ABSTRACT
The history of clergy exercising military command in Britain begins in ad 429, with a story in Constantius’s Vita S. Germani,1 which Bede absorbed into the Ecclesiastical History.2 When the Saxons and Picts marched against them, the Britons took St Germanus of Auxerre as their leader. Dripping from baptism, the Britons gave three shouts of ‘Alleluia’. Terrified by the sound, which echoed off the surrounding hills, the Saxons and Picts fled without bloodshed.3 Constantius and Bede heavily stressed the religious character of these events, but even in this portrayal of a bloodless victory, Germanus nominated himself as leader, picked the soldiers, led them to defensible ground, carried their banner himself and had them await their enemies in ambush. Whether weapons were ever used (and the story does acknowledge that the Britons carried them), Germanus provided the first example of a bishop acting as a military commander in England, even before the mission of Augustine.4 It is only in the ninth century, however, with the expansion of the monarchy of Wessex, and its wars of resistance against the Norse and slow conquest of the rest of England, that we can begin to explore the involvement of English clergy in military activity. Even then, the great bulk of the narrative material does not allow us to produce coherent pictures of sustained military campaigns. Instead, fighting clergy come into the historical record for a particular moment, a key incident deemed worthy of attention by an author such as a battle, a siege or the death of the cleric in question. Until the latter half of the twelfth century, therefore, and especially in the Anglo-Saxon period, this discussion is necessarily episodic.
