menu_book Chapter 13

Section 13 of Edward I by Thomas Frederick Tout. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 9. Edward and the Church. 1272-1294. The relations of Edward to the Church shed a strong light on his policy and character. Edward was himself a man of sincere and ardent religious feeling. He was rigidly orthodox, and never so much as questioned the right of the Church to reign supreme in all matters of faith

and practice. A crusader in his youth, he never, as we have seen, altogether relinquished his hope of joining in a great movement for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. He was an unwearied attendant at the offices of the church. He was a founder of monasteries and an ardent pilgrim to holy places. To what he conceived to be lawful ecclesiastical authority, he yielded an absolute and ungrudging obedience. Yet Edward's personal piety and unblemished orthodoxy did not prevent

the greater part of his reign being occupied in a long and stern fight, both with the papacy and with the leading representatives of the national church. And it was inevitable that this should be so. The 13th century witnessed both the culmination of ecclesiastical pretensions and the first vigorous growth of that national power, which was in the long run to subject the church to itself. It was an age of strange contrasts. The successors of Pope Innocent III

indulged in dreams of universal domination such as would have appeared strange to a Gregory VII or an Alexander III. Their pretensions could not but trench upon the political sphere. The chronic difficulty of determining the relations of the king as the representative of the nation and the secular arm, with the Pope as the recognized head of the Church universal, was never presented in a more perplexing and bewildering form than to Edward. And the difficulty

of the situation was increased when we remember, what some moderns would fain forget or ignore, that to every Christian of the age of Edward the Pope was the divinely appointed head of the Church, with large judicial and taxative powers over the whole of Christendom, and the main, if not the sole source, of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Yet hard, as was the question of determining the royal relations to the papacy, the difficulties of this side of the problem sink into insignificance

as compared with the difficulty of determining the relations between the crown and the national church itself, where all through the Middle Ages the chronic conflict of church and state was wont to assume its bitterest and most irreconcilable form. A strong king like Edward, who was resolved to be really supreme over the state and who waged constant war against all forms of class privilege, could not but stand in an attitude of permanent hostility to the pretensions of the clerical

caste to absolute immunity from the secular jurisdiction, and to the constant tendency of the ecclesiastical high flyers to treat the state as a mere means for carrying out the will of Holy Church. Yet though there was a constant undercurrent of opposition between Edward on the one side, and the Roman curia, and the English hierarchy on the other, it is no small testimony to the tact and skill of the king that these chronic difficulties came so seldom to the surface,

and that the rain passed by without a new struggle on the lines of that of Henry I with Anselm, or Henry II with Beckett, and that even the fierce fight of Boniface VIII with Philip the Fair awoke but a faint echo in England. In treating of Edward's ecclesiastical policy, we must distinguish between his dealings with the papacy and his dealings with the English Church. We must further remember that in the Middle Ages, even more than in our own time,

the Church did not form a single corporation and hardly a single organization. The Church included in its ranks every class of society, every variety of lawful opinion. It is unreasonable, then, to expect any unity of action from so great and many-sided a body. In the same way, too much precision must not be given to the distinction between the English church and the church universal as represented by the papacy. In the thirteenth century, no hard and fast line

can be drawn between the two. The ecclesiastical problem was sometimes presented in a twofold aspect, on other occasions in a single one. Moreover, the great religious revival, which had witnessed the establishment of the mendicant orders, had tended on the whole to bridge over the gulf between the Roman Curia and the National Church. Edward's difficulties were therefore for the most part, presented to him in a complicated form. Edward had been brought up

to look upon the papacy as the undoubted superior of the English crown, both in church and state. The humiliating submission of John to Innocent III, by which England had been formally constituted a papal fief, was still so recent in men's minds that it almost effaced the fading memory of the times when England was another world in matters ecclesiastical, and when the ties which bound England to the Roman Sea were scarcely more substantial than the ties which now bind Canada

