The English Church in the Middle Ages

by William Hunt

Before Anselm’s consecration the king recovered, and turned back to his evil ways. He tried to make Anselm promise that he would not reclaim the lands of the see which he had granted out as knights’ fees. To this Anselm could not agree, for he would not lessen the property of his church. Nevertheless he was consecrated, and did homage to the king, as the custom was. Before long Rufus wanted money for an expedition against Normandy. The archbishop offered £500. Rufus was advised to demand a larger sum, and sent the money back. His demand was evidently based on the idea that Anselm owed him much for making him archbishop; and Anselm, though willing to contribute to the king’s need, rejoiced that now no one could assert that he had made a simoniacal payment, and gave the money to the poor. When Rufus was about to sail, Anselm asked to be allowed to hold a synod, and the wrathful king answered him with jeers: “What will you talk about in your council?” Anselm fearlessly replied that he would speak of the foul vices that infected the land, and named the special vice of the king and his court. “What good will that do you?” asked the king. “If it does me no good,” was the answer, “I hope it will do something for God and for you.” He prayed him to fill the vacant abbacies. “Tush!” said the king, “you do as you will with your manors, and may I not do what I will with my abbeys?” In his eyes the rights of a patron were merely the rights of a lord over his lands. He left England in wrath with the archbishop. Anselm had not yet received the pall, and when the king came back he asked leave to go and fetch it. “From which Pope?” demanded the king; and Anselm answered, “From Urban.” Now, though Rufus had no objection to acknowledge Urban, he did not choose that any one should decide the matter save himself. He took his stand upon his father’s rule, and the rule was a good one, for the acknowledgment of a Pope was a matter of national policy. His fault lay in refusing to make his choice out of a sheer love of tyranny. A meeting of the great council was held at Rockingham to decide whether Anselm could maintain “his obedience to the Holy See without violating his allegiance to his earthly king.” The king most unfairly treated him as though the question had been decided against him and he was contumacious. The bishops took part against him, and their conduct shows how deeply the feudal idea had sunk: they were the “king’s bishops,” and their counsel was due to him and not to their metropolitan. William of Saint-Calais, now in favour again, even advised the king to take away the archbishop’s staff and ring, and at the king’s bidding the bishops renounced their obedience to him. The nobles, however, would not become instruments of a tyranny that might strike next at themselves. “He is our archbishop,” they said, “and the rule of Christianity in this land is his; and therefore we as Christians cannot, as long as we live, renounce his authority.” The matter was adjourned; yet it was something that the tyrant had been shown that men recognized higher laws of action than the feudal principles by which he sought to make Church and State alike subservient to his caprices.

As evil ever strives to master good, so the Red King was set on mastering Anselm. To this end he acknowledged Urban, persuaded him in return to send the pall to him, and then offered the legate who brought it a large sum for the Pope if he would depose Anselm. When the legate refused his offer, he tried to make Anselm give him money for the pall. In this, of course, he failed, and the pall was placed by the legate on the high altar of Canterbury Minster, whence Anselm took it. The next year the king found a new cause of quarrel; the military tenants of the archbishopric serving in the Welsh war were badly equipped, and he bade Anselm be ready to answer for it in his court. Anselm then petitioned to be allowed to go to Rome, and urged his request in spite of the king’s repeated refusals. His case was discussed at a meeting of the great council at Winchester. In persisting in his demand against the will of the king he was certainly acting contrary to the customs of the kingdom, and he was, if not in words, at least in fact, appealing to the Pope against the king. At the same time, it must be remembered that he had none to help him, and that he naturally turned to Rome as the place of strength and refreshment in his troubles. The bishops plainly told him: “We know that you are a holy man, and that your conversation is in Heaven; but we confess that we are hampered by our relations whom we support, and by our love of the manifold affairs of the world, and cannot rise to the height of your life.” Would he descend to their level? “Ye have said well,” he answered; “go, then, to your lord. I will hold me to God.” Nor were the nobles on his side. At Rockingham his demand was in accordance with the customs of the realm; here the case was different. Rufus declared that he might go, but that if he went he would seize the archbishopric. He went, and the king did as he had said. Urban received the archbishop magnificently, styling him the “pope and patriarch of another world,” and promising to help him. Council of Bari, 1098.At the Council of Bari the Pope called on him to defend the Catholic faith against the Greek heresy. His speech delighted the council; the conduct of Rufus was discussed, and it was decided that he ought to be excommunicated. Anselm, however, interceded for him, and his intercession availed. Although Urban in public spoke severely enough to a bishop whom Rufus sent to plead his cause, he talked more mildly in private; money was freely spent among the papal counsellors, and a day of grace was given to the king. It is scarcely too much to say that Anselm’s cause was sold. He was present at the Lateran Council in 1099, where he heard sentence of excommunication decreed against all who conferred or received investiture; his wrongs were spoken of with indignation, but nothing was done to redress them. He left Rome convinced that he could never return to England while Rufus lived, and was dwelling at Lyons when he heard of the king’s death.

