CHAPTER III

THE ENGLISH CHURCH BEFORE THE DANISH CONQUEST

In order to understand the impact of the relationship between King Cnut and the English church, the condition of the church in the period before the Danish conquest in 1013-1016 needs to be examined.

The church organization in Northumbria and the Danelaw had been destroyed by the Viking invasion and settlement in the ninth century. Many of the English people in the North abandoned the Christian faith and the immigrants who came from Scandinavia were pagan. Northumbrian monasticism was destroyed by the havoc and disruption of the times as was the episcopal organization of the church.¹ For example, the East Anglian See of Elmham was vacant from the death of Bishop Hunberht who was consecrated in 816 until the consecration of Eadulf in 942, a period of about one hundred years. Æthelwald, who was consecrated in 845, was the last bishop of the See of Dunwich. It was never revived.² Many of the Scandinavian settlers became Christian, but they did not rebuild the monasteries and the bishoprics were only slowly reestablished.³ Even as late as the reign of Cnut, the Northumbrian Priest's Law showed that paganism was still a problem that had to be confronted.⁴ Sections one through forty-five of this code described proper priestly behavior and the penalties for improprieties. Penalties for improper celebration of the mass and misdirections regarding fasts and festivals could indicate an uneducated priesthood, but penalties for refusal of baptism and confession, simony, and a refusal to obey clerical authority indicate problems beyond mere ignorance. An injunction against priests who abandon their women indicates that clerical celibacy could not be enforced.⁵ Thus the church was faced with an uneducated and recalcitrant priesthood and heathenish tendencies among the people in the North.

The monastic reform in England was begun by Dunstan while he was abbot at Glastonbury from about 940-957. He founded Abingdon a few years later to achieve even greater austerity, but then fell out of favor with King Eadred and was exiled to Flanders. There Dunstan was influenced by continental reformed monasticism inspired by Cluny.

Dunstan returned at the beginning of the reign of King Edgar when he was appointed bishop of Worcester. He eventually became archbishop of Canterbury. The great tenth-century monastic reform in England was directed by Dunstan and aided by Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester and Oswald, Archbishop of York, who began his monastic career at the Cluniac monastery of Fleury.⁶ Where necessary, secular clergy were expelled or transferred and replaced by monks. Winchester, Worcester, and later Sherborne and Canterbury became monastic cathedrals with monk-bishops in place of an abbot. The Regularis Concordia was adopted for use by English monasteries at a synod council about 970. During the last third of the tenth century, English monasteries became centers of learning and art. Dunstan regarded the monastic order as the spiritual and intellectual heart of the nation.⁷ In addition to spiritual and artistic training, many of the monks educated in the restored and reformed monasteries were prepared for church administration. Most of the bishops appointed by King Edgar and his son King Æthelred were from these monasteries.

English church reform was, thus, separate from the continent, but under the influence of leaders that were aware of continental reforms. The monastery at Cluny was the center of the continental reform movement. The papacy did little to support monastic reform in England, or the rest of Europe. Rome remained a goal for pious pilgrimage, Peter's Pence continued to be paid on an intermittent basis, and at this time, English archbishops traveled to Rome to receive their pallium from the pope.⁸

Archbishop Dunstan and King Edgar worked together well. They made a concerted effort to unite English and Danes into one kingdom. Oda, Oskytel and Oswald, all archbishops during Edgar's reign, were Danes. They helped unite the two peoples in his kingdom.⁹ Dunstan's influence ended after Æthelred was crowned, but the influence of the reform he began continued.¹⁰ The functions of church and state were closely interwoven during this period. By the time the three reformers died, over thirty monasteries for men and six institutions for women had been founded. These religious institutions were large landowners which tied them to their localities by bonds of revenue, jurisdiction and personal dependency.¹¹ Monks and nuns controlled about one-sixth of the landed wealth of England in Domesday Book of 1086. This was probably also true earlier in the eleventh century.¹² The will of Archbishop Ælfric who died in 1005 showed how closely church leaders were involved in the affairs of the kingdom. In addition to bequests to all of the religious houses with which he had been associated, Ælfric gave the king his best ship and its sailing tackle along with sixty helmets and coats of mail. The counties of Kent and Wiltshire each received a ship. He also forgave the debt owed to him by the county of Kent and money he had paid on behalf of Surrey and Middlesex which had probably paid one of the many Danegelds late in Æthelred's reign.¹³ This close connection with local affairs probably reduced the influence of continental reformers in England.¹⁴

The deaths of Æthelwold (984), Dunstan (988), and Oswald (992) removed their driving personalities from the reform effort.¹⁵ The early death of Edgar also removed his influence. Like his father before him, Æthelred appointed monastic bishops. Unlike his father, he did not seem to have taken their advice seriously. The troubles that began in Æthelred's reign also limited the monastic reform movement by forcing the administrative talents of the nation to focus on opposition to the invaders and diverting national resources away from the church.¹⁶

The position of the king in English society was very strong. The king was the anointed of God (christus domini) and thus his power came from God and not the people.¹⁷ Once crowned and anointed, the idea of deposing him was wrong in the eyes of the church. This view of kingship limited the options of the English to resist the Scandinavian invasion. They needed effective leadership yet could not replace their king when he proved to be ineffective.

