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Anglo-Saxon Church Dues: A Study in Historical Continuity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

William A. Chaney
William A. Chaney
Affiliation:
Lawrence College
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Extract

The problem of rendering to God what is God's is no less complex when Caesar is himself a Christian. Among the Anglo-Saxons, for example, “a Christian king is Christ's deputy among Christian people,” but both the royal role in religion and the offerings made to the divine were shaped by the Germanic heathenism which had embraced both. In the full flood of Christian monarchy in England, the ruler still participated in cosmic and earthly realms, a position presaged by that of his pagan ancestors but involving, inevitably, changing forms and problems. The king was still the head of the folk under divine auspices, and a separation of religion and royal function was as unthinkable as under paganism. The English ruler stood in a special relationship to the Divine King, and the doctrine of separation of powers between ruler and Church was as abhorrent to the latter, which had inundated the kingdoms on the tide of royal favor, as it was impracticable to the monarch. The ruler was expected to play a theological and eschatological role for his people. The view of the king as doctor of his folk—the tuba praedicationis, as Alcuin hailed Offa of Mercia—leading them to judgment, cast a religious aura about him which was to continue a ruler-cult in Christian terms.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , September 1963 , pp. 268 - 277
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1963

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References

1. VIII Aethelred 2(1); Robertson, A. J., (ed.), The Lows of the Kings of England From Edmund To Henry I (Cambridge, 1925), p. 118.Google Scholar

2. “Vos estis decus Britanniae, tuba praedicationis, gladius contra hostes, seutum contra inimicos”: Alcuin to of Mercia, 790 A.D.; Mon. Ger. Hist., Epp., IV, 107.Google Scholar

3. For brief discussions of pagan Germanic kingship, with bibliographies, see my ”Paganism to Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England,” Harvard Theo-logical Review, LIII (1960), 209–217Google Scholar; “Grendel and the Gifstol: A Legal View of Monsters,”.PMLA, LXXVII (1962), 5104–519.Google Scholar

4. Wihtred 1; Attenborough, F. L., (ed.), The Laws of the Earliest English Kings (Cambridge, 1922), p. 25Google Scholar. The sub-sidiary clause (1 [1]) establishes a kind of spiritual taxation on the Church, a Christian equivalent of the pagan necessity of performing blot or sacrifice: “The king shall b prayed for, and they (the clergy) shall honour him freely and without compulsion” Ibid.

5. Ine 4; Ibid., p. 37. Cf. Inc 61; Ibid., p. 57. It is to be noted that the twelve-fold compensation for failure to pay parallels the twelve-fold compensation for theft from a church in Aethelberht 1. On the date of Inc's code, probably between 688 and 694, cf. Ibid., p. 34.

6. Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England (2nd ed.; Oxford, 1947), pp. 153–154Google Scholar. Cnut's Proclamation of 1027 sets the feast of St. Martin for the payment of “first fruits of the crops (primitiae serminum), quae A nglice circsceatt no'minantur,” undoubtedly a reference to the customary dues, with, as Felix Liebermann has pointed out, primitiae seminum merely an incorrect translation of the Anglo-Saxon ciricsceatt; Robertson. op. cit., pp. 152, 347 a. 3 to c. 16. In this present study the term “Church dues” is used in a general sense; since, however, it is a customary translation for ciricsceat, it has been retained for the latter also, but in each case where it has been used in this narrower sense, the word ciriesceat has been placed after it in parentheses.

7. Attenborough, op. cit., p. 183 n. to Inc 4. Wite and bot as economic aspects of cult are discussed in my forthcoming study, “Wer, Wite, and Rot: The Economics of Ruler-Cult.”

8. Stenton, op. cit., p. 155.

9. Edward and Guthrum 5(1), 6–6(4); Attenborough, op. cit., p. 105. I take the attribution of this code to the homilist Wulfstan as unproved. On the gradual replacement of ciriosceat by the tithe as chief dues, cf. Stenton, op. cit., pp. 154–156.

10. For both of these imposts, cf. Dorothy, Bethurum (ed.), The Homilies of Wulfstan (Oxford, 1957), pp. 342–343.Google Scholar

11. I Athelstan, preamble and 1–5; Attenborough, op. cit., pp. 123–125. Attenborough suggests Genesis 28:22 and Exodus 22:29 as the inaccurate sources.

