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| A contemporary imitation of a coin of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenus (1081–1118), mint of Constantinople, found at South Shields, Tyne and Wear. Click here for a larger version of this photograph. Note, an imperial seal of Alexios I Komnenus has been also been found in England, just a few miles to the north-west of Lincoln at Torksey (image: PAS). |
The sole reference to Wulfric of Lincoln and his early twelfth-century embassy on behalf of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenus is found in The History of the Church of Abingdon, a twelfth-century history thought to have been written by a monk of Abingdon Abbey who was apparently a contemporary of Abbot Faritius of Abingdon (d. 1117), with the text reaching its final form in the 1160s. He gives the following account of the embassy of Wulfric of Lincoln to England and Wulfric's subsequent visit to Abingdon and gift of a relic of St John Chrysostom to Abbot Faritius in the early twelfth century:
It is worthwhile, moreover, to record briefly how he obtained that very sacred arm [of St John Chrysostom]. Emperor Alexius of Constantinople at that time sent to England letters and gifts for King Henry and Queen Matilda. In that embassy, Wulfric, an Englishman by birth, native of the town of Lincoln, performed with great pomp, as befitted the guide of such dignity [i.e. the relic]. He was very bold in his close relations with that emperor, and sought and received from him these relics of the blessed John, with a view to the uplifting of his homeland. He went to Abingdon to commend himself to the brethren's prayers, and there most devoutly deposited these relics, together with the dust which is said to have marvellously burst forth from the tomb of St John the Evangelist, and a part of the bones of Macarius and Anthony the abbots. The abbot, moreover, received this and enshrined it fittingly in the way customary with him.(1)Unfortunately, we are unable to date the event any closer than c. 1100–1117, but it seems likely that the gifts sent by Emperor Alexios to King Henry I and Queen Matilda included a piece of the True Cross that was subsequently kept at Henry I's foundation of Reading, as it was said to be kept 'in a cloth that the emperor of Constantinople sent to Henry the first, king of the English', and another piece given by Queen Matilda to her foundation of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, which was likewise said to have been given by the emperor Alexios.(2)
Needless to say, the fact that the first documented ambassador from the imperial capital of Constantinople to England was stated to be a native of Lincoln and bore the Old English name Wulfric is most intriguing. Given the date of the embassy and the name and origins of the ambassador, it is hard to avoid connecting this curious situation with the evidence for a significant Anglo-Saxon emigration from England to the Byzantine Empire in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest (occurring c. 1075), discussed at length in a previous post, or the fact that a substantial proportion of the imperial Varangian Guard—the personal bodyguard of the Byzantine emperor—at Constantinople subsequently appears to be of English origin right through the twelfth century and up until the siege of Constantinople in 1204, if not beyond.(3) Indeed, as late as the mid-fourteenth-century, the De Officiis of Pseudo-Kodinus related that the Varangians who existed then still constituted a separate people and that, at Christmas, they wished the emperor length of life 'in their native tongue, that is, English'.(4)
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| A gold coin of the Byzantine emperor Michael VII Doukas (1071–8), in whose reign the English Varangians are thought to have arrived in Constantinople, found at Hambleton, North Yorkshire; the coin has been pierced for suspension and the placing of the hole implies that it was intended to be worn displaying the image of the emperor. Click here for a larger version of this photograph (image: PAS). |
In light of all this, Wulfric of Lincoln would certainly seem to have a credible context within the Constantinople of c. 1100. Moreover, he wouldn't be the only such post-1066 Anglo-Saxon emigrant who took on important imperial duties in this period. For example, the 'Advices to the Emperor' in Kekaumenos's Strategikon, which was written in the late 1070s and then revised up to c. 1100, complains of the emperor favouring 'the foreigner who has come to us from England' and 'making him head of a department of state or general'.(5) Likewise, the account of a visit to Constantinople in c. 1090 by a monk named Joseph from Canterbury who encountered 'men from his own homeland (patria) and his own friends, who were part of the emperor’s household (ex familia imperatoris)'(6), is clearly noteworthy, as is Goscelin of Canterbury's (d. c. 1100) contemporary reference to an unnamed 'honourable man' from England who,
