Saturday 27 October 2018

The Broad Sweep of History


At the huge risk of generalisation, anachronism and non sequiturs here is a broad sweep of some of the historical events near and far, circumstances and persons leading to the Constitutions of Clarendon  :-

Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald troubles with the bishops of the Frankish Empire 

Carolingian Renaissance - Wikipedia

With the reforms inaugurated by Charlemagne, bishops in the Carolingian empire enjoyed a steady growth in their influence. As the political stability of the Frankish empire deteriorated after 830 the episcopate found itself subjected to new and unfamiliar pressures. A coup against Louis the Pious in that year prompted  later in 1835, the deposition of several prominent clerics, including the emperor’s very own milk-brother, Archbishop Ebbo of Reims, at the Synod of Thionville.

Charles the Bald - Wikipedia

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Pseudo-Isidore and the False Decretals

Pseudo-Isidore - An edition-in-progress of the False Decretals

Introduction to Pseudo-Isidore

The False Decretals
U. B.
The Catholic Historical Review
Vol. 9, No. 4 (Jan., 1924), pp. 566-569
Published by: Catholic University of America Press
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25012012

Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals - Wikipedia

Following the Carolingian civil war that followed Louis the Pious’ death in 840 the Gallican and the German episcopates faced a deep uncertainty. A group of monks in North France known to historians under the pseudonym Pseudo-Isidore responded to these forces in a number of different ways. "He" strove to shore up the legal protections afforded to bishops, by enhancing or by the outright invention of a wide variety of procedural protections for accused prelates. Taken together, Pseudo-Isidore’s procedural programme extended a de facto immunity from temporal authority to all accused bishops everywhere.

The Pseuso-Isidorian forgeries sought to subordinate the Frankish church to a legal oversight by the Roman papacy. Pseudo-Isidore’s view was of a Rome-centered Christendom under the Pope. This was an ideological conviction that "he" shared with some of his contemporaries. Rome physically was at the margins of Carolingian political power. It functioned within the forgeries as a distant venue where appeals could be held. By expanding the legal jurisdiction of the Pope and his Court [the Papal Curia], Pseudo-Isidore hoped to withdraw accused bishops and their trials from the influence of the Carolingian rulers and the provincial synods and bring them to Rome to be judged by the Pope. Additionally, Pseudo-Isidore sought to establish a near absolute authority and autonomy of bishops within their own dioceses, and to protect the property of their churches from the depredations of the lay nobility.

The principal purpose of the forgers of the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals was to protect the rights of clerics, clerical property, and bishops from lay control and judicial authority.

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Codification of the Laws of the Faith in the Western Roman Catholic Church

Decretum Gratiani
Constitutions of Clarendon: Canon Law and The Canonical System
Ivo of Chartres - Wikipedia
Constitutions of Clarendon: Decretum Gratiani


Many of Pseudo-Isidore's decretals found their way into the set of laws governing the Roman Catholic Church.

Donation of Constantine
Constitutions of Clarendon: Donation of Constantine

The Donation of  Constantine, although a forgery, confirmed the successors of St. Peter, the Popes the bishops of Rome, as the Supreme Primate of the Roman  Catholic Church.

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Pope Gregory VII and Papal Supremacy

Pope Gregory VII - Wikipedia
Constitutions of Clarendon: On the origins of the Doctrine of Papal Supremacy
Constitutions of Clarendon: Canonical Decretals which empower the Pope
Constitutions of Clarendon: Dictatus Papae, A.D. 1075
Constitutions of Clarendon: Papal Authority
Constitutions of Clarendon: Libertas Ecclesiae

Pope Gregory VII was the champion of Papal Supremacy. He espoused the monastic tradition within the Church and favoured its cause. He wanted to reform and renew the Church, to return it to the state which it had had at the time of the Golden Age of the Fathers of the Church. He wanted to stamp out the heretical sin of Simony, the purchase of ecclesiastical office for money, and to put an end to marriage by clerics, which he deemed sinful. He wanted the whole of the Church to submit to his spiritual authority. This found itself expressed as Libertas Ecclesiae from the temporal control of the secular authorities, like kings and emperors in the countries of Western Europe. But above all he wanted a hierocracy, with the Church and himself at its pinnacle.

Robinson, I. (2004). Reform and the Church, 1073–1122. In D. Luscombe & J. Riley-Smith (Eds.), The New Cambridge Medieval History (The New Cambridge Medieval History, pp. 268-334). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521414104.010

The Papacy and Canon Law in the Eleventh-Century Reform
Uta-Renate Blumenthal
The Catholic Historical Review
Vol. 84, No. 2 (Apr., 1998), pp. 201-218
Published by: Catholic University of America Press
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25025208

Oswald Joseph Reichel (1870). The See of Rome in the Middle Ages. Chapter XII Investitures and Jurisdiction - Clerical Taxation: Longmans, Green. pp. 347–.

Margaret Deanesly (2004). A History of the Medieval Church: 590-1500. Chapter VI Growth of Papal Power 604 to 1073: Routledge. pp. 76–. ISBN 978-1-134-95533-6.

Christopher Harper-Bill; Elisabeth Van Houts (2007). A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World. Chapter 9: The Anglo-Norman Church: Boydell & Brewer Ltd. pp. 165–. ISBN 978-1-84383-341-3.

