- ASMMF
Anglo-Saxon manuscripts in microfiche facsimile
- BAV
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; CCCC = Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
- CCSL
Corpus Christianorum Series Latina
- CSEL
Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
- DA
Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters
- JK, JE, JL
Philipp Jaffé, Regesta pontificum romanorum ab condita ecclesia ad annum post Christum natum MCXCVIII, 2nd edn, ed. Ferdinand Kaltenbrunner (to 590), Paul Ewald (to 882) and Samuel Lowenfeld (to 1198), Leipzig 1885–8, repr. Graz 1956
- MGH
Monumenta Germaniae Historica
- Capit. n.s.
Capitularia Regum Francorum, Nova Series
- Epp.
Epistulae
- Epp. Sel.
Epistulae Selectae
Anglo-Saxon canon law is a branch of history that remains little studied and little understood. Pre-Conquest England has rarely attracted the attention of historians of canon law, in part because evidence for traditional forms of canon law in England prior to the eleventh century is very slight, and in part because of the inherent difficulty of interpreting and contextualising the scarce evidence that is available. This article will address the question of evidential difficulty in due course. First, by way of introduction to the subject of Anglo-Saxon canon law, it will be useful to consider briefly the kind of evidence available as well as possible explanations for its scarcity.
Not surprisingly for a subject cutting across the early Middle Ages, the problems most endemic to the study of Anglo-Saxon canon law are those that relate to issues of preservation. For example, it seems that Anglo-Saxon church councils promulgated a relatively small corpus of canons. If one discounts the modest number of episcopal capitularies as well as the great number of secular law codes (where in fact there lurks a considerable amount of ecclesiastical law) produced in Anglo-Saxon England,Footnote 1 then only four series of conciliar canons survive from Anglo-Saxon councils, all enacted between 672 and 816. Yet the possibility exists that much evidence of Anglo-Saxon conciliar activity – and so of conciliar canons – has been lost.Footnote 2 Indeed, this is especially likely in light of the fact that so few Anglo-Saxon manuscripts in general survive from before the Viking invasions of the ninth century.Footnote 3 If a poor manuscript survival rate is one reason why so few Anglo-Saxon canons have come down to us, then another may be a general lack of effort directed toward textual preservation on the part of the Anglo-Saxons themselves. Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics, unlike their continental counterparts, showed no interest in compiling the indigenous canons of their Church into a representative or ‘national’ canon law collection.Footnote 4 Thus, there is relatively little for the legal historian to work with in terms of what one might call a ‘native’ Anglo-Saxon canonical tradition.
In fact, until relatively recently, scholars have found little evidence to show that canon law collections of any origin – English, Irish or continental – figured nearly as predominantly in the Anglo-Saxon Church as they did on the continent. This fact is of the utmost importance for understanding the still nascent state of the study of Anglo-Saxon canon law. The small body of evidence for canon law collections in pre-Conquest England has allowed the Anglo-Saxon tradition to slip through the drag-net of mainstream canonical historiography – canon law collections being, after all, the principal objects of study for historians of medieval canon law.Footnote 5 In the early medieval West, canon law collections, or collectiones canonum, were the standard vehicle by which the canon law was transmitted. They acted as repositories of both ancient and recent church law, of canons enacted by popes and episcopal councils, and of statutes that were of local importance.Footnote 6 In most Christianised regions of the early medieval West, the genre of the canon law collection enjoyed universal success. Collections of great variety – in size, format and purpose – served as the benchmarks of the canonical tradition(s) that had been in development since the Church's foundation. In contrast, very few collections survive from England for the Anglo-Saxon period. With the exception of the two major ‘Insular’ collections – the collectiones Hibernensis and Wigorniensis (or Excerptiones Pseudo-Ecgberhti) – there seemingly is little manuscript evidence to show that Anglo-Saxons knew of or used most of the canon law collections that had grown so popular on the continent.Footnote 7 What is rather more in evidence, and what has received a great deal more attention from scholars since the nineteenth century, is Anglo-Saxon interest in an alternative genre of law-book known as the penitential handbook, a legal manual that focuses on the pastoral concerns of the priesthood (crime and personal sin) over the administrative and juridical concerns that are the traditional hallmark of the bishop-oriented canon law collections.Footnote 8 Indeed, penitential handbooks have gained a degree of celebrity among Anglo-Saxonists, who have long studied them for their rich social, political and (in the case of the Old English penitentials) linguistic value.Footnote 9
All of this has led historians to interpret the Anglo-Saxon Church primarily as a domain of the penitential, rather than of the canon law collection. Implicit in this historiographical point of view is the assumption that these two genres of canonical literature vied with one another for the attentions of their ecclesiastical audiences, in a sort of zero-sum competition. In this way could the success of the penitential in Anglo-Saxon England explain the failure of the canon law collection, and vice-versa.Footnote 10 As most recently articulated, this view holds that the Anglo-Saxon Church participated in an ‘insular tradition of ecclesiastical law’, that is a tradition marked by the transmission of especially penitential texts, and by methods of codification and compilation that distinguished it dramatically from the continental Church.Footnote 11 But, prevalent as this view is, it is not entirely accurate and requires qualification.
