Elisabeth Austin PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

to Canterbury before.1 48 Historians have sometimes overlooked the
fact that from the first few days of the primacy contest, a formal
council was forecast.
Intravit notes, almost in passing, that Lanfranc subsequently
required and received written professions from those bishops who
had been consecrated during Stigand's pontificate. 149 Although the
text states that all the bishops formerly consecrated professed
obedience to Lanfranc, the only surviving professions of bishops
consecrated before 1072 apply to prelates potentially important to
Thomas: Wulfstan of Worcester, Remigius of Dorchester (later
Lincoln), and Herfast of Thetford. Worcester and Dorchester
potentially fell under York's metropolitan jurisdiction, and Thetford,
although less directly involved, abutted Dorchester's huge see.1 50
No written record of Thomas' profession in 1070 survives.
Canterbury's long and unusual tradition of preserving professions
renders it almost inconceivable that the chapter would not have
copied the text Thomas wrote and read. The omission of Thomas'
promise from the archive seems deliberate.l 51 Intravit speaks of an
anodyne profession, promising nothing more than personal obedience
148 ... Lanfranco porrigere, in qua preceptis quidem eius in omnibus quae ad
Christianae religionis cultum pertinent se obtemperaturum absolute nulla
interposita conditione promitteret, successoribus vero eius non ita nisi prius
vel coram rege vel in episcopali concilio competens ei ratio redderetur qua
antecessores suos Dorobernensis aecc1esiae primatibus id fecisse et facere
debuisse evidentissime ostenderetur.
149Non post multos dies Lanfrancus ab universis Anglid regni episcopis qui
diversis temporibus diversis in lods ab allis archiepiscopis vel a papa tempore
Stigandi sacrati sunt professiones petiit et accepit. GP, p. 40 repeats the
Intravit sentence verbatim.
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