DIOCESAN AND PAROCHIAL ORGANIZATION.
The English Conversion forms a remarkable chapter in the general history
of Christian missions; the piety, simplicity, zeal, and unselfishness of
the missionaries are beyond praise; not less remarkable is the earnestness
with which the English embraced the new faith and the civilization which
came together with it. The fact bears witness to the intellectual and
moral qualities of the people that in the very first generation of
converts there were men of learning and character like Wilfrid and
Benedict Biscop, like the pupils of Hilda of Whitby, like Ithamar and
Deusdedit in Kent, worthy of taking place among the bishops and abbots of
their time.
The royal and noble ladies who played so important a part, in the
influence they exercised in affairs, or in the foundation and rule of
religious houses which trained bishops and priests, present a spectacle,
almost unparalleled in history, of which their descendants may well be
proud.
The English kings and nobles put themselves frankly under the guidance of
their teachers not only in religion and literature, but in the arts of
civilization. The three codes of law which have remained to us--the first
written laws of the English race--carry proof on the face of them that
they were compiled under the influence of the Christian teachers. The
princes sought their counsel in the Witenagemot, and put them beside the
secular judges in the administration of justice at the hundred and folk
motes. “In a single century England became known to Christendom as a
fountain of light, as a land of learned men, of devout and unwearied
missions, of strong, rich, and pious kings.”[30]
By the third quarter of the seventh century the first fervour of the
English conversion had cooled down, and circumstances produced a kind of
crisis. One of those plagues which at intervals ravaged mediæval
Europe--it was called the Yellow Pest--during the summer of 664 swept over
England from south to north. Earconbert, King of Kent, and Deusdedit, the
first native bishop of the Kentish men, died on the same day; Damian,
Bishop of Rochester, probably died a little before his brother of
Canterbury. In the north, Tuda, recently appointed Bishop of Northumbria,
died, and Cedd, Bishop of the East Saxons, then staying at his monastery
of Lastingham. The half of the East Saxons who were under the rule of the
sub-king Sighere, thinking the pest a result of the anger of the ancient
gods, apostatized from the faith. The differences between the two “schools
of thought,” the Continental in the south of the country, and the Scotic
in the north, were causing friction and inconvenience, so much so that the
bishops elect of the Continental school hesitated to receive consecration
from the bishops of the Celtic school; Wilfrid of York had at this very
time gone to seek consecration from the Frankish bishops. In this crisis,
Oswy, King of Northumbria, agreed with Egbert, who succeeded Earconbert in
Kent, to send a priest acceptable to both schools to Rome, to study things
in that centre of Western Christendom, to get consecration from the Bishop
of Rome, and then to return and reduce the ecclesiastical affairs of
England to a common order. Wighard, a Kentish priest, sent in pursuance of
this wise plan, died in Rome; and, to save time, at the request of the
English Churches, Vitalian, the Bishop of Rome, selected Theodore of
Tarsus, a learned priest of the Greek Church, consecrated him, and sent
him to be archbishop of the English.
With Theodore (668-690) begins a new chapter in our history. His
antecedents, as a member of the Eastern Church, eminently qualified him to
look impartially upon the two schools, the Italian and the Scotic, into
which the religious world of England was divided, and to address himself
with broad views of ecclesiastical polity to the task of organizing the
Heptarchic Churches into a harmonious province of the Catholic Church.
In 673, at the instance of Theodore, and under the presidency of Hlothere,
King of Kent, a synod was held at Hertford, attended by all the English
bishops but one, and by the kings and many of the principal nobles and
clergy, at which the independent national Churches agreed to unite in an
Ecclesiastical Province, with the Bishop of Canterbury as its
metropolitan; it was further agreed that the bishops and clergy should
meet in synod twice a year, once always in August at Clovesho, the other
was probably left to the convenience of the moment as to time and place,
but was usually held at Cealchyth. Augustine and his successors at
Canterbury had never been practically more than bishops of the Kentish
men, with the titular distinction of archbishop which Gregory gave them.
