Welsh Journals

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fully dated, though they are arranged under regnal years, and there are some place-names which arouse inevitable queries. There is some reference to other Exchequer sources, and an introduction which is particularly interesting on the administrative aspect. Mrs. Fryde is to be thanked for making a valuable addition to our research armoury. G. A. USHER Bangor CANTERBURY PROFESSIONS. Edited by M. Richter. Canterbury and York Society, Part 140, 1973. Pp. xcviii, 138. £ 4.25 (to non-members). Dr. Richter's monographs on the twelfth-century Welsh Church will already be familiar to readers of this journal, and it was such studies that led him to a closer examination of the written professions (or promises) of canonical obedience made by the suffragans-elect of the Canterbury province to their archbishops prior to consecration. He soon found himself in uncharted waters and decided, quite rightly, to make his priority the production of sound navigational aids-a complete and critical edition of the texts (original and copy) of the extant professions. There are 301 of these (of which 54 have been printed before) from the archiepiscopate of Aethelheard (793-805) to that of Chichele (1414-1443), with the bulk from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These latter were a crucial period in the attempt to establish Canterbury's primacy over York (unsuccessfully) and over the Welsh Church (successfully). Six Irish professions have been found, but by 1152 Saint Patrick's Armagh, unlike St. David's church, had escaped subjection. The practice of written professions was a useful weapon ('the gentlest', to use R. W. Southern's apt phrase) in the Canterbury armoury and her efficient scriptorium took pains to preserve and, later, to copy them. This collection, then, is a commentary on the Canterbury success story, for it not only contains the earliest written professions but is also the most complete collection in the western Church. The text is introduced by a scholarly discussion of the canonical status of the profession, its significance and its history. Special emphasis is placed on the Norman (i.e. Lanfrancian) contribution, although the author readily admits that 'it cannot be finally decided whether the written and elaborate profession of obedience was re-introduced into the English Church by Lanfranc himself or was already customary before his accession'; but Richter clearly regards the former proposition as the more likely. The next definitive stage is reached under Boniface of Savoy, when professions achieve a standard and more elaborate form (they become, in fact, oaths), but we are not told why this should have occurred. There are fifty-one Welsh professions, and discussion predictably centres on the period from the Norman Conquest to 1148. The author, however, adds little that is new to what he has said before in this field, which is very much his own. It is in this Welsh connection that the pro- fession displays both its strength and weakness. In 1147 Eugenius III was less impressed by Bernard of St. David's claim to be Welsh archbishop