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CHAPTER 4
POSITIONS AND PAYMENT
The sociological literature is less extensive on the creation of formal positions within an
organization than it is on many other aspects of organizational structure. While there is a
copious literature on the creation of new positions, what is lacking a literature on the shift from
informal positions to formal positions that accompanies the move from household to office.1 Yet
it constitutes one of the central components of Weber's ideal type of bureaucracy. The
importance of formal positions is certainly clear. Formal positions outlast their incumbents, and
the holder of a formal position typically has a different tenure than that of her superior. They
also create a distinction between the incumbent and the position, in that authority and
remuneration are tied to the position, not to the incumbent. Formal positions also involve
jurisdiction and specified responsibilities, which prevent the incumbent from exploiting the
position for her personal goals. The responsibilities attached to positions limit the power of the
office holder, and allows others to monitor and control her activities within the organization. In
addition, formal positions allow for organizations to reproduce themselves when they have
constant entry and exit. By filling specific positions with well-defined responsibilities and
jurisdiction, the tasks can be completed in a similar fashion after replacement, and the new office
holder can more readily step into the job.
This chapter examines the creation of formal positions within English dioceses. At the
end of the 11th century, and into the first part of the 12th century, episcopal administration was a
household form of administration, where administrators did not have set offices or jurisdictions,
and were dependent on the bishop for their position. Starting in some dioceses in the late 11th
1
Arthur L. Stinchcombe, When Formality Works: Authority and Abstraction in Law and Organizations, (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2001); Max Weber, Economy and Society, trans. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich,
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968).
1
century, and throughout the 12th century, the church created a number of formal administrative
positions to create an administrative hierarchy, and began to use the cathedral chapter as a source
of administrators. What emerged within the English church was a group of administrative
offices directly below the bishop. Removing tasks from the bishop’s set of responsibilities, they
carved out separate administrative jurisdictions that created new and formal “departments”
within the administrative structure of the diocese.
Below these high administrative offices was the cathedral chapter, which was the group
of canons initially charged with operating the liturgical function of the cathedral, such as
officiants in the mass and singing in the choir. The chapter was restructured in the late eleventh
century which involves an increased formalization of their role in the cathedral, as well as in
their rights and responsibilities. This newly reformed chapter served as an important source for
administrators of the diocese, and as the administrative apparatus of the church became
increasingly formalized, the canons were differentiated into separate offices under the bishop and
other high administrative offices within the church.
One of the characteristics that distinguish formal organizations from other forms of social
organization is through their method of coordinating action. Formal organizations coordinate the
action of disparate social actors through administrative structures, rules, and fiat. This is in stark
contrast to other types of social organizations, such as markets (the coordination of action
through self interested exchange) and culture (through socialization). Fundamental to this is the
way in which the division of labor is structured through the formal organization.
This chapter explores certain aspects of the formalization within the medieval church.
First, it explores the creation of a formal division of labor structured by the organization. In
contrast to social structures such as markets, where collective action is structured and organized
through self-interested exchange, in organizations action is structured through formal roles that
2
are attached to offices with definite titles that each have their own responsibilities and rule-based
interactions between them that determine collective action. While this is typically deviated from
to some degree in most actual organizations, it provides the baseline model for organizational
action. This structuring of the division of labor into an administrative structure is the second
aspect of formal positions that has tremendous implications for the process of organizing and
action. Finally, some form of salary or remuneration is provided to incumbents of these
positions in return for their service in these positions, something that is not attached to the
individual separate from their incumbency.
As we explore the process by which this occurred in the English church, one of the things
which will become apparent is that the administrative and role based aspects of formal positions
arose as a consequence of new models of remuneration, not vice versa as would be expected.
Typically, we would expect money, salaries, property, wages, and so on to be paid in return for
certain definite activities on the part of the recipient, namely their labor for the organization.
However, instead we see again that the method of payment was a driving force in the
development of formal organizational structures in the medieval church, and the formalization of
roles and responsibilities were themselves products of formal positions, not vice versa.
Over the course of this chapter we will see how this process begins within the household
administration and ultimately returns to it, but in a dramatically transformed way. The
household model of administration that was common throughout the church prior to the reform
era was the initial baseline for later developments. This was leveraged into formal positions by
certain bishops who wanted a large household staff but were unable or unwilling to provide for
them solely from their own wealth or the bishop’s share of the revenues of the diocese. Formal
positions with prebends attached to them became an effective way of shifting the fiscal burden
away from the bishop to the organization, but produced a set of organizational resources for
3
incumbents in those positions to utilize over the course of the 12th century to increasingly
formalize those positions for organizational ends, which were frequently not those of the
bishops. In contrast to this model was a different model based around monastic organization that
was initially pushed by reformers, but eventually became increasingly obsolete as it was unable
to scale to the demands of ecclesiastical administration. To continue to expand the
administrative staff, bishops sought out other alternatives to place their household into places
within the church, initially relying on the cathedral chapter and later on churches whose tithing
rights were owned by monasteries and other ecclesiastical corporations, or even noble magnates.
Familia Administration
While the 12th century brought new administrative needs to the church, there had always
been a need for some form of diocesan administration. In England, as in the rest of the Latin
church, this had been provided by the bishop's household, or familia.2 Household administration
is quite common historically, and follows the basic model of authority as based on personal
bonds of loyalty and obligation to the head of the organization.
In the late 11th and early 12th century English church, the structure of diocesan
administration closely followed this model. Formal positions were infrequent, and the majority
of the administration of the diocese was conducted by clerks and laymen with personal ties to the
bishop. For bishops from the nobility, these were primarily household retainers of their families,
while those from a lower social class were able to use their position to attract individuals seeking
some form of employment, and employment in the church was attractive. What distinguishes
this mode of administration from what we see develop is that the administrators are tied directly
2
Kathleen Edwards, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages: A Constitutional Study with Special
Reference to the Fourteenth Century, 2nd ed., (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967); Heinrich
Fichtenau, Living in the Tenth Century: Mentalities and Social Orders, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1991).
4
to the bishop, and are fully dependent on the bishop for their livelihood. In this type of
administration, appointments, promotions, and continued employment are based on the
individuals loyalty and dependence on their superior, in this case the bishop, and the extent to
which the bishop has trust in the individual. Expertise and education are possible characteristics
of administrators, but these are secondary factors to displays of trust and loyalty, which is the
basic employment contract.
In a household administration, the division of labor is often indistinct, and varies over
time, since there are no or few formal positions with delimited jurisdictions. Instead, the bishop
held all of the authority and power, and members of his administration could act only in his
name. To the extent that they had some specified set of responsibilities, these were fluid over
time, as bishops had great flexibility in the arrangement of their administration, since his staff
had no formal protections. Furthermore, the extent to which anyone had any jurisdiction was a
personal characteristic, in that they personally carved up administrative tasks, and on their death
or removal from their position, their successor might not necessarily have the same set of
responsibilities.
In terms of remuneration, the members of the bishop's household had no independent
claim on salaries or benefices, but instead were provided for out of the bishop's own property.
On the continent, it was typical for the upper nobility to become bishops and archbishops, and
because of the frequent warfare, they typically used their family's wealth to provide for their
staff.3 In England this pattern was different in a number of ways. First, even immediately after
the conquest, the bishops were primarily drawn from the lower nobility or from the royal
3
Fichtenau, Living in the Tenth Century: Mentalities and Social Orders; R. W. Southern, Western Society and the
Church in the Middle Ages, (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin Books, 1970); Gerd Tellenbach, The Church in
Western Europe from the Tenth to the Early Twelfth Century, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Gerd
Tellenbach, Church, State, and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest, (Oxford: B. Blackwell,
1940).
5
household, which meant that they had less familial wealth and resources to draw on. In addition,
the dioceses of England were better endowed, in that they had more property than on the
continent, and the property was more productive because it was not as subject to destruction by
warring armies or bandits. Because of this, the English bishops were able to provide for their
household out of the episcopal estates.4 This was particularly true of the clergy in the early
households, who often held episcopal manors in order to provide for payment.
However, this method of remuneration was still tied very closely to the bishop's person,
in that the members of the household held no legal claim to the property beyond the will of the
bishop, so that when the bishop died, they were typically removed from the property in order to
allow for the members of the new bishop's administration. Those who did not hold episcopal
manors were principally paid from the bishop's revenues, which provided even less protection.
This method of appointment and remuneration allowed little continuity of administration, as well
as having little in the way of formal jurisdictions and spheres of competency.
To provide for their staff in the familia, the bishops provided for the members of the
familia through in-kind payments, namely food and shelter. The benefit of this method was that
it kept the clerks close to the bishop, in that they were directly dependent on the bishop for their
livelihood. However, this method of provision was severely limited in other ways. First, it drew
directly from the bishop's revenues, which were also needed to provide for the upkeep of the
cathedral, the provision of alms, and the general fund for diocesan operations. While the
incomes of the English dioceses varied dramatically, the provision of a growing administration
was a drain on the resources of the diocese. This method also required the use of a large staff of
lay people to manage the property of the diocese for the provision of the clergy, which put a
further drain on the central resources. This method of provision of the clergy created problems
4
Julia Barrow, "Cathedrals, Provosts and Prebends: A Comparison of 12th-Century German and English Practice,"
Journal of Ecclesiastical History 37, no. 4 (1986).
6
for the creation of formal positions in the church administration, in that by tying payment to a
direct relationship with the bishop, continuity of administration was difficult, since each
successive bishop would bring in his own personal household staff. Since this method of
provision was primarily through in kind payments, it presented a difficulty in attracting talented
clerics, primarily ones who had higher education, since they would find better sources of
employment in places where sinecures were attached to positions.
To take one example of this type of household, let us examine the household of Robert
the Lotharingian, the bishop of Hereford from 1079 to 1096. We have a pretty clear indication
of his household from a grant to Roger de Lacy, a wealthy nobleman in Herefordshire. This
actum has a rather long witness list, including Roger Montgomery, the earl of Shrewsbury, the
earls staff and family, the bishop's household, and Roger de Lacy's household.5 In the bishop's
household are eighteen men, including two occupants of formal positions, six clerks, and ten
laymen. The laymen were definitely part of the bishop's household, in that this charter clearly
distinguishes the witnesses from the different parties, as well as clearly distinguishing the social
order of all of the witnesses:
The witnesses of this event are: . . . . Of the bishop's men: Gerard the bishop's brother (who was
dean of Hereford), archdeacon Hanfrid, Ansfridus the priest, William, Lewin, Alfward, Saulfus,
Alwin; of the laymen of the bishop: Udo, Athalard, Frank, Arnulf, Theobald, Robert, Gozo,
Osbert, Peter, and Richard the cupbearer.6
While this actum is distinct in having such a detailed witness list at this early date, it reflects the
composition of diocesan administration at the time. The early positions, in this case the dean and
the archdeacon, were closely tied to the bishop. In fact, the dean was the bishop's brother. In
addition, there was a mix of clergy and laymen handling the episcopal administration, with a
5
V. H. Galbraith, "An Episcopal Land-Grant of 1085," English Historical Review 44, no. 175 (1929).
Julia Barrow, ed., English Episcopal Acta, Vol. Vii: Hereford, 1079-1234 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993),
no. 2.
6
7
majority being laymen. Also noteworthy is the fact that the clergy who are mentioned were not
members of the cathedral chapter, but instead were clergy personally tied to the bishop, and did
not hold offices separate from their connection to the bishop.
In addition, there is little distinction between the men within the same strata. There are
only three people mentioned by office (the dean, archdeacon, and cupbearer), otherwise the
functions of the members of the household are unclear, which is less a problem of the data then it
is a characteristic of households. There are rarely formal jurisdictions in a houshold
administration, and the informal jurisdictions shift over time, as particular officials gain greater
or lesser responsibilities, though these responsibilities are not protected by any rights.7
Furthermore, the members of the household, outside of the dean and archdeacon, were identified
in the domesday book as holding some of the bishop's estates.8
This form of administration has some distinctive properties. For one, it is rather central,
in that the bishop has tight control over his staff, because they are all personally dependent on
him. In addition, it allowed greater discretion to the bishop, since within the administration there
were fewer checks on his power. However, this mode of administration is not very scalable, in
that it is difficult to increase the size of the administration to handle new tasks or a greater
number of tasks, and coordination is also difficult, since all of the members are tied to the
bishop. In addition, the source of authority for any of the administrators was the bishop himself,
which made it difficult for them to handle other clergy since they had no independent authority
to act. This was particularly difficult for the lay members of the household, since they were of a
different ordo than the clergy, and were not recognized as having authority over the clergy.9
7
The idea of formal jurisdiction involves not only the set of tasks for which the officeholder is responsible, but also
importantly includes a set of rights to defend their responsibilities from encroachment by others. C.f. Weber,
Economy and Society..
