H. R. Loyn. The English Church, 940-1154. Harlow: Longman, 2000. x + 174 pp. $99.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-582-30303-4.

Reviewed by Bailey K. Young (Department of History, Eastern Illinois University )
Published on H-Albion (November, 2001)

H.R. Loyn's first book, Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest (1961, reprinted 1991) was a masterful survey of social and economic history; it seems fitting that this last one (he died on October 9, 2000) should offer a complementary picture of the nature and development of the Church in late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman times. Most of it follows a chronological format: three chapters devoted to the story up to 1066, two focused on the reign of William, and two taking the story forward to the end of Stephen's reign. Then, having "dealt mainly with the external life of the Church," he devotes chapter eight to doctrine, ritual and belief, asking, "Was there significant identifiable development in these two centuries on matters of doctrine and social discipline that had effect on the religious and everyday life of the people of England?" (p. 138). Since this is no murder mystery, we may give away his conclusion at the outset: "To see the structure of a theocracy in place in the tenth, eleventh and early twelfth centuries is to interpret at least some of the legal and theoretical evidence accurately enough. Practice can be very different, however, and the violence of both the Anglo-Saxon world and the Anglo-Norman fits very uneasily into the picture" (p. 154). But the overwhelmingly agrarian society that was only beginning to develop towns in the last part of this period "made for stability and was receptive to Christian teaching" (p. 154). The Church, by 1154 well-reformed, well-organized, well-led, well-taught by generations of monastery-trained clergy, was up to the task, but not without some significant help. A partnership between Church and State, grounded in an ideology of Christian kingship and professing (in the vernacular as well as in Latin) "a coherent picture, dependent on the Augustinian view of original sin . . . (and informed by) a moral code based on the certainties of accepted Christian cosmology and doctrine" (p. 155) made possible this sort of theocracy in a violent world. The chief theme of the book is the development of this partnership, which Loyn sees as providing a significant element of continuity that rather belies the often dramatic and bloody conflicts and changes of the two centuries under consideration.

Loyn opens his story in the year 940, which seems a curious choice, since J. Armitage Robinson (The Times of Saint Dunstan, Oxford, 1923) has shown that the foundations of the monastic revolution which is the theme of the first chapter were laid in the reign of King Aethelstan (924-939). But in that year King Edmund, in a pious gesture motivated by his escape from a nearly-fatal hunting accident, named a young man named Dunstan, of a prominent Wessex family, abbot of Glastonbury. This was the beginning of a golden career, in what has been termed the golden age of the Anglo-Saxon Church. Under his leadership Glastonbury became the launching pad for the monastic revival that was the key to this development; in Loyn's words: "Glastonbury became both powerhouse and seedbed for a religious revival, standing out as a superb example of a disciplined house of prayer, education and influence . . ." (p. 11). The Abbot was a very politic man, whose good fortune it was to share a vision with most of the Kings of his lifetime. Only for a brief moment was there a hiccup, in 956-957, when a young ruler whom he had admonished forced him into exile in Ghent, but soon power came into the hands of this man's brother Edgar, who recalled Dunstan and launched the episcopal part of his career which led quickly through London to Canterbury, where his primacy endured for almost thirty years (960-988). Even during his lifetime an odor of sanctity was gathering around him and in King Cnut's time his death-day was recognized as a day of sacred memory. Dunstan's life illustrates Loyn's point that the distinguishing feature of tenth-century ecclesiastical history in England was the unusual harmony (in the light of later periods) that united the monastic church, the bishops, and the royal power. Monastic reform sparked a renewal of the larger Church.

Credit for the renewal is shared with two contemporary churchmen and a king. Aethelwold, ordained at the same time as Dunstan, his companion for some time at Glastonbury before undertaking to build up a new foundation on this pattern at Abingdon, is also said to have been, along with Dunstan, an influential teacher of the young prince who became King Edgar. In 963 this king appointed him Bishop of Winchester and he set to work at once to implement dramatic reforms. Other recent studies, such as Mechtild Gretsch's The Intellectual Foundations of the English Benedictine Reform (Cambridge, 1999) and Michael Lapidge's edition of his vita by St. Wulfstan (Wulfstan of Winchester: The Life of Saint Aethelwold, OMT, 1991) show him to have been the driving force for change. In Winchester itself secular priests were driven out of the Old and New Minsters, to be replaced by monks, and a movement of monastic foundations and reform was promoted under the conjoined leadership of the King and the Bishop-Abbot. The Old Minister itself was ambitiously reconstructed (as the recent excavations of Martin Biddle and his colleagues allow us to appreciate) and in 971 the relics of St. Swithun were translated within. Aethelwold himself wrote the Regularis Concordia, establishing for England the acceptable version of St. Benedict's Rule, modeled on the earlier reform of St. Benedict of Aniane, thus displaying the extensive continental influences at work on the reform movement. Although unlike Dunstan Aethelwold himself had not traveled abroad, he had sent a pupil to Fleury and brought monks from Corbie to teach up-to-date methods of chanting the psalms. Both Fleury and Ghent sent representatives to the 973 Winchester synod which established the pattern for the English church.

