Nicholas of Worcester
Nicholas of Worcester was the prior of the Benedictine priory of Worcester Cathedral from about 1116 until his death. He was born around the time of the Norman Conquest. His parents are not known, but the 12th-century historian William of Malmesbury wrote that he was "of exalted descent", and the historian Emma Mason argues that he was a son of King Harold Godwinson.
Nicholas was the favourite pupil of Wulfstan, the bishop of Worcester, who brought him up. Wulfstan, the last surviving Anglo-Saxon bishop, lived until 1095. He was influential in transmitting Old English culture to Anglo-Norman England. Nicholas carried on this work as prior, and he was highly respected by the leading chroniclers, William of Malmesbury, John of Worcester and Eadmer, who acknowledged his assistance in their histories. Several letters to and from Nicholas survive.
Nicholas was an English monk at a time when both Englishmen and monks rarely received promotion in the church. When Bishop Theulf of Worcester died in October 1123, Nicholas led an unsuccessful attempt of the priory chapter monks to be allowed to choose the next bishop.
Background
In the late 960s, Oswald, Bishop of Worcester and one of the leaders of the late tenth-century English Benedictine Reform, set up Worcester Cathedral priory as a Benedictine monastery. Almost a century later, in 1060, Ealdred, Bishop of Worcester, was appointed Archbishop of York, and he attempted to revive the practice of some of his predecessors of holding York and Worcester in plurality. However, Pope Nicholas II forced him to relinquish Worcester, and Wulfstan was appointed to the see in 1062, four years before the Norman Conquest. He lived until 1095 and was the last surviving Anglo-Saxon bishop. The historian Emma Mason writes that Wulfstan "played an important role in the transmission of Old English cultural and religious values to the Anglo-Norman world". He was regarded as a saint in his lifetime and was canonised in 1203.Family and early life
Nicholas's date of birth and parents are not known. He was brought up by Wulfstan, who was like a father to him. In his Vita Wulfstani, the twelfth-century historian William of Malmesbury wrote: "On his English side, Nicholas was of exalted descent. His parents paid the holy man high respect, and won his friendship by the many services they did him. Wulfstan baptised Nicholas as a child, gave him a fine education in letters, and kept him continually at his side when he was old enough." Mason suggests that William may not have named Nicholas's father out of discretion, because he was a member of a leading dynasty in the regime before the Norman Conquest. She argues that his most likely father was King Harold Godwinson, who was a close friend of Wulfstan and supported his election as bishop. According to William of Malmesbury, Harold "had a particular liking for Wulfstan, to such a degree that in the course of a journey he was ready to go thirty miles out of his way to remove, by a talk with Wulfstan, the load of anxieties oppressing him". Wulfstan was loyal to kings from Edward the Confessor to William II, but Harold was the only king whose devotion to Wulfstan was emphasised by William of Malmesbury. Mason suggests that Nicholas was Harold's son by Ealdgyth, who married Harold in or after 1063. She was a daughter of Ælfgar, Earl of Mercia, a member of the other great dynasty of the period. After 1066, the Godwin properties were forfeit and members of the family had poor secular prospects, so life as a Benedictine monk was a much better alternative.The historian Eadmer, who was a friend of Nicholas, mentions as one of his sources for his Life of Dunstan, an Æthelred who was sub-prior of Canterbury and later a dignitary of the Worcester church. In 1928 the scholar Reginald Darlington suggested that Æthelred and Nicholas were the same man. Mason gave a detailed defence of the theory in 1990: Nicholas was not an Anglo-Saxon name, but by the late eleventh century it was becoming common for recruits to monastic life to be given a new name in religion, and he may have been named after Pope Nicholas II, whose refusal to allow York and Worcester to be held in plurality paved the way for Wulfstan's appointment. The identification of Nicholas with Æthelred is also accepted by the medievalists Ann Williams and Patrick Wormald, but the theory is disputed by the historian of religion David Knowles because Eadmer stated that Æthelred had earlier served for a long time under Bishop Æthelric of Selsey, who died in 1038, and Nicholas would have been too young for the association with Æthelric and a senior position at Canterbury.
In his Vita Wulfstani, William of Malmesbury describes an incident that illustrates Wulfstan's affection for Nicholas. On one occasion when he was stroking the young man's head, Nicholas jokingly thanked Wulfstan for trying to save his hair, which was receding. Wulfstan replied that he would not go bald so long as Wulfstan lived. Nicholas lost his remaining hair around the time that Wulfstan died, and Mason comments that whereas the modern reader would see progressive baldness, the twelfth century saw the success of a minor prophecy.
