Bartholomew of Exeter’s sermons and the cultivation of charity in twelfth‐century Exeter

By analyzing the little-studied sermons of Bartholomew, bishop of Exeter 1161–84, against the backdrop of archival sources for the history of the city of Exeter, this article examines the bishop’s relationship with his cathedral city. Charitable activities in twelfth-century Exeter involved co-operation among urban lay elites, the secular clergy, religious houses and the bishop himself. Bartholomew preached regularly to lay audiences at Exeter cathedral. His sermons endeavoured to engage local interests and emphasized the importance of charitable works. This article points toward a broader understanding of the ways in which a twelfthcentury bishop might converse with his subjects by responding to, and cultivating, local religious cultures. Writing in the twelve-thirties, the chronicler Roger de Wendover recorded in his Flores Historiarum a story about Bartholomew, bishop of Exeter from 1161 to 1184. According to Wendover, Bartholomew was out on a visitation of his diocese and stopped in an unnamed village overnight, lodging in a house near the village cemetery. During the night, he was disturbed by the voices of children wailing: ‘Alas for us! Alas for us! Who will give alms and pray for us now, or celebrate masses for us?’ The bishop sent his chamberlain out to search for a light; the chamberlain returned reporting that a man of the village has just died, and that the villagers were mourning because the man used to keep a priest in his house to say masses and prayers for the dead. The man had been ‘a father to orphans and a consolation to the wretched, one who spent his income on the poor and practiced hospitality while he lived’. The following day, after consulting with the villagers, Bartholomew provided an endowment so that the priest whom the dead man used to pay could continue to celebrate masses.1 At first glance, the story looks like a more or less standard iteration of ‘ideal bishop’ tropes. But evidence from Exeter during Bartholomew’s episcopate suggests that elements of Wendover’s report – the initiative of a pious layman, the importance of charity towards the poor and deceased, and, most importantly, the bishop’s responsiveness – may actually ref lect Bartholomew of Exeter’s relationship with certain social groups of his cathedral city. 1 Roger de Wendover, Flores Historiarum, ed. H. G. Hewlett (Rolls ser., lxxxiv, 3 vols., 1886–9), i. 18–20. * An earlier version of this article was presented at the conference ‘Shaping the officer: communities and practices of accountability in premodern Europe’ at the German Historical Institute, London, 8–10 Nov. 2017. The author is grateful to those who offered comments at this conference, as well as to this journal’s anonymous reviewers. D ow naded rom http/academ ic.p.com /histres/articlect/92/256/267/5603417 by gest on 13 Feruary 2020 268 The cultivation of charity in twelfth-century Exeter © 2019 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 92, no. 256 (May 2019) Scholarship on bishops of the central middle ages has flourished in the past two decades.2 Once seen from a largely institutional perspective – as more or less efficient cogs in an emergent ‘papal monarchy’, either championing papal reforms or colluding with secular rulers – bishops are now portrayed as multifaceted pastors, patrons, lords and politicians whose actions must be analyzed in regional, diocesan and even urban contexts. Bishops drew on religious imagery, ideology and tradition to create, collectively, an ‘episcopal culture’; at the same time, they strategized and responded to political, social and economic forces in their localities. Historians have tracked episcopal relationships with local communities through the lenses of palace architecture, tithing and clothing, to name just a few examples.3 They have also documented many examples of bishops supporting hospitals and other works of charity, participating alongside lay people and religious in localized ‘spiritual economies’.4 Charity is in many ways an ideal lens through which to view a late twelfth-century English bishop interacting with his cathedral city.5 A preoccupation of theologians around the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, charity was particularly associated with the model bishop.6 But it was also inherently social, and therefore local – an activity and a value with which bishops, lay people, secular clergy and religious alike could meaningfully engage. Hospitals multiplied in twelfthand thirteenth-century England, established and supported by lords, bishops, religious institutions, lay individuals and civic groups.7 Another manifestation of charity could be participation in a guild or 2 See, in particular, E. Palazzo, L’Êvêque et son image: L’illustration du Pontifical au Moyen Âge (Turnhout, 1999); M. C. Miller, The Bishop’s Palace: Architecture and Authority in Medieval Italy (Ithaca, N.Y., 2000); G. Albertoni, Die Herrschaft des Bischofs: Macht und Gesellschaft zwischen Etsch und Inn im Mittelalter (9.