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Influences on the Thought of Alan of Tewkesbury

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

M. A. Harris
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Extract

Towards the end of the twelfth century an increasing number of the men entering Benedictine monasteries in England had already received a training in the secular schools. At Bury St Edmunds, for instance, there were at least five magistri in the community by 1183. This led to a certain amount of tension there, and Bury's chronicler, Jocelin of Brakelond, records the fierce dispute that arose when Abbot Hugh died between those who wanted a scholar as his successor and those who did not. One monk said, ‘God forbid that a dumb image should be set up in the Church of St Edmund, where it is known that there are many men of learning’, while another felt such strong antipathy that he prayed, ‘From all good clerks, O Lord, deliver us.’ Jocelin himself, ‘being a young man’ at the time, as he said, ‘would not agree to any man being made abbot unless he knew something of dialectic and could distinguish between false argument and true’. In the event, the man chosen was a scholar, the sub-sacrist, Master Samson.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , January 1982 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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Footnotes

1

This article is a revised version of a paper read to the Medieval Society of Liverpool University in February 1979, and I should like to thank members of the Society for their comments. I should also like to thank Miss B. Smalley and Mr D. H. Farmer for their help and encouragement. I dedicate the article to the memory of my father in gratitude for the constructive interest he took in it at every stage but the last.

References

2 For this and other examples see Knowles, D., The Monastic Order in England, 940–1216, 2nd edn, Cambridge 1963, 502 Google Scholar.

3 Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, ed. Butler, H. E., London-Edinburgh 1949, 12 Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., 13–14.

5 Ibid., 23.

6 For an assessment of Alan's work in editing the Becket correspondence, especially with reference to the fine twelfth-century manuscript, probably produced at Canterbury under Alan's supervision and now in the British Library, Cotton Claudius B ii, see Duggan, A., Thomas Becket: a textual history of his Utters, Oxford 1980, 85–145 Google Scholar. Sec also W. J. Millor and C. N. L. Brooke (eds), The Letters of John of Salisbury, II, The Later Letters, Oxford 1979, pp. xlix-lxiii. For a more detailed account of Alan's career, see Harris, M. A., ‘Alan of Tewkesbury and his letters’, Studia Monaslica, xviii (1976), 77–94 Google Scholar.

7 For a discussion of the early history of Oxford University see Southern, R. W., ‘Master Vacarius and the beginning of an English academic tradition’ in Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays presented to Richard William Hunt, ed. Alexander, J. J. G. and Gibson, M. T., Oxford 1976, 266–73Google Scholar.

8 Delhaye, P., ‘Deux textes de Senatus de Worcester sur la Penitence’, Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Medievale, xix (1952), 224 Google Scholar.

9 Hunt, R. W., ‘English learning in the late twelfth century’, Trans. Royal Historical Society, 4th ser., xix (1936), 29 Google Scholar.

10 E. Rathbone, ‘Peter of Corbeil in an English setting’ in Medieval Learning and Literature, 287–98.

11 See p. 8.

12 Knowles, The Monastic Order, 505.

13 Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, 94.]

14 Ibid., 40.

15 Douai, Bibliothèque Municipale MS. 887, fos. 18–47. For a printed edition of these letters see Harris, , ‘Alan of Tewkesbury and his letters’, Sludia Monastica, xviii (1976), 299–345 Google Scholar.

16 With the questionable exception of letter 40, none of the Tewkesbury letters is concerned with the affairs of Tewkesbury Abbey. It is therefore probable that letters concerned with abbey affairs were kept separately, perhaps with the abbey records and charters, and that this section of the collection represents only the personal letters which Alan sent in response to some request or to offer sympathy or advice.

17 Letter 27.

18 The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, ed. D. Knowles, London-Edinburgh 1951, 110.

19 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. M. Chibnall, Oxford Medieval Texts, 1969–78, vi. 553–5.

20 Knowles, The Monastic Order, 421.

21 Harris, ‘Alan of Tewkesbury’, 90–1.

22 Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, ed. J. C. Robertson (Rolls Series 1877), iii. 523.

23 Letter 23.

24 See the commentaries of Hrabanus Maurus, P.L., cvii. 839, and Pscudo-Bede, P.L., xcii. 36.

25 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Laud Misc. 291, fo. 40.

26 See B. Smalley, ‘The Gospels in the Paris Schools in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries’, in Franciscan Studies (forthcoming).

