This article was downloaded by: [Uniwersytet Warszawski]
On: 24 January 2014, At: 04:48
Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,
37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Journal of Medieval History

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmed20

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh-
and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

Simon Coates

a

a

Department of History, King's College , Strand, London WC2R 2LS, England

Published online: 03 Jan 2012.

To cite this article: Simon Coates (1999) Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century
Wearmouth–Jarrow, Journal of Medieval History, 25:2, 69-86, DOI:

10.1016/S0304-4181(98)00020-7

To link to this article:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0304-4181(98)00020-7

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained
in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no
representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the
Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and
are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and
should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for
any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever
or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of
the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic
reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any
form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://

www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Journal of Medieval History, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 69–86, 1999

1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.



P I I : S 0 3 0 4 - 4 1 8 1 ( 9 8 ) 0 0 0 2 0 - 7

Printed in The Netherlands.

0304-4181 / 99 $ – see front matter 1 0.00

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-

century Wearmouth–Jarrow

*

Simon Coates

Department of History

, King’s College, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, England

Abstract

This article investigates the manner in which Wearmouth–Jarrow was able to define itself as a

religious community through the manner in which it remembered the activities of its former abbot,
Ceolfrid. Ceolfrid’s memory was cultivated in two written texts: the anonymous Vita Ceolfridi and
Bede’s Historia Abbatum. The article explores the nodal points around which both texts
constructed Ceolfrid’s memory paying particular attention to the gifts he made to the community
and his involvement in liturgy. It also contextualises the two Lives by analysing texts from
Frankish Gaul which they used as models or which shared similar concerns. The article concludes
by considering the differences between the two texts and argues that Bede consciously sought
deliberately to forget certain aspects of Ceolfrid’s career as a response to the threat he perceived
Bishop Wilfrid had presented to the late seventh- and early eighth-century Northumbrian Church.



1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords

: Memory; History; Hagiography; Ceolfrid

In recent years historians have become increasingly aware of the importance of the

process of commemoration, particularly the liturgical commemoration of the dead, in

1

early medieval society. However, one body of source material which allows this process
to be investigated has been relatively neglected by English-language speaking historians:
the Libri Memoriales or Libri Vitae of the great monasteries. The purpose of these books
was to record the names of men and women associated with the monastery concerned,
and who hence formed a focus for its prayers, either as members of it, patrons, or even
servants. The earliest of three surviving examples from Anglo-Saxon England is known
as the Liber Vitae of Durham and, although difficult to date because it consists of entries

SIMON COATES is a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at King’s College, London. He has

published in History, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Speculum, Studies in Church History 33: The
Church Retrospective, Downside Review, and Historical Research.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: simon [e-mail]

]

1

Many references to the now large amount of literature on the subject of commemoration can be found in

Memoria

. Der geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter, ed. K. Schmid and J.

¨

Wollasch (Munster, 1984). The commemoration of the dead is covered in F. Paxton, Christianizing death

.

The creation of a ritual process in early medieval Europe (Ithaca, N.Y., 1990); M. McLaughlin, Consorting
with saints

: The ideology of prayer for the dead in early medieval France (Ithaca, N.Y., 1993); and P. J.

Geary, Living with the dead in the middle ages (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994).

69

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

70

Simon Coates

made and recopied over time, arguably dates from the ninth century, possibly from

2

around 840.

Beginning with a list of kings and duces and written in alternating lines of gold and

silver, this book was appropriate for a royal monastery. Although it has traditionally
been associated with Durham and the community of Saint Cuthbert, it has recently been
argued that the text’s ultimate origin can be ascribed to Wearmouth–Jarrow and the

3

absence of a bishops’ list from its contents may further point in this direction. Heading

4

a list of abbots and priests is Ceolfrid, abbot of Wearmouth–Jarrow. Examination of the
kings’ list reveals names which attest to wide bonds of prayer and patronage extending
from Scotland to Francia. The Picto–Scottish quotient is relatively high and is attested
by such names as Oengus I, son of Fergus, 729–61; Constantine, son of Fergus

5

790–820; and Eoghenan, son of Oengus II, who died in 839. In addition to such great
names as that of Charlemagne, one also finds lesser Frankish kings who are commemo-
rated. One such king is Helpric or Chilperic. This figure was Chilperic II, a Merovingian
ruler and former cleric from Neustria vilified by the Carolingians for his weakness who

6

was defeated by Charles Martel in a civil war and ended his days under house arrest. If
one were to ask why a weak, failed Frankish ruler was remembered by a Northumbrian
monastic community, the answer lies in the figure of Ceolfrid. Having left his brethren
bound for Rome carrying with him a huge pandect, a complete Latin Bible, the Codex
Amiatinus, as a gift for the pope, Ceolfrid was welcomed in Francia by Chilperic. His
journey, like the king’s rule, was a failure. He died at Langres in 716 and the Codex

7

Amiatinus reached Rome without him.

The Libri Memoriales, as commemorative litanies, were texts designed to cultivate

2

The paucity of English-language scholarship on Libri Vitae has, in part, been rectified by the recent edition of

one of the three surviving Anglo-Saxon texts by Simon Keynes, The Liber Vitae of New Minster and Hyde
Abbey Winchester

. British Library Stowe 944. Together with leaves from British Library Cotton Vespasian

A

. VIII and British Library Cotton Titus D. XXVII. Earliest English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 26

(Copenhagen, 1996). The introduction provides useful background to the Anglo-Saxon texts as a whole

¨

(49–65). The fullest study, however, remains J. Gerchow, Die Gedenkuberlieferung der Angelsachsen
(Berlin, 1988). For the Durham Liber Vitae, see Liber Vitae Ecclesiae Dunelmensis, ed. A. Hamilton-
Thompson, Publications of the Surtees Society, 136 (London, 1923); Liber Vitae Ecclesiae Dunelmensis, ed.
J. Stevenson, Publications of the Surtees Society, 13 (London, 1841). A full study is needed. Until one
appears, it is necessary to consult E. Briggs, ‘Religion, society and politics and the Liber Vitae of Durham’
(Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds, 1987) for further secondary comment.

3

¨

Gerchow, Die Gedenkuberlieferung der Angelsachsen, 119–31.

4

¨

Gerchow, Die Gedenkuberliferung der Angelsachsen, 306.

5

¨

Gerchow, Die Gedenkuberliferung der Angelsachsen, 304, nos. 43, 80, 100; S. Airlie, ‘The view from

Maastricht’, in: Scotland in dark age Europe, ed. B. Crawford (St Andrews, 1994), 33–46, at 42.

6

¨

Gerchow, Die Gedenkuberlieferung der Angelsachsen, 304, no. 79 (Charlemagne); no. 67 (Helpric or

Chilperic); Liber Historiae Francorum, ed. B. Krusch (Monumenta Germaniae Historica [henceforth MGH],
Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum [henceforth SRM] II, Hanover, 1888), cc. 52–3; Trans. P. Fouracre and R.
Gerberding, Late Merovingian France

: history and hagiography 640 –720 (Manchester, 1996), 95–6;

Fredegar, Chronicarum quae dicuntur Fredegarii scholastici libri IV, ed. B. Krusch, (MGH, SRM II,
Hanover, 1888), cc. 9–10; Trans. J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar
(London, 1960), 88–9. For the importance of 716 in the rise of Charles Martel, see R. Gerberding, ‘716: A
crucial year for Charles Martel’, in: Karl Martell in seiner Zeit, ed. J. Jarnut, U. Nonn and M. Richter
(Sigmaringen, 1994), 205–216.

7

Historia Abbatum auctore anonymo (anon, Vita Ceolfridi ), ed. C. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae opera

historica, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1896), vol. 1. c. 32 [henceforth VC followed by chapter number / s]; Bede,
Historia Abbatum, ed. Plummer in the same volume, c. 21. [henceforth HA followed by chapter number / s].

