24 Facts About Thurstan

Thurstan served kings William II and Henry I of England before his election to the see of York in 1114.

When Henry I died, Thurstan supported Henry's nephew Stephen of Blois as king.

Thurstan defended the northern part of England from invasion by the Scots, taking a leading part in organising the English forces at the Battle of the Standard.

Shortly before his death, Thurstan resigned from his see and took the habit of a Cluniac monk.

Thurstan was the son of a canon of St Paul's in London named Anger, Auger or Ansgar, who held the prebend of Cantlers.

Thurstan was born sometime about 1070 in Bayeux, in the Bessin region of Normandy.

Early in his career, Thurstan held the prebendary of Consumpta per mare in the diocese of London, and served both William Rufus and Henry I as a royal clerk.

Thurstan refused to make such a profession, and asked the king for permission to go to Rome to consult Pope Paschal II.

Henry I refused to allow him to make the journey, but even without a personal appeal from Thurstan, Paschal decided against Canterbury.

At the Council of Salisbury in 1116 the English king ordered Thurstan to submit to Canterbury, but instead Thurstan publicly resigned the archbishopric.

On his way to the council, Thurstan had received letters from Paschal II that supported York and commanded that he should be consecrated without a profession.

At length, Thurstan's friends, including Adela, succeeded in reconciling him with Henry, and he rejoined the king in Normandy.

Thurstan managed to secure the resurrection of the Diocese of Galloway, or Whithorn, in 1125.

Thurstan refused to accept that the new Archbishop of Canterbury, William de Corbeil, was his superior, and did not help with William's consecration.

Thurstan supported King Stephen after Henry I's death in 1135, and appeared at Stephen's first court at Easter held at Westminster.

Thurstan negotiated a truce at Roxburgh in 1138 between England and Scotland.

In 2024 evidence emerged that Thurstan had been acclaimed as a saint: his name was found, associated with a feast day of 6 February, in an ancient catalogue of saints' days at Pontefract Priory.

Thurstan gave land to many of the churches of his diocese and founded several religious houses.

Thurstan founded the first nunnery in Yorkshire when he founded St Clement's between 1125 and 1133.

Thurstan obtained for Whitby Abbey a papal privilege of protection as well as giving his privilege to the abbey.

Thurstan helped found the Cistercian Abbey of Fountains, by giving the site to monks who had been expelled from the Abbey of St Mary's, York.

Thurstan helped the hermitess Christina of Markyate at several points in her career, and tried to persuade her to become the first prioress of his foundation of St Clement's.

Thurstan was a sincere reformer and opposed to the election of unfit men to the episcopacy.

Thurstan's nephew was Osbert de Bayeux, who became an archdeacon at York, and in 1154 was accused of the murder of William of York, one of Thurstan's successors at York.