How religious was the tenth-century reform?

The reform movement started to look as if it was gathering speed when King Edmund (939-46), having miraculously escaped from a near-fatal hunting accident made a pious gesture by appointing Dunstan, one of the lead reformists, as abbot of Glastonbury. Dunstan’s biographer, whom we know only as ‘B’, describes Glastonbury as “following the most wholesome institution of St Benedict”, though there continued to be both clerks and monks under Dunstan’s rule. However, Edmund’s interest in the reform movement was to prove short-lived, demonstrated by his giving the abbey of Bath to unreformed clerks, ‘refugees’ from the reform of St. Peter’s, Ghent. Edmund’s brother Eadred (946-55) was much more sympathetic. Under him, the fortunes of Glastonbury were consolidated. However, Dunstan was initially unable to impose the new style of monasticism at Glastonbury, which provoked Aethelwold, who was studying underneath him, to plan to withdraw to the continent. He was persuaded to stay when the king gave him the estates of a deserted monastery at Abingdon that had passed into royal possession, giving him permission to shape it as he wished.

However, whilst Eadred was prepared to make personal financial sacrifice to aid the reform movement, he was not prepared to incur the opposition which an attack on an established monastic community could have encountered. Under Eadred’s successor, Eadwig, monastic reform followed a similarly slow, and rather erratic, course. Dunstan was exiled, although the king remained on good terms with Aethelwold, who taught his brother, Edgar. Aethelwold’s influence seems to have been behind Edgar’s openness to ideas of reform. After Edgar came to the throne, Dunstan was recalled and appointed archbishop of Canterbury, despite the demotion of the previous archbishop being in total defiance of canon law. Within five years Aethelwold had been granted the second see of southern England at Winchester and Oswald had been made bishop of Worcester. It was from Worcester and Winchester that an attempt was made to monasticise the English Church and Aethelwold’s abbey at Abingdon was the source from which new reforming abbots and, later, monastic bishops were recruited. In 963 Aethelwold worked in alliance with Edgar in expelling the secular canons from Winchester and replaced with Benedictine monks. Whilst this did not happen everywhere it is an indication of Edgar’s support for the reformers and Yorke for one is of the belief that Aethelwold could not have succeeded without the support of King Edgar.

Before looking at the motives of the king in putting his support behind the reform movement, we should be careful not to assume that ecclesiasts had only spiritual interests at heart. This is a view which is encouraged by biographers. Wulfstan and Aelfric, for example, are not interested in the secular aspects of Aethelwold’s life, their aim being to prove his sancity both through his life in the church and through the miracles performed during his lifetime and at his tomb. But in tenth-century England, the church and state operated within the same sphere. Bishops were frequently consulted on matters of state, as their regular appearance at royal councils demonstrates. Significantly, leading bishops (and monks) tended to come from aristocratic families. During his adolescence Aethelwold was a member of the royal house of King Aethelstan. Dunstan came from a similarly wealthy background- his brother Wulfric owned substantial lands in Wiltshire and Surrey. This meant that they could have been unlike any other aristocrat in their desire to ingratiate themselves with the royal family, competing against other aristocratic landowners, especially since patronage was at stake. Simon Coates describes how as the king’s chief adviser he was entrusted with many title deeds and treasures, despite the appropriation of secular values being (in theory at least) against what he should have stood for. However, what is remarkable about all three main reformers is that they adhered to reforming principles for decades before these were fashionable. This could even subject them to persecution. According to Eric John, Dunstan was beaten up at the court of Aethelstan for his religious views. He and Oswald both experienced exile and Aethelwold must have feared it from time to time. Given that they might have enjoyed more comfortable and stable lives had they not been pressing for reform, it would seem as though the desire Dunstan, Oswald and Aethelwold had to see implementation of strict Benedictinism in England had firm spiritual roots.

