Persistence of Error

Most of the papers I have heard in the past four days of this conference on Anglo-Norman studies have been very good or excellent, but the pool of talent and perception is not as deep as many might think.  I have also encountered a good deal of ignorance and romanticism.  In global capital markets the difference between good judgment and bad judgment, better information and worse information, is very quickly expressed in millions of dollars of profit and loss.  Peers are highly motivated to correct misperception by relieving the incompetent of risk capital and  imposing on the credulous with loss-making 'investments'.  Those who underperform are weeded out as their losses mount.  The mechanisms and motivations for correction of error are much weaker in academic circles.  Erroneous understandings, assumptions or theories can therefore persist and become entrenched quite easily because it is easier to agree politely or say nothing at all rather than to correct and risk offence.

I have been told today that the William the Conqueror who went to war with a papal mandate was consecrated by the uncanonical and excommunicate Stigand; that King Edward the Confessor half-Norman by birth and raised for 28 years in Normandy was thoroughly English and beloved as English in his own lifetime; that popes weren't really relevant to medieval royal succession and consecration; and that Saint-Denis - the most mercantile Benedictine order in early medieval Europe - really wasn't that interested in trade or markets.  And I have been told these marvellous things by people who claim, and are even acknowledged by their peers, to be experts in their fields of study or education.  They would not have had long careers in financial markets but they can have long, placid and damaging careers in education.

I suppose that it is because England separated itself from France that some English academics can think Gallic and Frankish dominion impossible or of minor consequence in early England.  I suppose it is because England separated its church from the Roman Catholic Church that some English academics can think popes irrelevant to medieval ecclesiastical authority, royal succession and royal marriage.  I suppose it is because England evolved the Anglo-Saxon model of mercantilism that some English academics cannot imagine that the  literate and numerate clerics of medieval times may have been educated for the purpose of regulating and taxing trade and commerce.  And these less rigorous academics would much rather persist in error, and reinforce each other in error, than suffer correction of their romantic misapprehensions.  What these misguided academics have taught me is that it is rude to introduce facts or even original sources contrary to their received opinion.

If I'm wrong, I want to know it, and I want to know it now.  I don't want to persist in error and disseminate error to others for decades.

The other night I was told that religious orders really didn't bother much about the pope once they were established and vice versa.  That doesn't make sense, I suggested, as the pope expected financial contribution from religious orders, and the clerical accountants tracked whether contributions were paid.  I was told there was no evidence for my belief that popes cared about money or expected financial contributions from religious orders.  Of course there is plenty of evidence but it is ignored.  It took me only minutes once I was online again to find the commendatory letter from Pope Gregory to the Bishop of Arles recounted by Bede which reminds the bishop that his predecessor had not made payment as expected to Rome and he should remit the past due gold with the preceptor bearing the letter.  Bringing forth the evidence would do no good; my interlocutor is an authority and cannot possibly be wrong.  I must therefore misunderstand Gregory or perhaps Pope Gregory's demand for past due gold is not representative of the mercenary nature of the medieval church.

And so the learned elites will continue to give misguided papers to each other and congratulate each other on perceptions that are fundamentally flawed.  And I will continue to write rational, fact-based, well-evidenced history outside the academic mainstream.

1066 as a Catholic Crusade: Ports, Sees and Crowns

One of the patterns I found while researching the Carmen was the "First Christian King" pattern.  Maybe historians have already written hundreds of papers on this, but I stumbled on it as an observation, so that's how you get it here.  Like everything Roman there was a system for subjugation of client kings and the Roman system set the standards for first Christian kings in the Roman Catholic Church.  It turns out the church took possessions it received from first Christian kings very seriously, and these possessions became key territorial objectives of the Norman Conquest in 1066.

