Canterbury and the Norman Conquest: Churches, Saints and Scholars 1066 – 1109 9781474210126

Citation preview

Preface

The idea of a conference on Canterbury and the Norman Conquest to coincide with the 900th anniversary of the translation of St Augustine in 1091 was first projected by Richard Sharpe. The conference was held at the University of Kent, attracting over ninety participants. All the papers in this volume, with the exception of the one by Nicholas Orchard, were read in Canterbury and have been revised for publication. The book thus reflects the aim of the conference, which was to explore a range of cultural, religious and political themes arising from 'normanisation' of the Canterbury churches in the age of Lanfranc and Anselm. No attempt has been made to produce an overall synthesis of the changes which took place; the effect is rather to suggest that, despite the distinguished work already accomplished, much more remains to be done, in manuscript studies, archaeology and other fields. This book will therefore supplement and amplify the independent research conducted for the relevant chapters of the forthcoming History of Canterbury Cathedral (edited by Patrick Collinson, Nigel Ramsay and Margaret Sparks), and the findings of the important excavations in the cathedral nave conducted by the Canterbury Archaeological Trust in 1993, the detailed publication of which is eagerly awaited. Along the way we have incurred a number of debts, which it is a pleasure to acknowledge. As organisers of the 1991 conference we received advice and support from many people, and especially Sandy Heslop, Simon Keynes and Margaret Sparks. During the conference Charlotte Hodgson, Michael Stansfield and the staff of the Canterbury Cathedral Archives mounted an impressive exhibition of documents; Paul Bennett, Director of the Canterbury Archaeological Trust, provided invaluable guidance to the sites of St John's Hospital and St Gregory's Priory (the latter accessible thanks to a recessioninduced delay in the redevelopment of the site). Jenny Schunmann was a highly efficient conference secretary. As editors of this volume we must thank above all Martin Sheppard for his commitment to this book and patience over the time it has taken to realise it.

Introduction Richard Eales Kent is, according to F.W. Maitland, 'of all English counties that which is most exposed to foreign influences'.' Maitland was writing about the evolution of distinctive customs in medieval Kent, but his comment applies equally to the Christian conversion of Anglo-Saxon England. Geographical setting helps to explain how earlier contacts between Kentish kings and Frankish Christian rulers led to the Augustinian mission of 597, which then made the regional royal centre of Canterbury its main base of activity. But there is also much truth in the view, trenchantly expressed by Nicholas Brooks, that the archbishopric of Canterbury which developed out of the early missionary settlement 'is one of the most astonishing mistakes in English history', owing its subsequent preservation through the Saxon period 'both t o English pragmatism and It certainly had no place in Pope Gregory 1's original English con~ervatism'.~ scheme, though it was precisely to Gregory's legacy that the Christ Church community appealed, ultimately by forgery, when they sought to defend Lanfranc's concept of the Canterbury primacy between the 1070s and the 1120s. Under Brooks's heading of 'conservatism' comes the ultimate reluctance of rulers and ecclesiastical leaders elsewhere in England to challenge the leading position of Canterbury after the pontificate of Archbishop Theodore in the late seventh century. This helps to explain the abandonment of schemes to create a new Mercian archbishopric in the eighth century, or to expand the province of York at Canterbury's expense in later times, despite the temporary existence of strong political pressures for such changes. Under the heading of 'pragmatism' must be included the adaptability and luck which enabled the Canterbury churches to survive drastic changes in Kent itself, notably the violent loss of the kingdom's independence in the 790s and the ninth-century Viking attacks which destroyed conventual religious life outside Canterbury and Rochester. Thereafter the surviving communities of Christ Church and St Augustine's Abbey dominated the religious life of the region, just as the power of the archbishops increased with English unification under the tenth-century Wessex

' F. Pollock and F.W. Maitland, The Hisrory of Englrsh Law before the Time of Edward I (Cambridge. 1895). p. 187. N.P. Brooks, The Eurly History of he Church of Canrerhury (Leicester. 1984), p. 3.