Archbishop Wulfstan of York was a significant figure in the reign of both Æthelred and Cnut. Wulfstan was faced with the problem of finding an authority that could keep the peace and encourage the pursuit of righteousness by all citizens. The Carolingians had found this authority in the king, but like the descendants of Charlemagne, Æthelred proved unable to maintain peace.¹⁸ The chaotic conditions toward the end of Æthelred's reign probably led Wulfstan to try to stabilize authority in the church. To increase respect for the church, Wulfstan appealed to the clergy to lead exemplary lives as a model for others.¹⁹ In his writing he attempted to provide tools for the English clergy to support them in this role. Wulfstan's comments in his "Sermon of the Wolf to the English" first delivered about 1014 showed that he did not succeed during Æthelred's reign. Wulfstan blamed the troubles of that time on the anger of God and compared the English of his day with the Britons that Gildas had condemned in his writings. He concluded by exhorting the English people,

"And let us do as is necessary for us, turn to the right and in some measure leave wrong-doing, and atone very zealously for what we have done amiss; and let us love God and follow God's laws and perform very eagerly what we promised when we received baptism, ... ."²⁰

Throughout his career, Wulfstan tried to strengthen the position of the church. Part of this effort involved making explicit the rights of the church and the responsibilities of the English people to the church in the law codes. An element of preaching was also present in the law codes associated with Wulfstan.²¹ Problems within the church and the country at large can be detected from the content of these codes. Pagan practices were rejected by law which shows that some people had reverted to paganism after the Danish raids of the late tenth and early eleventh century.²² Clerical marriage remained a problem that was also addressed in the laws. In Æthelred's law code of 1008, the clergy were reminded of their responsibility to remain celibate, but also the reward of theign's status was offered to those who complied ²³

An additional problem for the church of this period was pluralism. Wulfstan himself was guilty of this since he held the See of Worcester at the same time that he was Archbishop of York. In his case and many of the other examples, pluralism was necessary to provide support for the bishops due to the poverty of some of the English Sees. The long connection between Worcester and York appears to have been an attempt to provide necessary income to the archbishops.²⁴

Though Wulfstan found little to encourage him when Cnut seized the crown, he supported Cnut from the beginning of his reign and immediately began to instruct him in the duties and expectations of English kingship.²⁵ Subjection to a potentially heathen monarchy raised enough concern that Archbishop Lyfing's journey to Rome in 1018 may have been connected with a desire for papal counsel regarding the attitude of the English Church toward the new dynasty. Lyfing returned with a letter from the Pope exhorting Cnut to extol the praise of God and promote peace and justice.²⁶

Thus when Cnut became king in 1016, the leadership of the English church was anxious about his alien and potentially heathen background, but was prepared to work with him. They expected to instruct him on proper Christian kingship. This attitude and Cnut's willingness to allow the church its accustomed rights and privileges allowed his reign to begin with reconciliation based on Edgar's laws. As the working relationship between Cnut and church leaders developed, it gave the English people a period of peace and prosperity that made them forget that Cnut was an alien conqueror. It also gave the church an opportunity to recover from the turmoil of invasion.

NOTES

1. M. K. Lawson, Cnut , p. 121; John Lamb, The Archbishopric of Canterbury: From Its Foundation to the Norman Conquest (London: The Faith Press, Ltd., 1971), p. 218. RETURN

2. These consecration dates came from bishop lists displayed in Norwich Cathedral. Thetford succeeded Elmham as the episcopal seat of East Anglia in 1075 and was in turn succeeded by Norwich in 1094. RETURN

3. A glance at Figure 3 that used to be located at http://members.aol.com/bakken1/engabb.gif demonstrates the concentration of monasteries in the south. RETURN

4. "Law of Northumbrian Priests," in Dorothy Whitelock, ed., English Historical Documents, p. 437. See Paragraph 48. RETURN

5. Ibid., Paragraph 35. The writer of the law code could not bring himself to say wife and thus merely said, "If a priest leave a woman for another," RETURN

6. David Knowles and R. Neville Hadock, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales, (London: Longmans, Green & Co., [...]), p. 5. RETURN

7. Ibid., p. 6. RETURN

8. Dorothy Bethrum Loomis, "Regnum and Sacerdotium in the early eleventh century," In England Before the Conquest: Studies in primary sources presented to Dorothy Whitelock, Peter Clemoes and Kathleen Hughes, ed., (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1971), p. 134-5. RETURN

9. Lamb, Archbishopric of Canterbury, p. 230. RETURN

10. Lamb, Archbishopric of Canterbury, p. 205. RETURN

11. Knowles and Hadock, Medieval Religious Houses, p. 7. RETURN

12. Lawson, Cnut, p. 119. RETURN

13. Dorothy Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1930), No XVIII, also see notes pp. 160-1. RETURN

14. Knowles and Hadock, Medieval Religious Houses, p. 7. RETURN

15. Frank Barlow, The English Church, 1000 - 1066 (Hamden: Archon, 1963), p. 62. RETURN

16. Ibid., p. 27. RETURN

17. Loomis, "Regnum and Sacerdotium", p. 132-3. RETURN

18. Ibid., p. 130. RETURN

19. Ibid., p. 136. RETURN

20. "The Sermon of the Wolf to the English," in Whitelock, English Historical Documents, p. 859. RETURN

21. M. K. Lawson, "Archbishop Wulfstan and the Homiletic Element in the Laws of Æthelred II and Cnut," English Historical Review (1992): pp. 565-86. RETURN

22. Lamb, Archbishopric of Canterbury, p. 213. RETURN

23. "King Æthelred;s code of 1008 (V Æthelred)," in Whitelock, ed., English Historical Documents, p. 406. RETURN

24. R. Darlington, "Ecclesiastical Reform in the Late Old English Period," English Historical Review 51 (1936), p 398. RETURN

25. Loomis, "Regnum and Sacerdotium", p. 139. RETURN

26. Laurence Marcellus Larson,. "The political policies of Cnut as King of England," American Historical Review 15 (1910), p. 738. RETURN