8
Barrow, "Cathedrals, Provosts and Prebends: A Comparison of 12th-Century German and English Practice."
9
Georges Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
8
Overall, the familia system was an effective, if inefficient, system for the local control of
dioceses.
It also fit well with other systems of administration, such as the royal court, which
also relied on the use of personal relations for authority and control. The basic logic of
administration through personal relations with a household organizational structure, and both
supported each other. By governing through a household, bishops were able to completely
replace existing staffs upon taking office, ensuring that they could have a staff loyal and
dependent upon them.
The question arises then of why this began to change, Bishops had been able to
administer their dioceses more or less effectively in the past, and while they had to deal with an
increasingly complex and large set of responsibilities over the course of the twelfth century, it
was not at all clear that this in itself was the driving force in the development of a formal
structure of administration. To explore this question, it is important to begin to investigate the
process of formalization in order to start to develop an answer as to why it came into being.
The Creation of Formal Positions
In the late 11th century a significant development began to transform the organizational
structure of dioceses. The household model of administration began to change to one where th
ebishop administered the diocese with and through a set of administrators in formal positions
with set jurisdictions and tasks. During the period from 1075 to 1250, though nearly all of the
activity occurred between roughly 1180 and 1150, individual dioceses began to create formal
positions between the bishop and the parish priests and cathedral chapter. The cathedral chapter
(i.e., canons) became more involved in not only electing the bishop, but also in filling
administrative roles in the diocese. These offices carved up the administration of the diocese
into several components over which each office had jurisdiction. The offices were hierarchically
9
ranked by status, with the dean or precentor typically at the top and the archdeacons typically at
the bottom. These offices were directly below the bishop, and stood in between the bishop and
the cathedral chapter.10 This section first details the different offices that were created, and their
attempts to explain their creation using a theoretically informed analysis.
The English church developed a set of positions which is known as the “four-corner”
system, because the four main officers (dean, precentor, treasurer, and chancellor) of the church
had their stall in each of the four corners of the cathedral.11 It was known as the four-corners in
that the four principal officers (dean, treasurer, chancellor, and precentor) each established their
stalls in one of the four corners of the cathedral. In addition, there was also a group of
archdeacons in each diocese, and sometimes formally distinct assistants to the dean and
precentor, the subdean and succentor respectively. The principal offices of the diocese were the
dean, the archdeacons, chancellor, treasurer, and precentor. The dean was the head of the
cathedral chapter, and was responsible for the community of the chapter as well as presiding over
the assemblies of the clergy at the cathedral. These assemblies were called for the election of the
bishop and for certain acts of the bishop, including the alienation of church property. The
archdeacon originated as the administrator of day-to-day affairs in the diocese. In most English
dioceses, there were several archdeacons, who were first without territorial jurisdiction.
Beginning at the end of the 11th and through the 12th century, archdeacons were reorganized
along territorial lines, with one archdeacon who was a chief executive officer, and several
archdeacons who were responsible for the parishes within their territory. The office of the
10
Though the incumbents of these offices were also typically members of the chapter, in that the office also had
attached to it a prebend which made the incumbent simultaneously a member of the chapter, with the rights of a
canon, and above the chapter by virtue of holding a higher office.
11
Edwards, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages: A Constitutional Study with Special Reference to
the Fourteenth Century.
10
chancellor emerged out of the Magister Scholarum, or the master of the cathedral school, located
in the capital town of the diocese. The cathedral school taught Latin, literacy, and the seven
liberal arts to younger students in preparation for governmental administration or a clerical
career (and later for mercantile careers). During the 12th century, the chancellor transformed
this role into the keeper of the bishop's seal, the officer in charge of external affairs and
correspondence, responsibility for the cathedral school, and the head of the judicial staff of the
diocese. The treasurer was responsible for maintaining and preserving the treasury of the
cathedral, which primarily involved relics and other valuable items, not the general operating
funds. The precentor emerged out of the office of cantore, who was in charge of leading the
choir. Later, the office took on the great share of responsibilities for conducting mass and other
rituals at the cathedral as well as some of the local churches.
Of the five primary administrative positions within the diocese, the easiest to explain the
origin of is the archdeacon. The position of the archdeacon was principally a Norman transplant,
with little indication of its existence in England prior to the conquest.12 The archdeaconry was
well established in Normandy by the mid-eleventh century. During his tenure, Lanfranc, the
archbishop of Canterbury from 1067 to 1089, enacted statutes to get the English cathedrals to
adopt this Norman office, in order to aid the bishop in his administration of the diocese.13 In the
monastic cathedrals this was often the only secular position in the administration outside of the
12
Frank Barlow, The English Church, 1000-1066: A Constitutional History, (London: Longmans, 1963); Edwards,
The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages: A Constitutional Study with Special Reference to the
Fourteenth Century.
13
Frank Barlow, The English Church, 1066-1154: A History of the Anglo-Norman Church, (London: Longman,
1979).
11
secular clerks in the bishop's familia.14 However, in the secular cathedrals they provided the first
step in the creation of a broader range of formal administrative positions within the cathedral.
The archdiaconate was created before or concurrently with the office of the dean, with
the possible exception of Chichester, where the first mention of an archdeacon is c. 1118, while
the first mention of the dean is c. 1108, though the vagueness of the dating makes it difficult to
tell whether the deanery was in fact created prior to the archdeaconry. However, there are
several cases where the deanery was created well after the archdeaconries, notably Salisbury and
Wells.
The office of the archdeacon underwent an early and important modification in the late
11th and early 12th century as it became territorialized. These territorial archdeaconries were
subdivisions of the diocese with an archdeacon at the head of them. At Chichester, Salisbury,
Hereford, and Wells, the archdeacons were originally without formally defined territorial
jurisdictions until the early part of the 12th century, while at London and Lincoln the
archdeaconries were apparently organized territorially from their inception.
One significance of this territoriality is that involves a very different type of jurisdiction.
Non-territorial archdeacons were principally aides to the bishop, with unclear and loosely
defined responsibilities and authority.15 However, the introduction of territorial archdeacons
meant that archdeacons had more clearly defined jurisdictions over particular parish churches
and parochial revenues, significant judicial roles within their territory, and more clearly defined
episcopal authority.16 This shift to a greater formalization in the role of the archdeacon leads me
14
John Le Neve and Diana E. Greenway, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1066-1300, Revised and expanded ed.,
(London: Institute of Historical Research; Athlone P., 1968-), vol. 2.
15
Barlow, The English Church, 1066-1154: A History of the Anglo-Norman Church; Edwards, The English Secular
Cathedrals in the Middle Ages: A Constitutional Study with Special Reference to the Fourteenth Century.
16
Brian R. Kemp, "Archdeacons and Parish Churches in England in the Twelfth Century," in Law and Government
in Medieval England and Normandy: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt, ed. George Garnett and John Hudson
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Brian R. Kemp, "Informing the Archdeacon on Ecclesiastical
12
below to consider the territorial archdeacon as a different type of position than a non-territorial
archdeacon.
A similar issue arises with the difference between the office of the master of the schools
(magister scholarum) and the chancellor. The master of the schools was an early office that was
principally involved with running the schools, while the chancellor added a number of duties
including a judicial function, running the chancery and external correspondence, as well as
running the schools. Because of this major shift in the nature of the position, the creation of the
office of the master of the schools is considered in the following analysis to be distinct from the
chancellor.
There is an important methodological problem in studying the creation of administrative
positions in the English church at this time, namely that it was not a subject that contemporaries
found worthy of commenting on. While we can identify new positions being created, and can
measure when they were created fairly accurately, much of the process of this creation is difficult
to ascertain, because it is not mentioned in the letters, chronicles, or papal decretals during this
period, other than the archdeaconries mandated by Lanfranc. Instead, we need to examine the
process of formation through indirect references to people incumbent in these positions. Table 1
shows the creation of positions by the bishops who created them in six different dioceses. It
identifies the diocese, the individual bishops, their dates of office, and what offices were created
by each bishop. This is not a complete list of the bishops in each of the six dioceses under study,
but instead just those bishops that are "at risk", to use terminology from event-history analysis,
of creating new formal positions. Most of the positions were created in all of the dioceses, but
we can see from Table 1 that two positions were not present in several of the dioceses: namely
Matters in Twelfth-Century England," in Medieval Ecclesiastical Studies in Honour of Dorothy M. Owen, ed. M.J.
Franklin and Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell Press, 1995).
13
master of the schools and the non-territorial archdeacon. Lincoln never created non-territorial
archdeaconries because Remigius instituted territorial archdeaconries early on. Hereford, Wells,
and Chichester never created masters of the schools, though they did create chancellorships, but
since no masters of the schools were implemented after 1107, and they were relatively late
adopters of the majority of the positions, they created chancellorships directly, instead of
transforming the existing position of the master of the schools.
There are two main patterns of the creation of positions evident in Table 1. The first
pattern is that embodied by Lincoln and Salisbury, which created a large number of positions and
early relative to the other dioceses. At Lincoln, Remigius instituted the office of the dean,
territorial archdeacon, treasurer, magister scholarum, and precentor by 1092, when they were all
present at the dedication of the new cathedral at Lincoln.17 The only change in the composition
of the upper administration of Lincoln is the change of the magister scholarum to a chancellor in
1148 under Robert de Chesney. At Salisbury, Osmund had created non-territorial archdeacons
by 1085, but the majority of positions were created during the episcopacy of Roger. Roger
created the magister scholarum c. 1107, the deanery by 1111, the treasurership and precentorship
by 1122, and territorial archdeaconries by 1130. His successor completed the creation of
positions by creating the chancellorship from the magister scholarum in 1155.
The second pattern is typified by Hereford and Chichester, which created positions late
relative to the other dioceses. At Chichester, Ralph Luffa created the office of the dean c. 1108,
the non-territorial archdeacon c. 1118, and the precentorship c. 1122. The rest of the offices
were established under Hilary, who created the treasurship in 1147/8, territorial archdeacons c.
1157, and the chancellorship sometime between 1154 and 1163. The Robert the Lotharingian in
Hereford had established a dean and non-territorial archdeacons fairly early (c. 1085), but it was
17
David M. Smith, ed., English Episcopal Acta, Vol. I: Lincoln, 1067-1185 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1980), no. 3.
14
not until the beginning of Robert de Bethune's episcopacy that Hereford had territorial
archdeacons (c. 1131), a cantore (c. 1132), and a treasurer (by 1132). The offices were not
complete at Hereford until William de Vere created the office of the chancellor between 1187
and 1195.
The other two dioceses are intermediate between these two patterns. London tends more
towards Lincoln and Salisbury, but the treasurership and the transition from a magister
scholarum to a chancellor happened much later than at the other two dioceses. At London,
Bishop Maurice had instituted non-territorial archdeacons by 1096, territorial archdeacons by
1102, the magister scholarum in 1102, the cantore18 by 1105, and the dean by 1107. The
treasurership was not added until 1160-1162 under Richard de Belmeis II, and it was not until
1204 that William de Ste-Mere-Eglise instituted the chancellorship.
In contrast, Wells looks in many ways like Chichester and Hereford, in the relative
lateness of its positions, though it had archdeacons early on, but Robert of Lewes created a
number of positions during the mid-12th century that looks more like the large-scale creation of
positions at Lincoln or Salisbury. At Wells, Giso instituted archdeacons c. 1086, and his
successor John of Tours had instituted territorial archdeacons by 1106. However, it was not until
Robert of Lewes that Wells saw the other major offices, with a dean by 1141, precentor by 1146,
the creation of a treasurer between 1153 and 1159, as well as an assistant to the precentor, the
succentor, sometime before 1165. The offices at Wells were completed with the creation of the
chancellorship c. 1188 by Reginald FitzJocelin.
From this we can see that the different dioceses had different patterns of development,
and that the majority of the changes were made by specific bishops, such as Maurice at London,
18
This position is equivalent to a precentor.
15
Robert of Lewes at Wells, Remigius at Lincoln and Roger at Salisbury. For the later adopters of
positions, the sees of Chichester and Hereford, the development is much less driven by
individual bishops, but has a more fragmented development. This suggests several possible
explanations for the creation of formal positions.