–11. Jahrhuntert) (Bolzano, 2003); The Bishop: Power and Piety at the First Millennium, ed. S. Gilsdorf (Munich, 2004); The Bishop Reformed: Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages, ed. J. S. Ott and A. T. Jones (Aldershot, 2007); M. F. Giandrea, Episcopal Culture in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2007); S. Pazold, Episcopus: Wissen über Bischöfe im Frankenreich des späten 8. bis frühen 10. Jahrhunderts (Ostfildern, 2008); A. T. Jones, Noble Lord, Good Shepherd: Episcopal Power and Piety in Aquitaine, 877–1050 (Leiden, 2009); T. Reuter, ‘A Europe of bishops: the age of Wulfstan of York and Burchard of Worms’, in Patterns of Episcopal Power: Bishops in 10th and 11th Century Western Europe, ed. L. Körntgen and D. Wassenhoven (Berlin, 2011); J. Eldevik, Episcopal Power and Ecclesiastical Reform in the German Empire: Tithes, Lordship, and Community, 950–1150 (Cambridge, 2012); J. S. Ott, Bishops, Authority and Community in Northwestern Europe, c.1050–1150 (Cambridge, 2015). Despite dealing with a much earlier period, C. Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: the Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transformation (Berkeley, Calif., 2005), has also been an important inf luence. 3 Miller; Eldevik; Ott, pp. 72–8. 4 This analytical framework is used by S. Sweetinburgh in The Role of the Hospital in Medieval England: Gift-Giving and the Spiritual Economy (Dublin, 2004). J. W. Brodman, Charity and Welfare: Hospitals and the Poor in Medieval Catalonia (Philadelphia, Pa., 1998), pp. 8–18; N. Orme and M. Webster, The English Hospital, 1070–1570 (New Haven, Conn., 1995), p. 34; C. Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul: the Life, Death and Resurrection of an English Medieval Hospital (Stroud, 1999), esp. chs. 2, 5; S. C. Watson, ‘City as charter: charity and the lordship of English towns, 1170–1250’, in Cities, Texts and Social Networks, 400–1500: Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space, ed. C. Goodson, A. E. Lester and C. Symes (Farnham, 2010), pp. 235–62, at pp. 235–49; S. M. Brasher, Hospitals and Charity: Religious Culture and Civic Life in Medieval Northern Italy (Manchester, 2017). A. Brown, Popular Piety in Late Medieval England: the Diocese of Salisbury (Oxford, 1995), esp. ch. 2, paints a nuanced picture of both connections and tensions between lay people and the cathedral. 5 An example is Sethina Watson’s insightful comparison of the hosptial foundations of Reginald, bishop of Wells 1174–91, and Jocelin, bishop of Bath and Wells 1206–42, ‘The bishop and his cathedral cities’, in Jocelin of Wells: Bishop, Builder, Courtier, ed. R. Dunning (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 67–98, at pp. 90–8. 6 J. W. Brodman, Charity and Religion in Medieval Europe (Washington, D.C., 2009), pp. 9–44; S. Hamilton, Church and People in the Medieval West, 900–1200 (Harlow, 2013), pp. 92–3. 7 M. Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge (Cambridge, 1987); Orme and Webster, ch. 1; Sweetinburgh; S. C. Watson, ‘The origins of the English hospital’, Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., 6th ser., xvi (2006), 75–94; S. C. Watson, ‘The sources for English hospitals 1100 to 1400’, in Quellen zur europäischen Spitalgeschichte in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. M. Scheutz and others (Vienna, 2010), pp. 65–103; D. X. Carpenter, ‘Harehope hospital and the arrival of the Order of St. Lazarus in England’, Northern History, liv (2017), 3–14. D ow naded rom http/academ ic.p.com /histres/articlect/92/256/267/5603417 by gest on 13 Feruary 2020 The cultivation of charity in twelfth-century Exeter 269 Historical Research, vol. 92, no. 256 (May 2019) © 2019 Institute of Historical Research fraternity, or the endowment of anniversary masses and other intercessory prayers.8 These associations facilitated contact and influence, not only among lay members, but between citizens, clergy and, as we shall see, the local bishop. This article analyzes the city of Exeter’s relationship with Bishop Bartholomew as an example of how a bishop might forge connections with local communities, in this case by responding to and cultivating an enthusiasm for charity. In order to do this, it begins with the community itself. It examines the practice of charity and the provision of intercessory prayer in the context of religious life in twelfth-century Exeter, arguing that charitable activities depended on and strengthened co-operation among urban lay elites, the secular clergy, religious houses and, crucially, the bishop himself. Then, by analyzing the form and content of Bartholomew of Exeter’s sermons, the article demonstrates that the bishop preached regularly to lay and mixed audiences in Exeter, particularly around the city’s more important feasts. In his sermons, Bartholomew addressed his listeners not only through engaging rhetoric and emotional appeal, but by offering practical advice and encouragement for acts of charity. Focusing on the importance of charity in Exeter leads toward a broader understanding of the way a t