Lanfranc

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Lanfranc (1005–89), archbishop of Canterbury, is venerated as a saint in Pavia, where he was born, and at Bec-Hellouin, where he became a monk, also at Bayeux and elsewhere, but not at Canterbury, where his ecclesiastical reforms are his principal achievement. These are often reckoned to be the most important in the medieval Church in England. His attempt to impose the ‘primacy’ of Canterbury over York, though initially successful, failed after a papal decision in favour of York. At the end of his life his stern treatment of the monks of St. Augustine's for rebellion must have made him enemies as well as admirers, while the same is true of his earlier and temporary suspicion of Anglo-Saxon saints.

Lanfranc was educated at Pavia and in other Italian towns, but left them for Burgundy and Normandy, where he built up a deserved reputation both as scholar and teacher. At the comparatively advanced age of thirty-seven he became a monk at Bec, a poor, obscure Norman abbey founded by the knight Herluin. This was in 1042; only three years later he became prior. Both by his administrative efficiency and by his scholarship in the fields of law and theology, he raised its level of all-round achievement which soon surpassed that of other Norman abbeys. His main literary works in this period were commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul, as well as on the Psalms. The first of these was much read for about 100 years and was excerpted by Anselm of Laon.

When consulted about Duke William's marriage to Matilda of Flanders, he first thought it was invalid because it was within the prohibited degrees. But William entrusted him with negotiations with the Holy See in this matter; as a result the marriage was regularized, but William was enjoined to found some monasteries as a penance. This he did at Caen, with one abbey for monks and another for nuns. Lanfranc was placed in charge of the first, in 1063. Here again he was notably successful, and in these years he wrote his most famous work, On the Body and Blood of the Lord, against the errors of Berengarius of Tours. This was a vigorous refutation from Scripture and the Fathers and pointed forward to the doctrine of transubstantiation.

William after 1066 wished him to be archbishop of Canterbury, but he could not be appointed until the corrupt pluralist and intruder Stigand had been deposed. This was achieved in due course through papal legates; only then did, Pope Alexander II (a former student of Lanfranc) appoint him to Canterbury in 1070. Soon after, Canterbury cathedral was badly damaged by fire, and Lanfranc's consecration took place in a roofless ruin, but with some walls standing.

His subsequent rebuilding of the church there, with the reform of its monastic community through the injection of monks from Bec, epitomize his policy of order for the Church in England as a whole. This included the relocation of bishoprics, the foundation of more monastic cathedrals, the safeguarding of the rights of manorial priests, the general renewal of Christian life, not least through insistence on church marriages. The monasteries gained in numbers, learning, and buildings through his infusion of new ideals into rather tired institutions. Lanfranc's Letters reveal him as a firm ruler and a perceptive spiritual guide, but also (as in an early letter to the pope) as someone who could suffer deep discouragement and depression, not mitigated by his articulate eloquence and rhetoric. All in all, he made a unique contribution as teacher, writer, and ruler to the Church in England, but his ultimate failure in the primacy controversy only became clear well after his death.

For many years he was the friend of St. Anselm, also from Bec, who was his successor at Canterbury, Feast: 28 May.

Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.

• M. T. Gibson, Lanfranc of Bec (1978); H. Clover and M. T. Gibson, The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury (1979); F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (1965), pp. 650–70; D. Knowles, The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc (1951) and M.O., pp. 83–127; Lanfranc's works are in P.L., cl. See also Eadmer, History of Recent Events in England, ed. G. Bosanquet (1964) and R. W. Southern, St. Anselm (1990)

The Italian monk and theologian Lanfranc (ca. 1010-1089) served as archbishop of Canterbury. He was a trusted adviser of King William I and presided over many changes in the English Church after the Norman conquest.

A native of Pavia, Lanfranc migrated to France in the 1030s. He studied under Bérenger at Tours and taught at Avranches. In 1042 he became a monk at Bec; he rose to be prior and head of the monastic school, which became famous under his direction. At the councils of Rome and Vercelli in 1050 Lanfranc was the principal defender of orthodoxy against the heretical doctrine of Bérenger on transubstantiation. His own views were expounded later in his treatise De corpore et sanguine Domini (On the Body and Blood of the Lord), which, like his other theological work, is sound but unoriginal.

William, Duke of Normandy (later William I of England), made Lanfranc abbot of his new foundation of St. Stephen at Caen in 1063, and in 1070, now king of England, he arranged Lanfranc's election as archbishop of Canterbury. Lanfranc was consecrated on August 29. Thereafter Lanfranc was the King's chief adviser and agent in Church affairs and one of his leading supporters in England. He suppressed a conspiracy of the earls of Norfolk and Hereford in 1075, and in 1087 he carried out the Conqueror's last wish by crowning his son, William II.