The Setting of St Augustine's Translation, 1091 Richard Sharpe During one dramatic and exhilarating week in September 1091 the tombs of the first six archbishops of Canterbury were opened and their bodies were moved from the old Porticus of St Gregory, where they had lain since the seventh century, into new tombs in the east end of the new abbey of St Augustine, Canterbury. These translations were carried out with great liturgical splendour by the abbot and monks of St Augustine's in the presence of Bishop Gundulf of Rochester, monks from the cathedral priory of Christ Church, and a crowd of men and women of Kent. It was a week of holidays. Then on Monday morning, 15 September, the workmen moved in to start clearing the way for the foundations of the wall that would complete the new abbey. Goscelin of Canterbury has left us with a detailed account of these events in his Translatio S. Augustini, and this can be compared with the remains of the tombs from the north side of the original porticus, revealed by St John Hope's excavations in 1915.' From the architect's point of view the translations were a necessity if the building was to be finished. St Gregory's Porticus- the last surviving part of the ancient church of St Peter and St Paul, begun by Augustine himself - had been the final obstacle to the building planned by Abbot Scotland from about 1072. In that year his plan had been given approval by Pope Alexander 11, whom Scotland had visited with a Norman legation.' The pope had particularly asked

' Goscelin's text was edited, apparently from a Maurist transcript of the Cottonian manuscript, now EL, MS Cotton Vespasian B.XX. by the Bollandist Daniel Papebroch, Acra SS., May, vi (1688), pp. 411-43. The excavations were reported by W.H. St John Hope, 'Recent Discoveries at St Austin's Abbey', Archaeologia Candana, 31 (1915). pp. 294-96; idem, 'Recent Discoveries in the Abbey Church of St Austin at Canterbury', ibid. 32 (1917). pp. 1-26, repr. from Archaeologia, 66 (1914-15), pp. 377-400; see also R.U. Potts, 'The Tombs of the Kings and Archbishops in St Austin's Abbey', Archaeologia Canriano, 38 (1926), pp. 97-112. Goscelin describes this as a royal legation, Tmnslatio S. Augurtini, ii, c. 7 (ed. Papebroch, p. 434); the account of it is repeated in his Translario S. Adriani, c. 1 (BL, MS Cotton Vespasian B.XX, fols 241v-242r). Among Lanfranc's letters, however, is one to the archbishop from Hildebrand, which indicates that the legation was sent by Lanfranc to seek papal confirmation of the submission of the archbishop of York to the primacy of Canterbury, The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbkhop of Canterbury, ed. H . Clover and M.T. Gibson (Oxford, 1979), pp. 58-59 (no. 6).

Gundulf and the Cathedral Communities of Canterbury and Rochester Martin Brett

So far as any living man has a leading part in Goscelin's account of the translation of St Augustinc, it is Gundulf, bishop of Rochester. The reference is unemphatic, but the context is critical.' Goscelin's story is constructed with great art, and an essential element is the tension with which he contrives to invest the whole process. 'This tension has several elements. The simplest is the excitement and anxiety of the hunt for a priceless treasure, at once supernatural and material. Another is physical danger. The story echoes with the fall of stone and crash of timber; the choking dust rises as the ancient fabric totters towards ruin. A third is much more pervasive; terror that the saints might rise in their wrath against those who disturbed their rest. Goscelin hammers home again and again the litany of those who laid impious hands on the saints; their punishments run through his narrative as an ominous ground bass to the theme. Here Gundulf comes into his own, the figure whose combination of authority and sanctity calms the fears of the abbey's craftsmen and carries the excavations to their triumphant conclusion. Standing among the ruined shrines of the apostles of the English, the bishop, as vicar of Augustine's successor, guarantees the security of the great adventure. It was no part of Goscelin's scheme to suggest what the sceptical might also suppose, that the bishop's celebrated skill in building gave his reassurances a more mundane authority.2 Gundulf's early life must have seemed a most unlikely preparation for such an office. He was born to parents of modest rank in the Norman Vexin, on the border with the Capetian lands, around 1023, and studies in the schools of

