Ecgbert

Ecgbert or Ecgberht or Ecgbeorht (died 766) was an eighth century Archbishop of York and correspondent of Bede and Saint Boniface.

Life

He was the son of Eata, who was descended from the founder of the kingdom of Bernicia. His brother Eadberht was king of Northumbria from 737 to 758. Ecgbert went to Rome with another brother, and was ordained deacon while still in Rome.^[1] He studied under Bede, who visited him in 733 at York.^[2]

Ecgbert was named to the see of York in 734^[3] by his cousin Ceolwulf, the king of Northumbria. Pope Gregory III sent him a pallium, the symbol of an archbishop's authority, in 735.^[1] Alcuin as a child was given to Ecgbert, and was educated at the school at York that Ecgbert founded.^[4][1] Liudger, later the first bishop of Munster, and Aluberht, another bishop in Germany, both studied at the school in York.^[5] Bede wrote him a letter, dealing with monastic issues as well as the problems of large dioceses. Bede urged Ecgbert to study Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care.^[1] Bede's admonition to divide up dioceses, however, fell on deaf ears, as Egbert did not break up his large diocese.^[6] The suffragans continued to be limited to the bishops of Hexham, Lindisfarne, and Whithorn.^[7]

The monastic problems came from the secular practice of families setting up monasteries that were totally under their control as a way of making the family lands book-land and free from secular service. Book-land was at first an exclusive right of ecclesiastical property. By transferring land to a family-controlled monastery, the family would retain the use of the land without having to perform any services to the king for the land.^[8] Ecgbert wrote the Dialogus ecclesiasticae institutionis, which was basically a legal law code for the clergy, setting forth the proper procedures for many clerical and eccleisastical issues including weregild for clerics, entrance to clerical orders, deposition from the clergy, criminal monks, clerics in court, and other matters.^[1] It details a code of conduct for the clergy and how the clergy was to behave in society.^[9] The historian Simon Coates saw the Dialogues as not especially exalting monks above the laity.^[10] Other works were attributed to him in the Middle Ages, but they are not regarded by modern scholars as his. These include the Excarpsum de canonibus catholicorum patrum, as well as a pentitential and a pontifical.^[11]

Saint Boniface wrote to him, asking for support against Ethelbald of Mercia. Boniface also asked the archbishop for some of Bede's books, and in return sent wine to be drunk "in a merry day with the brethern."^[12] The school he founded at York is held by the modern historian Peter Hunter Blair to have equalled or surpassed the famous monasteries at Wearmouth and Jarrow.^[13]

Ecgbert died on 19 November 766.^[3]

Notes

References

• Blair, Peter Hunter (1990). The World of Bede (Reprint of 1970 edition ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-39819-3. 
• Coates, Simon. "The Role of Bishops in the Early Anglo-Saxon Church: A Reassessment". History 81 (262): 177–196. 
• Cubitt, Catherine (1999). "Finding the Forger: An Alleged Decree of the 679 Council of Hatfield". The English Historical Review 114 (459): 1217–1248. 
• Fryde, E. B.; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I. (1996). Handbook of British Chronology (Third Edition, revised ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56350-X. 
• Hindley, Geoffrey (2006). A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons: The Beginnings of the English Nation. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 978-0-78671-738-5. 
• Kirby, D. P. (2000). The Earliest English Kings. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-24211-8. 
• Lapidge, Michael (2001). "Ecgberht". in Lapidge, Michael; Blair, John; Keynes, Simon; Scragg, Donald. The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. p. 157. ISBN 978-0-631-22492-1. 
• Mayr-Harting, Henry (1991). The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-00769-9. 
• Mayr-Harting, Henry (2004). "Ecgberht (d. 766)" (fee required). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8580.  Accessed 9 November 2007
• Stenton, F. M. (1971). Anglo-Saxon England (Third ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280139-5. 

External links

• Prosopography of Anglo Saxon England entry on Ecgbert