web counter

READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

 

HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH FROM THE APOSTOLIC AGE TO THE REFORMATION A.D. 64-1517

 

 

 

BOOK VI.

FROM THE DEPOSITION OF POPE GREGORY VI. TO THE DEATH
OF POPE CELESTINE III, A.D. 1046-1198.
 

CHAPTER V.

ENGLAND FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO THE DEATH OF ST. ANSELM. A.D. 1066-1108.

 

 

THE successful expedition of William of Normandy produced important changes in the English church. At his coronation, which was performed by Aldred, archbishop of York, William, as heir of Edward the confessor, swore to administer equal justice to all his subjects but the necessity of providing for his followers soon led him to disregard this pledge, while a pretext was afforded by the obstinate resistance which he met with in completing the subjugation of the country, and by the frequent insurrections of the Saxons. Much property of churches and monasteries was confiscated, together with the treasures which the wealthier English had deposited in the monasteries for security. During the reign of Edward, the Norman influence had for a time prevailed in England; many Normans had been advanced to high ecclesiastical stations, and the system of alien priories—i.e. of annexing priories and estates in England to foreign religious houses—had been largely practised. But under the ascendency of Earl Godwin, Robert of Jumièges, the Norman archbishop of Canterbury, had been obliged to leave the kingdom, and the primacy had been conferred on Stigand, bishop of Winchester, who, after having unsuccessfully applied for the pall to Leo IX, received it from the antipope John of Velletri, and held his see in defiance of Alexander II. Stigand, according to some writers, refused to officiate at the coronation of the Conqueror, while others state that William refused his services; in any case, he was obnoxious as a Saxon. William for a time affected to treat him with great honour; but at a council held at Winchester under two papal legates in 1070, he was charged with having intruded into the seat of a living bishop; with having irregularly held at once the sees of Winchester and Canterbury; with the want of a properly-conferred pall, and with having used for a time that of his ejected predecessor. These pretexts served for the deprivation of the archbishop, which was followed by that of other native prelates, so that, with a jingle exception, the English sees were soon in the hands of Normans, who either had been appointed under Edward or were now promoted by the Conqueror. The system of preferring foreigners was gradually extended to the abbacies and lower dignities, and for a long series of years it was hopeless for any Englishman, whatever his merit might be, to aspire to any considerable station in the church of his own land. One Norman only, Guitmund, the opponent of Berengar, is recorded as having ventured to refuse an English bishopric, and to protest against a system so adverse to the interests of the church and of the people.

The later Anglo-Saxon clergy are very unfavourably represented to us by writers after the conquest. It is said that they were scarcely able to stammer out the forms of Divine service—that any one who knew “grammar” was regarded by his brethren as a prodigy; and religion as well as learning had fallen into decay. But, although the increase of intercourse with other countries eventually led to an improvement in the English church, it seems questionable whether the immediate effect of the change introduced by the conquest was beneficial. The new prelates were in general chosen for other than ecclesiastical merits; they could not edify their flocks, whose language they would have scorned to understand : the Anglo-Saxon literature, the richest by far that any Teutonic nation as yet possessed, fell into oblivion and contempt; the traditions of older English piety were lost; and there was no love or mutual confidence to win for the new hierarchy the influence which the native pastors had been able to exert for the enforcement of religion on their peopled

But while the dignities of the church were commonly bestowed on illiterate warriors or on court-chaplains, the primacy was to be otherwise disposed of Lanfranc had been sentenced by William to banishment from Normandy for opposing his marriage with Matilda, as being within the forbidden degrees; but, as he was on his way to leave the country, an accidental meeting with the duke led to a friendly understanding, so that Lanfranc was employed to obtain the pope’s sanction for the union, and a removal of the interdict under which William’s territories had been laid. His success in this commission recommended him to the duke’s favour; he was transferred from Bec to the headship of St. Stephen’s at Caen, the noble abbey which William was required to found in penance for the irregularity of his marriage, and, after having already refused the archbishopric of Rouen, he was now urged to accept that of Canterbury. It was not without much reluctance that he resolved to undertake so onerous a dignity among a people of barbarous and unknown language; and the difficulties which he experienced and foresaw in the execution of his office speedily induced him to solicit permission from Alexander II to return to his monastery; but the pope refused to consent, and Lanfranc thereupon requested that the pall might be sent to him. The answer came from the archdeacon Hildebrand—that, if the pall could be granted to any one without his personal appearance at Rome, it would be granted to Lanfranc; but that the journey was indispensable. On his arrival at Rome, the archbishop was treated with extraordinary honour. The pope, who had formerly been his pupil at Bec, rose up to bestowed on him two palls, as a mark of signal consideration—a compliment of which it is said that there has never been another instance—and invested him with the authority of legate. A question as to precedence was raised by Thomas, archbishop of York, who had accompanied Lanfranc to Rome and contended that, by the terms of Gregory’s instructions to Augustine, the primacy of England ought to alternate between Canterbury and the northern see, for which he also claimed jurisdiction over Worcester, Lichfield, and Lincoln. The pope declined to give judgment, and remitted the questions to England, where, after discussions in the king’s presence at Winchester and at Windsor, they were decided in favour of Lanfranc on the ground of ancient custom. The archbishop of York was required to promise submission to Canterbury, and, with his suffragans, to attend councils at such places as the archbishop of Canterbury should appoint.