' Goscelin, Translatio S. Augustini, i , cc. 8, 13, (ed. Papebroch, pp. 413-15). ' Textu~Roffensis: Rochester Cathedral Library M S A.3.5, ed. P.H. Sawyer, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 7 (1957). 1 1 (1962). lols 173-4v (no. 88).201v (no. 210). The printed version, Textrcs Roffensis. ed. T. Hearne (Oxford, 1720). was taken from an incomplete transcript. The manuscript is now Maidstone, Kent Archives Office, DKdR 1 . In the manuscript the documents are numbered, and the numbers were used by Hearne; passages are cited by folio and number to allow either printed copy or facsimile to be used. Compare The Life of Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester ed. K.M. Thomson (Toronto, 1977). pp. 78-80,

The Life and Writings of Osbern of Canterbury Jay Rubenstein In 1067 much of Christ Church, Canterbury, burned to the ground. Its sudden destruction serves as a compelling symbol for the end of the Anglo-Saxon era. The world of St Dunstan and of St Elphege entered the realm of memory, of interest only to the hagiographers and historians who took upon themselves the task of preserving their country's past in the face of an aggressive foreign culture. At this time the most important and eloquent spokesman on behalf of Christ Church's past was the precentor Osbern, author of the Vita er rranslatio S . Elphegi and the Vita er miracula S. Dunsrani. An understanding of the veneration of the saints of Christ Church under the Norman Archbishop Lanfranc is almost inseperable from an understanding of the career of the Osbern. But Osbern is an elusive figure. H e makes few references to himself in his own writings and, as a result, a great amount of guesswork must be used in order to reconstruct his career. A coherent and detailed picture of his character, however, is within reach, and this picture will provide us with a basis for understanding the position of the Anglo-Saxon saints of Canterbury in the Anglo-Norman world. Osbern supplies the most information about himself in his Miracula S. Dunsrani. He first appears there in a story involving the cure of a blind girl on the eve of the feast of St Bartholomew and St Audoen. At the time Osbern was a boy singing in the choir, and in the story the miracle occurs during the hymns for nocturns, 'modulatis uocibus concinebamus'. H e goes on to describe vividly the wonderment which captured him and the other boys as blood flowed from the girl's eyes, announcing her cure: Interim nos pueri uultus illuc dirigere, oculis subaspicere. interimque ad inuicern mutuis aspectibus simul ac nutibus laetitiam significare: suspicati narnque surnus, quod res erat, bonum patrem nostrum boni aliquid operatum fuisse.'

The miracle affected Osbern in another, more direct way, when on the next day reverence for the miracle prevented the boys' teachers from whipping

'

Osbern, Miracula S. L)unsrani, c . 11, ed. W . Stubbs, Memorials of St Dunstan, US 63 (London,

1874).

The Beginnings of St Gregory's Priory and St John's Hospital in Canterbury Tim Tatton-Brown During 1989 and 1990 a large area-excavation was carried out on the site of St Gregory's Priory. Much of the foundations of the nave and claustral buildings of the twelfth-century and later Augustinian priory were uncovered.' Beneath these structures, however, were the enigmatic remains of earlier churches that must date from the late eleventh century. It is these buildings and their historical context that will be discussed in this essay, along with the closelyrelated remains of St John's Hospital, which are still to be seen on the other side of Northgate street, immediately opposite the site of St Gregory's. The standing ruins in the grounds of the uniquely early St John's Hospital were first studied by the writer in 1983-84, when they were much obscured by ivy.2 Subsequently, they have been cleaned and conserved, and in 1991 the exceptionally well-preserved reredorter building was fully recorded and studied during excavation work by the Canterbury Archaeological rust." It is fairly well known that a double foundation of a hospital of St John the Baptist and a house of secular clerks was founded by Lanfranc in the mid 1080s outside the Northgate of Canterbury on either side of the main street (Figs 1 and z ) . ~Eadmer informs us that Lanfranc 'built a decent and ample house of stone outside the north gate . . . for the benefit of poor and infirm persons, dividing it into two parts for men and women'. He also tells us how Lanfranc made provision for their clothing and keep, and appointed ministers for them. He goes on to say that he also built, on the other side of the street, a church in honour of St Gregory, in which he put 'canons' (canones) to minster to them