or Australia to the mother country. All through the barons' wars, Henry III had made unsparing use of the friendship of the Roman court as a convenient weapon against his rebellious subjects. He obtained from two successive popes a release from his plighted oath to observe the provisions of Oxford, and Edward himself had not scrupled to take advantage of the same papal dispensation. Yet all the thunders of the papacy had not detached a considerable section of the best

of English churchmen from the patriotic side. The good bishop, Walter of Cantaloupe, had blessed Earl Simon's soldiers as they drew up to meet the royalist forces on the field of Lewis. the nameless scholar who wrote in the Song of Lewis the clearest statement of the principles and policy of the baronial party, the mass of the monastic chroniclers who describe with ardent partisanship the mighty deeds of Montfort for the good cause, the simple priests and laymen who

worshipped the dead earl as a saint, were all alike, careless or hardly conscious, that their hero died under the ban of the Roman church. Now Edward was at least as much the heir of Montfort as the inheritor of the policy of his father. His heart was at least as much stirred by the patriotism of the native English churchmen as by the thunders of a papal legate. He parted unwillingly enough, yet nonetheless thoroughly, with the foreign bishops and clerks who had come

in the train of the foreign lords and ladies. It was his difficult task to absorb and appropriate the national church feeling which had stood so strongly on the side of Montfort. At the same time, he could foresee an endless series of difficulties if he abandoned his father's friendship for the papacy. He realized very fully the utility of papal support in carrying out both his English and his general European policy. Moreover, Edward was fully conscious of the need of keeping up

the traditions of the absolute supremacy of the crown, which William the Conqueror and his sons had upheld and handed down as a binding tradition to later ages. Priests, no less than laymen, must submit themselves to the king, who was not less truly the lord's anointed than the bishop or the abbot. Like the lords of a feudal franchise, the clergy might continue to rule within their own sphere, but it was Edward's constant care to define that sphere as narrowly as circumstances allowed.

The first step to set aright the relations of church and state was to secure for friends of the king the chief posts of the church as they fell vacant. In the early period of his rule, Edward was more lucky in his personal relations to the popes than to his archbishops. Just as Edward was starting for his crusade, the death of his unworthy uncle, Boniface of Savoy, had ended the weak and nerveless tenure of the primacy of the English church by one of the most hated of

the Queen's kinsmen. Edward, who always stood by his friends, made a vigorous effort to secure the election of his favorite clerk Robert Burnell to the vacant archbishopric. Disgusted that his letters provoked no response, Edward hurriedly abandoned the preparations for his embarkation and hastened to Canterbury. The monks of the Cathedral of Christ Church, in which the canonical right of election was vested, were deliberating in the chapter house with locked doors. Edward,

violently burst open the fastenings, and almost beside himself with rage, vehemently urged the frightened monks to choose his friend as their archbishop. But not even the ravings of the king's son could force the clannish monks to elect a secular clerk. Edward withdrew in impotent anger and started at once on his crusade. The monks chose in due course one of their own number, but Gregory X persuaded the candidate of the chapter to resign his claims.

When Edward came back to England as king, he found the pope's nominee, Robert Kilwardby, seated upon the throne of St. Augustine. Kilwardby was a Dominican friar and the first mendicant vowed to absolute poverty who occupied a high place in the English church. He was a learned theologian and a famous master of scholastic dialectics, an ardent churchman, a strong papalist, and an upright and honorable man. His appointment was probably due to the

desire felt by Rome that the new archbishop should be a zealous upholder of the extremist ecclesiastical pretensions. But the excellent understanding that prevailed between Edward and the good pope Gregory X prevented any possibility of conflict as long as Gregory lived. Succeeding popes found a further difficulty in pushing forward their claims in the limited interests and senile inactivity of the Dominican archbishop. So thoroughly did Kilward B.

