Ingulf

Croyland Abbey.

Ingulf (Latin: Ingulphus; died 16 November 1109) was the Benedictine abbot of Crowland from 1087.

Life

Ingulf was an Englishman who, having travelled to England on diplomatic business as secretary of William, Duke of Normandy, in 1051, was made Abbot of Crowland in 1087 (Chambers and DNB say 1086) at Duke William's instigation after he had become king of England and the abbacy had fallen vacant. 1087 was in the last year of William's reign.

In the meantime, Ingulf had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and entered Fontenelle Abbey at Caudebec-en-Caux in Normandy, where after a time, he was appointed prior. He was appointed abbot there in 1080.

As his life as Abbot of Crowland progressed, Ingulf suffered the usual events: gout and the work of rebuilding after a destructive fire in the abbey. However, he was able to obtain an arm of Saint Wulfram; and in 1092 he received the body of Earl Waltheof of Northumbria, an Anglo-Saxon who had been executed per William's orders and who was considered a hero and martyr in popular thought. These relics brought in the pilgrims and eased his money problems.

Works

For several centuries, he was credited with the original authorship of a history of Crowland Abbey, Historia Monasterii Croylandensis, the Croyland Chronicle, a manuscript which has since been shown to have been fabricated well after his time, probably in the 13th or 14th century. The chronicle, which for many years was referred to as 'Ingulf' and is now called the Pseudo-Ingulf, was probably written in order to support claims to property around Crowland, particularly in regard to incursions from Spalding. Crowland was on a small gravel ridge in wet fen. All of the Abbey's arable lands listed in Domesday Book were in other parishes, such as Spalding.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Abbot of Croyland, Lincolnshire; d. there 17 December 1109. he is first heard of as secretary to William the Conqueror, in which capacity he visited England in 1051. After making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem he entered the Norman monastery of Fontenelle, or Saint-Wandrille, under Abbot Gerbert, who appointed him prior. The English Abbey of Croyland falling vacant, owing to the deposition by Lanfranc of Abbot Ulfeytel, Ingulf was nominated to the office in 1087 at the special instance of King William. he was not only an able but a kindly man, as was shown by his successful efforts to obtain his predecessor's release from Glastonbury, where he was confined, and his return to Peterborough (the house of his profession), where he died. Ingulf governed Croyland for twenty-four years, and with success, though in the face of many difficulties, not the least being his own bad health, for he suffered greatly from gout. Another of his troubles was the partial destruction by fire of the abbey church, with the sacristies, vestments, and books. An event of his abbacy was the interment in Croyland church of the Saxon Earl Walthe of Northumbria, who was executed by William's orders, and was a martyr as well as a national hero in the popular estimation.

ORDERCIUS, VITALIS, Historia Ecclesiastica, pars II, lib. IV (ed. MIGNE, Paris, 1855), 364 [ORDERICUS is the onlly extant authority for the few fact known about Ingulf's life. the chronicle known as his Historia Anglicana, containing many autobiographical details, is a fourteenth-or fifteenth-century forgery]: see also FREEMAN, Conquest of England, IV (Oxford, 1871), 600, 601, 690.

Bibliography

• Thorne, J.O. Chambers Biographical dictionary (1969) SBN 550-16001-9 (ISBN 0-550-16001-9)
• Dictionary of National Biography (1921-22 reprint)
• Morris, J. ed. Domesday Book (Lincolnshire) (1086) [Phillimore (1986)] ISBN 0-85033-598-1

External links

• Ingulf 2 at Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England
• Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Ingulf". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Richard III Society's transcription of the continuation of 'Ingulph' from 1453 onwards