Jocelin of Glasgow - Bishop of Glasgow

Bishop of Glasgow

After the death of his friend Bishop Enguerrand, Jocelin was elevated to the bishopric of Glasgow. He was elected on 23 May 1174. The election, like many other Scottish episcopal elections of the period, was done in the presence of the king, William the Lion, at Perth, near Scone, the chief residence of Scotland's kings. The election was probably done by compromissarii, meaning that the general chapter of the bishopric of Glasgow had selected a small group to which they delegated the power of election. Pope Alexander III was later told that Jocelin was elected by the dean and chapter of the see. The Chronicle of Melrose states that he was elected "by demand of the clergy, and of the people; and with the consent of the king himself", perhaps indicating that the decision had already been made by the Glasgow clergy before the formal election at Perth. The election was certainly an achievement. Cistercian bishops were rare in Great Britain, and Jocelin was only the second Cistercian to ascend a Scottish bishopric. Jocelin was required to go to France to obtain permission from the General Chapter of the Cistercian order at Cîteaux to resign the abbacy. Pope Alexander III had already sanctioned his consecration, and gave permission for the consecration to occur without forcing Jocelin to travel to Rome. Conveniently, it was at Cistercian house of Clairvaux that, sometime before 15 March 1175, Jocelin was consecrated by the Papal legate Eskil, Archbishop of Lund and Primate of Denmark. Jocelin had returned to the Kingdom of Scotland by 10 April, and it is known that on 23 May he had consecrated a monk named Laurence as his successor at Melrose.

He was soon faced with a political challenge to the independence of his church. The challenge came from the English church, and was not new, but had lain dormant for some decades. The reason it was awakened was that in the summer of 1174 King William had invaded northern England, and on 13 July, having been caught underprotected during a siege at Alnwick, was captured and taken into English custody. The capture was disastrous for the king, leading to a revolt by Gilla Brigte, Lord of Galloway, and to many of William's discontented subjects "ruthlessly" slaying "their English and French neighbours" and perpetrating a "most wretched and widespread persecution of the English both in Scotland and Galloway", that is, of the English and French-speaking settlers William and his predecessors had planted around the castles and towns of his Gaelic-speaking territories in order to increase royal authority. Worse still, and more significantly for Jocelin, in the following year King Henry II of England forced William to sign the Treaty of Falaise, a treaty which made William Henry's vassal specifically for Scotland and sanctioned the subordination of the kingdom's bishoprics to the English church.

Jocelin did not, in the end, submit either to the Archbishop of York or even the Archbishop of Canterbury and managed to obtain a Papal Bull which declared the see of Glasgow to be a "special daughter" of the Roman Patriarchate. Jocelin, moreover, does not seem to have been interested in the independence of the other "Scottish" sees, but merely to maintain his own episcopal independence, i.e. that of the bishopric of Glasgow. On 10 August 1175, along with many other Scottish-based magnates and prelates, Jocelin was at Henry's court giving his obedience to the king as stipulated in the treaty. Jocelin again appeared at King Henry's court in January 1176. This time church matters were on the agenda. When the Archbishop of York confronted Jocelin over the subordination of the bishopric of Glasgow to the archbishopric of York, Jocelin refused to acknowledge this part of the treaty, and presented him with the Papal Bull declaring Glasgow to be a "special daughter".

This Bull was confirmed by Pope Alexander's successor Pope Lucius III. Jocelin had obtained this confirmation while at Rome in late 1181 and early 1182. He had been sent there by King William, along with abbots of Melrose, Dunfermline and Kelso and the prior of Inchcolm, in order to appeal to the Pope regarding his stance in a struggle over the Bishopric of St Andrews and the sentence of excommunication and interdict the Pope had placed over the king and kingdom. The dispute concerned the election to the bishopric of John the Scot, which had been opposed by the king, who organised the election of his own candidate, Hugh. The mission was successful. The Pope lifted the interdict, absolved the king and appointed two legates to investigate the issue of the St Andrews succession. The Pope even sent the king a Golden Rose, an item usually given to the Prefect of Rome. The issue of the succession, however, did not go away. In 1186, Jocelin, along with the abbots of Melrose, Dunfermline and Newbattle, excommunicated Hugh on the instructions of Pope Lucius. Hugh travelled to Rome in 1188, and obtained absolution, but he died of the pestilence in that city a few days later, thus allowing the issue to be resolved.

It is certainly obvious that Jocelin was one of the most respected figures in the kingdom. In this era, the Pope appointed Jocelin Judge-delegate (of the Papacy) more times than any other cleric in the kingdom. As a bishop and an ex-abbot, various bishoprics and monasteries called him in to mediate disputes, as evidenced by his frequent appearance as a witness in dispute settlements, such as the dispute between Arbroath Abbey and the Bishopric of St Andrews, and a dispute between Jedburgh Abbey and Dryburgh Abbey. Jocelin had the respect of the secular elite too. He witnessed 24 royal charters and 40 non-royal charters, including charters issued by David, Earl of Huntingdon (the brother of King William), Donnchadh, Earl of Carrick, and Alan Fitzwalter, High Steward of Scotland. Jocelin had been with King William when he visited the English court in 1186, and again accompanied the king to England when the king travelled to Woodstock near Oxford to marry Ermengarde de Beaumont on 5 September 1186. The marriage was blessed by Bishop Jocelin in their chamber, and it was to Jocelin's escort that King William entrusted her for the journey to Scotland. When a son was born to William and Ermengarde, the future King Alexander II, it was Jocelin who performed the baptism. In April 1194, Jocelin again travelled to England in King William's company when William was visiting King Richard I. Jocelin's intimacy with the king would be the key to earning his patronage, thus making possible the legacy that Jocelin would leave to Glasgow.