One potential explanation is that the early adopters were aligned with the Gregorian
reform movement, which in part sought greater church control and centralization.19 Of the early
adopters, all were royal appointments, as were nearly all appointments to English bishoprics
prior to 1125, which makes this explanation unlikely.20 One of the bishops was more aligned
with the reform movement. Remigius at Lincoln was a monk from Fécamp, which was a minor
center of church reform in Normandy. However, during the late 11th and early 12th centuries
the reform movement in England was pushed forward by Archbishop Lanfranc and in particular
Archbishop Anselm, both of whom sought to increase the power of monks in the church by
transforming secular foundations to monastic foundations, which is one of the reasons why Wells
does not adopt many positions early in the period.21 Furthermore, Remigius was initially
removed from office by the pope on a charge of simony, though he travelled to Rome with
Lanfranc and was able to be reinstated in office. Indeed, as we will see later in this chapter, the
refoundation of the secular canons in the cathedral chapter, done by all three of these bishops,
was most likely a reaction against these reform attempts.
In contrast, the other two bishops who adopted positions early on were not considered
reformers at all. In particular, Roger of Salisbury, who was discussed in chapter 1, and Maurice
19
Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989);
Tellenbach, Church, State, and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest; Walter Ullmann, The
Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages: A Study in the Ideological Relation of Clerical to Lay Power, 3d.
ed., (London: Methuen, 1970).
20
For more on appointments and elections in the English Church, see chapter 6.
21
Robert Bartlett, Medieval Panorama, (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2001); C. R. Cheney, From Becket to
Langton: English Church Government, 1170-1213, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956).
16
were both former royal chancellors, and Roger continued as a royal chancellor, which often put
him on the wrong side of the reforming movement. In fact, both of them centralized church
property under themselves, and both signed confessions on their death giving property back to
the clergy for their wrongs. Maurice writes to the clergy of London:
I am sorry for my evil deeds which I did both greatly against the church of Saint Paul and against
you. Wherefore I beg you, to be lenient to me for what I have unjustly committed against you, to
hold this agreement that hereafter the customs of your church , statutes, elections, powers in your
prebends, and to be established in manors just as you held on the day in which I became bishop."22
The statements of Roger are very similar, he made several deathbed confessions to various
ecclesiastical bodies restoring to them land and property he had misappropriated.23
From this, it is clear that the bishops who were creating extensive formal administrations
early on were not strongly associated with reform, and at least two of them, Maurice and Roger,
were known to be opposed to the reformers.24 This makes the argument that the creation of
formal positions was an element of reform an unlikely candidate to explain the original creation
of formal positions within the church.
If the early development of formal positions was not driven by reformers, it was certainly
true that they were Normans. Following from this, it is plausible that it was driven by
importation of practices from the Norman church into England. The importance of Normans
suggest the hypothesis that the English church borrowed its structure from the Norman church,
which in many ways was more developed. We already saw this process operate for the creation
of the initial archdiaconates. Furthermore, since royal appointees were creating formal positions
within the church at this time, and the king was engaging in a project of Normanification of the
22
Falko Neininger, English Episcopal Acta, Vol. 15: London, 1076-1187, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999),
no. 9.
23
Edward J. Kealy, Roger of Salisbury, Viceroy of England, (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1972),
app. 2.
24
Barlow, The English Church, 1066-1154: A History of the Anglo-Norman Church; Kealy, Roger of Salisbury,
Viceroy of England; H. R. Loyn, The English Church, 940-1154, (Harlow, U.K.: Longman, 2000).
17
church,25 it is possible that the new Norman clergy brought with them administrative models
from northern France. This would constitute an normative isomorphic process, as the Norman
bishops brought with them administrative practices from Normandy and instituted them in
England.26
There is some credence to this. All of the bishops in England appointed between 1066
and1125 were Norman, with a few exceptions of Normans who had been born in England. All
three of the bishops who created numerous positions early on were Norman, and had experience
with the church there to varying degrees. As previously mentioned, Remigius was a monk at
Fécamp in Normandy, while Roger had been a parish priest and Maurice had been archdeacon of
Le Mans, giving them knowledge of the Norman church system. For Roger, this is particularly
apparent, in that in his familia he had a number of staff drawn from Norman churches.27
Remigius, the bishop at Lincoln, was himself a Norman monk from Fontevrault
However, this explanation is more difficult for Lincoln and London, since no Norman
church had all of the positions that they had implemented by the end of the 11th century.28
Instead, Lincoln in particular was slightly ahead of the Norman churches in the elaboration of a
formal administrative structure. This explanation is also complicated by the fact that the Norman
bishops in the other dioceses did not create a formal administrative hierarchy, instead relying on
their familia and archdeacons to provide for the administration of the diocese. While there was
certainly some borrowing of structure that occurred, this does not fully account for the creation
25
For example, Florence of Worcester comments that king William removed archbishop Stigand and his brother
bishop Ethelmar from office “that he might appoint persons of his own nation to preferments, and thus confirm his
power in his new kingdom” Benjamin Thorpe, ed., Florentii Wigorniensis Monaci Chronicon Ex Chronicis
(London: English Historical Society, 1848-1849), 170..
26
Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective
Rationality in Organizational Fields," American Sociological Review 48, no. 2 (1983).
27
Kealy, Roger of Salisbury, Viceroy of England.
28
Edwards, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages: A Constitutional Study with Special Reference to
the Fourteenth Century.
18
of positions. What does seem likely is there were consultations and collective action among the
bishops, both Norman and English, to establish similar structures in both places.29
Another possible explanation is that these developments were driven by organizational
pressures from changes in the responsibilities and their staffs. Modern research has shown that
formal administrative positions would help to coordinate and control activity, and this would be
most important for larger dioceses with more people and resources to coordinate and control. If
we examine the dioceses that created the most positions the earliest, we can see that these were
the larger dioceses, while the smaller dioceses created positions later and in a more sporadic
fashion.
Lincoln was the largest diocese in Western Europe in the 11th century, and the church
was fairly wealthy, with a large number of monasteries as well as many churches. In 1092, when
the new cathedral was finished, the bishop Remigius was able to create it with a large chapter.
While the actual number of canons in the late eleventh-century is unclear, contemporaries
remarked on the size and scholarly background of the cathedral chapter. Henry of Huntingdon
wrote that Remigius “graced [the new cathedral] with clergy who were most commendable for
their learning and their morals”.30 The reconstitution of Lincoln, as well as other chapters,
required a greater degree of supervision than before.31 Furthermore, Salisbury, Lincoln, and
London were relatively wealthy dioceses in the late eleventh century. In order to manage the
property, a more formal and larger administrative staff would have been more effective than the
traditional household organization. Most of this property was in the form of churches, where
29
C. R. Cheney, English Bishops' Chanceries, 1100-1250, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1950).
J. P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Omnium Ss. Patrum, Doctorum Scriptorumque Ecclesiasticorum
Sive Latinorum, Sive Graecorum, Series Latina, (Paris: Migne, 1844-1859), vol. 195, col. 932A.. See also the
statement above by William of Malmesbury.
31
A fuller discussion of this reconstitution is contained later in this chapter as well as in the next chapter.
30
19
revnues were generated from fields attached to the churches, and more importantly, the tithes
drawn from the congregation of these churches. These churches needed to be staffed, and their
priests overseen by the diocesan administration. This presents a significant management
problem, with a large number of people who needed to be assessed, placed, managed, and
monitored. This problem was more accute at the larger dioceses, where the situation was more
of a problem than at the smaller dioceses, and necessitated a greater formal control apparatus
than the smaller dioceses. However, we can also see from Table 4.2 that the relative differences
between the dioceses decreases over the twelfth century in the dioceses studied. London and
Lincoln remain larger than the others, but London goes from being five times as wealthy as
Chicester in 1086 to only twice as wealthy in 1212, and by 1212 Wells, Chichester, and
Salisbury are all equivalent in size, with London and Lincoln 1.5 to 2 times as wealthy as these
dioceses. There are still differences, but the relative differences diminish over time as the
smaller dioceses accumulated property.
The argument from size is, however, a necessary but not sufficient condition for the
creation of formal administration. If larger dioceses created formal administrative positions in
order to manage the heavier organization burden, then we would expect Salisbury to create
positions early than under Roger in the first part of the 12th century. However, if we look at the
early adopters, what we see is that they were the larger dioceses that created formal positions
when there was also a reorganization of the cathedral chapter, as we will see below in the section
on the role of the cathedral chapter in developing a diocesan administrative staff.
This recommends a fifth argument that helps us to understand the problem. This fits with
arguments that existing institutional arrangements make it difficult to implement new
20
organizational structures.32 Even with the introduction of foreign clergy, the local clergy were
still significant actors, and though they could not attain the highest offices, were active in
protecting their rights, and the formalization of positions was seen as a threat, since it involved
shifts in power and property arrangements.33 This resistance made it difficult for bishops to
implement large-scale reforms in the dioceses. One of the ways in which this resistance was
weakened was in the shift of sees to large towns after the decree of archbishop Lanfranc in 1075.
Moving the see allowed bishops greater flexibility in instituting changes, because the customs
and rights of the clergy were tied to the specific locale. Moving to a new cathedral meant that
the bishop had the opportunity to institute new rules and positions.
The diocese of Thetford was moved to Lincoln by Remigius, where construction of the
cathedral was completed in 1092. During the construction of the new cathedral, Remigius had
created all of the formal positions in the diocese, and when the cathedral was completed in 1092
William of Malmesbury noted that he “filled it with many canons, who themselves were
conspicuous because of their scholarship”34 to provide a pool of clergy to serve as administrators
along with the new dean, territorial archdeacons, master of schools, and precentor. Similar
patterns were seen at Salisbury and London, where the bishops there refounded the cathedrals,
with Osmund moving the see from Sherborne to Salisbury and Maurice building a new cathedral
in London. At the time of these foundations, Osmund and Maurice also reconstituted the
cathedral chapter, which opened up a context for reorganizing the entire administration.
32
Gerald Berk, Alternative Tracks: The Constitution of American Industrial Order, 1865-1917, (Baltimore, Md.:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Elisabeth S. Clemens and James M. Cook, "Politics and Institutionalism:
Explaining Durability and Change," Annual Review of Sociology 25 (1999); Kathleen Thelen and Sven Steinmo,
"Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics," in Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in
Comparative Analysis, ed. Scen Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen, and Frank Longstreth (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1992).
33
On the shift in property arrangements, see chapter 5.
34
David Preest, ed., The Deeds of the Bishops of England by William of Malmesbury (Woodbrige, U.K.: Boydell
Press, 2002).
21
The process of creating formal positions thus appears to be a combination of a need to
control an increased division of labor, and the means to do so with the reorganization of the
chapter, which allows the creation of new administrative structures. The larger dioceses adopted
formal positions earlier and more extensively than did the smaller dioceses, but the creation of
formal positions occurred immediately after the cathedral was moved, which allowed a
rearrangement of the organizational structure of the diocesan administration. The creation of
positions and offices allowed a larger administration for the diocese, and one managed by
incumbents of these offices who held greater authority and formal limits on their activities,
which allowed for a more effective control over an administration that had a greater scope and
scale.
For the smaller dioceses, the pressure for formal administrative positions was less
because there were fewer people to manage, less property to administer, and fewer resources
with which to reorganize the diocese. However, as the twelfth century progressed, the work of
the smaller dioceses began to look increasingly similar to that of the larger dioceses.
Additionally, they had accumulated more property, benefitted from some of the advances for the
payment of clergy we will see in the next chapter, and greater resources to restructure their
administrations. What we see is that they adopt positions more slowly as the century progresses,
in line with the argument from the division of labor. The one exception is Wells, where a
number of new positions were created in the mid-twelfth century, but this was when the secular
chapter at Wells was reconstituted, fitting the pattern for the larger dioceses, only several
decades later.
The importance of the constitution of the cathedral and its chapter in the creation of
formal positions indicates that we need to look at this process as well. In addition, the chapter
served as an important source for administrators that were under the direction of the bishop and
22
other administrative officers of the church. To this end, the next section of the chapter examines
the development and role of the cathedral chapter in the creation of a formal administrative
structure in the English church.
The Cathedral Chapter
These formal positions were not the only source of administrators within the church.
Below the formal positions was the cathedral chapter, which provided an additional source of
administrators for the increasingly bureaucratic church. The chapter was important in the
development of a formal administration in that it provided a way of paying and promoting the
bishop's clerks. Furthermore, it provided a group of clergy within the church who could serve as
potential administrators, whether they had previously been clerks of the bishop or not.
The church reformers in England initially pushed for administrative changes in line with
their affiliations in the reformed monasteries. Archbishop Lanfranc sought several changes
within dioceses, including moving many from small villages to larger, and walled, towns, such as
the move from Thetford to Lincoln among other examples. In addition, the archbishop mandated
that bishops should create at least one archdeaconry in every diocese. However, Lanfranc's most
dramatic policy was to support the existing monastic cathedrals as well as to create some new
dioceses with a monastic chapter and to even change some existing secular chapters into
monastic ones.
