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Prelacy, Pastoral Care and the Instruction of Subordinates in Late Twelfth-Century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2019

Rebecca Springer
Rebecca Springer*
Affiliation:
Merton College, Oxford
*
*270 Harrison Avenue #303, Jersey City, NJ, 07304, USA. E-mail: rebeccaspringer4@gmail.com.
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Abstract

Historians of the Middle Ages usually associate the phrase ‘pastoral care’ with the sacraments and religious services performed by parish priests on behalf of lay people. But late twelfth-century writers primarily attributed pastoral care to prelates. Closely following the tradition of Pope Gregory I's Pastoral Rule, they held that prelates bore the responsibility to govern, guide and (perhaps most importantly) instruct their subordinate clergy or religious. Prelates did this by preaching, and they were supposed to validate their words with the example of their own righteous lives. But although commentators assumed that prelates would be reasonably well educated, late twelfth-century writers did not attribute good preaching to intellectual aptitude, or to the availability of preaching treatises or model sermon collections, as historians often assume. In an age of intellectual vibrancy and flourishing schools, ensuring that prelates instructed their subordinates remained firmly a moral, rather than an educational, question for the English church. Only by instructing subordinates could a prelate ensure their, and by extension his own, eternal salvation: neglect of preaching was tantamount to murder. This article uses the little-studied writings of Alexander of Ashby, Bartholomew of Exeter and Thomas Agnellus to uncover new links between ideas about prelacy, pastoral care and the instruction of subordinates in the high Middle Ages.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 55: CHURCHES AND EDUCATION , June 2019 , pp. 114 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2019 

The history of pastoral care, and more broadly of clerical ministry to the laity, in the high and later Middle Ages is tied up with the history of education at virtually every level, from the development of practical theology at the university of Paris in the second half of the twelfth century,Footnote 1 to the provisions for clerical education in the Third and Fourth Lateran Councils in 1179 and 1215Footnote 2 and the proliferation of instructional treatises for parish priests.Footnote 3 This story is well known; here I want to highlight a part of it which has been less emphasized. My interest is not so much in the actual practice of religious ministry, but rather in the way in which pastoral care was conceptualized: in particular, by four little-known writers active in England during the second half of the twelfth century. Drawing on ideas which had percolated through ecclesiastical literature since the time of Gregory the Great (d. 604), these writers asserted that ‘prelates’, that is, those who bore the burden of pastoral care, were responsible for spiritually instructing their ‘subjects’ by word and example. The approach of these authors was not to provide detailed instructions for the holders of specific ecclesiastical offices, but rather to emphasize the moral imperative that, in their view, defined the relationship between pastoral care and education.

The texts studied here have been chosen in part because they have not received much attention from scholars. Alexander of Ashby was prior of the Augustinian canons of Canons Ashby in Northamptonshire, and died in 1208x1214. He was a frequent papal judge-delegate,Footnote 4 and authored, among other works, De artificioso modo predicandi, a preaching treatise with five model sermons attached.Footnote 5 Bartholomew of Exeter was bishop of Exeter from 1161 to 1184, a noted canonist and probably a one-time Parisian master.Footnote 6 He is remembered as the author of a widely copied penitential,Footnote 7 but here I focus on the volume of one hundred and twenty-five sermons which he bequeathed to the Exeter Cathedral library.Footnote 8 Robert of Cricklade was the prior of another Augustinian house, St Frideswide's Priory in Oxford, from 1141 to 1174,Footnote 9 and authored a collection of Homiliae super Ezechielem, conceived as a continuation of Gregory the Great's homilies on the same book.Footnote 10 Finally, Thomas Agnellus was archdeacon of Wells from c.1168 to c.1195.Footnote 11 His forty-eight sermons survive only in a single manuscript.Footnote 12

