Herman, 1075—1078. 163 
In the year 1058 Herman was appointed to the see of Sherborne, 
and was allowed to hold it together with his own see of Ramsbury. 
Herman lived at Sherborne for some seventeen years, making that 
place the see of the two dioceses, At the end of that time, in the 
year 1675, in consequence of a decision arrived at by a council held at 
St. Paul’s, London, in the time of Archbishop Lanfranc, at which 
council Herman himself was present, the two sees became one united 
bishopric, the see of which was fixed at Old Sarum—the diocese 
comprising Wilts, Berks, and Dorset. 
Old Sarum was indeed a strange place to choose for a bishop’s 
see, an unpromising site on which to build a Cathedral. The chroni- 
elers speak of it as “a fortress rather than a city, placed on a high 
hill, surrounded by a massive wall.”! The settlement, so to speak, 
comprised not only the king’s castle, with all his officers and retainers, 
but the quarters of the bishop and his clergy. The relations of 
Chureh and State are at all times matters of delicate adjustment ; 
and hence it is not surprising to find, that when the authorities in 
Church and State were brought into such necessary and close prox- 
imity, not a few unfriendly conflicts took place. Peter de Blois 
indeed speaks of the Church at Old Sarum as the “ Ark of God 
shut up in the temple of Baal.”? Nevertheless on that unpromising 
site, Herman, old as he was—he had already been a bishop more 
than thirty years—began vigorously to build a Church, But he 
lived only to lay its foundations, or little more,.for he died within 
two years of the removal of his see to Old Sarum, leaving his 
work to be carried on to completion by his successor, the famous 
Osmund, a name renowned in liturgical history. 
Herman was a Fleming by birth. He was one of the eight 
eonsecrators of Lanfranc, a true member of the old English hierarchy, 
the only one in truth of them who had received consecration from a 
‘Vice civitatis castellum locatum in edito, muro vallatum non exiguo,” 
Malms. Gest Pontif., 183. 
* The description—I am quoting second-hand from Ledwych—given of Old 
Sarum by Peter de Blois, in one of his poetical epistles, is as follows :— 
‘Quid domini domus in castro? Nisi foederis Arca 
In templo Baalim; carcer uterque locus, 
Est inibi defectus aque, sed copia crete, 
Sevit ibi ventus, sed Philomela silet.’’ 
