Textus Roffensis origins
/Dr Christopher Monk explores the origins of Ethelbert’s law-code, foundational document of the Early English Laws portion of the ‘Rochester Book’.
King Ethelbert, Rochester Cathedral. © Christopher Monk 2016 When I think of origins or beginnings in relation to Textus Roffensis, England’s most important collection of medieval laws, my mind immediately homes in on the two texts connected to King Ethelbert of Kent: first, his law-code; and, second, the foundation charter for the church at Rochester.1
The law-code is now positioned as the opening text of our medieval codex, though in fact it was not so originally but arranged thus by the monks of Rochester priory, probably during the thirteenth century2 (you can read the law-code in translation, and hear me reading some of its clauses, by following the link at the bottom of this post).
The foundation charter is the first of many charters relating to Rochester in the book’s cartulary section. Its bold and beautiful decorated initial would have been the first thing to greet the reader when the cartulary was originally a separate volume.
The idea of origins and beginnings is, however, far more than a matter of where these two texts now happen to appear in Textus Roffensis. Indeed, of great importance is that Ethelbert’s set of laws represents the birth of English as a language of the book. Penned originally about the year 600, it is ‘the earliest datable work composed in English’.3 It is Textus Roffensis alone which captures this historic moment, preserving as it does the only extant copy of the document.
Moreover, Ethelbert’s law-code should be understood more broadly as the document that sets the foundation for English law and society. Though arguably a relatively unsophisticated grouping of decrees when compared to the law-codes that follow, it is still fundamentally important in helping us to understand legal culture in the earliest stages of English history.
The relationship of Ethelbert’s foundation charter to the concept of origins is a more complex one, for this document is a forgery or, more precisely, a copy of a forgery. Though it purports to have been originally written by Ethelbert in the year 604, experts today are in no doubt that the charter is a fabrication; indeed, one scholar has recently made the case that charters were not introduced into England until 670.4
The foundation charter’s dubious heritage should not, however, put us off from exploring its association with the idea of beginnings and origins. In fact, when we take a close look at the document, examining it both textually and visually, we can begin to appreciate how vital it must have been for the bishop and monks of Rochester to assert their claim to an ancient genesis for their church.
I will address the content and context of the foundation charter in part 2 of this essay. First, however, let us explore in greater detail the story behind Ethelbert and his law-code. What do we know about this early English king? And why was it so important to get his laws into writing?
Unfinished illuminated initial showing a scribe, possibly Bede. © The British Library Board. London, British Library, MS Arundel 74 (possibly East Anglia or Norwich c.1375-1406), f. 2v.
Ethelbert according to Bede
Our best source of historical detail about Ethelbert is the Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum) written by the Father of English history, Bede.5 Though Bede is, generally speaking, a reliable historian, it is important to remember that his account of Ethelbert is written, as with all historical narratives, from a particular angle or perspective, in this case one that emphasises the spiritual over the political. The story of Ethelbert is essentially used by Bede as a rather dramatic apostolic narrative: the king’s conversion by the missionary monk Augustine, sent by Pope Gregory the Great, is conceived of as the sprouting and blossoming of English Christianity. Ethelbert’s political motives are not Bede’s (nor should they be Bede’s readers’) chief concern, though it is possible to glean from Bede’s cited sources – principally, letters from the pope – that something more than the spreading of the gospel was a driving force for the king. Perhaps the best note of caution sounded for readers of Bede’s conversion narrative is that by the historian Nick Higham who reminds us that ‘Bede’s story of an English nation eager for conversion by Roman missionaries is both simplistic and overly optimistic’.6 The point needs to be made, too, that in writing Ecclesiastical History Bede is heavily reliant on his Canterbury contemporary, Abbot Albinus, with whom he shared a great deal of interest in Rome and the Gregorian mission; indeed, Bede was an admirer of Gregory’s writings. And we must remember that the Ecclesiastical History was completed about the year 731, more than a century after Ethelbert’s death around 616. These circumstances prompt me to sound yet more caution as I attempt to interpret Bede’s story of Ethelbert. In short, the record is not an eyewitness account. All this said, it is still helpful to understand what Bede actually did write about Ethelbert, and in doing so we may gain some insight into why the first Christian king of Kent produced England’s first set of written laws. Ethelbert’s reign over the Kentish folk was summed up as ‘a glorious earthly reign of fifty-six years’, finishing at his death in the year 616, though there is considerable doubt over his reign being that long.7 It may perhaps be that Bede was conflating his total years on earth with his years as king. Though typically we may refer to Ethelbert as a king of Kent, he was in reality overlord of a much larger area of England. Bede informs us that, ‘He was the third English king to hold sway over all the provinces south of the river Humber’, adding with passion, ‘but he was the first to enter the kingdom of heaven’!8 Bede’s self-conscious prioritisation of the spiritual over the worldly, here, is actually key to understanding not only Ethelbert’s place in history but the importance of the two Ethelbert texts in Textus Roffensis. It is Bede’s positioning of Ethelbert as the first Christian king in, what we now call, England that is most relevant when we consider the importance of his contribution to the evolution of English legal culture.