Only kings consecrated by the Catholic Church with the consent of the pope were deemed royal with rights of inheritance for their heirs in the early medieval era.  Kings sought papal approval and holy consecration to gain legitimacy and protection from challenge of rival tribal lords and neighbouring kings.  The first Christian king of just about anywhere you can name in Europe will have three things in common with other first Christian kings: (1) He was approached by a missionary sent by a pope to convert him to Christianity; the missionary baptised him and established Christianity in his realm.  (2) The king founded a priory for the care of his immortal soul in the Holy See, giving land and the revenues of an extraterritorial and inviolable canton port to the monks of the new religious order, usually Benedictines.  (3) The king founded a bishopric for a native church with an episcopal see; the see was granted liberties and revenues of a market borough so that the native church, bishops and priests might prosper and convert pagans to Christianity.  The Roman Empire had incredibly efficient systems for promoting and controlling trade and markets as the portorium and vectigalia were the principal means of streaming money from provinces to Rome.  The Roman Catholic Church church took these systems and leveraged them into a stream of secular revenues for the church and Holy See that in parallel promoted the concentration of wealth and power in the early Christian royal kings.  If you think of it as a Mafia-style protection racket, you won't be far wrong.

In England the first Christian king was King Lucius, converted sometime around 180.  According to legend he wrote to Pope Eleutherius asking to become a Christian, and the pope sent missionaries Fuganus and Duvianus to baptise the king and establish a Christian church in England.  King Lucius then founded a priory in the Holy See at Dover for the care of his immortal soul, endowing Christ Church inside the old Roman castle as a priory with revenues of the port.  He founded the archbishopric of England in London with a church for the episcopal see at St Peter-upon-Cornhill; its first bishop was Thean.  Lucius founded other churches for other bishoprics including the Old Minster at Winchester and St Martin's church in Canterbury - each with the lands and liberties of the borough flamens (river ports) for support of the church's good works and the spread of Christianity in the diocese.  King Lucius reigned for 77 years, including 54 years after his baptism, and was buried in London at his death.  After his death Christianity faded again, under attack by Romans and pagans alike, and the English church lapsed in the 4th century.

In 496 Pope Gregory sent Augustine, Mellitus and Justus with 40 monks to bring Christianity again to Britain.  King Aethelberht of Kent was married to Bertha, a Frankish princess and only daughter of Charibert I of Neustria.  Gregory of Tours says that Aethelberht married Bertha while he was already living in Neustria, so presumably his conversion to Christianity and alliance with Charibert were conditions of the marriage.  King Aethelberht was consecrated a Christian king; he founded the see at Canterbury with Augustine as the first archbishop of Canterbury, moving the archbishop's see and control of the English church from London to Canterbury.

Mellitus then converted King Saeberht of the East Saxons to Christianity, and like all first Christian kings, King Saeberht founded an abbey with a port for the Holy See and a bishopric with a see for a native church.  The abbey was consecrated to St Paul in the Roman port of London, known then as East Minster and believed the site of the earlier church granted by King Lucius.  The episcopal see was consecrated to St Peter on Thorn Island, known afterwards as West Minster.  Mellitus was ordained the first bishop to the new see at St Peter’s Westminster in 604.  Mellitus fled to Gaul after King Saeberht's death as his pagan sons sacked Westminster and London in 617.  Although Mellitus returned as archbishop of Canterbury, no bishop returned to London for fifty years, and when Wine was made bishop of London in 666 he took refuge within the city's strong walls at Old St Paul's abbey church, making it the episcopal see by usage rather than endowment, and confusing royal and Holy See jurisdictions.

Meanwhile King Aethelberht's daughter, Aethelburg, married King Edwin of Northumbria, and by  627 Paulinus, the monk who accompanied her north, had converted Edwin and a number of other Northumbrians.  Like all first Christian kings, King Edwin founded an order in the Holy See to pray for his immortal soul with revenues of a port at Lindesfarne and a bishopric with a see supported by borough market and liberties at York with Paulinus as the first archbishop.

King Cenwalh of Wessex converted to Christianity about 648, establishing a see for the diocese of Wessex at the site of the church founded by King Lucius in Winchester, which became the Old Minster and later Winchester Cathedral.  He founded a Benedictine religious order in the Holy See and gave them the Isle of Wight with port privileges for the care of his soul.  King Alfred the Great would later establish a priory in the Holy See at Winchester, the New Minster, confusing royal and Holy See jurisdictions in the borough. 

