Page images
PDF
EPUB

Vercelli.

Confirma

of Dorches

ter.

CHAP. VII. another synod at Vercelli. Here the theological controSynod of versy was again raised, and Lanfranc again shone forth as the irresistible smiter of heresy. Berengar was finally tion of Ulf condemned, notwithstanding his appeals to the elder teaching of John Scotus, and his protests that those who rejected John Scotus rejected Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, and all the Fathers of the Church.1 These disputes, renowned in the Church at large, are wholly passed over by our insular Chroniclers. To them the famous Synod of Vercelli seems to have been memorable only as showing the Roman Court in what was apparently a new relation towards the prelacy of England. Before the assembled Fathers came the newly appointed Bishop of Dorchester, Ulf the Norman, seeking, it would seem, for consecration or confirmation. His unfitness for his post was manifest; he was found incapable of going through the ordinary service of the Church. The Synod was on the point of deposing him, of breaking the staff which, according to the ceremonial of those times, he had already received from the King. But the influence which was already all-powerful at Rome saved him. He kept his Bishoprick; but he kept it only at the cost of a lavish expenditure of treasure, of which we may be sure that none found its way into the private coffers of Leo. It was in this same year that Macbeth pilgrimage made that mysterious bestowal of alms or bribes at Rome beth. from which some have inferred a personal pilgrimage on

Possible

of Mac

both quartered on wrong sees, Ealdred prematurely at York, Hermann at Winchester, no doubt by the easy confusion between "Wintoniensis" and "Wiltoniensis." The story does not occur in the contemporary Life, p. 417.

1 See the first letter in Dr. Giles's Lanfranc, i. 17.

2 Our ancient tongue appears to advantage in the pithy narrative of this affair given in the Peterborough Chronicle (1047); "And eft se Papa hæfde sinoð on Uercel, and Ulf biscop com þærto; and forneah man sceolde tobrecan his stef, gif he ne sealde pe mare gersuman; forðan he ne cude don his gerihte swa wel swa he sceolde." Florence passes by the story; his Latin would be feeble after such vigorous English.

ULF BISHOP OF DORCHESTER.

117

the part of the Scottish usurper. It is not beyond the CHAP. VII. bounds of possibility that one who seems to us hardly more real than the creations of Grecian tragedy may have personally appeared at Rome or at Vercelli, that he may have shown his pious indignation at the heresies of the Canon of Tours, or have felt his soul moved within him at the incapacity of the Bishop of Dorchester. A personal meeting between Leo, Lanfranc, Ealdred, and Macbeth would form no unimpressive scene in the hands of those who may venture on liberties with the men of far-gone times which to the historian are forbidden.

Arch

October

Ealdred and Hermann thus came back from Rome with the wished-for dispensation from the King, and Ulf came back from Vercelli to hold the great see of Mid-England, and to rule it in his unbishoplike fashion for a little time. But before long a still greater ecclesiastical preferment Death of became vacant. Eadsige, who had so lately resumed his bishop archiepiscopal functions, died before the end of the year.2 Eadsige. The day of complete triumph for the Norman monks 29, 1050. and chaplains who surrounded Eadward now seemed to have come. A Frenchman might now sit on the throne of Augustine. Patriotic Englishmen were of course in equal measure alarmed, and among them none more so than those who were most immediately concerned, the Chapter of the metropolitan church. The monks of Christ Church met, and made what is called a canonical election. In the eye of English law such a process The monks was a mere petition to the King and his Witan for the Church appointment of the man of their choice. That choice Elfric. fell on a member of their own body, their selection of whom showed that seclusion from the world had not made them incapable of a happy union of the dove

1 See above, p. 54.

2 Chron. Petrib. 1047; Flor. Wig. 1050.

3 Vita Eadw. 399, 400. On the whole story see Appendix I.

of Christ

CHAP. VII. and the serpent. There was in their house a monk, Elfric by name, who had been brought up in the monastery from his childhood, and who enjoyed the love of the whole society. Notwithstanding his monastic education, he was held to be specially skilled in the affairs of the world. And he had a further merit as likely as any of the others to weigh either with an English Chapter or with an English Witenagemót; he was a near kinsman of Earl Godwine.1 The monks petitioned the Earl, the natural patron of a corporation within his government, to use his influence to obtain the King's confirmation of their choice. Godwine was doubtless nothing loth to avail himself of so honourable an opportunity to promote an Englishman and a kinsman. But his influence was crumbling away. Four years

Elfric re

the King, and Ro

to the see

before he had

been able to obtain the confirmation of Siward as Eadsige's coadjutor; he was now unable to obtain the conjected by firmation of Ælfrie, or of any other man of native birth, as Eadsige's successor. The saintly King paid no regard bert Bishop of London to the canonical election of the Convent, and in the appointed Midlent Witenagemót of the next year, the Archbishoprick of Canterbury was bestowed on the King's French favourite, Robert, Bishop of London. The national party however prevailed so far as to secure an English successor Spearhafoc to the see which Robert vacated. Spearhafoc, Abbot of appointed to London, Abingdon, a man famous for his skill in the goldsmith's craft, was named to the see of London by the King's

of Canter

bury.