along with many noble exiles from the fatherland, migrated to Constantinople; he obtained such favour with the Emperor and Empress as well as with other powerful men as to receive command over prominent troops and over a great number of companions... He married a noble and wealthy woman, and remembering the gifts of God, built, close to his own home, a basilica in honour of the Blessed Nicholas and Saint Augustine, his patron.(7)Finally, mention ought to be made of Hardigt, who is said to have been a member of the 'Oriental Angli' who was made both chief of the Varangian Guard and commander of the imperial fleet in the Laon Chronicle's thirteenth-century account of the Anglo-Saxon emigrants:
the Oriental Angli sent a man called Hardigt to the Emperor. He was reputed to be the strongest of all the Angli, for which reason he was suspect to the Greeks, who cunningly let loose a lion to devour him. Hardigt was alone in the courtyard of the palace. But he ran to the marble columns that stood in the atrium of the palace to use them as protection against the lion. Then (by a series of adroit manoeuvres) he succeeded in braining the lion by bashing its head on a column. This Hardigt of the race of the Angli was later wrongfully accused of treason by two Greeks, but he defended his innocence against them in a flight on foot, brave though they were. One of them he forced to the ground with his arm severed from his side; the other he fell upon and split him in two from his chest. The Emperor appointed this man leader of all his guards and not long afterwards made him commander of the naval forces.(8)This specific element of the Laon Chronicle's account has been subject to some scepticism, but it is worth noting that Krijnie Ciggaar considers Hardigt to be a potentially genuine English emigrant who perhaps gained these roles in the later 1080s and 1090s, and Nancy Ševčenko furthermore observes that the seemingly slightly fanciful detail of the lions is arguably supported by a subsequent release of both lions and leopards to attack Lombard Crusaders camped outside the walls of Constantinople in 1101.(9) In any case, even setting Hardigt to one side, it seems clear that Wulfric of Lincoln's role as the Byzantine Emperor's ambassador to Norman England not only has a context in terms of the arrival of Anglo-Saxon emigrants in the Byzantine Empire after c. 1075, but also in the evidence for a number of these English exiles apparently fairly rapidly attaining important positions within the imperial household and the wider Byzantine state during the late eleventh century.
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| The distribution of eleventh- to twelfth-century Byzantine coins and seals in Britain, based on data from the PAS, the EMC, De Jersey 1996, Biddle 2012 and Kelleher 2012; click here for a larger version of this map. Note the two major concentrations of coins and seals shown on this map represent the finds from Winchester and London (image: C. R. Green). |
Notes
1. J. Hudson (ed. & trans.), Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis: The History of the Church of Abingdon, Volume II (Oxford, 2002), p. 69.
2. R. Bartlett, England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings: 1075–1225 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 108–09.
3. See, for example, K. N. Ciggaar, 'L'émigration anglaise à Byzance après 1066. Un nouveau texte en latin sur les Varangues à Constantinople', Revue des études byzantines Année, 32 (1974), 301–42; C. Fell, 'The Icelandic saga of Edward the Confessor: its version of the Anglo-Saxon emigration to Byzantium', Anglo-Saxon England, 3 (1974), 179–96; J. Shepard, 'The English and Byzantium: a study of their role in the Byzantine army in the later eleventh century', Traditio, 29 (1973), 53–92; J. Godfrey, 'The defeated Anglo-Saxons take service with the Byzantine Emperor', Anglo-Norman Studies, 1 (1979), 63–74; K. N. Ciggaar, Western Travellers to Constantinople: The West and Byzantium, 962–1204 (Leiden, 1996), pp. 140–1, 144, 146, 158–9. The connection between Wulfric of Lincoln and the English Varangians was first made by E. A. Freeman in his History of the Norman Conquest of England, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1876), vol. 4, pp. 847–8.