Investitures.

In the first clause of the charter in which Henry I. declared the abolition of the abuses introduced by Rufus we read that he made “God’s holy Church free;” he would “not sell it nor put it to farm,” and he would take nothing from the demesne of bishopric or abbacy during a vacancy. He invited Anselm to return, and welcomed him joyfully. When, however, he called on him to do him homage on the restoration of his lands which Rufus had seized, Anselm refused; for he had laid to heart what he had heard at the Lateran council. It is evident that personally he had no objection to perform these acts, which he had already done to Rufus. His objection arose from the fact that they were now forbidden. Rome had spoken, and he felt bound to obey. As the question of Investitures forms the subject of a separate volume of this series, it will be enough to say here that the conveyance of the temporalities of a see was regarded in the feudal state as the chief thing in the appointment of a bishop, who received investiture of his office by taking the ring and crozier from the hands of the king—a ceremony which encouraged the feudalization of the Church and gave occasion for many abuses. At the same time, it was by no means desirable that a prelate should hold wide lands and jurisdictions without entering into the pledge of personal loyalty required of other lords. With the abstract side of the question, however, Anselm was not concerned. With him it was a matter of obedience, and he held that he was bound to obey the Pope rather than the law of the land. For the king’s demand was justified by the custom of England, and it was on this that he took his stand. “What,” he said, “has the Pope to do with my rights? Those that my predecessors possessed in this realm are mine.” Anselm would neither do homage nor consecrate the bishops elect who had received investiture. Yet the dispute was conducted with moderation on both sides. The archbishop in person brought his men to defend the king against the invasion of Robert; he forwarded Henry’s marriage and crowned his queen; while Henry, even during the progress of the dispute, authorized him to hold a synod and sanctioned its decrees. Stern as the king was, he loved order and justice, and his conduct presents a striking contrast to the conduct of his brother.

The closer relations with Rome introduced by the Conquest compelled the king to attempt to gain the Pope’s agreement to the English law. Paschal II., while bound to abide by the decision of the Lateran council, was evidently unwilling to alienate the king, and seems to have temporized. At last Anselm went to Rome, at the request of the king and the nobles, who no doubt hoped that he would learn there that the Pope was scarcely whole-hearted in the matter. His presence, however, seems to have stirred Paschal to give the king’s envoy a flat refusal. Henry then took the archbishopric into his hands, and Anselm remained abroad. During his absence the king embarked on a piece of ecclesiastical administration. His constant want of money led him to levy a fine on all the clergy who had disobeyed the decree of Anselm’s council by neglecting to put away their wives; and, finding the sum less than he calculated, he demanded a payment from every parish church. About two hundred priests, in their robes, waited on him barefoot, and prayed him to release them from this demand without success. At last, in 1107, the question of investitures was arranged between the king and the Pope, and the arrangement was sanctioned by a great council at London. The king gave up the investiture, and in return his right to homage was acknowledged. He may be said to have surrendered the shadow and to have secured the substance. While the chapters were allowed to choose the bishops, they were to exercise their right at the king’s court, where, of course, they were subject to his influence. Anselm again received the temporalities, and the vacant bishoprics were filled up. Throughout the dispute the clergy remained loyal to the king in his struggle with the feudal lords, and the affairs of the Church went on as usual. The speedy and satisfactory settlement of a question that agitated the Empire for half a century, and the moderate spirit in which it was debated, were mainly due to the character of the king; for Henry was a statesman of fertile genius, and, unlike Rufus, acted on well-defined principles. He was willing to grant the exact amount of freedom of action that seemed necessary to orderly development, while, at the same time, he kept that freedom in strict subordination to his own supremacy.

