News Template

December 2003

Parish History Episode 32

The Courts of Lateran

We learned last month that Young Roland Bellasis fought for the King in the Battle of Lewes, was knighted for his courage, and eventually returned home to Morton House. He seems to have died peaceably at home, probably in the 1270’s or 1280’s. His body was taken to Houghton church, to be buried there, while a stone effigy of him in full armour was erected in the South Transept, probably close to where he was buried. The funeral service (which would then have been preceded by Vespers, Matins and the Dirge, and would have concluded with a Requiem Mass) could have been conducted by John Mansell, the Rector of Houghton-le-Spring.

So far, the priests who have served Houghton throughout the previous two centuries, have remained, to us, anonymous. We have two names - Renaldus in 1131, and Rogerus in 1147 - and that is all we know of the early clergy in our parish. We tried, in the section of this Parish History entitled “The Norman Priest” - in the April number of “Signpost” - to paint a picture of how Renaldus would have arrived in Houghton, and how he would have tried to serve his new parish, but it was of course guesswork, for nothing is known about Renaldus beyond the fact that he was alive in 1131.

But now, after a gap of more than a century (from the equally brief mention of Rogerus in 1147), we come once again to the names of Houghton priests : a brief mention of one Geoffrey of St. Agatha, in 1258, and then John Mansell in 1260. The names of these two men are then succeeded, on the plaque at the rear of our church, by forty-eight other names, culminating with the present rector, Ian Wallis; and this list of fifty names is probably a complete record of every incumbent who has, since 1250, held the office of Rector of Houghton.

It would be pleasant to record that the rectors of this period, the rectors whose names have come down to us, were men renowned for their sanctity, and who thus deserved to be commemorated. But, if anything, the opposite is the case. Their names have come down to us, mostly, because they infringed Canon Law (the rules of the church) by holding more than one benefice (more than one parish), and they therefore needed to obtain dispensation from the bishop (generally obtained by paying him a fee); and, particularly where the different benefices were in different dioceses, it was necessary also to obtain dispensation from the Pope in Rome.

Thus, we first hear of Geoffrey of Saint Agatha in 1258, when it was pointed out to him that he was Rector both of Houghton-le-Spring and of a parish in Cumberland, and that he needed to obtain dispensations from both the Bishops of Durham and of Carlisle, and also from Rome, in order to continue to collect the tithes of both parishes. He does not appear, however, to have enjoyed them for long, for two years later, we find John Mansell being installed as Rector of Houghton.

Perhaps Mansell had to pay steeply for the Parish of Houghton, for the Diocese of Durham was in serious financial difficulties. Richard le Poore, Bishop of Durham from 1229 to 1237, had begun an immense programme of rebuilding in the Cathedral, of which the main fruit visible to-day is the Chapel of the Nine Altars, and he seems to have financed this programme, at least in part, by the sale of Indulgences to the people of his Diocese. By donating cash, instead of doing Penance, a sinner could purchase an Indulgence which would grant him pardon for any venial (less serious) sins he had committed (the more serious, mortal, sins could not usually be dispensed this way), providing, of course, the sinner also showed sincere Contrition for the evil that he had done.

Work on the Cathedral was still going on in 1255, during the Episcopate of Walter of Kirkham, and much of the money collected by the sale of Indulgences was lying in the Cathedral Treasury, waiting to pay builders’ fees, when King Henry III rode North to Durham, on Pilgrimage to the Shrine of Saint Cuthbert, with a strong escort of armed men. The King was also in deep financial trouble, partly resulting from money that he owed the Pope of Rome for various services (dispensing him, for instance, from observing the letter of various inconvenient obligations, such as the provisions of Magna Carta), and so he ordered his knights to seize the money lying in the Treasury, and he rode back to London, greatly enriched. (Some pilgrimage that was!).

The measures taken by the Bishop of Durham to restock his empty Treasury (and to pay those builders, who wanted cash, not Indulgences) may have led on to the process whereby we know of Geoffrey of Saint Agatha, and later John Mansell, paying heavy fees for the right to collect tithes from the Houghton peasantry. But such events in Durham were only a small example of the problems facing the Church, caused at least partly by the difficulties in raising the money to pay for the cost of building a Church to serve, and to redeem, the peoples of Europe.

