A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons (25 page)

Thus, in Old Saxony . . . if a married woman commit adultery, they sometimes force her to kill herself by hanging; and when the body has been cremated they hang her seducer over the pyre . . .

The implied contrast with goings on among the Christian (Anglo) Saxons under Æthelbald’s dispensation is obvious.
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But then the lifestyle of the average, unreformed Frankish aristocrat bishop paid little heed to clerical niceties, either. Polygamy was not unheard of among the episcopate – perhaps on the theory that a bishop’s ordination gave him something of the sacral mystery surrounding the king. Boniface reported deacons who slept nights with four or five concubines in their bed, acknowledged bastard children, and yet became bishops and celebrated mass. Part of the problem was that the church permitted married men to enter the priesthood if, admittedly, on what one might term a strictly one priest, one wife basis. Neighbouring heathen tribes might understand such concessions to their own practices. What they could not stomach, Boniface wrote, were pagan practices in Rome itself–January celebrations in front of St Peter’s, where crowds paraded the streets and gorged themselves at food- and wine-laden tables and women, festooned in ornaments, hawked pagan amulets and bracelets.
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Nor was Boniface much helped by the unsavoury reputation that the clergy of his native island seem to have acquired on the Continent. In his long letter to Archbishop Cuthbert of Canterbury he complains about reports of drunken parish priests, and even drunken bishops who encourage what sounds suspiciously like binge drinking among their clergy. Even then the English had a reputation for excessive drunkenness, which later in the same letter Boniface laments as ‘a vice that is peculiar to the heathen and to
our race
, and that neither the Franks nor the Gauls, . . . Lombards, . . . Romans, nor Greeks [indulge in]’ [my emphasis].
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Apparently, although he never read Bede on the ‘English’, Boniface was perfectly aware of an ethnic identity that distinguished him from other peoples of Europe – including, it would seem, the heathen Saxons. It is also worth pausing to notice that he distinguishes between ‘Gauls’, the original Romano-Celtic population of what we today call ‘France’, and ‘Franks’, the federation of diverse barbarian tribes that overran them. As to drink, perhaps Boniface himself was not averse to the occasional episcopal tipple. In a letter to Archbishop Ecgberht of York he not only asks for copies of the book of homilies and the commentary on the Proverbs of Solomon by Bede, ‘inspired priest and student of the scriptures’ (not ‘historian’, we note), but sends by the bearer two small casks of wine to be consumed ‘in a merry day with the brethren’.

But books were always the great solace and book requests are a standard feature; with advancing age he had a particular need for large print versions ‘with the letters written out clearly and separately’, which were to be had in England but ‘unavailable in this country’. The more serious troubles of old age in exile, such as the withering of friendship, could challenge even his determination. Recalling his original name ‘Boniface also called Wynfrith’ asks a West Country acquaintance from his youth to pity ‘. . . an old man worn out by tribulations in this land of the Germans’.
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The role of women

This section focuses upon St Lioba, for whom St Boniface had an intense regard. She is just one of a number of Anglo-Saxon women saints, such as Abbess Hild of Whitby, Abbess Æthelburga of Barking in Essex and Abbess Æthelthryth (also known as Etheldreda or Audrey), daughter of King Anna of the East Angles. Twice married, Æthelthryth nevertheless maintained her virginity so that her second husband, Ecgfryth of Northumbria, who evidently expected more from a ‘peace weaver’, as dynastic wives were called,
released her for the life of religion so that she might found a double monastery at Ely, where she presided until her death. She was succeeded by her sister St Sexburga, dowager queen of Kent.

The double monastery/nunnery was a fairly common institution in the Old English church and in most cases headed by a woman rather than a man. But then the Anglo-Saxons honoured many women as saints, a practice that ended with the Norman Conquest; in the view of the distinguished historian Doris Stenton, ‘Anglo-Saxon women were more nearly the equal companions of their husbands and brothers’ than in Norman England. In her
Women in Anglo-Saxon England
, Christine Fell cities cases of women apparently in business on their own account in the craft of embroidery. In the 810s the bishop of Worcester granted a certain Eanswith 200 acres (80 hectares) of land in return for the maintenance and enlargement of the cathedral’s vestments, which means she must have employed a team of craft workers. From the reign of Edward the Confessor we hear of Ælfgyth, who was made a modest grant from the royal revenues for teaching a king’s sheriff’s daughter the craft of gold thread embroidery (
aufrisium).