Acting on these principles, he allowed councils to be held, though, like his father, he made ecclesiastical legislation dependent on his sanction. At Anselm’s synod, held at Westminster in 1102, a return was made to the old English custom of the joint action of the clergy and laity; for the nobles took part in it along with the bishops and abbots. Synodical activity under Henry I.The suspension of synodical action during the reign of Rufus had weakened the authority of the Church, and it was thought advisable that both orders should act together in legislation. The first canon marks the growth of ecclesiastical jurisdiction consequent on the separation of the courts. Archdeacons had now become judicial officers over distinct territorial divisions, and as the profits of their courts were considerable, it became necessary to decree that they should not be farmed. An advance was made on Lanfranc’s legislation on clerical marriage; married priests and deacons were now ordered to put away their wives, an order which, as we have seen, was widely disregarded; no married man was to be admitted to the subdiaconate; tithes were not to be paid except to churches, and several decrees were made for the maintenance, dress, and general conduct of the clergy. Another national council, held in 1127, sat in the church of Westminster while the king held his court in the palace; just as now the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury and the High Court of Parliament are summoned to meet at the same time at Westminster.

Legates.

Henry, like his father, aimed at establishing perfect harmony between Church and State, keeping both alike in absolute dependence upon himself. Accordingly he resisted any unauthorized interference on the part of the Pope with the affairs of the Church. Early in the reign a Burgundian archbishop landed here without invitation, claiming legatine authority over the whole kingdom. His claim was pronounced “unheard of.” Although the Conqueror had invited the Pope to send him legates for a specified purpose, the archbishop of Canterbury was held to be the permanent representative of the Holy See in England, a legatus natus, whose authority was not to be superseded by a special legate, or legatus a latere. No one acknowledged the legate’s authority, and “he went back,” Eadmer remarks, “as he came.” A more serious attempt to override the rights of the Church was made in the time of Anselm’s successor, Ralph. The king was in Normandy, and when it became known that a legate, Anselm’s nephew and namesake, was on his way hither, the bishops and nobles of the kingdom met in council, and sent Ralph over to Henry to request that he “would bring the innovation to nought,” and the king prevented the legate Anselm from landing. In the time of the next archbishop, William of Corbeuil, Henry was, for political reasons, anxious to stand well with Rome, and accordingly admitted into the kingdom a legate from Honorius II., named John of Crema. Men saw with indignation that this legate sat in the highest seat in the metropolitan church, and said mass in the archbishop’s stead, clad in episcopal vestments, though he was only a priest; “for both England and other countries knew that, from St. Augustin onwards, the archbishops were held to be primates and patriarchs, and were never made subject to a Roman legate.” At the same time, though John occupied the seat of honour at the council of 1125, the summons ran in the name of the archbishop and the decrees were confirmed by the king. While, then, the Crown, the English Church, and the papal representative acted concurrently, the royal authority was saved. It was not so with the see of Canterbury or with the national interests it represented, and the archbishop went to Rome to complain of the injury done to his see. Honorius silenced his complaints by giving him a legatine commission, a measure which, while gratifying William personally, lessened the inherent dignity of his see and the independence of the Church.

Thurstan, archbishop of York, 1119-1140.

In spite of various efforts, the archbishops of York had hitherto been unable to evade the profession of obedience to Canterbury. Thurstan, the fourth since the Conquest, was a man of different mould from his predecessors, and refused to make the profession. Archbishop Ralph accordingly refused to consecrate him, and the king upheld the right of the primatial see, bidding Thurstan do what was due according to ancient usage. Thurstan was encouraged in his revolt by Popes Paschal II. and Calixtus II., who treated it as a good opportunity for a covert attack on the greatness of the English primate. The see of York remained vacant for about five years. At last Thurstan obtained leave from the king to attend the council held by Calixtus at Rheims, promising that he would not accept consecration from the Pope, while Calixtus undertook that he would do nothing to the prejudice of the see of Canterbury. Nevertheless Thurstan received consecration from Calixtus, and so escaped making the profession. Henry refused to allow him to return to England; and the next Pope, Honorius II., seems to have actually declared the kingdom under an interdict, though the sentence was not published here. The dispute went on for some years, and the old question appears even now to excite the local patriotism of some of the clergy of York. Yet it can scarcely be denied that Thurstan sacrificed the interests of the national Church to the aggrandizement of his see, and that both he and Calixtus got the better of the king by a somewhat discreditable trick. York was freed for ever from the obligation of obedience by a bull of Calixtus.