Money and the Church in Medieval Europe, 1000-1200

Practice, Morality and Thought

Giles E. M. Gasper, Svein H. Gullbekk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317094357
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

Bringing together essays from experts in a variety of disciplines, this collection explores two of the most important facets of life within the medieval Europe: money and the church. By focusing on the interactions between these subjects, the volume addresses four key themes. Firstly it offers new perspectives on the role of churchmen in providing conceptual frameworks, from outright condemnation, to sophisticated economic theory, for the use and purpose of money within medieval society. Secondly it discusses the dichotomy of money for the church and its officers: on one hand voices emphasise the moral difficulties in engaging with money, on the other the reality of the ubiquitous use of money in the church at all levels and in places within Christendom. Thirdly it places in dialogue interdisciplinary perspectives and approaches, and evidence from philosophy, history, literature and material culture, to the issues of money and church. Lastly, the volume provides new perspectives on the role of the church in the process of monetization in the High Middle Ages. Concentrating on northern Europe, from the early eleventh century to the beginning of the thirteenth century, the collection is able to explore the profound changes in the use of money and the rise of a money-economy that this period and region witnessed. By adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, the collection challenges current understanding of how money was perceived, understood and used by medieval clergy in a range of different contexts. It furthermore provides wide-ranging contributions to the broader economic and ethical issues of the period, demonstrating how the church became a major force in the process of monetization.

PART I
Attitudes to Money within the Church

Chapter 2
Turpe lucrum? Wealth, Money and Coinage in the Millennial Church

Rory Naismith¹

One day in 1058, a Flemish monk named Balger was laid up on the Sussex coast in England, and took himself off to a nearby church at Bishopstone.² There, he was told, lay the relics of the local saint Lewinna. Balger was suitably awed by her shrine, and had to have not just a souvenir, but a piece of Lewinna herself. He took one of the local clergy by the hand and offered him anything he asked in return for some of the relics. The priest was aghast. He responded: ‘Father! Do you not know what you say? Is it proper that a servant of God wishes this, fitting that he utters it, suitable that he does this? Although some fool might wish to commit this crime, you being prudent, you being wise, you a servant of God ought to prevent it!’.³ The saint’s relics, quite clearly, were not the stuff of paltry commerce. Much more suitable was simply to steal the relics during a quiet moment, which is what Balger did, as this meant that the saint herself must have acquiesced to the deed on some level. As the relics ended up at Balger’s monastery of St Winnoc in Flanders, this was exactly the argument the author of the text telling of their translation wanted to put forward.

This episode is a classic example of furtum sacrum, ‘holy theft’, in which the successful theft of a saint’s remains was justified as having been the result of the saint’s own supernatural will.⁴ But it also gives one eleventh-century writer’s insight into what the clergy should not be doing: buying and selling the relics of the saints. Some things were simply not suitable for commerce, or at least commerce carried out by men of God. But Balger for one readily indulged in this and other forms of commerce throughout the story. While returning home by sea with the relics, for example, he went ashore and paid six pennies to be rowed back out to his ship, although in the meantime it sailed off, and shenanigans ensued as he tried desperately to recover the relics.⁵

Balger’s experience epitomises broader concerns over how members of the eleventh-century church should engage with money and material wealth in general. Why should the church and its clergy be at the same time so involved with money, and yet have such misgivings about it? To approach an answer, I will concentrate on and draw my examples from the period extending from around 975 to about 1125. These years have often been seen as witnessing profound and interconnected changes in the economic, social, political and spiritual landscape of western Europe; changes sometimes characterised as a ‘revolution’ or ‘transformation’.⁶ Territories in Spain, Scandinavia and eastern Europe were brought into the Christian fold. There was growth in agriculture and commerce, and an associated expansion of towns and coinage, arguably associated with a rise in overall population.⁷ Even if the pace was slower and more uneven than the terms ‘revolution’ and ‘transformation’ might suggest, there is little doubt that much did indeed change,⁸ and that one of the principal differences is in source material: the rising tide of evidence in the eleventh century perhaps reveals concerns long present or gestating but hitherto unexposed.⁹ For this reason it will be stressed here that many of the developments associated with this time already had a long history behind them, and progressed in fits and starts. Nevertheless, the ‘long’ eleventh century at various times and places saw existing pressures sharpen to a jagged point. The church, which for better or worse was integrated into earthly society, had to face up to evolving social and economic conditions which set the scene for the twelfth century and after.¹⁰

These shifts played out differently across Christian Europe. Some institutions found themselves presented with new riches that they could use to honour God more dazzlingly than ever before, or were faced with the cure of souls burdened with greater monetary resources. Others rejected the ever-increasing lustre of gold, silver and the marketplace with renewed fervour. The two principal flashpoints for comment and debate were the question of poverty in religious life, and the practice of simony (the acquisition of ecclesiastical office for payment). There could be sharp tensions between clergy who held different views on these points, and between their patrons and supporters.¹¹ To speak simply of ‘the church’ as a monolithic entity is, therefore, gravely misleading. When it came to attitudes to wealth there was no single church line. This was a period of adaptation and polarisation: ideas and practices separated, collided and reconverged in kaleidoscopic fashion.¹² Variability in attitudes to wealth was to be expected.