Lanfranc exerted himself to reform the disorders of the English church (which it is very possible that, as a man trained in entirely different circumstances, he may have somewhat overrated), and in his labours for this purpose he was effectually supported by the king, who bestowed on him his full confidence, and usually entrusted him with the regency during his own absence on the continent. The primate used his influence to obtain the promotion of deserving men to bishoprics. Many churches which had fallen into ruin were rebuilt—among them the primate's own cathedral. Sees which had been established in villages or small towns were removed to places of greater importance; thus the bishopric of Selsey was transferred to Chichester, that of Sherborne to Sarum, Elmham to Thetford, Dorchester (in Oxfordshire) to Lincoln, Lichfield to Chester—a change agreeable to the ancient system of the church, but perhaps suggested by the policy of William, who, by thus placing the bishops in fortified cities, secured their assistance in preserving the subjection of the people. Lanfranc—“the venerable father and comfort of monks”, as he is styled by the Anglo-Saxon chronicler—was zealous for celibacy and monasticism. The effects of Dunstan’s labours had passed away, and the English clergy had again become accustomed to marry freely; but the Italian primate renewed the endeavour to substitute monks for secular canons in cathedrals, and serious struggles arose in consequence. Nor was the enforcement of celibacy on the clergy complete; for, although a council at Winchester in 1076 enacted that no canon should have a wife, and that for the future no married man should be ordained priest or deacon, the rural clergy were, in contradiction to the regulations which Gregory VII was labouring to enforce elsewhere, allowed by the council to retain their wives. William was greatly indebted to Rome. His expedition had been sanctioned by a consecrated banner, the gift of Alexander II, and he had found the papal support valuable in carrying out his plans as to the English church. But he was determined to make use of Rome—not to acknowledge her as a mistress. He held firmly in his own grasp the government of the church. By retraining from the sale of preferment—however he may have been guilty of simony in that wider definition which includes the bestowal of benefices for service or by favour—he earned the commendation of Gregory but he promoted bishops and abbots by his own will, invested them by the feudal forms, and took it upon himself to exempt the abbey which was founded in memory of his victory near Hastings from all episcopal and monastic jurisdiction. No pope was to be acknowledged in England, except by the king’s permission; nor, although William allowed legates to hold synods in furtherance of his own views, was anything to be treated or enacted at these meetings without his previous sanction. The bishops were forbidden to obey citations to Rome; they were forbidden to receive letters from the pope without showing them to the king; nor were any of his nobles or servants to be excommunicated without his licence. The bishop was no longer to sit in the same court with the sheriff but his jurisdiction was confined to spiritual matters. The tenure of frank-almoign (or free alms), under which the bishops had formerly held their lands, was exchanged for the feudal tenure by barony; and the estates of the clergy became subject to the same obligations as other lands.

In his ecclesiastical policy William was willingly seconded by the primate. Lanfranc was indeed no devoted adherent of Gregory, with whom he was probably dissatisfied on account of the indulgence which the pope had shown to his antagonist Berengar. In a letter to a partisan of the antipope, he professes neutrality as to the great contest of the time, and even shows an inclination towards the imperial side. After censuring the unseemly language which his correspondent had applied to Gregory, he adds—“Yet I believe that the emperor has not undertaken so great an enterprise without much reason, nor has he been able to achieve so great a victory without much aid from God”. And, while he advises Guibert’s agent not to come to England, it is on the ground that the king's leave ought first to be obtained—that England has not rejected Gregory, or given a public adhesion to either pope, and that there is room for hearing both parties before coming to a decisions. If such was the archbishop's feeling as to the controversy between the pope and the emperor, he could hardly fail to be wholly with his own sovereign in any questions between England and Rome.