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

71

8

memory. Memory was triggered off by the invocation of a name in prayer. This paper is
concerned with the manner in which memory moulds and shapes the collective religious
identity of monastic communities. Monasticism was dependent upon memory. Monks
operated in a world of collective experience, identifying themselves with exemplary
figures from the past. Furthermore, the organization of monastic communities: the daily
round of manual work, prayer and study, was focused around, and given authority by,
the frozen memory of past communities in written Rules. Above all, however, this
paper’s focus is the manner in which the collective social memory of Wearmouth–
Jarrow reconstructed the life of its former abbot through hagiography. Commemoration
was central to the cult of saints. The term memoria was used to describe not only the

9

relics of the saints themselves but also the tomb or shrine where they were kept. Saints’
lives are part of a genre of immense longevity, relatively impervious to change, and yet
also the product of particular circumstances and environments. The rewriting of a saint’s
vita, during a period of rapid cultural transformation, reveals the manner in which
memory is not static. It changes as circumstances change and, furthermore, ‘different

10

groups of people remember things in different ways’.

By investigating two texts: the

anonymous Vita Ceolfridi and the later Historia Abbatum written by Bede, a pupil of
Ceolfrid’s monastic scriptorium, it may be possible to recover the memory of seventh-
and early eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow for our own age and to cast light upon how
the figure of Abbot Ceolfrid in particular reveals the intellectual and social environment

11

of an early Northumbrian monastic community.

The Vita Ceolfridi was composed at a time of transformation and change. Following a

prolonged period of relative stability and security, the monks’ collective memory of their
former abbot, Ceolfrid, was aroused by the sudden, and unexpected, announcement of
his departure for Rome and the need to select a long-standing member of the
community, Hwaetbert as his successor. Ceolfrid confirmed the election along with
Bishop Acca of Hexham and Hwaetbert further consolidated his position by composing

12

a letter to the pope informing him of the succession.

This relationship between a

distinct period of transformation and the cultivation of memory was made more explicit
when Hwaetbert, in one of his first acts, carried out under the authorisation of Acca,
translated the relics of Eosterwine and Sigfrid, two early members of the community

8

There is now a large amount of literature on the subject of memory in medieval culture. For a sample, see J.

Coleman, Ancient and medieval memories

. Studies in the reconstruction of the past (Cambridge, 1992); J.

Fentress and C. Wickham, Social memory (Oxford, 1992); Mary Carruthers, The book of memory

. A study of

memory in medieval culture (Cambridge, 1990); P. Geary, Phantoms of remembrance

. Memory and oblivion

at the end of the first millennium (Princeton, 1994); A. Remensynder, Remembering kings past

. Monastic

foundation legends in medieval southern France (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995); P. Connerton, How societies remember
(Cambridge, 1989). For a consideration of memory in one early medieval context, that of Notker’s Life of
Charlemagne, see M. Innes, ‘Memory, orality and literacy in an early medieval society’, Past and Present,
158 (1998), 3–36, and for a wide consideration of the relationship between oral and written culture and the
preservation of the past, see M. T. Clanchy, From memory to written record

. England 1066 –1307 (2nd

edn., Oxford, 1993).

9

‘Memoria’, in: Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus, ed. J.F. Niermeyer (Leiden, 1984), 669.

10

C. Wickham, ‘Lawyers’ time. History and memory in tenth-and eleventh-century Italy’, in: Studies in

medieval history presented to R

.H.C. Davis, ed. H. Mayr-Harting and R. I. Moore (London, 1985), 54.

11

The fullest single account of Ceolfrid and Wearmouth–Jarrow is I.N. Wood, The most holy abbot Ceolfrid

(Jarrow Lecture, 1995) to which this present study is deeply indebted.

12

VC, 21–30; HA, 16–20

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

72

Simon Coates

who had briefly served as abbots, to join those of its founder, Benedict Biscop, in St

13

Peter’s Wearmouth.

The creation and management of these early monastic cults was

given further resonance by the return of some of Ceolfrid’s companions bearing news of

14

his death.

Thus, 716 proved to be a year of immense significance in the community’s

history and finds prominent place in the manner in which the Vita Ceolfridi remembered
the recently deceased abbot. Although the text sought to narrate the entirety of Ceolfrid’s
life, it devoted half of its forty chapters to Ceolfrid’s preparations for his departure, his
valedictory address and the actual events of the departure itself which culminated in his
death. Furthermore, such was the importance attached to the events of 716 in the
author’s mind that he gave no indication that he was present at the events he described

15

until his narration of the reception of the returning brothers in the final chapter.

The

need to commemorate the calamitous events of 716 finds expression in the author’s
concern to discuss the pressing concerns of his brethren for some form of memorial and
in his designation of his vita as a sermo, a commemorative address or homily, which
was to be addressed to the brethren and to form the key focus of Ceolfrid’s memorial

16

service.

Bede’s Historia Abbatum was also deeply marked by the events which surrounded

Ceolfrid’s departure, death and incipient cult. Although the work was intended to
encompass the entire institutional history of Bede’s monasterium rather than to serve as
a means by which the actions of his erstwhile abbot were remembered, it devoted nine of
its twenty-three chapters to Ceolfrid’s abbacy. Eight of these, however, were devoted to
his departure and death and the rest of Ceolfrid’s career was subsumed into a single
chapter. When he heard of Ceolfrid’s decision, Bede had interrupted his composition of
his commentary on Samuel and opened its fourth book by chronicling the delay in his
work engendered by ‘the sudden change of circumstances brought about by the

17

departure of my most reverend Abbot’.

Thus, as with all saints’ cults, death provided a

focal point around which memory could be constructed. It also convinced the
community of the need for a written account of Ceolfrid’s life so that the memory of
their abbot could not be forgotten. The two texts which embodied this memory
possessed certain features in common, emphasizing how Ceolfrid was a figure who
united the community, controlled its social formation, and steered its development.
However, the two texts were also markedly different and, in the case of Bede, who

18

composed the Historia Abbatum after the earlier anonymous work,

what he chose to

forget was as important as what he chose to remember. For Bede, Ceolfrid had a past
history which needed to be presented in fragments; certain pieces of the past needed to
be buried in order to preserve a particular portrayal of Wearmouth–Jarrow for posterity

13

VC, 18; HA, 20.

14

VC, 36–37, 40; HA, 22.

15

VC, 40.

16

VC, 1.

17

Bede, In primam partem Samulhelis libri IV, praef., ed. D. Hurst, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 119

[henceforth CCSL] (Turnhout, 1962), 212.

18

The work has not been precisely dated. However, it is generally thought to have been written sometime

between 725–31. When composing the Chronica Maiora in 725, Bede used the Vita Ceolfridi rather than the
Historia Abbatum which was presumably still unwritten. See W. Levison, ‘Bede as historian’, in: Bede

. His

life

, times and writings, ed. A. Hamilton Thompson (Oxford, 1935), 129–32.

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

73

and minimise the potentiality of ecclesiastical dispute. Before dealing with the issue of
why Bede came to rewrite the life of Ceolfrid in one section of the Historia Abbatum,
however, it is necessary to examine the nodal points around which both texts sought to
construct their memory of Abbot Ceolfrid, emphasizing matters of convergence before
those of divergence.

As Patrick Geary has noted, tangible, material objects which had been given as gifts

to churches were key points around which memory could be organized and

19

constructed.

In both the anonymous Vita Ceolfridi and Bede’s Historia Abbatum,

Ceolfrid was presented as a notable monastic benefactor, concerned to build up the
wealth and prestige of Wearmouth–Jarrow through substantial gifts of books, vestments
and ecclesiastical vessels.

20

Ceolfrid accompanied Benedict Biscop to Rome, returning with books and paintings.

The anonymous views him as an equal partner with Benedict Biscop in the foundation of
the library at Wearmouth–Jarrow whereas Bede emphasizes the manner in which
Ceolfrid’s work as a bibliophile was an extension of the foundations of book-collecting
laid by Benedict who, before his death, had specifically stated that the library should be

21

preserved as a single collection.