Money and coin was just one component of this, and one which had played a part throughout Christian history thanks to its prominence in the Bible. Currency was above all a tool associated with earthly material resources: as Christ said in the Gospel of Matthew (22:21) when shown a Roman imperial coin, ‘render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s’. This did not necessarily make money in itself bad or sinful. Also in the Gospel of Matthew (20:1–16) the gift of the kingdom of heaven was likened metaphorically to the denarius diurnus, the ‘daily penny’. Money was, for the Evangelists as for eleventh-century Christians, an accepted part of life and interaction on earth, good or ill: everything depended on the purpose and context of its use.¹³ Biblical views on money were therefore tempered by warnings against the temptations of wealth. Paul’s First Epistle to Timothy (6:10) famously declared that ‘the desire of money (cupiditas) is the root of all evils’ and advocated humility, while Mark’s Gospel (10:25) stated that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. Luke 14:33 stated that ‘whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple’. Careful and moderate management of resources could, however, be encouraged, and in the Book of Proverbs (6:6–8) the ant which looked after itself and stored up food at harvest-time was praised as a model to be followed. Readers could and did therefore take a variety of messages away from consideration of wealth in the Bible. But the prevalent view of Benedict of Nursia (d. 546) and other early monastic founders was that hard work and austerity were crucial to a life in the service of God. Property should be held in common, and no giving or receiving was to take place without the abbot’s leave. Food was rationed, with the intention that the monks should provide for their own needs as far as possible.¹⁴

This ideal had metamorphosed considerably by the millennium. Pride had long been considered the principal vice that monks should avoid, but began to give way to avarice as the eleventh century wore on.¹⁵ Labour in the fields had come to be associated with servile status, and the requirement for monks to do manual agricultural work had been reduced by Benedict of Aniane in the early ninth century. It was, by and large, nominal in Benedictine houses of the eleventh century.¹⁶ A parallel and contributing development had been the growth in monasteries’ role as ‘powerhouses of prayer’. Prayer had always been at the heart of monastic life, but reduced labour requirements freed up mouths to sing in church. As monasteries proliferated and became established, they did so with the support of powerful local patrons. These in return expected to benefit from the prayers of the monastic community; a process which served to develop their liturgical role.¹⁷ The lands and other material goods the monasteries received placed them in a very different position to the humble early churches of the desert fathers, albeit not automatically one of dissolution or corruption.¹⁸ Monetary wealth permitted churches to support the poor through almsgiving on a lavish scale, and growth of population, especially in towns, would have served to increase the number of paupers dependent on charity.¹⁹ Material success in the form of gold, silver and new buildings could also be a demonstration of many monasteries’ role as effective heavenly intercessors.²⁰ Nowhere exemplified the liturgical strength of monasticism better than Cluny.²¹ This monastery in central France came to house hundreds of monks, and, after the completion of Cluny III in the late eleventh century, included the largest church in Europe. In the words of Hildebert, writing his vita of St Hugh, abbot of Cluny (1049–1109), a new basilica could be commanded and planned out in a vision of St Peter, and culminate in an ‘ambulatory of angels’.²² Building was far from empty ostentation. In the eleventh century there was a strong link forged between architectural enterprise and the maintenance of monastic discipline, and even implementation of reform.²³

Estates held by the church presented difficulties on several levels. Even large monasteries only needed so much food, and so a common practice was to lease land out, or to engage in sale or exchange to acquire more conveniently located estates.²⁴ Monastic landlords had long been among the most economically ‘rational’ in Europe,²⁵ and were at the forefront of developments like the commutation of food rents into specie, and the promotion of towns and markets.²⁶ Importantly, clergy were charged only with the management of these resources, not their immoderate expansion through taking advantage of others. Good administration within these parameters was stressed by Peter Damian (d. 1072) and Humbert of Silva Candida (d. 1061):²⁷ ideals of order and lives shaped by routine placed the emphasis in economic matters on structure rather than maximisation of profit.²⁸ The Benedictine houses which were strictest and most closely managed tended also to be the richest. Raising revenues, like building lavishly, went hand in hand with generosity in giving as a sign of amplificatio loci, ‘improvement of the place’ – in other words, generally effective management on the part of the abbot. Texts such as cartulary chronicles and gesta abbatum praised the material wealth and spiritual rigour of a monastery in the same breath.²⁹

For Benedictine monasteries, as for other churches, wealth was not therefore in and of itself a bad thing. Nonetheless, many observers were not altogether satisfied with the model of religious devotion presented by mainstream ecclesiastical institutions in the eleventh century. By about 1000 there certainly were plenty of churches and clerics worthy of criticism on account of their attitude towards wealth, which in the eyes of many could slip easily from prosperity into decadence.³⁰ Bernard of Angers tactfully wrote, when he came to discuss the state of the abbey of Conques in the early eleventh century, that ‘for the preservation of a morally upright life nothing is better than a mediocre talent for worldly matters, because then one is neither saddened by harsh poverty nor bloated with immoderate excess … but I am speaking of an ordinary [i.e. monastic] way of life, because there is a more powerful opinion that judges the highest perfection to belong to those who have absolutely nothing in the world’.³¹ The Bible and early Christian history offered other examples of service to God and men, based not least on recognition of Christ’s own poverty,³² and the eleventh century witnessed several attempts to take the spiritual life of Christendom in the new directions alluded to by Bernard.³³ Eventually these culminated in the mendicant orders, but key to the early stages of the process were strong personalities eager to essay new lives as canons regular or through different interpretations of monasticism. Among these individuals were Norbert of Xanten, whose new monastery of Prémontré was chosen for its remote location; Bruno of Cologne, who founded Chartreuse and other monasteries which sought to combine the virtues of regulated monastic life with a small, isolated community structure; and Odo of Tournai, who set up a new house of canons w...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Prefatory Remarks
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• Part I Attitudes to Money within the Church
• Part II Buying, Selling and Building: The Use of Money by the Church
• Part III Money and Power:Coinage, Salvation and Ritual
• Bibliography
• Index