Elisabeth Austin PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

persuaded otherwise. Lanfranc also appears baffled by the
unflagging defense of his formal pupil. When Thomas first
challenged him to prove the justice of his demand, Lanfranc can offer
nothing. 189 He fails to convince the pope in Rome. He refuses to
elaborate Thomas' arguments in the letter to Alexander, although he
spells out his own in detail: a sorry piece of work for a dialectician.
His begging of Alexander looked distasteful even to his own chapter.
All in all, the memorandum presents an unattractive portrait of the
archbishop it strove to justify.
A less partisan piece of much the same date also survives.
Drawing on elements of the memorandum material, a Latin annal,
written c. 1090 and found at the close of the A-version of the Anglo­
Saxon Chroncle (which ends in 1070), details the acts of Lanfranc's
career in England. As early evidence for events from 1070 to 1089,
the Acta Lanfranci bears some conSideration, but as the annal deals
with Lanfranc's pontificate in its entirety, and represents the
primacy issue only as an aspect of his career, its usefulness proves
limited. On this pOint, it is easier to correct the annalist than to learn
from him.
The Acta Lanfranci author favoured the letters of Lanfranc
above any other source. 1 90 This dependence on the letter collection
at one point leads the author into an error of chronology, but on the
whole the annalist provides a factual record of archiepiscopal
189At the time of Thomas' first consecration ceremonv.
190rhe date is Gibson's, I I, p. 11; it is certainly likely that the AI was written
during the vacancy, and soon after Lanfranc's death.
85