In the 8th century King Offa unified the kingdoms of England by conquering the East Saxons, Hastingas and Wessex and merging these three distinct regions with his native Mercia.  His powerful wife Cynethreth, possibly a Frankish kinswoman of Charlemagne, and Charlemagne's adviser Alcuin urged alignment with the pope and adoption of Frankish commercial administration and trade.  King Offa sent to the pope to seek consecration as king of the united realm, later visiting Rome himself on pilgrimage.  He confirmed a priory for Saint Denys at Rotherfield with the port of Hastingas & Pevenisel, known as Wincenesel to the Benedictines, and also granted by the same charter land on the strand at Lundenwick, the port of London.  He founded a new archbishopric at Lichfield for the benefit of his the northern kingdom.  Vikings had begun to raid England and had overwintered for the first time in England the year before, so perhaps King Offa was keen to secure alliance with the Roman pope and the Frankish emperor to better defend England against the Vikings and the Danes.

The Danes were not easily dissuaded from settlement and raiding in England and over the succeeding centuries more and more Danes settled in England.  First the Danes settled in the north and east, creating Danelaw - a region under Danish hegemony.  Then the Anglo-Danes of the north of England continued raiding in the south, demanding tribute from the English kings.   King Aethelred decided he needed big, bad allies to take on the Danes so he married Emma of Normandy in 1002, making her queen with primacy for her sons as legitimate heirs to the crown.  A few months later he ordered the killing of every Danish man, woman and child in England on St Brice's Day.  Among the dead was the sister of King Sweyn of Denmark and he started invading England the next year.  King Aethelred died in 1016, his son Edmund Ironside was defeated and died a few months later.  King Cnut the Great married the widowed Queen Emma in 1017.  King Cnut and his Danes and Anglo-Danes raided and enslaved widely in England, including taking possession of ports, lands and treasures belonging the church.  King Cnut still wanted Rome's legitimacy, however, so he gave a charter of protection to London to secure consecration as king of England in 1016 and a charter to Fescamp Abbey for Rameslege (the manors of Hastingas and Bretda with their port) to secure consecration of Emma as queen of England in 1017.  Both London and Rameslege remained Holy See jurisdictions with exterratoriality and inviolability.  The Roman Church, which controlled trade ports in Christian realms, would have insisted that trade with England be directed to the ports it controlled in England and the ports at London, the Isle of Wight and Hastingas would then become hugely prosperous during the decades of King Cnut's rule of England.  The frequency with which Godwin and his sons raid the Isle of Wight, Pevenisel and Hastingas during their rebellions against Edward the Confessor and each other are testimony to the appeal of Holy See ports as prosperous targets.

Bringing this back to the Carmen and 1066, William the Conqueror landed at Wincenesel - also known by then as Hastingaport.  After the Battle of Hastings when William had become lord of England by defeating and burying the excommunicate and unconsecrated King Harold under a heap of stones on the coast, he began to secure possession of the royal realm.  He marched to Dover and took possession of Dover and its port and castle, where he remained 30 days.  Envoys were sent to Canterbury and the archepiscopal see of the Church of England sent the first tribute, followed by all other urban boroughs in canonical and royal duty.  Then William marched to Winchester where the primates (the bishop of the see in Old Minster and the abbot of the abbey in New Minster) and Queen Edith, relic of King Edward the Confessor, all agree a deal offered by King William: they will accept him as king and swear loyalty, but they will only pay him market tolls - vectigalia - and not poll taxes - tributa.  Then William marches on London where the rebels have taken sanctuary and a Witenagemot has convened to make Edgar the Aethling a figurehead king.  King William guarantees the burgesses of London will retain their independent republican governance and generous liberties and they agree to renounce Edgar and swear oaths of loyalty to King William.  The bishop who holds the king's right hand in procession to Westminster is Archbishop Ealdred of York while his left hand is held by "another equal in rank", referring to the metropolitan Bishop William of London, just as London and York were deemed equal by Pope Gregory in the 6th century.

Wincenesel - a Holy See port.  Dover - a Holy See port.  Canterbury - the archbishopric of all the church of England.  Winchester - the see of the bishopric of Wessex and a Holy See borough.  London - the see of the bishopric of the East Saxons and a Holy See port.  London and York equal metropolitan bishoprics in canonical law.  Anyone else see a relevant pattern here?

The church wanted Dover back even before 1066.  Return of Dover castle was part of the oath Earl Harold swore to Duke William in 1064 when he was in Normandy.  In the Carmen Dover is the first objective after securing military victory.  King William put Dover in the custody of his brother Bishop Odo of Bayeux, returning the port to church administration.