Midlent,

1051.

3

1 Vita Eadw. 399.

"Ex supradicti ducis Godwini stirpe." 2 Chron. Ab. 1050. See Appendix I.

See the Abingdon History, i. 463. He was a monk of Saint Eadmund's, and was charged with alienating some of the lordships of the house to Stigand. The account of his promotion to London I do not fully understand; "Spearhavoc autem a Rege civitati Lundonensi [civitatis Lundonensis?] eodem prædicta pactionis anno, in episcopatum promotus, dum auri gemmarumque electarum pro coronâ imperiali cudendâ, Regis ejusdem assignatione receptam haberet copiam." Was Saint Eadward's favour purchased by the materials of an earthly crown?

ROBERT ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

to the

119

writ under his seal.1 The Abbacy of Abingdon was CHAP. VII. given to a man whose description raises our curiosity; and Rudolf he was one Rudolf, described as a kinsman of King Abbey of Abingdon. Eadward and as a Bishop in Norway. For a native Northman to have been a kinsman of the son of Ethelred and Emma is hardly possible, unless the common ancestor was to be looked for so far back as the days before the settlement of Rolf. A Norman is hardly likely to have desired or obtained preferment in so unpromising a land; but it is highly probable that Cnut, who appointed several Englishmen to Bishopricks in Denmark, may have made use of a see in Norway either to reward or to remove some remote and unrecorded member of the English royal family. It is therefore not unlikely that Rudolf may have been an Englishman. He was an aged man and weary of his office. The hand of Harold Hardrada pressed heavily on the Church. Pilgrim of the Holy Sepulchre as he was, he is charged with destroying ecclesiastical buildings, and even with sending Christian men to martyrdom. Rudolf sought and found a place of more quiet, if of somewhat less honour, in the dominions of his kinsman. The monks of Abingdon received him, not

3

1 Chron. Petrib. 1048. "Mid þæs cinges gewrite and insegle." See above, p. 66.

2 Rudolf's kindred to the King is asserted more positively in the local Chronicle just quoted than in the local History (463); "Inde Rodulfum quemdam longævum abbatis loco ponendum Rex transmisit, qui episcopatum apud Norweiam gentem diu moderans, et tandem ab hujusmodi fasce privatum se agere malens, ad Regem ipsum suum, ut ferebatur, cognatum venit; a quo et susceptus est."

3

Rudolf, in any of its forms, is not an usual English name, but it might like the rare names of Carl and Lothar (Hloðhære). See vol.

occur,

i. p. 334.

....

* Adam Brem. iii. 16. "Rex Haraldus crudelitate suâ omnes tyrannorum excessit furores. Multæ ecclesiæ per illum virum dirutæ, multi Christiani ab illo per supplicia sunt necati. . . . . Itaque multis imperans nationibus, propter avaritiam et crudelitatem suam omnibus erat invisus." He goes on to give a full account of Harold's dealings with the Archbishop of Trondhjem.

turns from

CHAP. VII. very willingly, it would seem, but they were won over by the prospect that the old man would not live very long, and by the King's promise that at the next vacancy Robert re- free election should be allowed.1 Presently the new ArchRome. bishop Robert came back from Rome with his pallium; July 27, he was enthroned in the metropolitan church, and soon 1051. hastened to the royal presence.2 Spearhafoc, the Bishopelect of London, came with the royal writ, and demanded He refuses consecration from his Metropolitan. Robert refused, saying that the Pope had forbidden him to consecrate Spearhafoc.3 Spearha- Things had come to such a pass that an Englishman,

to consecrate

foc.

appointed to an English office by the King and his Witan, was to be kept out of its full possession by one foreigner acting at the alleged bidding of another. There were times when the Roman See showed itself a real refuge for the oppressed, and, as far as good intentions went, so it doubtless was in the days of good Pope Leo. But Englishmen now needed protection against no man except against the foreign favourites of their own King, and it was on behalf of those foreign favourites, and against Englishmen, that these stretches of Papal authority were now made. The unworthy Ulf was allowed, by the power of bribes, to retain his see-for he was a stranger. Spearhafoc, on what ground we know not-except so far as his English birth was doubtless a crime in the eyes of Robert— was refused the rite which alone could put him into full possession of his office. A second demand was again made

1 Hist. Mon. Ab. 463. See Appendix I. Rudolf survived only two years.

2 Chron. Petrib. 1048. "pæs sylfan Lentenes he for to Rome after his pallium. . . Đa com se arcebiscop fram Rome ane dæge ær Ses Petrus mæsse æfene, and gesæt his arcebiscopstol at Xões cyrcean on Ses Petrus mæssedæg, and sona þæs to þam cyng gewande."

3 The Peterborough Chronicle (1048) is here again very graphic; “Da com Sparhafoc abbod to him mid þæs cynges gewrite and insegle (see Appendix I); to pan þet he hine hadian sceolde to biscop into Lundene. þa widowed se arcebiscop, and cwæð þet se papa hit him forboden hæfde.”

« PreviousContinue »