Ensayo de Biodegradación:

The question thus arises whether the sanctions of Anglo-Saxon royal diplomas did indeed require the use of ritually authoritative actors in the form of bishops (or archbishops), and ritually authoritative settings in the form of a liturgical ceremony, as described by Lester Little and others. With regard to the unparalleled boom of spiritual sanctions in royal diplomas of the late Anglo-Saxon period, the possibility of an alternative scenario is certainly suggested by the concept of the king as Christ’s vicar on earth that was propagated by Anglo-Saxon tenth-century ‘ruler theology’.

It must first be pointed out that the issue of punishing transgressions against charters appears to be even more complex than appreciable at first sight. Elaine Treharne has pointed to secular involvement in the process of excommunication in Anglo-Saxon 84_{S 1036 from CE 1062 appears to indicate this.}

England, arguing that excommunication correlated with the punishments of criminals in secular laws and that, while there is evidence of a more frequent use of excommunication than previously suggested, excommunication ‘was not effective

when used by the church alone’.85 For the late Anglo-Saxon period Treharne has

observed that the secular and ecclesiastical arms of the law worked together in punishing offenders and that excommunication ‘was subject to the further penalty of secular outlawry’.86 Hence, the consequences of transgressing against Anglo-Saxon charters which contain curses are of ecclesiastical (excommunication, anathema) or religious (damnation, anathema) and possibly secular nature (outlawry). If excommunications needed the support of secular authorities in order to be authoritative, witenagemotappear to have been ideal occasions for the sentencing of those who transgressed against charters, because of the presence of the leading secular as well as ecclesiastical men of Anglo-Saxon England. Furthermore,

according to Tryggvi Oleson, the witenagemot was also accompanied by

ecclesiastical meetings at which ecclesiastical business was debated.87While it is not known if excommunications were performed on these occasions, there is evidence that the outlawry of prominent members of the Anglo-Saxon ruling elite did indeed take place atwitenagemot.88

While it is not known whether those who transgressed against charters were excommunicated or anathematized, there are faint suggestions that they may have been punished with very secular penalties, namely compensation for the damaged party and forfeiture of property. Patrick Wormald described a dispute settlement that

85

Treharne, ‘Unique Old English Formula’, pp. 190-1, at 191. 86_{Treharne, ‘Unique Old English Formula’, pp. 192-5, at 194.} 87_{Oleson,Witenagemot, pp. 31, 34.}

involved a title deed that records a layman’s donation of land to St Andrew’s

Cathedral in Rochester (S 1511 from CE 975 x 987, maybe CE 980 x 987).89 This

charter does not contain a sanction with infernal imagery, but a sanction threatening with God’s anger (in its Old English version) and with punishment at the Last Judgement (in its Latin version). It must also be noted that S 1511 is not a royal diploma, but a charter issued in the name of a layman.90 S 1511 was stolen from St Andrew’s Cathedral by priests on behalf of the grantor’s son. When the son (and his father) had already died, his mother was considered punishable. She was ordered to return the title deed ‘with compensation for the theft’ and in addition her ‘property was forfeited to the king’.91 Compensation and forfeiture are known to have been increasingly practised punishments in tenth-century Anglo-Saxon England.92 Were they, however, also used as punishments for transgressions against charters, as the case described above seems to imply? In this context, it would be of interest to

establish to what exactly satisfactio refers, which is so often demanded in the

sanctions’ penance clauses. Should it be understood ecclesiastically as ‘penance’ or in a more worldly sense as ‘reparation’? Should we think in these categories at all? Perhaps this is another case of deliberate ambiguity: just as the transgressions themselves are referred to in very general terms, so the necessary measures to

89

P. Wormald, ‘Charters, Law and the Settlement of Disputes in Anglo-Saxon England’, The

Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe, ed. W. Davies and P. Fouracre (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 149-68, at 157-9.

90_{Curiously, spiritual sanctions, especially those with infernal imagery, appeared more often in non-} royal lay charters than in ecclesiastical charters; see above, p. 18. Perhaps lay charters were deliberately modelled upon royal charters, although the question of pastoral, ideological and practical value of spiritual sanctions in lay charters (other than royal diplomas) is indeed questionable. However, Anglo-Saxon lay people may have prioritized an authentic look of their charters, which may have meant the inclusion of all diplomatic elements found in royal charters. The question whether individual diplomatic elements were of value to these charters may have been of secondary importance in these lay charters.