To understand the difference between these two types of cathedral organization, it is
important to first discuss the two different types of clergy within the Catholic tradition, up to that
point. Within the church the members of the clergy are divided into two quite distinct types:
secular and regular. Regular clergy are those who follow a monastic rule, the term regular
deriving from the Latin for rule, regula. The purpose of the rule was to reduce mundane
23
activities to their minimum to force the individual adhering to the rule the ability to focus as
much as possible on spiritual and otherworldly matters. The physical world was a burden, albeit
a necessary one, which the monk sought to overcome to strict adherence to ascetic practices.
The monastic ideal was captured in the oft repeated phrase that the monk was dead to the world,
indicating the turning of his back on the mundane and secular. For much of the history of the
Latin church, the principal rule was that of St. Benedict from the 6th century, which imposed a
uniformity to western monasticism. The rule covered many aspects of monastic life, including
food, dress, interactions, relations with family and the laity, daily activities, personal possessions,
the structure of the community, and many other things which covered nearly all aspects of the
monk's life.
As can be expected, the ideal was rarely attained, and in practice much of this was
watered down as monasteries became more prominent and included more people. This led to
repeated efforts for reform within the confines of the monastic world, including various
movements for purification and reform. It was from these communities that a reform movement,
known popularly as the Gregorian Reform after pope Gregory VII, one of the principal architects
of reform and the person who made the reform movement a dominant force within the church.
In contrast to the otherworldly life of the regular clergy were the secular clergy. They
drew their name because unlike the regular clergy who turned their back on the world, the
secular clergy were definitely of the world, or saecula. For a universal church which sought to
provide religious guidance to all from the lowest the highest, it was necessary for some of the
clergy to deal with the world directly. These were the secular clergy, which includes bishops,
archbishops, priests, archdeacons, and others who are charged to handle worldly affairs. This
includes a wide variety of functions, including performing sacraments, ordaining other members
24
of the clergy, providing pastoral care to the laity, managing church property, running the
cathedral, and so on.
This group of clergy is much less clearly defined than the regular clergy. There is no
standard rule, nor any other indicator of membership other than ordination. Some members of
the secular clergy lived together in communities, while others did not. Some followed a rule,
many of the most important, such as bishops, had no corrolary with a monastic rule.
The monastic cathedral was a uniquely English establishment.35 Unlike a typical
cathedral where the cathedral and city churches were staffed by a chapter of secular clergy, the
monastic cathedral was instead built around a Benedictine monastery. This organizational form
originated from the reintroduction of Christianity from Ireland, which was heavily monastic in
character.36 Unlike a typical monastery with an abbot as head of the community, the monastery
was organized under the bishop, and the titular head of the monks was a prior subject to the
bishop.
The reformers, many of whom came from the continent, found this to be an attractive
organizational structure that was in line with their own purposes. In many ways, the goals of the
reformers was to make the lives of the secular clergy more similar to that of the regular clergy,
and to turn their focus inward towards the church as opposed to outwards towards the world.
The reformers broadly pursued several major policies. One was to push a ban on lay
investitures, the widespread practice of having powerful lay rulers, such as kings or members of
the nobility, themselves appoint individuals to positions within the church. This was especially
35
There were only two monastic cathedrals outside of England, one in Italy and one in Ireland.
However, these were not the organization of dioceses in Ireland itself, as there as well as in Wales the bishop was
not based in a fixed see, and was himself subordinate to a local monastery, making the abbot the principal
ecclesiastical official in a diocese. Instead of having a cathedral as episcopal seat, the bishop travelled throughout
the diocese providing pastoral care as an itinerant bishop subject to an abbot.
36
25
important in the selection of bishops and abbots who were themselves powerful actors within the
church, and reformers saw the practice of lay investiture as producing poor clerics who were not
focused on the well-being of the church. A closely related practice that reformers sought to
prevent was simony, or the purchase of ecclesiastical offices for money. These were often done
by laymen who held rights, whether by law, custom, or usurpation, over the appointment of
clergy, and used this as a way of generating revenue. Many church offices, especially high
offices like abbacies, held large amounts of property which could then be used to enrich the
officeholder. In this way, the office was an investment which produced particularly egregious
cases of rent-seeking behavior.
While the attempt to place bans on lay investiture and especially simony were popular
within the church, another major element of the reformers' policies was much less so. In
addition to attempting to separate the church from powerful lay rulers by removing their rights to
appoint clergy, and to stop the buying and selling of church offices which led to their utilization
as a vehicle for personal enrichment, the reformers sought to separate the secular clergy from
another main social relation: family. The reformers pushed very hard to ban clerical marriage
throughout the Latin church, not just for monks but for all those who were in orders. The
monastic cathedral was seen by Lanfranc and other reformers as one of the best ways to get the
secular clergy to become celibate, by essentially turning the main bastion of the secular clergy
into a chapter of regular clergy.
The monastic cathedral model provided for monastic discipline, based upon asceticism as
opposed to the externally imposed legal rules binding secular clergy. The regular clergy in a
monastic chapter were also much more independent of the bishop than were the canons in a
secular chapter. This meant that the local clergy in these dioceses would have been much more
likely to be in line with reformers’ goals.
26
One way in which we can see the importance of the chapter organization in the creation
of formal positions is that except for the archdiaconate, formal positions were not created in
monastic cathedrals. Furthermore, as a model the monastic cathedral proved contentious in
several ways. The secular clergy were beginning to be more active and unified in acting, much
of it directed against the monasteries. The rhetoric of the reformers as well as their strong push
against clerical marriage alienated the clerks. The increasing number of monksbecoming
bishops and seeking greater administrative roles in the church directly threatened the clerks
organizational positions and opportunities. On the other hand, there were a number of attempts
to create monastic cathedrals that were seen by monks, not inappropriately, as naked theft.
One example of this which was notorious in England was the diocese of Bath. The
diocese centered on Somerset was originally based in a secular cathedral at Wells. The bishop
John of Tours, who had previously been the physician to the king, moved the see to the rich
monastery of Bath around 1089 with royal approval. The original church at Wells lost its status
as a cathedral, and the monastery of Bath became the new chapter under Bishop John. This
move from a poor church to a rich monastery was supported by Lanfranc in his support of
monastic cathedrals, as well as being potentially lucrative for the bishop, who might have hoped
for private patients who were visiting the famous baths in the city.37
The monks of Bath as well as other monks examining these events were upset by the
change. They were furious that the lay servants of the bishop’s household were doling out their
livings, and the revenues of the diocese were were used to buy the city itself for the bishop and
the diocese.38 This tension in the chapter was somewhat relieved in following years as some
independence was restored to the monks. Additionally, John returned the chapter its estates
along with some of the newly acquired properties, but in fact he and his successors continued to
37
38
Kathleen Edwards, Secular Cathedral; L.S. Colchester, Wells Cathedral.
William Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, p. 195; Regesta, i. no. 326.
27
hold poessession of most of these properties. Eventually, it took the monks seventy years to
have all of their properties restored to them.
His sucessor, Robert of Lewes, was a secular clerk who sought to reestablish a chapter of
clerks in the diocese. To this end he rebuilt the chapter at Wells, among other administrative
reforms. The monks were concerned about their potential loss of rights to elect the bishop as
well as the general dignity of being a cathedral, but were somewhat pacified by further
restorations of their property. The conflict between the two chapters ultimately dominated the
political life of the diocese for the next century. The two chapters were more or less coequal in
the diocese, but a later bishop, Savaric, sought to incorporate the very rich and famous monastery
of Glastonbury in the diocese.39 The abbey itself was richer than the diocese, making it an
attractive target for Savaric. He used the upheavel surrounding the captivity of king Richard to
get possession of the abbey, and received papal confirmation to move the see to the abbey. This
was ultimately short-lived, but created tremendous negative feelings towards the acquisition of
monasteries for creating a monastic cathedral from all sides.
Beyond the basic conflict between the two types of clergy, and the difficulties in turning
existing abbeys into cathedrals, the monastic cathedral model proved difficult for the expansion
of administration in the twelfth century. In this case, as well as others, the move to the monastic
chapter was driven principally by greed on the part of individual bishops. Separate from this,
however, were the administrative limitations of monastic cathedrals. As we will see in secular
cathedrals, not having canons and prebends made it difficult for bishops in these dioceses to
provide for their staff. The existence of prebends was also essential in providing for the
expansion of formal offices in dioceses by creating a separate means of providing for them. The
39
During this time the monks made the widely believed claim that Glastonbury was in fact Avalon, where king
Arthur of legendary fame was buried with his wife.
28
monks themselves were not helpful either in providing administrative assistance, in large part
because of their otherworldliness.
In contrast to the monastic cathedral was the typical model of cathedral organization
based around a secular chapter. Each cathedral was staffed by a chapter composed of canons
who were responsible for the liturgical functions of the cathedral. The idea of the bishop and
cathdral developed early in church history when it was based in a more urban society. The
bishop was the local religious leader for the city in the sole church, and to assist him in running
the church were a number of other men from the community. As Christianity became universal
and western society became less urban and more rural, the bishop could no longer provide for the
spiritual sustenance of the area, and often not even of the entirety of the city. This required a
larger and more formal group of people to aid the bishop. In the city where the bishop was
resident, this was typically the cathedral chapter, who served the cathedral itself and typically
other churches spread throughout the city. They sang in the choir, officiated the mass, served as
priests, and were otherwise involved in the liturgical functions of the bishopric. In outlying
churches other arrangements were involved, which were hardly uniform. Many churches had no
priest or clergyman to officiate, relying on itinerant priests. Others drew from the local village
someone who was barely able to recite the Latin liturgy, much less understand it or be able to
read the bible. Others were well-served by chaplains attached to the church through a vicarage,
or the patronage of a local lord or monastery, especially those in the noble houses. Monasteries
often had a member of their community get an exception and be ordained priest so that he could
lead the monks in the services.
The cathedral chapter in a secular cathedral initially began as the group of clergy
associated with the cathedral to run the liturgical operations. They composed the choir and the
29
officiants, and were often hereditary sinecures, since there was little restriction the canons of the
cathedral from marrying and living in their own houses. The development of the prebendal
system at the end of the eleventh century involved the bringing of the canons into the cathedral,
in that it required them to live communally and celibately. This movement of the canons into a
common life and with individual prebends to pay for them created a means in which the bishops
could collate their clerks into the cathedral chapter.
The chapters of the English dioceses were reconstituted in the late eleventh century, all
around 1090.40 This was immediately after the death of Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury,
who had been a strong advocate of moral reform of the clergy and was active in establishing
many of the principles of the Gregorian reform in England. One of the ways in which he sought
to transform the secular clergy was through the expansion of monastic cathedrals. The monastic
cathedral, as discussed in chapter 3, was a peculiarly English way of structuring churches. The
monastic cathedral had a bishop and archdeacons, but was otherwise administered by an abbey
of Benedictine monks who served as the chapter of the cathedral. With respect to the goals of
the reform movement, namely bans on clerical marriage and the moral reform of the clergy, this
was an effective means in that it brough regular clergy who were under a strict rule into the
administration of the dioceses. Lanfranc was successful in establishin monastic chapters at a
number of cathedrals. Prior to the conquest, Winchester, Worcester, and Canterbury were
monastic foundations. After the conquest, Lanfranc took this structure and changed Rochester
and Durham into monastic cathedrals, constituted the new diocese of Ely with the see at Ely
40
Cheney, English Bishops' Chanceries, 1100-1250; Edwards, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages:
A Constitutional Study with Special Reference to the Fourteenth Century.. The one important exception is Bath and
Wells, where the see was moved to Bath and constituted as a monastic cathedral, and then constituted as a dual see
diocese in 1136 with the refoundation of a secular chapter at Wells. A similar structure was used at Coventry, where
there was a monastic foundation at Coventry and a secular foundation at Lichfield.
30
abbey, and refounded Norwich, Coventry, and Bath as monastic cathedrals in their respective
moves from Elmham, Lichfield, and Wells.