12. Gudbrand, Vigfusson and Powell, F. York (eds.), Corpus Poeticum Boreale (Oxford, 1883), II, 478.Google Scholar

13. Chancy, , “Paganism to Christianity…” pp. 209–213.Google Scholar

14. IV Edgar 1(1–8); Robertson, op. cit., pp. 29–33.

15. I Edmund 2; Ibid., p. 7. Peter's Pence occurs only in MS. D and may be an interpolation; cf. Bethurum, op. cit., pp. 342–343. For a history of this tax in the Anglo-Saxon period, cf. Lunt, W. E., Financial Relations of the Papacy With England to 1327 (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), pp. 3–30Google Scholar. Although it is probable that Peter's Pence originated in England, the problem of which king began it— with me, Offa II, and Aethelwulf as the chief probabilities—is apparently insoluble.

16. Robertson, op. cit., pp. 21–23. The hearth-penny is apparently Peter's Pence (Ibid., p. 303 a. 1 to II Edgar 4), especiaily as it was due on St. Peter's Day and was paid to Rome. It is also so accepted by Bethurum, op.cit., pp. 342–343. On sawlsceat, cf. Stenton, op. cit., pp. 152–153, who, noting that it “may well represent a heathen custom turned to Christian uses,” comments on the “significant resemblance between such gifts made on such occasions and the grave-furniture which had once accompanied heathen burials.”

17. Liebermann, F., (ed.), Die Gesetre der Angelsachsen (Halle a. S., 1912), 11:2, 749Google Scholar; cf. Robertson, op. cit., p. 302 n. 1 to 1(1). It is, of course, the first code binding on all England in which tithes are necessitated in law; cf. Stenton, op. cit., p. 155.

18. Robertson, op. cit., p. 29.

19. Adam of Bremen, Gesta Ham.maburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificurn, Bk. IV, c. 27; Migne, , Patrlogia Latina (Paris, 1853), CXLVI, cols. 643–644.Google Scholar

20. Fuglingasaga, c. 15 (18). Ynglingatal, c. 5; Vigfusson and Powell, op. cit., I, 245.

21. Haraldasaga Graumantel, c. 16; Hervarar saga olc Heithreks konungs, cc. 11–12. Cf. Chadwick, H. M., The Cult of Othin (London, 1899), p. 5.Google Scholar

22. Ynglingasaga, c. 43 (47); Heimskringla I, 75–76.Google Scholar

23. Robertson, op. cit., pp. 83, 97, 105, 109, 111, 113, 121–123. With VII cf. VII Aethelred (A.S.), 2(2–3); Ibid., p. 115. VII Aethelred 4, 7 are, however, missing in the Anglo-Saxon version.

24. Ibid., pp. 152, 165–167, 201. In the laws, besides the dues mentioned in the Proclamation, and sawlsceat are also provided for in I Cant 12–13.

25. For problems of dating—with 992–995, 998–1000, 1004–1006, 1009–1011, and 1015 as the possibilities— cf. Ibid., pp. 49–50.

26. Miss Robertson describes the code as “notable for its entire lack of reference to practical measures of defence” (Ibid., p. 50), a perhaps unnecessarily narrow and certainly unmedieval view of what constitute “practical measures.”

27. Ynglingasaga, c. 8; also Ari's Life of Haakon the Good, c. 16, in Vigfusson and Powell, op. cit., I, 405. Cf. my “Paganism to Christianity…” pp. 211–212, 214.

28. Inc 4; Attenborough, op. cit., p. 37.

29. Ven. Bede, De Temporum Ratione, c. 15 (Dc Mensibus Anglorum); Jones, C. W., (ed.), Bedae Opera De Temporibus (Cambridge, Mass., 1943), p. 213Google Scholar. On the use of blotan, blot, and related words for “sacrifice,” cf. Jente, Richard, Die MytMlogisohe Ausdrilcke im Altenglischen Wortschatz (Anglistisohe Forschungen, LVI; Heidelberg, 1921), pp. 38–41.Google Scholar

30. Phulippson, Ernst A., Germanisches Heidentum bei den Angelsachsen (Kölner Anglistische Arbeiten, IV; Leipzig, 1929), p. 205Google Scholar. There is a possibility, however, that November 7th marked the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon Winter; cf. Rend, Heinrich, “Altenglischer Monehsaberglaube,” Englische Btudien, LXIX (1935), 347Google Scholar. Bede says that the Anglo-Saxons celebrated the year's beginning at Christmas, “ab octavo kalendaruin. ianuariarum die,” but this is a Christianized observance.

