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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
It is the intent of this article to restore to Lanfranc's early career some of the luster that recent scholarly investigations have chipped away. I intend to show that historians have become overly skeptical of the traditional view of Lanfranc's dominating position during his eighteen years as prior of Bec (c. 1045-63). On the basis of the best current research, he is no longer regarded during these years as a major ducal adviser but as a back-bencher, overshadowed by other Norman churchmen. His once-celebrated school at Bec has gone the way of the school of Chartres: it was a good school, but it functioned for only a short time, opening c. 1059 or 1060 and closing three or four years later on Lanfranc's elevation to the abbacy of St-Étienne, Caen, in 1063. And some of its most famous alumni, including Pope Alexander II, are now believed not to have studied there at all. Similarly, Lanfranc's association with the papacy is thought to have been much exaggerated by earlier scholars. It is now doubted that he had anything to do with the dropping of the papal ban against Duke William's marriage with Matilda of Flanders, or with William's establishment of the two great abbeys at Caen.
It will be argued here that Lanfranc was indeed intimately associated with both the duke and the papacy, and that the school of Bec flourished as an international center of learning for many decades. No such reinterpretation can be attempted without taking into full account the growing sophistication in source analysis that has characterized recent scholarship on Lanfranc, and the systematic doubt that has been directed at the testimony of twelfth-century writers about eleventh-century Normandy. The dominating prior of Bec who emerges from A. J. MacDonald's 1926 biography of Lanfranc is no longer fully recoverable; yet the sources, when carefully evaluated, continue to portray Lanfranc as a major force in the political and intellectual life of his times.
Delivered in a shortened version at the Third Annual Conference of the Charles Homer Haskins Society, Houston, Texas, November, 1984.1 am grateful to Professor C. Warren Hollister for helpful advice and comments, and to members of the Haskins Society, especially Drs. Paul Hyams and David Bates.
1 Gibson, Margaret, Lanfranc of Bec (Oxford, 1978), pp. 23–38Google Scholar; Bates, David, Normandy before 1066 (London, 1982), pp. 199–202Google Scholar; Schmidt, Tilmann, Alexander II (1061-1073) und die Römische Reformgruppe seiner Zeit (Stuttgart, 1977), pp. 10–25Google Scholar; Barlow, Frank, “A View of Archbishop Lanfranc,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 16 (1965): 163–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Barlow, Frank, The Norman Conquest and Beyond (London, 1983), pp. 223–37Google Scholar; the latter edition will be cited hereafter; see especially pp. 223-32.
2 See in particular Gibson, , Lanfranc, pp. 31, 98, 106–7.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., pp. 34-38, 102-4.
4 Schmidt, , Alexander II, pp. 10–25Google Scholar: Bates, , Normandy, pp. 200–201.Google Scholar
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7 Morgan, Marjorie, The English Lands of the Abbey of Bec (Oxford, 1946), p. 10.Google Scholar
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10 Hugh the Chantor, The History of the Church of York, 1066-1127, ed. Johnson, Charles (London, 1961), p. 2Google Scholar; OV, 2:271 n. 4; Robert of Torigni, Chronicle, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. Howlett, Richard, 4 vols. (Rolls Series, London, 1884–1889), 4:100.Google Scholar
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12 Schmidt, , Alexander II, pp. 10–25Google Scholar; Somerville, Robert, “Alexander II, Pope,” Dictionary of the Middle Agess, ed. Strayer, Joseph R., vol. 1 (New York, 1982), p. 146Google Scholar; Frank Barlow expresses similar doubts in “Lanfranc,” p. 230 and n. 4. Most of the evidence is summarized and carefully evaluated in Gibson, , Lanfranc, p. 197Google Scholar, where the issue is left unresolved.
13 The Letters of Lanfranc Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. Clover, Helen and Gibson, Margaret (Oxford, 1979), Epp. 12, 23, 26 (Thomas), 61 (William), 53 (Gundulf), and 18 (Anselm).Google Scholar
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15 William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificum Anglorum, ed. Hamilton, N.E.S.A. (Rolls Series, London, 1870), p. 65Google Scholar: “… professus, hanc venerationem non se illius archiepiscopatui, sed magisterio litterarum deferre”; “Vita Lanfranci” (hereafter cited as VL), in Patrologiae Latinae, ed. Migne, J.-P., 150, col. 49Google Scholar (hereafter cited as PL), quoting Alexander II: “Non ideo assurrexi ei quia archiepiscopus Cantuariae est; sed quia Becci ad scholam ejus fui, et ad pedes ejus cum aliis auditor consedi.”
