Offa of Mercia - Church

Church

Offa ruled as a Christian king, but despite being praised by Charlemagne's advisor, Alcuin, for his piety and efforts to "instruct in the precepts of God", he came into conflict with Jaenberht, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Jaenberht had been a supporter of Egbert II of Kent, which may have led to conflict in the 760s when Offa is known to have intervened in Kent. Offa rescinded grants made to Canterbury by Egbert, and it is also known that Jaenberht claimed the monastery of Cookham, which was in Offa's possession.

In 786 Pope Adrian I sent papal legates to England to assess the state of the church and provide canons (ecclesiastical decrees) for the guidance of the English kings, nobles and clergy. This was the first papal mission to England since Augustine had been sent by Pope Gregory the Great in 597 to convert the Anglo-Saxons. The legates were George, the Bishop of Ostia, and Theophylact, the Bishop of Todi. They visited Canterbury first, and then were received by Offa at his court. Both Offa and Cynewulf, king of the West Saxons, attended a council where the goals of the mission were discussed. George then went to Northumbria, while Theophylact visited Mercia and "parts of Britain". A report on the mission, sent by the legates to Pope Adrian, gives details of a council held by George in Northumbria, and the canons issued there, but little detail survives of Theophylact's mission. After the northern council George returned to the south and another council was held, attended by both Offa and Jaenberht, at which further canons were issued.

In 787, Offa succeeded in reducing the power of Canterbury through the establishment of a rival archdiocese at Lichfield. The issue must have been discussed with the papal legates in 786, although it is not mentioned in the accounts that have survived. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports a "contentious synod" in 787 at Chelsea, which approved the creation of the new archbishopric. It has been suggested that this synod was the same gathering as the second council held by the legates, but historians are divided on this issue. Hygeberht, already Bishop of Lichfield, became the new archdiocese's first and only archbishop, and by the end of 788 he received the pallium, a symbol of his authority, from Rome. 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.

The few accounts of the creation of the new archbishopric date from after the end of Offa's reign. Two versions of the events appear in the form of an exchange of letters between Coenwulf, who became king of Mercia shortly after Offa's death, and Pope Leo III, in 798. Coenwulf asserts in his letter that Offa wanted the new archdiocese created out of enmity for Jaenberht; but Leo responds that the only reason the papacy agreed to the creation was because of the size of the kingdom of Mercia. Both Coenwulf and Leo 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. These are therefore partisan comments. However, both the size of Offa's territory and his relationship with Jaenberht and Kent are indeed likely to have been factors in Offa's request for the creation of the new archdiocese. Coenwulf's version has independent support, with a letter from Alcuin to Archbishop Æthelheard giving his opinion that Canterbury's archdiocese had been divided "not, as it seems, by reasonable consideration, but by a certain desire for power". Æthelheard himself later said that the award of a pallium to Lichfield depended on "deception and misleading suggestion".

Another possible reason for the creation of an archbishopric at Lichfield relates to Offa's son, Ecgfrith. After Hygeberht became archbishop, he consecrated Ecgfrith as king; the ceremony took place within a year of Hygeberht's elevation. It is possible that Jaenberht refused to perform the ceremony, and that Offa needed an alternative archbishop for that purpose. The ceremony itself is noteworthy for two reasons: it is the first recorded consecration of any English king, and it is unusual in that it asserted Ecgfrith's royal status while his father was still alive. Offa would have been aware that Charlemagne's sons, Pippin and Louis, had been consecrated as kings by Pope Adrian, and probably wished to emulate the impressive dignity of the Frankish court. Other precedents did exist: Æthelred of Mercia is said to have nominated his son Coenred as king during his lifetime, and Offa may have known of Byzantine examples of royal consecration.

Despite the creation of the new archdiocese, Jaenberht retained his position as the senior cleric in the land, with Hygeberht conceding his precedence. When Jaenberht died in 792, he was replaced by Æthelheard, who was consecrated by Hygeberht, now senior in his turn. Subsequently Æthelheard appears as a witness on charters and presides at synods without Hygeberht, so it appears that Offa continued to respect Canterbury's authority.

A letter from Pope Adrian to Charlemagne survives which makes reference to Offa, but the date is uncertain; it may be as early as 784 or as late as 791. In it Adrian recounts a rumour that had reached him: Offa had reportedly proposed to Charlemagne that Adrian should be deposed, and replaced by a Frankish pope. Adrian disclaims all belief in the rumour, but it is clear it had been a concern to him. The enemies of Offa and Charlemagne, described by Adrian as the source of the rumour, are not named. It is unclear whether this letter is related to the legatine mission of 786; if it predates it, then the mission might have been partly one of reconciliation, but the letter might well have been written after the mission.

Offa was a generous patron of the church, founding several churches and monasteries, often dedicated to St Peter. Among these was St Albans Abbey, which he probably founded in the early 790s. He also promised a yearly gift of 365 mancuses to Rome; a mancus was a term of account equivalent to thirty silver pennies, derived from Abbasid gold coins that were circulating in Francia at the time. Control of religious houses was one way in which a ruler of the day could provide for his family, and to this end Offa ensured (by acquiring papal privileges) that many of them would remain the property of his wife or children after his death. This policy of treating religious houses as worldly possessions represents a change from the early eighth century, when many charters showed the foundation and endowment of small minsters, rather than the assignment of those lands to laypeople. In the 770s, an abbess named Æthelburh (who may have been the same person as Offa's daughter of that name) held multiple leases on religious houses in the territory of the Hwicce; her acquisitions have been described as looking "like a speculator assembling a portfolio". Æthelburh's possession of these lands foreshadows Cynethryth's control of religious lands, and the pattern was continued in the early ninth century by Cwoenthryth, the daughter of King Coenwulf.

Either Offa or Ine of Wessex is traditionally supposed to have founded the Schola Saxonum in Rome, in what is today the Roman rione, or district, of Borgo. The Schola Saxonum took its name from the militias of Saxons who served in Rome, but it eventually developed into a hostelry for English visitors to the city.