Reflecting his own devotion to scholarship, Bede

chose to emphasize Ceolfrid’s interest in books. Unlike the anonymous who comments
merely on how Ceolfrid increased the size of the monastic library, Bede specifically
mentions how he doubled its collection. He also provides a small insight into the
contents of the books at Wearmouth–Jarrow noting that Ceolfrid managed to increase
the size of the community’s landed endowment by exchanging a work of the

22

Cosmographers brought back from Rome by Benedict Biscop for eight hides of land.
Ceolfrid’s contribution to the community’s collection of books, however, is most notable
through his commissioning of three pandects: one each intended for Wearmouth and
Jarrow and one to be taken to Rome. Whereas the anonymous simply records the
enterprise, Bede links the three pandects, which were copies of Jerome’s Vulgate, to the

23

old translation, the Vetus Latina, which Ceolfrid himself had brought back from Rome.
The relationship between the two translations is evident in the Codex Amiatinus which
utilises the new text of Jerome but places the books of the Bible in the order of the old

24

translation listed by Cassiodorus.

Thus Bede, the most notable scholar nurtured under

Ceolfrid’s abbacy, was anxious to remember Ceolfrid’s own contribution to scholarship
alongside that of Benedict Biscop and to provide an insight not only into Ceolfrid’s
concern to continue to foster the increase of the library’s size but also into the structure
and content of the works he commissioned. The manuscripts of Wearmouth–Jarrow
known to have been produced under Ceolfrid’s abbacy testify to its cultural output.

19

Geary, Phantoms of remembrance, 18.

20

VC, 9–10; HA, 7.

21

VC, 20; HA, 4, 6, 11, 15.

22

VC, 20; HA, 15.

23

VC, 20; HA, 15.

24

R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford, The art of the Codex Amiatinus (Jarrow Lecture, 1967), 8–9; The Stonyhurst Gospel

of Saint John, ed. T. J. Brown (Roxburgh Club, Oxford, 1969), 10; K. Corsano, ‘The first quire of the
Codex Amiatinus and the Institutiones of Cassiodorus’, Scriptorium, 41 (1987), 3–34; P. Meyvaert, ‘Bede,
Cassiodorus and the Codex Amiatinus’, Speculum, 71 (1996), 827–83; Wood, The most holy abbot Ceolfrid,
13–14.

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

74

Simon Coates

These works, produced in a characteristic Uncial script, include a fragment of one of the
other pandects, a fragment of Gregory the Great’s Moralia, gospel fragments and the

25

Stonyhurst Gospel of Saint John.

Furthermore, these manuscripts were not merely

ostentatious, they were designed for the practical benefit of the community as the
anonymous author makes clear by commenting on how the pandects intended for
Wearmouth and Jarrow were to be placed ‘so that it should be easy for all who wished to

26

read any chapter of either testament, to find what they wanted’.

Alongside the Vita

Ceolfridi and Bede’s Historia Abbatum, such manuscripts illustrate the manner in which
Wearmouth–Jarrow recognised the importance of the written word in defining and
consolidating the identity of a monastic community.

Ceolfrid was also notable as a builder. The most striking testimony of this occurs not

in the hagiography but in the preservation of the foundation stones of St Paul’s, Jarrow,

27

identifying Ceolfrid as the church’s founder. The anonymous, rather than Bede, is more
inclined to emphasize Ceolfrid’s role as the founder stating that Ceolfrid took with him

28

twenty-two brothers from Wearmouth to serve as the church’s initial inmates.

Bede,

however, lists the number as seventeen thereby slightly reducing the numbers of brethren

29

under Ceolfrid’s leadership.

He does state elsewhere, however, how the church at

Jarrow was not Ceolfrid’s only ecclesiastical building remarking how he was responsible

30

for the building of several chapels.

Ceolfrid’s continued involvement in building work

is further evident from Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica where it recounts how he was
asked by Nechtan, king of the Picts, to whom he had earlier written a lengthy letter
concerning the Roman tonsure and method for calculating Easter, to provide masons for

31

the building of a church in the Roman manner.

One of the most striking elements in the life of the church which is dependent on

memory is the liturgy which, as Catherine Cubitt has emphasized, ‘acted as a potent

32

force in the creation of a common identity’.

Isidore of Seville had stressed the central

role of memory for the music of the church by writing of how ‘unless man hold sounds

33

in the memory they perish, because they cannot be written down’.

Both Bede and the

25

M. B. Parkes, The scriptorium of Wearmouth – Jarrow (Jarrow Lecture, 1982), 3–4; Brown, The Stonyhurst

Gospel of Saint John, 6–13. A fragment of one of Ceolfrid’s pandects eventually came into the possession
of the church of Worcester where it was rumoured to have been given as a gift by Offa, P.H. Sawyer,
Anglo-Saxon Charters

. An annotated list and bibliography (Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks

no.8, 1968), no. 118 (forged or interpolated); P. Sims-Williams, Religion and literature in western England

,

600 –800 (Cambridge, 1990), 182.

26

VC, 20.

27

Corpus of Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture, vol. 1, part 1, County Durham and Northumberland, ed. R. Cramp

(London, 1984), 113–4; J. Higgitt, ‘The dedication inscription at Jarrow and its context’, Antiquaries
Journal, 59 (1979), 343–74.

28

VC, 11.

29

HA, 7.

30

HA, 15.

31

Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors, Bede

’s

Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford, 1969), 5. 21 [henceforth Bede, HE followed by book
and chapter number / s].

32

C. Cubitt, ‘Unity and diversity in the early Anglo-Saxon liturgy’, in: Studies in church history

32. Unity and

diversity in the church, ed. R. N. Swanson (Oxford, 1996), 45–57, at 46.

33

Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1911), vol. 1, III.xv.2.

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

75

anonymous pay special attention to Ceolfrid’s devotion to the liturgy and its preserva-
tion. Nowhere is this more striking than in the anonymous’ account of Ceolfrid’s
response to a plague which left the community devastated. Only Ceolfrid and one small
boy, possibly Bede, were left behind and although it was decided to conduct all the
psalm singing without antiphons, except at vespers and matins, this practice was only
inaugurated for a week since Ceolfrid could not bear the impoverishment of the

34

liturgical life.

The importance of the antiphons lay in the manner in which they made

the psalms into prayers and, elsewhere in the anonymous’ text, one finds an emphasis on

35

Ceolfrid’s concern for prayer.

Prayer formed the backbone of Ceolfrid’s foundation of

Jarrow where he began to observe the same canonical method of chanting and reading
which existed at Wearmouth despite the fact that there were many who were unable to

36

chant psalms, read in church, or recite the antiphons.

Although it was Benedict Biscop

who had been responsible for the introduction of Roman chant into Wearmouth by
travelling to Rome, accompanied by Ceolfrid, and returning with John the Arch-chanter,
the text of the anonymous makes clear Ceolfrid’s own continual devotion to correct

37

liturgical practice.

This is evident in the lengthy and detailed account it provides of

Ceolfrid’s leave-taking where a desire for unhindered application to prayer formed a key

38

element in his decision to leave for Rome.

The stress he placed on the importance of

the maintenance of the liturgy for the communal life of the church is emphasized in the
account of the brothers’ weeping on hearing of his intended departure and his concern to
stay with them during a day and night. Returning to St Peter’s, Wearmouth, Ceolfrid
attended Mass at St Peter’s and St Mary’s, received communion and, lighting a censer,
proceeded to the oratory of St Laurence in the monastic dormitory accompanied by the
monks singing the antiphons from Isaiah 26 and the 66th and 83rd psalms, all of which
were relevant to a journey. Having addressed the brethren, Ceolfrid entered a ship
accompanied by deacons holding a cross and candles. His final act was to venerate the
cross before riding away. Bede’s account is more condensed but preserves essentially the

39

same details.

