Thurstan

Thurstan or Turstin († February 6, 1140 ) was Archbishop of York from 1114 or 1119 to 1140. He was the son of a certain Anger or Auger, benefactor of St Paul's Cathedral in London , and a brother of Audoin († 1139), Bishop of Evreux .

He was also the benefactor of St Paul's, and also a clerk in the service of the English kings William II and Henry I. The latter obtained Thurstan's election as Archbishop of York in 1114 .

He got into a big argument that occupied him for much of his tenure and even forced him out of the country for a few years. The Archbishop of Canterbury , Ralph d'Escures , refused to ordain him until Thurstan submitted to him. Thurstan refused and asked the king for permission to travel to Rome to consult with Pope Paschal II . Heinrich I forbade him to travel, Paschalis II again opposed Archbishop Ralph. At the Synod of Salisbury (1116), King Thurstan ordered Thurstan to submit, who instead resigned from office without actually taking effect.

Paschal's successors, Pope Gelasius II and Kalixt II, supported the position of the headstrong Thurstan, who was consecrated by Kalixt II in Reims in October 1119 without obeying Henry I's orders. Thereupon the king forbade him to return to England, whereupon Thurstan remained in the entourage of the Pope. Later, his friends succeeded in reconciling him and Henry I so that Thurstan, after serving the king in Normandy , could return to England in early 1121.

A major weakness of the Archdiocese of York was the lack of suffragan dioceses . Thurstan tried to remedy this weakness, and at least achieved the establishment of the Whithorn diocese ; it is possible that he made arrangements with Fergus of Galloway to found more suffragan dioceses, which would also have increased the prestige of the Kingdom of Galloway . The founding provoked countermeasures by the Scottish Bishop Wimund , at whose expense the new diocese went, but who ultimately had to accept its existence.

Since Thurstan did not recognize William of Corbeil , the new Archbishop of Canterbury, as his superior, he did not take part in his ordination. Both archbishops later presented their complaints twice in Rome.

In 1138 he brokered an armistice between England and Scotland in Roxburgh , and took an active part in the exhibition of the army that defeated the Scots in the standard battle on August 22nd . At the beginning of 1140 he entered the Cluniac Monastery of Pontefract , where he died on February 6th.

literature

• James Raine (Ed.): Fasti eboracenses , 1863.

predecessor	Office	successor
Thomas II	Archbishop of York 1119–1140	William FizHerbert