Thomas objects to the description of Anselm as "Metropolitan of Britain." success on behalf of the dignity of his own church. Before the consecrating prelates went on to the examination of the bishop-elect, it was the business of the Bishop of London to read the formal document declaring the cause why they had come together.[1] Bishop Maurice handed over this duty to the Bishop of Winchester. Walkelin began to read how the church of Canterbury, the metropolitan church of all Britain, was widowed of its pastor. The Archbishop of York stopped him; "Metropolitan church of all Britain? Then the church of York, which all men know to be a metropolitan church, is not metropolitan. We all know that the church of Canterbury is the primatial church of all Britain; metropolitan church of all Britain it is not."[2] This was not a distinction without a difference. To allow the claim of Canterbury to be the metropolitan church of all Britain would have been to admit that the church of York was a mere suffragan see of Canterbury. The other form simply asserted the precedency of Canterbury as the higher in rank of the two metropolitan sees of Britain. So Anselm's correspondent at Lyons was Primate of all the Gauls, without endangering the metropolitan rank of Rheims and Rouen. But William the Good Soul would have been stirred to wrath had it been hinted that Lyons was the metropolitan church of all Gaul, and Rouen simply its suffragan. A zealot for
- ↑ Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 21. "Cum ante ordinandi pontificis examinationem Walchelinus Wentanus episcopus, rogatu Mauricii episcopi Lundoniensis cujus hoc officium est, ecclesiastico more electionem scriptam legeret." This is, I suppose, as Dean of the Province, an office still held by the Bishops of London, and by virtue of which they do several of the things which Thomas Stubbs claims for his own metropolitan.
- ↑ Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 21. Walkelin reads the writing till he comes to the words which set forth how "hæc Dorobernensis ecclesia totius Britanniæ metropolitana suo sit viduata pastore." Then Thomas "subintulit, dicens totius Britanniæ metropolitana? Si totius Britanniæ metropolitana, ecclesia Eboracensis quæ metropolitana esse scitur, metropolitana non est. Et quidem ecclesiam Cantuariensem primatem totius Britanniæ esse scimus, non metropolitanam."