Gregory, in his letters to William and to Lanfranc, spoke of the king with profuse expressions of the deepest respect, as incomparably superior to all other princes of the age; and, when obliged to censure any of his acts, he was careful to season the censure with compliments to the king’s character, with remembrances of their old mutual regard, and of the services which he had rendered to William in former days. But these blandishments were thrown away on a sovereign whose policy was as decided, and whose will was as strong, as those of Gregory himself. When, in 1079, the pope required William to see to the payment of Peter-pence from England, and to swear fealty to the apostolic see, the reply was cool and peremptory—“Your legate has admonished me in your name to do fealty to you and your successors, and to take better order as to the money which my predecessors have been accustomed to send to the Roman church; the one I have admitted; the other I have not admitted. I refused to do fealty, nor will I do it, because neither have I promised it, nor do I find that my predecessors have performed it to yours”. The payment was to be made, not as a tribute, but as alms. On receiving this answer, the pope declared that money without obedience was worthless, and at the same time he complained of the king's conduct in other respects; that, by a presumption which no one even among heathen princes had ventured on, he prevented the prelates of his kingdom from visiting the apostle's city; that he had promoted to the see of Rouen the son of a priest—an appointment to which Gregory was resolved never to consent. His legate was charged to threaten William with the wrath of St. Peter unless he should repent, and to cite certain representatives of the English and Norman bishops to a synod at Rome. No heed was paid to this citation; but the pope submitted to the slight; and it is certain that, but for the voluntary retirement of William's nominee, Guitmund, the ally of Lanfranc in the Eucharistic controversy, the objection in the case of Rouen would have been withdrawn. Equally unsuccessful were the pope's attempts on Lanfranc. Again and again invitations, becoming by degrees more urgent, required the archbishop to appear at Rome, where he had not been since Gregory's election. After a time the pope expresses a belief that he is influenced by fear of the king, but tells him that neither fear, nor love, nor the difficulties of the journey, ought to detain him. Lanfranc, in his answer, showed no disposition to comply; and he alluded, with an indifference which must have been very annoying, to the failure of the pope's claim to fealty. At length Gregory summoned the archbishop to set out for Rome within four months after receiving his citation, and to appear there on a certain day, under pain of deposition, but the citation was as vain as those before it, and the threat was never followed up.

Gregory again found himself obliged to remonstrate in the case of William’s half-brother, Odo, bishop of Bayeux. Odo, deluded (it is said) by the arts of sooth­sayers, who assured him that a person of his name was to be pope, sent large sums of money to Rome for the purpose of securing himself an interest there, and enlisted a considerable force with which he intended to make his way to Italy. But William, on discovering the project, arrested and imprisoned him; and, in answer to an objection as to the bishop's spiritual character, declared that he had proceeded against him, not as bishop, but as earl of Kent. Gregory expostulated with the king, insisting on the immunities of the clergy, with the pretended saying of St. Ambrose, that royalty is less comparable to the episcopal dignity than lead to gold, and quoting the text—“He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of Mine eye”; but Odo remained in prison until his brother, when dying, reluctantly ordered his release; and here, as in the other cases, conduct which would have drawn down the most awful thunders of Rome on the head of a weaker prince, was allowed to pass unpunished in the stern, able, powerful, and resolute master of England and Normandy.

In 1087 the Conqueror was succeeded by William Rufus. For a time the new king was kept within some degree of restraint by the influence of Lanfranc, who had been his tutor; but on the archbishop’s death, in 1089, his evil dispositions were altogether uncontrolled. William, according to an ancient writer, “feared God but little, and men not at all”. His character was utterly profane; his coarse and reckless wit was directed not only against the superstitions of the age, or against the clergy, whom he despised and hated, but against religion itself. The shameless debaucheries in which he indulged gave an example which his subjects were not slow to imitate. The rapacity by which he endeavoured to supply his profuse expenditure fell with especial weight on the property of the church. In former times the revenues of a vacant abbey had been committed to the bishop, and those of a vacant bishopric to the archbishop, under whose superintendence they were applied to religious or charitable uses; under the Conqueror, they were administered by a clerk, who was accountable for his stewardship to the next incumbent. But William's chosen adviser, a Norman ecclesiastic of low birth, named Ralph Passeflaber or Flambard, devised the idea that, as bishoprics and abbacies were fiefs of the crown, the profits of them during vacancy belonged to the sovereign. Under this pretext William kept bishoprics long vacant; while the diocese was left without a pastor, he extorted all that was possible from the tenants of the see, by means alike oppressive to them and injurious to the future bishop and the most unblushing simony was practised in the disposal of ecclesiastical preferments.

After the death of Lanfranc, the primacy remained vacant for nearly four years. In answer to entreaties that he would nominate a successor, William swore, as he was wont, “by the holy face of Lucca”, that he would as yet have no archbishop but himself; and when public prayers were offered up for the direction of his choice, he said that the church might ask what it pleased, but that he was resolved to take his own way. A severe illness, which followed soon after, was regarded as a judgment of heaven, and the king was earnestly urged to show his penitence by filling up the primacy, and by redressing the grievances of his government. He consented, promised amendment, and made choice of Anselm as archbishop.