To be sure, there was something distinct about Insular canonical culture. Recent scholarship, particularly on the Hibernensis and the Theodorian penitential tradition, has highlighted how Insular, especially Irish, ecclesiastics often fell back on canonical sources that would have been viewed as unconventional by their continental counterparts.Footnote 12 Among Insular (though again especially Irish) ecclesiastics a marked tendency to compile patristic, scriptural and penitential sentences into short libelli has also been noticed,Footnote 13 which is in stark contrast to the continental practice of assembling vast collections of authoritative conciliar and papal judgements. Moreover, the first penitential handbooks originated in the ascetic monastic communities of the early Irish Church, and from there they travelled to England, and thence to the continent. This path of transmission, scholars have long believed, left an indelible mark on the canonico-legal landscape of Anglo-Saxon England. It is significant, for instance, that from at least the tenth century the Anglo-Saxons were engaged in efforts to translate (and rebrand as their own) certain continental penitential handbooks into their vernacular, something that does not seem to have occurred on the continent.Footnote 14 Such an early and apparently whole-hearted embrace of the Irish penitential as a source of church law and discipline would seem to point to the existence in England of a rather different conception of the nature of canonical authority than was current on the continent.
On the other hand, modern historians have overestimated the influence that Irish conceptions of canon law had on Anglo-Saxon legal culture in general, and on Anglo-Saxon canon law in particular. In part this is due to historians' tendency to lump Anglo-Saxon England together with Ireland in accounts of the early development of western canon law.Footnote 15 The early Irish Church certainly did have a special relationship with penitential law, which was part of an overall Irish canonical tradition that was idiosyncratic in many ways.Footnote 16 But the extent to which the idiosyncrasies of the Irish canonical tradition penetrated the heavily Romanised Anglo-Saxon Church can easily be overestimated. Rather, the Anglo-Saxon Church must have been influenced as much, if not far more, by continental canonistic ideas than by Irish ones.
This can be seen particularly in Christian England's earliest period, where there are clear indications of deep continental influences – especially Italian and Frankish – running through the Anglo-Saxon canonical tradition.Footnote 17 The early Anglo-Saxon Church's receptivity to foreign traditions is well established,Footnote 18 as is demonstrated, for example, by one of its foundational documents. The Libellus responsionum, a decretal letter written by Pope Gregory the Great to Augustine of Canterbury in the late sixth century, enjoyed an exceedingly warm reception in the English Church, where it circulated in both Latin and (after the ninth century) Old English.Footnote 19 Italian canonical influence in England goes far beyond the Libellus, however. There were already Italian canon law collections in use in Canterbury, and probably also Northumbria, in the seventh century. The earliest for which there is evidence is the sixth-century collection known as the Sanblasiana (or Italica), perhaps imported to England by Theodore or Benedict Biscop, or maybe even St Augustine himself.Footnote 20 There is also continental evidence which suggests that Anglo-Saxons may have known other collections at this early stage, namely the Italian collectiones Dionysiana I Footnote 21 and Dionysiana II,Footnote 22 and the (possibly Italian) Quesnelliana,Footnote 23 all composed in the sixth century. All this in the way of pre tenth-century evidence. With respect to the later Anglo-Saxon period, recent research into the works of Archbishop Wulfstan (†1023) and the library that he played a part in assembling at Worcester has revealed how canon law collections, particularly Frankish ones, were a significant source of inspiration for reform movements in the later Anglo-Saxon Church.Footnote 24
Clearly, then, continental canon law collections must have played an important role in the conceptualisation and development of ecclesiastical law and custom in the Anglo-Saxon Church. The present study considers an important example of this by presenting new evidence for the transmission and influence of an important Gallic canon law collection, the Collectio vetus Gallica, in England during the late and possibly also the early Anglo-Saxon period. The influence of the Vetus Gallica on pre-Conquest England has been suggested before but never proven. However, certain Anglo-Latin texts written in the later Anglo-Saxon period all but confirm Anglo-Saxon familiarity with this collection. To understand the significance of the evidence, it will be necessary to explore the history of one of the Vetus Gallica's sixth-century sources. The point of departure, then, is an encyclical letter written by Caesarius, metropolitan bishop of Arles from 503 to 543.
Caesarius, Pseudo-Hormisdas and the Collectio vetus Gallica
In 533 a council convened at Marseilles and presided over by Caesarius condemned Contumeliosus, bishop of Riez, for the crimes of fornication and dissipation of ecclesiastical property. The council sentenced Contumeliosus to perform penance for a time in a monastery at Casensis and to pay for whatever property he had alienated from Riez's cathedral.Footnote 25 A record of the council's decision was dispatched to the bishop of Rome, Pope John ii, who upheld the council's judgement in three respondent letters issued the following year – one addressed to the bishops of Gaul, one to the clergy of Riez, and one to Caesarius himself.Footnote 26 The pope went further than Marseilles, however, and called for the immediate deposition of Contumeliosus from his office as bishop of Riez, claiming that it was impossible for one convicted of such crimes to administer the sacraments. To support this position, the pope subjoined to his letter to Caesarius (JK 888) a short series of Dionysian canons that, taken together, require anyone unanimously convicted of a serious crime (fornication, in particular) to be expelled from holy orders with no hope of reinstatement. Apart from its relevance to the Contumeliosus controversy, the letter is important as the earliest example of the papacy's (unofficial) endorsement of the collectiones Dionysianae, compiled only a few decades earlier.Footnote 27
Pope John's letter was well received by Caesarius, who in turn circulated it throughout his own province. Before doing so, however, Caesarius appended to it a long encyclical letter of his own (written c. 534) in which he added further support to the pope's arguments for Contumeliosus' deposition. This appended letter will be referred to here as Caesarius' Letter, though it has long gone under the designation Pseudo-Hormisdas (‘Ecce manifestissime’), JK †868, for reasons which are discussed below.Footnote 28 The resulting Johanno-Caesarian dossier that circulated throughout southern Gaul would serve to proclaim the authority of both metropolitan and pope, and to buttress their cause during the controversy that followed the conviction of Contumeliosus.Footnote 29
In his Letter Caesarius adduced canonical precedents of his own, this time drawing not on the Dionysian collections, but rather on a collection containing Gallic canons, probably one akin to the mid sixth-century collectiones Coloniensis and Laureshamensis, both of which originated in southern Gaul.Footnote 30 Having cited his canonical authorities at the outset, Caesarius begins his letter:Footnote 31
Thus it stands most plainly, according to what is contained in the titles of the ancient Fathers transmitted by the holy Pope John, and in the opinion of the 318 bishops, and even in [our own] Gallican canons, that clerics accused of adultery who have either confessed it themselves or been convicted by others cannot return to their office.