Lanfranc's principal task was to carry out reforms and changes in the Church. Some of these changes were purely political and involved replacing Saxon bishops and abbots with foreigners wherever possible. To effect his reforms, he held a series of councils; those of Winchester (1072 and 1076) and London (1075) were of great importance. He tried to enforce stricter discipline in monasteries and the rule of celibacy upon the secular clergy. He also presided over the removal of bishoprics from villages to towns; for example, in 1075 the sees of Lichfield, Sherborne, and Selsey were transferred to Chester, Salisbury, and Chichester. About the same time, no doubt with Lanfranc's approval, William ordered that Church cases should no longer be heard in secular courts. Lanfranc also claimed supremacy for Canterbury over York; his claims were endorsed by a legatine council held at Winchester in 1072.

Lanfranc regarded cooperation with the King as the best policy for the Church. He offered no opposition to King William's claims to decide between rival popes, to appoint and invest bishops, and to approve or disapprove decrees of Church councils and publication of papal letters. The extreme claims to power and independence, which were being made by Pope Gregory VII and his party, were quietly ignored. Lanfranc was perhaps fortunate that he died on May 24, 1089, less than 2 years after the accession of the irreligious William II, with whom cooperation was almost impossible. A small collection of Lanfranc's letters and some theological works survive.

Further Reading

Lanfranc's The Monastic Constitutions, edited and translated by D. Knowles (1951), illustrates his ideas on the religious life. A useful collection of contemporary documents, including some of Lanfranc's letters, is translated in D. C. Douglas and G. W. Greenaway, eds., English Historical Documents (1042-1189), vol. 2 (1953). The best biography is Allan John Macdonald, Lanfranc: A Study of His Life, Work, and Writing (1926; 2d ed. 1944). The basic book on the Church for this period is Z. N. Brooke, The English Church and the Papacy (1931), in which the author identifies and discusses the collection of canon law brought by Lanfranc to England.

Additional Sources

Gibson, Margaret T., Lanfranc of Bec, Oxford Eng.: Clarendon Press, 1978.

Lanfranc (c.1010-89), archbishop of Canterbury (1070-89), was an Italian from Pavia, who moved to northern France in the 1030s, and rose in Normandy before 1066 to be William the Conqueror's chief ecclesiastical adviser. After 1070 his influence was widely pervasive throughout the Normanized church in England. He asserted Canterbury's primacy over York and, as a result, was able to preside over synods of the entire English church which gave a central direction to the efforts of the new Norman bishops. His close and harmonious co-operation with William the Conqueror assisted the Norman settlement of England.

Lanfranc served as archbishop of Canterbury under William the Conquerer. He reformed the English church, established strong church-state relations, and introduced components of Roman and canon law to England. Under William's reign, he laid the foundation for what succeeding theorists would build into England's secular common-law court system. Early U.S. law derived some elements from this system.

Lanfranc was born in about 1005 in Pavia, Italy. He studied law in Pavia and became a respected scholar, principally because of his studies in Roman law, which was a subject of growing interest in Italy at the time.

Lanfranc established a school at Avranches, Normandy, and taught for three years, until about 1042. After being attacked and almost killed by a highway robber, he went into seclusion at Saint Stephens Abbey at Bec, a newly established monastery. After three years of total seclusion, he returned to teaching, this time at the monastery. He taught there for eighteen years, earning high respect throughout Europe as an instructor of theology. The school became one of the most famous in Europe under his leadership. The future pope Alexander II was among his students.

When William the Conquerer decided to marry Matilda of Flanders, Lanfranc declared that the union would be a violation of canon law. Because of Lanfranc's strong opposition, William threatened to exile him. Lanfranc eventually gave up his stand against the marriage. In about 1051 William married Matilda, despite a papal ban on the union. Lanfranc sought support from the pope and engineered an eventual reconciliation of the papacy with the king. Six years after the wedding, William received the pope's approval to marry Matilda. In 1063 the grateful king appointed Lanfranc the first abbot of Saint Stephens.

Lanfranc also successfully lobbied for papal support for William's subsequent invasion of England. Because of these efforts, Lanfranc became William's closest and most trusted adviser by the time of the invasion in 1066, which resulted in the Norman Conquest.

In 1070 William appointed Lanfranc archbishop of Canterbury and chief justiciar. In the latter capacity, Lanfranc worked as a viceroy, or representative of the king, alongside William and when William was away from court. To reinforce William's dominance as ruler of England, Lanfranc replaced many English bishops with Normans. He also defeated an effort by the archbishop-elect of York to declare independence from Canterbury. He supported absolute veto power for the king and helped lay the precedent for trying bishops before secular courts.