The third great architect of reform, Oswald, was raised partly in the household of his uncle, Archbishop Oda of Canterbury, and trained as a monk in Fleury before he succeeded Dunstan in the see of Worcester in 960. Oswald too promoted monastic ideals and institutions as bishop, gradually replacing secular with regular clergy in his cathedral, creating a reform monastery at Westbury under his companion from Fleury, Germanus, and becoming himself abbot of Ramsey. His own family ties with the Danelaw no doubt led to his appointment as Archbishop of York in 972, which he held in plurality with Worcester, an arrangement Loyn terms "astonishing" but which set a precedent. The position of King Edgar at the center of this reform movement deserves more attention than Loyn allows. In particular the special "second coronation" ceremony held in Bath in 973 was doubtless developed by the reformers on the model of Frankish coronation rituals to point up the parallel between the functions of a Christian King and those of Christ himself (see Eric John in James Campbell, ed., The Anglo-Saxons, Oxford, 1982, pp. 188-9). The event aptly symbolizes the establishment of a new ideology which gave the basis for a lasting partnership. A small cadre of cloister-trained, like-minded reformers who were also friends, working closely with the rising royal power, reshaped Church and State in their lifetime and passed their vision on.

When Edgar died young, in 975, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle stressed his high prestige at home and abroad and his feat in keeping England at peace: "Nor was there fleet so proud nor host so strong that it got itself prey in England so long as the noble king held the throne"(quoted in J. Campbell, ed. The Anglo-Saxons, Oxford, 1982, p. 160). His death was followed by episodes of violence and instability, with internal revolts, succession struggles, and renewed Viking attacks setting the tone for the last ninety-one years of Anglo-Saxon history. There was a violent "reaction against the monasteries," led by some ealdormen and thegns whose interests had been touched by the reforms; Edgar's son Edward was murdered in 978; his half-brother Aethelred II spent most of his long reign (979-1016) fighting off Viking attacks, ultimately unsuccessfully, since the English crown passed after his death to the Danish invader Cnut. Cnut's own effective power, and even his hold on the throne was often precarious, subject to challenges from overmighty subjects at home and potential invaders from abroad, and much the same can be said of Edward the Confessor.

Though such events are only fitfully reflected in the background of Loyn's narrative (and this is fair enough, as politics is not his main concern) an awareness of them underscores the contrast of his general theme: the overall stability of the English church in the midst of turmoil, under the leadership of worthy sometimes remarkable men nurtured by the principles of the tenth-century reformers, and able to apply and adapt these to new circumstances. The two great figures of the next generation, Wulfstan and Aelfric, made their mark as outstanding intellectuals and literary stylists in the vernacular (as well as Latin) amidst the disasters of Aethelred's reign. Aelfric was a star pupil at Aethelwold's school in Winchester who became abbot of the newly founded (or refounded) abbey of Cerne Abbas in 987, and in 1005 founding abbot of Eynsham. Loyn devotes surprisingly little attention to the man termed by Eric John "the father, the inventor, of the rich tradition of plainly stated, undecorated, but vigorous and powerful English prose" (J. Campbell, ed.The Anglo-Saxons, p. 203). (The reader is also referred to M.R. Godden's notice in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England to appreciate the range of his erudition.)

Like his predecessors of the first reforming generation, Wulfstan's career path led from the cloister to high office: Bishop of London in 996, in 1002 he followed the precedent set by Oswald in holding Worcester and York in plurality, but seems to have resigned control of the former in 1016. A canonist and a legist who also wrote chiefly in the vernacular, his most famous sermon, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, which castigates his chiefly lay audience for the sins bringing upon them God's wrath in the form of Viking attacks, is here quoted as an example of his "magniloquent purple" prose. Wulfstan played a central role in the development of ecclesiastical law, and although Loyn rather overlooks the Carolingian influence in this regard (the notable canonist Abbot Abbo of Fleury spent some time in England in the 980's when Wulfstan was young), he is surely right to stress the Archbishop's role in framing enactments under both Aethelred and Cnut. Here is the paradox of the early eleventh century: the political upheavals did not set back the development of the English churchindeed, the contary may be true. Himself a convert, anxious to establish his power and in need of friends and allies, Cnut respected English practices and proved a generous patron of favored churches, notably Christ Church, Canterbury and the Old Minister, Winchester. He also strengthened ties with Rome, travelling there himself in 1027 for Emperor Conrad's coronation.