Queen Bertha, Woottons Green, Canterbury © Christopher Monk 2016.
Even before the arrival of the Christian mission to England in 597, led by Augustine under the direct authority of Pope Gregory the Great, Ethelbert was no stranger to Christianity. His wife Bertha, a Merovingian Frankish princess, was a devout Christian at the time of their marriage. According to Bede, her parents – and, most probably, Bertha herself – laid down the prenuptial condition that Bertha would ‘have freedom to hold and practise her faith unhindered’.9
Bede informs us that Bertha’s parents had arranged a certain Bishop Liudhard to travel with her to Kent where he would serve ‘as her helper in the faith’, her personal chaplain.10 Ethelbert fulfilled his promise, granting the use of the ‘old church’ in Canterbury, which had been dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours during the time of the Roman occupation of Britain.11 Thus, renovated, St Martin’s became Bertha’s private chapel; and subsequently Ethelbert, though not adopting his wife’s faith, was exposed to this new religion of hers.
St Martin’s Church, Canterbury, is the oldest church in the English-speaking world. The area in blue is Saxon, c.600; the area in orange is Roman, possibly dating to the 300s. The front of the church and the roof date to the 1300s. © Christopher Monk 2016
Bede’s account of Ethelbert’s conversion reads like one of the mini dramas from The Acts of the Apostles. It is a narrative designed to show how a truly noble ruler, though a heathen, will inevitably be won over by the comforting and edifying message of Christianity.
And so it was, explains Bede, that Augustine, apostle of the English, along with forty fellow brothers in Christ, arrived in Ethelbert’s realm. Thanet, at the north-eastern tip of Kent, is the precise landing point provided by Bede. In Ethelbert’s time, it was an island separated from the mainland by the Wantsum Channel, and thus it happens to work well, for Bede’s dramatic purposes, as a metaphor for the king’s initial distrust of his visitors.
Map: Kent at the Coming of the Saxons’. Source: dcc.dickinson.edu/source/map-kent
Ethelbert’s response to his papal envoys is perhaps best described as one of watchful hospitality. When Augustine sent his translators to meet the king they were told to remain and wait on Thanet, where their necessities would be met. Despite, then, his wife being Christian, or possibly because he was more immediately familiar with Frankish churchman rather than the more distant authority of Rome, Ethelbert is depicted as peculiarly wary of these servants of Christ. So much so that Bede has the king, on arriving some days later on Thanet, holding his meeting with the missionaries out of doors to counter any attempt by them to overpower him with ‘magical arts’.12 In order to soothe the king’s anxieties, Augustine’s team deployed a suite of audio-visual ‘special effects’, approaching Ethelbert with a glorious, shining, silver cross as their standard, along with a painting of the Lord and Saviour himself, while also singing a petition to God in grand liturgical Latin. It seemed to do the trick, for Ethelbert was suitably impressed and ordered them to sit and preach to him and his court. The words of the gospel clearly had an impact on the king, great enough to mollify any courtly bent toward pre-emptive violence against the magic-practicing missionaries, though not sufficiently powerful for Ethelbert to hand himself over to Augustine there and then for baptism. On the contrary, Bede records the king’s declaration that though the missionaries’ words and promises were fair indeed, they were also rather new and uncertain, and for that reason Ethelbert, we are told, also proclaimed, “I cannot accept them and abandon the age-old beliefs that I have held together with the whole English nation”.13 A somewhat stubborn heathen, it would seem. Even so, Ethelbert was, by all accounts, a truly hospitable ruler. Perceiving Augustine’s sincerity, he promised the monks not to harm them and even granted them a house in his chief city of Canterbury, where not only would they be supplied with all their physical needs, but their desire to preach and convert would not be interfered with. Bolstered by the king’s kindness, Augustine led his team into Canterbury, still bearing the silver cross and the painting of Christ, but now, according to a tradition rehearsed by Bede, singing a litany that petitions the Lord to withhold his wrath and anger from the city and his holy house. Ah, a wise move to sing in Latin. It was the manner of life that the missionaries adopted in Canterbury that held greatest sway for those to whom they preached. Emulating the life of the apostles and the primitive Church – not abusing the