There is another feature, besides their being relatively unknown, which unifies these works. Although they vary in their format and intended audiences, they all draw on a common rhetorical model of pastoral care, as shown below. This was not true of all pastoral texts produced in late twelfth-century England; for example, the better known writings of William de Montibus, head of the school at Lincoln Cathedral from the 1180s to 1213, are much more practical and pedagogical in their approach,Footnote 13 including numerous verse and prose treatises on subjects such as penance, virtues and vices, and logic, intended for the use of students of theology. As Joseph Goering has observed, theologians trained by William de Montibus might go on to instruct other lay people or clergy, perhaps parish priests,Footnote 14 and several of William de Montibus's works, notably Peniteas cito, contain what might be considered advice about pastoral care in practice. But William's writings do not comment on the moral imperative of pastoral care or on the role of the pastor more generally, nor do they discuss the danger of pastoral failure; they are meant to inform, not to inspire.Footnote 15 By contrast, although some of the writers studied in this article, particularly Alexander of Ashby, do offer practical advice to pastors, they also put forward a vision in which the prelate's responsibility to teach his subjects is a moral imperative: that is, they are less concerned with practical instruction than with exhortation.

Prelacy and Pastoral Care

Much scholarship has focused on innovation in twelfth-century religious thought: the influence of Aristotelian logic, the scholastic method and the turn toward practical theology.Footnote 16 But the writers studied here relied heavily on much older ideas. They conceptualized pastoral care as a bipartite relationship between contrasting groups, which we might generalize as prelates and subjects. In this model, a prelate, bearing the weight of pastoral care, guides and governs subjects; the prelate takes primary, if not exclusive, responsibility for the subjects’ spiritual welfare. The precedents for this kind of thinking stretched back for centuries. Latin writers of Late Antiquity had occasionally mentioned solicitous bishops acting ‘with pastoral care’ or being constrained by pastoral care,Footnote 17 but it was Gregory the Great's formulation of pastoral care as a burden set on the shoulders of prelates – so solemn and ponderous in its requirements that even Gregory himself was ‘unequal to it in merit’ – which was to shape the thinking and language of ecclesiastical writers down to the thirteenth century.Footnote 18 By the time of Bede, pastoral care was associated with abbots and priors as well as with bishops, and the phrase cura animarum was used interchangeably with cura pastoralis. In fact, these two phrases became so synonymous with the office of prelacy that chroniclers across Europe from the eighth century on described elections, institutions, deaths and resignations of both abbots and bishops in shorthand by stating that they ‘took up’ or ‘gave up’ the cura pastoralis or cura animarum.Footnote 19 The office of a prelate, then, conferred the burden of pastoral care: a responsibility to govern and instruct subject souls.

The late twelfth-century English writers studied in this article draw heavily on this Gregorian model of prelacy and pastoral care, but they were not only concerned with the duties of bishops and abbots. When modern scholars speak of ‘prelates’ they are referring to men who held high ecclesiastical offices, generally bishops and heads of male religious houses. Prelatus, the Latin cognate, could have the same meaning in late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century England, but as the past passive participle of preferre (literally ‘the one set in front’) it could also refer to any leader or important person, secular or ecclesiastical.Footnote 20 That is, prelacy was a function, as well as a category, of office. The four writers studied here distinguish between two contrasting groups, one which bears pastoral care and one which is subject to it. They refer to the former group, which we might generalize as ‘prelates’, variously as prelates, preachers, pastors or priests (sacerdotes),Footnote 21 and to the latter as subjects, subordinates, listeners, the people or the flock. In practice, this prelate-subject dichotomy usually referred to the holder of a high ecclesiastical office and the clergy or religious directly under his governance, such as an abbot over his monks or a bishop over his cathedral and diocesan clergy. But it could also refer by analogy to a priest over his parishioners. The ambiguity of the language employed by these writers indicates that the state of having been ‘set in front’, and the responsibilities which that status incurred, were far more important than the particular office which an individual held.

A brief discussion of the intended audiences of the works studied here will reveal this ‘functional’ definition of prelacy at work. We may begin with Alexander of Ashby. In a rhetorically florid prologue, Alexander dedicates De artificioso modo predicandi to an unnamed acquaintance, an abbot, who has since forsaken the duty of preaching. Alexander frames his treatise as an attempt to encourage his friend to begin preaching once more; whether this abbot was a rhetorical construction or a real acquaintance, it is clear that De artificioso modo predicandi is pitched for prelates. Yet Alexander seems to imagine that such prelates will preach to clerical or religious audiences and to lay people, since the model sermons he appends to the treatise address both types of audiences.Footnote 22 This means that when Alexander writes of prelati and subiecti, it is not always clear whether he is thinking of prelates and clerical or religious subordinates, or parish priests and lay people, or prelates and lay people; or, indeed, whether he is talking about any, or even all, of these pairs. He often uses prelatus and sacerdos interchangeably.Footnote 23 In other words, Alexander sees prelacy in numerous different relationships in which one party has the pastoral care of another, and is unconcerned to distinguish among those relationships.

