Anonymous

The Norman Anonymous is the name modern scholars give to the unknown author of a group of about thirty-one treatises and sermons. They survive in a single manuscript now held at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The author is thought to have been a clergyman, possibly connected with Rouen in Normandy, and wrote around the years 1100, in the generation after the Norman Conquest of England. His exact identity, birth and death are unknown, and attempts to name him remain debated.

His writings take up the great quarrel of his age, the struggle between kings and popes over who held authority in the Church. He argued strongly for the power of the king, whom he described as sharing in a sacred, almost priestly role, and he questioned the claim of the papacy to rule over rulers. Because of this, his work is valued by historians as a rare and vivid voice in medieval debates about kingship, church and state.