Relations between the secular clergy and regular clergy were very antagonistic in the
twelfth century.41 Given the timing of the new constitutions for the secular chapters, it appears
as though the bishops at the remaining secular cathedrals sought to retain their secular chapters,
and did so through reforming the secular chapter, by making it somewhat monastic while
keeping it full of secular clergy.42 As one chronicler put it, the English bishops “made a
determined effort to turn out the monks who were living the monastic life in a number of English
Cathedrals”.43 The chronicler then recounts how they tried to turn Winchester into a secular
cathedral, until Lanfranc intervened and forced it to remain a monastic cathedral, though this did
not “succeed in allaying the enmity which some had conceived against the monks”.44 By
refounding the chapters with a more formal constitution, these bishops were able to preemtpt any
further encroachment of monastic chapters on the existing secular cathedrals. Much of this was
driven by the use of the chapter in these cathedrals as an increasingly administrative body, as we
will see below. Monks in general made poor administrators, because administration necessarily
involves secular affairs such as management, organizational disciplining, and land
administration. The monk’s rejection of the world and his asceticism made him typically poorer
at administration, and their observance of the Benedictine rule also made them less likely to
engage in worldly activities. Furthermore, the refounded chapters served as an important
resource for bishops by providing them with paid positions that they could appoint their clerks
to, as indicated below, which would have been more difficult with a monastic chapter.
41
For more on this topic, and how it impacted the selection of bishops, see chapter 6.
A fuller discussion of these reforms is in chapter 5.
43
Martin Rule, ed., Eadmeri Historia Novorum in Anglia (London: Longman & Co., 1884).
44
Ibid.
42
31
The cathedral chapter was the primary executive and legislative organ in the diocese.
They were responsible for electing the bishop, and had to pass on any alienations of property
held by the diocese. In addition, they continued in their role as the primary officiants of the
cathedral in performing the liturgical duties. The prebendal system, as we will see in the next
chapter, was a way of paying for the canons by giving them individual pieces of property in
which they were responsible for managing in return for the revenues that the property could
generate. These revenues were used to pay for their own support, as well as for any of the tasks
of their office.
The bringing together of the canons into the cathedral with prebends to pay for them
created an opportunity for the bishops to fill them with their clerks. The primary problem with
the familia administration was that it was difficult for the bishop to pay for his administrative
staff. The creation of formal positions was one way to pay for clerks to serve as administrators
without having to draw from the bishop's own property, and the chapter served as an additional
resource. The prebends served as a way of paying for them, so that the bishop could have an
administrative staff without having to pay for them out of his own revenues.
As we saw in the previous section, the growing administrative demands of the diocese led
to the establishment of formal positions. The same pressures were felt in the houshold, but the
familia administrative structure made it difficult to expand, because of the financial and material
pressures of supporting a larger staff. What we see with the chapter is that the reconsituted
chapter served as an important resource for the bishops, as were the formal positions, in that it
allowed the bishop to expand the administration by putting his clerks into the chapter and the
higher church offices.
In secular cathedrals the canons and the holders of administrative offices were provided
for through prebends. The prebend was a sinecure to provide for their own person, as well as the
32
operations of their office. These sinecures included a certain amount of land, and not
infrequently a church, where they were able to collect the tithes for their own use. In this
capacity, the holder of the prebend was to manage the property, as landlord of land and priest in
the churches.
Attached to each prebend were a number of rights, responsibilities, and requirements. As
we will see below, these developed over time as the prebendal system became more elaborate.
In general, the holder of a prebend held the property for their own use and that of the office, but
there might be some requirement attached to the prebend to give a rent of some portion of the
revenues of the prebend to either the bishop or to the common fund of the cathedral. In addition,
the prebend was attached to membership in the college of canons of the cathedral church, which
gave them a set of rights of participation in the college. By being a member of the cathedral
church, the holder of the prebend was required to be in residency, though as we shall see this
requirement was relaxed and modified in a number of ways, and getting the canons to maintain
residency was a continual problem in the church. Furthermore, the holder of the prebend held
extensive rights over the property, which protected them from the encroachment of others,
including the bishop, monasteries, the laity, and other canons.
This system was the closest to the idea of salary in Weber's discussion of bureaucracy.45
The property was technically owned by the office, in that a canon who held a particular prebend
was able to enjoy the fruits of the property, but was unable to alienate the property, and had
restrictions on their ability to rent it out or use it for purposes outside of the scope of using it for
their own sustenance and to provide for the needs of their office. In this sense, it represents an
important move in the separation of individual property rights from property rights attached to
positions. In the terms of Weber, it involves the important separation of the office from the
45
Max Weber, Economy and Society, trans. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1968).
33
incumbent, in that the benefits of the property accrue to the individual only insofar as they hold
the office, and cease upon their removal from the office.46 In this way, it tied the property to the
position, not to the individual, separating in a significant way ownership from control.
However, in an important sense the prebendal system was not the same as the salary
system that Weber describes. One important difference was that the system was based on direct
control over property, instead of drawing a salary from the organization.47 These benefices were
for the rights to the produce and revenues generated by particular parcels of land, and more
importantly, the tithes generated by churches at which the holder of the prebend served as a
priest, or contracted it out to a vicar.
The prebendal system of benefices for the clergy came about after the Norman Conquest.
There is little evidence of its existence prior to the conquest, and nearly all of the structural
elements seem to have Norman origins.48 While the prebendal system solved the important
problem of paying for the clergy in the newly created positions, in large part the system was
created as a way of avoiding the direct monasticization of the cathedrals. As mentioned in
chapter 3, the English church was distinct from continental churches in having the clergy of
some of the cathedrals organized as Benedictine monasteries. As we saw in the previous
chapter, the bishops reconstituted their chapters after the death of Lanfranc to prevent a future
archbishop from establishing them as monastic chapters. This allowed them to remain secular,
and furthermore, to serve as a means of provisioning an administrative staff in the dioceses.
It is in this context that we see the development of a prebendal system in the secular
cathedrals in England. The prebendal system appears with the reorganization of the dioceses
46
Though there is an important exception to this for officeholders who die while in office, who were given rights
over the benefits of the prebend for a year after deat, as discussed below.
47
Weber in fact separates out prebendal bureaucracies from other forms on this dimension alone.
48
Kathleen Edwards, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages: A Constitutional Study with Special
Reference to the Fourteenth Century, 2nd ed., (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967).
34
upon the construction of the new cathedrals. At Lincoln the dedication of the new cathedral in
1192 included the establishment of prebends there.49 Similarly, at London the dedication of
Osmund the bishop lists the different prebends created there, as well as what should be done
when a prebend is left vacant by a deceased canon.50 While it is impossible to absolutely
determine that the creation of the prebendal system was conditional on the reorganization of the
cathedral, the lack of evidence for its existence prior to the reorganization strongly suggests that
the creation of the new system was able to occur because of the opening of the institutional
structure of the diocese upon the creation of a new cathedral. This suggests that the prebendal
system was able to be created because of the general reorganization of the dioceses, in the
context of attempts to establish monastic cathedrals. The reconstitution of the chapter happened
with the creation of prebends for the canons of the cathedral.
However, this still does not indicate why the prebendal system was created. There seem
to be two reasons why the prebendal system came into existence. The first was a reaction to the
creation of monastic cathedrals, and the reorganization of some secular cathedrals as monastic
cathedrals. In addition to this, the prebendal system established a way of managing church
property as the church was increasing its land holdings.
As discussed in the previous chapter, the prebendal system emerged in England at the
same time as Lanfranc, the archbishop of Canterbury, and other reformed monks were
attempting to reform the English church through a monasticization of the secular clergy. This
49
Marjorie Chibnall, ed., The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969-1980);
Edwards, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages: A Constitutional Study with Special Reference to the
Fourteenth Century; Diana E. Greenway, ed., The History of the English People by Henry, Archdeacon of
Huntingdon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968); David Preest, ed., The Deeds of the Bishops of England by William of
Malmesbury (Woodbrige, U.K.: Boydell Press, 2002); David M. Smith, ed., English Episcopal Acta, Vol. I: Lincoln,
1067-1185 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980).
50
Brian R. Kemp, ed., English Episcopal Acta, Vol. 18: Salisbury, 1078-1217 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999), no. 3.
35
was especially true of the dioceses, where the push to establish monastic chapters was
particularly strong, and was successful in a number of instances.
Beyond the attempts of the secular clergy to protect their positions in the dioceses, the
creation of the prebendal system was also seen as a way of better managing the property of the
church. The conquest of England established more secure claims of the church to a variety of
land holdings, and one of the ways in which William the Conqueror sought to pacify his new
lands was through the church. This led to the transfer of large amounts of land to the church,
both the monasteries and the dioceses. The increase in land holdings, as well as the existing
holdings, created a problem of management, since the administration of the dioceses in the late
11th century was not very well developed, and it was not principally focused on land
management. The prebendal system established a way for the church to manage large amounts
of land in a decentralized way by granting broad rights to the holder of prebends. Hugh the
Chanter describes this motivation in the creation of a prebendal system at York:
For many years the canons lived together in common, but the archbishop then
decided, upon advice, to give each on a prebend from the lands of St. Peter [York
Minster Cathedral], much of which lay desolate. The purpose was to increase the
number of canons and to encourage each one, as it were for his own sake, to build
up and cultivate his share with greater zeal.51
Eerily echoing arguments from agency theory, this indicates that a motivation for the creation of
individual prebends, as opposed to communal property, was driven by the desire to make land
more productive.52 By giving out the land to individuals in the chapter, and not the chapter as a
whole, it was hoped that they would pay more attention to the management of the property, and
since they drew the revenues from it, make it more productive for their own selfish interests.
51
Hugh the Chanter, The History of the Church of York, 1066-1127, trans. Charles Johnson, (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1990), p. 18.
52
On agency theory, see Eugene F. Fama and Michael C. Jensen, "Separation of Ownership and Control," Journal
of Law and Economics 26, no. 2 (1983); Michael C. Jensen and William H. Meckling, "Theory of the Firm:
Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs, and Ownership Structure," Journal of Financial Economics 4 (1976).
36
The prebendal system was primarily for the canons of the cathedral, who were paid from
the income and produce generated by their holdings. However, it also allowed for the easier
development of formal positions. In all of the dioceses, the administrative officials of the
diocese were given prebends to hold, and these prebends were attached to their particular office.
For example, the dean of Wells held the prebend of Wedmore Prima, and this was permanently
attached to the deanery.53 The one exception to this was the archdeacons in some of the
dioceses. Since some of the archdeaconries had been created prior to the establishment of the
prebendal system, some of them were not originally constituted with a prebend attached. The
problem of paying these archdeacons often continued through the end of the thirteenth century,
in large part because many of the cathedral chapters were antagonistic to the archdeacons, who
were notorious for exacting strict justice, and were often perceived as being overly acquisitive of
others’ property.54 Because of this resistance, prebends were not attached to these until the late
thirteenth century, and these archdeacons often had to use their powers to gain property for their
own support. The development of perpetual vicarages helped this problem, by allowing the
bishop to appoint archdeacons to these vicarages as a way of providing for them. However, this
exception is telling, since it was the archdeacons who did not have prebends attached who were
particularly active in exacting property. Furthermore, the reason why this organizational conflict
was created was because of the timing of the creation of the office. Whereas other
archdeaconries were established after the creation of the prebendal system, and thusly had
53
Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, vol. 7.
Brian R. Kemp, "Archdeacons and Parish Churches in England in the Twelfth Century," in Law and Government
in Medieval England and Normandy: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt, ed. George Garnett and John Hudson
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Robert E. Rodes, Ecclesiastical Administration in Medieval
England: The Anglo-Saxons to the Reformation, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977); Jean
Scammell, "The Rural Chapter in England from the Eleventh to the Fourtheenth Century," English Historical
Review 86, no. 339 (1971).
54
37
prebends attached to their positions, those positions created prior to the establishment of the
prebendal system had a difficult time in getting property attached to their office.
Because of the paucity of records, it is impossible to assess just how frequent this was,
but we can see that as the chapter developed, many of the bishop's clerks were elevated to
canonries. In London, we have little records of the composition of Maurice's household, who
was the bishop who instituted prebendaries there. However, for his successor, Richard de
Belmeis, we have a more accurate picture. There are seven identifiable members of his
household, and of these, four later became canons.55 In addition, he placed two of his sons and
four of his nephews into prebends. Here we can see that the organizational logic of the
household, based on trust, loyalty, and dependence, was also carried over into the early chapter,
as Richard sought to fill the chapter with not only his clerks, but his relatives as well.56
A similar pattern holds at the other dioceses. The cathedral chapter became a way of
moving the household into the diocesan hierarchy, and provided a means of paying for them.
Over the course of the twelfth century, we see a similar pattern, as clerks are moved into the
chapter. However, towards the end of the twelfth century we see a decrease in the number of
relatives who were elevated into the chapter in the same diocese. That is, bishop's had a harder
time placing their relatives into the chapter of their own diocese, though if they had the right
qualifications (serving as a clerk and having some form of education or administrative
experience) were frequently in the service of other bishops.