Whether the same can be said of the royal reasons for monastic reform is a matter of debate. An exceptionally pious king might want to impose what he saw as an ideal form of monastic rule, perhaps as a way of dutifully proving to God that he was fit to rule. However, as we have seen, even kings who initially appear sensitive to the possibility may balk at the idea of large-scale reform once they realise the costs it could incur to them, both financially and in terms of making enemies amongst influential landowners. Could we say therefore that Eadgar realised what his forebears had not: that there were certain political benefits to be gained from monastic reform? Eric John sees the reform movement as a deliberate joint attack by monks and the king on the entrenched interests of local aristocrats, formerly accustomed to the possession of hereditary rights over monastic offices and clerical property. The Regularis Concordia strictly forbade secularium prioratum, which could be interpreted as meaning the direct rule of monasteries by laymen. Interference by local magnates, was, if we are to believe Aethelwold a significant problem. In ‘An Old English Account of King Eadgar’s Establishment of Monasteries’ he warns of the malpractices of local magnates and families which threatened newly revived monasteries, but according to Eric John he is implying that this menace was not new. But while it is undoubtedly true that reform represented a mutually advantageous alliance between the king and monks, John’s analysis is flawed. Patrick Wormald has demonstrated that the jurisdictional immunity of the Oswaldslow is a post-Conquest forgery, thereby demolishing John’s argument that Eadgar used this to strengthen episcopal authority at the expense of local aristocratic power. True, the new monastic endowments must have meant that many nobles suffered financially, either by loss of their estates or by the hard-bargaining techniques Aethelwold used to purchase the land. But others, for example, Aethelwine of East Anglia or Byrhtnoth of Essex became patrons of reformed houses. The family of Athelstan Half-King in East Anglia was important in the endowment of Glastonbury and of Oswald’s fenland abbeys. Donating money to or even founding a monastery could improve a family’s social standing and was a way of ingratiating oneself with a reforming king. It could also bring spiritual benefits: P.A. Stafford notes that whenever the Regularis Concordia mentions prayers to be said for the royal family, it also speaks of those to be said for benefactors. This last point shows that aristocrats were not deliberately left out of the reform by the king. He knew that to a certain extent his power depended on their wealth and affiliations and so would have been unwise to unnecessarily irritate them. The anti-monastic reaction after the death of King Edgar (975), which saw attacks by nobles led by Aelfhere, ealdorman of Mercia on monastic property has been seen as a revolt by aristocrats who saw the increasing power of the Church as a threat to their own power (and inheritance). However, as DJV Fisher explains, the real issue at stake was not Eadgar’s monastic reforms but the dynastic battle between Edward and Aethelred. The former attacked Mercian monasteries not because he was an enemy of monasticism but because there he could attack his political opponents where they were most vulnerable. True, he could count on a certain degree of aristocratic support from landowners aggrieved at their declining influence, but, claims Fisher “it is a great deal more credible that armies should be raised to settle a dynastic issue than the merits of Eadgar’s monastic policy”. After the dynastic crisis had been settled, there were no further attacks on the monasteries. The idea of an anti-monastic reaction is therefore misleading and exaggerates the importance of monasticism as a political issue.

The idea that the monastic reforms were designed to reduce the power of local lay magnates is associated with the theory that they greatly increased the king’s authority. The king was increasingly symbolically associated with God (as the second coronation and anointing of Eadgar at Bath demonstrates) as well as becoming a major patron and protector of many monasteries. The Regularis Concordia stipulated that it was only with the king’s advice and consent that abbots and abbesses were to be elected. In addition, as has already been mentioned, it compelled monks to pray frequently for the well-being of the king and queen. This feature of the new monasticism was pretty much unique to England, where (unlike the ducs of Burgundy) the monarchy was extremely strong. According to John, the reformed monasteries offered an atmosphere “permeated with devotion to the royal family: on the great occasions and in the shire meetings...the English upper classes [who, remember, were prominent in the monasteries- monks tended to be well-born] were forced to breathe that atmosphere”. This could guarantee loyalty, a quality which had previously been lacking amongst some (aristocratic) bishops. For example, Wulfstan I of York had helped lead the northern rebellion against Eadred’s West-Saxon control. From Eadgar’s reign to well into the eleventh century, however, monastic bishops bred to be loyal to the king dominated the English church. Under Aethelred, for instance, twenty-nine bishops (two-thirds) had previously been monks or abbots. A celibate monastic order could therefore take the place of family affiliations in producing good royal servants. Wills reveal the extent to which these monastically-trained bishops had been separated from their original backgrounds. Bequests to family do feature but not as prominently as do bequests to monasteries. Archbishop of Canterbury, Aelfric, for example, leaves bequests to Abingdon, St. Albans and Christ Church.