Envoys were sent to Canterbury demanding tribute to King William.  As an ecclesiastical urban borough in the royal realm it owed tribute and loyalty to the new king.  A letter from Pope Alexander II to the clergy of England demanding canonical submission to William as the rightful king would have convinced the clerics even if the Norman army didn't.  Canterbury yields the first tribue, and all other ecclesiastical urban boroughs then send tribute and magistrates to swear fealty in duty to the new king.  That leaves Winchester and London as the hold outs.

Winchester had a confusion of jurisdiction, hosting both the see of the bishopric at Old Minster and the priory in the Holy See at New Minster.  Showing deference to New Minster within the Holy See, King William compromises to accept oaths of loyalty and customs tolls, forgoing royal tribute.  After the Norman Conquest the Norman kings forced the monks of New Minster to take residence elsewhere outside the city walls, clarifying the jurisdictions between royal realm and Holy See again.

London also had a confusion of jurisdictions, hosting the see of London at Old St Paul's church by usage from 666 and the Holy See port at the strand and the ancient dominion and liberties of the Holy See within the city from the foundation of Old St Paul's abbey in 604.  King Edward may have been rebuilding St Peter's church at Westminster in order to return the episcopal see to the site originally intended by King Saeberht and Pope Gregory, and thus restore the original intended clarity between royal and Holy See domains.  St Peter's church at Westminster was consecrated at Christmas 1065, a week before King Edward died and Earl Harold declared himself king.

The objectives of the Norman Conquest after the Battle of Hastings were the Holy See possessions of Dover, Winchester and London, and the seat of the English church at Canterbury.  The author of the Carmen was deeply knowledgeable about the history of the Roman Catholic Church in England, and the possessions of episcopal sees and Benedictine orders.  He uses the word coloni - tenants or settlers - only for the citizens of ecclesiastical jurisdictions, where citizenship was a matter of covenant and not a birthright.  He uses sedem for Westminster and Winchester, both sees of the first bishoprics established by the Gregorian Mission, even though in 1066 the bishop of London was resident at Old St Paul's within the walls of the city.  He references the equality of the metropolitan bishops of London and York. The overall import of the Carmen is that the Norman Conquest was a bit of a crusade to restore Christianity to England and restore the possessions of the Holy See, clarity of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and canonical authority to the pope.  

King Harold was excommunicate and unconsecrated, crowning himself king in defiance of papal authority.  Archbishop Stigand was excommuniate and uncanonical, making himself archbishop in defiance of papal authority.  He defied canonical authority of five successive popes to hold the see of Canterbury without pallium, and was excommunicated by all of them.  He crowned - not consecrated - King Harold without papal assent.  Pope Alexander II wanted them both deposed in 1066 and Duke William of Normandy was his instrument for getting the job done.  The pope may not have armed divisions, as Stalin wryly observed, but the pope could declare 'open season' on monarchs he disapproved by papal excommunication.

King William reinstated Christianity in England under authority of the pope in Rome.  Like other first Christian kings he endowed an abbey in the Holy See with royal immunities for the care of his soul at Battle.  He established a bishopric for an episcopal see at Chichester (taking over from Selsey, long since dispossessed by Godwin of anything of value).  He confirmed the ancient liberties and immunities of London.  He restored dispossessed Holy See possessions at Rameslege, Steyning, Eastbourne and elsewhere to Fecamp Abbey, an order in the Holy See.  He installed Lanfranc, prior of St Etienne of Caen (Holy See religious order) and a confidante of Pope Alexander II, as archbishop of Canterbury to oversee reformation of the English church, restoring it to canonical alignment with Rome under papal authority.  He invited all religious orders and churches in England to seek restoration of dispossessed lands and liberties as they had been held under Edward the Confessor, creating a free-for-all ecclesiastical forgery industry that historians are still unravelling today.

Last year the Vatican announced that it would be digitising and publishing all the ancient records in the Vatican Library, starting with the very oldest and most fragile manuscripts.  If they kept records of Holy See possessions and episcopal sees granted by royal charters of the first Christian kings, we may yet have more proof that these possessions and sees were not just points in the landscape in 1066 but also a casus belli of the Norman Conquest.

Going to Battle for a Better History of 1066

We make choices in life, and I've made a big one.  I've revised the Carmen to include an Introduction with several theories I've been developing for the past year that will challenge commonly received English history, and I'm going to take these theories to the Battle Conference and put them out there for academic historians to kick sand at in ten days' time.  The Carmen has turned into a Rosetta Stone of medieval history and geography.