hospitality of their host city – Augustine and his brothers soon won over ‘a number of the heathen’ who admired the simplicity of their holy way of life.14 Before long, their comforting message of salvation moved these heathens to Christian belief and baptism, and to sharing with their queen in worship at the church of St Martin’s. Augmenting this display of exemplary life and the ‘gladdening promises’ of these holy men was the performance of ‘many miracles’, and so it comes as no surprise that with the passing of time Ethelbert and others in his realm were edified and prompted to accept the new faith and get baptized.15 Once this happened, according to Bede, ‘great numbers gathered each day to hear the word of God, forsaking their heathen rites and entering the unity of Christ’s holy Church as believers’.16 Bede reports that it was said that Ethelbert did not compel his people to accept Christianity, having learned from his instructors that the service of Christ must be entered upon freely. Though, if we accept the claims within one of Pope Gregory’s letters, that as many as ten thousand accepted the faith, then it’s quite possible that there may have been strong peer pressure to adopt the king’s faith. What the king did do was promote Christianity. ‘It was not long,’ continues Bede, ‘before he granted his teachers in his capital of Canterbury a place of residence appropriate to their station, and gave them possessions of various kinds to supply their wants.’17 It was not long either before Pope Gregory appointed Augustine as the first archbishop of Canterbury – in the same year (597) as the mission arrived, in fact. In turn, Augustine, with the king’s support, founded in Canterbury both his cathedral of Christ Church and the renowned St Augustine’s monastery which became a centre for great learning. For Ethelbert, had the success of the Roman mission created an impact outside of the spiritual, beyond his personal conversion? It would seem so. In Augustine, a lettered man and biblical scholar, there stood the embodiment of Roman knowledge, wisdom and authority. Moreover, he brought with him a new medium for increased prestige and, dare I say, even the prospect of earthly immortalisation. For not only had the Roman mission established a new belief system in his realm, Ethelbert had also garnered a new system of technology: writing!
Ethelbert’s response to his papal envoys is perhaps best described as one of watchful hospitality. When Augustine sent his translators to meet the king they were told to remain and wait on Thanet, where their necessities would be met. Despite, then, his wife being Christian, or possibly because he was more immediately familiar with Frankish churchman rather than the more distant authority of Rome, Ethelbert is depicted as peculiarly wary of these servants of Christ. So much so that Bede has the king, on arriving some days later on Thanet, holding his meeting with the missionaries out of doors to counter any attempt by them to overpower him with ‘magical arts’.12 In order to soothe the king’s anxieties, Augustine’s team deployed a suite of audio-visual ‘special effects’, approaching Ethelbert with a glorious, shining, silver cross as their standard, along with a painting of the Lord and Saviour himself, while also singing a petition to God in grand liturgical Latin. It seemed to do the trick, for Ethelbert was suitably impressed and ordered them to sit and preach to him and his court. The words of the gospel clearly had an impact on the king, great enough to mollify any courtly bent toward pre-emptive violence against the magic-practicing missionaries, though not sufficiently powerful for Ethelbert to hand himself over to Augustine there and then for baptism. On the contrary, Bede records the king’s declaration that though the missionaries’ words and promises were fair indeed, they were also rather new and uncertain, and for that reason Ethelbert, we are told, also proclaimed, “I cannot accept them and abandon the age-old beliefs that I have held together with the whole English nation”.13 A somewhat stubborn heathen, it would seem. Even so, Ethelbert was, by all accounts, a truly hospitable ruler. Perceiving Augustine’s sincerity, he promised the monks not to harm them and even granted them a house in his chief city of Canterbury, where not only would they be supplied with all their physical needs, but their desire to preach and convert would not be interfered with. Bolstered by the king’s kindness, Augustine led his team into Canterbury, still bearing the silver cross and the painting of Christ, but now, according to a tradition rehearsed by Bede, singing a litany that petitions the Lord to withhold his wrath and anger from the city and his holy house. Ah, a wise move to sing