Guy (bishop of Amiens)

Guy (died 1075) was the bishop of Amiens in the north-east of France and a Latin poet. He composed the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, a celebration of the Norman victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

Life

Born in 1058, Guy was the son of Enguerrand I, Count of Ponthieu.[1][2] He was educated for a career in the church at the abbey of St Riquier and was one of its most brilliant students.[3] His teacher was abbot Enguerrand, called "the wise".[3] Guy was an archdeacon by 1045.[4] As the trusted representative of Bishop Fulk II, he was sent in 1049 to the papal curia to place charges against the abbot of Corbie.[4] "His predecessor to the episcopate of Amiens, Bishop Fulk II, was caught up in the emerging struggle between the secular clergy, dominated by the political contentions of the great feudal families, and the reforming popes, with their bias in favour of monastic houses, which they often rendered exempt from episcopal jurisdiction." Guy succeeded Fulk II as bishop of Amiens in 1058.[4] On May 23, 1059, Bishop Guy went to Reims to witness the crowning of Philip I of France alongside his nephew, Guy I, Count of Ponthieu.[4] When Guy became bishop of Amiens he inherited the ecclesisatical struggles of his predecessor with the abbey of Corbie; this eventually resulted in Guy being suspended by Pope Alexander II from his duties as bishop.[5]

He was in this state of papal disfavour at the time of the Norman Conquest. This may have been the (contributing) reason why bishop Guy composed the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio ("Song of the Battle of Hastings"), as an effort to flatter the new Norman king of England, William I, who was then in very high favor with the pope. But if so, bishop Guy's poem failed in its purpose. He was highly enough thought of at the Norman court to be assigned as Matilda of Flanders's chaplain when she went over to England for her coronation in 1068. But when bishop Guy died in 1075, he still had not regained his bishopric.[5]

References

  1. ^ Barlow 1999, p. xlii, xliv.
  2. ^ Tanner 2004, p. 295.
  3. ^ a b Barlow 1999, p. xlvi.
  4. ^ a b c d Barlow 1999, p. xlvii.
  5. ^ a b Barlow 1999, p. xlviii.

Sources

  • Barlow, Frank, ed. (1999). The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy, Bishop of Amiens. Clarendon Press.
  • Tanner, Heather (2004). Families, Friends and Allies: Boulogne and Politics in Northern France and England, c.879-1160. Brill.
  • The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Bishop Guy of Amiens, edited by Catherine Morton and Hope Muntz, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1972.