Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- LIST OF MUSIC EXAMPLES
- LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
- Introduction
- 1 The Abbey and the Norman Conquest an Unusual Case?
- 2 Charters and Influences from Saint-Denis c. 1000–1070
- 3 The Abbey's Armoury of Charters
- 4 The Women of Bury St Edmunds
- 5 Baldwin's Church and the Effects of the Conquest
- 6 New Light on the Life and Work of Herman the Archdeacon
- 7 The Cult of St Edmund
- 8 St Edmund Between Liturgy and Hagiography
- 9 Books and their Use Across the Conquest
- 10 An Eleventh-Century Bury Medical Manuscript
- 11 Medicine at Bury in the Time of Abbot Baldwin
- 12 Medicine After Baldwin: The Evidence of BL, Royal 12. C. xxiv
- Index
3 - The Abbey's Armoury of Charters
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- LIST OF MUSIC EXAMPLES
- LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
- Introduction
- 1 The Abbey and the Norman Conquest an Unusual Case?
- 2 Charters and Influences from Saint-Denis c. 1000–1070
- 3 The Abbey's Armoury of Charters
- 4 The Women of Bury St Edmunds
- 5 Baldwin's Church and the Effects of the Conquest
- 6 New Light on the Life and Work of Herman the Archdeacon
- 7 The Cult of St Edmund
- 8 St Edmund Between Liturgy and Hagiography
- 9 Books and their Use Across the Conquest
- 10 An Eleventh-Century Bury Medical Manuscript
- 11 Medicine at Bury in the Time of Abbot Baldwin
- 12 Medicine After Baldwin: The Evidence of BL, Royal 12. C. xxiv
- Index
Summary
At some point during the 1070s the archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc, wrote to Herfast (bishop of East Anglia 1070–84/5) in trenchant terms. Much of his letter criticized the bishop's lifestyle – ‘Give up the dicing (to mention nothing worse) and the world's amusements in which you are said to idle away the entire day’ – and the company he kept: ‘Banish the monk Hermann, whose life is notorious for its many faults, from your society and your household completely.’ Instead, Lanfranc told his bishop to read Scripture and above all to master the decrees of the Roman pontiffs and the canons of the holy councils, to ‘discover what you do not know’ and ‘ensure that you hold no opinion that is at variance with your mother church’. The significance of that advice finds context in the opening of the letter, which relates to the affairs of the abbey of Bury St Edmunds. After a conventional greeting, where Lanfranc wished Bishop Herfast might be humble in wisdom and of sober understanding, the archbishop began by observing that Berard, a cleric of Abbot Baldwin of Bury, had delivered a previous letter from the Archbishop to Bishop Herfast. He went on:
As [Berard] himself affirmed to me later, you made a coarse joke about it; you uttered cheap and unworthy remarks about me in the hearing of many; and you declared on oath that you would give me no assistance in that matter. There will be another time and another place to speak of those things. But my immediate instructions are these: that you lay no claim to the property of St Edmund unless you can give indisputable proof that it was claimed by your predecessors and that you discharge the aforesaid Berard without any fine or threat of punishment, until the case comes into our own court and can be rightly concluded according to canon law and our own ruling as judge.
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- Information
- Bury St Edmunds and the Norman Conquest , pp. 31 - 52Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014