The Collectio Lanfranci and the primacy of Canterbury

The founding action of the rule of Lanfranc of Canterbury (1070–89), promoted by William the Conqueror, was to submit the consecration of the metropolitan of York, Thomas, to the prior drafting of a profession of obedience. This demand – unheard of, according to contemporaries – provoked a lively polemic before Pope Alexander ii and in assemblies of English bishops and abbots. The result, favourable to Canterbury, coincided with the first instances of the use of the title of primate of Britain. This title is attested, in varying forms (‘totius Britanniae primas’, ‘totius Britannicae insulae primas’, ‘Britanniarum primas’), in Lanfranc's Memorandum (1073–5)Footnote ⁶, at the councils of London (1075) and Winchester (1076)Footnote ⁷, over which he presided in person, and in the professions of obedience which were rendered to him between 1074 and 1088 by the bishop of Dublin and the suffragans of the province of Canterbury.Footnote ⁸ There have been many attempts to explain the genesis of the pre-eminence of Lanfranc and the appearance of the profession of obedience to the primate. The influence of the monastic culture of the former prior of Bec and former abbot of St-Étienne, Caen, has been rightly remarked upon. The obedience acknowledged to a superior is a primordial element of the Benedictine rule, to which the archbishop of Canterbury often refers in his writings.Footnote ⁹ Nor can the influence of the hierarchy of Anglo-Norman secular society, founded on the oath of fidelity, be neglected with regard to insular ecclesiastical structures.Footnote ¹⁰ None the less, scholarly constructs seem to have played the most important part. Lanfranc introduced into England, as a gift to the community of Christ Church, a certain legal manuscript, bought from the Norman abbey of Bec and probably written there in the 1060s, which was progressively diffused throughout the island through the efforts of the archbishop and his successors. This collection of extracts (‘excerpta’) from the False Decretals, the famous Collectio Lanfranci, unites, in a rather antiquated way, two autonomous parts respectively devoted to the papal decretals and to the conciliar canons.Footnote ¹¹

The decrees of the councils of Toledo (I–XIII) – transcribed at the end of the second part – have been interpreted as an important source of inspiration for Lanfranc. The annotations made, under his direction, on the codex of the Collectio, his correspondence and the citations from them at the Council of London (1075), demonstrate the undeniable good fortune of these texts. Once transformed into a universal maxim, the principle of the profession of obedience – Toledo XI (675), c. 10 – and the pre-eminence of Toledo in the Visigothic Church – Toledo XII (681), c. 6 – would form the doctrinal basis of Lanfranc's pretensions.Footnote ¹² At the same time, the assiduous use of the canons of Toledo also justified the emergence of the title of primate (‘primas’), revived from the African councils of Carthage and until then unknown in the English Church.

This perceptive reconstruction says nothing, however, of the original contribution of Pseudo-Isidore – whose effects on the Canterbury primacy have only ever been hinted at.Footnote ¹³ Addressing himself to Herfast, bishop of Thetford, Lanfranc reveals that the writings of the holy Fathers, as much as the councils of Toledo, furnished some passages on primates and archbishops (‘de excellentia et potestate primatum atque archiepiscoporum’).Footnote ¹⁴ The first part of the Collectio Lanfranci includes the decretals of Clement, Anacletus, Anicetus and Stephen, which all come under this heading.Footnote ¹⁵ These apocryphal letters probably played a preponderant role, and indeed seem to have determined how the Iberian conciliar canons were understood. The hierarchy established by Lanfranc – the church of York is held to obey the archbishop of Canterbury as the primate of all Britain – derives directly from the doctrine of Pseudo-Isidore. The tract of the Norman Anonymous (c. 1100) echoes this interpretation when, recounting the opposition between the two metropolitan cities of England, he denounces the distinction, judged invalid, between a simple archbishop (‘archiepiscopus tantum’) and an archbishop-primate (‘archiepiscopus simul et primas’).Footnote ¹⁶ A formula from the second decretal of Anacletus could, on the other hand, legitimate on its own the profession of obedience to the primate by the metropolitans (‘metropolitanos suos qui praedictis iuste oboedirent primatibus’). The allusion to the institutions of the holy Fathers, renewed by Thomas of York at the Council of Winchester (Easter 1072), where he promised obedience to Lanfranc and his successors, would reinforce this argument.Footnote ¹⁷ In the twelfth century the use of the False Decretals leaves little room for doubt. It can be seen in the designation of Canterbury as the ‘first see’ (‘prima sedes’), an expression borrowed from Pseudo-Isidore. In a letter to Pope Calixtus ii, Archbishop Ralph of Canterbury (1114–22) relates in significant terms the accord concluded between Thomas and Lanfranc (‘Lanfranco et primae sedi reconciliatur’).Footnote ¹⁸ The prologue to the Gesta pontificum (c. 1125) of William of Malmesbury is even more explicit. The chronicler, true to the identity of office of primates and patriarchs laid down by Anacletus – ‘patriarchas vel primates qui unam formam tenent, licet diversa sint nomina’ – elevates thereby the bishop of the ‘first see’ of Canterbury to the rank of primate and patriarch of all England (‘totius Angliae primas et patriarcha’).Footnote ¹⁹

A juridical anchorage such as this was not, however, enough to create unity. The Norman Anonymous takes up the defence constructed by Ivo of Chartres for the metropolitan of Sens, then resisting the primacy of Lyons. He had recourse to the triple protection of divine law, decrees of the holy Fathers and custom to deny any foundation to the profession of obedience which the primate of Canterbury expected from the archbishop of York.Footnote ²⁰ Hugh the Chanter, inveterate protector of the metropolitan of Northumbria, does not make use of Ivo's arguments, contenting himself with gathering his nuanced positions from the Investiture Contest.Footnote ²¹ The controversy, it is true, had by this time lost the essential element of its raison d'être. In 1120, with the aim of avoiding the conflicts which took place under Lanfranc, Anselm and RalphFootnote ²², Pope Calixtus ii had forbidden all professions of obedience to the primate of Canterbury and had authorised the metropolitan of York to receive the consecration of its suffragans during periods of dispute.Footnote ²³