After the Battle Conference I'm going to come back and finish writing my next book: The Great Lost Port of England's Conquest.

The four sections of the Introduction in the updated Latin & English Carmen paperback (not yet available in Kindle versions or English only) are:

(1)  The backstory to 1066 is that the outlaws Godwin and Harold raided and seized the vast Holy See jurisdiction of Rammesleah held by Fecamp Abbey after they were exiled from England in 1051 and during their rebellion against King Edward the Confessor in 1052; Godwin and Harold bribed the boatmen of Hastingas into joining the rebellion, leading to defections of other boatmen and bondsmen on the coast contrary to their oath of loyalty to the king; Earl Harold refused to give the possessions back when Abbot John of Fecamp Abbey travelled to England to seek restoration of Holy See possessions in 1054, despite the support of King Edward the Confessor for the abbey; and Pope Alexander II feared losing all Catholic Church possessions, revenues and authority in England when Earl Harold had himself 'crowned' king in 1066. 

(2)  Four mis-identifications in earlier translations of the Carmen are corrected:  Felix Hellocis at line 503 is a Trojan, a 'son of Hellas', in poetic compliment to the unknown Englishman who brings down Duke William's second horse with a javelin strike, an allusion to the legend of Brutus of Troy, the eponymous first king of Britain.  Ansgardus at lines 689 and 725 is the Germanic birth name of Edgar the Aethling; Ansgar was the name given the baby in Hungary in 1051 and by which he would be known in Frankish abbeys and courts where the Carmen would be sung.  The magistrate of London secretly offered a 'better separation' by King William at line 685 is Godfrey de Magnaville, the veteran portreeve of London since 1051.  And the 'other of equal rank' to Archbishop Ealdred of York at line 802 holding King William's left hand is Bishop William of London, consistent with the canonical equality of London and York as laid down by Saint Gregory in the 6th century.


(3)  The Norman fleet landed at portus Hastingas & Pevenisel - the Frankish name for the  great estuarine port braced by peninsulas named Hastingas and Pevenisel, between the manors of Hastingas and Bretda in Sussex.  The Normans camped on the strand to the west of the harbour below Iham, and the camp once established became the settlement of Old Winchelsea, the novus burgus of the Domesday Book for the manor of Hastingas.  The 40,000 Normans who emigrated to England in the first year after the conquest would have swelled the town, cementing its importance for trade and communication with Normandy.  The town was washed away from the strand in the violent storms of the 13th century and rebuilt above the harbour on Iham in 1280 as Winchelsea.  Pevenesel was resettled elsewhere too in 1207 when the higher reaches of the estuarine Brede River silted up;  King John gave the barons of Pevenesel the spur below saltmarsh where the Roman shore fort of Anderitum stood, a place called Penevesse ('fort in the saltmarsh or wash') by the Anglo-Saxons and Penevesel in Domesday Book; he allowed the burgesses to keep their Cinque Ports liberties in their new town, now Pevensey.

(4)  The Holy See, the episcopal see of the pope in Rome, had legal jurisdiction over Rammesleah from early medieval times, and perhaps going back to the Roman Empire.  This made the region legally a separate domain outside the king's realm under early medieval legal principles - Rameslege means 'Rome's lowey' or 'Rome's law' in Anglo-Saxon.  The pope and clerics bitterly resented a Holy See jurisdiction being violently taken and occupied by Godwin and Harold in 1052 and retained by Harold to 1066.  Holy See territories were extraterratorial and inviolable under canonical law, and anyone violating Holy See possessions could expect excommunication in this life and divine retribution thereafter.   It was because he was excommunicate at his death that Duke William denied a burial in consecrated ground to King Harold, consistent with canonical law;  instead Harold was buried on a cliff above the port where the camp was sited 'under a heap of stones' at line 584 in the Carmen.


These theories are big changes to the Norman Conquest story, but I'm now ready to go to Battle with them!

In addition to airing the new Carmen theories at the Battle Conference this summer, I will be presenting to the Battle and District Historical Society in October.  So I guess I get to go to Battle twice with the new theories.  Let's hope my fate at Battle will be kinder than Harold's was.