The two texts do differ, however, in their account of Ceolfrid’s devotion

to the liturgy in his last sickness, the anonymous stating that he recited the whole of the
psalter three times a day until four days before his death, Bede correcting this to twice

40

daily.

The symbolic importance of these events lay in the manner which they stressed the

centrality of Rome in the community’s life. St Peter, St Mary and St Laurence were the
three great patrons of Rome and, furthermore, important liturgical changes had been
inaugurated there by Pope Sergius I between 687 and 701. Sergius had given new

34

VC, 14. This passage has been widely discussed. See D. Whitelock, ‘Bede and his teachers and friends’, in:

Famulus Christi

. Essays in commemoration of the thirteenth centenary of the birth of the Venerable Bede,

ed. G. Bonner (London, 1976), 20–2; P. Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, in the same volume, 143–4;
Wood, The most holy abbot Ceolfrid, 16.

35

B. Ward, Bede and the psalter (Jarrow Lecture, 1991), 3–4.

36

VC, 11.

37

VC, 10; HA, 6; Bede, HE, 4. 18.

38

´

VC, 21–8; E. O’Carragain, The city of Rome and the world of Bede (Jarrow Lecture, 1994), 12–14.

39

HA, 16–17.

40

VC, 33; HA, 22.

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

76

Simon Coates

impetus to the cult of the Cross and inaugurated four new feasts celebrating the

41

incarnation and the glory of Mary.

Ian Wood has argued, on the basis of traces of these

cults to be found in eighth-century Northumbria, that Ceolfrid may have been the agent
for their introduction particularly as he sent an embassy to Sergius to secure a papal

42

privilege for Jarrow.

Rome followed a stational liturgical system where, on 160 days

each year, the Pope celebrated Mass not at the Lateran but at other basilicas and shrines.
The stational system was followed by Ceolfrid when he travelled to the various churches
associated with Wearmouth–Jarrow. Such action would ensure that the monks re-
membered those who celebrated in a similar fashion in Rome and form a means of

43

establishing the community’s liturgical identity.

It is important, however, not to see

Wearmouth–Jarrow solely through a Rome-centred prism. Whilst Bede and the
anonymous had formed a focus for the community’s identity with Rome, the series of
homilies composed by Bede reveal knowledge of Southern Italian customs through their
inclusion of local Neapolitan feasts. Liturgy, whilst remembered as a focus for unity,

44

remained diverse.

A further focus for remembrance was the community’s faithful devotion to the

45

regularity of monastic appointments.

Indeed, it is arguable that one of the central

purposes of both works was the preservation of monastic unity and the concern with the
upholding of discipline and custom. Although Bede’s Historia Abbatum illustrates that
the regula mixta rather than pure Benedictinism formed the backbone of the communi-

46

ty’s life, the memory of Benedict of Nursia’s actions loomed large.

It was filtered

through the Rule itself, perhaps acquired by Benedict Biscop from Wilfrid who had
travelled to Rome to obtain knowledge of it, and the influence of Gregory the Great

47

upon Bede and the anonymous.

Whilst it was difficult to find evidence for the early

observance of the Benedictine Rule in Rome, it began to be increasingly used in
Frankish Gaul in the communities which had begun life under the patronage of

48

Columbanus.

Agilbert, the erstwhile bishop of Wessex and Wilfrid’s host in Gaul

41

Liber Pontificalis, ed. L. Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis

, texte, introduction et commentaire 2nd. edn., 2 vols

(Paris, 1955), vol. 1, 374; Trans, R. Davis, The book of pontiffs (Liverpool, 1989), 85; Wood, The most holy

´

abbot Ceolfrid, 17; O’Carragain, The city of Rome and the world of Bede, 13–14.

42

´

Wood, The most holy abbot Ceolfrid, 17; O Carragain, The city of Rome and the world of Bede, 35–6; O

´

Carragain, ‘Liturgical innovations associated with Pope Sergius and the iconography of the Ruthwell and
Bewcastle crosses’, in: Bede and Anglo-Saxon England, ed. R.T. Farrell (British Archaeological Reports,
46, Oxford, 1978), 131–47; M. Clayton, The cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge,
1990), 29.

43

´

O Carragain, The city of Rome and the world of Bede, 11–12, 27.

44

Cubitt, ‘Unity and diversity in the early Anglo-Saxon liturgy’, 50–1.

45

J. McClure, ‘Bede and the Life of Ceolfrid’, Peritia, 3 (1984), 71–84, at 78–9.

46

Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, 141–6; H. Mayr-Harting, The Venerable Bede

, the Rule of St

Benedict and social class (Jarrow Lecture, 1976).

47

Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, 145; Stephanus, Vita Wilfridi, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave, The Life of

Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge, 1927), c. 14 [henceforth, VW followed by chapter
number / s].

48

James Campbell, ‘The first century of Christianity in England’, repr. in his Essays in Anglo-Saxon History

(London, 1986), 49–67; also his ‘Observations on the conversion of England’, in the same volume, 69–84;
Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, 145–6.

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

77

49

during his trip to Rome, possessed Columbanian connections.

It is likely that Biscop

spent some time with Agilbert when returning from Rome with Theodore and Hadrian in

50

668–9.

Furthermore, Wessex is known as an early outpost of Benedictinism in

51

England.

The impact of Gregory the Great on the cultural world of the Northumbrian

Church was immense. It seems hardly a coincidence that the book Biscop chose to have
read to him on his deathbed was Job, the subject of Gregory’s most extensive work of

52

biblical exegesis. Ceolfrid’s first assumption of the office of abbot was described by the
anonymous in words echoing Gregory’s Pastoral Rule emphasizing how the assumption
of office must not be the individual’s own choice. The account of Ceolfrid’s conduct of
his abbacy in the Vita Ceolfridi shows him in a Gregorian mould severe in rebuking

53

sinners but also able to exercise the reconciliation of the penitent with gentleness.

Like

Gregory’s Dialogues, the work places great emphasis upon the monastic contribution to
teaching and preaching. Bede’s treatment of the abbots and their activities, although
indebted to the Vita Ceolfridi, incorporated them into a wider scheme of reform based
upon Gregorian principles advocated in his commentaries where action and contempla-

54

tion were combined and used in the service of the community.

Both texts consistently specify that Wearmouth–Jarrow was to be one monasterium in

55

two places. The creation of a single abbot for the two is a central preoccupation.

This

process occurred in stages. Benedict Biscop’s creation of co-abbots had to be justified.
The Vita Ceolfridi did so by specifically mentioning that Benedict could have managed
without Ceolfrid’s aid and justifies the appointment of Eosterwine on the grounds of
Benedict’s frequent absences at court where he was summoned by the king to give

56

counsel.

For Bede, the problem was a more specifically religious one, Benedict,

anxious to travel abroad for the good of the community, faced too burdensome a task.
Benedict of Nursia’s appointment of twelve abbots in his stead was therefore cited to

57

justify Eosterwine’s appointment.

Around 688 or 689, Eosterwine was replaced by

Sigfrid and it was only when it was realised that neither Benedict nor Sigfrid could
survive much longer that Ceolfrid assumed the sole abbacy. Unity loomed large.
According to Bede, Benedict Biscop feared for the unity of the community after his

58

death, the anonymous attributed a similar fear to Ceolfrid.

Central to the issue of preserving monastic unity lay the problem of hereditary

49

Bede, HE 3. 7, 24, 26, 28; 4. 1; 5. 19; VW, 9–10; 12; Cubitt, ‘Unity and diversity in the early Anglo-Saxon

liturgy’, 52–3. For important comment on Wilfrid and Gaul, see J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Rome and the early
English Church. Some questions of transmission’, in his Early medieval history (Oxford, 1975), 115–35, at
128–9.

50

HA, 3; Bede, HE, 4. 1.

51

Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, 146.

52

HA, 12.