Caesarius' letter then proceeds to argue at length (it is about eight times as long as Pope John's) against those who think such canons too severe, and against whomsoever would extend ‘false mercy’ to those who in fact deserve stern correction. I would like to dwell a little further on Caesarius' sentiments, for they are relevant to the argument below. Caesarius warns that it is ‘injurious kindness to pander to the criminous and let their wounds go uncured until the day of Judgement’.Footnote 32 He remonstrates that showing indulgence and laxity to, or accepting flattery and blandishment from, the confessedly guilty makes the sinner worse off. What is more, he says, to do such is to ‘forget what is written in the Old Testament, that for one man's sin did God's wrath rage against all. Oh how pious, oh how merciful, to spare one and drag all into danger through bad example!’ (this last and bitterly sarcastic remark brilliantly foreshadowing the letter's climax).Footnote 33 He continues: ‘and so, consider carefully whether it can or ought to happen that we should show contempt for the canons of such great and excellent sacerdotes as we have mentioned above, and presume to observe or act contrary to the ways they established’.Footnote 34 The whole of the Letter builds towards the presentation of two Old Testament exempla, the first concerning the terrible events that befell the Israelites because the high priest Eli failed to rebuke his ill-behaved sons (1 Samuel iii.13; iv.10–18), the second concerning how the high priest Phinehas, moved by zeal, unhesitatingly dispatched two adulterers who lay together while the rest of Israel wept, thus freeing his whole people from God's wrath (Numbers xxv.6–11).Footnote 35 These exempla, Caesarius says, demonstrate how ‘it is better for each of us to endure humility and shame for a short time in this world, than to arrive at eternal punishment afterwards’.Footnote 36 Both exempla also clearly illustrate the blurring of the boundaries between personal and corporate guilt, a theme that runs through the entirety of Caesarius' Letter.
Not long after 534, the approximate date of its composition, Caesarius' letter was incorporated into several canon law collections in southern Gaul, namely the collectiones Corbeiensis, Coloniensis, Laureshamensis and Remensis.Footnote 37 Only in the Collectio Remensis was the full Johanno-Caesarian dossier included, that is Pope John's letter to Caesarius (JK 888) with the Dionysian canons attached, followed by Caesarius' selection of Gallican canons and then his own Letter.Footnote 38 The text immediately preceding this dossier in the Collectio Remensis is a decretal of Pope Hormisdas, and this is important.Footnote 39 In the Remensis, Hormisdas's decretal concludes with the words ‘Explicit epistola Ormisdę’ and is followed immediately by the incipit for John's letter to Caesarius. The Remensis's compact explicit-incipit is in fact written in such a way as to make the referent of ‘epistola Ormisdę’ somewhat ambiguous.Footnote 40 A later careless copyist or excerptor could have been led to think that the following Johannine letter, with its Caesarian appendix, was also a decretal of Hormisdas. Indeed, it appears that early on someone did exactly this, excerpting the Johanno-Caesarian dossier and mistakenly ascribing the whole to Hormisdas; and later, when Caesarius' Letter became separated from John's and began to circulate by itself, it retained the ascription to Hormisdas. This may well be how Caesarius's letter came to be circulated in the Middle Ages under the false inscription ‘Hormisdae’.