The second decretal of Anacletus and the primacy of Lyons

On 19 April 1079 Gregory vii sent out two letters by which he confirmed Gébuin, archbishop of Lyons (1077–82), in the primacy over four provinces (‘primatus super quatuor provincias’) and exhorted the metropolitans of Rouen, Tours and Sens to submit to him.Footnote ²⁴ This was done by virtue of the authority of writings (‘scripta propria’) and decrees (‘decreta’) emanating from Roman pontiffs. These terms go back, not to privileges accorded by the reforming popes, nor to false ones drafted in the entourage of the beneficiary, but to the Pseudo-Isidorian forgeries. Looking for an alternative to the standard interpretation according to which the papacy was both the initial promoter of the primacy of Lyons and the origin of the choice of canonical citation,Footnote ²⁵ one might suppose that Gébuin was responsible for the exhibition of the decretal of Anacletus which was transcribed in the second papal letter. The petition presented by the archbishop of Lyons, who went himself to Rome at the beginning of 1079, can be located in a very precise context. At the Council of Poitiers (1078), his primacy over the province of Tours had been seriously contested, although his predecessor Humbert (1065–76) had exercised, in this same province, the right of appeal appropriate to a primate.Footnote ²⁶ The pontifical concession of 1079 cannot, therefore, be regarded as a terminus ante quem non – Horst Fuhrmann talked of a Gründungsjahr Footnote ²⁷ – and a prior local use of the False Decretals must be deduced. This is the only way to explain the appearance of the primatial title and the gradation of ecclesiastical jurisdiction from Tours to Lyons. Faced with difficult circumstances, Gébuin looked for support for the primacy from Pseudo-Isidore. Writing to the archbishop of Tours he describes the letter of Gregory vii as the confirmation of many privileges of Lyons (‘in privilegio pro nobis ab eo facto quo confirmat cetera Lugdunensium dignitatum privilegia’).Footnote ²⁸ The second decretal of Anacletus, known through the numerous copies of the False Decretals, was the first amongst them. This interpretation is supported, though for a later period, by the testimony of the Norman Anonymous, who shows that papal decrees (‘decreta pontificum’), and that of Anacletus in particular, formed part of the proofs invoked by Hugh (1082–1106), successor to Gébuin, to obtain the submission of the archbishop of Rouen.Footnote ²⁹ This canonical reference, inserted in the letter addressed to the three metropolitans of Rouen, Tours and Sens, served the purpose of calling them back, with regard to Gébuin and his successors, to a form of obedience (‘obedientia’) comparable to that required from suffragans. Stemming from an extreme reading of the text of Anacletus and, perhaps it worked in this direction, of a transposition onto the continent of the experiences of Lanfranc of Canterbury,Footnote ³⁰ the performance of a profession of obedience to the primate of Lyons is not documented before the holding of the general council of Clermont (1095).Footnote ³¹ Whereas the obedience of the archbishop of Tours had been obtained in the past, the metropolitan of Rouen, absent from the council, was given three months to render it up. It was for him that the Norman Anonymous wrote one of his tracts in the first years of the twelfth century. Moreover, Henry i of England (1100–35) was later to exempt him – or one of his successors – from this obligation towards the primate.Footnote ³² Following his refusal, Richer of Sens was, for his part, deprived of the pallium and placed under interdict. He died in December 1096 without having given satisfaction. Even the consecration of Daimbert, the archbishop-elect, reserved to the first suffragan of Chartres and his coprovincials, was postponed by Hugh of Lyons who claimed, before the consecration, the obedience due to the primate.Footnote ³³ In a letter to Urban ii, Ivo of Chartres responded that such a request was attested neither by the canons (‘leges’) nor by custom (‘consuetudo’).Footnote ³⁴ It seems that Ivo attached little importance to the decretal of Anacletus, which he nevertheless knew very well, having included it in his own canonical collections, the Collectio tripartita, the Decretum and the Panormia.Footnote ³⁵ In April 1099 Daimbert of Sens, who had received papal consecration, was finally constrained to acknowledge the primacy of Lyons.Footnote ³⁶ In the hands of Pope Urban ii, he committed himself to hold Hugh and his successors for his primates and to go to the city on the Rhône to make his profession of obedience.

A further use of the second decretal of Anacletus concerns the cognizance of episcopal cases by the primate. This letter sustained the interventions of Humbert and Gébuin in the province of Tours. Josserand of Lyons (1107–18) considered himself faithful to its spirit when he summoned the archbishop of Sens and his suffragans to the Council of Anse (c. 1111–12), to deal with diverse ecclesiastical matters.Footnote ³⁷ Ivo of Chartres responded once more.Footnote ³⁸ This time, however, he no longer neglected the decretal of Anacletus, and indeed used it to reduce the prerogatives of the primate to the reception of appeals alone. According to the testimony of Abbot Geoffrey of Vendôme, the argument of the suffragan was none the less refuted by Daimbert. By promising to obey Josserand as his primate (‘omnem oboedientiam illi tanquam suo primati promississe’), the metropolitan of Sens completed a new profession of obedience, unheard of since the episcopate of Hugh.Footnote ³⁹

