Walter of Suffield

Walter of Suffield (also Walter of Calthorpe ) († May 19, 1257 in Colchester ) was an English clergyman. From 1244 he was Bishop of Norwich .

Origin and promotion to bishop

Walter Suffield probably came from Calthorpe , which is near Suffield in Norfolk and where he got his nickname from. Presumably he studied at Oxford before continuing his studies in Paris. There he graduated as a doctor of canon law . He then taught as a lecturer in Paris. At the latest in 1240 he returned to England, where he ruled as a commissioned papal judge in a canon law case in Suffolk . After King Henry III. after a long dispute had agreed that William Raleigh would move as bishop of Norwich to Winchester , Suffield was elected in 1244 as the new bishop of the Diocese of Norwich . On July 9, 1244, the king confirmed the election and on July 17 gave him the diocesan temporalities . On February 26, 1245, Suffield was ordained bishop in Norwich .

Bishop of Norwich

Political activity

In the summer of 1245 Suffield attended the first council of Lyons . On October 13, 1247, he preached in Westminster Abbey on the occasion of the transfer of the Holy Blood relic that the King had received from Robert of Nantes , the Patriarch of Jerusalem. In February 1248 he attended a parliamentary assembly in London, and in October 1248 the king granted him his protection so that he could make a pilgrimage to Saint-Gilles in southern France. During this pilgrimage he also visited the papal court. There he received a papal privilege, which probably confirmed that Norwich was the only English diocese to receive additional income from vacant parishes. Suffield, along with the other suffragan bishops of Canterbury ecclesiastical province , protested in 1251 when Archbishop Boniface of Canterbury claimed the right to make a visitation of the clergy in his ecclesiastical province. In January 1252, Suffield was one of the mediators in the dispute between the king and Simon de Montfort over the reimbursement of the costs Montfort had incurred as a lieutenant in Gascony . In 1253 he took part in the great council meeting in Westminster , at which a general threat of excommunication for violations of the freedom of the Church was passed. In late 1253, Suffield was commissioned to estimate the tithing of the ecclesiastical properties that the Pope had granted the king for a crusade. This estimate, known as the Valuation of Norwich , was considered to be very moderate, whereupon the King ordered a new estimate. After violent protests by the clergy, however, he decided not to carry out the new estimate, which is why the Valuation of Norwich was used for renewed surveys of a tithe until 1276.

The cloister of the Suffield-donated Great Hospital in Norwich

Spiritual work

As a clergyman, Suffield was heavily influenced by the two later canonized bishops Edmund of Abingdon and Richard of Wyche , both of whom he admired. He himself was a committed pastor who was also said to have holiness and miracles after his death. During a famine, he sold part of his property to help the starving, and in 1246 he donated St Giles ' Hospital , which still exists today as the Great Hospital in Norwich. Under him the magnificent Lady Chapel was added to the Norwich Cathedral , and he also had a good relationship with the Cathedral Chapter. He added further rules to the diocesan statutes issued by his predecessor, and also issued the first precise rules for mass grants in his diocese. Around 100 documents have been received from his term of office, which, among other things, prove that he conscientiously took care of the filling of the pastoral positions in his diocese. He also ensures that the parish vicars have a secure position with sufficient income. In contrast to his piety was his passion for hunting. In 1253 the king permitted him to hunt in the royal forests of Essex , and in his will he bequeathed his hunting dogs to the king. Suffield was buried in Norwich Cathedral. In his will, he bequeathed funds to poor students at Oxford and to the grave monument of Edmund of Abingdon in Pontigny . He bequeathed his remaining fortune to his nephew William of Calthorpe .

Web links

• Christopher Harper-Bill: Suffield, Walter of (d. 1257). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004

predecessor	Office	successor
William Raleigh	Bishop of Norwich 1244–1257	Simon of Walton