Caesarius's Letter was already attributed to Hormisdas when it was incorporated in the middle of the eighth century into the Collectio canonum vetus Gallica,Footnote 41 a collection read and copied widely throughout Francia from the seventh to the ninth century. Originally compiled in Lyons sometime between 585 and 627, the Vetus Gallica was revised at the end of the seventh century at Autun, and again at Corbie in the middle of the eighth century.Footnote 42 It is the Corbie recension, which includes an important ‘appendix’ of additional canonical texts, that has come down to us. There are two forms of the Vetus Gallica in which Caesarius' Letter figures: in the ‘north-French’ Vetus Gallica tradition the Letter appears among the works forming the Corbie appendix;Footnote 43 and in the ‘south-German’ tradition the Letter appears as the final chapter of book xvi, on how clergy can be deposed.Footnote 44 From the Vetus Gallica, the Letter entered a number of other manuscripts and canon law collections, and eventually enjoyed a wide dissemination.Footnote 45
Caesarius' Letter in late Anglo-Saxon England
Portions of Caesarius' Letter are quoted in a handful of Latin works from late Anglo-Saxon England, all of which are connected to Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester (1002–16) and archbishop of York (1002–23). The first is a short sermon on pastoral duty and priestly responsibility probably composed by Wulfstan himself. Titled (in some manuscripts) Admonitio spiritalis doctrinae, the sermon consists essentially of excerpts from Scripture, Isidore's Sententiae and Caesarius' Letter. It has been edited from four manuscripts by James E. Cross, who did not recognise the Caesarian source.Footnote 46 All four manuscripts are part of the so-called ‘Commonplace Book’ tradition, an important group of English manuscripts containing collections of liturgical, canonical and sermonic texts assembled at Worcester during Wulfstan's tenure.Footnote 47Admonitio spiritalis doctrinae addresses itself to priests (‘praedicatoribus’, ‘pastores’), and invokes the pastoral duty to cry out against sinners (‘clama, ne cesses’; cf. Isaiah lviii.1). It places particular emphasis on the dangers of cajoling the sinful with flattering words, and quotes Cyprian to that effect (‘Cyprian says: he who cajoles the sinner with flattering words stokes the fire of sin, and does not suppress that one's faults but rather foments them’).Footnote 48 The public reproach of sinners, when necessary, is encouraged, and the priest is advised not to fear reprisal or secular repercussions for speaking out (this by way of the familiar imagery of the wolf and ‘mercenary pastor’ in John x.11–13). Reticent priests are equated to canes muti, mute dogs, unable or unwilling to bark at those who would threaten the safety of their flocks. The dangers of reticence and the rewards of conviction are aptly illustrated by the concluding accounts of Eli and Phinehas, which have been taken verbatim from Caesarius' Letter.Footnote 49 The quotation from Cyprian is also taken from Caesarius' letter, as are two other passages, namely ‘What is that [but] injurious kindness, to pander to the criminous’, and ‘it is written in the Old Testament, that for one man's sin did God's wrath rage against all’.Footnote 50 The Caesarian material has been retooled to fit a new context. The Old Testament exempla now demonstrate how spiritual leaders who fail to reprove with a declamatory voice the sins of their flocks will bring peril not only upon themselves but also upon their own people (compare Caesarius' theme of corporate guilt). This theme appealed in particular to Wulfstan, who preached similar warnings to the English elite in his celebrated Sermo lupi ad Anglos.Footnote 51
In one of the four Commonplace Book manuscripts, Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Barlow 37, the entire text of Admonitio spiritalis doctrinae has been appended to a longer sermon for priests titled De pastoribus ecclesie, quomodo uigili cura et sedula ammonitione populum dei perducant ad pascua uite, undoubtedly of Wulfstanian authorship as well.Footnote 52 This larger, composite text is an extended meditation on the themes of spiritual shepherding found in John x.11–13, and consists of a catena of quotations from Scripture, Isidore, Alcuin, Caesarius' sermons, Pope Gregory i and the Collectio Hibernensis.Footnote 53 This composite text is also found in a fifth Commonplace Book manuscript, BL, ms Cotton Nero A. i, fos 70–177 (1003×1023, Worcester or York, bearing corrections in Wulfstan's hand), where it is titled De veneratione sacerdotum, though here portions of the pendent Admonitio spiritalis doctrinae have been excised;Footnote 54 only Caesarius' Eli exemplum has been retained, which has been made to serve as the text's rather abrupt conclusion.Footnote 55
Caesarius' Letter is also quoted in a pair of related (and unprinted) Anglo-Latin tracts which extol the value of penance when imposed properly upon criminals. Titled De inproviso iudicio secularium and De excommunicatis qui inviti ad penitentiam provocantur, these works occur next to each other in two Commonplace Book manuscripts; both were, again, probably composed by Wulfstan.Footnote 56 Each concludes with ‘it is better for each to weep [plangat] and do penance for the short time that they live in this world, and to endure humility and shame for their sins than to arrive at eternal punishment afterwards’, which corresponds (with slight amplification) to lines 224–6 of Caesarius' Letter.Footnote 57 As these lines also occur in the conclusion to Admonitio spiritalis doctrinae, however, it is impossible to tell which text was the immediate source for the author of De inproviso and De excommunicatis. Though they are rather short, these two texts are interesting examples of the sort of exhortatory legal-sermonic tracts commonly found in Commonplace Book manuscripts. Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe has noticed that De inproviso may be a direct source for one of Wulfstan's law codes for King Æthelred.Footnote 58De excommunicatis, too, may be of further interest to legal historians: its call for obstinate excommunicants to be forced to perform penance ‘against their will’ (‘inviti’) may be unique in medieval penance literature.Footnote 59 As with the other Anglo-Saxon texts discussed so far, De excommunicatis and De inproviso are intricately related, structurally and thematically, to other Commonplace Book texts. In their immediate manuscript context they stand as part of a series of tracts dealing with obstinate criminals. Another text in this series, De incestuosis et homicidis – the source for which is ch. ii.41 of Ansegis's Collectio capitularium – was clearly the first of the three tracts to have been written, De excommunicatis and De inproviso being later developments of themes introduced therein.Footnote 60 While the sources – Ansegis and Caesarius – that inspired this series of texts are continental in origin, there is no reason to suppose (as O'Keeffe and others have) that the texts themselves are.