in Latin. It was the manner of life that the missionaries adopted in Canterbury that held greatest sway for those to whom they preached. Emulating the life of the apostles and the primitive Church – not abusing the hospitality of their host city – Augustine and his brothers soon won over ‘a number of the heathen’ who admired the simplicity of their holy way of life.14 Before long, their comforting message of salvation moved these heathens to Christian belief and baptism, and to sharing with their queen in worship at the church of St Martin’s. Augmenting this display of exemplary life and the ‘gladdening promises’ of these holy men was the performance of ‘many miracles’, and so it comes as no surprise that with the passing of time Ethelbert and others in his realm were edified and prompted to accept the new faith and get baptized.15 Once this happened, according to Bede, ‘great numbers gathered each day to hear the word of God, forsaking their heathen rites and entering the unity of Christ’s holy Church as believers’.16 Bede reports that it was said that Ethelbert did not compel his people to accept Christianity, having learned from his instructors that the service of Christ must be entered upon freely. Though, if we accept the claims within one of Pope Gregory’s letters, that as many as ten thousand accepted the faith, then it’s quite possible that there may have been strong peer pressure to adopt the king’s faith. What the king did do was promote Christianity. ‘It was not long,’ continues Bede, ‘before he granted his teachers in his capital of Canterbury a place of residence appropriate to their station, and gave them possessions of various kinds to supply their wants.’17 It was not long either before Pope Gregory appointed Augustine as the first archbishop of Canterbury – in the same year (597) as the mission arrived, in fact. In turn, Augustine, with the king’s support, founded in Canterbury both his cathedral of Christ Church and the renowned St Augustine’s monastery which became a centre for great learning. For Ethelbert, had the success of the Roman mission created an impact outside of the spiritual, beyond his personal conversion? It would seem so. In Augustine, a lettered man and biblical scholar, there stood the embodiment of Roman knowledge, wisdom and authority. Moreover, he brought with him a new medium for increased prestige and, dare I say, even the prospect of earthly immortalisation. For not only had the Roman mission established a new belief system in his realm, Ethelbert had also garnered a new system of technology: writing!
The evangelist portrait of Luke, Gospels of St Augustine. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 286 (probably Italy, 6th-century), f. 129r. Image courtesy of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
Immortalising the law maker
Christianity is a religion of the book. This would have been vividly impressed upon Ethelbert when he cast his gaze upon the splendidly illuminated gospel book that the missionaries had brought with them from Rome. It is quite possible that this gospel book still survives today. For centuries it has been accepted that the codex known today as the Gospels of St Augustine (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 286), late sixth-century and generally thought to have been written in Italy, is this very book. It is still used at Canterbury Cathedral as part of the enthronement ceremony for archbishops. When I look at this treasure – I had the great pleasure of seeing it at the 2018 British Library ‘Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms’ exhibition – and particularly at its surviving evangelist portrait of Luke (it’s likely there were four evangelist portraits originally), I think of King Ethelbert. I imagine, first, him receiving the gospel book from Augustine, momentarily appreciating its heft – possibly enhanced by a bejewelled cover – before turning its calf-skin pages and being captivated by the workings of the pen – page upon page of finely executed uncial letters ordered into columns. Then he reaches the evangelist with scenes from the life of Christ flanking him. He is enthralled by the gold and the spectrum of colours. Of course, it is impossible to know exactly what Ethelbert felt. But how dry history would be if we didn’t engage our imagination, if we didn’t ponder on the possibilities. And the image of Luke is powerful. He sits on an elegant throne, surrounded by exquisite architectural framing, contemplative like a philosopher and, most intriguingly, holding a book outward for the viewer to witness the words on its pages. Written words are thus intrinsically intertwined with the regal and the wise. Authority is written. Words, it seems, live forever on the page.Inspiration?