Not all of the canons of the chuch began as clerks of the bishop. The bishops in England
had control over the appointment of new canons, but many were legacies from earlier bishops,
and some were appointed based on restrictions on the original grant of the prebend, while others
55
Neininger, English Episcopal Acta, Vol. 15: London, 1076-1187.
Brooke argues that Richard was able to place his relatives into the chapter by agreeing to protect hereditary rights
for the other canons in the chapter. Christopher N.L. Brooke, "The Earliest Times to 1485," in A History of St.
Paul's Cathedral, and the Men Associated with It, ed. W.R. Matthews and W.M. Atkins (London: 1957).
56
38
were appointed because their appointment might be attached to the grant of land to the diocese
by the prospective canons family.57 Some of the canons would have been clerks of the previous
bishop, while others were put into place for a variety of other reasons. Some of the canons were
children of the local elite, where a suitable donation to the diocese would allow their children to
gain a position. Similarly, some of the prebends were granted by the king as positions for his
clerks to have paying positions within the clergy. Finally, others, and this is particularly true
later in the twelfth century and in the thirteenth century, were graduates of the universities who
were recruited directly into the chapter to serve as administrators.
These canons served as a pool of literate and educated clergy who were a pool of
administrators on which the bishop could draw staff. Some of the canons were explicitly linked
to particular offices, such as an archdeaconry or the chancery, where the holder of the prebend
served as an official within that “department” of the diocese. In addition, these canons had the
requisite background to serve as officials, and were brought into administrative tasks by the
bishops.
The individual prebend of the canons was instrumental in England's ability to attract and
retain university educated clergy, because it was potentially more lucrative to the individual than
the communal arrangements that were more common on the continent. Even without domestic
universities throughout most of the twelfth century, the English church pulled ahead of France in
bringing university trained clergy into ecclesiastical administration.58 The individual prebends
proved attractive to the university graduates, since it provided a more stable as well as larger
57
Everett Uberto Crosby, Bishop and Chapter in Twelfth-Century England: A Study of the Mensa Episcopalis,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Edwards, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages: A
Constitutional Study with Special Reference to the Fourteenth Century; Joseph H. Lynch, Simoniacal Entry into
Religious Life from 1000 to 1260: A Social, Economic, and Legal Study, (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University
Press, 1976).
58
John W. Baldwin, "Studium Et Regnum: The Penetration of University Personnel into French and English
Administration at the Turn of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries," Revue des Études Islamiques 44 (1976).
39
income.59 In addition, because the bishop had more control over the appointment of canons, he
was able to institute canons who were better educated and better able to serve as administrators.
The chapter also served as an important entry into the higher administrative positions
within the diocese. As the secular career path within the diocese developed, the college of
canons proved to be an important source for the promotion of clergy to the higher offices. As
Table 6.6 indicates, after 1170 the most important source of new incumbents to the higher
diocesan offices was the cathedral chapter. For those whose backgrounds can be identified, 45%
of new precentors, 83% of new chancellors, and 60% of new archdeacons were canons. The
majority of those who did not come up from the chapter were those who were initially in another
high office, and had been canons before then. The chapter became an important resource for the
secular clergy in developing a bureaucratic career, as it became the prime source for the selection
of incumbents to the higher administrative offices, as well as an important source of lower
administrators in its own right.
Indeed, the cathedral chapter became a prime source for the development of professional
administrators, by providing them with positions and compensation that allowed for a new
system of administration. The professionalization of the clergy occurred because the chapter
provided a way of introducing to diocesan administration who were educated in the universities.
As the chapter became linked into a bureaucratic career within the church, it provided a means of
advancement to the very top of the diocese for those whose primary focus was on administration,
and it socialized individual members of the clergy into organizational roles in a way that would
have been impossible without the chapter and inducements for promotions into the upper clergy.
59
Julia Barrow, "Education and the Recruitment of Cathedral Canons in England and Germany, 1100-1225," Viator
20 (1989).
40
Rebuilding of the Household
The formal positions and the cathedral chapter were important sources for the creation of
a bureaucratic structure, by bringing administration out of the familia into a set of positions with
formal jurisdictions, tasks, and independent means of support. By the end of the twelfth century,
this group of clergy in these formal positions were essential to the operation of the diocese, and
their influence was dramatic in the building of a bureaucratic church. However, we also see at
the end of the twelfth century the growing importance of the bishop's familia in the
administration of the diocese.
This pattern represents a bit of a puzzle, since the development of formal positions should
have created a steady decline in the role of the bishop's household, yet we see a resurgence of
their role towards the end of the twelfth century and into the thirteenth. As the number of formal
position grew, and the incumbents in them became increasingly professionalized, we would
expect a diminished role for clerks who were affiliated only with the bishop, not with a formal
position within the cathedral. Instead, we see that there is a growth in the importance of
unattached clerks in the bishop's familia in the last few decades of the twelfth century, and into
the thirteenth.
This shift was not accompanied by a shift away from the use of the clergy in the
administrative positions or in the cathedral chapter. Instead, there is a growth in the number of
clerks appearing in administrative activities in the church, in addition to the canons and higher
clergy. We can see this in the successive bishop of Salisbury. Table 2 shows the number of
different types of witnesses to the various bishop’s acts from Osmund to Richard Poore, which is
the best indicator of administrative activity available.60 We can see here that there were only
three witnesses to Osmund’s acts, of whom two were laypersons. However, under Roger, we
60
F.M. Stenton, "Acta Episcoporum," Cambridge Historical Journal 3, no. 1 (1929).. After Richard Poore, the
bishops of Salisbury used registers, which makes comparisons impossible to earlier periods.
41
can see that his witnesses included eight of the incumbents of formal offices (four archdeacons,
the dean, precentor, chancellor, and subdean), three clerks, and six laypersons. In Jocelin’s
administration, we see a dramatic increase in the use of canons, of whom fifteen witness his acts,
compared to only five household clerks. However, under Hubert Walter we see that there is an
increased use of clerks, though a large number of incumbents of formal positions and canons
appear as well. Herbert Poore presents a similar pattern, with a large number of clerks, most of
the incumbents of the formal positions, and some canons. Under his brother Richard, we see that
there is an almost equal use of clerks and canons, and a heavy of the officers of the church. The
pattern at Salisbury is illustrative of the patterns in the other dioceses, where towards the end of
the twelfth century we see an increased use of household clerks, in combination with the
incumbents of formal positions and the cathedral chapter. This all indicates that there was a
growing role for the bishop’s household in the administration of the diocese, but also a heavy use
of the diocesan officers, as we would expect.
There are several reasons for the increasing use of unattached clerks towards the end of
the twelfth century. The first is that the administrative complexity of running the dioceses was
steadily increasing, while the size of the college of canons remained largely the same. The
majority of the chapter was established by the middle of the twelfth century at all of these
dioceses. At Lincoln, the chapter had 43 canons by 1146, and only increases by six after that.
Similarly, by 1150 Salisbury had 47 canons, and only increased by five in the hundred years after
1150. Thus, the size of the chapter expanded rapidly at the end of the eleventh and through the
first half of the twelfth century, and then expands very slowly after that. Because the data is
biased towards later years, it is likely that most of the expansion occurred well prior to 1150.
Also, we can see in the number of new canons created that many were created early on. London
established its size very early, by 1100, and while Lincoln and Salisbury seemingly develop at a
42
slower pace, roughly half of their ultimate total number of canons were in place by 1110 at the
latest.
The administrative positions within the diocese were nearly all established by the midtwelfth century, and the college of canons did not increase significantly in the dioceses.
However, the work of the diocese was steadily increasing. The jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical
courts was increasing, the property holdings of the diocese were becoming more fully
established, there was an increased monitoring of the parish clergy and the local monastic houses
to ensure obedience to the laws of the church, and the activities of all of the members of the
church were becoming more constrained by an increasingly elaborate system of rules.
The shift to a higher level of formal regulation over the jurisdiction of positions, the
activities of their incumbents, and the appointment to these positions made them increasingly
autonomous from the bishop. The traditional familia administration was closely linked to the
will of the bishop, who had a high level of autonomy in action because the administrative staff
was dependent on him. As positions became formalized, and administrators were drawn from
the college of canons, by virtue of being in these independent positions they had a greater degree
of autonomy in their own action with respect to the bishop. That is, they gained power through
formalization by being able to protect their jurisdictions and having control over certain
organizational tasks that was independent of the interests of any particular bishop. The irony
was this was obtained through formalization, which greatly restricted the clergy holding
admiinstrative positions from pursuing their own interests, instead creating a convergence of
organizational interests with personal interests because of the structure of positions and careers.
This made the administrative staff of the diocese increasingly independent of the bishop.
A similar paradox happened with respect to the bishop, who gained power in the sense of control
over resources through the process of creating an administrative staff in formal positions, but
43
they lost a significant amount of control over the activities of the staff through the same process
of formalization.61 This restricted the bishop's control over the administrative staff of the
diocese, and the familia was a way in which the bishop could expand those parts of the
administration under his direct control. The shift away from the household led to the bishop
seeking to expand those parts of the administration under his direct control, while keeping those
aspects of the administration that were protected by formal positions the same size.
However, the revenues of the diocese were not significantly increasing over this period,
at least to the extent of the bishop being able to provide for a much larger administration out of
his own pocket. What allowed the administration to expand was the development of a new legal
arrangement that provided an important source for bisops to pay for their clerks, while still
keeping them out of the formal administrative apparatus of the formal positions and the cathedral
chapter. These arrangements were known as perpetual vicarages and were essential in allowing
the bishop to expand his household.
The prebendal system was also having difficulties in expanding in the later twelfth
century. The creation of individual prebends made it easier for other groups to gain prebends
within the chapter. Most notably were royal prebends and monastic prebends. Furthermore, the
bishops in monastic cathedrals were unable to rely upon their own chapters for their staff, they
had to try to place their clerks in prebends in other dioceses. All of the dioceses granted
prebends of the church to the king and large monasteries. The royal grants were a way for the
king to pay for his own administrative staff, by endowing prebends at the cathedrals and having
the bishop appoint his clerks to them. For the most part, these royal prebends restricted who was
61
This represents the orthogonal nature of two different conceptions of power. One is built on seeing power as
control over resources, while the other conception of power considers power as being able to act autonomously.
Richard M. Emerson, "Power-Dependence Relations," American Sociological Review 27, no. 1 (1962); Rosabeth
Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation, (New York: Basic Books, 1977)..
44
able to hold the prebend, or even giving explicit right to the king to appoint a clerk to that
prebend in perpetuity.62
Similarly, prebends were granted to monasteries, giving them rights in the cathedral, the
most important being participation in the election of the bishop. Because the monastery was
non-resident in the chapter, they were to appoint a vicar to replace them for the functions of the
chapter, and to pay for them out of the revenues of the prebend. In many of these grants of
prebendal rights to the monasteries, the bishop held the right of presentation, such that he could
appoint his clerks to fill the offices required by the prebend holder, but unable to be fulfilled by
the monks of the abbey. In part this is related to the issue of non-residency discussed below, as
this made sure that a member of the secular clergy was there to fill the duties of the prebendary.
However, it also served as a means for provisioning the clerks of the bishop’s household outside
of the bishop’s own land, in the same way as the system of perpetual vicarages operated, as we
will see later in the chapter.
Because prebends were tied to individuals, and the statutes of the cathedral were not well
specified early on, it prevented the establishment of particular tasks to all of the prebends of the
cathedral. Some were assigned explicitly to the officers of the church, such as the dean,
archdeacons, etc., as well as some of the minor offices, such as the almoner. Furthermore, other
canons worked in the administration of the church as well, but this was not always explicitly
defined. However, there were a number of prebends in every church which had unspecified
responsibilities, other than falling under general canonical discipline. That is, they could not sell
offices, marry, or pass on land to their children (which they were not supposed to have in the first
62
Edwards, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages: A Constitutional Study with Special Reference to
the Fourteenth Century; Ulrich Rasche, "The Early Phase of Appropriation of Parish Churches in Medieval
England," Journal of Medieval History 26, no. 3 (2000); R.N. Swanson, "Universities, Graduates and Benefices in
Later Medieval England," Past and Present 106 (1985); A. Hamilton Thompson, "Diocesan Organization in the
Middle Ages: Archdeacons and Rural Deans," Proceedings of the British Academy 29 (1943).
45
place), and were expected to be resident, though this restriction was weakly enforced, and for the
royal prebends, would involve engaging in a struggle with the king.