For interim excavation reports and a fuller discussion of the later history of the site by the present writer see Archaeolo~iaCunliana, 107 (1089), pp. 309-327 and ibid., 108 (1990), pp. 195201. A large area of the lay cemetery to the south (containing 1251 burials) was also excavated in 1988. see ibid., 106 (1988), pp. 170-175. Ibid., 101 (1984). pp. 300-1. Ibid., 1 0 (1991). pp. 298-308. Victoria County History, Kent, ii (London, 1926). pp. 157-59,211-12. At about the same time Lanfranc also founded a leper hospital at Harbledown, two miles to the west of the city, beside the main road to London.

'

The Canterbury Calendars and the Norman Conquest

The primary purpose of this essay is to make available in print the text of the earliest post-Conquest calendar of Canterbury Cathedral and to offer a brief analysis of its contents. The document in question, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Add. C. 260 (Plate l ) , has been known and used by scholars before, but neither its character nor its date and significance have been given anything like their due. Francis Wormald, for example, dated it no more closely than 'before 1170' and commented that it 'is not complete enough to reproduce'.' In fact the manuscript itself probably dates from the 1120s but the text it transmits is essentially that of Lanfranc's era. It is this latter observation which explains its apparent incompleteness, for its spareness is a characteristic of the early postConquest period. Like other aspects of the text, this fact helps to illuminate the priorities and sensibilities of the conquerors in general and of Archbishop Lanfranc in particular. I have taken the opportunity to place the evidence of the Christ Church Calendar alongside that from the other great Canterbury house, St Augustine's Abbey, and so as to check my findings against another, related body of material, to give preliminary consideration to the postConquest litanies of the two monasteries.

Christ Church The evidence for liturgical change at the cathedral has been discussed in the past from various points of view. In particular, commentators have concentrated on the extent to which the Norman takeover may or may not have had consequences for the feasts of major local saints such as archbishops Dunstan

' Francis Wormald, English Benedictine Kalendurs after A D 1100, i . HBS77, (1939), p. 63. The major publication on Canterbury calendars is still F. A . Gasquet and E. Bishop. The Bosworth Psalter (London, 1908). though this is marred by the error of treating BL, MS Arundel 155 (see below) as a post-Conquest text. There are important supplementary papers by P. M. Korhammer, 'The Origin of the Bosworth Psalter', Anglo-Saxon England, 2 (1973). pp. 173-87 and by R . W. Pfaff. 'The Calendar', in The Eadwine 1,ralter: Text, Image und Monastic Culture in TwelfthCentury Canterbury, ed. M . T. Gihson, T. A . Heslop and R . W . Pfaff (London, 1992), pp. 62-87.

The Bosworth Psalter and the St Augustine's Missal Nicholas Orchard

Ever since it was first discovered and published by Edmund Bishop and Aidan Gasquet in 1908, the splendidly produced tenth-century psalter and hymnal, now BL, MS Add. 37517, but better known as the Bosworth Psalter, has received an enormous amount of attention; and, happily, this looks set to continue.' Its provenance, however, has for a long time been a matter of some debate. Although few would deny that the calendar of c. 1000 that precedes the psalter is a Canterbury calendar, the question of whether it should be attributed to the cathedral priory of Christ Church or the abbey of St Augustine's has never been satisfactorily settled. Bishop and Gasquet thought Christ Church, but Wormald disagreed, favouring St Augustine's in his English Kalendars before 1100.~ In recent years, however, opinion has shifted again and the case for assigning the calendar to Christ Church or at any rate not to St Augustine's has been revived, notably by Michael Korhammer, and this view has been gradually gaining ground.%ut despite the fact that a number of points have been made in support of a Christ Church provenance, it is clear that Wormald was right. The psalter must be attributed to pre-Conquest St August ine's. In comparison with the psalter, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 270, the so-called 'St Augustine's Missal', has provoked little comment since it