Theodore, says Bede, was the first archbishop whom the Churches of the
English obeyed. This gave Theodore the authority necessary for the
carrying out of his plans for the peace and progress of the Church.
One feature of Theodore’s policy was the breaking up of some of the larger
sees. This was not done without opposition. There was much to be said in
favour of the idea of “one king one bishop;” it fell in with the political
organization and it had the prestige of ancient use. But Theodore, looking
at the subject from his point of view, as the ruler of an ecclesiastical
province, saw the desirableness of breaking it up into dioceses of more
manageable size. He was opposed by Wilfrid of York, who resented the
diminution of his great position as Bishop of the Northumbrian kingdom,
by the division of the diocese into four, York, Lindisfarne, Hexham, and
Whithern; but his opposition was overborne by the firmness of the King of
Northumbria and the archbishop. Wilfrid carried his complaint to Rome,
which is the first example of an appeal from the English to the Roman
Court, and raises the question of the relations of the English Church to
the Bishop of Rome. It is sufficient to say here in reference to the Roman
decision in Wilfrid’s favour on this and subsequent occasions, that
neither Archbishop Theodore, nor the clergy, nor the king and thanes of
the Witan, showed any disposition to accept the intervention of the Bishop
of Rome, or to defer to his judgment in the matter; and that Wilfrid was
punished by the king with imprisonment and exile for his contumacy.
The Bishop of Mercia, backed by the king, resisted the subdivision of that
vast diocese; and it was not until after Theodore’s death that his plan
was carried into effect of dividing it into four, Lichfield, Hereford,
Worcester, Leicester, with Sidnacester for Lindsey, recently reconquered
from Northumbria. It was not till 705 that the great diocese of Wessex was
divided into two, Winchester and Sherburn, and further subdivided in the
time of Alfred the Great by the erection of sees for Somerset, Wilts, and
Devon. A new English see in Cornwall, on its conquest by Athelstan,
completed the list of Saxon bishoprics.
The annual meeting of the Churches in synods was a very important
consequence of their organization into a province. Kings and their
councillors and great thanes came to the synods, as well as bishops and
clergy. It is probable that the laymen had no formal voice in the
ecclesiastical legislation, but their attestation and assent would add to
the authority of the acts of the councils in the estimation of the people.
The general synods would promote the regular holding of diocesan
synods.[31] One direct result of these frequent assemblies would be to
give a stimulus to the work of the Church all over the land. Another
incidental result would be to afford a stable centre of affairs, and to
promote the growth of a sentiment of nationality. Political affairs were
in a state of great disturbance. In some of the kingdoms rival pretenders
waged civil war, and now one, now another won the throne, while the bishop
maintained his position undisturbed. Nations warred against one another,
now Mercia reduced other kingdoms to dependence, and again Wessex asserted
a supremacy over others; but the synods continued to unite the bishops and
clergy of the kingdoms south of the Thames in frequent consultation for
the common good.
* * * * *
Theodore’s idea in setting himself to divide the national bishoprics was
to multiply episcopal centres of orderly Church life, adequate to the
needs of the Christian flock. The settling of priests among the scattered
people to take pastoral charge of them was a natural sequel to the former
movement. The practical way of effecting it was to induce the landowners
to accept and make provision for a resident priest who should have the
pastoral care of their households and people.