Loyn here draws a broad picture of the church's infrastructure and discipline in the late Anglo-Saxon period, using the law codes and, to some extent, archaeology. Below the level of the great and the lesser ministers, the sources suggest a variety of proprietary churches in the villages, some with burial rights and some without. Although most of what survives of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical architecture dates from this period, and recent excavations at Repton and Durham afford valuable new information, this amounts to a very small sample of what once existed. The "Law of the Northumbrian Priests," written by Wulfstan or under his influence, offers in sixty-seven clauses a glimpse of clerical life: it implies that local clergy were usually non-celibate, with one clause cursing a priest not for living with a woman, but for leaving her for another. It also shows a concern for strengthening episcopal discipline, providing early evidence that archdeacons were already deployed to enforce the rules.

It seems somewhat discordant to note that by the time William of Normandy seized England in 1066 with the blessing of the Roman curia, the Anglo-Saxon church was deemed to be in need of major reform. This discredit can be partly explained by a weakening of the monastic domination of the episcopate, with more of them recruited from the ranks of royal administrators and obliged to take tricky political stands as royal leadership weakened under Cnut and Edward the Confessor and powerful magnate families like the Godwins manouevred for power. But surely the changed standards and expectations of the triumphant Reform party in Rome counted the most; a notorious pluralist like Stigand, who held both Winchester and Canterbury for eighteen years and kept many abbacies vacant the better to enjoy their revenues, seems to symbolize corruption. The major theme of chapters four and five is the successful Anglo-Norman take-over of the English church, under William the Conqueror's strong leadership, with the backing of the Gregorian reformers in Rome. Pope Alexander II had supported William's claim to the throne, and the curia generally backed subsequent reforms in the conquered kingdom which practically eliminated the English from high ecclesiastical office, replacing them with a new generation of leaders recruited from Normandy and other continental lands. The chief architect of these policies was the Italian scholar-monk Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1070 to 1089, who brought the English church into line with continental ideals and practices. Did this entail a sharp break with previous traditions? Loyn shows how complex and nuanced must be answers to such questions. The change in personnel was certainly dramatic, with the ousting of Anglo-Saxon prelates such as the notorious Stigand. By 1086 of the fifteen bishops in England eleven were Normans and only one, Wulfstan of Worcester, was an Englishman (and he was a holdover from pre-Conquest days).

But the policy of appointing cutting-edge prelates from abroad goes back to Edward the Confessor. Some monasteries remained under English governance, such as Peterborough where the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was continued for some time in the vernacular, but Normans took over most of the key regular institutions and sometimes expressed, like Abbot Paul of Saint Alban's, open contempt for the past. Lanfranc's "Monastic Constitutions," based on the customary of Bec with influence from Cluny and Flanders, owes little to Anglo-Saxon precedent. Yet Baldwin increased his abbey's estate and protected its independence under the Conqueror, specially fostering the cult of the Anglo-Saxon royal martyr saint Edmund.

Loyn devotes chapter five to the problems involved in using the Domesday Survey for church history. Concerned primarily with property and fiscality, it can not be easily read as a reliable guide to the implantation of churches throughout the countryside, for example, but as about a quarter of the landed wealth of the realm was in Church hands it can be gleaned for all sorts of information. Though it offers little access to the inner life of the Church, it does reflect an ecclesiastical infrastructure already quite dense, with the considerable wealth unevenly divided among the high-level foundations (cathedral chapters), the mid-level (secular minster churches), and local churches. All in all the sources point, Loyn concludes, to "easy access to public worship . . . open to almost all the inhabitants of England" (p. 94). The scale and scope of this worship was also enhanced by a building boom that gets underway in the 1070's at Canterbury, Winchester, St Alban's and no doubt the Conqueror's own prize new foundation at Battle Abbey, and will spread in the following decades to create the extraordinary English Romanesque heritage. The transformation of the Church in a single generation is indeed impressive and revealed to be work of a small group of men sharing a common (monastic) education and a set of (reforming) idealsLoyn compares one group of them to "the better elements in the higher echelons of the Indian Civil Service in the days of the British Raj"(p 78). Their success derives from the mostly-co-operative leadership of a strong Archbishop and King can this not be termed an embodiment of the ideal of royal theocracy Loyn imputes to the tenth-century reformers? Could such a model survive, however, in a European context increasingly polarised by the Investiture Conflict?