The two sermon collections of Bartholomew of Exeter and Thomas Agnellus may be grouped together. Both gather sermons written for a variety of different preaching occasions, and which address a range of identifiable audiences. Although many of Bartholomew's sermons are not obviously aimed at any particular audience, drawing routine moral lessons from biblical stories, some are specific enough that the audience may be identified as lay people,Footnote 24 religious,Footnote 25 religious women,Footnote 26 clerics in generalFootnote 27 and priests or prelates.Footnote 28 I shall draw on sermons directed at the last category. Similarly, Thomas Agnellus preached to prelates,Footnote 29 mixed groups of prelates and lesser priests,Footnote 30 mixed groups of secular clergy and religious,Footnote 31 religious only,Footnote 32 priests or clergy in generalFootnote 33 and the canons of the collegiate church of St Andrew in Wells (later Wells Cathedral) specifically.Footnote 34 Of course it was natural to preach about pastoral care to those who had it; therefore I draw on sermons of Bartholomew and Thomas which address prelates or priests. Bartholomew tends to prefer pastores as a general term for this group, while Thomas uses prelati; both are working broadly within the Gregorian prelate-subject dichotomy, and rarely offer enough specific details to indicate exactly what sort of people they are thinking about.Footnote 35 Such sermons might have been preached to parish clergy during episcopal or archidiaconal visitations, to cathedral clergy, or to gatherings of ecclesiastical dignitaries.

Robert of Cricklade's Homiliae super Ezechielem provide a final example. Deliberately modelled on Gregory the Great's Homiliae in Ezechielem, these homilies constitute a unified treatise rather than a collection of sermons written for specific preaching occasions. Internal references to a lector and to gathered fratres suggests that Robert intended the homilies to be read aloud to a clerical or religious community such as the regular canons of St Frideswide's Priory in Oxford.Footnote 36 Although the canons do seem to have been interested in ministering to lay people in the middle of the twelfth century,Footnote 37 we do not need to focus on how relevant Robert's advice would have been to the day-to-day activities of the canons. His primary aim was biblical exegesis, not practical instruction, and he lumps together various appellations – prelates, bishops, doctors and preachers – as a single category, representing in this way an enlightened group which instructs an equally indistinct group of subjects.

The idea of ‘functional’ prelacy is crucial to understanding how these four writers conceptualized pastoral care. Despite addressing different audiences, they employed a simple dichotomy between prelates and subjects, and were content to let this idea stand for a range of pastoral relationships. It is possible that they used such ambiguous language as prelati and subiecti because they wanted their work to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. More immediately, as the rest of this article argues, these writers believed that the moral responsibility of prelacy, the prelate's responsibility to instruct and guide his subjects, was more important than the practicalities of actually carrying out that instruction. Therefore, it did not matter whether the ‘prelate’ in question was a bishop, an abbot, a regular canon or a secular parish priest; the pastoral mandate was the same.

Teaching by Word and Example

In the high Middle Ages, the phrase docere verbo et exemplo, ‘to teach by word and example’, was frequently used by ecclesiastical writers describe the responsibility of prelates to educate their subjects.Footnote 38 This was another idea traceable to Gregory the Great, and its importance for the writers studied here is difficult to overestimate. Sometimes, it was a handy cliché, a shorthand nod toward familiar conceptions of good prelacy or preaching in a general sense.Footnote 39 ‘The prelate should instruct his subjects by his own word of doctrine and example of life’, Alexander of Ashby writes, and does not need to elaborate.Footnote 40 However, clichés often point to widespread and influential assumptions. The phrase also represented a specific conviction that the verbal instruction of subordinates had to be backed up with demonstrable personal virtue. That in turn required the prelate to cultivate both doctrinal understanding and a moral life superior to that of his subjects. In a sermon on the theme ‘Get you up to a high mountain, you who bring good tidings to Zion [Isa. 40: 9]’, Alexander explains that the preacher must ‘ascend the mountain’ by living a moral life in order to be seen and heard more clearly by those to whom he preaches, as if the mountain were a raised pulpit.Footnote 41 Thomas Agnellus uses a similar metaphor, in which the mountain represents the priest himself: he is the first to receive the light of wisdom, and ‘may rise above the life of his subjects as if gazing down on those below him’.Footnote 42