Pseudo-Isidore and the primacy of Toledo

In the Iberian peninsula at the time of the Reconquista, the proclamation of the primacy of Toledo was linked to the re-establishment of the metropolitan see. Two years after the granting of the foundation charter of the cathedral by King Alphonse vi of Castile,Footnote ⁴⁰ Archbishop Bernard of Sédirac (1086–1124) obtained from Pope Urban ii a general privilege which granted the pallium and the dignity of primate of the kingdoms of the Spains (‘in totis Hispaniarum regnis primas’).Footnote ⁴¹ This significant event was recorded in the Liber pontificalis and in the Collectio britannica.Footnote ⁴² The basis of the papal privilege, which declares that it conforms to the decrees of the holy Fathers (‘sanctorum [patrum] decretales institutiones’), is not easy to determine. The formula was connected to canonical collections from which Archbishop Bernard would have drawn his extracts with the intention of producing them in the court of Rome. But the expression may have concealed, more simply, one of the numerous juridical citations of the correspondence of Urban ii, motivated by the collections in use under his pontificate – as the Collectio of Semur (Collectio remensis).Footnote ⁴³ The canons coming from the Collectio Hispana could seem to support Toledo's case.Footnote ⁴⁴

Four centuries after the counciliar decree of 681 (Toledo XII, c. 6), which gave him the right to consecrate bishops, under royal control and by delegation of the metropolitans, the primate of the Spains found himself invested with a judicial sovereignty without precedent. The charter of Alphonse vi, without mentioning his status of primate, granted Bernard of Toledo the power to judge bishops, abbots and clerics of the Castilian empire (‘ut episcopos et abbates seu et clericos mei imperii qui preesit huic eclesie prevideat iudicandos’). The papal letters insisted, for their part, on the devolution to the primate of major cases between bishops (‘gravia’) whilst still preserving, in certain circumstances, recourse to the apostolic see.Footnote ⁴⁵ These exceptional powers have been associated with Cluniac reformist ideas.Footnote ⁴⁶ Archbishop Bernard of Toledo, who ran the monastery of Sahagún before his election, had in fact benefited from the intercession of Hugh of Semur, abbot of Cluny (whose niece Constance was none other than the queen of Castile), with Urban ii, himself a former black monk.

From that time on, however, the influence of Pseudo-Isidore would never be totally excluded.Footnote ⁴⁷ The prerogatives conferred by the pope as regards appeals seem, in fact, to be close to those evoked by the apocryphal letters of Clement and Anacletus. A native of southern France, Bernard of Sédirac cannot have been a stranger to the False Decretals which inspired the papacy. Several collections from Aquitaine containing Pseudo-Isidorian material, such as the Liber tarraconensis (v. 1085–90), may have circulated in Spain. At this stage of the investigation it remains difficult to say more on this matter. The obscurity dissipates in the course of the twelfth century, as the different metropolitan sees were restored. At the moment of his promotion, Diego Gelmírez, first archbishop of Compostela (1120–40) after the transfer of Mérida's status, was invited to go to León in order to render obedience to the primate of Toledo, as laid out in advance by the holy canons (‘pro primatu obedientiam, quam sacri canones metropolitanis primatibus suis exibere precipiunt, nobis exibeatis’).Footnote ⁴⁸ This reference almost certainly implies familiarity with the second letter of Anacletus. Late and indirect though it may have been, the introduction of the False Decretals into the peninsula owes much to the reforming clergy. The Polycarpus (c. 1111–13) of Gregory, cardinal presbyter of St Grisogono, which was dedicated to Diego Gelmírez, may have been a point of transmission.Footnote ⁴⁹ Preceding the general council of Rheims, and the formative tour made by Raimundo of Toledo (1148),Footnote ⁵⁰ this early evidence (c. 1120) marks the start of conversion to Pseudo-Isidorian primacies. The professions of obedience regularly demanded of the metropolitans of Braga, Compostela and Tarragona from the beginning of the 1140s, and the adoption of the primatial title in Toledo (‘totius Hyspanie primas’) are other essential stages in this process.Footnote ⁵¹

This acculturation was assured by the diffusion of Gratian's Decretum (c. 1140) and, with it, of the decretals relative to primates.Footnote ⁵² In this way the archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada (1209–47), who between 1216 and 1218 was engaged in the Roman curia in litigation with the metropolitan of Braga,Footnote ⁵³ adapted an expression from the second letter of Anacletus (‘in capite provinciarum’) to denote his own see as the caput Hispaniarum. He also drew from the ‘dictum ante Gratiani’ of the same canon (D. 99, c. 1) – bishops must appeal to primates against judgements given by metropolitans and not the other way round – to maintain the idea of a gradation of appeals and to affirm that the Portuguese archbishop, placed under the jurisdiction of Toledo's primate, could not immediately make recourse to the apostolic see. His point of view thus tangibly differs from that developed, some decades before, by the primate of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, who interpreted the same passage to support the papal centralisation of major cases.Footnote ⁵⁴ Around 1230 the libellus reported by Roffredo of Benevento, advocate of the metropolitan of Compostela against the primate of Spain, and taken up in his Libelli de iure canonico (1237) recalled once more that the iura primatie of Toledo found their origin in the holy canons (‘sacri canones’).Footnote ⁵⁵ Without doubt, the formula referred to the second decretal of Anacletus, one part of the prologue of which Roffredo had taken care to cite.

