or engage in drinking-bouts, and greater attention was to be paid to ritual, especially in celebrating the Eucharist. While they were thus to be brought, as regards both their lives and the performance of their duties, to a deeper sense of the dignity of their calling, they were socially to hold a high place; a priest engaged in a suit with a thegn was not to be called on to make oath until the thegn had first sworn, and the quarrels of priests were to be decided by a bishop, and not taken before a secular judge. In these and other efforts to raise the character and position of the clergy Dunstan did not desire to make the Church less national, or to separate her ministers from the life of the nation and subject them to the authority of Rome. He worked, as the spiritual ruler of the national Church, for the good both of the Church and the nation, and evidently maintained an independent attitude towards the Pope. A noble, whom he had excommunicated for contracting an unlawful marriage, obtained a papal mandate ordering the archbishop to absolve him. Dunstan flatly refused to obey the order, declaring that he would rather suffer death than be unfaithful to his Lord.

Coronations.

As Eadgar’s chief minister, Dunstan must have had a large share in establishing the order and good government that form the special glories of the reign, and the wise policy of non-interference that secured the loyalty of the Danish districts was probably due as much to him as to the king. Cnut seems to have recognized what he had done to make the Danish population part of the English people, for he ordered that St. Dunstan’s mass-day should be kept by all as a solemn feast. Dunstan saw the fruit of his political labours. It has been asserted that Eadgar’s coronation at Bath was connected with a penance laid upon him by the archbishop. While it is not improbable that Dunstan imposed a penance on the king for one of the sins of his youth, the story that he forbade him to wear his crown for seven years is mere legend. The coronation at Bath, which was performed by both archbishops, with all the bishops assisting, was the solemn declaration that all the peoples of England were at last united under one sovereign. On Eadgar’s death a dispute arose as to the succession. Civil war was on the point of breaking out between the rival ealdormen of East Anglia and Mercia; the Mercian ealdorman turned the monks out of the monasteries and brought the seculars back, while the East Anglian house, which had ever been allied with Dunstan, and had forwarded the monastic policy of Eadgar, took up the cause of the monks. In this crisis the two archbishops preserved the peace of the kingdom; for they declared for Eadward, the elder son of Eadgar, and placed the crown on his head. His short reign was filled with the strife between the seculars and regulars. After his murder the two archbishops joined in crowning Æthelred. Although the increase in the personal power and dignity of the king that marked the age is to some extent to be connected with the teaching of the Church concerning the sanctity of his person and the duty of obedience, still the Church did not favour absolutism. Indeed, in the rite of coronation, which seems to have been brought into special prominence during this period, the king bound himself by an oath to govern well, to defend the Church and all Christian people, to forbid robbery and unrighteous doings to all orders, and to enjoin justice and mercy in all judgments. At Æthelred’s coronation Dunstan, after administering this oath, set forth in solemn terms the responsibilities of a “hallowed” king.

Dunstan’s last days.

Dunstan’s pre-eminent position in the State magnified the political importance of his see. In his time Kent and Sussex ceased to be ruled by their own ealdormen, and these shires, together with Surrey, were ruled by the archbishop with the authority of an ealdorman. With the accession of Æthelred, Dunstan’s influence in the State seems to have ended. During the early years of his reign the king was led by unworthy favourites to seize on some of the possessions of the Church, and among them on some lands of the see of Rochester. The see was in a special manner dependent on Canterbury, and the archbishop may almost be said to have been the lord of the bishopric, an arrangement that evidently sprang from the early dependence of the people of West Kent on the king of the Eastern people. Dunstan threatened to excommunicate the king. Æthelred, however, paid no heed to his threats, and sent his troops to ravage the lands of the see until the archbishop was forced to bribe him to recall them from the siege of Rochester.