disappoint the hopes which the papal curia had formed of him, that in 1278 he was dexterously removed from his see by his translation to the cardinal bishopric of Porto. In the thirteenth century the cardinalate had not yet become that merely honorary dignity which might be fitly born by the primate of a remote transalpine province. The cardinals were still bound to residence at the papal court, and promotion to the purple involved, therefore, the abandonment of such

distant preferment as the English primacy. Kilwardby accordingly gave up his archbishopric, and meekly accepting the covert censure implied in his formal promotion, took up his residence at the papal court, where he died soon afterwards. Edward made a second effort to promote Burnell, now Chancellor and Bishop of Bath and Wells, to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. This time the monks of Christ Church interposed no obstacle, but Pope Nicholas III, after appointing

a special commission to inquire into Brunel's fitness, declared that circumstances had come to his ears which made it impossible for him to accept Edward's minister as archbishop. It was probably the scandalous looseness of the great chancellor's private life which gave a good reason to the pope for refusing to advance to so high a post, a man so absolutely devoid of high clerical ideals and hierarchical pretensions. Two years later, Nicholas would not even allow

Burnell's translation to Winchester. Thus did his strong friendship for his minister and his desire to reward him adequately for his good service to the state expose Edward to two well-merited rebuffs from Rome, as well as to the scandalous imputation of desiring to make the great places of the Church mere rewards for political good service. Nicholas III now appointed an archbishop of his own mere motion. His choice fell on John Peckham, a Sussex man, a Franciscan friar,

a famous doctor of theology, and writer about optics and mathematics, who at the time was a teacher at the University of the Papal Court. Peckham was not less distinguished for his learning than for the austerity of his life. He fasted seven lengths in every year, and performed all his journeys however long on foot, disdaining the paltry evasion of the rule forbidding friars to ride on horseback, which led mendicants of less austere principles to travel on mules or asses.

He was an active, bustling, fussy man, pompous in his talk and gesture with little tact, but unbounded energy and zeal, devoted, as the best spirits of his order then were, to the highest doctrines of papal infallibility and hierarchical power, but transparently honest and absolutely devoid of self-seeking. He started for England, conscious of a high mission to stamp out immorality, laxity, and pluralities, and to put an

end to the rule of worldly bishops and careless kings over the Church of England. Edward was high-minded enough to bear no malice, and received Friar John with a kindness that the new archbishop cordially and gladly recognized. But no personal motives could turn Peckham from the strict path of duty. As soon as he got to England he summoned a church council to Reading. This assembly passed at the archbishop's instigation a series of thoroughgoing canons against pluralities,

an act which excited the alarm of the benefice-hunting clerks of the king's household. It also ordered the clergy to hang up in every church a copy of Magna Carta and to denounce periodically all offenders against the Charter as ipso facto excommunicate. This measure was construed as a personal insult to Edward himself and a suggestion that his rule was not in accordance with the Charter of Liberties. Edward was much incensed. The very next month he assembled

his Parliament at Westminster. He forced Peckham to make a humiliating retraction in full Parliament of all the canons dealing with Magna Carta and other secular points which had been passed at Reading in defiance of the rights of the Crown. Not content with this, Edward answered the pretensions of the Archbishop with rival pretensions of his own. This Parliament passed at the king's instigation, the famous Statute of Mortmain. The Statute of Mortmain was Edward's

reply to the Canons of Reading. It was not altogether a new measure, and as we have already seen, it had a more general aspect in its relation to Edward's constant policy of breaking down class privilege and upholding the legal rights of the feudal lords. But it was, like so much of Edward's work a real step in advance, though informed largely a definition of previous custom. Its clearness and definiteness made it in essence a startling innovation. It expressly prohibited

any future grants of land to ecclesiastical corporations under penalty of the land thus granted being forfeited to the capital lord of the fief. Priests and monks had, in Edward's opinion, land enough already, and it was hard for Peckham as a mendicant, who believed that the wealth of the church was at the root of its corruption, to fight with any show of grace against the king's legislation. Still, as an ardent defender of ecclesiastical privilege, Peckham could not but