Anselm was born of an honourable family at Aosta, in 1033 or the following year. His boyhood was devout, but was succeeded by a somewhat irregular youth, more especially after the death of his pious and gentle mother, to whom he had been deeply attached. The harshness with which his father treated him produced a resolution to leave his home; he crossed the Alps, and, after having, like Lanfranc, resided for some time at Avranches, he became, at the age of twenty-seven, a monk at Bec, where the founder, Herluin, was still abbot, while Lanfranc was prior and master of the school. On the removal of Lanfranc to Caen in 1063, Anselm succeeded him in his offices, and at the death of Herluin, in 1078, he was elected to the abbacy. With each dignity which he attained, his anxious feeling of responsibility increased, and he would have returned to the condition of a simple monk, but for the authority of Mauritius, archbishop of Rouen. His fame speedily even surpassed that of Lanfranc, and his name was widely spread by treatises on philosophical, theological, and grammatical subjects. Pupils flocked to his instructions; questions were addressed to him from all quarters, and his friend and biographer, Edmer, tells us that his answers were received as oracles from heaven. Since the time of St. Augustine, the church had produced no teacher of equal eminence with Anselm, or so powerful in his influence on later ages. He has been described as the founder of natural theology; but if this title is to be applied to him, the term must be understood as signifying a theology which aimed at bringing the aid of philosophical thought to the support of the most rigid orthodoxy of the church. Whereas John Scotus had made philosophy his foundation, and had endeavoured to reduce religion into accordance with it, the method of Anselm was exactly the opposite; its character is expressed in the title originally given to his ‘Proslogion’—‘Faith in search of Understanding’. The object of that work is to prove the existence and attributes of the Deity by a single argument. Edmer relates that, when the idea of such a proof had entered into Anselm’s mind, he was unable to eat, drink, or sleep; it disturbed him at his devotions, and, although he endeavoured to resist it as a temptation of the devil, he could not rest until, in the watches of the night, a light broke in on him a—“God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived; and he who well understands this will understand that the Divine Being exists in such a manner that His non-existence cannot even be conceived”. A monk named Gaunilo wrote a short tract in reply, objecting that the conception of a thing does not imply its existence, and exemplifying this by the fabulous island of Atlantis to which Anselm rejoined that the illustration was inapplicable to the question, since existence is a part of the perfections which are conceived of as belonging to the Deity.

The character of Anselm was amiable, gentle and modest. Simple and even severe, in his own habits, he was indulgent to others, and the confidence which he placed in those below him, with his indifference to the vulgar interests of the world, was often abused. Edmer draws a very pleasing picture of his familiar intercourse, and relates many stories which illustrate his wisdom, his kindly temper, his mild, yet keen and subtle humour, e In one of these stories, an abbot “who was accounted very religious” applies in despair for advice as to the treatment of the pupils in his monastery; he had flogged them indefatigably both by day and by night, but, instead of amending, they only grew worse. Anselm by degrees leads him to understand that so brutal a discipline could only be expected to brutalize its objects, and the abbot returns home to practise a gentler and a wiser system. But as the exercise of Anselm’s philosophical genius was subordinated to the strictest orthodoxy, so with his calm and peaceful nature he combined the most unbending resolution in the cause of the hierarchical system. To this he seems to have adhered, not from any feeling of interest or passion, or even of strong personal conviction, but because it was sanctioned by the church, while the scandalous abuses perpetrated by such sovereigns as William Rufus tended to blind him to the existence of dangers on the other side; and his assertion of it was marked by nothing of violence or assumption, but by an immoveable tenacity and perseverance.

Anselm was already known and honoured in England, which he had visited for the purpose of superintending the English estates of his abbey. He had been acquainted with the Conqueror, who, in conversing with him, laid aside his wonted sternness; and he had been the guest of Lanfranc, who had profited by his advice to deal tenderly with the peculiarities and prejudices of the people committed to his care. It was with great reluctance that, during the vacancy of the archbishopric, he yielded to the repeated invitations of Hugh Lupus, earl of Chester, who desired to see him in a sickness which was supposed to be mortal: for he knew that popular opinion had designated him as the successor of his old master; he was unwilling to exchange his monastery, with its quiet opportunities of study and thought, and his position of influence as a teacher, for the pomp and troubled dignity of the English primacy; and, honouring royalty, disliking contention, but firmly resolved to maintain the cause of the church, he shrank from the connexion with such a prince as William—a connexion which he compared to the yoking a young untamed bull with an old and feeble sheep. He therefore endeavoured, with a sincerity which cannot reasonably be questioned, to decline the offer; but he was carried into the sick king's chamber at Gloucester, the crosier was forced into his hands, and notwithstanding his struggles he was hurried away to a neighbouring church, where the people received him with acclamations as archbishop, and the clergy sang Te Deum for the election. He did not, however, consider himself at liberty to accept the primacy until he had been released from his obligations to his monks, to the archbishop of Rouen, and to his sovereign, duke Robert of Normandy.

The king recovered, and relapsed into courses even worse than before. The works of amendment which he had begun were undone, and when Gundulf, bishop of Rochester, ventured gently to remind him of his late promises, he disavowed the obligation in a speech of outrageous profanity. Anselm waited on him at Dover, and stated the terms on which only he would consent to be archbishop—that he should be allowed to enjoy all the rights of his see which Lanfranc had possessed, with such portions of its alienated property as he might be able to recover; that William should pay him the same regard in spiritual matters which the king claimed from the archbishop in temporal things; and that no offence should arise as to his acknowledgment of pope Urban, who had not yet been recognized in England. The answer was, that he should have all which Lanfranc had had, but that the other points must remain undecided for the present. The archbishop was invested in September 1093, but his consecration did not take place until the 4th of December. At this ceremony the archbishop of York, who took the chief part in it, objected to the title of "”metropolitan of all England"” on the ground that it implied a denial of the metropolitan dignity of his own Bec. The objection was allowed, and the title of primate was substituted.

