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April 2003

Parish History Episode 24

The Norman Priest

John, a Norman knight, had taken possession of an estate at Houghton atte Springs, and now styled himself Sir John le Spring. He had enriched himself, and had taken responsibility for the security of his lands, and - in theory - for the welfare of the peasants who dwelt upon it. To make sure of their welfare, he, or his son, would build a church for the people of Houghton.

But a church was of little value in itself unless there was someone inside it to say Mass. And saying Mass meant employing a priest. Therefore Sir John had to find one.

This was not quite as easy as one might expect. There had been plenty of priests around a generation or two before, but there were not all that many to be found in the North of England towards the end of the Eleventh Century. The devastation and “ethnic cleansing” caused by such atrocities as King William’s “Harrowing of the North” had led to large numbers of the better educated and more highly skilled classes of the English population taking flight, and seeking refuge across the Border in the Scotland of King Malcolm III : a process which was to benefit Scotland in several ways - for instance, by bringing new skills and crafts into her cities, and perhaps by “modernising” and romanising the Scottish Church - but which would also accelerate the tendency of the upper classes of that Kingdom to abandon their Gaelic speech and to adopt the Northumbrian variety of English as their native tongue.

But, by the start of the Twelfth Century, or perhaps a bit earlier, the le Springs had erected a church in Houghton. And, if they could not obtain a priest locally, they had to send home, to Normandy, to find one.

A priest was found, and, like hundreds of other clergymen of French origin, he made his way, on foot or perhaps on donkey-back, over the hills and over the sea, and he eventually reached the Northern city of Durham, where he saw the new cathedral rising up, built upon a rock within a loop of the River Wear. He was commissioned by the Bishop to take charge of the newly-created parish of Houghton, and so he left Durham and came here.

He may have been Renaldus, a priest whose name we know because he signed his name when witnessing a document in 1131; or he may have been a predecessor of Renaldus, a man whose name has not survived. But we will call him Renaldus, and try to visualise this man, who served this parish nearly nine hundred years ago.

To scholars - and there were great scholars arising at this time, men trained in the abbeys of Normandy : men like Lanfranc of Bec, who became the first Norman archbishop of Canterbury, and who taught a doctrine of the Eucharist that amounted to Transubstantiation, though he did not use that word; or Anselm, who also trained at Bec, and who also became Archbishop of Canterbury, and who tried to prove the existence of God by means of philosophical argument, and who quarrelled with the Norman kings of England through advancing the claims of the Popes of Rome to control high ecclesiastical appointments in England and in all countries - yes, to scholars such as these, a priest like Renaldus would seem but a half-educated man, whose only instruction had come from some old priest whom he had once served as an altar-boy. Renaldus, such scholars would claim, knew no Latin, and merely mumbled through the Mass by Rote.

He would have felt deeply insulted if he had been aware of the low opinion that scholars held of him. In his own eyes he was a man of letters; when he reached Houghton, he would probably find himself to be the only man in the village who could read or write - very probably the le Spring family were all illiterate. Renaldus even knew Latin (and signed his name with a Latin termination), for he had been taught to read, and he could make out the sense of most Latin texts. He would, however, make a woeful mess of any attempt at Latin composition.

For that reason he preferred to write in his own vernacular, which was French. The tortured mess that he, and hundreds of other priests imported from France, made of English place-names can be seen on a map of Northern England, in names such as Houghton-le-Spring.

Once he arrived here, he would no doubt need to acquire a working knowledge of English. The Mass was all in Latin, of course, as were other Services; and he may rarely, if ever, have preached a sermon. But he will need to know some English - at least, to have a knowledge of all the rude words, and the words denoting sin - if he is to hear Confessions and award Penances. And, within a year or so of arriving, he was probably capable of carrying on some sort of conversation with the peasants, about farming and similar topics.

Thus we can picture him, at some date prior to 1131, leaving the city of Durham, and starting off, up Gilesgate bank, along the track leading towards the ancient monastery of (Monk)wearmouth. He carries perhaps some bread and cheese in a pouch attached to his belt (no need for water: by now he is aware that England is full of little becks and burns from which a traveller can refresh himself); on his back (or in his saddle-bags if he is lucky enough to own a donkey), he bears a heavy pack, loaded with books which he will need in his new charge. These include the Missal, the Lectionary, the Psalter and, in the hope that he might be able to form a choir, an Antiphonary. He will also possess written forms of the order of services for Christenings, Weddings and Funerals. He will also have a calendar, complete with “golden numbers” for computing the dates of future Easters, and perhaps one or two small books giving lives of the saints (useful if he ever does preach sermons), and maybe a book on penitential discipline, suggesting the appropriate penances for various sins.

He bears a heavy burden, and Gilesgate bank is steep. But one book which was almost certainly missing from his pack was the Bible. A copy of it would have made his burden intolerably heavy, and anyway, on his income, he would be unable to afford one. He is probably proud of having seen - perhaps even handled - a Bible on more than one occasion. He has seen them in great abbeys in Normandy, and may have looked at one in Durham Cathedral, while waiting for an interview with the Bishop. He was probably able to commit some Bible stories to memory, before being called away to meet the Bishop. He hopes his memory will retain the gist of them if and when he learns enough English to begin preaching.

As he breasts the crest of the hill at Rainton, Renaldus looks down into the low land between where he is standing and the high ridge some miles ahead of him. There, nestling below that ridge, he espies some wisps of smoke rising from among trees, and then recognises a scatter of buildings. Most of them are tiny huts of wattle and daub, with thatched roofs. A larger timber building will be, he assumes, the residence of the le Spring family. And he also notices a wee stone building, devoid of tower or spire, smaller perhaps than the Hall where the le Springs live. That, he realises, will be the church, the place where he will labour, perhaps until such time as he dies. It is of stone, he notes, it is built to last until the end of this World. The Hall and the mud huts will pass away, but he - Renaldus - serves a Master who will live for ever, and a Church which will last until that Master returns again.