It is not historically true that Theodore invented this idea of parochial
organization, because it already existed in countries where the church had
been longer established. Rome was virtually divided into forty parishes
before the end of the third century. The system of appointing a priest to
take charge of all the souls within a definite district existed in the
city of Alexandria in the time of Athanasius, and in some country
districts of Asia Minor at a very early period; it was a natural outcome
of the Christian idea of the pastoral office of the ministry. The Emperor
Justinian[32] had encouraged the system, by a law of 541, which decreed
that a man who should build an oratory and furnish a competent livelihood
for a priest, might present a clerk thereto, by himself and his heirs, and
the bishop finding him worthy should ordain him. To come nearer home, a
Synod of Orleans, in A.D. 541, ordained that, if any one desired to have a
“diocese” on his estate, he should first allot sufficient lands for the
maintenance of the church and of the clerks who should fulfil their
offices there.[33] In Italy parishes were beginning to be founded in the
time of Gregory the Great. From one of his letters it appears that Anio
“Comes Castri Aprutiensis,” having built a church in his castellum,
wished to have it consecrated;[34] and the Bishop of Fermo had referred to
Gregory on the question. He allows it to be done on condition that the
count shall provide a proper endowment for a resident priest. His
business-like statement of what the endowment is to consist of, gives a
kind of standard of what, in the circumstances of that time and in the
judgment of a wise and practical bishop, was a proper endowment of a
country parish. It was to consist of a farm with its homestead and a bed,
a yoke of oxen, two cows, and fifteen head of sheep, and the proper
implements of a farm, and four pounds of silver as the working capital. In
another letter Gregory bids Felix, Bishop of Messina, to consecrate a
church built by Subdeacon Januarus in the city, on the condition that it
be properly endowed; and in this case he expressly denies the founder any
rights (_e.g._ of patronage), except admission to Divine service.
The canons of the Council of Toledo, a little earlier than this, and a
capitulary in 823 of Charlemagne,[35] a little later, show that it was
about this period that country parishes, with their separate endowments
and legal rights, were being founded throughout Europe.[36] Theodore knew
what had been done in the East, and he is said to have encouraged the
great landowners to adopt the system here. We may accept it as highly
probable that we owe to Theodore the diocesan and parochial organization
of the Church of England, which provides a pastor to look after every soul
in his own home, as against the previous system of monastic centres from
which missionaries went forth for occasional ministrations, and to which
the people resorted in their spiritual needs.
The kings would be likely to set the example. They were accustomed to
divide their time among their principal estates. Aidan’s head-quarters
were at Lindisfarne, but he had also a church and chamber at Bamborough,
the chief residence of the Northumbrian kings; and, if we rightly
understand Bede’s words,[37] he had a church and chamber at other of the
principal houses, where the king and his court used to live for months
together. It would be natural that the king should provide for the
permanent residence of a priest to serve each of these royal chapels, for
the well-being of the people on the several royal estates; and the
subsequent history of royal free chapels confirms the conjecture that he
did so. The great landowners would be among the first to follow the king’s
example; and we find some evidence of it in an incidental notice by
Bede[38] of the consecration by St. John of Beverley (705-718), then
Bishop of Hexham, of a church at South Burton, in Yorkshire, for the
Ealdorman Puch, and another at North Burton, in the same county, for
Addi the Ealdorman. What Puch and Addi were doing on their estates,
probably others of the great Thanes were also doing, though no marvel
occurred at the consecration of these other churches to lead the historian
to mention them.
[Illustration: House of a Saxon nobleman. The hall in the middle, the
church on the right hand. The nobleman and his wife are distributing alms
to the poor. From Harl. MS. 603.]
Not only kings and nobles, but the bishops themselves, and the great
monasteries with outlying estates, would naturally make provision for the
religious interests of the people dependent upon them. In the south we
gather from the canons of Clovesho, in 747, that the collegiate and
conventual bodies had erected churches on their outlying estates, and that
the lands of the lay proprietors had been divided into districts by the
bishops, and committed to the care of resident priests.