Under William's sons strong royal influence over the Church was maintained, but with a significant shift. Tensions grew under William Rufus, who extracted full financial duties from the churches and forced Archbishop Anselm into virtual exile. Under Henry I, however, the historic compromise of 1107 met the demands of the Reformers for symbolic acknowledgment of the Church's independence while preserving the essential interests of the King: his right to approve appointments, and to receive homage from bishops-elect. This modus vivendi, this which set the precedent for the resolution of the Investiture Conflict with the Empire at Worms (1122), was the work of Anselm, former abbot of Bec and one of the greatest theologians of the Middle Ages, Lanfranc's successor at Canterbury in 1093. Thus was renewed the tradition of saintly monk-scholars who also proved to be effective reformers and administrators leading the English Churchhe proved to be the last of such stature. Most bishops came from the royal entourage and were chosen for their reliability and administrative skills; most were still of continental background and some still trained in monasteries; to be English was still an obstacle, under Henry I, to high office in the Church. Loyn points to two major trends in these years: the growth of literacy and the increasing influence of Rome. The former means we are much better informed: more than 300 of Anselm's letters have survived from his years as Archbishop, and surviving episcopal charters show us the bishops and their increasingly complex households and administration (cathedral chapters, archdeacons, rural deans, stewards, butlers, constables, and so forth) at work. The sources also show that by Henry's reign the scope and tempo of contact with Rome had significantly increased. Many legates came to England, and the issue of Peter's Pence was often raised by them; in 1128 Abbot Hugh of Reading, King Henry's prize new foundation, negotiated a new standard for this which proved durable. Even more significant was travel going the other way: many of the roads in the more and more mobile world led to Rome, and were taken routinely by churchmen high and low as appeals to the papal curia became more routine.

Loyn's treatment of the reign of Stephen stresses 1) the extraordinary spread of reformed monasticism; 2) a continuing respect for the institution of Christian kingship, despite the conflicts engendered by the mistakes of this particular king; and, 3) the stability of the institutional Church, and its relative success in making itself a key to resolving conflicts and defending peace as the principle of the orderly Christian life. Archbishop Theobald of Bec, though sometimes at odds with King Stephen and even exiled by him, opposed a threatened papal excommunication of the King and later served as an effective intermediary between Stephen and the Angevin party in resolving the succession dispute. The bishops of Coventry and of Lincoln were named as pledge-holders in a peace convention between two feudal magnates. Effective papal influence continued to grow, with legatine authority often confided to an English prelate such as Henry of Winchester or Archbishop Theobold. The English presence in Rome also became notable for the first time, with young John of Salisbury in papal service, Robert Pullen a cardinal and Chancellor of the Roman Church, and of course Cardinal Nicolas Breakspear elevated to the papacy in 1154, the year that Stephen died and which Loyn has chosen as the endpoint to his survey. By this time there were 307 monastic foundations in England, up from 193 at the same king's ascension in 1135. The Cistercian surge of course accounts for a part of this, but so did the Augustinians and the brand-new order of Gilbertines, set up in 1147 by the son of a Norman knight from Lincolnshire. That such remarkable growth (114 new foundations in under twenty years, which can be compared to thirty-three over the next twenty years) took place against the background of civil war supports Loyn's general contention that the "anarchy" of Stephen's reign has been much exaggerated. Despite the succession struggle and episodes of localized warfare and oppression, he sees the "somewhat old-fashioned partnership of Church and State"(p. 137) still functioning well overall, and poised to take a new reforming path under Henry II.

This succinct, highly readable volume, in the excellent Medieval World Series edited by David Bates, packs a lot of information into 155 pages of text. Though one can respect the editor's decision to eschew illustration (the cover reproduces the marvelous title page to St. John the Evangelist from the Grimbald Gospels), a few maps would enhance it. The English Church will serve many as an excellent introduction to its subject, and fittingly closes the ouevre of one of the major Anglo-Saxon scholars of the later twentieth century.

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Citation: Bailey K. Young. Review of Loyn, H. R., The English Church, 940-1154. H-Albion, H-Net Reviews. November, 2001.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=5687

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