The ‘Gregorian constitution’ and the forgeries of Christ Church, Canterbury

From the start the dispute between Canterbury and York produced competing interpretations of the letter sent by Gregory the Great (22 June 601) to the missionary bishop, Augustine, charged with establishing the framework of a new Church in England.Footnote ⁵⁶ On the model of Roman provincial organisation and the apostolic tradition, the pope announced the foundation of two metropolitan sees, in London and York, each with twelve suffragan bishoprics. Cited by Archbishop Thomas at the papal curia (October 1071), then at the Council of Winchester (Easter 1072), the constitutio gregoriana served to defend, against Lanfranc, the original equality of the two metropolitans of York and Canterbury. From Augustine's time onwards, claimed Thomas, only seniority of consecration mattered in episcopal dignity. The literal reading of this document – the pope clearly distinguished between the primacy of England granted to Augustine and the situation which would pertain after his death – was not without its difficulties, however. Concerned with the balance between London and York, the Gregorian constitution said nothing about Canterbury. Exploiting this weakness, Lanfranc strove to repeat that the document was of no significance in the case at issue. The assembly held at Winchester backed his opinion. If it could not profit York, the letter of Gregory the Great legitimated, on the other hand, the superior powers of Canterbury over the whole Church of England – from which the northern province was not exempt. This involved treating as one and the same Augustine's two roles, that of ‘Apostle of the English’ and that of the first metropolitan of Canterbury, since he had settled in the former royal palace of the king of Kent. With the support of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica (731), Lanfranc underlined that the successors of Augustine had held for 140 years – that is until the concession of the pallium to the bishop of York (735) – a primacy over Britain and Ireland (‘super Eboracensem aecclesiam totamque insulam quam Britanniam vocant necnon et Hiberniam primatus’) that had expressed itself in the convocation of councils and the reception of professions of obedience at the consecration of various bishops.Footnote ⁵⁷

At the beginning of the twelfth century, the Norman Anonymous inherited the arguments of the Church of York. He indicated that although the ‘epistola beati Gregorii’ had granted the primacy of all England (‘totius Anglie primatus’) to the bishop of the English as well as to the Church of London – there was no question of it being Canterbury – it envisaged that after the death of Augustine precedence should fall to the first bishop of the two to have been ordained (‘qui prior esset ordinatus’).Footnote ⁵⁸ The Chronicle of the archbishops of York does not deviate from this line.Footnote ⁵⁹ At Canterbury, on the other hand, the exhumation of a theory elaborated at the end of the ninth century, in John the Deacon's Life of St Gregory, had significant consequences. To Gregory the Great was attributed the project of creating three metropolitan sees at Canterbury, London and York, the first with precedence over the two others. This perspective, sketched out in the letter of Archbishop Ralph to Pope Calixtus ii, was developed, at the end of the century, in the Actus pontificum of Gervase of Canterbury.Footnote ⁶⁰

At Easter 1072, in the royal chapel at Winchester, the Gregorian constitution formed the first link in a chain of papal privileges – centred on the seventh to ninth centuries, they continued until the time of Leo ix – invoked by Lanfranc in the presence of the papal legate Hubert. The list of these documents, addressed to the archbishops of Canterbury and the Anglo-Saxon kings, is reported to Pope Alexander ii.Footnote ⁶¹ Their similarity to the letters rejected at Rome in 1123 – the ‘Canterbury forgeries’ – has led to the belief that most of these acts had been interpolated between Easter and Pentecost 1072, before the royal court at Windsor.Footnote ⁶² Concern to avoid the discovery of the subterfuge is used to explain the relatively unimportant place they hold in the argument. Another view sees in them forgeries fabricated by the monastic chapter at Christ Church, in its rivalry with the neighbouring abbey of St Augustine (1060–70), and discreetly put to use by Lanfranc.Footnote ⁶³ These suppositions come up against several difficulties. It is hard to believe, to begin with, that the archbishop of Canterbury would have held himself back from using acts made to measure or transformed with care for his purposes. Yet, the fact that the two lists from 1072 and 1123 do not match perfectly, the second list being that transmitted by the chroniclers Eadmer and William of Malmesbury and in two Christ Church manuscripts dating from the twelfth century, remains the principal objection.Footnote ⁶⁴ Unlike his community, pushed to falsification by the changing realities of the monastic world, Lanfranc could provide evidence for his primacy by putting forward extracts from Bede's Historia ecclesiastica and some well chosen original charters, furnished with appropriate formulae. The styles of address of the letters and the modes of designating prelates would doubtless have been adequate for his purposes.Footnote ⁶⁵ In 1121 the desperate search for an apostolic privilege changed the stakes. Working from the corpus put together by Lanfranc – which explains the meeting points between the two lists – the partisans of Canterbury made additions, removals and interpolations. The enterprise led to nine fresh letters, from Pope Boniface v (619–25), Pope Honorius i (625–38), Pope Vitalian (657–72), Pope Sergius i (687–701), Pope Gregory iii (731–41), Pope Leo iii (795–816), Pope Formosus (891–6) and Pope John xii (955–63). Produced in 1123, in the form of copies, by Archbishop William of Corbeil (1123–36), they were declared suspect by the judges of the papal curia.Footnote ⁶⁶

Toledo and its Visigothic origins

The journey to Rome undertaken by Archbishop Bernard of Toledo (1088), with the aim of having his primacy over the kingdoms of Spain confirmed, was associated with the compilation of a short collection of proofs. Contained in Toledo cartularies of the first half of the thirteenth century and in a manuscript of the cathedral library of Burgo de Osma including Ivo of Chartres's Panormia and the acta of the synod of Segovia (1166), the ‘Exceptio de dignitate Toletane ecclesie’ collects together six interpolated texts from the early seventh to the mid-ninth century: two letters from Bishops Braulio of Zaragoza and Isidore of Seville to the metropolitans of Toledo, a eulogy of Felix of Toledo for his predecessor Julian, two citations attributed to Beatus of Astorga and Álvaro of Cordoba as well as a decree of the Visigothic king, Gundemar (c. 610).Footnote ⁶⁷ Perhaps presented in this state, this composite collection would form the main point of the request addressed to Pope Urban ii.Footnote ⁶⁸ Recent work, more attentive to the textual tradition, has pushed back the Exceptio to the thirteenth century, unless the composition of a first version, modified in the 1230s, should be situated in the course of the twelfth century.Footnote ⁶⁹ This refinement of the chronology resolves the strange contradiction involved in suggesting that Bernard of Sédirac, first representative of the secular generation of Toledo's Frankish archbishops, had immersed himself in the Hispanic Christian literature. This seems unlikely given that all his reformist activity, centred on the implantation of Roman customs, distanced him from it in a radical fashion, in contrast to the Mozarabic community and to the Castilian monarchy, which took up this weighty heritage at the same time. Receptive to doctrines forged across the Pyrenees, under the double patronage of Pseudo-Isidore and Pseudo-Dionysius, Toledo's twelfth-century archbishops showed themselves little sensitive to the virtues of the Iberian past.