The idea of teaching by word and example was also malleable, and the writers studied here frequently altered it to reflect their own priorities. For example, Bartholomew, a bishop who was particularly committed to the provision of intercessory prayer in his cathedral and diocese,Footnote 43 emphasized the prelate's duty to pray for his subjects in addition to teaching them by word and deed. In a sermon for St Peter's feast day, he describes three ways in which ‘each and every pastor should feed the elect committed to him like the sheep of Christ: by example, by word, and by prayer. By example, as those who pasture them live well; by word, as they commend good living to them with blessed speech; by prayer, as they pray for their subordinates’.Footnote 44 Robert, prior of an Augustinian house at which public sermons were delivered,Footnote 45 replaced verbo with the more specific and forceful praedicatio when he praised ‘the blessed preachers by whose example and preaching we are stirred up to praise God’.Footnote 46 And Alexander, closely connected with the school based at St Andrew's Priory, Northampton,Footnote 47 associates the phrase with lecturers in the schools. The penitent should judge his own life and sins, he writes, like a judge, or bishop, or ‘a doctor in his chair, teaching others by word and example the path to a better life’.Footnote 48 In another sermon Alexander goes so far as to affirm that ‘any good men who are able to enlighten others by word and example can be called “the light of the world”’, implying, perhaps, that even a layman might usefully instruct his neighbours or family.Footnote 49

In spite of these variations, it was clear that all four writers believed that subjects would benefit more from instruction ‘by example’ than from instruction ‘by word’. Alexander, in a sermon appended to his preaching treatise, cites Gregory's Regula pastoralis: ‘The flock is better led by example than by word’. For this reason, Alexander writes, ‘the example of a good deed should precede words of wisdom’.Footnote 50 Bartholomew and Robert also advised would-be preachers to focus on their morality first and their preaching second. ‘For first we should chastise ourselves and tame our carnal vices and luxury’, Bartholomew writes. ‘Then we should observe and imitate the life of the good men who came before us; then we should correct our subordinates and defend them with our staff, that is, our counsel and our word’.Footnote 51 Robert similarly upholds ‘the preachers who should first nourish virtue in themselves with great zeal, so that they can demonstrate an abundance of virtues’.Footnote 52 It was particularly clear that audiences were likely to see through a hypocritical preacher, with disastrous consequences. Thomas warned that ‘doctrine cannot be easily sold to listeners if it comes from a master held in contempt. If his life is despised, consequently his preaching will be easily held in contempt. Thus the guilt of the priest is the ruin of the people.’Footnote 53 He was alluding to an often repeated line from Gregory's letters which Alexander copied verbatim,Footnote 54 elaborating an inversion of the docere verbo et exemplo principle: ‘Bad priests are the cause of the ruin of the people. We should dread this, and to increase our dread it would be good for us to investigate why it is so. Priests are the cause of the ruin of the people in three ways: indiscriminate silence, undisciplined word, and bad example.’Footnote 55

It is clear, however, that exemplum did not have to precede verbum only to head off potential claims of hypocrisy. It was important for prelates to lead virtuous lives because the failure to preach was itself considered a moral failure: a good prelate would surely preach. The implications of this idea are made clear in Alexander's De artificioso modo predicandi. As mentioned above, this preaching treatise purports to address an unnamed abbot whom Alexander had known ‘in the schools’. Alexander's friend had been a promising student, but he gave up intellectual pursuits after becoming a regular canon, despite the suitability of the religious life to study: ‘You have become like an uneducated man or a despiser of learning, pursuing neither reading nor doctrine, even though your many fellow canons were frequently bringing you illustrious documents for your edification’, Alexander writes.Footnote 56 But he is primarily concerned about his friend's lack of study because he believes it is connected to a more significant failing: the abbot has ignored ‘the office of preaching’:Footnote 57

If you take away the food of life, will you not be judged to have inflicted death upon them? Do you really not know that the law sentences to death the priest who enters the temple without the sound of bells attached to the edge of his hyacinth tunic? … It is also said to you by the prophet: if you will not announce to my people their wickedness, I will consider their blood to be on your hands.Footnote 58