' E. Bishop and F.A. Gasquet's monogrpah, 011the Bosworth Psalter (London, 1908), though outdated in some respects, remains the best general work on the book. The psalter has been dated on palaeographic grounds to the third quarter of the tenth century by D.N. Dumville. 'On the Dating of Some Late Anglo-Saxon Liturgical Manuscripts', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 10 (1991). p. 45. A good codicological account of the manuscript is given by N.R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saron (Oxford, 1957), pp. 161-62. I should like to express my thanks to Mr T.A. Heslop for generously putting the typescript of his paper at my disposal and for much advice besides; and to Dr R. Baxter and Dr R. Gameson for their help. F. Wormald, English Kalendars before 1100, 1IBS 72 (1934), pp. 57-69. The litany that was later added to the psalter contains no localisable features, M. Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints. HBS 106 (1991). pp. 138-39. P.M.Korhammer, 'On the Origin o l the Bosworth Psalter', Anglo-Saron England, 2 (1973). pp. 178-87; and most recently, D.N. Dumville, Liturgey and the Ecclesiustical History of the Late Anglo-Saxon Church (Woodbridge. 1992). pp. 39-51.

'

English Manuscript Art in the Late Eleventh Century: Canterbury and its Context Richard Gameson The Bayeux Tapestry, for which a Canterbury origin has reasonably been favoured,' depicts in graphic detail the demise of the Anglo-Saxon order, whilst providing by its very existence a striking testimony to the survival of English artistic traditions in a modified form under Norman patronage. The events of 1066 implied at the very least a critical auditing of Anglo-Saxon civilisation; they brought about the destruction of many of its material artefacts and, perhaps more fundamental, caused a restructuring of the social order, the very foundations on which it had rested. As there is not inconsiderable evidence for royal and noble lay folk, especially women, owning and perhaps commissioning decorated books in the earlier eleventh century, the annihilation of much of the thegnly class in 1066 and the dispossession of those who survived would eventually have had an indirect effect on English book production and decoration. Altogether more important, immediate and direct consequences arose from the systematic appointment of Normans to prominent positions in the English church. Whether or not hired professionals played a significant role in the manufacture of books in late Anglo-Saxon

'

F. Wormald. 'Style and Design', The Bayeux Tapestry: A Comprehensive Survey, ed. F.M. Stenton (2nd edn, London. 1965). pp. 25-36; N.P.Brooks and H.E. Walker, 'The Authority and Interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry', Proceedings of the Battle Conference of Anglo-Norman Studies, 1 (1978). pp. 1-34; also W. Urry, 'The Normans in Canterbury', Canterbury Archaeological Society Occasional Papers, 2 (1959). pp. 10-12. For an alternative view see D.M. Wilson, The Bayeur Tapestry (London, 1985). pp. 203-12. A prime weakness of this last is that, irrespective of its date, the narrative sculptural fragment from Winchester has no particular stylistic correspondence with the Bayeux Tapestry. Conversely, the telling artistic parallels which can be drawn between the Tapestry and the St Augustme's books of the beginning of the twelfth century, BL, MSS Arundel91 and Cotton Vespasian B. XX, have yet to be fully explored. The following abbreviations are used throughout the notes: BL

= London,

British Library; BM

= Bibliotheque Municipale; Bodl. = Oxford, Bodleian Library; CCCC = Corpus Christi College. Cambridge; C U L = Cambridge University Library; T C C = Trinity College, Cambridge.