A letter written by Bede, the most learned and most revered Churchman of
the time, to Egbert, on his consecration to the See of York, is a very
valuable piece of evidence as to the condition of the Church in the north
at that point of time (734). We learn first that the discipline of the
monasteries had become lax. Many reeves had obtained land under pretext of
founding a monastery, and under that pretext claimed freedom for their
land from state burdens, and called themselves abbots, but were living
with their wives and families, and servants, very much like other lay
folk, and handing down their abbeys as hereditary fees. He says that there
are towns and hamlets in the most inaccessible places which are taxed for
the support of a bishop--an early notice of the general payment of
tithe--but never see one, and are moreover without any resident teacher
or minister--which implies that towns and hamlets in more accessible
places have a resident minister, and are visited by a bishop for
confirmation. The venerable old man gives advice to the youthful prelate
for the mitigation of the evils which he points out. He advises him to
obtain the fulfilment of the original plan of Gregory the Great, viz. the
formation of the churches north of the Humber into a northern province,
with York as the metropolitan see, and to obtain the king’s leave to
subdivide the northern dioceses to the number of twelve in all, using some
of the monasteries of whose decadence he complains for the new episcopal
sees; he exhorts him to ordain more priests to preach and administer the
sacraments in every village; and, lastly, he suggests the translation of
the Creed and Our Father out of Latin into English for the instruction of
the people.
Egbert followed Bede’s advice so far as to obtain his recognition as
archbishop of the second province which embraced the country north of the
Humber, with York as its metropolitan see; but he did not procure the
subdivision of the existing dioceses. He did, however, accomplish a great
work by raising the schools of York to such an eminence in learning and
religion that they were famous throughout Europe. The schools of Wessex,
under Aldhelm, rivalled those of Northumbria; the clergy generally could
hardly fail to be influenced by the spirit of these great centres.
Meantime churches were being built, and rectors of them settled upon the
estates of the landowners. The seventh canon of Graetley, 928, in the
reign of Athelstan, dealing with the question of penance for perjury,
directs that the parish priest, _sacerdos loci illius_, is to certify the
bishop as to the penitent’s behaviour; which implies that local priests
were sufficiently widely scattered to keep in view every member of the
small population.
* * * * *
The Parish Priest was not merely one who ministered in spiritual things to
those who chose to accept his ministrations, he had ecclesiastical
jurisdiction over a definite territory and over all who dwelt within it.
Just as the jurisdiction of the heptarchic bishops extended over the
kingdoms, so in the parish the jurisdiction of the priest was conterminous
with the estate of the lord or thane who invited the priest to minister to
himself and his people.
Some of these estates were very extensive, comprising vast tracts of
forest and waste around the cultivated land, and therefore some of the
parishes were of great extent. Probably the parish priest, in addition to
his work in the principal village, would also partially adopt the old
system of itinerant mission work by visiting remote hamlets within his
jurisdiction at certain times for the preaching of the Word and
celebration of Divine worship. It is certain that at a very early period
in the history of parishes the rector was assisted by chaplains in the
maintenance of the frequent services of the mother church and in the
visitation of the people.
Thus there gradually arose another class of Churches. As population
increased and forest was assarted and waste brought into cultivation, new
centres of population grew up at a distance from the original village. The
Saxon laws encouraged the enterprise of the people by assigning to them a
higher rank in proportion to their possessions,[39] which involved not
only social dignity but also legal privileges; a law of Athelstan enacted
that “if a ‘ceorl’ throve so that he had fully four hides of his own land,
church and kitchen, ‘bur geat settl,’ and special service in the king’s
hall (‘sunder note’ or ‘sundor note’) then was he thenceforth of
thane-right worthy.”[40]
It is in the nature of things that many of these successful ceorls would
be energetic and enterprising men who had looked out a tract of good soil
in some neighbouring dale or amidst the surrounding waste, and brought it
under cultivation, and created what was virtually a new township. The
occasional visits of the parish priest or his chaplain would hardly
satisfy the inhabitants of the new settlement for long. The new
proprietor, in imitation of his betters, would be ambitious of having a
church on his ground, and the law of Athelstan encouraged his laudable
ambition. But the customary jurisdiction and revenues of the mother
Church extending over the whole district were jealously guarded against
encroachment on the part of these new foundations. A “canon of Edgar”
enacts (1) that tithe be paid to the Old Minster to which the district
belongs; (2) if a thane has on his boc-land a church at which there is not
a burial-place, then of the nine parts let him give to his priest what he
will; and let every church scot and plough-alms go to the Old Minster. A
later law of King Canute enacts that if a thane has erected on his own
boc-land (freehold or charter land) a church having a legerstowe--a
burial-place--he may subtract one-third part of his tithes from the mother
Church, and bestow them upon his own clerk.[41]
[Illustration: Saxon Church of timber, at Greenstead, Essex.]