The final Anglo-Latin work to quote Caesarius' Letter is also a Commonplace Book tract. The Frankish Paenitentiale Pseudo-Theodori, originally compiled in the early to mid-ninth century, perhaps near Reims or Mainz, is found in seven manuscripts dating from the ninth to the twelfth century.Footnote 61 One of these is the Commonplace Book manuscript Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, ms 190, where the Paenitentiale is preceded and followed by additional penitential chapters. The main sources for these chapters (where they can be identified) are the Paenitentiale of Halitgar, the Paenitentiale attributed to Ecgberht, Defensor's Liber scintillarum, and the Paenitentiale Pseudo-Theodori itself. Nearly all of these additional chapters are found, in one form or another, in other Commonplace Book manuscripts and probably were never meant to be considered part of the Paenitentiale Pseudo-Theodori.Footnote 62 This, along with the fact that one can detect in the various versions of these chapters a process of textual experimentation and adaptation not unlike that seen in the other Commonplace Book texts, strongly suggests that Wulfstan was behind their composition.
One of the chapters that precedes the Cambridge copy of the Paenitentiale Pseudo-Theodori is titled De temperantia penitentum. It requires that capital crimes committed by clergy be expiated by a measure of penance appropriate to the offender's rank.Footnote 63 A list of standard penances for capital crimes is given, ranging from five years for a ‘canonicus’ to twelve years for a bishop; but a qualification is added to the effect that, whereas ‘lighter sins’ (‘peccatis leuioribus’) may warrant relaxation of these standard times (five to twelve years), ‘parricide and other abhorrent crimes’ allow for no such indulgence and are to be met with the strict measure of penance.Footnote 64 What follows next will be familiar:Footnote 65
Because, as Cyprian says, who cajoles the sinner with flattering words stokes the fire of sin, and does not suppress that one's faults but rather foments them. Pope Hormisdas says: what is that [but] injurious kindness, to pander to the criminous and let their wounds go uncured until the day of Judgement. Elsewhere it is written: both those who do and those who consent suffer the same penalty [cf. Romans i.32].
All but the final sentence (‘Elsewhere it is written …’) has been taken verbatim from Caesarius' Letter. Nevertheless, Caesarius was not the direct source; rather this entire passage has been lifted verbatim from a longer section in Admonitio spiritalis doctrinae.Footnote 66 Interestingly, the author of De temperantia has excised almost all of the additional (and interspersed) material from the Admonitio spiritalis doctrinae passage which could not also be found in Caesarius' Letter. This would be an impossible coincidence, unless the author of De temperantia had detailed knowledge of which sources Admonitio spiritalis doctrinae was using at this point. This is simply to say that the pattern of borrowing between these texts is best explained as the result of the work of one and the same author.
That this person was Archbishop Wulfstan seems eminently probable, given the manuscript context of these works, their relationship to his known sermons, and his actual participation in the copying of one of the extant copies of De temperantia.Footnote 67 Moreover, the recurrent theme of penance, particularly clerical penance – not to mention the subject of episcopal deposition prevalent in Caesarius' original letter – are matters that are most suitable to an archbishop's commission. Further study of the material in the Commonplace Book manuscripts will likely reveal additional ways in which the texts considered here are linked to Wulfstan and his corpus.
The Vetus Gallica and the Collectio Wigorniensis
Caesarius' Letter may have found its way onto English soil by a number of different routes. Transmission with the Vetus Gallica, however, seems most likely, because readings from the Commonplace Book texts match closely the readings of the version of Caesarius' Letter that circulated with this canon law collection.Footnote 68 It has in fact been suggested before that the Vetus Gallica may have had some influence in Anglo-Saxon England, based on evidence from the early eleventh-century English Collectio Wigorniensis.Footnote 69 In 1975 Hubert Mordek suggested the possibility that the Vetus Gallica was a source for a series of several canons in the Wigorniensis.Footnote 70 Martin Brett has also acknowledged the Vetus Gallica as a likely source for the earlier and shorter A recension of the Wigorniensis.Footnote 71 Scholars have thus long suspected a relationship between these two collections, though no one has yet proven or demonstrated the full extent of this relationship. While a full discussion of the points of contact between the Vetus Gallica and Wigorniensis cannot be given here, a brief summary of the most significant parallels can be provided.