From the 1180s accession to the see of Toledo by prelates from the peninsula coincided with the rewriting of local history which developed in the following decades. The basis of the primacy over Spain consequently moved. At the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) the defence of Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada manifested once more, in the face of the archbishop of Compostela, the strength of the French legend of Eugenius.Footnote ⁷⁰ The right arm of the Apostle and first bishop of Toledo, sprung from the Dionysian source of legitimacy, had been carefully preserved, for more than a half century, in the treasury of the cathedral.Footnote ⁷¹ Against St James, the miraculous appearance of the Virgin to Archbishop Ildefonso bears witness, on the other hand, to the rediscovery of the Visigothic golden age. The pretensions of the primate over the metropolitans of Narbonne and Seville derived from a similar logic. In 1215 the archbishop of Toledo obtained the promise of jurisdiction over Seville, as soon as it returned to Christendom. During this contentious debate, Rodrigo affirmed that he possessed irrefutable evidence (‘alia plura privilegia et munimenta et scripta’) of his superior power. This piecemeal research bears no comparison, however, with the veritable documentary fever which seized Toledo after the general council. At the time of the cases heard at the Roman curia (1216–39) between the primate and the metropolitans of Braga and Compostela, classical authors and Visigothic conciliar canons joined in the struggle.Footnote ⁷² This polemical context added to the stakes raised by the situation in Seville, a formidable rival whose submission to Toledo had been confirmed by Honorius iii in a privilege from 1218.Footnote ⁷³ At the beginning of the 1240s the historiographical aspect of the dispute is captured well by the differences between the Chronicon mundi of Lucas of Túy and the De rebus Hispanie of Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada.Footnote ⁷⁴ The former, a one-time canon of San Isidoro of León, upholds the translatio primatie from Seville to Toledo in the reign of Chindasvinth (642–53). The latter is the committed partisan of an almost timeless Toledan primacy. Using as his source a specific group of documents, reported in the Libri de primatu ecclesie Toletane, the archbishop historian worked up much the same froth that he had produced as primate. The Notule de primatu, nobilitate et dominio ecclesie Toletane were for him a first-class canvas.Footnote ⁷⁵ At their heart lay a long version of the Exceptio (Note excepte digne memoria de primatu ecclesie Toletane). Including three more texts – amongst them the sixth canon of the Twelfth Council of Toledo (681) – it focused, like its predecessor, on the creative exploration of origins.Footnote ⁷⁶

The primacy of Armagh: St Patrick and the loca patriciana

In Ireland, the primacy of Armagh rested exclusively on the memory of St Patrick, the missionary bishop (‘Hiberione constitutus episcopus’) active in the middle of the fifth century and presumed founder of the bishopric.Footnote ⁷⁷ At the beginning of the twelfth century the position of the successors of Patrick (‘comarbada Pátraicc’) was not unknown to reforming legates. Meeting in 1111, the Council of Ráth Breasail generalised the diocesan framework, at the expense of Celtic monastic structures, and put in place the first supports of the two metropolitan provinces of Cashel and Armagh, to which twelve suffragan bishops were to be assigned. The propagation of Gregorian principles was in perfect harmony with the maintenance of the pre-eminence of Armagh. The holder of the see thus subscribed to the decisions of the council as archbishop and primate over all the bishops of Ireland.Footnote ⁷⁸ This use of the primatial title was not unrelated to the model proposed by the primate of Canterbury, who received professions of obedience from the bishops of Ireland. Furthermore, the Liber de statu ecclesiae (1111) of the papal legate Gilbert of Limerick, the essential guide for the reformer written in straight connection with the Anglo-Norman Church,Footnote ⁷⁹ shows a fine knowledge of the primates, defined as the superiors of between one and six metropolitans.Footnote ⁸⁰ According to the Clonenagh annals, it was not until the Council of Kells (1152), which instituted the four ecclesiastical provinces of Armagh, Cashel, Dublin and Tuam, that the legate John Paparo, holder of the pallia, elevated the archbishop of Armagh to the dignity of primate (‘Armachanum archiepiscopum in primatem super alios prout decuit ordinavit’).Footnote ⁸¹ A list of the provinces and bishoprics of Ireland, transcribed at the end of the twelfth century in a manuscript of the abbey of Pontigny, even designates him as primate of all Ireland (‘primas totius Hibernie’).Footnote ⁸² Moreover, the Life of St Malachy of Armagh (1132–48), composed by Bernard of Clairvaux a little before the Council of Kells, refers to that same metropolitan city as the ‘first see’ (‘prima sedes’).Footnote ⁸³ This linkage, in the middle of the twelfth century, between the tradition of St Patrick and the False Decretals reflected back on the saint. In his Topographia hibernica (1188), Gerald of Wales, who relates the establishment made by Patrick at Armagh after the conversion of the island, suggests that in this way the place became a quasi-metropolis (‘quasi metropolim’) and the primatial see of all Ireland (‘proprium totius Hiberniae primatiae locum’), an expression directly derived from the title of the archbishops of Armagh.Footnote ⁸⁴