91 _{Wormald, ‘Charters, Law and the Settlement of Disputes’, p. 158. The dispute case became}

increasingly complex, but the further implications are not of interest at this point. Incidentally, the later events involved a charter in which King Æthelred the Unready expresses regret for his youthful misdeeds (S 893), cf. above, pp. 29-30.

absolve oneself from the curse of the sanction may be deliberately vague in order to imply anything. If transgressions against charters were indeed punished with secular punishments such as compensation and forfeiture, why did charters not threaten with these kinds of punishments? More importantly, as sanctions were addressed to undefined third parties, i.e. essentially anyone, how did Anglo-Saxons distinguish

between a common crime committed against a property that happened to be the

object of a charter and protected by a sanction on the one and a transgression against acharteron the other hand? Was the theft described above simply a theft, or was it a transgression against charter S 1511? Does the spiritual sanction of Anglo-Saxon charters have any relation to the legal machinery set in motion by a transgression against a charter? If not, does that mean that a sanction is a purposeless element after all, preserved for purely traditionalistic reasons?

I would like to argue that spiritual sanctions, especially those containing infernal imagery, fulfilled an ideological purpose rather than a predominantly legal function, at least in most royal diplomas issued in tenth-century and early eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon England. Many sanctions of these charters were ideologically powerful because they reflected the king’s elevated spiritual position and, by implication, expressed his divinely ordained authority. I have pointed out at the beginning of this chapter that only saints were allowed to curse legitimately without the use of rituals that authorized their curses.93 The legitimacy and authority of their curses were derived from the saints’ exceptional spirituality and the resulting close relationship to God. I have also pointed out that lay cursing was condemned in Anglo-Saxon England.94Since the king was a layman, it is indeed very curious that royal diplomas,

93_{See above, p. 33.} 94_{See above, p. 33.}

which were written (in a royal chancery or in the scriptoria of religious houses) as if spoken by the king, contain so many curses; more importantly, that the use of curses in royal diplomas even increased quantitatively and qualitatively in the relevant era. In this light, Robert Deshman’s observation that King Edgar was iconographically elevated above the status of saints in the frontispiece of the Refoundation Charter of New Minster, Winchester, is of great interest.95As described in the Introduction, the Anglo-Saxon Christian kingship ideology that reached its peak in the second half of the tenth century put forth the idea that the king was divinely ordained and as such Christ’s earthly counterpart, his vicarius and chief pastor on earth. Thus, he was responsible not only for his people’s worldly welfare but also for their spiritual well- being. The king’s laws were God’s laws and transgressing against them brought about not only the king’s but also God’s wrath.96 With spiritual sanctions, especially with sanctions containing infernal imagery, the king may have fulfilled his pastoral duties to his subjects, ultimately perhaps with his own spiritual welfare in mind. Moreover, he may thus have demonstrated his divinely ordained authority over his people and by implication his undisputable power. If charters were indeed delivered

and even read out at witenagemot, they reached the ‘correct’ audience for this

ideological message, namely the ruling class of Anglo-Saxon England.97

In this respect, the fact that many tenth-century charters were written in challenging Latin poses a problem, however. Who was able to understand these charters?

95 _{Deshman, ‘Benedictus monarcha et monachus’, pp. 224-5. For a brief description of this}

frontispiece and further reading, see below, p. 164. 96

See above, p. 24.

97_{For introductory reading on nobility in Anglo-Saxon England, see J. M. Pope, ‘Monks and Nobles}

in the Anglo-Saxon Monastic Reform’,ANS17 (1995), 165-79; A. Williams, ‘Princeps Merciorum

gentis: the Family, Career and Connections of Ælfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia, 956-83’, ASE 10 (1982), 143-72; F. Barlow,The Godwins: the Rise and Fall of a Noble Dynasty(Harlow, 2002); M. F.

Smith, R. Fleming, and P. Halpin, ‘Court and Piety in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, Catholic

According to Charles Insley, presumably more people than hitherto thought, as lay education among the secular elite may have been better than previously suspected.98 Nevertheless, the exact content of these charters probably reached only a limited number of people. In addition, the use of spiritual sanctions in royal diplomas seems to reflect efforts of establishing the heavenly kingdom on earth by uniting the ecclesiastical and religious with the royal and secular sphere. Hence, I would like to argue that the spiritual sanctions of late tenth- and early eleventh-century charters were valuable expressions of the Christian kingship ideology of its time. The practical effectiveness of spiritual sanctions in Anglo-Saxon royal diplomas as legal tools for the persecution of those who transgressed against charters may have been of secondary relevance. This is not to say, however, that sanctions ought not to be taken seriously, but simply that the spiritual value and success in preventing transgressions is difficult to determine, as there are, to my knowledge, no sources commenting on these issues. Hence, it can only be assumed that sanctions were sometimes successful in preventing transgressions and sometimes not, just as today’s law is sometimes effective and sometimes not.