4. S. Blöndal & B. S. Benedikz, The Varangians of Byzantium (Cambridge, 1978), p. 180; J. Shepard, 'Another New England? — Anglo-Saxon settlement on the Black Sea', Byzantine Studies, 1 (1978), 18–39 at p. 39; D. M. Nicol, 'Byzantium and England', Balkan Studies, 15 (1974), 179–203 at p. 192.
5. C. Fell, 'The Icelandic saga of Edward the Confessor: its version of the Anglo-Saxon emigration to Byzantium', Anglo-Saxon England, 3 (1974), 179–96 at p. 193; A. Shchavelev, 'A seal of Byzantine "Translator of the English" Patrikios Sphen: its date and socio-cultural context', in H. Ivakin et al (eds.), Byzantine and Rus' Seals (Kyiv, 2015), pp. 193–200 at pp. 196–8; J. Shepard, 'The English and Byzantium: a study of their role in the Byzantine army in the later eleventh century', Traditio, 29 (1973), 53–92 at p. 64.
6. C. West, 'Constantinople, Jerusalem and Canterbury: Joseph the monk and the Norman Conquest', blog post, 18 September 2017, online at http://turbulentpriests.group.shef.ac.uk/constantinople-jerusalem-and-canterbury-joseph-the-monk-and-the-norman-conquest/; J. Shepard, 'The English and Byzantium: a study of their role in the Byzantine army in the later eleventh century', Traditio, 29 (1973), 53–92 at p. 91.
7. Translated in D. M. Nicol, 'Byzantium and England', Balkan Studies, 15 (1974), 179–203 at p. 190. His name may have been Coleman, as the thirteenth-century Laon Chronicle account of the Anglo-Saxon emigrants mentions a man of that name who built a church in Constantinople; the church in question is often thought to be that of Bogdan Serai, especially in light of the apparent survival of grave-markers belonging to English Varangians there until the nineteenth century: K. N. Ciggaar, 'L'émigration anglaise à Byzance après 1066. Un nouveau texte en latin sur les Varangues à Constantinople', Revue des études byzantines Année, 32 (1974), 301–42 at pp. 313 and 328; C. Fell, 'The Icelandic saga of Edward the Confessor: its version of the Anglo-Saxon emigration to Byzantium', Anglo-Saxon England, 3 (1974), 179–96 at p. 196; R. Byron, The Byzantine Achievement (London, 1929), p. 147 fn. 1.
8. D. M. Nicol, 'Byzantium and England', Balkan Studies, 15 (1974), 179–203 at p. 187 (translation); K. N. Ciggaar, 'L'émigration anglaise à Byzance après 1066. Un nouveau texte en latin sur les Varangues à Constantinople', Revue des études byzantines Année, 32 (1974), 301–42 at pp. 305, 323 (text, lines 95–109) and 337–8 (commentary).
9. K. N. Ciggaar, 'L'émigration anglaise à Byzance après 1066. Un nouveau texte en latin sur les Varangues à Constantinople', Revue des études byzantines Année, 32 (1974), 301–42 at pp. 305 and 337–8; K. N. Ciggaar, Western Travellers to Constantinople: The West and Byzantium, 962–1204 (Leiden, 1996), p. 141; N. P. Ševčenko, 'Wild animals in the Byzantine park', in A. Littlewood et al (eds.), Byzantine Garden Culture (Washington, D. C., 2002), pp. 69–86 at p. 79. For a contrasting view, see C. Fell, 'The Icelandic saga of Edward the Confessor: its version of the Anglo-Saxon emigration to Byzantium', Anglo-Saxon England, 3 (1974), 179–96 at pp. 186–8, who considers him to be a mistaken insertion of the deeds of Harald Hardrada into the Laon Chronicle's account of the Anglo-Saxon emigrants.
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