In the thirteenth century the disputes relative to the primacy of Ireland crystallised around the procurations which the primate intended to collect when he visited the loca patriciana situated outside his provincial domain. The ancient catalogues, which delimited the paruchia Patricii, probably served to determine the churches which, by virtue of their foundation by the saint, depended from the authority of Armagh. After the debates concerning the metropolitan rights of Armagh and Tuam, from the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) to the pontificate of Gregory ix,Footnote ⁸⁵ the ‘primatie iura’ of the former see became a contentious issue in its own right. In 1244 the archbishop of Armagh asserted that his predecessors had always enjoyed primacy over Ireland, which had been uncontested until the pontificate of Honorius iii, and that the metropolitans of Cashel and Tuam – the name of Dublin is deleted in the papal register – were wrongly attempting to free themselves from it. The possessions (‘possessiones’) mentioned in their respective provinces, whose jurisdiction is disputed, surely indicate the lands of St Patrick.Footnote ⁸⁶ In 1255 Alexander iv granted the archbishop of Armagh the right to visit the province of Tuam iure primatie, every five years and for a maximum of twenty-seven days.Footnote ⁸⁷ The decision to fix the regularity and the length of the visitation strongly recalls the rule promulgated by Gregory ix (1232) to define the prerogatives of the primate of Bourges in the province of Bordeaux.Footnote ⁸⁸ Yet, concentrated on the churches of St Patrick, the polarised visitation of the primate of Ireland remains none the less highly original.

The catalogues of cities

On 1 December 1095 Urban ii confirmed the primacy of Hugh of Lyons, condemning the attacks which Richer, archbishop of Sens, had made against the authority of the ancient catalogues (‘catalogorum antiquitas’).Footnote ⁸⁹ Ivo of Chartres, in a letter to his metropolitan, also evoked the catalogues of cities (‘catalogi civitatum’) which lay at the foundation of the primacy of Lyons.Footnote ⁹⁰ These documents, which served as proofs before the papacy, can be seen to be exemplars of the Notitia galliarum (c. 400).Footnote ⁹¹ Both the enumeration of cities which make up the seventeen provinces of Gaul, unique in the heart of the laterculi provinciarum, and also the wide diffusion of the list in the Middle Ages – more than a hundred copies can be counted from between the ninth and the twelfth century – make this association certain. For the prelates who put it to use, the Notitia galliarum was held to be a list of bishoprics instituted by the first popes, in continuity with the pagan divisio provinciarum. From the middle of the ninth century, the tomus which Anacletus said he had attached to his third decretal was clearly identified with the Notitia. This perspective justified compiling together, in the same manuscripts, extracts from the False Decretals with lists of provinces and cities.Footnote ⁹²

Unlike metropolitanae civitates and civitates, the ‘first sees’ (‘primae sedes’) of the False Decretals do not refer to any particular level in the organisation of the Notitia galliarum. The identification of the metropolitan of the first province as a primate, with authority over inferior provinces, became the rule. In 1079 the four ecclesiastical provinces submitted to Archbishop Gébuin correspond, in order, to the former Lugdunenses I–IV. The Norman Anonymous derisively takes apart the mechanism in action, when he notes that the primate of Lyons drew his inspiration from his leading position in the catalogue (‘quia in catalogo prior scribi videtur’) in order to claim the obedience of the metropolitan of Rouen.Footnote ⁹³ Although he recognised that the limits of the provinces had been defined by the holy Fathers, Josserand went as far as to maintain that the four Lugdunenses constituted one and the same area. To summon the archbishop of Sens and his suffragans to the Council of Anse (c. 1111–12), in the diocese of Lyons, was not to act extra provinciam. This organic conception of the primacy – in which Lugdunensis prima and Lugdunenses secundas (II–IV) form respectively the ‘caput’ and the ‘membra inferiora’ – expresses a growing territorialisation.Footnote ⁹⁴ In the light of Pseudo-Isidore, the employment of the Notitia galliarum also led to the use of the legend ‘prima sedes Galliarum’ on Lyons denarii, once Archbishop Humbert and his chapter had acquired the right to mint coins.Footnote ⁹⁵ It gave birth, some decades later, to a new episcopal title. Hugh and Josserand both proclaimed that they were bishops of the ‘first see’ (‘primae sedis Lugdunensis ecclesiae episcopus’), a title taken up by Ivo of Chartres in the addresses of the letters he sent to them.Footnote ⁹⁶ This exploitation of the Notitia galliarum was not unique to the see of Lyons. Three privileges of Popes Urban ii (1097) and Paschal ii (1099, 1107) in fact confirmed the primacy of Narbonne over the province of Aix by virtue of the hierarchy between the two Narbonenses.Footnote ⁹⁷ In the first third of the twelfth century, the papacy reinforced the authority of Bourges over the provinces of Bordeaux and Auch, the metropolitan cities of Aquitaniae II–III.Footnote ⁹⁸ An anonymous seal used by Richard (1071–93) and Léger (1099–1120), archbishops of Bourges, may have been engraved with the title of primate of Aquitaine (‘primax Aquitanus’) – if it is not a false one produced between 1125 and 1150.Footnote ⁹⁹ Moreover, from 1185 onwards, long after the recognition of the primatus of Bourges over the province of Bordeaux by a general privilege of Eugenius iii (1146), the formularies of the episcopal chancery adopted the title of primate of Aquitaine (‘Aquitanie primas’).Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Recognised in 1119–20 by Pope Calixtus ii, the primacy of Vienne is quite distinct from its homologues. Taking the form of a papal legation ad sedem, it invests the primate, vicar of the pope, with the authority to summon synods and to judge ecclesiastical matters in the provinces of Vienne, Bourges, Bordeaux, Auch, Narbonne, Aix and Embrun.Footnote ¹⁰¹ This vast area of activity matches up with the limits of the diocese of Viennensis, or the Seven Provinces. The Epistolae viennenses – a local collection compiled, in different stages, between the episcopates of Ado (860–75) and Guy (1094–1119)Footnote ¹⁰² – were presented as the body of evidence in which was preserved the memory of the civil organisation of the middle of the third century.Footnote ¹⁰³ The mention of a catalogue (‘catalogus’) in two letters of the collection – one of which is a forgery attributed to Gregory vii (1077)Footnote ¹⁰⁴ – puts us on the track of the Notitia galliarum.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ In fact, the pontifical privileges enumerate the provinces subordinated to the primate of Vienne in the exact order of the second section of the list (‘de provinciis numero septem’), without any possible comparison with the Laterculus veronensis (312–14). The manuscript tradition of the Notitia galliarum adds further support. Some exemplars describe Narbonenses I–II and Alpes Maritimae as Second, Third and Fourth Viennensis. In the same way, the special exception from which the province of Tarantasia benefited – it did not pertain to the Seven Provinces but its metropolitan had to obey the primate of Vienne – is not comprehensible without the copies of the Notitia which attached Alpes Graiae et Poeninae to the province of Vienne. Turning the list in his favour, the holder of the see of Vienne, the first named of the Seven Provinces, considered that he had the right to assign himself sovereignty over this immense area. This principle probably inspired the archbishops of Vienne, successors of St Maurice, to make a new inscription (‘S. Mauricius Vienna maxima Galliarum’) on local coinage from the twelfth century onwards.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

