The Norman Church

The Norman Invasion brought with it a profound change to the English Church. English Priests went into hiding or exile and were replaced with continental Abbots and Bishops. The Church itself was brought under the wing of the Roman Pope; its organisation and structure changed to that of the Roman Catholic Church. Not only were English Saints struck from the Church calendar, but their bones and relics were pulled from the ground. Few survived, but one who did is Saint Cuthbert, whose grave can be still visited today at Durham Cathedral. English Saints were replaced with continental ones with little or no association with England.

The Normans did, however, bring a new sense of vigour and intellectual scholarship with them. The first Norman Archbishop of Canterbury was William’s personal counsellor, Lanfranc, abbot of Bec in Normandy. Lanfranc was a great teacher and scholar. His successor, Anselm, who was also Abbot of Bec, continued this scholarly approach, being the originator of Scholasticism.

The Normans did not set about only to change the religious and cultural nature of the English Church. They also embarked on a massive programme of new buildings and the almost complete rebuilding of existing ones. The typical Anglo Saxon Church was small and homely, intended to serve a relatively small community. The Norman Church, on the other hand, was intended to be a statement of power and wealth – of Norman rule over the native English. Using English labour, the Norman over lords stamped their authority all over the country with new Churches, Cathedrals, Castles and Monasteries. St Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, and the only Anglo Saxon to retain office in the new Church, lamented “we labour to heap up stones”. The result was the advent of some of our most grandiose Churches and Cathedrals, but at a great cost in terms of the loss of so much of our Anglo Saxon Church heritage.

English military resistance did not end with defeat at the Battle of Hastings. William had many battles ahead as he moved towards London and then on into northern England. English resistance was met with such force and retribution that it would probably count as genocide in today’s language. His campaigns against the free farmers of northern England were particularly brutal, culminating in the deaths of nearly a third of the population and mass starvation caused by his scorched earth policy. English resistance never did quite die out though. The tales of Robin Hood are essentially the tales of Anglo Saxon English resistance to Norman rule and injustice. There may never have been a single real person called Robin Hood, but there are many real life characters, such as Hereward the Wake, on who he is partly based.

But not content to subdue the English through death and destruction, the Normans also brought with them the feudal system that was to be the basis of medieval society and the English class system that remains with us today. This system introduced the notion of free and un-free. Normans and their allies were of course at the top of the pile, native Anglo Saxon and Scandinavian English were at the bottom.

The monasteries, for all their learning and no doubt genuine devotion to God, benefited hugely from this feudal system at the expense of the ordinary person. Bishops and Abbots became more like Barons than monks. Many, though not all, became corrupted by this temporal power. They, and their monasteries, grew rich and powerful as the ordinary people lived as virtual slaves. Rather than being part of the community, as had been the case in the old Anglo Saxon Church, the monks grew more distant and lived often quite different lives to the ordinary folk.

The twelfth century saw the growth of military orders as part of the Crusades to regain Jerusalem from the Muslims. These orders gave rise to the concept of Chivalry and of the sturdy defender of hearth and home as well as of Christendom. They also formed the basis of the modern free masonry movement. Linked to this, was a revival in interest in ancient legends, especially those of the Holy Grael and King Arthur. Perhaps the biggest legacy of this period for England, was the adoption of St George as her Patron Saint.

The Crusades began with a noble cause; to win back Jerusalem for Christendom and were at first a joint venture between the western and eastern Churches. However, they not only failed in their attempt to permanently win back the holy land, they were often marred by periods of extreme violence, not only against Jews and Muslims, but also against eastern Christianity – an unfortunate legacy that is still with us to this day.

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were a period of warfare, famine, plague, despotic rulers (both secular and ecclesiastical) and generally short, brutal lives for most people. However, this very brutal world, in which death was always just round the corner, helped nurture a vibrant culture of mysticism. Great English mystics of this time include Walter Hilton, Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich.

As the fourteenth century progressed, England began to recover from the plague and periods of peace broke out. For the first time since the Norman invasion, the English language (though much changed) began to be used officially again rather than Latin or Norman French. This is the period of Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales. The scriptures were still available only in Latin, an unfamiliar language to most ordinary people. The Church opposed the idea of translating the bible into English, although the Anglo Saxon Church, especially under Alfred, had achieved a great deal of translation – mostly forgotten or unreadable by this period. However, translations did start to appear, though their authors risked serious punishment. One of the earliest translations of the bible into modern English was by John Wycliffe (1320 – 1384) who also sought to reform the Church and is considered by many to be the first Protestant. His followers were known as the Lollards, a group which emphasised piety and the authority of scripture over that of priests. Despite being condemned as a heretic, Wycliffe escaped punishment and died naturally.

The next English translation of the bible did not occur for a further hundred years. By his time, Europe was a completely different place. The Renaissance had flowered, Plato had been translated to give birth to humanist scholarship. The Christian faith was in the process of a radical review and renewal. It can be said that this period marked the end of the superstitious medieval era and the birth of a new age of reasoning and questioning of long accepted dogma. William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale produced a new English translation of the bible in the late 1520’s. Tyndale was also a reformist, having met Martin Luther in Germany. Despite his Protestant leanings, he incurred the wrath of Henry the Eighth by writing against his divorce. He was eventually captured in Antwerp and executed in 1536.

The reformist movement was growing throughout Europe and England was not immune from it. However, the break with Rome did not come about in England as a result of Protestant agitation, but simple old fashioned royal decree. Henry the Eighth’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had not been able to bear him a male heir. Henry wanted to divorce Catherine so he could marry Anne Boleyn, who he hoped would bear him a son. But, he needed the permission of the Pope to do this. Infact, this was not an entirely unusual request and would probably have been granted if it was not for the fact that Catherine’s nephew was Charles Fifth of Spain. Charles wanted to retain influence in England through his sister and so persuaded the Pope not to grant Henry’s divorce. As a result, Henry (something of a modern ‘nationalist’ monarch) repudiated papal authority and established himself as head of the Church. However, Henry was no Protestant. He remained firmly Catholic to his dying day and continued to refer to himself as the ‘Defender of the (Catholic) faith’. Nevertheless, the break with Rome can be seen as a clear turning point in the history of the English Church and the re-emergence of the Anglican Church once more. Henry was in effect the founder and first leader of the Anglican Catholic tradition.

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