We have shown, in earlier parts of this series, how the Unity of Christendom, which had, in the “Dark Ages”, depended largely on an entirely informal network of contacts between monasteries, even though there had been acceptance, at least in Western Europe, of the Primacy of the Pope of Rome, had been reshaped, under the leadership of Hildebrand during the Eleventh Century, so as to form more of a “Christian Republic”, under the presidency of the Pope. But though the powers of the Pope might be freely acknowledged by the bishops of England and of other lands, there was as yet insufficient administrative ability to make a reality of them, and the energies of Christendom tended to be side-tracked into long-drawn-out wars between Popes and Kaisers, or into Crusades against Islam. Now, however, literacy and numeracy had developed far enough to make it possible for strong rulers to make their power effective throughout their realms. Various Popes of Rome took advantage of these developments, and none more so than Pope Innocent III (1198-1216).

During Pope Innocent’s Pontificate, the Crusaders overthrew the Byzantine Empire, and a Latin Emperor and a Latin Patriarch were enthroned in Constantinople. The rift between West and East that had developed since 1054 seemed to be over. Kings everywhere in Europe found themselves obliged to accept the authority of the Pope. Twice Pope Innocent excommunicated the King of a major West European kingdom, and indeed laid the whole Kingdom (France, 1198-1203; and England, 1208-1213) under an Interdict, by which all Sacraments were denied to the people of the Kingdom, save only Baptism for the new-born, and Extreme Unction for the dying. In the case of England, the Interdict was only lifted when King John, on bended knee, did homage before the Pope’s Envoy. Thereafter the Pope’s powers over the English Church became much more extensive, and that is one reason why Rome became much more involved in appointments to office in England, not only at a diocesan level but even at a parochial level.

The increase in bureaucracy needed to weld Europe together in this “republic” was provided not only by the traditional Roman congregations and secretariats, but by the rise of the new orders of Friars - Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, Carmelites - who soon came to bestride Europe. Priests were now becoming much more numerous. At one time, most monks had been laymen : now almost all were priests. All the members of the Orders of Friars, save only for a few Lay Brethren, were also ordained priests. And priests were not only more numerous, they were also becoming more distinct from society, perhaps more “professional”. The Rule of Celibacy had finally been made obligatory on all priests in 1139.

Not all these priests were performing parochial duties. Many of the brightest and most ambitious of them moved to Rome, and secured appointments within the Papal bureaucracy, and went to work in the offices in the Lateran Palace, which was, at this time, both a Papal residence and the location of most of the Papal Secretariats. (The Lateran Palace fell into decay during the Fourteenth Century, when the Papacy moved to Avignon. After the Return to Rome, the Papal administration became centered in the Vatican Palace, where it has remained until the present day.)

Some of the effects of this centralisation may have been beneficial. The great thinkers of Europe moved about more (not necessarily to Rome; they also moved from one university to another), got to know each other, stimulated each other. But other results were deplorable. One Roman Court of Law, that of the Inquisition, had been established, in 1232, to suppress heretical opinions. It became responsible for burning large numbers of people who deviated from official dogma. The early victims were mostly “philosophical heretics” (who differed from Christian tradition in their understanding of good and evil, of the soul and the after-life), such as the Cathars of Southern France, against whom the de Montforts, father and son, had fought. Later the Inquisition went into action against “evangelical heretics”, such as the Valdesians of Alpine Italy, that is men and women attempting to live by the Gospel rather than by the rules of the Church, and the Inquisitors also attempted to suppress sorcery and witchcraft. On the whole, the Inquisition succeeded in screwing down a safety-valve, a valve which was to explode centuries later in the Protestant Reformation, in an outburst which would disrupt the unity of Christendom.

There was Evil, as well as misdirection of effort, in the activities of the Inquisition. However, there was nothing particularly evil about the way that the office known as the Congregation of the Clergy went about its business, attempting to discipline and to control the clergy, but its wish to have influence on appointments everywhere in Europe, to dispense or not to dispense priests from breaches of Canon Law, did lead to inefficiency, long vacancies, and a widening gap between clergy and laity. It was also an expensive office to run, and it needed to charge high fees for its services, and the men who obtained the vacant benefices were expected to pay these fees. This was to give the people of the parish a feeling that their money was being siphoned off and despatched to Rome.

Perhaps, however, that is what modern congregations in the Church of England feel about paying the Parish Share to the Diocese. But we do get obvious benefits back from the Diocese : for a start, it pays the stipend of our priest. John Mansell’s congregation still had to pay the tithes to enable their priest to live in the Rectory. They saw very little benefit coming back to them from the Lateran Palace in Rome.