The first entrance of Anselm into his city had been disturbed by the appearance of Flambard, who in the king’s name instituted against him a suit of which the subject is not recorded and other events soon occurred to justify the apprehensions with which he had undertaken his office. William was busy in raising subsidies for an intended expedition into Normandy, and the archbishop, after his consecration, was advised by his friends to send him a contribution of five hundred pounds, in the hope that it might render the king favourable to the church. William was at first pleased with the gift, but some of his advisers persuaded him that it was too little—that the archbishop, in consideration of his promotion, ought to have given twice or four times as much. Anselm replied that he could not raise more without distressing his tenants; that it should not be his last gift; that a little freely given was better than a larger sum extorted : and, as William persevered in refusing the money, he bestowed it on the poor for the benefit of the king's soul, comforting himself with the thought that he could not be charged with even the appearance of simony. The king was deeply offended. He evaded the fulfilment of his promise as to the restoration of the archbishop’s estates. He refused him leave to hold a council for the suppression of disorders among the clergy and monks, and for the general reformation of morals; and when Anselm urged the necessity of filling up the vacant abbacies, he asked, “What is that to you?—are not the abbeys mine?”. “They are yours” replied the primate, “to defend and protect as advocate, but they are not yours to invade and to devastate”. The knowledge of the royal disfavour naturally raised up or encouraged a host of lesser enemies, who industriously persecuted Anselm by their encroachments on his property and by other annoyances. The bishops advised him to propitiate William by a new offering of five hundred pounds; but he declared that he would not oppress his exhausted tenants, and that such a proceeding would be alike unworthy of the king and of himself.

Notwithstanding all discouragements, the archbishop set vigorously about the work of reform. In the beginning of Lent, when the court was at Hastings, he refused to give the customary ashes and benediction to the young nobles who affected an effeminate style of dress and manners—wearing long hair, which they curled and adorned like women. It is not to be supposed that he regarded for their own sake these follies, or the fashionable shoes in which the invention of Fulk of Anjou had been developed by one of William’s courtiers, who twisted their long points into the likeness of a ram's horn. But he dreaded the tendency of such fashions to extinguish a high and active spirit, and he denounced them from a knowledge that they were connected with habits of luxury and gaming, and with the unnatural vices which had become rife in England since the conquest.

Since the death of Gregory VII neither of the rival popes had been acknowledged in England. The king had come to regard it as a special prerogative of his crown, distinguishing him from other sovereigns, that within his dominions no pope should be recognized except by his permission; and this opinion had been encouraged by courtly prelates. The right of Urban had, however, been admitted in Normandy, and Anselm, as we have seen, had stipulated that he should be allowed to adhere to the profession which, as abbot of Bec, he had made to that pontiff. He now, on William’s return from the Norman expedition, requested leave to go to Rome, and to receive his pall from the pope. “From which pope?” asked the king; and, on Anselm’s replying “From Urban”, he angrily declared that neither his father nor himself had ever allowed any one to be styled pope in England without their special warrant; as well might the archbishop attempt to deprive him of his crown.

Anselm on this desired that the question whether his duty to the pope were inconsistent with his duty to the king might be discussed at a council; and an assembly of bishops and nobles met for the purpose at Rockingham, in March 1095.

The archbishop took his stand on the principle that God ought to be obeyed rather than man. Two only of his own order, the bishops of Rochester and Chichester, supported him. William of St. Calais, bishop of Durham, and Herbert of Norwich, who from his character was styled the Flatterer, were vehement in their opposition; while the rest, accustomed as they had been to the Conqueror’s ecclesiastical supremacy, and perplexed by the discord between powers which had until then acted in concert, behaved with timidity and indecision. The king maintained that it was an invasion of his rights for a subject to look to any other authority, even in spiritual things. The bishops advised the archbishop to make full submission; but, when William asked them to disown him, they answered that they could not venture on such a step against the primate, not only of England, but of Scotland, Ireland, and the adjacent islands. Anselm, who throughout retained his composure, and at one time even fell asleep while the bishops had withdrawn for a consultation, professed his readiness to answer for his conduct in the proper place; and his enemies were alarmed at the words, which they rightly understood to imply that, as metropolitan, he was amenable to the pope's jurisdiction only. The bishop of Durham, after having in vain attempted to influence Anselm, told the king that, as the archbishop had Scripture and the canons in his favour, the only way to deal with him was by force—that he should be stripped of the ensigns of his dignity, and should be banished from the realm. On being again asked by William whether they renounced the archbishop, some of the prelates replied that they did so absolutely; others, that they renounced him in so far as he pretended to act by Urban’s authority. The king was indignant at the qualified answer, and those who had made it were afterwards obliged to pay heavily for the recovery of his favour. The nobles behaved with greater spirit than the bishops, declaring that, although they had not taken any oath to the primate, they could not disown him, especially as he had committed no offence; while the people, who surrounded the place of meeting, were zealous in his cause, and loudly exclaimed against his cowardly brethren as Judases, Pilates, and Herods. At length it was resolved that there should be a truce until the octave of Whitsunday. Anselm was ordered in the meantime to confine himself to his diocese; but the truce was broken on the king's side by the pillage of the archbishop's estates, by attacks on his train, and by the banishment of some of his confidential friends.

