Rooftop cross on St Michael’s at the Northgate, Oxford.
A rooftop cross seen from the tower of St Michael’s at the Northgate, Oxford. The tower is all that remains of the original Anglo-Saxon church, and had been standing for some thirty years when Guitmond was respectfully but firmly declining William I’s invitation to make his career in England. Guitmond’s point was that when an enterprise is rotten to its very foundations, it is useless to try to shore it up by cementing into it a few people of nobler stone. The Norman conquest of England was in his view utterly godless from the start, and anyone brought in to make it better would simply be allowing himself to become part of a great wrong.
Part 1 of 2
“I AM averse [said monk Guitmond] to undertaking any ecclesiastical function for many reasons, which I am not willing, nor would it become me, fully to detail. In the first place, when I consider well the infirmities, both bodily and mental, which I continually suffer, I painfully feel my inability to undergo the scrutiny of the divine Judge, for even now I lament that in my daily struggles to keep the path of life I am in continual danger of erring from the truth. But if I cannot safely rule myself, how shall I be able to direct the course of others in the way to salvation?*
“Besides, after carefully considering all circumstances, I do not see by what means I can fitly undertake the government of a community whose foreign manners and barbarous language* are strange to me; a wretched people, whose fathers and near relations and friends have either fallen by your sword, or have been disinherited by you, driven into exile, imprisoned, or subjected to an unjust and intolerable slavery. Search the scriptures and see if there be any law by which a pastor chosen by enemies can be intruded by violence on the Lord’s flock.
* See also Samuel Smiles on An Unpopular Popular Reform.
* Old English was a descendant of Germanic languages, and therefore ‘barbarous’ in the sense that it came from a barbarian, i.e. not Roman, people. Norman French was a descendant of Latin, and thus a so-called Romance language.
Précis
When William the Conqueror asked Guitmond to come to England and soften the cruelties of Norman clergy the honest monk refused. He said he felt unfit to govern any man, and especially men whose ways and language were not his own. More, the way the conquest had been achieved meant that no man could bring good out of it. (59 / 60 words)
Part Two
Flames rising from a brazier.
Guimond likened taking a job in William’s forcibly Norman-culture English Church to a man grasping handfuls of charcoal from a red-hot brazier. Although the English and French churches were both Latin-rite churches governed by Rome, their histories were markedly different. The English had maintained closer contacts with Greece and Russia; they lovingly kept the memory of English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish saints; they preached in English, and esteemed English writers; their chant was peculiarly English; and the lower English clergy, like their Eastern counterparts, were accustomed to marry. Norman abbots and Bishops swept this away, sometimes at sword-point, always with arrogance and contempt. Guitmond believed that to take hold of this raging bonfire of English things could only burn a good man’s hands.
“Every ecclesiastical election onght to be purely made in the first instance by the society of the faithful who are to be governed, and then confirmed by assent of the fathers of the church and their friends, if it be canonical; if not, it should be rectified in a spirit of charity. How can that which you have wrung from the people by war and bloodshed be innocently conferred on myself and others who despise the world and have voluntarily stripped ourselves of our own substance for Christ sake?
“It is the general rule of all who take religious vows to have no part in robbery, and, for the maintenance of justice, to reject offerings which are the fruits of pillage. For the scripture saith: ‘The sacrifice of injustice is a polluted offering’; and a little afterwards: ‘Whoso offereth a sacrifice of the substance of the poor is like one that slayeth a son in his father’s sight.’* Reflecting on these and other precepts of the divine law, I cannot but tremble. I look upon England as altogether one vast heap of booty, and I am afraid to touch it and its treasures as if it were a burning fire.”
* See Ecclesiasticus 34:18-20: He that sacrificeth of a thing wrongfully gotten, his offering is ridiculous; and the gifts of unjust men are not accepted. ... Whoso bringeth an offering of the goods of the poor doeth as one that killeth the son before his father’s eyes.
Précis
The appointment of a clergyman, continued Guitmond, was traditionally handled by the community he was to govern, not by others; and in any case, those who had renounced worldly glory could not serve those who lived for it. Scripture assures us that the spoils of war are an offering repugnant to God, and perilous to the hand that touches it. (60 / 60 words)