reckon that a deadly blow had been dealt to the future aggrandizement of the church. In 1281 the struggle was renewed. Peckham assembled another provincial council at Lambeth, and again threw down the gauntlet to Edward by proposing to take all suits concerning patronage and the personal property of clergymen entirely out of the jurisdiction of the king's courts that he might deal with them in church courts according to canon law. The old question about

which Beckett had fought so fiercely against Henry II seemed now on the verge of revival. Edward peremptorily cancelled the proceedings of the council, and again, as in 1279, Peckham yielded to his fierce and uncompromising wrath. In the years that immediately succeeded, King and Archbishop had a common work to perform against the Welsh, but no sooner was Wales reduced to order, and the old disputes were renewed. At last, in 1285, a royal ordinance

or statute called Circum Spectae Agatis was passed, which, while recognizing the right of the church courts to deal with suits purely spiritual, rigidly and narrowly defined the limits of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in matters which had in them a temporal element. With this formal recognition of his rights, Peckham had perforce to be contented. Edward came out the real victor in the struggle, though he employed his victory with his customary

moderation. But he had been helped by the indiscretion of the archbishop, who, in his zeal for reformation, had raised up for himself a whole host of enemies. Peckham's constant and vexatious metropolitan visitations of his province had excited the liveliest indignation of his suffragans, who saw in his exaggerated estimate of his archie-episcopal powers an attack upon the liberties of every bishop in England. Thus, while Peckham was quarreling

with Edward, the bishops of the southern provinces were quarreling with Peckham. So early as the Council of Reading, the Holy Thomas of Cantaloupe had led the resistance to the Franciscan primate. Peckham persecuted him with exceeding vindictiveness and involved him in costly and vexatious suits at the papal court. When, in 1282, Thomas died in Italy, worn out with asceticism and anxiety, Peckham strove to refuse Christian burial to his remains.

Edward showed warm sympathy with the persecuted bishop. He attended the great solemnities which ushered in the translation of the holy bishop's remains to their noble shrine in Hereford Cathedral, where, as men of that age firmly believed, a long series of miracles attested the dead man's claims to sanctity. Edward urged upon the papal curia that Thomas should be enrolled among the saints, and before his death had secured the appointment of the commission which

finally led to his canonization. Thus did the former Chancellor of Simon de Montfort obtain the honors of sanctity through the victor of Evesham. It was a convincing answer to Peckham's insinuation that Edward did not rule in the spirit of the great charter. Even when most at variance with the archbishop, Edward had never failed to respect Peckham's honesty and energy. But as age and ill success dimmed the activity of Peckham, Edward's relations with the church

became easier. For the next few years, the king's great complaint was not against the archbishop, but against the greedy popes, whose partisan spirit and lust of strife were the greatest obstacles in the way of his plans for the pacification of the continent. At home, Edward now cooperated with Peckham in a long series of assaults on the Jews. The Jews had held a strange position in England since the growth of trade, which attended the Norman conquest, had first

attracted them to settle in large numbers in the country. They had accumulated much wealth, owing to their practical monopoly of all banking business. But as usurers and infidels, they had made themselves exceedingly unpopular. They were accused of foul crimes such as murdering and crucifying Christian children, and occasional outbursts of Christian fanaticism had involved them in outrage and massacre. But the Jews had powerful friends. They were the special subjects

of the crown and were nearly always protected in their usury by the royal officials on the simple condition that a good share of their spoil found its way to the king's coffers. But as thirty and forty percent were allowable and moderate rates of interest at this time, the Jews were able to pay great tallages to the king and still live luxuriously and grow rich. Many of the greater nobles emulated the royal example and formed an unholy league with the