Alexander's solution to the moral problem of a prelate's failure to preach is instructive, and perhaps unexpected. There is nothing in his letter to indicate that the abbot is neglectful because he lacks the skills or tools to preach; indeed, Alexander says he was a good scholar who had ample access to books. The preaching treatise which Alexander sent him gives advice on how to structure a sermon using principles from Ciceronian rhetoric, principles which would have been familiar to anyone who had studied the trivium.Footnote 59 It also gives advice on how to tailor a message to varied audiences, much of which is lifted directly from Gregory's Pastoral Rule, undoubtedly also familiar.Footnote 60 In short, Alexander is not trying to educate his friend, but to spur him on, to drive home the import of the prelate's responsibility to preach by acting out that import himself: that is, by writing a treatise about it. Alexander assumes that his friend's recent neglect of study is a symptom of his lack of appreciation for the gravity of the prelate's office. More specifically, Alexander is responding to a conviction about what is required of prelates, writing with the Day of Judgement in mind, at which he and other prelates, standing alongside the apostles themselves, would be held to account for the souls under their care. In another sermon he cautions prelates to ‘strive through preaching to acquire many whom you will be able to present to the Lord on the day of judgement, when Peter will present the Jews, Paul the Greeks, Andrew Achaea, Matthew Ethiopia, and so on’.Footnote 61

Conclusion

For the four writers studied in this article, prelacy and pastoral care were fundamentally defined by a moral imperative to educate others. Specifically, ‘prelates’ were held – and expected – to teach their ‘subjects’ primarily by modelling virtuous living, and secondarily by instructing them verbally, especially by preaching. So important was this responsibility that it sat at the heart of what it meant to be a prelate in the first place. Pastoral care, the prelate's spiritual burden, was, to put it simply, an instructional and governance relationship between a superior and an inferior. This functional framework was both sufficiently flexible and sufficiently evocative to be useful for writers working in a range of contexts, such as crafting a preaching aid for prelates, writing sermons for delivery to clergy or penning an exegetical treatise for reading aloud to regular canons. It allowed them to look beyond concrete practicalities, instead drawing attention to what they perceived to be more important: the prelate's responsibility to teach his subjects. As Alexander of Ashby's writings demonstrate, these writers also felt confident that any prelate who fully grasped this responsibility, and his ultimate accountability to God, would take care to work out the practicalities of ministering to his flock.

It remains to offer some thoughts on how this distinctive strain of pastoral writing might fit into broader narratives. Collectively written between perhaps 1161 at the earliest and 1214 at the latest, these texts in one sense represent a fifty-year historical period. They circulated little, or not at all, and therefore probably did not shape the thinking of many readers or listeners, especially when compared with, for instance, William de Montibus's Peniteas cito. However, in another sense, these writings attest to the continued influence of centuries-old clichés and concepts of pastoral care at the end of the twelfth century. Historians crave both specificity and novelty; by contrast, the prelate's responsibility to instruct his subordinates was an old idea, and indeed one that tended to obscure, or lump together, a variety of lived experiences. It may be that these ideas were more pervasive – geographically, chronologically or across genres – than previously realized. It is clear that by the end of the twelfth century a more practical and applied type of pastoral literature, epitomized by William de Montibus and (not long after) Thomas of Chobham and the earliest post-Lateran synodalia, was emerging.Footnote 62 There was, it seems, a growing consensus in the thirteenth century that offering specific instructions on how to fulfil the duties of pastoral care was more valuable than simply trying to motivate zealous and virtuous pastors. This should not blind us, however, to the emphasis placed by some English writers on prelacy, pastoral care and the instruction of subordinates in the second half of the twelfth century.

Footnotes

I am grateful to Ian Forrest for his supervision of the research underpinning this article, to those who offered comments and questions at the Ecclesiastical History Society Summer Conference, and to the society for supporting my conference attendance. All translations in this article are my own.

References

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17 Augustine of Hippo, Epistula 178 (PL 33, col. 773); Gregorius Turensis, Liber de virtutibus sancti Martini 1.10 (MGH SRM 1.2, 145); Synodus Romana 502 13 (MGH AA 12, 449); Ennodius, Praeceptum de cellulanis (PL 63, col. 256).