A law of Canute incidentally describes four different classes of churches
which, “though divinely they have like consecration,” hold a different
rank and have a different penalty attached to the violation of their
right of sanctuary. The classes are called: (1) the heafod mynster, chief
minster; (2) the medemra mynster, translated _ecclesia mediocris_; (3) the
læssa mynster, translated _ecclesia minor_; (4) the feld-cirice, literally
field-church, where there was no burial-place. These are probably (1)
cathedral or mother churches; (2) churches of ancient date with wide
jurisdiction; (3) smaller parish churches; (4) district or mission
chapels.
[Illustration: West end of Greenstead Church, Essex.]
The continual increase of the population and the consequent bringing of
more land into cultivation, and the gathering of this population upon the
newly cultivated lands, caused the constant growth of new lordships or
townships, or, in later times, manors, and the constant building of new
churches to supply their spiritual wants. The jurisdiction and rights of
the mother Church had to be dealt with in all these cases; but in many
cases, by agreement with the mother Church, or by the assumption of a lord
of the land too powerful for its priest to withstand, or by long usage,
many of these new churches acquired the status of independent parishes;
and at length, in the time of Edward the Confessor, the legal status of
parish churches was given to all which by ancient custom had the right of
administration of baptism, marriage, and burial.
The Domesday Survey gives, so far as it deals with the matter, a view of
the condition of the Church and clergy at the close of the Saxon
period--_tempore regis Edwardi_. It is to be borne in mind that its object
was not to make a complete terrier and census of the kingdom, but to
ascertain the rights and revenues due to the Crown. The commissioners who
made the survey in the different counties took somewhat different lines in
making their returns, particularly in those details which are of special
interest in the present inquiry. In most of the counties churches and
clergy seem to be named only where they were liable to some payment to the
Crown. In some counties all the churches seem to be named; in others all
the presbyters; in others there is no mention of one or the other. Thus,
in Lincolnshire 222 churches are named, in Norfolk 243, in Suffolk, 364;
in Leicestershire 41 presbyters, in Rochester diocese about 65,[42] in
Sussex 42, of which seven are described as _ecclesiolæ_ chapels. In the
returns for the counties of Cambridge, Middlesex, Lancaster, and Cornwall,
neither church nor presbyter occurs. In the whole there are only 1700
churches named. But there seems no reason why Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and
Suffolk should have had a larger proportion of churches to population at
that time than the other counties; and if the other counties were
proportionately subdivided into parishes and equipped with churches, we
arrive at the conclusion that there were nearly as many churches
(including chapels) and clergy before the Norman Conquest, when the
population was about two millions, as there were at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, when the population had increased to nearly nine
millions.
[Illustration: Saxon tower, Sompting Church, Sussex.]
From the same source we learn that the usual quantity of land assigned to
a church was from five to fifty acres; in some cases the glebe was larger.
Bosham, in Sussex, was one of the largest; in the time of Edward the
Confessor it had 112 hides. Barsham, in Norfolk, had 100 acres;
Berchingas, in Suffolk, 83; Wellingrove, in Lincolnshire, 129 acres of
meadow and 14 of other land.
The private origin of ecclesiastical benefices, together with the feudal
ideas of the tenure of property, produced in the minds of the owners of
advowsons a certain sense of property in the benefices which shows itself
in various ways: in the bargaining with the presentee for some advantage
to the lord, as a present, or a pension, or the tenancy of part of the
land.
The advowson descended with the manor, and was often subdivided among the
heirs.[43] In later times we not infrequently find a rectory held in
medieties, but in Domesday Book we find a benefice divided into any number
of fractions up to one-twelfth.[44]