The ecclesia Anglicana goes to war: prayers, propaganda, and conquest during the reign of Edward I of England, 1272-1307.

It is widely accepted by scholars that the Hundred Years' War, in general, and the reign of King Edward III of England (1327-1377), in particular, witnessed a crucial stage in the development of state sponsored propaganda efforts to mobilize the nation for war. (1) Edward III's government made particularly skillful use of the church to disseminate the justifications for the king's wars in France and against the Scots. The royal government also used church leaders on a regular and continuing basis to organize a spectrum of religious rites and ceremonies encompassing the largest possible sections of the English population, including the laity and clergy, to seek divine intervention on behalf of English troops serving in the field. These religious rites included prayers, penitential and thanksgiving processions, intercessory masses, vigils, almsgiving, and fasting. (2)

The administrative structure that made possible the dissemination of royal propaganda and the organization of this wide spectrum of religious observances was the hierarchical church itself. (3) Edward III's government regularly issued writs to English bishops, especially the archbishops of Canterbury and York, abbots, as well as the heads of the Dominican and Franciscan orders in England, which provided these church leaders with royally approved accounts of important current events. This information was then passed down the ecclesiastical chain of authority through cathedral deans and archdeacons and from there to the parish priests who were responsible for passing on this information to the English people in the form of sermons and other communications. Royal orders for public religious celebrations, including, on occasion, instructions for specific types of liturgies, prayers, processions, and other rites, traversed the same path from archbishops, to bishops and abbots, on to archdeacons, and then to the most local level of parish priests and vicars. The evidence for the royal government's systematic employment of the English church is to be found in numerous surviving copies of royal writs as well as archiepiscopal orders recorded in bishops' registers throughout Edward III's reign. (4)

Edward III clearly benefited from a well organized and sophisticated military-religious administration. But was this a fourteenth-century creation? This study argues that, in fact, the origins of Edward III's church-based propaganda efforts and his mobilization of religious rites on behalf of the army go back half a century to the reign of his grandfather Edward I (1272-1307). (5) It will be shown here that it was the reign of Edward I and not the reign of Edward III that saw the first fully developed military-religious administration for the mobilization of the English church on behalf of royal government's efforts to wage war. (6) It is therefore the burden of this study to show how the English church disseminated royal propaganda for war and organized intercessory religious rites on behalf of English soldiers during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century.

King Edward I of England was honored in his own day and by subsequent generations as one of the leading military commanders of Europe for his conquest of Wales and Scotland, and for his defense of Gascony against the French onslaught under King Philip IV (1285-1314). (7) Underpinning these successes was Edward's intelligent mobilization and utilization of the resources of his kingdom for carefully considered and planned campaigns. The purely military side of Edward's wars has been examined in detail by numerous scholars. (8) As indicated above, however, the religious elements of Edward's military policy largely have been ignored. (9)

As is true of the mid-to-late fourteenth century and the reign of Edward III, the most important sources for identifying the administrative system that made possible the dissemination of royal propaganda and the organization of religious rites, are surviving royal writs and the letters of English archbishops and bishops that were recorded in episcopal registers, and in other ecclesiastical documentary collections such as collegiate chapter books. (10) Additional administrative evidence can be gleaned from the internal memoranda of the government writing office, that is the chancery. (11) Finally, some corroborative evidence for the effectiveness of the administrative efforts of the Crown and church to disseminate information and organize religious rites is provided by contemporary chroniclers.

During Edward I's reign, the royal government regularly made use of the sophisticated administrative apparatus of the church reaching from the archbishops of York and Canterbury down to the parish level, not excluding either the great monastic houses of England or the Dominican and Franciscan orders, to explain and justify royal military policy to the nation as a whole. The government used two methods to mobilize the administrative resources of the church, both of which relied heavily on the English episcopate. The first and more common method was to order the chancery to issue a royal writ to the archbishops of Canterbury and York requiring these two leading prelates of England to issue orders to all of the bishops, monasteries, and other ecclesiastical jurisdictions within their archdiocese to carry out the royal will regarding the dissemination of information, that is royal propaganda, and the organization of religious rites on behalf of soldiers in the field. The second method was to issue this same information and orders to all of the leading ecclesiastical officers of the kingdom in the form of a circular writ, thereby bypassing the archbishops. This study will deal with both of these administrative procedures in turn.

In considering the first and more common method, there is a paradigmatic example in the royal writ issued to Archbishop Robert Winchelsey of Canterbury in August 1297. This text informed the archbishop that King Philip of France had broken a truce negotiated between the English and French forces in Gascony by the bishops of Albano Laziale and Prenestini, then acting as papal legates. (12) The royal writ emphasized that despite the king's own desire for peace Edward had been compelled with sadness (cum dolore) take up the fight against one who had "attacked and hostilely assaulted our friends and allies." (13) In order to support this military effort, the king required that, "you pour out devoted prayers to the Highest in your own cathedral and that you have this done in all of the churches that are under your jurisdiction and subject to you." (14) As is typical of these documents, the royal writ coupled the demand for prayers to be organized throughout the archdiocese with a brief synopsis of the royal position regarding the renewal of hostilities, namely ...