The Church under the Normans

The Norman Conquest was a political event, but it was also a religious one. William's invasion of 1066 had been blessed by Pope Alexander II; his consolidation of England required an English Church that was loyal, reformed, and administratively integrated with continental practice. Between 1066 and 1087 the senior English clergy was replaced almost entirely by Normans and continental reformers, cathedrals were rebuilt on an unprecedented scale, ecclesiastical courts were separated from secular justice, and the English Church was drawn into the wider European reform movement associated with Pope Gregory VII.

This lesson examines the state of the Anglo-Saxon Church in 1066, the appointment and reforms of Lanfranc of Bec as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1070, William's political use of ecclesiastical appointments, the Norman building programme, the introduction of canon law in 1072, and the careful balance William struck between cooperation with and resistance to the reforming Papacy. The Church under the Normans is a classic Paper 2 topic because it combines change with continuity, and because it illuminates how William governed a conquered kingdom.

1. The Anglo-Saxon Church in 1066

The English Church that William inherited in 1066 was wealthy, literate and in communion with Rome, but its senior leadership carried faults that reformers at Rome had long noted.

1.1 Wealth and organisation

By 1060 the English Church held roughly one third of the landed wealth of the kingdom. Dioceses such as Worcester (under Bishop Wulfstan) and Exeter were well-administered. Monastic houses such as Glastonbury, Ely, Peterborough and Winchester supported schools, manuscript production and estate management on a European scale. The parish system — a village church with a priest paying tithe to a mother minster — was already widespread.

1.2 Stigand and pluralism

The central scandal was the position of Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1052. Stigand held Canterbury and the diocese of Winchester simultaneously — a pluralism long condemned by canon law. He had also received his pallium (the symbol of archiepiscopal authority) from the antipope Benedict X rather than from a legitimate pope. This canonical irregularity meant that no serious continental reformer could regard Stigand as a valid archbishop, and it gave William after 1066 a ready-made excuse to replace him.

1.3 Other weaknesses

Some English bishops held office under clerical family inheritance; some priests were married (against canon law as reforming popes now interpreted it); some monasteries were under lay patronage rather than abbatial discipline. These were the points on which the Normans would build their case for reform.

Feature of the 1066 Church	Reform agenda in Rome
Stigand's pluralism and antipope pallium	End pluralism; only legitimate papal appointments
Married clergy widespread	Enforce clerical celibacy
Church courts mixed with secular courts	Separate ecclesiastical jurisdiction
Lay patronage of monasteries	Return houses to abbatial and papal discipline

2. Lanfranc of Bec as Archbishop of Canterbury

2.1 Appointment in 1070

Stigand was deposed at the Council of Winchester in April 1070, on the authority of papal legates sent by Alexander II. His replacement, consecrated on 29 August 1070, was Lanfranc, Abbot of Saint-Stephen at Caen and formerly prior of the great reforming abbey of Bec in Normandy. Lanfranc was a scholar of European reputation — he had taught Anselm, defeated Berengar of Tours in the eucharistic controversy, and was trusted personally by William.

2.2 Relationship with William

Lanfranc's relationship with William was the pivot of Norman ecclesiastical policy. Lanfranc was not a royal servant in the crude sense — he pressed reforms the king sometimes found inconvenient — but he understood that a reformed English Church also had to be a loyal one. From 1070 he acted as William's chief ecclesiastical adviser and, during William's long absences in Normandy, as effective regent.

2.3 Celibacy and clerical discipline

Lanfranc's Council of Winchester in 1076 enforced clerical celibacy on cathedral and urban clergy. Rural priests already married were permitted to remain so but no new married men could be ordained; future appointments had to be celibate. The rule did not transform parish life overnight, but it established the principle and the procedures by which reform would be pursued for a century.

2.4 Diocesan reorganisation

Lanfranc and William moved the seats of several bishoprics from small rural minsters to defensible urban centres — for example, from Dorchester to Lincoln (1072), from Lichfield to Chester (1075), and from Sherborne to Old Sarum (1075). The rationale was both practical (cities were easier to administer and defend) and political (new Norman cathedrals asserted dominance in regional capitals).

2.5 Tribunals and metropolitan authority

Lanfranc also insisted on the primacy of Canterbury over York. In 1072 he secured a written submission from Archbishop Thomas of York (a Norman appointee of William) that acknowledged Canterbury as the senior archbishopric. This settled a long-running dispute and gave Lanfranc metropolitan authority over the whole English Church.

3. William's Political Use of the Church

3.1 Replacement of English bishops

Stigand's deposition was the first of many. By 1087, of fifteen English bishoprics only one — Worcester under Wulfstan — was still held by an Englishman. Wulfstan was kept in post partly because he was a reformer himself and partly because his loyalty to William had been unambiguous.

3.2 Tight loyalty chain

William treated the Church as a fief like any other. Bishops did homage for their temporalities (their estates) like secular tenants-in-chief, and they owed knight service — the bishopric of Worcester owed 50 knights, Peterborough Abbey owed 60. A bishop who failed in loyalty could, in principle, be treated like a disloyal baron.

3.3 The three "rules" of William

According to the chronicler Eadmer (writing later) William imposed three rules on the Church:

1. No pope could be recognised in England without royal approval.
2. No papal letter could be received without royal inspection.
3. No baron or royal servant could be excommunicated without royal permission.

These rules demonstrate both the closeness of Church and Crown and the limits William placed on the reach of papal authority into English political life.

graph TD
  W[King William] --> L[Archbishop Lanfranc]
  L --> B1[Norman bishops]
  L --> B2[Norman abbots]
  W --> B1
  W --> B2
  B1 --> K[Knight service + homage]
  B2 --> K
  L --> R[Reform: celibacy, courts, councils]

3.4 Illustrative case: Odo of Bayeux

William's half-brother Odo combined the bishopric of Bayeux with the earldom of Kent. Odo's career — bishop, warrior, regent, prisoner from 1082 — showed both the opportunities and the limits of a churchman in Norman government. When Odo overreached politically, William arrested him not as a bishop (which would have required papal involvement) but as "Earl of Kent" — a technicality that reveals how seriously William's rules about ecclesiastical discipline were taken.

4. The Norman Building Programme

4.1 Scale of rebuilding

Between 1070 and 1100 nearly every English cathedral was either rebuilt or substantially enlarged in the Romanesque style — massive walls, round arches, thick piers, small windows. The old Anglo-Saxon minsters, by continental standards small, were replaced with buildings on a European scale.