Lanfranc supported papal sovereignty and protected the church from secular influences. He also helped William establish independence for the English church. In 1076 he wrote an important ordinance that separated secular courts from ecclesiastical courts. In addition, he reformed guidelines for the marriage of priests, established ecclesiastical courts, and strengthened monasteries. He died May 28, 1089.

Lanfranc brought to England an understanding of canon and Roman law, which had been more widely embraced in continental Europe. Although he did not replace England's court system with Roman law, he introduced components of that system to England's court system.

Lanfranc's efforts laid the foundation for important writings on English law in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the twelfth century, the first major text on the common law was written, reputedly by Ranulf Glanvill (his authorship is now disputed). In the thirteenth century, writings by Henry de Bracton built further on the common law with principles from both Roman (or civil) law and canon law. These works were important elements in the establishment of England's eventual common-law system. The scholar Frederic W. Maitland said that Lanfranc's influence was responsible for "the early precipitation of English law in so coherent a form." The United States borrowed concepts from the English court system that began to develop during the years following the Norman Conquest.

Lanfranc
Archbishop of Canterbury
Enthroned	unknown
Reign ended	24 May 1089
Predecessor	Stigand
Successor	Anselm of Canterbury
Consecration	15 August 1070
Personal details
Birth name	Lanfranc
Died	24 May 1089

For the thirteenth-century troubadour of the same name, see Lanfranc Cigala.

For the fourteenth-century surgeon, see Lanfranc of Milan.

Lanfranc (c. 1005–1089) was Archbishop of Canterbury, and a Lombard by extraction.^[1]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Teacher and scholar 3 Prior and abbot 4 Archbishop of Canterbury 5 Path to sainthood 6 In popular culture 7 Sources 8 References 9 Further reading

Early life

He was born in the early years of the eleventh century at Pavia, where later tradition held that his father, Hanbald, held a rank broadly equivalent to magistrate. He was orphaned at an early age.^[2]

Lanfranc was trained in the liberal arts, at that time a field in which northern Italy was famous (there is little or no evidence to support the myth that his education included much in the way of Civil Law, and none that links him with Irnerius of Bologna as a pioneer in the renaissance of its study). For unknown reasons at an uncertain date, he crossed the Alps, soon taking up the role of teacher in France and eventually in Normandy. About 1039 he became the master of the cathedral school at Avranches, where he taught for three years with conspicuous success. But in 1042 he embraced the monastic profession in the newly founded Bec Abbey. Until 1045 he lived at Bec in absolute seclusion.

Teacher and scholar

He was then persuaded by Abbot Herluin to open a school in the monastery. From the first he was celebrated (totius Latinitatis magister). His pupils were drawn not only from France and Normandy, but also from Gascony, Flanders, Germany and Italy. Many of them afterwards attained high positions in the Church; it is possible that one, Anselm of Badagio, became pope under the title of Alexander II. In this way Lanfranc set the seal of intellectual activity on the reform movement of which Bec was the centre. The favourite subjects of his lectures were logic and dogmatic theology. He was therefore invited to defend the doctrine of transubstantiation against the attacks of Berengar of Tours. He took up the task with the greatest zeal, although Berengar had been his personal friend; he was the protagonist of orthodoxy at the councils of Vercelli (1050), Tours (1054) and Rome (1059).

To his influence we may attribute the desertion of Berengar's cause by Hildebrand and the more broad-minded of the cardinals. Our knowledge of Lanfranc's polemics is chiefly derived from the tract De corpore et sanguine Domini, which he wrote many years later (after 1079), when Berengar had been finally condemned. Though betraying no signs of metaphysical ability, his work was regarded as conclusive and became for a while a text-book in the schools. It is often said to be the place where the Aristotelian distinction between substance and accidence was first applied to explain Eucharistic change. It is the most important of the surviving works attributed to Lanfranc; which, considering his reputation, are slight and disappointing.

Prior and abbot

In the midst of his scholastic and controversial activities Lanfranc became a political force. Later tradition told that while he was prior of Bec he opposed to the uncanonical marriage of Duke William with Matilda of Flanders (1053) and carried matters so far that he incurred a sentence of exile. But the quarrel was settled when he was on the point of departure, and he undertook the difficult task of obtaining the pope’s approval of the marriage. In this he was successful at the same council which witnessed his third victory over Berengar (1059), and he thus acquired a lasting claim on William's gratitude. In assessing this story it may well be relevant that no reputable source can tell what the exact impediment to marriage was. In 1066 Lanfranc became the first abbot of St Stephen's at Caen, a house which the duke had supposedly been enjoined to found as a penance for his disobedience to the Holy See.