Laws regulating relations between the sexes could be harsh. Adulterers were liable to severe penalties, but whereas a man might be subject to forfeiture of land, under Cnut’s laws a woman offender faced bodily mutilation. But from the very earliest period, Anglo-Saxon codes provide clear and sensible legislation for the rights of women. A rapist could expect a heavy fine but the laws also specified compensations payable for different degrees of sexual harassment short of rape, from seizing the breast to throwing a woman to the ground. The ‘morning gift’ a man paid to his wife on their marriage became her personal property to dispose of as she saw fit and it could be a substantial amount, whether in money or land. Æthelfryth, a certain ninth-century lady, sold land equivalent to five peasant land holdings. The code of Æthelred II of 1008 protected a widow from forced remarriage, ruling that she must remain
single for twelve months, after which time she could remarry if she wished, but was free to choose her husband. Some chose to enter the life of religion: noblewomen and others might already be literate and, as for men, the church could offer prospects denied them in lay society. Not all could be abbesses, but many could exercise lesser responsibilities, while some apparently learnt to excel at the demanding skills of manuscript illumination.

Like Jerome, Boniface enjoyed the friendship of women. But whereas Jerome seems to have had a more or less permanent entourage of female admirers, Boniface kept a wide correspondence with various nuns and abbesses – many, like him, of noble kin, but also expert in the disciplines and the skills of the religious life. We have seen him writing to Abbess Eadburga, asking her to make a luxury copy of the Epistles of St Peter. It is not a question of her commissioning the work from a master illuminator but it is clear he is confident of her skills in this highly sophisticated and complex technique. A princess of the West Saxon dynasty, she uses the vocabulary of royal triumph on hearing of Boniface’s initial success against the Frisian King Radbod, ‘the enemy of the Catholic Church, [whom] God humbled at your feet’. When she says farewell ‘in love unfeigned’, one senses feelings deeper than mere friendship. His mission certainly owed a good deal to her generous support in books, church furniture and money.

Probably the woman who made the greatest impression on Boniface, as she seems to have done on all who met her, was Lioba (also Leoba). At his request she was sent out at the head of thirty nuns, all able to read and write and with some Latin, to act as a sort of missionary back-up team.

In his biography of her, Rudolf of Fulda, writing about 830, tells us that St Lioba was born about 699 in the island of Britain, which, he adds, ‘is inhabited by the English nation’. Her aristocratic parents had almost given up hope of having children and Lioba’s birth, foreseen by her mother’s aged nurse in a dream, seemed divinely
ordained. Devout Christians, they vowed the child to the service of God – and rewarded the aged nurse, evidently a household slave, with her freedom. The girl entered the Wessex convent of Wimborne under Abbess Tetta, sister of the king and well known to Boniface.

The community had just come through a troubled time. Tetta kept a strict house, even guarding her girls from contact with clerics – and that included bishops (drunken or not!). But her deputy, still more severe and quite unwilling to apologize, had infuriated the younger sisters, who were mostly young aristocrats used to deference. In due course the termagant died. Within days some of the younger nuns were jumping on the grave and cursing the body. Ominous portents subdued the more rebellious spirits and by the time of Lioba’s arrival Abbess Tetta was presiding once more over a docile community.

It was a sympathetic atmosphere for the serious-minded young novice, at this time perhaps something of a prig (bishop-proof certainly). But she was to become a model of spiritual commitment and wisdom, truly worthy of sainthood. Boniface knew about her, as she was ‘related to him on his mother’s side’, and wrote to Abbess Tetta asking her to release Lioba for service in the German mission. Continually building churches and monasteries throughout Hesse, Thuringia and Bavaria he wrote regularly to England to rally recruits, not just as missionaries in the field but to head his new monastic communities, which were to be homes of both prayer and scholarship, as well as anchors for the scattered rural congregations of believers. Tetta released her community’s most celebrated member with a bad grace. Boniface made Lioba abbess at the convent of Tauberbischofsheim and general superintendent of nuns throughout Germany. By the end of her career there was hardly a convent in the region that did not have one of her pupils as abbess.