We have no way of knowing exactly the path of inspiration that led to Ethelbert’s creation of a written law-code, but evidently the stimulus was at least in part external. Bede, after acknowledging that the king’s own wisdom conferred many benefits on the nation, highlights Ethelbert’s set of laws as the outstanding example of this, and suggests, too, that the king was ‘inspired by the example of the Romans’.18 By this I don’t think Bede means Ethelbert was motivated to imitate Roman law; there is little resemblance in the structure and content of Ethelbert’s code that would indicate this was the king’s direct concern. Rather, I would suggest that Bede simply means that Ethelbert wanted to be like the Romans in having a written system of laws, and that this would elevate him and his kingdom beyond those rulers and peoples, past and present, who have relied solely upon the oral transmission of law. In having his own written law-code, then, Ethelbert was in a sense staking his claim to Romanitas – being Roman – in this specific sense of adopting this aspect of Roman legal culture. However, having his laws written in English, not Latin, he was also asserting the validity of his own world. For Ethelbert, the inspiration for the Roman way of doing things is most directly traceable to those men who had travelled to his kingdom from Rome, Augustine and the rest of the missionary delegation, whom of course he met face to face. However, the influence of the pope himself, far away in Rome, should not be underestimated. Ethelbert’s motivations for writing his laws down can be at least intimated from the contents of the letter he received from Pope Gregory within a few years of his baptism. Appealing to Ethelbert as a glorious ruler over ‘the English nation’, Gregory urged the king to extend the Christian faith among his people, following the example of Emperor Constantine who ‘in his day turned the Roman State from its ignorant worship of idols’ to submission to Christ. The rewards for Ethelbert doing this would ultimately be heavenly, but Gregory made it equally clear that his earthly majesty was also at issue. Constantine’s ‘glorious reputation has excelled that of all his predecessors’, the pope expounds, ‘and he has outshone them in reputation as greatly as he surpassed them in good works’. What king could resist that? In bringing to his people knowledge of the One God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – the pope persuades Ethelbert that his ‘own merit and repute may excel that of all the former kings of [his] nation’.19 This direct appeal from the Holy See of Rome was couched in terms that arguably fostered rather than countered a king’s desire for worldly prestige and glory, even if we are meant to understand the pope’s emphasis to be that Ethelbert’s status hinged upon him being identified as a true Christian monarch. It is this context of Ethelbert’s acquisition of political and spiritual ‘Roman-ness’ that his law-code should be placed. I am not suggesting that King Ethelbert wanted to model his entire realm on Rome. Rather, in adopting specifically the Roman model of a written system of laws, he was, perhaps, in his own mind, laying a foundation for earthly immortality. Alongside his support for Augustine in establishing Christianity within his nation, the creation of his own written law was the proof that he, like Emperor Constantine, ‘outshone’ his predecessors. The origin of English written law was thus the beginning of true greatness for Ethelbert, we might say, a greatness to be perpetually uttered via his words on the page. The preservation of Ethelbert’s law-code in Textus Roffensis is a unique witness to this. And we are still reading Ethelbert’s words today.
The opening of Æthelberht’s Law-Code, Textus Roffensis. Rochester Cathedral Library, MS A.3.5 (Rochester, c. 1123), f. 1r.
Footnotes
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1 I have chosen to use the more accessible spelling of Ethelbert, except for in the translation of the law-code. The typical scholarly form of the name is Æthelberht, though in fact the spelling in the rubric of the law-code in Textus Roffensis is ‘æðelbirht’.
2 Ben Snook, ‘Who Introduced Charters into England? The Case for Theodore and Hadrian’, in Textus Roffensis: Law, Language, and Libraries in Early Medieval England, ed. Bruce O’ Brien and Barbara Bombi (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 257–289.
3 Colin Flight, ‘The making of the “Textus Roffensis”, provides a thorough analysis of how Textus Roffensis came to be in its present form: bmr-textus (durobrivis.net) [accessed 7 October, 2021].
4 Julia Crick, ‘The law-code of King Æthelberht of Kent’, in Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, ed. Claire Breay and Joanna Story (London: British Library, 2018), p. 80.
5 Quotations from Bede’s work are from the accessible Penguin Classics translation by Leo Shirley Price: Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People (London: Penguin, revised edition 1990), herein HE. Bede’s accounts relating to Ethelbert are found in book 1, chapters 25, 26, 32 and 33, and in book 2, chapters 3 and 5.
6 Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan, The Anglo-Saxon World (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013), p. 154. For a very thorough discussion of Ethelbert’s political motives for converting to the Christian faith, an excellent resource is chapter 2 in Higham’s The Convert Kings: Power and Religious Affiliation in Early Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997).
7 & 8 HE, p. 111.
9 & 10 HE, p. 75.
11 HE, p. 76.
12 HE, p. 75.
13 HE, pp. 75, 76.
14 HE, p. 76.
15, 16 & 17 HE, p. 77.
18 HE, p. 111.
19 HE, pp. 94, 95.
© Christopher Monk 2021
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