Coenwulf of Mercia - Relations With The Church

Relations With The Church

In 787, Offa had persuaded the Church to create a new archbishopric at Lichfield, dividing the archdiocese of Canterbury. The new archdiocese included the sees of Worcester, Hereford, Leicester, Lindsey, Dommoc and Elmham; these were essentially the midland Anglian territories. Canterbury retained the sees in the south and southeast. Hygeberht, already Bishop of Lichfield, was the new archdiocese's first and only archbishop.

Two versions of the events that led to the creation of the new archdiocese appear in the form of an exchange of letters in 798 between Coenwulf and Pope Leo III. Coenwulf asserted in his letter that Offa wanted the new archdiocese created out of enmity for Jaenberht, the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time of the division; but Leo responded that the only reason the papacy agreed to the creation was because of the size of the kingdom of Mercia. Both Coenwulf's and Leo's comments are partisan, as each had their own reasons for representing the situation as they did: Coenwulf was entreating Leo to make London the sole southern archdiocese, while Leo was concerned to avoid the appearance of complicity with the unworthy motives Coenwulf imputed to Offa. Coenwulf's desire to move the southern archbishopric to London would have been influenced by the situation in Kent, where Archbishop Æthelheard had been forced to flee by Eadberht Præn. Coenwulf would have wished to retain control over the archiepiscopal seat, and at the time he wrote to the pope Kent was independent of Mercia.

Æthelheard, who had succeeded Jaenberht in 792, had been the abbot of a monastery at Louth in Lindsey. On 18 January 802 Æthelheard received a papal privilege that re-established his authority over all the churches in the archdiocese of Lichfield as well as those of Canterbury. Æthelheard held a council at Clovesho on 12 October 803 which finally stripped Lichfield of its archiepiscopal status. However, it appears that Hygeberht had already been removed from his office; a Hygeberht attended the council of Clovesho as the head of the Church in Mercia, but signed as an abbot.

Archbishop Æthelheard died in 805 and was succeeded by Wulfred. Wulfred was given freedom to mint coins that did not name Coenwulf on the reverse, probably indicating that Wulfred was on good terms with the Mercian king. In 808 there was evidently a rift of some kind: a letter from Pope Leo to Charlemagne mentioned that Coenwulf had not yet made peace with Wulfred. After this no further discord is mentioned until 816, when Wulfred presided over a council which attacked lay control of religious houses. The council, held at Chelsea, asserted that Coenwulf did not have the right to make appointments to nunneries and monasteries, although both Leo and his predecessor, Pope Hadrian I, had granted Offa and Coenwulf the right to do so. Coenwulf had recently appointed his daughter, Cwoenthryth, to the position of abbess of Minster-in-Thanet. Leo died in 816, and his successor, Stephen IV, died the following January; the new pope, Paschal I confirmed Coenwulf's privileges but this did not end the dispute. In 817 Wulfred witnessed two charters in which Coenwulf granted land to Deneberht, bishop of Worcester, but there is no further record of Wulfred acting as archbishop for the rest of Coenwulf's reign. One account records that the quarrel between Wulfred and Coenwulf led to Wulfred's being deprived of his office for six years, with no baptisms taking place during that time, but this may have been an exaggeration, with four years being the more likely term of the suspension.

In 821, the year of Coenwulf's death, a council was held in London at which Coenwulf threatened to exile Wulfred if the archbishop did not surrender an estate of 300 hides, and make a payment of 120 pounds to the king. Wulfred is recorded to have agreed to these terms, but in the event the conflict continued well past Coenwulf's death, with an apparently final agreement between Wulfred and Coenwulf's daughter Cwoenthryth reached in 826 or 827. However, Wulfred officiated at the consecration of Coenwulf's brother and heir, Ceolwulf, on 17 September 822, so it is evident that some accommodation had been reached by that time. Wulfred had probably resumed his archiepiscopal duties earlier that year.