William de Vere

William de Vere (* around 1120 ; † December 24, 1198 in (uncertain :) Hereford ) was an Anglo-Norman clergyman. From 1186 he was Bishop of Hereford . He became known as a promoter of Anglo-Norman literature.

biography

Origin and advancement as a clergyman

William de Vere was a younger, probably the fourth son of Aubrey II. De Vere , the Chamberlain of King Henry I , and his wife Alice de Clare . William grew up at the royal court, where Queen Adelheid , who herself was a patron of French poetry, aroused his interest in Anglo-Norman poetry . As a younger son he was trained as a clergyman and had received at least minor orders when his father died in 1141 . However, like many other high Anglo-Norman clergy of the 12th century, he did not attend a high school.

When during the controversy between King Stephen of Blois and the Empress Matilda , the so-called anarchy , Matilda William's eldest brother Aubrey III de Vere rose to Earl of Oxford, she promised William the office of Chancellor . However, she did not keep this promise. Instead, William entered the household of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, like several other young clergymen . In 1153 William accompanied the archbishop to Colchester , where Matilda's son Heinrich Plantagenet made an agreement with Earl William Warenne , a son of the king. Before 1160, the Archbishop appointed William as his envoy to Heinrich, who had meanwhile become King Henry II. In 1160 William traveled twice to France to give the king advice from the archbishop on the occasion of the controversial election of Pope Alexander III. to deliver.

Canons at Essex and Waltham

Between 1160 and 1162, William was a canon at St Paul's Cathedral in London . However, he gave up this benefice before 1163 in favor of William of Northolt . In addition, William became a regular canon of the Augustinian monastery of St Osyth near Great Bentley in Essex . The Abbey of St Osyth had been particularly encouraged by his mother Alice. Presumably in St Osyth, William wrote a hagiography of St. Osgyth , using as a model another biography of Osgyth, also written in the 12th century. To this end, he supplemented the text with remarks about himself and his family. William's manuscript has not survived, but John Leland wrote a summary in the 16th century. As a canon in Essex, William was apparently not involved in the dispute between the king and Archbishop Thomas Becket or in the conflict between his brother Aubrey de Vere and Bishop Gilbert Foliot of London, which lasted until 1172 .

As atonement for the murder of Becket, King Henry II converted the collegiate church of Waltham into an Augustinian priory. One of the canons with whom this priory was occupied in 1177 was probably William de Vere. Until 1182 he was involved in building the priory.

Journey to the Holy Land

Perhaps as early as 1178 or from 1182 to 1185 William made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land . If he visited the Holy Land in 1178, he probably belonged to the large entourage of his nephew William de Mandeville, 3rd Earl of Essex , who traveled there from 1177 to 1178. In the Holy Land, William met King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and the Latin Patriarch on behalf of Henry II . On the way back he visited Constantinople , where he bought a copy of the Epistole of the Priest King John . In England he had the script translated into Anglo-Norman by a Roanz d'Arundel , possibly Reginald (or Renault ) of Arundel , an official of Archbishop Roger of York .

Bishop of Hereford

In 1185 and 1186 William served as the royal traveling judge, administering justice in numerous counties. Most likely during a council meeting in Oxford , the cathedral chapter of the Diocese of Hereford elected William on May 25, 1186 as the new bishop. The choice was clearly made at the king's behest. William was ordained bishop on August 10 at Lambeth . As a bishop, he continued to serve as a judge. From 1192 to 1194 he was active several times in the western Midlands , in addition he took part in royal and ecclesiastical council meetings quite often. Nevertheless, he was also often in his diocese. Since this bordered on the Welsh principalities , he often received high-ranking guests who traveled to or from Wales. In December 1186, negotiations between the Justiciar Ranulf de Glanville and Lord Rhys , the Welsh Prince of Deheubarth, took place in his bishop's palace . In the spring of 1188 Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury visited him twice in Hereford when he was preaching in Wales for participation in the Third Crusade . According to the account of Gerald of Wales , who was a canon in Wales, William was a generous host. Bishop Peter de Leia of St David's, who was also one of his guests, is said to have called him a parasite.

As bishop, William implemented several innovations in the administration of his diocese. His officials drew up model certificates to confirm benefits and other rights. The permits with which monasteries were granted income from parish churches were also standardized. William made sure that the clergy who took on the pastoral care in the parishes received a regular income. In 1195 he converted the rights of the monastery of Cormeilles in Normandy to three churches and a chapel in his diocese into a benefice at Hereford Cathedral , so that the monks of the monastery could manage their rights more easily. His cathedral chapter also benefited from this, because the Abbot of Cormeilles, who was an honorary member of the chapter, was allowed to appoint a vicar as his representative. William himself made several donations to the cathedral chapter. Most of the canons he appointed during his tenure had received theological training and were designated as Masters . Among the best known of them was Gerald of Wales' friend, the poet Simund de Freine . At the suggestion of Gerald of Wales, the future Bishop Robert Grosseteste came into Williams's household around 1195 , where he was not yet important.

Even as a bishop, William continued to be interested in the development of St Osyth's monastery and Waltham, elevated to the status of an abbey in 1184. He donated real estate to St Osyth in London, and on March 13, 1188, he visited Waltham Abbey, where he consecrated a chapel dedicated to the canonized Thomas Becket. He also gave Waltham a relic of St. Osgyth. For Hereford Cathedral he had a magnificent reliquary made in Limoges with a relic of Thomas Becket.

Promoter of poetry and literature

In the 1180s Herefordshire was a center of Anglo-Norman poetry. Williams' predecessor Robert Foliot had already provided the writer Walter Map with a benefice at the cathedral. The poet Hue de Rotelande lived in Credenhill near Hereford . William also apparently sponsored Simund de Freine, who wrote poetry in both Anglo-Norman and Latin. He wrote a life story of St. George , which also glorified the idea of ​​the crusade. It is possible that William himself brought templates from Lydda from his trip to the Holy Land . At the request of the canons of Hereford Cathedral, Gerald of Wales wrote a life story of Saint Æthelberht , one of the patrons of the cathedral, around 1195 . This work was probably sponsored by William. The introduction of the feast day of St. Osgyth in Hereford certainly went back to William, as did the commission to an unknown author to write a new life story for Osgyth. In this hagiography, written in Anglo-Norman, the saint performs a miracle on a woman from Hereford. To this end, William commissioned the Augustinian canon Guy of Southwick to write a manual on faith and repentance for the clergy in his diocese.

William probably died in Hereford on Christmas Eve 1198. He was buried in the cathedral, where a funerary monument made at the end of the 13th century commemorates him.

literature

• Julia Barrow: A twelfth-century bishop and literary patron: William de Vere. In: Viator, 18 (1987), pp. 175-189.

Web links

• Julia Barrow: Vere, William de (d. 1198). 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
Robert Foliot	Bishop of Hereford 1186–1198	Giles de Braose