Ancient histories and canons of the Roman pontiffs

The advent of historical culture changed the modes of access to the Notitia galliarum. Thus at the Council of Rheims (1148), the archbishops of Lyons and Trier abandoned catalogues of cities in favour of ancient histories.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ It falls henceforth to authentic chronicles (‘apud veteres hystoricos’, ‘in antiquis hystoriis’) to prove that the first see of the Gauls (‘prima sedes Galliarum’) has authority over the metropolitan cities of Rouen, Tours and Sens, whereas the metropolis of Belgica I ought to prevail over that of Rheims, situated in Belgica II. Historians of the twelfth century did their best to bring up to date the cosmographies attributed to the ancients, from Caesar to Isidore of Seville, via Solinus, Eutropius and Orosius. Relating the succession to Ralph of Burgundy (1032), the chronicle of Otto of Freising (1143–5) recalls the division of Transalpine Gaul into three parts – Belgica, Lugdunensis and Aquitania – and notes at once that the primates of Trier, Lyons and Bourges were intended to control each of these territorial units (‘Unde et tribus his Galliis tres primates preesse volunt, Belgicae Treverensem, Aquitanicae Bituricensem, terciae Lugdunensem’).Footnote ¹⁰⁸ To these traditional divisions the chroniclers sometimes added the seventeen provinces of the Notitia galliarum, a list which they found reproduced in canon law and classical manuscripts. Thus, on the subject of the conversion of Gaul, the chronicle of Hugh of Flavigny (c. 1103) integrates a list of provinces and cities into its narrative. Dry notes, similar to those employed in pontifical privileges, are intermixed with a more elaborate passage, linked to the particularity of Lyons, in which the legend found on the coinage of the first city of the Gauls and the extent of its primatial territory are placed alongside one another (‘Prima sedes Galliarum Lugdunensis est cum tribus suis provinciis, Rotomagensi, Turonensi et Senonensi’).Footnote ¹⁰⁹ In recounting the election of John Bellesmains (1182–93), Robert of Torigny, abbot of Mont-St-Michel (d. 1186) is quick to say that Lyons holds primacy over three archbishoprics. At the same time he puts forward the list of the four Lugdunenses, reduced to their respective metropolitan cities.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Using this work for his Abbrevationes chronicorum, Ralph of Diceto (d. 1201) goes so far as to turn to John Bellesmains to discover more about the division of the Lugdunenses.Footnote ¹¹¹ Confronted with a version of the Notitia galliarum following the Nomina provinciarum (‘Polemii Silvii Laterculus’) – the lists, placed under the authority of Burchard of Worms, must have been transcribed at the head of an exemplar of the Decretum – the dean of St Paul's of London perceived the hiatus which separated these diverse nomenclatures from the heritage passed down by antiquity. He asked the archbishop of Lyons to cite a specific pontificate for the creation of the four Lugdunenses and to state how long the metropolitans of Rouen, Tours and Sens had complied with canonical injunctions before disobeying them in the recent past (‘hiis diebus’). John Bellesmains responded that Pope Anacletus had stipulated in his third decretal that the sees of Lyons, Rouen, Tours and Sens should occupy respectively first, second, third and fourth place. Moreover, he suggested that the ordained organisation of the primitive Church (‘quasi primitivae ecclesiae ordinatio’) had remained inviolate until the failure of the archbishop of Sens to submit in the time of Urban ii, justifying the call to order made at the Council of Clermont (1095). But this radical perspective, which accords to Anacletus the provisions of the Notitia galliarum, had been bubbling under the surface for some decades. From 1148 the primate of Trier had in effect maintained that the hierarchy between the two metropolitan cities of Gallia Belgica found its basis in ancient histories as much as in the canons of the Roman pontiffs (‘canones Romanorum pontificum’).