Henceforward Lanfranc exercised a perceptible influence on his master's policy. William adopted the Cluniac programme of ecclesiastical reform, and obtained the support of Rome for his English expedition by assuming the attitude of a crusader against schism and corruption. It was Alexander II, possibly a pupil of Lanfranc's and certainly a close friend, who gave the Norman Conquest the papal benediction—a notable advantage to William at the moment, but subsequently the cause of serious embarrassments.

Archbishop of Canterbury

When the see of Rouen next fell vacant (1067), the thoughts of the electors turned to Lanfranc. But he declined the honour, and he was nominated to the English primacy as soon as Stigand had been canonically deposed on 15 August 1070. He was speedily consecrated on 29 August 1070.^[3] The new archbishop at once began a policy of reorganization and reform. His first difficulties were with Thomas of Bayeux, archbishop elect of York, (another former pupil) who asserted that his see was independent of Canterbury and claimed jurisdiction over the greater part of midland England. This was the beginning of a long running dispute between the sees of Canterbury and York, usually known as the Canterbury-York dispute.^[4]

Signatures at the council of Winchester. The large Xs are the 'signatures' of William & Matilda, the one under theirs is Lanfranc's, and the other bishops' are under his.

Lanfranc, during a visit which he paid the pope for the purpose of receiving his pallium, obtained an order from Alexander that the disputed points should be settled by a council of the English Church. This was held at Winchester in 1072. At this council Lanfranc obtained the confirmation of primacy that he sought; nonetheless he was never able to secure its formal confirmation by the papacy, possibly as a result of the succession of Gregory VII to the papal throne in 1073.

Lanfranc assisted William in maintaining the independence of the English Church; and appears at one time to have favoured the idea of maintaining a neutral attitude on the subject of the quarrels between papacy and empire. In the domestic affairs of England the archbishop showed more spiritual zeal. His grand aim was to extricate the Church from the fetters of corruption. He was a generous patron of monasticism. He endeavoured to enforce celibacy upon the secular clergy.

He obtained the king's permission to deal with the affairs of the Church in synods. In the cases of Odo of Bayeux (1082) (see Trial of Penenden Heath) and of William of St Calais, bishop of Durham (1088), he used his legal ingenuity to justify the trial of bishops before a lay tribunal.

He accelerated the process of substituting Normans for Englishmen in all preferments of importance; and although his nominees were usually respectable, it cannot be said that all of them were better than the men whom they superseded. For this admixture of secular with spiritual aims there was considerable excuse. By long tradition the primate was entitled to a leading position in the king’s councils; and the interests of the Church demanded that Lanfranc should use his power in a manner not displeasing to the king. On several occasions when William I was absent from England Lanfranc acted as his vicegerents.

Lanfranc's greatest political service to the Conqueror was rendered in 1075, when he detected and foiled the conspiracy which had been formed by the earls of Norfolk and Hereford. Waltheof, 1st Earl of Northumberland, one of the rebels, soon lost heart and confessed the conspiracy to Lanfranc, who urged Earl Roger to return to his allegiance, and finally excommunicated him and his adherents. He interceded for Waltheof’s life and to the last spoke of the earl as an innocent sufferer for the crimes of others; he lived on terms of friendship with Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester.

On the death of the Conqueror (1087) he secured the succession for William Rufus, in spite of the discontent of the Anglo-Norman baronage; and in 1088 his exhortations induced the English militia to fight on the side of the new sovereign against Odo of Bayeux and the other partisans of Duke Robert. He exacted promises of just government from Rufus, and was not afraid to remonstrate when the promises were disregarded. So long as he lived he was a check upon the worst propensities of the king’s administration. But his restraining hand was too soon removed. In 1089 he was stricken with fever and he died on 24 May^[3] amidst universal lamentations. Notwithstanding some obvious moral and intellectual defects, he was the most eminent and the most disinterested of those who had co-operated with William I in riveting Norman rule upon the English Church and people. As a statesman he did something to uphold the traditional ideal of his office; as a primate he elevated the standards of clerical discipline and education. Conceived in the spirit of popes such as Leo IX, his reforms led by a natural sequence to strained relations between Church and State; the equilibrium which he established was unstable, and depended too much upon his personal influence with the Conqueror.