53

McClure, ‘Bede and the Life of Ceolfrid’, 77, 80.

54

A.T. Thacker, ‘Bede’s ideal of reform’, in: Ideal and reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon society, ed. P.

Wormald, D. Bullough and R. Collins (Oxford, 1983), 130–153.

55

McClure, ‘Bede and the Life of Ceolfrid’, 78–9.

56

VC, 12.

57

HA, 7.

58

HA, 13; VC, 25.

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

78

Simon Coates

succession. This had formed the backbone of the privileges obtained for the community

59

by Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrid.

Ceolfrid had been appointed abbot by Biscop

because he felt united to him more by spiritual than carnal relationship. The problem of
kinship had, however, loomed over the community since he had chosen Ceolfrid with
the deliberate intention of excluding his brother from acquiring the abbacy and, most

60

importantly, Wearmouth–Jarrow’s endowment.

Bede, unlike the anonymous, speaks

specifically of several legitimate land grants made to the community which relates his
text directly to the anxiety he felt about monastic land falling into lay hands expressed in
his letter to Egbert of York in 734. In this letter, in addition to criticising certain bishops
for setting bad examples, being unlearned and ignoring the laity in remote places, he
lamented the rise of secular, lay abbots who founded pseudo-monasteries so as to avoid
the obligations placed upon secular land and be exempt from military service. This not
only led to a decline in monastic standards but also diminished the numbers of fighting

61

men who were available.

During the reign of King Osred, Ceolfrid traded the land he

had acquired through his gift of the book of the Cosmographers to Aldfrid for twenty
hides at a place known as Sambuce and the gift of Witmer, who had consecrated himself
into the community’s service, led to its acquisition of ten hides, originally granted to

62

Witmer by Aldfrid, in the township of Dalton.

These grants reveal not only Bede’s

concern with the preservation of the community’s landed endowment in an age of
increasing anxiety over the lay appropriation of monastic land but also the manner in
which memory placed itself in the physical contours of the landscape, becoming
incarnate in places and names. Although Wearmouth–Jarrow was a monasterium which
reflected the manner in which Northumbria belonged to a wider, Christian world, it was
also a highly localised institution. Presentation of its foundation and development was

63

thus, in part, an exercise in geographical memory.

Memory did not exist in a vacuum. Hagiographical texts, whilst constructed out of the

memory of individuals and communities which produced them, needed also to rely on
known models; the genre demanded it and here one finds both unity and diversity in the
approach adopted by the two texts. To find such literary models of memory we need to

64

clear ‘the fog in the channel’,

as Janet Nelson has reminded us, and look to Gaul. The

anonymous’ text clearly drew upon a body of monastic literature produced in southern

´

Gaul at Lerins where Benedict Biscop was noted to have stayed and where he was

65

´

consecrated.

It drew upon the Life of Honoratus, the founder of Lerins, composed by

Bishop Hilary of Arles since Ceolfrid’s emphasis on the need for unity between two
communities under his rule is close to Honoratus’ attitude to hostile parties in the church

59

HA, 6, 11, 15; VC, 16; Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, 146–9; W. Levison, England and the continent

in the eighth century (Oxford, 1946), 23–7, 187–90.

60

VC, 16; HA, 11.

61

Bede, Epistola ad Ecgbertum, ed. C. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae Opera Historica 2 vols. (Oxford, 1896),

vol. 1, 405–423.

62

HA, 15.

63

Geary, Phantoms of remembrance, 124.

64

J. L. Nelson, ‘...sicut olim gens Francorum...nunc gens Anglorum’: Fulk’s letter to Alfred revisited’, in:

Alfred the Wise

. Studies in honour of Janet Bately on the occasion of her sixty-fifth birthday, ed. J. Roberts,

J.L. Nelson and M. Godden (Cambridge, 1997), 135–44, at 144.

65

HA, 2.

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

79

66

of Arles.

Furthermore, only Ceolfrid’s passing, like that of Honoratus, was marked by

67

wonders.

Instead of the miraculous, the Vita Honorati was concerned with describing

the personal virtues and striking death scene of the saint, a concern which also found

68

expression in Possidius’ Life of Saint Augustine.

Honoratus and Ceolfrid both

69

possessed a concern for the poor and a devotion to the psalter.

70

The impact of John Cassian on the monastic culture of southern Gaul is well known.

Cassian influenced the anonymous’ treatment of the themes of resignation and
peregrinatio. Ceolfrid’s decision to depart for another calling on account of his old age
recalls Cassian’s comments concerning Abbot Charemon in the Conferences:

What doctrine can I teach you? I in whom the feebleness of old age has relaxed my
former strictness, as it has also destroyed my confidence in speaking? For how could
I presume to teach what I do not do, or instruct another in what I know I now practise
but feebly and coldly? Wherefore I do not allow any of the younger men to live with
me now that I am of such an advanced age, lest the other’s strictness should be
relaxed owing to my example. For the authority of a teacher will never be strong

71

unless he fixes it in the heart of his hearer by the actual performance of his duty.

In Cassian’s writings, moreover, discourse and memory are the media through which
ascetic experience and expertise is transmitted.

A further text akin to that of the anonymous was the Vita Caesarii, the Life of

Caesarius, bishop of Arles, composed in two books by five clerics of Caesarius’

72

acquaintance, most notably Cyprianus, bishop of Toulon from c.517 to c. 545.

The

early sections of the first book described Caesarius’ life before he became bishop
emphasizing, like the Vita Ceolfridi, Caesarius’ patrons and teachers. Both Caesarius and

73

Ceolfrid shared a devotion to books and maintenance of the daily office.

Both texts

were marked by striking, extended, death scenes and both saints had left their

´

communities for other callings; Caesarius departing from Lerins because the severe

74

asceticism of his discipline led him to develop fever.

´

Although Bede was clearly influenced by the literature of the Lerins circle and it

guided his monastic reform programme, in order to write the history of an abbey’s
internal structure and its relationship with the outside world, he needed to look

66

VC, 25; Hilarius, Vita Honorati, ed. S. Cavallin, Vitae sanctorum Honorati et Hilarii (Lund, 1952), 28.

67

VC, 40; Hilarius, Vita Honorati, 34.

68

Possidius, Vita Augustini, ed. H.T. Weiskotten, Sancti Augustini vita scripta a Possidio Episcopo (Princeton,

1919); Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, 151.

69

VC, 33–4; Hilarius, Vita Honorati, 20, 38.

70

O. Chadwick, John Cassian (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1968); P. Rousseau, Ascetics

, authority and the church in

the age of Jerome and Cassian (Oxford, 1978).

71

Cassian, Conlationes, 11. 4, ed. M. Petschenig, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 13 (Vienna,

1886), 316–7; Trans, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 11 (2nd edn., Massachusetts, 1995),
416.

72

Vitae Caesarii Episcopi Arelatensis Libri Duo, ed. B. Krusch (MGH SRM III, Hanover, 1896); Caesarius of

Arles

. Life, testament, letters, ed. and trans. W. Klingshirn (Liverpool, 1994); W. Klingshirn, Caesarius of

Arles

. The making of a Christian community in late antique Gaul (Cambridge, 1994).

73

VC, 14, 20; Vitae Caesarii, 1. 15–16, 19.

74

VC, 21–36; Vitae Caesarii, 1. 7, 13–14; 2. 45–50.

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

80

Simon Coates

elsewhere. A model from early sixth-century Frankish Gaul may help to set his work in

75

context: the Vita Patrum Iurensium or Lives of the Jura Fathers.

This text, an early

collective monastic history, describes the routine and Rule of a network of monastic
communities in the Jura mountains of Burgundy founded by three abbots: Romanus,
Lupicinus, Romanus’ brother, and Eugendus, who left family estates for the ascetic life.
It is striking that Bede’s Historia Abbatum is similarly structured around three lives,
dealing effectively with Benedict Biscop, Eosterwine and Ceolfrid. It also shared,
alongside the Vita Patrum Iurensium, a concern to unite the lives of holy men around a

76

written Rule. Furthermore, despite his asceticism Romanus, the founder of the abbey of

77

Condat, never strayed too far from the local aristocracy.