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20 VH, p. 97.
21 Eadmer, , Vita Sancti Anselmi, ed. Southern, R.W. (London, 1962), p. 40 (hereafter cited as VA).Google Scholar
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50 MacDonald, , Lanfranc, pp. 37–39, 41–55Google Scholar; on the eucharistic controversy see Southern, R.W., “Lanfranc of Bec and Berengar of Tours,” in Studies in Medieval History Presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke, ed. Hunt, R.W., pantin, W.A., and Southern, R.W. (Oxford, 1948), pp. 27–48Google Scholar; and Gibson, , Lanfranc, pp. 63–97.Google Scholar
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53 Nicholas was enthroned on January 24, 1059; the synod opened on April 13; Nicholas died on July 27, 1061.
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55 OV, 2:252.
56 They are unlikely to have met at Rome on some other, unrecorded occasion, because such a meeting would surely have been mentioned by Lanfranc or Berengar in the tendentious treatises that they hurled at one another: Lanfranc, De corpore, passim; Berengar, , De Sacra Coena adversus Lanfrancum, ed. Beckenkamp, W.H. (The Hague, 1941).Google Scholar
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59 VL, col. 41 = Gesta Guillelmi, p. 126.
60 VL, col. 41 = OV, 2:250.
61 Cf. Chibnall, in OV, 2:xviii.
62 Lanfranc and Berengar themselves sometimes get confused as to what occurred at what council: MacDonald, , Lanfranc, pp. 47–48.Google Scholar
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64 Douglas, , William the Conqueror, p. 392Google Scholar; Bates, , Normandy, p. 201.Google Scholar
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68 Letters of Lanfranc, Ep. 14; see Gibson, , Lanfranc, p. 67Google Scholar for the chronology; MacDonald, pp. 45-47, n. 7 for an analysis of the sources and the problems in interpreting them.
69 Jaffé, Philip, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, 2 vols. (2nd ed.; Leipzig, 1885–1888), 1: no. 4226.Google Scholar
70 Gibson, , Lanfranc, p. 67Google Scholar; Bates, , Normandy, p. 201Google Scholar; MacDonald, , Lanfranc, pp. 45–46Google Scholar, n., and sources cited therein.
71 PL, 143, cols. 797-800: letter of John abbot of Fecamp to Leo IX (1049-54) reporting his activities as a papal legate and alluding in passing to the warm friendship between the Normans and the papacy—further corroborating Bates' revised chronology.
72 De corpore, PL, 150, col. 413; cf. Gibson, , Lanfranc, p. 67.Google Scholar
73 PL, 143, cols. 1349-50: the same letter that expresses regret that Lanfranc cannot visit Rome.
74 VL, col. 37; Bates, , Normandy, pp. 200–201Google Scholar; Gibson, , Lanfranc, pp. 109–110.Google Scholar
75 Vitalis, Orderic, Interpolations, in William of Jumièges' Gesta Normanorum Ducum, ed. Marx, Jean (Rouen, 1914), pp. xxv-xxvi, 181–82Google Scholar; William of Malmsbury, De Gestis Regum Anglorum, ed. Stubbs, William, 2 vols. (Rolls Series, London, 1887–1889), 2:327Google Scholar: “Ferunt quidam …”; for these and later sources see Gibson, , Lanfranc, p. 110 and n. 2.Google Scholar
76 Gesta Normannorum Ducum, pp. 127-28; Gesta Guillelmi, pp. 48-50.
77 Guitmund of Aversa, De corporis, in PL, 149, col. 1428.
78 PL, 150, col. 63; Gibson, , Lanfranc, p. 66.Google Scholar
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80 Ibid.
81 OV, 2:250.
82 Gibson, , Lanfranc, p. 69.Google Scholar
83 De corpore, PL, 150, cols. 409-12.
84 Ibid., col. 412.
85 Ibid., cols. 407-9.
86 Nicholas II to Lanfranc: PL, 143, col. 1349: “quern in Romanis et apostolicis servitiis satis opportunum …” Cf. Letters of Lanfranc, no. 1 (p. 32: Lanfranc to Alexander II): “ut taceam multa alia in quibus uobis uestrisque antecessoribus pro rerum ac temporum qualitate nonnunquam seruiui.”