Jews to ruin or buy out their smaller neighbors. During Henry III's reign the king's necessities had forced him into constant dependence on the Jews so that the religious zeal that might, if he had been a free man, have led him in the direction of persecution, found a sufficient outlet in building the Domus Convessorum, a home for converted Jews on the site of the present record office, and in entertaining its few inmates with pensions. As a consequence of this alliance

between the Jews and the Crown, the baronial opposition was always strongly opposed to the Jews. In 1215, and again in 1258, the baronial triumph involved the unlucky crown agents in much wanton spoliation and persecution. Edward disliked the Jews, both on religious and economical grounds. The crusading spirit that had almost lost hope of fighting against the Muslim saw some satisfaction in wrecking its vengeance on the Israelites. Edward held strongly the

the medieval belief in the sinfulness and harmfulness of usury. He was angry that the Jews fleeced his subjects and saw with disgust that the lands of an impoverished and spendthrift nobility could hardly render him their due service because they were mortgaged up to the hilt to Jewish usurers. His own embarrassed finances and the constant burden of debt did not make him the more friendly to the moneylender. Early in his reign, Edward drew up severe

laws forbidding Jews to hold real property, enjoining on them the wearing of the distinctive and degrading Jewish dress, which was bidding fair to become obsolete and prohibiting usury altogether. The Jews knew no other way of living and turned in their distress to even less legitimate methods of earning a livelihood. They sweated and clipped the king's coin so unsparingly that the prices of commodities became disorganized, and foreign merchants shunned a realm whose money

standard fluctuated so widely and constantly. In 1278 the royal vengeance came down upon the unlucky sweaters. Nearly 300 Jews were imprisoned in the tower on the charge of depreciating the coinage. More than 200 of them were hanged and their goods confiscated to the crown. But very few of the Christian goldsmiths and moneyers, who had been the partners of their guilt, were likewise partners in their punishment. Edward caused them to be arrested, but with very

few exceptions, they were released through the partiality of the Christian juries that tried them. The lot of the Jews became constantly more grievous. The old charges of murdering Christian children were revived and eagerly believed in. Archbishop Peckham added to the thunders of the state the thunders of the church. He finally closed up their synagogues altogether and solemnly rebuked Queen Eleanor for suffering her love of money to lead her into unholy

alliances with Jews against Christian landowners. But if Edward's wife was lukewarm, his mother, Eleanor of Provence, who now played at being a nun, urged on her son to harsh measures against the blasphemers. In 1287, during Edward's long absence abroad, all the Jews in England were imprisoned and only released on payment of a huge fine. A little later, Edward banished the Jews from Guienne. On his return to England, he applied the same policy to his island kingdom.

In 1290, he finally expelled the Jews from England, but he allowed them to take with them their movable property and sternly punished the brutal sailors of the sink ports who had robbed and murdered their Jewish passengers on their way over the Channel. The expulsion of the Jews was a popular act, and the Parliament granted Edward a fifteenth as a thank offering. The king was himself a heavy loser by the transaction, and was thought to have shown rare unselfishness and high

religious principles in consenting to get rid of a race so profitable to the royal exchequer. But the Jews were no longer indispensable. Christian usurers from Caor in Guienne and from northern Italy had deprived them of their monopoly. The Italian agents of Edward's finances were soon as much hated as the Jews themselves had been. In 1292, Archbishop Peckham died. This time Edward and the monks of Christ's Church were in harmony, and Robert Winchelsea,

a secular priest and a learned scholastic, but much more a man of action than of letters, was duly elected archbishop. A papal vacancy delayed his consecration, and it was not until 1294 that the new primate entered into complete possession of his office. He at once took up the ultra-clerical policy of Peckham and combined it with an alliance with every element of secular opposition to the crown. But the great strife between Edward and Winchelsea, the culminating

point in the struggle between church and state in this reign can only be properly appreciated in connection with the general history of the latter part of Edward's life. In entering the political sphere, Winchelsea was gradually forced into an attitude very different to the purely ecclesiastical standpoint of Peckham. End of Section 13.