18 Gregory the Great, Registrum epistularum 1.24, 41; 3.29 (2 vols, CChr.SL 140, 140A, 1: 22, 31–2, 47, 174, quotation at 22). See Paroneto, Vera, ‘Connotazione del “pastor” nell'opera di Gregorio Magno teoria e prassi’, Benedictina 31 (1984), 325–43Google Scholar; Leyser, Conrad, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford, 2000), 142, 160–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dattrino, Lorenzo, ‘Gregorio Magno Pastor et Praedicator’, Lateranum 75 (2009), 355–70Google Scholar; Demacopoulos, George E., ‘Gregory's Model of Spiritual Direction in the Liber regulae pastoralis’, in Neil, Bronwen and Santo, Matthew Dal, eds, A Companion to Gregory the Great (Leiden, 2013), 204–24Google Scholar, at 210.

19 A few examples of many: Altfrid, bishop of Münster, Vita Liudgeri Mimigardefordensi s 14 (MGH SS 2, 408); Annales Alamannici, Continuationes Sangallenses tres (860–926, 1185) (MGH SS 1, 50); Annalista Saxo (741–1139), s.a. 970 (MGH SS 6, 623); Anonymous of Herrieden, De episcopis Eichstetensibus 27 (MGH SS 7, 261); Anson of Lobbes, Vita Ursmari episcoporum et abbatum Lobbiensis 2.8 (MGH SRM 6, 460); Bernold of Constance, Apologeticus 10 (MGH LdL 2, 69); Chronica Boemorum, Continuatio monachi Sazavensis (932–1162), ‘De exordio Zazovensis monasterii’ (MGH SS 9, 150); Chronicon Sancti Michaelis monasterii in pago Virdunensi 11 (MGH SS 4, 82); Collectaneum exemplorum et visionum Clarevallense e codice Trecensi 946 4.36 (CChr.CM 208, 323); Abbot Folcwin of Laubes, Gesta abbatum Sancti Bertini Sithiensium 109 (MGH SS 13, 630); Sigebert of Gembloux, Gesta abbatum Gemblacensium 15 (MGH SS 8, 531).

20 Ashdowne, Richard, Howlett, David and Latham, Ronald, eds, Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, 3 vols (Oxford, 2018)Google Scholar, s.v. ‘praeferre’, §7.

21 This varied language, like so much writing about prelacy and preaching, reflects the thought of Gregory the Great, whose elusive references to rectores, praedicatores, sacerdotes, pastores and prelati have caused historians to ponder whether he intended the Regula pastoralis for an audience wider than bishops, perhaps even including secular rulers: Leyser, Authority, 157–8; Robert A. Markus, ‘Gregory the Great's Rector and his Genesis’, in Jacques Fontaine, Robert Gillet and Stan Pellistrandi, eds, Grégoire le Grand, Chantilly, Centre culturel Les Fontaines, 15–19 septembre 1982, actes, Colloques internationaux du Centre national de la recherche scientifique (Paris, 1986), 137–46; Reydillet, R., La Royauté dans la littérature latine (Rome, 1981), 463Google Scholar.

22 Alexander included the first of the five appended sermons as a demonstration of how to preach to eruditi and simplices simultaneously, while the third, fourth and fifth sermons all address the duties of prelati, including how prelates should teach minores sacerdotes to perform sacraments correctly: De artificioso modo predicandi (Opera omnia, 1: 38, 48–71).

23 Ibid. 24, 49–50, 61–2.

24 Bodl., MS 449, fols 23rb–24ra (30), 26rb–vb (34), 33vb–34vb (45), 47ra–vb (60), 49rb–vb (63).

25 Ibid., fols 1va–2rb (2), 21vb–22rb (28), 24ra–vb (31), 53ra–b (70), 61va–62rb (84), 62rb–63ra (85).

26 Ibid., fols 54vb–55rb (73).

27 Ibid., fols 3va–4va (5), 8vb–9va (12), 11rb–12rb (15), 20ra–21ra (26), 32vb–33vb (44), 39ra–vb (49), 56va–57ra (76), 70rb–vb (97).