Lioba was described as beautiful (angelic) in appearance, abstemious (her personal drinking cup was known as ‘Leoba’s little one’) and unfailingly good natured. A woman of private means, she
was generous in her hospitality, hosting banquets for her guests even when she herself was fasting. In summertime she took an afternoon siesta, observing that lack of sleep dulled the mind, especially for study. But she expected a scripture reading all the same. Younger nuns competed for the privilege and the fun of trying to trick the holy abbess. Even when she seemed most soundly asleep she would correct any slip or omission and no one was ever able to catch her out.

Serious to a fault, apparently she never laughed out loud. Quite averse to the courtier’s world, she was nevertheless much respected in court circles, above all by Queen Hildegard, wife of Charlemagne, who ‘revered her with a chaste affection and loved her as her own soul’. There are hints that Lioba detected undertones in the queen’s regard. In response to a pleading letter that they might meet one last time, Lioba complied ‘for the sake of their long-standing friendship’. She received the usual effusive welcome, but cut short the visit. Their farewell embrace was more affectionate than usual, Rudolf tells us. The abbess kissed her royal friend on the mouth as well as upon the forehead and the eyes, saying

farewell dearly beloved lady and sister . . . most precious half of my soul . . . we shall never more enjoy one another’s presence on this earth. May Christ . . . grant that we meet again without shame on the day of judgement.

Shortly after, returned to her convent, Lioba fell into a terminal illness and was given the last rites from her English priest and confessor Torhthat.

The consequences of a pioneer age

Summing up what we know of the English missions in Germany during the eighth century reveals an episode of immense consequence in the history of the European continent. By its constant allegiance to Rome and the popes, the English mission assured the
ascendancy of the Roman rite in the Western Church’s liturgy until the Reformation of the early 1500s and, for good or ill, the survival of papal authority over Western churches. By its organization of the German church hierarchy the mission and its leaders prepared, under papal direction, a structure that proved central to the administration of the medieval, later Holy Roman, empire. So much for the future. At the time, contemporaries recognized its leaders as men of importance at the very summit of European affairs. According to tradition, the seventy-year-old Boniface anointed Pippin the Short, ancestor of the Carolingian dynasty, king of the Franks in 751. At the local level English clerics and monks were doers and role models admired and long remembered in the lands of the old Germany hegemony. Willibrord of Echternach, Willibald at Eichstätt and Boniface are only the most notable in the roll call of Anglo-Saxon names who were fundamental in the formation of early European history.

The reform spirit created by the Anglo-Saxons was alive in the Frankish church and the ecclesiastical policy of these Carolingians on the whole may be regarded as the continuation and the heritage of the work of St Boniface. Of crucial significance, according to Professor Rosamond McKitterick, were their methods of teaching, their conviction of the importance of papal authority, their emphasis on synodal authority and the energy they devoted to establishing a coherent diocesan structure.
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Professor McKitterick showed also that there is ‘abundant manuscript evidence’ of English men and women at work on the Continent in the form of the books they copied, both west and east of the Rhine. Even where, as at Jouarre, near Paris, the work is in Merovingian Frankish style there may be ‘unmistakable insular traits’ indicating connections with England. From the regions of Germany where Boniface and his colleagues were active, manuscripts in distinctively insular script styles indicate many more men and women from England than would be expected. McKiterrick found similar evidence of English scribes in Bavarian records,
representing a continuous influx of Anglo-Saxon volunteers up to thirty years after the death of St Boniface.
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Such a trend might help explain the low level of learning in England deplored by King Alfred in the next century. On the continent, the contribution of these Anglo-Saxon expatriates was undeniable.