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T H E E N G L I S H C H U R C H I N T H E T H I R T E E N T H C E N T U R Y

IN 1737 DAVID WILKINS published his Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, a work which has ever since been a standard book of reference for students of ecclesiastical history. For the period of its compilation it was a splendid work, and for more than two centuries it has held its place in English libraries. Lately, however, it has become increasingly outdated as a reference-book. Wilkins’ criterion for the inclusion of particular documents was a little arbitrary, and his work has not un- fairly been described as a ‘miscellaneous anthology’, including as it does papal bulls and a very long and detailed account of the trial of the Templars. The text of his entries is not always accurate, and he fre- quently printed from sources now known to be inferior. By the standards of modern research the entries themselves are far from being an exhaustive list of the councils and synods held in England. Finally the index of Wilkins’ work is not always helpful to the modern reader. Not only, being designed for an age better trained in the classics than our own, is it written in Latin, but it is also arranged on principles which are curiously difficult to disentangle. Councils, for example, are listed neither alphabetically nor chronologically, but in the order in which they occur in the text. The baffled enquirer will therefore find that the Council of Chalcedon appears considerably later than the Council of Rockingham.

A new edition of the work, in continuation of Haddon and Stubbs’ Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, was first planned more than thirty years ago on the initiative of the late Sir Maurice Powicke. The present book, the first volumes of this enterprise to appear, is the work of two editors, Professor Powicke himself and Professor Cheney.l No student of the history of the English church will need any assurance that this is a work of outstanding value. I t is superbly edited, with a critical com- parison of all the available MSS. of each entry and a concordance of the texts as printed in Wilkins with other editions and MSS. Moreover, although all the entries (with the exception of a few in Norman French) are in Latin, this fact should not deter the student whose ability to read that language is less than his desire to find out what the thirteenth- century church was doing. Such a reader, as well as those who wish to use the book in order to check references, will find the task lightened

COUNCILS AND SYNODS WITH OTHER DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE ENGLISH CHURCH. Vol. 11, A.D. 1205-1313. Two volumes. Edited by F. M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney. Oxford: Clarendon Press. li + 723 pp. + xiv + 1450 pp. 1964. Ex5 19.

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by reason of the inclusion, under the appropriate dates, of brief but thorough notes on the circumstances in which each document was written, and of extremely useful bibliographies. Subjects of related interest which do not fall directly within the scope of the book- for example the Fourth Lateran Council-are likewise briefly but thoroughly summarized. There are two indices, one of MSS. and one of general subjects. Both are clear and workable, and the general index gives a welcome concession to human frailty in the shape of the dates of each bishop’s tenure of his see. This is a book which ought to be in every serious library, and it is one which all students of thirteenth- century history should buy if they can. I t is not cheap, but like good port it can safely be laid down for one’s successors.

The editors have wisely kept to a rather narrower field than Wilkins, although the products of the intervening years of research have con- siderably increased the amount of material with which they have to deal. Apart from a small amount of miscellaneous but relevant material, such as John’s charter of 1214 or Edward 1’s writ Circumsflecte agatis, the entries fall into two clearly-defined groups, first the acts of legatine and provincial councils, and secondly the acts and statutes of diocesan synods, in each case with relevant related documents. Since most of the synodal statutes, with important exceptions such as those of Quinel for Exeter, were issued before 1265, and most of the councils, again with important exceptions such as the Council of Oxford in 1222 and the Legatine Council in I 237, were held after I 265, there is some difference in the type of material covered by the two volumes. The first illustrates rather more fully the relations of the church with its members and the second those of the English clergy with the Pope and the King. Such contrasts can obviously not be pushed too far.

It is probable that most people who use this book will not sit down to read it straight through. This is a pity, because such a reading gives an extremely good idea of the work of the thirteenth-century church. No detail was too small to escape the eye of the reforming bishop- nettles in a churchyard, the burdening of unfortunate children with foolish names (Zasciva nornina), the exasperating conduct of priests who, debarred from revealing the sins of their penitents, fell back upon such dark hints as Ego scio vos quuales estis, the primitive superstition of those who refused to marry in the time of a waning moon or to walk barefoot after having received Extreme Unction. Guidance in pastoral ministra- tion strikes one as extremely sound. Bishop Poore’s statutes for Salisbury, for example, contain an injunction, which was often reiterated, that confessors are to frame their questions ‘so that those who have com- mitted sins are given a chance of confessing them, and those who have not are provided with no new ideas for sinning’. Repeated legislation against clergy who make provision in their wills for concubinae or arrange for their sons to inherit their benefices suggest the continuance of a relationship which was traditional in England before the Conquest and

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often, in all but name, a faithful marriage. On the other hand, the darker aspects of social life are briefly but sufficiently indicated in the lists of offences for which general sentences of excommunication had to be published four times a year, or the ruling of the Council of Oxford that no-one knowingly is ‘to retain thieves in his service for the purpose of robbery’, whiIe a note of complaint recurrent throughout history is struck by Bishop Posre’s statement that parents have recently become notoriously lax in bringing up their children.

I t is clear by the fact that Langton published his first synodal statutes in 1213/4, at the very beginning of his effective archiepiscopate, that the Fourth Lateran Council can no longer be regarded as the source from which flowed all the reforms of thirteenth-century England. Rather, as Professor Cheney has shown in other works, reform is some- thing inherent in the church itself, a society which has never been free of abuses and yet never devoid of reformers. I t is the sheer bulk of the work accomplished by these medieval bishops which should leave their successors exceedingly grateful.

In the latter part of Henry 111’s reign and in those of Edward I and 11 the documents become more concerned with the regular meetings of councils and convocations, with the problems incidental to the heavy taxes levied by both Pope and King, and with the complaints of the clergy against such persons, be they seculars or friars, as appeared to threaten their position. I t would, however, be wrong to assume that the desire for reform within the dioceses had given way to preoccupation with the problems of the church’s constitutional position and temporal rights. If reforming statutes became rarer, it was because they had already been enacted and were being regularly recited in synods and parish churches. The growth of regular, organized meetings of the higher clergy was nothing new-it was part of a process begun by Theodore of Tarsus, the first English archbishop to enact that councils should meet at regular intervals. Moreover, if the clergy seem, at times, unduly concerned with their own position, it is clear that many of them realized to the full how deep a responsibility they were bound to carry.

Many are the books which have been written about the church in the thirteenth century, and many the thoughtful and considered judge- ments which have been passed upon it. Councils and Synods is not another book about the church-it is the very stuff of its history. Here one can see the church itself-not in doctrinal subtlety or in liturgical splendour, but in the sheer, determined, gruelling hard work which characterized the best of its members. As a book of reference Councils and Synods will have great and lasting value, but it is by reading it through that one comes best to an understanding of the wisdom and scholarship which, in the twentieth no less than in the thirteenth century, have gone to its making. Wesgeld College, London ROSALIND HILL