28 Ibid., fols 34vb–37ra (46), 57vb–58rb (78), 58rb–vb (79).

29 Bodl., MS Laud Misc. 71, fols 1va–5va (1), 70vb–73va (20).

30 Ibid., fols 90rb–93vb (24).

31 Ibid., fols 13vb–18va (4), 29va–34rb (8), 100va–104ra (28).

32 Ibid., fols 41vb–44va (11), 66rb–73va (19).

33 Ibid., fols 5va–13vb (2), 53rb–5vb (15), 58vb–66rb (17).

34 Ibid., fol. 49rb (13).

35 An exception is one passage in which Thomas Agnellus moves directly from a discussion of (bad) prelati into one of a (bad) presbiter: ibid., fol. 54ra (15).

36 Pembroke College, MS 30, fols 6va (2), 54rb (12).

37 The Cartulary of the Monastery of St Frideswide at Oxford 22, ed. S. R. Wigram, 2 vols, Oxford Historical Society 28, 31 (Oxford, 1895–6), 1: 27.

38 Caroline Walker Bynum, Docere verbo et exemplo: An Aspect of Twelfth-Century Spirituality, Harvard Theological Studies 31 (Missoula, MT, 1979), 15. For this section, see also Springer, ‘Local Religious Life’, 64–8, 70–1.

39 Alexander, Collectio secundo 1; Sermones uarii 19 (Opera omnia, 1: 220, 368, 374); Pembroke College, MS 30, fol. 10rb (2).

40 ‘Prelatus subiectos sibi instruere debet uerbo doctrine et exemplo uite’: Alexander, Sermones uarii 4 (Opera omnia, 1: 275).

41 Alexander, De artificioso modo predicandi 5 (Opera omnia, 1: 61–71).

42 ‘Sic honestate preemineat subditorum uitam tamquam inferiorem aspiciat’: Bodl., MS Laud Misc. 71, fol. 9ra (2).

43 Exeter, Cathedral Archives, D&C 802; Roger de Wendover, Flores Historiarum, s.a. 1161, ed. H. G. Hewlett, 3 vols, RS 84 (London, 1886–9), 1: 18–20; Bodl., MS 449, fol. 72ra (98).

44 ‘Tribus autem modis unusquisque pastor electos sibi commissos tanquam oues Christi pascere debet: exemplo scilicet, uerbo, et oratione. Exemplo, ut qui eas pascunt bene uiuant; uerbo, ut bonam uitam sancto sermone commendent; oratione, ut pro subditis orent’: Bodl., MS 449, fol. 57vb (78).

45 Bodl., MS Wood empt. 13, fols 74r–76v, 93r–97r; ActaSS Oct. 8: 47, 579.

46 ‘Sancti predicatores quorum exemplo et predicatione ad laudandum deum excitamur’: Pembroke College, MS 30, fol. 10rb (2).

47 Alexander, De artificioso modo predicandi 1, 3, Collectio primo 22 (Opera omnia, 1: 33–40, 53, 203–7); H. G. Richardson, ‘The Schools of Northampton in the Twelfth Century’, E HR 56 (1941), 595–605.

48 ‘Debet eciam sedere quasi doctor in cathedra, docendo alios uerbo et exemplo uiam uite melioris’: Alexander, Sermones uarii 19 (Opera omnia, 1: 368).

49 Alexander, Opera omnia, 1: 220. This was not an anomalous view. Bartholomew's Liber penitentialis encourages that ‘filios suos debent ad scolam siue ad monasteria siue foras presbiteris ut fidem catholicam recte discant et orationem dominicam, ut domi alios edocere ualeant’ (‘they [lay people] should send their sons out to a school or monastery or priest to learn correctly the Creed and Lord's Prayer, so that they can teach the rest of their household’): Morey, Bartholomew of Exeter, 2, 176. Robert asserts that ‘electi quique … uerum etiam uerbo et exemplo eam [ecclesiam sacram] subleuant’(‘any of the elect … truly may uplift the sacred church by their word and example’): Pembroke College, MS 30, fol. 49ra (10).

50 ‘Precedere enim debet exemplum boni operis uerba sapientie, quia ut ait beatus Gregorius: grex per exempla melius quam per uerba gradietur’: Alexander, De artificioso modo predicandi (Opera omnia, 1: 30).