Life
Monk
Nicholas was a devoted disciple of Wulfstan, and was described by William of Malmesbury as "his revered pupil", and "his particular favourite among his pupils". To complete Nicholas's training, Wulfstan sent him off to Lanfranc, the Archbishop of Canterbury between 1070 and 1089. The usual way of spreading reforms among monasteries was to invite them to send a young monk to the originating house to learn the new customs. Nicholas probably brought back parts of Lanfranc's Monastic Constitutions, which regulated the daily routine of Canterbury monks. One of the changes in religious observance at Worcester was the introduction of the feasts of the Blessed Virgin, and Nicholas may have brought them from Canterbury.The historians Emma Mason and Julia Barrow suggest that Nicholas was probably involved in the production of the fraudulent Altitonantis, which purported to be a contemporary record of the establishment of monasticism at Worcester by Oswald in the 960s. The Altitonantis is connected with a letter by Nicholas about the parentage of King Edward the Martyr, as both documents incorrectly state that his father King Edgar vanquished the King of Dublin and both describe it by the same word, subiugare. Mason wrote that: "Nicholas, in his later years, wrote persuasively in defence of the interests of his monastic community, and was fully aware of the importance of preserving documentation to support his case".
In Mason's view, Wulfstan probably authorised the production of Altitonantis in order to support legal claims by the monastic community for which they had no genuine documentary evidence. In that period, forgery by monks in defence of the church was regarded as acceptable. The monks of Canterbury carried out a programme of forgery in the 1070s purporting to show that privileges claimed for the archbishopric had an ancient origin, and Mason comments that Nicholas may have brought back from his stay there "innovative, not to say imaginative, techniques in the drafting of charters". On the other hand, Barrow dates Altitonantis to the episcopacy of Wulfstan's non-monastic successor, Samson, who replaced the monks of Westbury Priory with secular canons, probably making the Worcester priory monks fear the same fate. Worcester had only become solely monastic after Oswald's death, but the Altitonantis claimed that he had driven out the secular clerics, justifying Worcester's exclusively monastic status by bringing its history in line with the expulsion of secular clergy from Winchester Cathedral in 964.
Prior
Nicholas later became prior of Worcester, its head under the bishop. Prior Thomas died in October 1113 and no other prior is known before August 1116, when Nicholas is recorded as holding the office. The historian Richard Southern dates Nicholas's appointment to 1113, and this date has been widely accepted by other scholars. However, William of Malmesbury stated that Nicholas was appointed prior by Bishop Theulf. Bishop Samson of Worcester had died on 5 May 1112, and King Henry I nominated Theulf as his successor on 28 December 1113, but as the archbishopric of Canterbury was then vacant he was not consecrated until 27 June 1115, when Archbishop Ralph d'Escures received his pallium from Rome and was thus empowered to perform the ceremony. The scholars Michael Winterbottom and Rodney Thomson date Theulf's tenure as 1115 to 1123, and Nicholas's appointment to c. 1116.According to William of Malmesbury, Bishop Theulf later turned against Nicholas. William wrote:
Wulfstan's long survival after the Norman Conquest allowed him to inculcate the values of English monasticism into the first wave of French monks in Worcester, and his work was carried on by Nicholas during his time as prior. The Monastic Constitutions gave considerable independent power to the prior, and William of Malmesbury wrote that, as prior, Nicholas "in a short period gave many proofs of his hard work. And, something I think particularly to his credit, he so inculcated letters into the occupants of the place, by both teaching and example, that, though they may be inferior in numbers, they are not surpassed in zeal for study by the highest churches of England." Mason comments: "The sensitive disciple glimpsed in the Life of Wulfstan matured into an effective prior. Given the prejudice against Englishmen in high office by the twelfth century, it is a reflection of the impact which Wulfstan himself had upon the chapter that his protégé could succeed to this office in the second decade of the reign of Henry I." Eadmer complained about this prejudice, stating that English nationality debarred a man from achieving high office in the church, however worthy he was.
Manuscript production in most of England declined sharply immediately after the Conquest and revived at the end of the century, but Worcester was an exception to this pattern. There was no post-Conquest decline, but the choice of books was conservative and most were written in Old English. Production declined between around 1090 and 1110, but it revived thereafter and by the time of Nicholas's priorship it had returned to its previous level. There appears to have been a complete turnover in scribes, as no hand in late eleventh-century manuscripts is found in early twelfth-century ones. The twelfth-century revival saw almost all books in Latin and integration into the contemporary literary culture.