William took advantage of the interval to send two ecclesiastics to Rome, with instructions to inquire into the claims of the rival popes, to make terms with the claimant whom they should find to be legitimate, and to obtain from him a pall for the archbishop of Canterbury, without naming Anselm, for whom the king hoped by this means to substitute another. The decision of the envoys was in favour of Urban, from whom a pall was brought to England by Walter, bishop of Albano. The king agreed to acknowledge Urban; but when he asked the legate to depose Anselm, he was told that it was impossible. The archbishop was summoned to court, and was desired to receive the pall from William's own hands. He replied that it was not for any secular person to give the pall; and, as he persevered in his refusal, it was agreed that the pall should be laid by the legate on the high altar at Canterbury, and that the archbishop should take it thence, as from the hand of St. Peter.

Robert of Normandy was now about to set out for the crusade, and had agreed to pledge the duchy to his brother in consideration of a sum of money for the expenses of his expedition. In order to make up this payment, William had recourse to severe exactions. He seized the plate of monasteries; and when the monks remonstrated, he met them in his usual style by asking— “Have ye not shrines of gold and silver for dead men’s bones?”. Anselm contributed liberally; but he was soon after required to answer in the king's court for having failed in the proper equipment of some soldiers whom he had supplied for an expedition against the Welsh. In this summons the archbishop saw a design to bring him under feudal subjection, and he knew that he could not look for justice, while the hopelessness of any satisfactory relations with such a prince as William became continually more and more evident. He therefore resolved to lay his case before the pope, and requested leave to go to Rome that he might represent the state of the English church. William met the application by telling him that he had no need to make such a journey, since he had done nothing to require absolution, and, as for advice, he was fitter to give it to the pope than the pope to him. The suit was thrice urged in vain. Anselm declared that he must obey God rather than man; and that, even if leave were refused, he must go to Rome. The bishops whom he requested to support him, told him that they reverenced his piety and heavenly conversation, but that it was too far above them; that, if he would descend to their level, they would gladly give him their assistance; but that otherwise they must decline to do anything inconsistent with their duty to the king. William required him either to renounce his design, and swear that he would never apply to St. Peter, or to quit the kingdom for ever, but Oct. 15, finally, at Winchester, yielded an ungracious consent. The archbishop offered to give him his blessing unless it were refused; and, on William’s replying that he did not refuse it, they parted with a solemn benediction.

At Canterbury the archbishop took from the altar the staff and the dress of a pilgrim. When about to embark at Dover, he was subjected to the indignity of having his baggage publicly searched by William of Warelwast, one of the king’s chaplains, in the vain hope of finding treasures; and after his departure his archiepiscopal acts were annulled, the property of his see was confiscated, and his tenants were oppressed by the king’s officers more mercilessly than ever.

Anselm had been forbidden to take his way through Normandy. The earlier part of his journey was a triumphant progress; the latter part was, from the fear of antipapalists and of robbers, performed in the garb of a simple monk, undistinguished by appearance from his companions, Baldwin and the biographer Edmer, precentor of Canterbury, whom in one of his epistles he describes as “the staff of his old age”. On arriving at Rome, he was received with extraordinary distinction by Urban, who declared that he ought to be treated as an equal—as “pope and patriarch of another world”—and wrote to the king of England, desiring that the archiepiscopal property should be released from confiscation. After a stay of ten days in the city, Anselm withdrew to a monastery near Telese, incompliance with an invitation from the abbot, who was a Norman and had formerly been his pupil. In order that he might escape the extreme heat of summer, his host conveyed him to a retreat among the neighbouring hills; and here he finished a treatise which he had begun in England, on the purpose of the Saviour’s incarnation—a treatise of which the doctrine has become a standard of orthodoxy even in communions where the obligation to Anselm is little suspected. In the opening of it, he states that the subject was engaging the attention not only of the learned, but of many uneducated Christians. He shows the necessity of a satisfaction for sin in order that man might become capable of that blessedness for which he was originally created; the impossibility that this satisfaction should be rendered except by God, while yet it must be made by man, from whom it was due; and the consequent necessity that the Mediator, who was to effect the reconciliation by his voluntary death, should at once be perfect God and perfect man.

Anselm in his retreat was regarded with veneration by all who saw him—even by the Saracens of the Apulian army. He thought of resigning his dignities, and of devoting himself to labour in this new sphere; but the pope rejected the proposal, and required him to attend a council which was to be held at Bari, before the body of St. Nicolas, with a view to the reconciliation of the Greek and Latin churches. At this assembly, when the question of procession of the Holy Ghost was proposed, Urban, after arguing from one of Anselm’s treatises, desired the archbishop himself to stand forward, and pronounced a high eulogium on his character and sufferings. Anselm was ready to discuss the subject, but was requested to defer his argument until the following day, when he spoke with a clearness and an eloquence which won universal admiration. The pope then entered on the grievances of the English church; the council was unanimous for the excommunication of William; and, Urban, inspirited by his success in the great movement of the crusade, was about to pronounce the sentence, when Anselm, throwing himself at his feet, entreated him to forbear, and gained fresh admiration by this display of mildness towards his oppressor.

