Archbishops Ralph D'Escures, William of Corbeil and
Theobald of Bec: Heirs of Anselm and ancestors of Becket
Jean Truax
Ashgate £19.99
(978-0-7546-6833-6)
Church Times Bookshop £18 (Use code CT469
)
THIS book fills a gap. The Archbishops of Canterbury
who came after Anselm (d.1109) have been comparatively neglected by
historians. Their times were no less challenging, but these three
are more two-dimensional, lacking Anselm's standing as thinker and
writer. They were men of affairs, not of ideas.
There were plenty of affairs to engage their talents.
After Anselm's death there was a gap of five years before Ralph
D'Escures was chosen as a compromise candidate accept-able to the
King. He was in poor health, and lacked the energy during the eight
years before he died to prevent Thurstan, the new Archbishop of
York (1114-40), reviving the controversy between the English
provinces.
The primacy of Canterbury over York was the dispute
of the day for his successors, too. After two chapters on Ralph and
his grapplings with his colleague, the book moves on to William of
Corbeil, another Archbishop chosen - against op-position from
the bishops who wanted a secular choice - from the religious
orders, but an Augustinian canon, not a Benedictine monk. Arriving
in Rome to receive the pallium, he found Thurstan already there,
arguing for York's primacy, and objecting that William could not
lawfully be Archbishop of Canterbury because he had not been
consecrated by Thurstan himself as Archbishop of York. Canterbury
offered the Pope a set of documents now known as the Canterbury
Forgeries, purporting to provide historical warrant for
Canterbury's claims. There is a lively discussion of these
forgeries and their origins.
The Canterbury-York power struggle continued into
Theobald's archiepiscopate, which began in 1138 after a two-year
gap, but it moved into the background for a time. Now there was a
succession crisis for the kingdom, because Henry I's only
legitimate son had died in 1120. The politics of Church and State
became multi-dimensional. Theobald's authority was undermined by
that of the papal legate Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester
and Theobald's disappointed rival.
These excitements form the backbone of the chapters
on Theobald, and the preliminaries to Thomas Becket's appointment.
Becket had to deal with the Canterbury-York primacy question,
too, with the additional complication that Gilbert Foliot, Bishop
of London, was agitating to have his bishopric made a third
archbishopric.
The story is told with care and clarity, with
considerable sensitivity to the priorities of the day, and keeps
close to the sources. It does something new in telling the story
of these complex events from the viewpoint of a succession of
Archbishops of Canterbury. A series of convenient appendices in
Latin and English gives the text of the Canterbury Forgeries, and
key chronicle and correspondence evidence.
Dr G. R. Evans is Emeritus Professor of Medieval
Theology and Intellectual History in the University of
Cambridge.