Wearmouth-Jarrow was

similarly bound to kings and aristocrats by chains of amicitia and gift-giving. Romanus
remained a man with political contacts, as the life of his brother Lupicinus reveals since
Lupicinus had frequent cause to defend himself against the hostile courtiers of King

78

Chilperic I of Burgundy. Some of the monastic communities of Burgundy were thought
to contain large numbers of monks. The Vita Clari, a Life written in the Carolingian

79

period, gave a figure of 500 monks for Vienne.

Wearmouth–Jarrow was similarly large

80

and said to have contained 600 brethren when Ceolfrid departed.

Although the Vita

Patrum Iurensium focuses primarily on the inner lives of the communities founded by
the saints, miracles of healing, visions and the survival of demonic torments are recorded
particularly in the account of Eugendus’ life. Bede’s innovation, therefore, was to
remove miracles from his work completely. He ignored the posthumous miracle
associated with Ceolfrid described by the anonymous arguably because it was thought
inappropriate for his intended audience: the monks themselves. He may have thought
that some people needed to hear miracle stories more than others and reserved his

81

presentation of the miraculous to those texts he wrote with a wider audience in mind. A
further text from Frankish Gaul also helps us to set Bede’s collective history in context.
To do so, we need to step forward one hundred years from Bede’s time to the
Carolingian world of the early ninth century and the composition of the Gesta Abbatum
Fontanellensium which Levison described as the earliest monastic history from Western

82

Europe.

It recounts the affairs of the abbey of Saint-Wandrille founded around 649 on

the lower Seine by Wandregisil and endowed by prominent Merovingian benefactors:

75

`

´

Vita Patrum Iurensium, ed. F. Martine, Vie Des Peres du Jura, (Sources Chretiennes, 142, Paris, 1968); I.N.

Wood, ‘A prelude to Columbanus. The monastic achievement in the Burgundian territories’, in: Columbanus
and Merovingian Monasticism, ed. H.B. Clarke and M. Brennan (British Archaeological Reports,
International Series, 113, Oxford, 1981), 3–32; J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church (Oxford, 1983),
8–9.

76

Vita Patrum Iurensium, 1. 1, 19; 3. 23, 26.

77

Vita Patrum Iurensium, 1. 1.

78

Vita Patrum Iurensium, 2. 10.

79

Vita Clari, 2 (Acta Sanctorum, Jan., 1, 55–6); Wood, ‘A prelude to Columbanus’, 10.

80

VC, 33; HA, 17. It is possible that some of these fratres could have been those resident on the monastic

estates, A.T. Thacker, ‘Monks, preaching and pastoral care in early Anglo-Saxon England’, in: Pastoral
Care Before the Parish, ed. J. Blair and R. Sharpe (Leicester, 1992), 141.

81

¨

H. Mayr-Harting, ‘Bede’s patristic thinking as an historian’, in: Historiographie im Fruhen Mittelalter, ed.

A. Scharer and G. Scheibelreiter (Munich and Vienna, 1994), 367–74, at 368.

82

¨

¨

W. Levison, ‘Zu den Gesta abbatum Fontanellensium’, in: Levison, Aus rheinische und frankischer Fruhzeit

¨

(Dusseldorf, 1948), 532; I.N. Wood, ‘Saint-Wandrille and its hagiography’, in: Church and chronicle in the
middle ages

. Essays presented to John Taylor, ed. I.N. Wood and G.A. Loud (London, 1991), 1–14.

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

81

Clovis II, Childeric II, Theuderic III and Balthildis, Clovis II’s queen and once an

83

enslaved Anglo-Saxon.

The abbey thereafter fell into Carolingian hands. A body of

hagiographical material associated with it was generated in response to the translation of
Wandregisil, Abbot Ansbert and the hermit Conded from the church of St Paul to that of
St Peter in 704, an incident which parallels Hwaetbert’s translation of Sigibert and

84

Eosterwine to St Peter’s Wearmouth in 716.

The material associated with Saint-

Wandrille was notable for sharing concerns similar to those aired by Bede in the
Historia Abbatum. The miraculous plays little part. Instead we find recorded a zeal for
learning which is marked by gifts of books, the lives and activities of the saints as abbots
showing their concern for the monastic life and correct abbatial behaviour, and a stress

85

upon the importance of the Rule.

A further concern which is prevalent is that surrounding monastic immunity. Charles

Martel granted Abbot Lando an immunity in c.732 and the monks had Ragenfrid

86

deposed for infringing it. Austrulf secured a further privilege from Pippin III in 751–2.
Saint-Wandrille, a monastery associated with powerful Carolingians and known to
possess computistical works by Bede was thus, like Wearmouth–Jarrow as described in
the Historia Abbatum, remembered by hagiography concerned with the security of its

87

monastic endowment.

Saint-Wandrille, although owing its continued existence to the

Carolingians was not always a pro-Carolingian house. The aggressive policies of Charles
Martel and Pippin III lost it vast quantities of land and gave it a series of bad abbatial

88

appointments.

Abbot Teutsind had no compunction about secularization and may have

distributed up to a third of his lands to his followers as precariae. Abbot Witlaic was a

89

simoniac who bought his office from Pippin III.

Although all these texts from Frankish

Gaul possess general parallels to Bede and the anonymous, it is not possible to provide
specific contexts in which such texts might have been known at Wearmouth–Jarrow.
Instead such texts reveal that the milieus of Francia and eighth-century Northumbria
bore strikingly similar characteristics.

Memory, as we have said, was not static. Bede did not entirely remember Ceolfrid in

the same manner as the anonymous. On the one hand this may be seen as a matter of
genre. Bede, after all, was writing the history of his house not a saint’s Vita. On the other

83

Wood, ‘Saint-Wandrille and its hagiography’, 1; Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church, 71.

84

Gesta sanctorum patrum Fontanellensis coenobii, ed. F. Lohier and J. Laporte (Rouen and Paris, 1931), 2. 4;

VC, 18; HA, 20.

85

Wood, ‘Saint-Wandrille and its hagiography’, 7–8.

86

Gesta sanctorum patrum Fontanellensis coenobii, v. 2; viii. 1; x. 4.

87

Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church, 350–2.

88

Wood, ‘Saint-Wandrille and its hagiography’, 9–12; Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms

450 –751 (London,

1994), 279; Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church, 136–8. It is important to place the seizure of
Saint-Wandrille’s lands into perspective. There is no early evidence to suggest that abnormally large
numbers of estates were seized, see I.N. Wood, ‘Teutsind, Witlaic and the history of Merovingian precaria’,
in: Property and power in the early middle ages, ed. W. Davies and P. Fouracre (Cambridge, 1995), 31–52.
The extent to which Charles Martel had a systematic ‘policy’ of alienating church land has also been
questioned. See T. Reuter, ‘‘‘Kirchenreform’’ und ‘‘Kirchenpolitik’’ im Zeitalter Karl Martells. Begriffe und
Wirklichkeit’, in: Karl Martell in seiner Zeit, 35–59 and the studies in the same volume by H. Wolfram,

¨

‘Karl Martell und das frankische Lehenswesen Aufnahmne eines Nichtsbestandes’, 61–78; A. Dierkens,
‘Carolus monasteriorum multorum eversor et ecclesiasticarum pecuniarum in usus proprios commutator?
Notes sur la politique monastique du maire du palais Charles Martel’, 277–94.

89

Gesta sanctorum patrum Fontanellensis coenobii, 4. 3; 11. 1.

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

82

Simon Coates

hand, however, it may be possible to discern a further motive for Bede’s omissions and
changes. To do so we need to examine the anonymous’ account of Ceolfrid’s early
career, a subject ignored by Bede, and, in particular, to consider his relationship with
Bishop Wilfrid. Ceolfrid’s father, a member of the royal comitatus of King Oswiu was

90

grand enough to expect to wine and dine with the king.