The archbishop accompanied Urban to Rome, where he was treated with a reverence second only to the pope, while the people, impressed by his demeanour, spoke of him not as “the man” or “the archbishop”, but as “the man”. About Christmas envoys from England appeared—William of Warelwast being one. The pope told them that their master must restore everything to the archbishop on pain of excommunication; but in private interviews they were able, by means of large presents, to obtain a truce until Michaelmas. At the synod of the following Lent, the decrees against investitures and homage were renewed, and were received with general acclamation. Reginger, bishop of Lucca, introduced the subject of Anselm's wrongs in an indignant speech, to which he added emphasis by striking the floor with his pastoral staff; and it was with difficulty that the pope prevailed on him to desist, while Anselm, to whom the mention of his case was unexpected, took no part in the scene. It was, however, now evident to him that he could not expect any strenuous assistance from Urban, and he withdrew to Lyons, where for a year and a half he was entertained with the greatest honour by archbishop Hugh. During this residence at Lyons he was informed of the pope's death, in July 1099, and of William's mysterious and awful end, in August 1100.

Henry I, at his coronation, promised to redress the grievances in the church and in the civil administration from which his subjects had suffered during the late reign. Flambard, who had succeeded William of St. Calais as bishop of Durham, was committed to the Tower. The king resolved to fill up the vacant bishoprics and abbeys; he urgently invited Anselm to return, and, on his arrival, apologized for having been crowned in the primate's absence. But a subject of difference soon arose.

The custom of investiture and homage, which were regarded as inseparable, was so firmly settled in England, that Anselm, notwithstanding his lofty ecclesiastical principles, had without scruple submitted to it at his elevation to the primacy. But when he was now required to repeat his engagements, in acknowledgment of the new sovereign, he answered that it was forbidden by the Roman council which he had lately attended. He declared that, although the objection to the ceremony was not his own, he held himself bound to maintain the council’s decrees, and that, if the king would not admit them, he could not communicate with him or remain in England. He suggested, however, that Henry might ask the pope to dispense with the enforcement of them in his dominions. A truce until Easter was agreed on, and, soon after it had expired, the king received an answer to a letter which he had written to the pope. In this answer Paschal dwelt on the distinction between ecclesiastical and secular power, but without touching the question whether investiture and homage were really an invasion of the church's spiritual rights.

The king found it necessary to temporise. He feared the influence of his brother Robert, who had returned from the east, adding to the charm of his popular manners the fame of a brave warrior who had borne a conspicuous share in the delivery of the holy sepulchre from the infidels. Henry, therefore, could not afford to alienate the clergy, while he was unwilling to give up so important a part of his prerogative as that which was now assailed. The nobles in general were opposed to the ecclesiastical claim, and the bishops joined them in declaring that, rather than yield the national rights, they would expel the primate from the realm, and renounce their connexion with Rome. Gerard, archbishop of York, Herbert of Norwich, and Robert of Coventry, were sent to Rome on the part of the king; Baldwin and another monk on that of Anselm. The bishops were charged with a letter, in which Henry, while professing his desire to respect the pope as his predecessors had done, declared himself resolved to uphold the rights of his crown; if, he said, he were to abase himself by suffering them to be diminished, neither his nobles nor his people would endure it; and he desired Paschal to choose between a relaxation of the decrees and a loss of England from his obedience.

In answer to the solicitations of the bishops, the pope declared that, even to save his life, he would not recede from the decrees; he wrote to the king that his treatment of the church was as if an unnatural son should reduce his mother to bondage; and he addressed to Anselm a letter of commendation and encouragements The bishops, however, who brought back the letter for Henry, professed to have been verbally assured by the pope that, if the king would in other respects discharge his duties well, he should not be troubled on the subject of investiture. The archbishop’s envoys said that they had received no such communication : but the bishops rejoined that it had been made in secret; that the pope would not commit it to writing, lest it should come to the knowledge of other princes, who might thereupon claim a like allowance. A vehement dispute followed. Baldwin indignantly insisted that he and his companion ought to be believed, supported as they were by the pope’s letters. It was replied that the word of an archbishop and two bishops ought to outweigh that of two monklings, who by their very profession were disqualified for bearing witness in secular courts; that it was far superior to sheepskins bescribbled with ink, and with a lump of lead appended to them : to which Baldwin rejoined that the question was not secular but spiritual. A fresh reference was made to Rome, for the purpose of ascertaining the pope's real sentiments, and in the meantime Anselm agreed that he would not suspend communion with the king, or with those who were invested by him. But he refused to consecrate some clergy of the court who were nominated to bishoprics; and, although the archbishop of York was willing to take the chief part in the rite, two of the nominees declined to receive consecration on such terms