Script and Manuscript Production at Christ Church, Canterbury, after the Norman Conquest Teresa Webber

The effects of the Norman Conquest upon the community at Christ Church, Canterbury, are clearly exhibited in the books produced there in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries and, in particular, in the style of script in which they are written.' The books display not only a number of Norman hands but also a new style of script based on Norman hands such as these. This distinctive, angular script, so different from the rounded forms of the handwriting of the prc-Conquest scribes, has long been associated with the arrival in 1070 of Lanfranc and monks from Norman monasteries such as ~ e c . * Likewise, the subsequent adoption of the script of St Augustine's, Canterbury, and at Rochester has been attributed to the introduction of Norman monks from Christ church.-' Indeed, few styles of handwriting have been more closely associated with the historical factors which influenced their development that the so-called 'Christ Church' style. Certain aspects of the post-Conquest but manuscripts from Christ Church have already received detailed attenti01-1,~ there has not yet been any attempt to discover more precisely the nature of the circumstances which led to the history there of a distinctive style of script. The

'

I am grateful to Mr M. Gullick, I)r M.B. Parkes, D r R. Sharpe and Dr R.M. l'homson for their comments on an earlier draft of this essay. Photographs are reproduced by the kind permission of the British Library Board and the Syndics of the University Library, Cambridge. * M.R. James, The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge. 1903). pp. xxixxxxi; C.R. Dodwell, The Canterbury School of Illumination. 1066-1200 (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 68. For specimens of the distinctive Christ Church script dating from the 1080s to the 1140s. see N.R. Ker, English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1960). pls 6 , 7 . and 9. -' In this essay I shall examine the employment o l the script only at its place of origin, Christ Church. For a briet survey of its use at St Augustine's, see Ker, English Manuscripts, pp. 29-30, and for a detailed examination of its progress at Rochester. see K.M. Waller, 'The Library, Scriptorium and Community o t Rochester Cathedral Priory, c. 1080-1150' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis. University of Liverpool, 1981). For the evolution o t the script, see Ker, English Manuscripts, pp. 25-29; for the decoration, see Dodwell, Canterbury School, and lor the identification o f the hands of some of the Christ Church scribes, see?'.A.M. Bishop, 'Notes on Cambridge Manuscripts, Part 1'. Tiansactiom of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 1 (1949-53). pp. 432,435-37.

The Historical Traditions of St A ugustine's Abbey, Canterbury Richard Emms The years after 1066 were difficult for long-established English monasteries. Abbots from Norman houses were imposed, monastic customs were changed and extensive programmes of rebuilding were undertaken. Occasionally smouldering resentments flared into open violence, as at Glastonbury and at St Augustine's, Canterbury. More generally, English monks felt the need to defend their lands against encroachment and to defend the saints whose relics they claimed to hold against those who did not know their traditions.' They had to come to terms with the new order and preserve important traditions from the old English past. This led to a notable revival of historical writing in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. The quality of writers such as Eadmer, Symeon of Durham, William of Malmesbury and John of Worcester is well known.* Unfortunately for later students of the history of St Augustine's there was no great writer to compare with these. The hagiographer Goscelin of St-Bertin, who after a varied career spent his last years in the abbey, produced works of distinction and of great importance for the early history of his house, but he did not write a chronicle. Although later writers used his Lives of saints, he was not the founder of the St Augustine's historical tradition. This was something that developed in the community, as monks passed on traditions about their founder and their saints and took pride in their house while strongly opposing those who were thought to be diminishing its importance. The amount of writing of a historical nature surviving from the preConquest period is small. Abbot Albinus supplied information to Bede, but there are no traces of early Lives of St Augustine and the early archbishops. 'The Kentish Royal Legend is likely to have been written at St Augustine's, and

' For details see M. D . Knowles, The Monosric Order in England (Cambridge. 1963). chapter 6. I am most grateful to Dr Mildred Budny and Mr Tim Graham oI the Parker Library. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. both of whom were present at thc Canterbury conference, for commenting on an earlier draft of this essay. R . W . Southern 'Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: The Sense of the Past'. Tronsocrions of the Royal Historical Society 4th series, 23 (1973), pp. 243-56.