However, this process was surely less a result of a conscious effort by the king to than an incidental side-effect of reform. If it was that easy to create a class of loyal bishops then why had other kings not put as much effort into reform as Eadgar? This brings us to the fundamental ‘political’ aspect of the monastic reform: its link with the unification of England. It seems more than a coincidence that the main period of monastic reform coincided with Wessex’s assertion of supremacy over the other English kingdoms. 970 was the high point in the royal titles assumed by the West Saxon kings. While tenth-century diplomas had always granted these kings some nominal superiority over all of England (some Worcester charters even called the king imperator), a 970 grant styles Eadgar imperator augustus. Eadgar’s reform of the coinage in 973 saw the legend Rex Anglorum become the unchanged style of English kings. Significantly, it was only from around 970 that reforms started to spread outside Wessex to Mercia and beyond. For example, Florence of Worcester reports for the year 969 that Eadgar ordered Dunstan, Oswald and Aethelwold to expel the clerks and found new monasteries in Mercia. Reforms may even have spread to Northumbria after 970, although this is largely based on the biography of Oswald which asserts simply that the archbishop founded a monastery at Wilfrid’s old cathedral and so may have meant York and not Ripon. The document that could be said to have sealed the monastic reform, the Regularis Concordia, was also drawn up around this time (Symons believes it was 973). The emphasis on unity and uniformity represented by the Regularis Concordia (not to mention its many prayers for the royal family) fits nicely with the idea of the unification of England under one king. It also has parallels with the Benedictine reforms under the Carolingians a generation earlier. However, it makes more sense to see the monastic reform under Eadgar not as a method of unifying England but as something that was made possible by England’s unification.

Eric John’s assertion that every reformed monastery was a “foyer of royal propaganda”, an outpost of royal authority, looks still shakier when we consider the fact that the spiritual and material regeneration may have touched only a fraction (probably below ten percent, according to John Blair) of the old communities. At the time of the Norman Conquest, the tiny number of Benedictine houses co-existed with hundreds of small, secular minsters. Furthermore, nearly all the reformed monasteries were in the south. If reform was a conscious and deliberate effort to impose royal authority over a newly-unified England, it turned out to be very limited indeed.

The English tenth-century monastic revival was certainly not as self-consciously spiritual as the Cluniac movement, and to ignore the fact that both ecclesiasts and the king had major political benefits to be accrued from such a reform would be foolish. However, as has hopefully been demonstrated, it is possible to be too cynical. While these political advantages with hindsight might look as though they had been purposefully and carefully thought-out, they may not have been obvious before the reform took place. And while we must be careful of too readily believing the words of their sometimes sycophantic biographers, the ecclesiastical reformers’ unstinting adherence to their aims, despite periods of unpopularity exile, demonstrates the passion that allegiance to the Rule of St. Benedict could incite. This unstoppable zeal for reform on their part must have affected the actions of King Eadgar, who took advantage of the strengthening of Wessex’s control over the rest of England and the increase in the wealth of the crown to commit himself to a reform programme. While he may have given some thought to the possible political benefits (for instance, by thinking along Carolingian lines), Eadgar’s keenness definitely seems to have had a spiritual side to it, although this may have been selfish. Lastly, although the Regularis Concordia can seem at times to be overtly political, it is simply the product of an age in which politics and religion operated extremely closely together. Monastic revival was therefore part of a larger process of religious revival which was inspired by the political regeneration and unification of England.  

Bibliography

J. Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (2005); ‘Secular Minster Churches in the Domesday Book’, in P.H. Sawyer (ed.), Domesday Book: a Reassessment (1985)

J. Armitage Robinson, The Times of St. Dunstan (1923)

T. Symons, ‘Regularis Concordia: History and Derivation’, in D. Parsons (ed.) Tenth-Century Studies (1975)

D.H. Farmer, ‘The Progress of the Monastic Revival’, in D. Parsons (ed.) Tenth-Century Studies (1975)

B. Yorke, ‘Aethelwold and the Politics of the Tenth Century’, in B. Yorke (ed.) Bishop Aethelwold: his Career and Influence (1988)

D. Bullough, ‘St. Oswald: Monk, Bishop and Archbishop’, in N.P. Brooks and C. Cubitt (ed.), St. Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence (1996)

E. John, ‘The King and the Monks in the Tenth-Century Reformation’, Orbis Britanniae (1966)

D.J.V. Fisher, ‘The Anti-Monastic Reaction in the Reign of Edward the Martyr’, Cambridge Historical Journal 10 (1952)

N. Banton, ‘Monastic Reform and the Unification of Tenth-Century England’, in Religion and National Identity, ed. S. Mews (1982)

P.A. Stafford, ‘Church and Society in the Age of Aelfric’, in The Old English Homily and its Backgrounds, ed. P.E. Szarmach and B.F. Huppé (1978)

S. Coates, ‘Perceptions of the Anglo-Saxon Past in the Tenth-Century Monastic Reform Movement’, in The Church Retrospective, ed. R.N. Swanson (1997)

D. Whitelock (ed. and trans.), English Historical Documents, I (1979), no.238 (‘An Old English Account of King Edgar’s Establishment of Monasteries’)

T. Symons (ed. and trans.), The Regularis Concordia (1953)

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