Paris, Saint-Denis

The church of Saint-Denis (Dionysius), near Paris, was founded towards the end of the fifth century.  It enjoyed the patronage of Merovingian kings, etc.  The church of Saint-Denis held an estate of 10 hides at Taynton, Oxfordshire, TRE and TRW (GDB 157r); it also held several vills in Deerhurst Hundred, Gloucestershire, TRW (GDB 166r). 

The ‘Anglo-Saxon’ charters of Saint-Denis fall into two quite distinct groups.  The first comprises a series of four documents (and one associated papal privilege) relating to properties or interests at Rotherfield, Hastings and Pevensey, in Sussex, and in Lundenuuic.  According to S 1186, Ealdorman Berhtwald had visited Saint-Denis to seek a cure for his illness, and on returning to England had built a church in honour of SS Denis, Rusticus and Eleutherius on his ‘ancestral’ estate at Rotherfield; by his charter, dated ‘795’ (in the ‘31st’ year of Offa’s reign (788)), he granted land at Rotherfield, with his ‘ports’ at Hastings and Pevensey, to the monks of Saint-Denis.  S 133 is a charter, dated 790, by which King Offa confirmed a grant of land in the port of ‘Lundenuuic’ made to the abbey by two brothers called ‘Agonauuala’ and ‘Sigrinus’, at the same time adding a grant of the proceeds of unspecified taxes, and confirming the abbey’s title to the lands given by Ealdorman Berhtwald.  S 318 is a charter by which King Æthelwulf confirmed the grants of land at Rotherfield, Hastings, Pevensey, and Lundenuuic, apparently in 857 (related to a privilege for the English possessions of the abbey issued in the name of Pope Benedict III (855-8)).  And S 686 is a charter of King Edgar, dated 960, restoring to the abbey certain goods which had been appropriated by the reeve ‘Togred’ from the estates at Rotherfield, Hastings and Pevensey. 

The second group comprises S 1105, a writ of King Edward the Confessor announcing his grant of land at Taynton, in Oxfordshire, to Saint-Denis (and authorizing Bishop Wulfwig to draw up a charter to the required effect), and S 1028, which is the charter itself, dated 1059.

The charters in the first group were dismissed by Stevenson (‘The Old English Charters to St. Denis’) as ‘later French forgeries’; but there is much to recommend the more charitable view of their status adopted by Atsma and Vezin, ‘Le dossier suspect des possessions de Saint-Denis en Angleterre revisité (VIIIe-IXe siècles)’.  That is to say, while there could be no question of accepting the charters in their received form as the products of English draftsmen or scribes, there is reason to believe that they may represent the adaptation at Saint-Denis of some genuine pre-Conquest documentation pertaining to the estates and interests in question.  It is the case, for example, that the church at Rotherfield is dedicated to St Denis.  A monk of Saint-Denis could not have invented all of the names and details which the charters contain; and (as Stevenson himself observed) the charters appear to represent interests in England which pre-date the position at the time of the Domesday survey.  All four charters existed in the seventeenth century in their ‘original’ (single-sheet) form, sealed en placard as if to make them the more acceptable to the community of Saint-Denis.  The ‘originals’ of S 133 and 686 still survive (reproduced by Atsma and Vezin): they were probably produced in the second half of the eleventh century; and it may be significant that the names of the witnesses in S 133 are written in script imitative of Insular minuscule.  The four charters were copied c. 1200 in a vidimus charter of Stephen, bishop of Noyon, and Robert, abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (Paris, Archives nationales, L 844 no. 2); the texts entered in the thirteenth-century ‘Book of Privileges of Saint-Denis’ (Paris, Archives nationales, LL 1156), and in the early-fourteenth-century ‘White Cartulary of Saint-Denis’ (Paris, Archives nationales, LL 1158), were apparently derived from the vidimus charter (Atsma and Vezin, pp. 221 and 234).  Copies of S 133 and 318, derived from the ‘originals’ in the archives of Saint-Denis, appear to have brought to England in 1606 by the French antiquary, Nicholas Fabri de Peiresc; see BL Harley 66, 91v, 104v and 119r, and above, p. 000.

The abbey of Saint-Denis acquired its interests at Taynton, Oxfordshire, and at Deerhurst, Gloucestershire, through the good offices of Baldwin, a monk of Saint-Denis who had served King Edward as his physician and who was appointed abbot of Bury St Edmunds in 1065.  The writ and diploma of Edward the Confessor relating to the gift of Taynton to Saint-Denis survive in their original form (Paris, Archives nationales, Cartons des rois, AE III 60), and constitute evidence of the utmost importance for the production of royal documents in the eleventh century; see Harmer, Writs, pp. 243-5, Bishop and Chaplais no. 20, and BAFacs. nos. 20-1 (with discussion of Baldwin’s involvement).  A seal, originally attached to the writ and subsequently transferred to the diploma, was the best of the surviving impresions of the genuine ‘First Seal’ of Edward the Confessor; unfortunately, the seal appears to have been mislaid.  In 1069 King William and Queen Matilda gave the church at Deerhurst, in Gloucestershire, with its appurtenances, to Saint-Denis, and confirmed Edward’s grant of Taynton (Regesta i. 26, also preserved in its original form).  According to this charter, the church at Deerhust had previously been given by Edward the Confessor ‘for his own proper use to our faithful Baldwin, monk of Saint-Denis’, before he was appointed abbot of Bury St Edmunds.  It is apparent, therefore, that Baldwin had held the church at Deerhurst TRE, perhaps in some sense as a cell of Saint-Denis; see Harmer, Writs, pp. 292-4 and 540.

Charters of Saint-Denis

Royal diplomas.  133; 318; 686; 1028.

Writ.  1105.

Miscellaneous.  1186.

Select bibliography

Mon. Angl. ii. 964-5; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) vi. 1077-8.  For Deerhurst priory, see Mon. Angl. i. 547-9, and Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) iv. 664-7.

Atsma, H., and J. Vezin, ‘Le dossier suspect des possessions de Saint-Denis en Angleterre revisité (VIIIe-IXe siècles)’, Fälschungen im Mittelalter, IV: Diplomatische Fälschungen (II), MGH Schriften 33.4 (Hanover, 1988), pp. 211-36.  Crosby, S. M., The Abbey of Saint Denis, 475-1122 (Yale, 1942).  Harmer, Writs, pp. 243-5.  Stevenson, W. H., ‘The Old English Charters to St. Denis’, English Historical Review vi (1891), pp. 736-42.

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