31. Chadwick, Nora (ed.), Studies in Early British History (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 181–182, 200Google Scholar. There is no evidence that St. Martin's, Canterbury, was so dedicated in Roman times.

32. Rode, Ven., Histpria Ecclesiastica, I, 27.Google Scholar

33. Inc 61; Attenborough, op. cit., p. 57.

34. II Edgar 3, VI Aethelred 18(1), VIII Aetheired 11, I Cant 10; Robertson, pp. 21, 97, 121, 165. Inc's original law (4) that failure to render God these dues brought a penalty of sixty shillings and twelve times the ciricsceat is probably reflected in the provisions of the last two laws for the payment of 120 shillings to the king and twelve-fold, with the amount due the king increased to the customary fine for insubordination.

35. II Edgar 3; Ibid., p. 21.

36. For Pentecost payment of tithes of young livestock and All Saints Day for tithes of fruits of the earth, cf. V Aethelred 11(1), VI Aethelred 17, VIII Aethelred 9, I Cnut 8(1); Ibid., pp. 83, 97, 121, 165.

37. VIII Aetheired 9; ibid., p. 121.

38. Cnut's Proclamation of 1027, c. 16; Ibid., p. 152.

39. I Athelstan 1; Attenborough, op. cit., p. 123. The requirement in VII Aethelred 7 that all alms in arrears be paid “between now and Michaelmas,” i.e., September 29th, is related to the three day fast preceding Michaelmas “as a national penalty” in the emergency of invasion and is dated undoubtedly for the occasion; Robertson, op. cit., pp. 109 (e.2), (2[3a]), 113 (7), 115 (1). However, note the Michaelmas payment of grain to the king in eleventh century Derby; see below.

40. Philippson, op. cit., p. 205. On October 1st among the Continental Saxons; Ibid.

41. De Temporum Ratione, c. 15; C. W. Jones, op. cit., pp. 211, 212.

42. Stenton, op. cit., p. 154.

43. Cf. Alcuin to King Aetheired of Northumbria, 793 A.D.: “In the king's righteousness is the common weal, victory in war, mildness of the seasons, abundance of crops, the blessing of sons, freedom from pestilence. It is for the king to atone with God for his whole people”; Haddan, A. W. and Stubbs, W. (eds.), Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 1871), III, 490Google Scholar. The feorm was the provision necessary to feed the king and his followers for a certain period of time.

44. Robertson, op. cit., pp. 21, 83, 97, 123, 165. The early references to payment of “plough-alms” in Edward and Guthruni 6(3), I Athelstan 4, and I Edmund 2 set no time for their payment; Attenborough, op. cit., pp. 105, 125; Robertson, op. cit., p. 7.

45. Chadwick, H. M., The Origin of the English Nation. (Cambridge, 1924), p. 223.Google Scholar

46. See n. 43.

47. In England as late as 1493 A.D. the purpose of plough-ceremonies is to help “make the year”: “the ledingh of the ploughe aboute the fire as for gode beginning of the yere that they schulde fare the better all the yere followying;” Chadwick, , Origin…, p. 224.Google Scholar

48. Edward and Guthrum, op. cit., 6(2); Attenborough, op. cit., p. 105.

49. Robertson, op. cit., pp. 83, 97.

50. Ibid., p. 328 n. 3 to 11(1).

51. Ibid., p. 165.

52. Ibid., p. 123.

53. MeNeill, J. T. and Gamer, H. M., (eds.), Medieval Handbooks of Penance (Records of Civilization, XXIX; New York, 1938), p. 419.Google Scholar

54. Bethurum, op. cit., p. 343.

55. Ibid.

56. Stenton, op. cit., p. 215, n. 1, discusses this grant and argues against it as the origin of Peter's Pence. The latter, appropriately, is always to b paid by St. Peter's Day, according to the laws: II Edgar 4 (hearth-penny), V Aethelred 11(1), VI Aethelred 18, VIII Aethelred 10, I Cnut 9; Robertson, op. cit., pp. 23, 83, 97, 121, 165.

57. Asser, Vita Alfredi, c. 16.