The canon Conquestus

The Council of Rheims was also the theatre for the first claims of Peter of La Châtre, archbishop of Bourges (1141–71), over the metropolitan province of Narbonne. The pointed restraint in the Notitia galliarum – the city of Narbonne did not form part of Aquitaine – deserves to be examined further. The primacy of Bourges over Narbonensis and the designation of this see as a patriarchate (‘patriarchatus’), in the face of the threat from the primate of Vienne, rest on an interpolated letter of Pope Nicholas i addressed to Ralph of Bourges (c. 864) on the subject of the rights exercised quasi iure patriarchatus over the clergy of the province of Narbonne.Footnote ¹¹² At the very end of the eleventh century this papal letter appears – from an unknown source – in the collections of Ivo of Chartres and is cited on many occasions in the bishop's correspondence.Footnote ¹¹³ In a significant way, the addressee of the letter, Ralph of Bourges, transformed himself, between 1097 and 1112, from Bituricensis archiepiscopus to Aquitaniarum primas.Footnote ¹¹⁴ However, limiting the powers of the primates and the patriarchs to that which was determined by the holy canons and custom, the letter served above all to protect Daimbert of Sens against the machinations of the primates of Lyons, Hugh and Josserand. Having entered into the juridical arguments of Bourges at the beginning of the 1130s (‘diligentique Aquitanie primatis providentia […] suaque patriarchali auctoritate’),Footnote ¹¹⁵ the reference turns up as expected before the fathers of the general council of Rheims. When he commented on the letter of Nicholas i, which had become the canon Conquestus in Gratian's Decretum,Footnote ¹¹⁶ Stephen of Tournai (c. 1165) did not fail to report that it was still the object of contradictory interpretations from Bourges to Narbonne.Footnote ¹¹⁷ The success of the canon explains the adoption of the patriarchal title on the seals of the archbishops of Bourges, a usage which lasted through to the end of the thirteenth century.Footnote ¹¹⁸ In the order of bishops (‘ordo episcoporum’), the presence of the primates of Aquitaine amongst the minor patriarchs corresponds to the same principle.Footnote ¹¹⁹ By virtue of the analogy established by Popes Anacletus and Nicholas i, it seemed coherent to unite the dignity of patriarch with that of primate of the provinces of the Notitia galliarum. In his commentary on the second decretal of Anacletus (D. 99, c. 1), where he takes up the terminology of the ancient chronicles, Stephen of Tournai thus makes the archbishop of Bourges, primate of Aquitanian Gaul (Aquitanica Gallia), into the superior of the three metropolitans of Narbonne, Bordeaux and Auch.Footnote ¹²⁰ Until the compilation of the Liber extra (1234), which included some parts of the Bourges-Bordeaux dispute (1230–1), the chapter Conquestus remained the only canonical citation mobilised by the primates of Aquitaine. Going beyond the literal reading (‘de Burdegalensi non invenitur’), Roffredo of Benevento did not hesitate to invoke this text in the libellus that he produced at the Roman curia (c. 1230) against the metropolitan of Bordeaux. Associated with other evidence favourable to the primate of Bourges, the canon Conquestus is part of the sacri canones which convinced Pope Gregory ix of the sound basis for the request.

In the western Church of the second half of the twelfth century, the diffusion of Gratian's Decretum and the flourishing of the scientia canonica, permitted by the circulation of ecclesiastical elites, contributed without doubt to the promotion of the juridical figure of the primate. Conceived in the False Decretals, this dignity became the subject of scholarly exegesis in the Bolognese, Franco-Rhenish and Anglo-Norman schools.Footnote ¹²¹ The canonists of the thirteenth century inherited this patrimony, whilst taking account of the cases judged at the papal curia. William Durand thus mentions the archbishops of Toledo, Canterbury and Bourges – alongside the holders of the sees of Aquileia and Grado – amongst the primates catalogued in his Speculum iudiciale (1271–6).Footnote ¹²² But superficial similarities – the use of the primatial title and the privilege of crossbearing – should not be allowed to conceal the great diversity of detail, born from contrasting encounters between Pseudo-Isidore and local ecclesiastical structures. Without even invoking the points of intersection between primacies and apostolic legations,Footnote ¹²³ analysis of the systems of proof has thrown light on the differing relationship of each primate to the territory he claimed.

The primates of England, Spain and Ireland, heirs to long traditions of pre-eminence, did not succeed in going beyond honorial precedence. The obedience of the metropolitans, really considered and partially applied, was not admitted in these regions. Debate concentrated more on the crowning of sovereigns and the presidency of clerical assemblies. Despite their Pseudo-Isidorian appearance, these primacies pertain to the model of Landesprimat found in the empire (Mainz)Footnote ¹²⁴ and, by extension, on the margins of Christendom under Germanic influence, in Scandinavia and eastern Europe. More effective than the division of provinces attributed by the primate of Toledo to the Visigothic King Wamba, the Notitia galliarum offered, on the contrary, an opportunity to develop a genuine superior jurisdiction (‘ius primatus, ius primatie’) – summoning to council, right of visitation and reception of appeals – where the metropolitan became, in a certain sense, the primate's suffragan. If the primate of Trier, deprived of Belgica II (Rheims), has little in common with his colleague of Bourges, a true canon law archetype, the French exception remains very real.Footnote ¹²⁵ It continued until the end of the Middle Ages. Hemmed in by the affirmation of papal plenitudo potestatis and the normalisation of supra-metropolitan prerogatives in the thirteenth century, reduced to nothing by the establishment of the curia at Avignon, the primacies of Lyons, Bourges and Vienne found service once more at the time of the Great Schism (1378–1417) and of the Pragmatic Sanction (1438–61). Gregorian vestiges erected against papal control of benefices and legal proceedings, the primates of the kingdom took part henceforth in the genesis of the Ecclesia gallicana.