His brother, Cynefrid, was

abbot of the Deiran monasterium of Gilling, a distinctive and pre-eminent royal house
founded by King Oswiu to atone for his murder of Oswine of Deira in 651 / 2 where the

91

monks were to daily pray for the murderer and the murdered.

Cynefrid retired to

become an ascetic in Ireland and his successor, Tunbert, another of Ceolfrid’s relatives

92

eventually rose to become bishop of Hexham but was deposed from the see in 685.
Tunbert and Ceolfrid, who had entered Gilling when he took up the religious life, left it
for Ripon where Ceolfrid was consecrated priest by Wilfrid. After leaving it to visit
monasteria in southern England in Kent and East Anglia so as to increase his knowledge
of the monastic life, Ceolfrid returned and, according to the anonymous, Benedict

93

Biscop then sought Wilfrid’s approval for his transfer to Wearmouth.

Ceolfrid agreed

but was soon to retire from his position as prior due to the hostility of certain aristocratic
monks to his vigorous practices. He returned to Ripon but finally agreed to return again

94

to Wearmouth at Benedict Biscop’s prompting.

All of these events are omitted from Bede’s rewritten account. As he created an image

of the past life of his former abbot, Bede chose to bury the memories of Ceolfrid’s early
career. As a result of this act of deliberate forgetting, the anonymous is the only text
which records Ceolfrid’s contacts with Wilfrid and Wilfrid’s own involvement in
sending Ceolfrid to Wearmouth. According to Bede, Wearmouth had no association with
the powerful and contentious bishop. Wilfrid’s turbulent career and ability to rouse the
hostility of kings, queens and fellow members of the clergy is well-known as are his
entreaties to Rome in 678 / 9 and 703 / 4 to petition for the restoration of properties which

95

had been removed from him.

Falling foul of King Egfrith’s queen, Iurminburg, he was

96

expelled from his see which was then dismembered by Archbishop Theodore.
Returning from Rome he was imprisoned and when finally restored to the royal court
was swiftly removed and spent time in Mercia and Wessex, consistently forced to move
since he aroused the hostility of the sister of Egfrith in the former and Iurminburg’s

97

sister, the queen, in the latter.

Only on Egfrith’s death could he return to Northumbria

in 686 / 7 at the invitation of King Aldfrith. Peace was made and his monasterium at

98

Hexham and then that at Ripon along with his entire see were restored to him.
Wilfrid’s relations with Aldfrith, however, soon became strained for three reasons:
Aldfrith attempted to despoil Wilfrid of his possessions, wished to convert Ripon into a

90

VC, 34.

91

VC, 2; Bede, HE, 3. 24.

92

VC, 3; Bede, HE, 4. 12, 28.

93

VC, 3–6.

94

VC, 8.

95

See, for example, the discussion in C. Cubitt, ‘Wilfrid’s ‘‘usurping bishops’’. Episcopal elections in

Anglo-Saxon England c.600–c.800’, Northern History, 25 (1989), 18–38, at 18–24.

96

VW, 24.

97

VW, 33–40.

98

VW, 43–4.

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

83

bishopric, and adhered to the decrees of the middle period of Archbishop Theodore’s

99

pontificate which had dismembered Wilfrid’s diocese.

Wilfrid was expelled again and

made a second appeal to Rome which once more earned him papal favour. As a result,
he obtained a settlement in 706 and at the Synod of Nidd received Ripon back and was

100

restored to the see of Hexham.

Mindful of the contention which his career had created,

Wilfrid sought to divide his vast wealth into four leaving one quarter of it to the
communities of Ripon and Hexham so that they could buy the friendship of bishops and

101

kings.

The memory of Wilfrid preserved by the account of his hagiographer, Stephanus,

102

written between 710 / 11 and 720

may, as Walter Goffart has suggested, have polarised

the Northumbrian ecclesiastical establishment. As a result, an outburst of hagiographical

103

writing occurred. Wilfrid’s ‘ghost’ remained to haunt the living.

A powerful magnate

with a large retinue who was consistently involved in power politics made an
uncomfortable form of saint and appeared to sharply differentiate Wilfrid from a saint

104

such as Cuthbert who had consistently sought withdrawal from the world.

As a result,

memories of Cuthbert, preserved in an anonymous Life, had to be rewritten by Bede to
restore him to a high position in the pantheon of Northumbrian saints. Similarly, the
Historia Abbatum and the Historia Ecclesiastica have been considered a response to the
cult of Wilfrid. Wilfrid’s reputation rested most prominently upon his Rome-centred
outlook. It is possible that his devotion to St Benedict may have created tension between
his own foundations and Wearmouth–Jarrow over which community was more
thoroughly Benedictine in outlook. Wilfrid’s heavy involvement with the aristocracy is
also of significance. Whilst Wearmouth–Jarrow could not, and indeed did not, wish to
disassociate itself from the aristocracy since they had provided its endowment and
ensured the survival of its reputation it was conscious that the aristocracy could threaten
as well as protect. As we have seen, 716 was a year of tension and anxiety within the
community since Ceolfrid’s departure brought a degree of uncertainty. The Vita
Ceolfridi presents the abbot’s resignation as a solely religious move. However, its
occurrence in 716 means that it coincides with the advent, by violent means, of King

99

VW, 45.

100

VW, 60.

101

VW, 63.

102

VW, x–xi. Any consideration of the date is dependent upon establishing who the author of the Vita Wilfridi
was. The identification of the author with the singing master Aedde said to have been brought to
Northumbria by Wilfrid in Bede, HE 4.2 and VW, 14, is now considered no longer valid, D.P. Kirby, ‘Bede,
Eddius Stephanus and the ‘Life of Wilfrid’’, English Historical Review, 98 (1983), 101–14. As a result, the
author is commonly known as Stephanus, J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, Bede

’s Ecclesiastical History of the English

People

. A historical commentary (Oxford, 1988), 139.

103

W. Goffart, The narrators of barbarian history

, AD 550 –800. Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, Paul the

Deacon (Princeton, 1988), 235–328; W. Goffart, ‘The Historia Ecclesiastica. Bede’s agenda and ours’,
Haskins Society Journal, 2 (1990), 29–45. This view is also expressed less explicitly in A.T. Thacker,
‘Lindisfarne and the origins of the cult of St Cuthbert’, in: St Cuthbert

, His Cult and His Community to

A

.D.1200, ed. G. Bonner, D. Rollason and C. Stancliffe (Woodbridge, 1989), 103–22, at 119–122; D.P.

Kirby, ‘The genesis of a cult. Cuthbert of Farne and ecclesiastical politics in Northumbria in the late seventh
and early eighth centuries’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 46 (1995), 383–397.

104

It should, however, be noted that Wilfrid and Cuthbert were both almost certainly aristocrats and that

Cuthbert’s apparent poverty is balanced by the burial of an object of wealth, his pectoral cross, alongside his
body. See The relics of Saint Cuthbert, ed. C.F. Battiscombe (Oxford, 1956), 308–25.

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

84

Simon Coates

Coenred whose ascent to the throne broke a monopoly of royal power which had been

105

established since the days of King Oswald (634–42).

If the rule of Coenred were

unfavourable this could split the community, hence the insistence of the Vita Ceolfridi
on the need to preserve monastic unity. Ceolfrid’s departure had political resonance.
Also in 716, in his commentary on Samuel, Bede condemned the inert clergy whose

106

inadequacies allowed compromise with heathen practice.

Moreover, the years of

uncertainty seem not to have diminished at the time of Bede’s composition of the
Historia Abbatum. His commemorative homily on Benedict Biscop hints at this,
emphasizing the salvation of the just and the punishment of the wicked whilst the
prologue to De Templo, a commentary on the construction of the temple of Solomon
composed between 729–31, speaks of the consolation of the scriptures in times of

107

affliction.

