Councils of Clovesho - The Council of 803

The Council of 803

The fifth Council of Clovesho was one of the most remarkable of the series, as its Acts contained the declaration of the restitution of the Mercian sees to the province of Canterbury by the authority of Pope Leo III.

In 798, Coenwulf of Mercia addressed to the pope a long letter, representing "with great affection and humility" the disadvantages of the new archbishopric at Lichfield that had been created eleven years before by Pope Adrian I. In the letter the king submitted the whole case to the pope, asking his blessing and saying: "I love you as one who is my father, and I embrace you with the whole strength of my obedience", and promising to abide in all things by his decision. "I judge it fitting to bend humbly the ear of our obedience to your holy commands, and to fulfil with all our strength whatever may seem to your Holiness that we ought to do."

Æthelhard, Archbishop of Canterbury, travelled to Rome to plead for the restitution of the sees. In 802, Leo granted the petition of the king and the archbishop and issued to the latter a Papal bull in which he restored to him the full jurisdiction enjoyed by his predecessors. The pope communicated this judgment in a letter to Coenwulf.

This decision was duly proclaimed in the Council of Clovesho held in the following year. Archbishop Ethelheard declared to the synod that "by the co-operation of God and of the Apostolic Lord, the Pope Leo", he and his fellow-bishops unanimously ratified the rights of the See of Canterbury, and that an archbishopric should never more be founded at Lichfield, and that the grant of the pallium made "with the consent and permission of the Apostolic Lord Pope Adrian, be considered as null, having been obtained surreptitiously and by evil suggestion". After Higbert, the Archbishop of Lichfield, submitted to the papal judgment and retired to a monastery, the Mercian sees returned to the jurisdiction of Canterbury.