27 Letters 20 and 38.

28 Knowles, The Monastic Order, 479.

29 See Harris, ‘Alan of Tewkesbury’, 77–8.

30 See Smalley, B., The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn, Oxford 1952, 87–9Google Scholar.

31 Luke x. 38–42.

32 For two versions of this quaestio, see Cambridge, St John's College MS. 57, fo. 336 and Ravaisson, J., Rapport sur les bibliothèques des departements de l'Ouest, Paris 1841, 407fGoogle Scholar.

33 See Peter Comestor, commenting on Luke x. 38–42, in Cambridge, Pembroke College MS. 75. A similar line had been taken by Robert Pullen. See Smalley, B., The Becket Conflict and the Schools, Oxford 1973, 43–8Google Scholar.

34 Hengel, M., Property and Riches in the Early Church, trans. J. Bowden, London 1974, 26–30 Google Scholar.

35 Southern, R. W., ‘Some new letters of Peter of Blois’, EHR, liii (1938), 420–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Letter 31.

37 The Latin reads ‘et in hiis hominem, loquor, assumptum, altaris misterium, et quedam alia’.

38 For a n outline of some of the christological positions see Luscombe, D. E., The School of Peter Abelard, Cambridge 1970, 267–73Google Scholar.

39 R. W. Hunt, Alexander Neckam, unpublished D.Phil, thesis, Oxford 1935, 4–5. I am indebted to the late Dr Hunt for permission to use his thesis and for his kind advice.

40 Ibid., 79.

41 Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS. 32, fo. 96. See also Ross, B., ‘Audi Thoma... Henriciani Nota: a French scholar appeals to Thomas Becket?’, EHR, Ixxxix (1974), 336–7Google Scholar.

42 Hunt, Alexander Neckam, 122–4.

43 See above n. 6.

44 Lacombe, G. and Smalley, B., ‘Studies on the commentaries of Cardinal Stephen Langton’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale el littéraire du Moyen Age, v (1931), 61 Google Scholar.

45 Baldwin, J. W., Masters, Princes and Merchants: the Social Views of Peter the Chanter and his Circle, Princeton 1970, 99 Google Scholar.

46 R. W. Hunt, ‘English learning in the late twelfth century’, 29–30.

47 De Considtratione, 1.5.

48 Bernard of Clairvaux, Five Books on Consideration, trans. J. Anderson and E. Kennan, Cistercian Fathers Series no. 37, Michigan 1976, 11.3.

49 See J. Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, trans. C. Misrahi, London 1978, 247 and 252–6.

50 Letter 10.

51 For a study of the language of friendship in Saint Anselm's letters, see A. Fiske,’ Saint Anselm’, Studia Monastica, iii (1961), 259–90. See also, A. Fiske, Friends and Friendship in the Monastic Tradition, Cuernavaca 1970.

52 Letter 47.

53 P.L., clxxxiv. 394.

54 John xv. 12.

55 Phil. ii. 8.

58 I John iv. 19.

59 See for example De Diligendo Dei, I.

58 I Tim. i. 5.

59 De Spirituali Amicitia, 2, 61. Cf. Cicero, De Amicitia, 30.

60 Letter 19.

61 Ep. ix, P.L., cxc. 1484.

62 See B. McGuire, ‘The collapse of a monastic friendship: the case of Jocelin and Samson of Bury’, Jnl Medieval History, iv (1978), 369–97.

63 M. R. James, The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover, Cambridge 1903, 29 and 109.

64 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Laud Misc. 576.

65 See p. 9.

66 London, B.L. MS. Cotton Claudius E i. See N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain; 2nd edn, London 1964, 188.

67 Sir Richard Southern has suggested that there may have been some attempt at Canterbury to have St Anselm canonised during the 1160s, and that, had not Becket's martyrdom intervened, Anselm would have become the most popular saint at Canterbury. See R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm and his Biographer, Cambridge 1963, 336–41. Alan may, therefore, have developed an interest in St Anselm while he was prior of Christchurch. Unlike Becket, however, who seems to have admired Anselm chiefly for his stand as an ecclesiastical statesman, Alan's interest in him would seem to have been primarily as a monastic theologian.

68 The unnamed abbot who, in the words of Alexander of Ashby, ‘became as it were an unlearned man and a despiser of letters’. See Hunt,’ English learning in the late twelfth century’, 28. See also Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 241–2.

69 It is probable that, like Odo of Battle and Samson of Bury, he preached to the local people in English. For Odo, see Knowles, The Monastic Order, 306, and for Samson, see Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, 40.