It is highly probable that chapters 17–28 of the A recension of the Wigorniensis derive from the Vetus Gallica.Footnote 72Wigorniensis A 23 offers a particularly important parallel between the two collections because it transmits Nicaea 18 in the unusual versio Rufini form, so-called because it derives from the translation of the Nicaean canons found in Rufinus of Aquileia's Historia ecclesiastica;Footnote 73 the Rufinian version of Nicaea 18 is also found in Vetus Gallica 13.5. Moreover, the Rufinian version of Nicaea 4, also transmitted in Vetus Gallica 5.1, is found in a section of a Wigorniensis B manuscript that has yet to be printed.Footnote 74 Yet another Rufinian canon, Nicaea 10, again also transmitted in Vetus Gallica 7.1, has been copied into the margin of a Wigorniensis B manuscript by a hand nearly contemporary to the main scribe's.Footnote 75 No other collection containing the Rufinian translation of Nicaea is known to have circulated in Anglo-Saxon England. It is therefore likely that the source for these Wigorniensis canons was the Vetus Gallica.Footnote 76 A further link with the Vetus Gallica is suggested by another canon (also unprinted) found in two Wigorniensis A manuscripts: this canon abbreviates a popular passage on marital chastity from Augustine's Sermo 392.Footnote 77 The same passage is found in Vetus Gallica 49.3, with readings very similar to those found in the Wigorniensis manuscripts.Footnote 78
The parallels between the Vetus Gallica and the series of canons in Wigorniensis A 17–28, along with the unprinted canons from Wigorniensis manuscripts mentioned above, are strongly suggestive of the Wigorniensis's dependence upon the Vetus Gallica. Unfortunately, and despite centuries of work on the subject,Footnote 79 source study on the Wigorniensis is still incomplete, and further research is needed before such a relationship can be proven beyond a doubt. Such research will be greatly worthwhile. Not only might it confirm the relationship between the Wigorniensis and the Vetus Gallica, but it is sure to deepen our understanding of how the legal culture of late Anglo-Saxon England was shaped by the canon law of the continent.
A few final, cautionary words are required on the Wigorniensis and its putative authorship by Wulfstan. The most recent editors of the Wigorniensis have established, on reasonably sound grounds, that the collection exists in at least two recensions: a shorter, earlier recension (A), and a later, revised and expanded one (B).Footnote 80 While this basic recensional division holds true enough for the purposes of the present argument, it should be recognised that the textual tradition is actually far more complex than this.Footnote 81 If the Vetus Gallica was a source for the Wigorniensis, then it was clearly used far more extensively in the A recension than it was in the B recension; indeed, it may not have been used in the making of the B recension at all.Footnote 82Wigorniensis B was certainly compiled at Worcester shortly after A's completion, probably by WulfstanFootnote 83 and probably in fresh consultation with law books available in Worcester's library. Wulfstan has of course long been associated with the Wigorniensis.Footnote 84 The collection is, after all, found only in manuscripts of the Commonplace Book tradition, and it often served Wulfstan as a source for his Latin and vernacular works.Footnote 85 But while we can likely hold him responsible for creating the longer, expanded B recension, it remains to be seen whether or not he can be credited with compiling the original A recension. In fact, there are strong indicators that different authors were responsible for each.Footnote 86 Among such indicators is the distinct impression that the compiler of A was considerably more learned and focused than was the person responsible for B.Footnote 87 Nevertheless, if it turns out that the Vetus Gallica was used in Wigorniensis A (as I suggest it was), and if it is true (again as I suggest) that Wulfstan knew of Caesarius' Letter from a copy of the Vetus Gallica, then the argument for Wulfstan's authorship of Wigorniensis A will be strengthened significantly. At the very least, the evidence presented above gives good reason for believing that the Vetus Gallica, in one form or another, was available at Worcester in the early eleventh century, and possibly elsewhere in England as well.
Tracing the Vetus Gallica's journey to England
It remains to investigate when and how the Vetus Gallica might have arrived in Anglo-Saxon England. Corbie Abbey, the locus for the last major redaction of the Vetus Gallica, was the product of an infusion of Irish monks from Luxeuil in the seventh century. Insular connections would thus naturally have been fostered there from an early time.Footnote 88 Part of the Corbie monks' work in redacting the Vetus Gallica in the second quarter of the eighth century involved the incorporation of texts of Insular origin or association, some of which were only several decades old at the time, including the Hibernensis, the Libellus responsionum and the collection of Theodorian judgements assembled by the discipulus Umbrensium (i.e. the Paenitentiale Theodori [U]).Footnote 89 This indicates the influence, if not the direct input of Insular personnel in the redacting process. The question thus arises: were Anglo-Saxons present at the creation of the Corbie Vetus Gallica, and did they participate in its early dissemination in the North? This question is difficult to answer with precision; nevertheless, evidence can be adduced in favour of the view that they were and that they did.
At the same time as the Vetus Gallica was being transformed in the scriptorium at Corbie, Anglo-Saxon scribes and ecclesiastics were at work in a number of centres throughout Germany.Footnote 90 Foremost among these was St Boniface, reformer, papal legate and dedicated proponent of the Roman (and English) canonical traditions.Footnote 91 Boniface's reforming efforts were directed chiefly towards the nascent Church in the regions of Thuringia and Hesse, but he also took an interest in the English, Bavarian and French (Austrasian) Churches. Scholars have in fact found indications that Boniface maintained direct contact with the Corbie community.Footnote 92 Recent work by Ludger Körntgen has even suggested that this contact may have influenced how the Vetus Gallica took shape there. Körntgen observes how ‘it appears remarkable … that the further additions and accompanying texts in the Corbie-redaction of the Vetus Gallica address questions with which Boniface saw himself as confronted’.Footnote 93 Moreover, as noted above, for their work in expanding the Vetus Gallica the Corbie monks would have had to rely upon canonical materials hot off the press, as it were, some of which were probably supplied to them by Anglo-Saxon missionaries newly-arrived on the continent:Footnote 94
the material that was assembled in Corbie and transmitted together with the Vetus Gallica mainly originated from very recent sources still not widely available in Francia, such as the Collectio Hibernensis, the Roman Synod of 721 and the Theodorian collection of the discipulus Umbrensium. [The new material] was also extremely relevant, for it addressed problems that were discussed in the second quarter of the eighth century in the Frankish Church, particularly under the direction of … Boniface.