He increasingly deplored the lack of virtue and intellect of those within the

108

church whose avarice and indolence left the laity bereft of spiritual teaching.
Moreover, the close of the Historia Ecclesiastica tells of how the beginnings of King
Ceolwulf’s reign, which began in 729, had been filled with so many varied and serious
commotions that it was impossible to know what to say about them or to guess at their

109

outcome.

Ceolwulf was captured in 731 and tonsured by unnamed opponents who

kept him prisoner in a monastic centre before he was restored to the kingship. In the

110

same year, Acca, bishop of Hexham, Bede’s diocesan, was expelled from his see.

The

possibilities of dynastic faction fighting, which came to find particular expression in the
later history of the eighth-century Northumbrian kingdom, coupled with the problem of
the increasing secularization of land and ignorant priests and bishops who neglected
their dioceses led Bede to be particularly resilient about stressing the unity of the
monasterium and to ignore any possible political controversy. As Paul Fouracre has
noted in a Merovingian context, the further away from its subject in time a hagiographi-
cal work was written, the more opportunity there was to create a distinctively saintly

111

image.

Wearmouth–Jarrow needed to be disassociated from such a contentious figure

as the likes of Wilfrid since the behaviour of such individuals had created tension and
schism in the Northumbrian Church. Bede certainly did not wish to diminish the
importance of Ceolfrid’s career nor did he, in any way, present it as controversial.
Although Ceolfrid’s decision to depart without consulting his diocesan was contrary to

112

canon law,

neither Bede nor the anonymous saw any need to criticise it. Nor was it

considered contrary to the monastic principle of stabilitas. In his homily on Benedict
Biscop, Bede had written of the profit that came out of Biscop’s journeys but hinted that
peregrinatio was not to be for all: ‘As often as he crossed the sea, he never returned, as

105

Bede, HE, 5. 22; D. P. Kirby, The earliest English kings (London, 1991), 147.

106

Bede, In primam partem Samulhelis libri IV, ed. D. Hurst, 122–3, 222.

107

Bede, Opera Homiletica, 1. 13, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL, 122 (Turnhout, 1955); Bede, De Templo, prologus, ed.

D. Hurst, CCSL, 119A (Turnhout, 1969).

108

Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam prophetas allegorica exposition, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL, 119A (Turnhout, 1969),

303, 324, 360.

109

Bede, HE, 5. 23.

110

Bede, HE, 572–3; Kirby, The earliest English kings, 148–9.

111

P. Fouracre, ‘Merovingian history and Merovingian hagiography’, Past and Present, 127 (1990), 3–38.

112

Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, 147.

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

85

113

is the custom with some people, empty-handed and without profit’

. Instead of

criticism, therefore, Biscop’s journeys were performed so that his community could
enjoy the peace of contemplation. Bede’s other omissions are tied into the need for
Wearmouth–Jarrow to look inwards in order to protect itself from the potentiality of the
landed aristocracy from without exploiting its monastic endowment and robbing it of
land. Cultivating the memory of Ceolfrid was one means by which a threatened

114

community could ensure itself of its continued identity.

At the time of Ceolfrid’s

departure the anonymous recounted a story about Ceolfrid’s generosity linking this to an
anecdote about his father. His father had on one occasion prepared a magnificent
banquet for the king but the monarch was unable to come due to the unexpected

115

exigency of war. Ceolfrid’s father therefore gave the food to the poor.

Bede was ever

mindful of moral example, particularly when an act of altruism was committed by a
layman, and it therefore seems credible to suggest that he omitted this story to
disassociate Ceolfrid from secular ties and make him a solely monastic figure.
Furthermore, by omitting to mention Ceolfrid’s welcome by Chilperic and the fact that
Benedict Biscop was able to receive builders from an Abbot Torhthelm in Gaul who had
once been united with him in friendship, Bede presented Ceolfrid in a more inward

116

looking manner to serve his purposes.

The sense of anxiety about the need to avoid

internal discord is evident in Bede’s refusal to recount the hostility which was expressed
towards Ceolfrid’s regime by some of his fellow monks when he first arrived at

117

Wearmouth as prior.

Memory is not passive. Instead it is a ‘process of active restructuring in which

118

elements may be retained, reordered, or suppressed’.

Shared images of the historical

past are the kinds of memories which have particular importance for the constitution of
social groups in the present. Despite the differences between the accounts of Bede and
the anonymous outlined above, Wearmouth–Jarrow certainly shared a strong sense of its
own corporate identity and the part played by Abbot Ceolfrid in creating and
maintaining that identity. A monastery which created and reworked an account of its
own history clearly was a community which regarded the memory of its abbots as a
commodity which could be exploited for certain, specific, goals. The cult of saints is not
merely the expression of a monolithic, uniform Latin Christianity but a phenomenon
whose nature and function reflected changing political and social realities. Whereas the
anonymous personalised memory, Bede institutionalised it. The anonymous sought to
justify Ceolfrid’s abbatial position. The Vita Ceolfridi may be read as an attempt to
narrate and to justify the sole abbacy of Ceolfrid as Benedict Biscop’s spiritual
successor. Bede, however, by writing a history of his own abbey located memory not in
persons but in a community. His goals were unity and peace. His concerns were books,
liturgy, monastic observance, and the preservation of ecclesiastical land. It is possible

113

Bede, Opera Homiletica, I 13, ed. D. Hurst, 93, ll. 172–3.

114

See A.P. Cohen, The symbolic construction of community (New York, 1985), esp. 44–50, 77–82.

115

VC, 34.

116

For Abbot Torhthelm, see VC, 7.

117

VC, 8.

118

Fentress and Wickham, Social memory, 40.

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014

86

Simon Coates

119

that the anonymous and Bede could even have been the same person.

Both texts

follow the Eusebian practice of including written documents within them. The Vita
Ceolfridi contains Hwaetbert’s letter to the pope and Gregory II’s reply. Both share a
similar style and both follow a precise, chronological format. The rewriting of the Vita
Ceolfridi may, therefore, have been a means by which the same author could address
some of the issues which he faced in the mid-720s. However, given the significance of
Wearmouth–Jarrow as a monastic centre, it should not be thought of as having only one
intellectual among its brethren who was capable of producing hagiographical and
historical writing. Hwaetbert was practised in writing, singing, reading, and teaching,

120

and a book of Latin riddles by Eusebius is attributed to him.

Witmer was ‘learned in

121

every kind of knowledge, both secular and of the Scriptures’.

The Historia Abbatum

itself should be viewed as an attempt to portray Wearmouth–Jarrow as an intellectual
powerhouse to be emulated.

Although the memory of Ceolfrid could serve certain immediate functions for the

monks of Wearmouth–Jarrow, it is fundamental to realise that the community’s chief
function, and the key element in establishing its identity, lay in the cultivation of
worship and devotion. Thus, ultimately, through the figure of Ceolfrid, memory provided
the monks with a means by which they could remember a world where the gens
Anglorum could begin to display the characteristics of the heavenly elite marked by the
classlessness of the universal Church, a world ‘where though there are Jews and
barbarian peoples and Scythians, freemen and slaves, nobles and non-nobles, all are

122

brothers in Christ and glory to have the same father in Heaven.’

119

McClure, ‘Bede and the Life of Ceolfrid’.

120

HA, 18; Whitelock, ‘Bede and his teachers and friends’, 25–6.

121

HA, 15.

122

Bede, De Templo, 195. Diximus autem supra quod pauimenti aequalitas humilem concordiam designaret

sanctae fraternitatis ubi cum sint Iudaei et gentis barbari et Scythae liberi et serui nobiles et ignobiles cuncti
se in Christo esse fratres uniuersi eundem se habere patrem qui est in caelis gloriantur...

Downloaded by [Uniwersytet Warszawski] at 04:48 24 January 2014