The individual aspect of the chapter expanded over time in certain ways, with the
important exception below of the common fund and the role of the assembled (i.e. resident)
chapter holding vacant prebends in common. The clearest way in which we can see this trend is
the creation of statutes that allowed the canon to retain rights for one year after his death. This
happened in all of the dioceses, and made the prebend in certain ways closer to private property
than property attached to an office. We can see the process of this in the diocese of Chichester.
During his tenure (1125-1145) bishop Seffrid I gave the following confirmation to the chapter
there:
In the name of the Holy Trinity I, Seffrid, by the grace of God bishop of
Chichester, concede to the canons of Holy Trinity Cathedral, Chichester, the
liberty prepared by our ancestor and confirmed by his seal, namely that from the
day of a canon’s death and burial for one year and a day to its return, they shall
hold their prebend exactly as it was when it was alloted in life, with the advice of
the dean and his canons, to free them from debts which they owe and to alms for
their burial and for the use of their parents and family.63
Similar grants were given at the other cathedrals, giving rights to the canons after their death for
the support of their family and to repay their debts. However, this was mitigated over the course
of the twelfth century. In 1152 bishop Hilary was told by Pope Eugenius III that half of a
deceased canon’s prebend should go for the use of the surviving canons, while the other half was
for the construction and maintenance of the church, but could be used to pay off any debts of the
dead canon.64 Similarly, Pope Alexander III confirmed this to Hilary in 1163.65 Simon of Wells,
the bishop of Chichester after Hilary, confirmed these statutes, though he did allow the dead
canon to retain rights over those parts of the prebend he was responsible for cultivating, but all of
63
Henry Mayr-Harting, The Acta of the Bishops of Chichester, 1075-1207, (Torquay, U.K.: Devonshire Press,
1964), no. 15.
64
Walther Holtzmann, Papsturkunden in England, (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1952-1972), ii, no. 70.
65
Ibid., ii, no. 113.
46
the rest of the prebend would go immediately to his successor.66 While never becoming fully
private property, the extent to which the property was that of the canon, versus that of the
particular office, was never fully resolved, with some always set aside to pay off debts. Support
for family was removed, but there was still a sense that these benefices were not fully a part of
the office, though it tended that way in the thirteenth century.67
Finally, the chapter was becoming increasingly autonomous over the course of the
twelfth century.68 This is represented in a number of different ways. First, by 1150 there was
established in all the dioceses a separation of the property of the bishop and the property of the
chapter. The chapter held property in the form of prebends separate from episcopal control
(though the bishop had rights of appointments to them for the most part), as well as property held
communally in the form of the common fund.69
Furthermore, the chapter gained rights over the election of the bishop and the election of
the dean. The rules on how to appoint a new bishop were very unclear in the eleventh century,
and were largely in the hands of the king. In the twelfth century as the canon law developed it
became policy to push for the election of bishops by the clergy of the diocese.70 However, which
clergy would participate was not fully established, since it could include the lower ranks of the
secular clergy and the monks of the religious houses within the diocese. In order to gain greater
authority within the diocese, the chapter acted to assert rights over the election of a new bishop,
and were successful in gaining relatively exclusive privilege for this election, with the exception
of the archbishopric of Canterbury, where the monastic chapter and the suffragan bishops
66
Mayr-Harting, The Acta of the Bishops of Chichester, 1075-1207, no. 145.
Edwards, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages: A Constitutional Study with Special Reference to
the Fourteenth Century.
68
Crosby, Bishop and Chapter in Twelfth-Century England: A Study of the Mensa Episcopalis.
69
Ibid; Edwards, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages: A Constitutional Study with Special Reference
to the Fourteenth Century.
70
Robert Louis Benson, The Bishop-Elect: A Study in Medieval Ecclesiastical Office, (Princeton N. J.: Princeton
University Press, 1968).
67
47
participated.71 Furthermore, they gained the right from the bishop to elect the dean, the head of
the chapter, to more fully establish their autonomy from the bishop. It was this point of power
and privilege in the church where a dean of Chichester could say to the abbot of Battle abbey
with whom the diocese was in a dispute with, “and so we are the church; we will endure after the
bishop departs, and that is why we demand this of you”.72 By the end of the twelfth century, the
chapter saw itself as distinct and somewhat autonomous from the bishop.73
The prebendal system allowed for the early development of an administrative staff
separate from the household in the administration of English dioceses. However, it created some
problems for the bishops in establishing administrations that were provided for solely through
prebends. The prebendaries became increasingly autonomous over the twelfth century, as the
engaged in collective action to protect their property. This reduced the reliance the bishop could
have on members of the chapter to serve as administrators, and lessened the willingness of the
bishop to expand the chapter. Furthermore, the canons were expensive, and held a significant
amount of property, which made the creation of new prebends problematic. As we saw in the
previous chapter, around the middle of the twelfth century the size of the chapter, at least at the
larger dioceses, is well-established, and there are few new prebends created in following
decades. In addition, the individuation of the prebends and their early development made it
difficult to keep all of the canons resident in the cathedral, either to serve in the liturgical
function of the cathedral or in the administration of the diocese. The solution to this problem
was the increased reliance on the common fund as a means to incentivize residency among the
chapter, the subject of the next section.
71
Robert Benson, "Election by Community and Chapter: Reflections on Co-Responsibility in the Historical
Church," The Jurist 31, no. 1 (1971); Benson, The Bishop-Elect: A Study in Medieval Ecclesiastical Office.
72
Eleanor Searle, ed., The Chronicle of Battle Abbey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 172.
73
Crosby, Bishop and Chapter in Twelfth-Century England: A Study of the Mensa Episcopalis.
48
The perpetual vicarage developed in the later part of the twelfth century in order to make
sure that churches owned by monasteries or other bodies were staffed by priests who were able
to perform the mass. This had been a significant problem before then, and as literacy expanded
in the church, the concern about priests being unable to perform the functions of their office, and
churches without pastors, became increasingly salient. Furthermore, the largest monasteries
were very large landholders and the perpetual vicarage was a way of getting for the secular
clergy some of the revenues of the monasteries, which were otherwise going to the support of a
relatively small number of monks. A perpetual vicarage was an arrangement whereby the holder
of the church, such as a monastery, would agree to pay out of the revenues of the church a salary
to a member of the secular clergy who would serve as a priest for the church. The monastery
would still be able to gain rents (primarily in the form of tithes) from the church, but some
portion of this was apportioned to the vicar for the church. These vicars were typically in
residency, but as they were used to pay for the bishop's clerks, this would only work effectively
for those churches close to the bishop's palace or the cathedral. For more far flung churches, the
perpetual vicar would often subcontract out his pastoral duties to another and lower ranking
priest so that the clerk could remain in the see while still gaining a salary from his position.
Perpetual vicarages first appear in England after 1150, and quickly spread and became
heavily used. Indeed, we see a quick rise in the number of the bishop's clerks who were
instituted into vicarages. Table 3 shows the number of clerks instituted to perpetual vicarages as
well as grants of land from 1150 to 1229 in six dioceses. What we see here is that at the time of
the decrease in the growth of the chapter after 1150, the use of perpetual vicarages to fund clerks
begins, increasing to a total of thirty clerks being instituted into perpetual vicarages. This
represents a very heavy use of this new way of paying for administrative staff. These data most
likely understate the situation, since not all of these records survive. As registers became more
49
heavily used, we see a much higher rate of institution into vicarages as the records were kept
both at the recipient (i.e. the monastery) and at the sender (the bishop's chancery). If we look at
Lincoln, where Hugh was the first bishop in England to use a register, beginning in 1217, eight
years after his election, we see that institutions to vicarages was one of the most common acts
done by the bishop. For his predecessor, William of Blois, who was bishop from 1203 to 1206,
we only have records of three institutions of clerks to vicarages.74 However, Hugh, who was
bishop from 1217 to 1235, we have a total of 83 institutions.75 Some of this might be a higher
rate of appointment, but the difference is also likely because these were not the most important
records for the monasteries to maintain, so many of the records of the appointments were most
likely lost. It is much more likely that the numbers in table 4.5 understate the actual extent of
institutions to vicarages, and that they were much more common earlier on.
The perpetual vicarages were an effective tool for the bishop, in that they allowed him to
expand the number of clerks in his household. While they also had a pastoral function, in
ensuring that churches had priests to perform the office, they were common in large part because
they were a means for the bishop to effectively have the monasteries pay for his staff. This
innovation was tremendously important in allowing the expansion of the administrative staff of
the church, and we can see that the perpetual vicarage and the increase in the household occur at
the same time, and the argument here is that this is because the perpetual vicarage was a
structural innovation that allowed the expansion of the administration by providing a means of
supporting a larger administrative staff. In fact, the Fourth Lateran Council required perpetual
vicarages in churches held by monasteries, but they had become common in England well over
40 years prior to the council. The Fourth Lateran Council was concerned with the pastoral role
74
David M. Smith, English Episcopal Acta, Vol. 4: Lincoln, 1186-1206, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986),
nos. 235, 87, 96.
75
Brian R. Kemp, English Episcopal Acta, Vol. 19: Salisbury, 1217-1228, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
50
of vicarages, and ensuring that churches had trained priests, but they became prevalent, at least in
England, because they provided a way of expanding the administration.
The growing autonomy of the chapter and the increasing separation of the chapter and
bishop was counteracted by various attempts by bishops to regain a more direct control over the
administration of the diocese. Prebends gave the canons an independent source of income, and
while they were dependent on the bishop for their appointment, barring serious misdeeds they
held their position for life. In addition, towards the end of the twelfth century, we saw in chapter
4 a resurgant importance of the episcopal household in the administration of the diocese, in large
part as an attempt by the bishop to regain a more direct authority over the administration of the
diocese, instead of having much of the administrative activity being carried out by members of
the clergy who had legal rights that restricted the bishops control over their activities.
The household was able to become reestablished as an important component of the
diocesan administration because of several new techniques for the funding of the clergy that
allowed the bishop to appoint his clerks to positions that lacked the autonomy of the chapter and
the higher offices of the diocese. While these formal positions were very important in
developing the upper administration of the diocese, and were essential in the building of
bureaucratic careers which socialized the clergy and induced compliance through expectations
about promotion, the bishops also sought to have a firmer grip on their diocese, and did were
able to do so by the creation of several new ways of paying for their clerks.
The principal method that was developed that allowed the bishop to expand his
administration by adding in clerks who were more dependent on him was through perpetual
vicarages. A perpetual vicar was someone who served as priest of a church, serving in the place
of the holder of the rights to tithes from the church. This was typically used for churches held by
monastic communities, where they were unable to have a member of the community serve as
51
priest, but held the rights to the tithes given to the church. This method was also used for holders
of churches among the secular clergy who were non-resident in the church, many of them canons
of the cathedral who were resident at the cathedral, but their prebend held a church outside of the
town, preventing the canon from serving as the priest. In place of the individual or corporation
that appropriated the tithes, the priest was to be paid out of that appropriation, with the amount to
be paid to the priest typically specified by the early thirteenth century.
The perpetual vicarage began in the mid-twelfth century, and was created at two different
types of events. The first was in the granting of rights to a church to a canon or a monastic
community, and specified the creation of a perpetual vicarage in the grant. A fairly typical
example of this was the grant of the church of Owersby to Royston priory by Bishop Hugh of
Avalon at Lincoln:
Hugh by the grace of God bishop of Lincoln to all of the faithful of Christ to
whom the present communication shall reach, greetings in the Lord. We are
willing to reach the acquaintance of your community with divine regard and
consideration of the poverty of the house of the canons reglar of Royston, and
concede to H. the prior and his canons who are servants with god that on the
presentation of Eustace de Merk who was instituted there they may have the
church of St. Martin Owersby in perpetuity. They must save a suitable portion of
it and the prior and canons must present to the bishop a perpetual vicar for the
later disposition of the bishop.76
The second event, and much more frequent, was on the occasion of a monastery seeking a
confirmation for their ownership of a church, either after a grant or in the occasional
reconfirmations of property.77 Here, the bishops would confirm the monastery’s possession of
the rights to appropriate the tithes from the church, but they were required to withold some
portion of the tithes in order to provide for the priest who was appointed in their place.
76
David M. Smith, English Episcopal Acta, Vol. 4: Lincoln, 1186-1206, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986),
no. 162.
77
For more on confirmations, see chapter 8.
52
The perpetual vicarage developed from several factors. The foremost, and the reason the
Third Lateran Council required the use of perpetual vicars,78 was the pastoral dimension.