Given these connections, it is of further significance that Grimo (or Grimoald), the Corbie abbot (694–747) who directed the process of redacting the Vetus Gallica, seems to have maintained a close relationship with Boniface, and may even have owed to Boniface his promotion in 744 to the newly-created see of Rouen.Footnote 95 At all events, Michael Glatthaar has shown that, even if Boniface did not play a direct role in the redaction of the Vetus Gallica at Corbie, by 739 he had certainly encountered the collection during his activities in Bavaria and travels through Lombard Italy, where he used it to aid in his efforts for church reform.Footnote 96
In the light of possible Anglo-Saxon connections to the Vetus Gallica on the continent, particularly its rebirth at Corbie in the eighth century, a number of manuscripts containing that collection stand out in particular. Bibliothèque royale Albert 1er, Brussels, ms 10127–44 (363), copied by several hands, bears a script showing Insular symptoms; it originated in north-east France at the turn of the eighth and ninth centuries, probably at a centre under Anglo-Saxon influence.Footnote 97 Another manuscript of interest is Universitätsbibliothek, Würzburg, ms M.p.th.q. 31 (late eighth or early ninth century, Germany). This composite codex is made up of two parts: fos 1–41 and 52–9, containing a lengthy abridgement of the Hibernensis and a collection of miscellaneous canons and works (including some attributable to Boniface), all of which were copied at a continental centre under Insular influence, possibly by an Anglo-Saxon scribe working within Boniface's circle;Footnote 98 and fos 42r–51v, a ‘booklet’ originally separate from the rest of the codex but which became bundled with it shortly after its creation. This booklet is actually a partial copy of the Vetus Gallica that Roger Reynolds believes was copied ‘in western Germany in a scriptorium under Irish influence’, but that Hubert Mordek believed had been copied in an Anglo-Saxon centre in Germany.Footnote 99 Finally, of great interest is Bibliothèque royale Albert 1er, Brussels, ms 8654–72 (1324), copied c. 800, probably in the Abbey of St Bertin.Footnote 100 The manuscript bears two Old English glosses (fo. 134r–v), an Old English alphabet (‘a–g’; fo. 146v), and the Old English names ‘Godwine fox’ and ‘Wulfric’ (fos 202v, 205v).Footnote 101 Whether these glosses and pen-trials were made by the main scribe(s), or by later owners, is a question that still needs answering. Canonical contents begin at fo. 119 with Charlemagne's Admonitio generalis and Duplex legationis edictum. These are followed by a ‘kleine Kirchenrechtssammlung’ comprising a selection of canonical and patristic texts (fos 127r–132r), several of which are Vetus Gallica canons.Footnote 102 Hubert Mordek showed that the source for these canons was the South German version of the Vetus Gallica (namely Mordek's sigla GEV and S3). This is of particular relevance as it is with a manuscript from the south-German Vetus Gallica tradition that the Wigorniensis shares readings most closely.Footnote 103 It has been suggested that Brussels, ms 8654–72 belonged to a member of Charlemagne's court.Footnote 104 That this individual may have been the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin, one of the foremost members of that court, is not merely wild speculation. First of all, it would help to explain the presence of the Old English glosses and doodles. Moreover, the manuscript contains the Admonitio generalis, which Alcuin is thought to have helped draft,Footnote 105 as well as a collection of creeds tentatively attributed to him.Footnote 106 Lastly, it contains the Sylvestrian accusatorial canon, which Alcuin quoted when he wrote to Bishop Arno of Salzburg concerning the indictment of Pope Leo iii.Footnote 107 Thus, while Körntgen's arguments suggest that Anglo-Saxons were directly involved in the production of the Corbie recension of the Vetus Gallica, the manuscript evidence suggests further that at the close of the eighth century Anglo-Saxons, both directly and through their foundations on the continent, were involved in the dissemination of that collection.
That Anglo-Saxons were involved generally in the spread of canon law collections on the continent in the eighth and ninth centuries is in fact supported by a fair amount of manuscript evidence.Footnote 108 It is fair to conclude, therefore, that contacts between England and the continent in the eighth century led to a sharing and cross-fertilisation of Anglo-Saxon and Gallo-Frankish canonical traditions. It is not unreasonable to assume that the Vetus Gallica, and with it Caesarius’ Letter, was familiar to certain Anglo-Saxons working in Germany in the eighth century, whence it may have been transmitted to England at an early date.
Evidence to support an early (as opposed to a late) arrival of the Vetus Gallica and Caesarius' Letter in England is admittedly scarce, however – though by no means have scholars been searching for such evidence for very long. At present it seems that there is no direct evidence for the transmission of either the Vetus Gallica or Caesarius' Letter in England, until the Letter comes to be used in the Commonplace Book tracts. However, a tantalising lead is provided by the fragmentary manuscript Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Bodley 572 (2026), fos 51r–106v (first half of the ninth century, north-east France).Footnote 109 Fos 51–106v of this composite codex contain a special version of the Vetus Gallica appendix (fos 51r–86r) in the form of a penitential manual, with Caesarius' Letter on fos 76v–80r.Footnote 110 These folios are now bound together with fos 1–50, a tenth-century miscellany of Insular (perhaps Cornish) origin known as the ‘Codex Oxoniensis posterior’.Footnote 111 It is possible that fos 51–106 emanated from an Insular circle on the continent, for their contents are closely related to the equally fragmentary Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen, ms Ny Kgl. Sam. 58 (8°) (first half of the eighth century), which itself may have originated in an Anglo-Saxon context.Footnote 112 Though ms Bodley 572 now only contains material from the appendix of the Vetus Gallica, it is currently missing an unknown number of leaves at its beginning, and so may once have contained that collection in its entirety.Footnote 113 Here, then, is a remnant of an early ninth-century north-French Vetus Gallica manuscript that may (or may not) have arisen in an Anglo-Saxon milieu, and at some point in time it ended up in England – but when?