Thomas N. Bisson (2009). The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government. The Church: Princeton University Press. pp. 197–. ISBN 0-691-13708-0. https://goo.gl/sog34H

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gregory (Popes)/Gregory VII - Wikisource
...
The whole life-work of Gregory VII. was based on his conviction that the church has been founded by God and entrusted with the task of embracing all mankind in a single society in which His will is the only law; that, in her capacity as a divine institution, she out tops all human structures; and that the pope, qua head of the church, is the vice-regent of God on earth, so that disobedience to him implies disobedience to God—or, in other words, a defection from Christianity. Elaborating an idea discoverable in St Augustine, he looked on the worldly state—a purely human creation—as an unhallowed edifice whose character is sufficiently manifest from the fact that it abolishes the equality of man, and that it is built up by violence and injustice.
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Lanfranc, William the Conqueror, Ecclesiastical Courts

In England Libertas Ecclesiae found expression in the setting up of Ecclesiastical Courts separate from the king's justice.

Constitutions of Clarendon: Ecclesiastical Courts
David Charles Douglas; George William Greenaway (1996). English Historical Documents, 1042-1189. Psychology Press. pp. 715–. ISBN 978-0-415-14367-7.

The historian Eadmer described the moral and the material reforms accomplished by Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury. The archbishop strove ‘to renew religion and morality among all orders of men throughout the kingdom; nor was he disappointed of his desire. For through his persuasion and teaching religion was increased throughout that country and everywhere new monastic buildings were constructed, as appears today.’

Lanfranc (DNB00) - Wikisource
Lanfranc - Wikipedia

Lanfranc as archbishop of Canterbury, tried to establish his overall authority and Primacy over the Church in England

Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/William the Conqueror - Wikisource

Richard Burn (1763). Ecclesiastical Law. Courts: H. Woodfall and W. Strahan, and sold by A. Millar. pp. 409–.

The constitutional history and constitution of the Church of England


The History of England. James, John and Paul Knapton. 1732. pp. 212–.

W. L. Warren (28 November 1977). Henry II. Chapter 11: Church and State in Norman England: University of California Press. pp. 404–5 ISBN 978-0-520-03494-5.
...
In exercising the functions of their office ; the bishops were subject to a web of customary restrictions, of which the near-contemporary Eadmer selects two as typical: a council of bishop could not 'lay down any ordinance or prohibition unless these were agreeable to the king's wishes and had first been approved by him', nor could any bishop, except with the king's permission, 'take action against or excommunicate one of his barons or officials for incest or adultery or any other cardinal offence or even when guilt was notorious lay upon h im any penalty of ecclesiastical discipline
...

Some of the customary restrictions which William imposed on the clergy helped to ensure that the papacy was kept at arm's length: if prelates were summoned to attend the papal court or general councils they could not obey without his licence; he would not allow anyone to receive a letter from the pope unless it had first been shown to him; he would not allow papal legates to visit his dominions without his permission; even the recognition of a newly-elected bishop of Rome had to await the king's approval.
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St. Anselm and the troubles with William Rufus and Henry I of England
Investiture Controversy

Anselm (later St Anselm) was Lanfranc's successor
Anselm of Canterbury - Wikipedia

On the Continent and in England too there raged the Investiture Controversy 

Council of London in 1102 - Wikipedia
Constitutions of Clarendon: Conflict of Investitures

Eugene Rathbone Fairweather (1 January 1956). A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham (Eadmer Settlement of the Controversy ed.). Westminster John Knox Press. pp. 211–. ISBN 978-0-664-24418-7.


Concordat of Worms - Wikipedia
The King was recognised as having the right to invest bishops with secular authority ("by the lance") in the territories they governed, but not with sacred authority ("by ring and staff"). The result was that bishops owed allegiance in worldly matters both to the pope and to the king, for they were obliged to affirm the right of the sovereign to call upon them for military support, under his oath of fealty.

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Thomas Becket Controversy, Henry II, Constitutions of Clarendon, Liberty of the Church

This Blog

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King John and Magna Carta




References




Ott, M. (1909). Ebbo. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved October 27, 2018 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05241a.htm

Introduction to Pseudo-Isidore - Decretum GratianiJames A Brundage (11 June 2014). Medieval Canon Law. Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals: Routledge. pp. 26–. ISBN 978-1-317-89534-3.


Anselm of Canterbury - Wikipedia
Brooke, Z. (1989). St Anselm. The rise of a papal party. In The English Church and the Papacy:From the Conquest to the Reign of John (pp. 147-163). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 



Zachary N. Brooke; Zachary Nugent Brooke (13 July 1989). The English Church and the Papacy: From the Conquest to the Reign of John. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–. ISBN 978-0-521-36687-8.

Norman Frank Cantor (2015). Church, Kingship, and Lay Investiture in England, 1089-1135. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-7699-0.
Church, Kingship, and Lay Investiture in England, 1089-1135 on JSTOR

Uta-Renate Blumenthal (1988). The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-1386-6.

Walter Ullmann (15 April 2013). The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages (Routledge Library Editions: Political Science Volume 35). Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-02630-1.

Wilfred Lewis Warren (1973). Henry II. Chapter 13: Archbishop Thomas Becket: University of California Press. pp. 447–517. ISBN 978-0-520-02282-9.



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