Churches held by monastic communities were frequently led by a serf who served as a priest, or
by a priest who might serve a number of different churches. While this allowed the monastery to
retain a larger share of the tithes, it made pastoral care poorer. The perpetual vicarage was a way
of retaining the rights of the monastery, but also providing for the pastoral care for the
congregation of the church, by requiring the monastery to pay for a suitable priest, and to provide
a suitable income to the priest.
The perpetual vicarages largely came out of a set of arrangements between monasteries
and the bishops. As we will see in chapter 8, perpetual vicarages were built into grants or
confirmations of churches. They appear in these forms almost always in combination with the
granting or confirmation of rights over the church to the monastery in perpetuity, saving the
requirement for the monastery to support a vicar in its stead. Since the regular clergy could not
serve as priests, they were unable to perform the divine office at these churches, and when it
entered into the formal canon law in 1189, it was for this pastoral purpose that they were
required.79 However, they were used beforehand in England, in part for pastoral provision, but
more importantly, and frequently, as a means for providing for the clerks of the bishop’s
household.
The trade-off was that monasteries had a stronger record of their rights over the church,
and did not have to continue to seek confirmations for their property with successive bishops.80
They were given a firm legal document, with a canonical establishment of ownership (an in
proprios usus clause), and in return, set some of the revenues aside for the provision of a vicar.
78
Though as we saw in the previous chapter, this was well after the practice had become established in England.
Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990).
80
For this practice, see chapter 8.
79
53
After these were required by the Third Lateran Council in 1189, the usage expands dramatically,
and more rights were secured for the patrons of the church (i.e., the monastery) to present to the
bishop a suitable clerk for the benefice, but still they were used as a means for provisioning the
household clerks of the bishop, as the practice initially developed in England.
In addition, as we saw prebends were given to monasteries as well. In return, they were
to appoint a vicar in their place to stand in their place in the cathedral. While the monasteries
held the rights of participation of a canon, they could not serve the pastoral function, nor the
administrative function, of canons in the chapter.81 These were another means for getting
monastic support for the provisioning of household clerks. By gaining prebendal rights, the
monasteries were able to gain some income, but more importantly have a voice in the selection
of a new bishop, rights to which by the late twelfth century were firmly in the hands of the
chapter.82 However, the trade was for a reduced income from the prebend through the
establishment of a perpetual vicar, which gave the bishop another source for the provisioning of
clerks in his household.
The clerks in this later familia administration were very different from those at the end of
the eleventh century. Unlike the earlier system, the perpetual vicarage provided a means of
support independent from the bishop, and because they were lifetime appointments, a degree of
autonomy from the bishop that was lacking in the previous system. In addition, it also meant
that they were better paid, though the amounts of these positions were not well established until
later, and many of them were not tremendously high paying positions, especially in comparison
to the prebends of the canons and those holding the higher adminsitrative offices.
81
Edwards, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages: A Constitutional Study with Special Reference to
the Fourteenth Century.
82
Benson, "Election by Community and Chapter: Reflections on Co-Responsibility in the Historical Church.";
Benson, The Bishop-Elect: A Study in Medieval Ecclesiastical Office.
54
In addition, these clerks were more highly educated. Many were graduates of the
universities, and the new system of payment, as well as hopes of a future career in the cathedral,
drew in a number of talented individuals to serve in the bishop's familia. Also, this led to the
household being much more professional in this period than in the original period, in that these
were largely members of the secular clergy entering into bureaucratic careers at the entry level,
but had a similar educational background as those who were canons. Indeed, we see that the
bishop's clerks with university education were more likely to be promoted into the cathedral
chapter, from which they could build a career into the higher diocesan offices.
Finally, the bishop's role had dramatically changed over the twelfth century, and along
with that his household. The formalization of roles and jurisdictions into positions removed a
great deal of autonomy from the bishop, as well as restricting the number of organizational tasks
to which he had to be directly responsible for. Instead, the diocese in the first half of the
thirteenth century, while the bishop retained a great deal of control over the diocese, had a
number of administrative offices that were largely independent of the bishop, and were operated
according to the canon law. The bishop's household was primarily responsible for the production
of documents, arranging for his visitations, and serving as an advisor to the bishop. Gone were
the days where the household was the sole administrative organ of the diocese. Replacing this
was a household that aided the bishop in performing his duties, and served as his advisor in
matters of expertise, such as in the law or theology. This household, while not as firmly in the
bureaucratic mold as formal positions were, was still a place for the professional administrators
coming out of the universities, and served as a feeder into the developing bureaucratic careers of
the English church.
55
Summary
The earliest elements of bureaucratic structures emerged with the formation of formal
positions within diocesan administration. The administration of dioceses had been based in the
episcopal household, known as the familia. The familia was composed of priests, clerks,
relatives, and laymen who were personally attached to the bishop, and each successive bishop
brought in a new household to manage diocesan affairs.
This household administration began to shift in the late 11th century for several reasons.
English bishops in particular, though this was by no means restricted to England, were
increasingly drawn from the lesser nobility which made it difficult for them to independently
support a large household. Furthermore, it meant that they had fewer family retainers which they
could bring with them when they were appointed bishop. This put pressures on the bishops to
find ways for the diocesan property to support their staff. Additionally, the earliest bishops after
the conquest followed the royal policy of “Normanification” of England, by finding ways to put
Normans in place of the local Anglo-Saxon clergy.
These patterns help to explain a peculiar pattern within the English church. Those who
were most active early in the establishment of formal positions within diocesan administration
were those who were most clearly opposed to the reform movement within the church. Instead,
reformers pursued a very different strategy, stemming from the principles of the Gregorian
Reform to monasticize the clergy. Because of the influence of the Celtic Church on England,
several dioceses in England were staffed not by secular clergy, but instead by Benedictine monks
or Augustinian canons. Early reformers, especially Archbishop Lanfranc, sought to replace the
secular canons at a number of cathedrals with monastic chapters, and were successful in a
number of cases. However, these monastic cathedrals became increasingly less important over
56
the course of the 12th century, in large part because of the role of officials within the secular
cathedrals.
Thus, the earliest formalization of diocesan administration occurred in the secular
cathedrals where opponents of reform sought to place Normans in their own household into
positions of authority over the Anglo-Saxon clergy in the chapter. Other secular cathedrals
followed more slowly, but by the mid-12th century, the formal administrative structure of a
secular cathedral was in place in nearly all of the English secular dioceses. The mere
establishment of formal positions did not mean the disappearance of the logic of household
administration. Instead, nepotism and the placement of trusted friends into these positions were
very common in the first half of the 12th century. However, by being placed into positions with
increasingly formal jurisdictions, responsibilities, and powers, they survived each successive
bishop, creating a structural basis for the advancement of careers.
As the Anglo-Saxon clergy were increasingly replaced by Normans, the cathedral chapter
in secular cathedrals underwent a significant transformation. Initially positions of local status
and to perform sacramental rituals within the cathedral, the chapter began to be utilized by
bishops as another source of administrative positions to attract educated clerks and others into
administrative service. This was a result of the system of providing support for the members of
the cathedral chapter. In the secular cathedrals, canons had traditionally supported themselves
and their families from the tithes of churches and rents from land that were individually
separated into prebends. In addition there were also incomes from properties that were held by
the chapter in common with the bishop which also provided support. This prebendal system
became extensively expanded starting in the late 11th century, and continued into the late 12th
century. In particular, the number of prebends increased as well as the amount of property
57
attached to them, and as an inducement to live at the cathedral in service to the diocese,
additional revenues were to be had from the common fund for those who lived in residence.
The prebends were an early way to build a diocesan administration, and administrative
positions had prebends attached to them, typically the more prosperous ones, which served as an
inducement to native and foreign clerks to serve in the diocesan administration. However, as the
patterns of feudal patrilineage were increasingly formalized, the nobility also sought to endow
prebends for their children who were sent to careers in the church, which reduced the overall
number of prebends available for canons who served administrative roles. Additionally,
monasteries were also active in gaining rights to revenues from churches, particularly those
donated to them by the nobility, which restricted the growth of an administrative system built
solely on prebends. For the bishops of the monastic cathedrals, the lack of any prebendal system
also made it difficult to establish an administrative staff that went beyond the archdeacons.
Over the course of the 12th century, the linking of property to positions allowed for the
recruitment of educated clerks, and made England a major center for the careers of university
trained graduates. Furthermore, it also created the basic structural framework for a formal
administration. The jurisdictions and responsibilities of these positions became increasingly
formalized and systematized, which led to a greater autonomy of the incumbents in these offices
from their bishop, even as they were increasingly bound by formal strictures. For the bishops,
this meant that many of the essential operations of the diocese were increasingly taken care of by
these administrators, but they had fewer people to assist them among the ranks of administrators
and canons for the tasks which they held to themselves.
In response to these pressures, English bishops began to establish a vicarage system for
churches whose rights were held by monasteries and the nobility. As the bishops gained greater
control over the establishment of ecclesiastical property rights, they began to require the holders
58
of these rights to establish fixed wages for a vicar who would also serve as the priest of the
church, or otherwise pay someone else to serve as the priest. These vicarages, which were firmly
institutionalized for the entire church at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, had been in
extensive use in England starting after 1150. The bishops utilized the vicarages in part to ensure
that churches had adequate pastoral care, but also as a means to provide means of support to low
level clerks who served on their own staffs. Along with the creation of the officialis, essentially
the bishop’s factotum, the bishops of the late 12th and early 13th centuries recreated a familia
organization, but one that was quite different from the traditional familia administration. The
clerks in this familia were better paid, more autonomous from the bishop, and were welleducated, while at the same time looking for advancement in the diocesan administration, hoping
to advance to canon or other offices and further their careers. Furthermore, they were not the
sole administrators of the diocese, or even the most important, but served as a training ground for
the next generation of professional administrators.
59
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62
Precentor
Treasurer
Terr. Archdcn.
X
Chancellor
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Lincoln
1061-1088
John of Tours
1088-1122
Godfrey
1123-1135
Robert of Lewes
1136-1166
Reginald Fitz Jocelin
1174-1191
X
Remigius
X
X
X
X
X
1067-1092
Robert Bloet
1093-1123
Alexander
1123-1148
Robert de Chesney
1148-1166
1060-1070
Hereman
1045-1078
Osmund
1078-1099
Stigand
1070-1087
Roger
1102-1139
Godfrey
1088-1088
Jocelin de Bohun
1141-1184
Ralph Luffa
1091-1123
Seffrid I
1125-1145
Hilary
1147-1169
X
X
X
X
X
X
Walter
Robert the
Lotharingian
1060-1079
Gerard
1096-1100
1079-1096
William
1051-1075
Reinhelm
1102-1115
Hugh de Aurea Valle
1076-1085
Geoffrey de Clive
1115-1119
Richard de Capella
1121-1127
X
X
X
X
X
X
Hereford
London
X
X
Salisbury
Chichester
Walter
Mag. Schol.
Giso
Dean
Bath & Wells
Dates of
Office
Archdeacona
Terr. Archdcn.
Treasurer
Precentor
Chancellor
Mag. Schol.
Dean
Dates of
Office
Archdeacona
Table 1 Creation of New Formal Positions by Diocese and Bishop
Maurice
1086-1107
Richard de Belmeis I
1108-1127
X
X
Robert de Bethune
1131-1148
Gilbert the Universal
1128-1134
Gilbert Foliot
1148-1163
Robert de Sigilo
1141-1150
Richard de Belmeis II
1152-1162
Gilbert Foliot I
1163-1187
Richard Fitz Neal
1189-1198
William of Ste.-Mere-Eglise
1198-1221
X
Robert of Melun
1163-1167
Robert Foliot
1173-1186
William de Vere
1186-1198
X
X
X
X
a These are archdeacons without a territorial title.
63
Table 2. Witnesses to acta of the Bishops of Salisbury
Household
Clerks
Canons
Osmund
Roger
3
Jocelin de Bohun
5
15
Hubert Walter
15
6
Herbert Poore
15
5
Richard Poore
10
12
a
b
Lay
2
6
7
2
6
5
Archdcns
1
4
4
5
5
6
Formal
Positionsa
3
4
4
6
10
Other b
1
2
1
3
Includes deans, chancellors, precentors, and treasurers.
Includes succentors and subdeans.
Table 3. Institutions and grants to clerks, 1150 to 1230
Number of clerks
instituted to
Number of grants of
perpetual vicarages
land to clerks
1150-1159
1
3
1160-1169
2
4
1170-1179
8
1
1180-1189
10
4
1190-1199
30
1
1200-1209
16
1
1210-1219
11
2
1220-1229
17
7
64