Path to sainthood

The efforts of Christ Church Canterbury to secure him the status of 'blessed' seem to have had only spasmodic and limited effect beyond English Benedictine circles. However, Lanfranc was honoured some 900 years later by a school bearing his name^[5] being opened in Croydon, where he resided at the Old Palace. Christ Church University Canterbury have named their state of the art accommodation block Lanfranc House. He is also remembered in road names in London and Worthing, West Sussex.

In popular culture

Lanfranc was portrayed by veteran actor Preston Lockwood in the TV drama Blood Royal: William the Conqueror (1990).

Sources

The chief authority is the Vita Lanfranci by Milo Crispin, who was precentor at Bec and died in 1149. Milo drew largely upon the Vita Herluini, composed by Gilbert Crispin, abbot of Westminster. The Chronicon Beccensis abbatiae, a 14th century compilation, should also be consulted. The first edition of these two sources, and of Lanfranc's writings, is that of L d'Achery, Beati Lanfranci opera omnia (Paris, 1648). Another edition, slightly enlarged, is that of JA Giles, Lanfranci opera (2 vols., Oxford, 1844). The correspondence between Lanfranc and Gregory VII is given in the Monumenta Gregoriana (ed. P. Jaffi, Berlin, 1865).

References

• This article incorporates text from the article "Lanfranc" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

1. ^ Wright, Thomas (1846). Biographia Britannica Literaria: Or, Biography of Literary Characters of Great Britain and Ireland. J.W. Parker. 
2. ^  "Lanfranc". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Lanfranc. 
3. ^ ^{a b} Fryde, E. B.; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I. (1996). Handbook of British Chronology (Third Edition, revised ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 232. ISBN 0-521-56350-X. 
4. ^ Barlow, Frank (1979). The English Church 1066–1154: A History of the Anglo-Norman Church. New York: Longman. pp. 39–42. ISBN 0-582-50236-5. 
5. ^ http://www.lanfranc.com/ The Archbishop Lanfranc School

Further reading

• LePatourel, John (September 1946). "The Date of the Trial on Penenden Heath". The English Historical Review 61 (241): 378–388. 

Catholic Church titles
Preceded by Stigand	Archbishop of Canterbury 1070–1089	Succeeded by Anselm of Canterbury (in 1093)

Persondata
NAME	Lanfranc
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Prior of Bec; Archbishop of Canterbury
DATE OF BIRTH
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH	24 May 1089
PLACE OF DEATH

v • d • e List of Archbishops of Canterbury To the Norman conquest Augustine · Laurentius · Mellitus · Justus · Honorius · Deusdedit · Wighard · Theodore · Berhtwald · Tatwine · Nothelm · Cuthbert · Bregowine · Jænberht · Æthelhard · Wulfred · Feologild · Ceolnoth · Æthelred · Plegmund · Athelm · Wulfhelm · Oda · Ælfsige · Byrhthelm · Dunstan · Æthelgar · Sigeric · Ælfric · Ælfheah · Lyfing · Æthelnoth · Eadsige · Robert of Jumièges · Stigand To the Reformation Lanfranc · Anselm · Ralph d'Escures · William de Corbeil · Theobald · Thomas Becket · Roger de Bailleul · Richard · Baldwin · Reginald Fitz Jocelin · Hubert Walter · Reginald · John de Gray · Stephen Langton · Walter d'Eynsham · Richard le Grant · Ralph Neville · John of Sittingbourne · John Blund · Edmund Rich · Boniface · William Chillenden · Robert Kilwardby · Robert Burnell · John Peckham · Robert Winchelsey · Thomas Cobham · Walter Reynolds · Simon Mepeham · John de Stratford · John de Ufford · Thomas Bradwardine · Simon Islip · William Edington · Simon Langham · William Whittlesey · Simon Sudbury · William Courtenay · Thomas Arundel · Roger Walden · Thomas Arundel · Henry Chichele · John Stafford · John Kemp · Thomas Bourchier · John Morton · Thomas Langton · Henry Deane · William Warham · Thomas Cranmer · Reginald Pole Post-Reformation Matthew Parker · Edmund Grindal · John Whitgift · Richard Bancroft · George Abbot · William Laud · William Juxon · Gilbert Sheldon · William Sancroft · John Tillotson · Thomas Tenison · William Wake · John Potter · Thomas Herring · Matthew Hutton · Thomas Secker · Frederick Cornwallis · John Moore · Charles Manners-Sutton · William Howley · John Bird Sumner · Charles Thomas Longley · Archibald Campbell Tait · Edward White Benson · Frederick Temple · Randall Thomas Davidson · Cosmo Lang · William Temple · Geoffrey Fisher · Michael Ramsey · Donald Coggan · Robert Runcie · George Carey · Rowan Williams

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