51 ‘Nam prius debemus castigare nosmetipsos et in nobis domare uicia carnis et luxuriam, et post inspicere et imitari uitam bonorum uirorum qui ante nos fuerunt, deinde alios nobis subditos corrigere et defendere nostro baculo, id est nostro consilio et nostro uerbo’: Bodl., MS 449, fol. 36va (46).

52 ‘Et [Abraham] significat predicatores qui ut possint aliis uirtutum copiam monstrare, in se primum oportet multo studio nutrire’: Pembroke College, MS 30, fol. 13vb (3).

53 ‘Doctrina namque auditoribus non facile produci si ceperit a magistro contempni. Cuius si uita despicitur, consequens est ut et predicatio facile contempnatur. Vnde culpa sacerdotum, ruina populi’, Bodl., MS Laud Misc. 71, fol. 10rb–va (3); cf. ibid., fol. 47vb (13).

54 Gregory the Great, Registrum epistularum 11.46 (CChr.SL 140A, 943).

55 Alexander, De artificioso modo predicandi 4 (Opera omnia, 1: 58).

56 ‘Factus es quasi homo ilitteratus aut litterarum contemptor, nec lectioni, nec doctrine insistens, cum plures concanonici tui preclara ad edificacionem te sepius audiente proferrent documenta’: Alexander, De artificioso modo predicandi (Opera omnia, 1: 23).

57 ‘Et elegisti in silentio potius et quiete legem perfecte addiscere, quam imperfectus docere. Hac ratione tibi tunc officium predicandi dissimulare licuit, cui nunc in cathedra collocato non dissimulare licebit’ (And you chose rather to learn the law completely in silence and quiet while you were still unprepared to teach. For this reason you were permitted to ignore the office of preaching, which, now that you are seated on the throne, you are not permitted to ignore’): Alexander, De artificioso modo predicandi (Opera omnia, 1: 23).

58 ‘Quibus si subtraxeris cibum uite, nonne iudicaberis mortem intulisse? Numquid ignoras quod legis censura sacerdotem occidit qui tabernaculum ingreditur sine sonitu tintabulorum extremis horis tunice iacinctine inherentium? … Postremo tibi per prophetam dicitur: si non annunciaueris populo meo scelera eorum, sanguinem eorum de manu tua requiram’: Alexander, De artificioso modo predicandi (Opera omnia, 1: 24); cf. Ezek. 32: 8. In Exod. 28: 33–5, Moses orders priests to wear garments with bells sewn on when they enter the innermost room of the tabernacle (often known as ‘the holy of holies’), or risk God's wrath. This was allegorized by Gregory the Great, who connects the sound of the bells to preaching: Gregory, Pastoral Rule 2.4 (1: 190, 192).

59 Briscoe, Marianne G., Artes praedicandi, Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge occidental 61 (Turnhout, 1992), 258–9Google Scholar; Kempshall, Matthew, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400–1500 (Manchester, 2011), 14–15Google Scholar.

60 The Regula pastoralis was often read in monastic refectories at mealtimes: Tessa Webber, ‘Public Reading and its Books: The Framework of Norms’, Lyell Lecture series, University of Oxford, 3 May 2016. Guibert of Gembloux, Hildegard of Bingen's secretary, advised a contact whom he considered to be a ‘useless prelate’ to mend his ways by reading just two books, Bernard of Clairvaux's De co nsid eratione and Gregory's Regula pastoralis: Guibert de Gembloux, Guiberti Gemblacensis epistolae 50 (2 vols, CChr.CM 66, 66A; 2: 509).

61 ‘Studeatis predicando multos adquirere quos positis in die iudicii Domino presentare, quando presentabit Petrus Iudeos, Paulus Grecos, Andreas Achaiam, Matheus Ethiopiam, et sic alii alios’: Alexander, De artificioso modo predicandi 3 (Opera omnia, 1: 53).

62 Goering, William de Montibus; Thomas of Chobham, Thomae de Chobham summa confessorum, ed. F. Broomfield, Analecta mediaevalia Namurcensia 25 (Louvain, 1968); idem, Summa de arte praedicandi (CChr.CM 82); Powicke, F. M. and Cheney, C. R., eds, Councils and Synods with other Documents relating to the English Church, 2: A.D. 1205–1313, 2 vols (Oxford, 1964), 2: 57–96Google Scholar, 125–37.