Fos 51–106 of ms Bodley 572 were certainly in England by the second half of the fifteenth century, by which time they had been bound together with the four volumes that constitute the ‘Oxoniensis posterior’.Footnote 114 However, our portion of the manuscript had certainly arrived in England some time before this, perhaps even long before this, as has been suggested by Helmut Gneuss, who speculates that the manuscript arrived in England before the twelfth century.Footnote 115 If ms Bodley 572 were in England by the eleventh century, it would account for the quotations from Caesarius' Letter in Wulfstan's Commonplace Book, but not necessarily the quotations of the Vetus Gallica in the Wigorniensis. In this connection it is significant that Bodley 572's copy of the Letter reads ‘confessionem’ for ‘confusionem’ (fo. 80r), an error also shared by the version of Admonitio spiritalis doctrinae in the Commonplace Book manuscript Bibliothèque municipale, Rouen, ms 1382 (U. 109), 173r–198v (first half of the eleventh century, England).Footnote 116 Bodley 572 also contains a copy of the Scarapsus Pirmini, a copy which, as Cross and Hamer have shown, shares a number of readings in common with a chapter of Wigorniensis B.Footnote 117ms Bodley 572 may therefore have played a role in transmitting Caesarius' Letter, possibly even the Vetus Gallica, in England in the early eleventh century. It may even have been a manuscript available to Wulfstan himself.
Whether, in the eleventh century, the Letter was a recent textual import or had already long been available in England, the evidence very compellingly suggests that Wulfstan encountered it in or alongside the Vetus Gallica. The author of Wigorniensis A (if, as seems likely, this person was someone other than Wulfstan) was apparently also quite familiar with the Vetus Gallica. It would be truly surprising if these two ecclesiastics had been the first or the only Anglo-Saxons to use this most important Gallic canon law collection. We should, therefore, expect to find further traces of this collection in other Anglo-Saxon works. Anglo-Saxonists need only begin to look.
The standard view of the Anglo-Saxon Church as an institution starkly different from the continent in its approach to canon law needs to be reassessed. In particular, old notions about the Anglo-Saxons' predilection for penitential books of law, as opposed to the more ancient genre of canon law collections, should be reconsidered, with due weight being given to all the evidence for the transmission of continental canon law collections in Anglo-Saxon England and through continental Anglo-Saxon centres. It is important to remember that, for the period under consideration here, the case cannot stand or fall on the basis of manuscript evidence alone. The relatively few extant Anglo-Saxon manuscripts that contain canon law collections cannot be used as evidence that such collections never achieved much currency in the Anglo-Saxon Church, any more than can the complete absence of Anglo-Saxon penitential manuscripts from before the tenth century be used to prove that penitentials were not known or used in England during that time.Footnote 118 Problems of preservation are a major obstacle to the study of Anglo-Saxon canon law. It is well known that in England the problem of poor manuscript survival from before the tenth century is a particularly acute one. Both the Viking invasions of the ninth century and the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth have left us with little in the way of physical evidence for the content of Anglo-Saxon libraries.Footnote 119 As Helmut Gneuss has shown, after the devastation of English libraries in the ninth century, ‘Texts that are known to have been available in the great northern libraries … were no longer to be found in England and had to be imported from the continent.’Footnote 120 Thus, a lack of manuscript evidence need not indicate a complete absence of tradition. Thankfully there is a relatively rich trove of continental canonical manuscripts with links – both direct and indirect – to Anglo-Saxon activities on the continent. Collectively, these manuscripts indicate that Anglo-Saxons were involved in the dissemination of a number of canon law collections in France and Germany during the eighth and ninth centuries.
This evidence, along with a host of canonical texts and manuscripts in orbit around eleventh-century Worcester, paints quite a different picture of Anglo-Saxon canonical activity than is typically depicted in modern surveys of the discipline. That a variety of canon law collections were known to and used by Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics from the seventh to the eleventh century cannot be disputed. That one of these collections was the Vetus Gallica has been demonstrated here. At present it is difficult to determine exactly how influential continental canon law collections like the Vetus Gallica were in Anglo-Saxon England, for so little work has been done on the subject and so many avenues of research remain to be explored. But surely, searching after a merely ‘insular tradition of ecclesiastical law’ will only ever give us part of the overall picture. As a locus of intersection between Irish and continental traditions, the Anglo-Saxon Church naturally inherited a variety of legal customs and possessed a complex canonical heritage. It should come as no surprise that there was a strong continental component to this heritage, particularly in the form of Gallo-Frankish and Italian canon law collections. It remains for future studies to determine more exactly the size and contours of that component.
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