William de St-Calais - Early Ecclesiastical Affairs

Early Ecclesiastical Affairs

The chronicler Symeon of Durham asserted that when St-Calais was consecrated bishop by Archbishop Thomas of York, he managed to avoid professing obedience to the archbishop, which, if true, would have freed St-Calais from interference in his diocese. After his appointment, St-Calais decided to replace his cathedral chapter of secular clergy with monks, and consulted the king and Lanfranc, the Archbishop of Canterbury, before going to Rome to receive permission from Pope Gregory VII. These consultations, and the conditions within his diocese, may have kept St-Calais from visiting Durham until some time after his elevation. In 1083 he expelled the married clergy from the cathedral, and moved a small community of monks from Bede's old monastery at Jarrow to Durham, to form the new chapter. This community had been founded at Jarrow by Reinfrid, a Norman ex-knight and monk of Evesham Abbey, and Eadwine, an English monk from Winchcombe Abbey. After the community had settled in Durham, St-Calais named Eadwine as prior, and arranged for lands to be set aside to support the monks. The expelled clergy were offered the option of joining the new monastic house, but only one actually joined.

St-Calais enjoyed good relations with his cathedral chapter, and they supported him when construction began on a new cathedral in 1093. He also gave a set of constitutions to the cathedral chapter, modeled on Lanfranc's rule for Canterbury. Symeon of Durham said that the bishop acted towards the monks of his chapter as a "loving father", and that the monks fully returned the sentiment. St-Calais is said to have researched exhaustively the pre-Norman Conquest customs of the cathedral, before re-establishing monks in the cathedral. He imposed the Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc on the community, instead of the older Regularis Concordia.