At Michaelmas 1102, a council was held at London, and, by Anselm’s desire, it was attended by the nobles of the realm, in order to add force to its decisions. A number of abbots were deprived for simony or other irregularities; the obligation of celibacy was now for the first time extended to the parochial clergy of England; and the other canons bear sad evidence to the condition into which religion, discipline, and morality had sunk under the misgovernment of William Rufus. The enforcement of celibacy met with strong opposition, especially in the province of York, where many of the priests preferred the alternative of shutting their church-doors, and giving up the performance of all Divine service. The king and the archbishop received answers from the pope; but Henry refused to make known the contents of that which was addressed to him, and Anselm refrained for a time from opening the other, lest it should involve him in fresh difficulties. The king made an opportunity of visiting him at Canterbury, and proposed that the archbishop should himself go to Rome with a view of obtaining a relaxation of the decrees. Anselm replied that, although old and infirm, he was willing to undertake the journey, but that he would not do anything to the injury of the church, or to his own discredit; whereupon he was assured that he would only be expected to confirm the evidence of the king's own envoys as to the state of English affairs.

The archbishop set out, and, on arriving at Bec, opened the pope’s letter, by which he found that Paschal solemnly disavowed the words imputed to him by Henry's late envoys, and placed the three prelates under censure until they should make satisfaction. After a journey in which honours everywhere waited on him, he reached Rome, where about the same time William of Warelwast arrived as representative of the king. At an audience of the pope, the envoy declared that his master would rather lose his crown than abandon the right of investiture. Paschal replied that he himself would die rather than yield up his claim; but, by way of conciliation, he confirmed in some other points the usages which had been introduced by William the Conqueror. Anselm soon discovered that his opponents were employing the pecuniary arguments which were generally successful at Rome; and, after having received the papal blessing, with a vague confirmation of the privileges of his see, he again withdrew to the hospitality of Hugh of Lyons, who, since his former visit, had performed the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On the way he was overtaken by William of Warelwast, who travelled for some time in his company, and at parting told him that the king would gladly see him back, if the archbishop would do as his predecessors had done to the crown. Anselm considered this as forbidding his return, unless he would agree to terms which the late Roman canons had rendered impossible; and he wrote from Lyons to warn the king that on him must be the guilt of any mischiefs which might follow. Henry committed the property of the archbishopric to the care of two of Anselm’s retainers, who, as would appear from a hint of Edmer, did not exercise their stewardship very faithfully. He repeatedly desired the primate to return, but without offering any mitigation of his conditions; while Anselm, in answer to letters from some of the clergy, who urged him to redress the disorders of the church, steadily declared that he could not return unless the king would make concessions. The archbishop attempted by frequent messages to urge the pope to a more decided course; but although he prevailed on Paschal to excommunicate the Norman counsellors who had maintained the principle of investiture, and the ecclesiastics who accepted it, no sentence was uttered against the king himself. At length Anselm resolved to take further steps on his own responsibility. In the spring of 1105, he visited Henry's sister, the countess of Blois, and told her that he was about to excommunicate the king. The countess was greatly alarmed by this information, as such a sentence might have dangerous effects at a time when Henry was at war with his brother Robert, and when his subjects were discontented on account of its cost. She therefore earnestly endeavoured to mediate between the king and the archbishop, and succeeded in bringing them to a conference at the castle of L'Aigle in Normandy, on the eve of St. Mary Magdalen (July 21). But although at this meeting Henry professed himself willing to give up the revenues of Canterbury, the question of homage and investiture was still a bar to reconciliation; and again a reference to Rome was necessary.

Many of the English clergy had taken advantage of the primate's absence to defy the late canons as to celibacy, and Henry conceived the idea of turning their irregularities to profit by imposing a fine on them. As, however, the produce of this measure fell short of his expectations and of his necessities, he proceeded to levy a fine on every parish-church, holding the incumbents answerable for the payment. It was in vain that two hundred of the clergy, arrayed in their robes of ministration, waited on him with a petition for relief; and Anselm found himself obliged to address to the king a remonstrance against his usurpation of ecclesiastical discipline. The primate received fresh letters, detailing the increased confusion which prevailed among his flock, and earnestly entreating him to return. Gerard of York, and other prelates who had formerly been his opponents, now wrote to acknowledge their error, and declared themselves ready not only to follow but to go before him in the endeavour to heal the wounds of the church.

At length William of Warelwast and Baldwin, who had been sent to Rome as representatives of the king and of the archbishop respectively, returned with the proposal of a compromise—that the king should forego investiture, but that, until he should come to a better mind, bishops and abbots should be permitted to do homage, while those who had been invested by him were to be admitted to communion on such terms as the two envoys should agree on. These conditions were ratified at Bec on the 25th of August 1106, when the king promised to restore to Anselm the profits of the see during his absence, to abstain from the revenues of vacant bishoprics and abbeys, and to remit all fines to the clergy. The victory over Robert at Tenchebray, on the 28th of September, was regarded by many as a blessing on the peace which had been concluded with the church.

Anselm was received in England with enthusiasm. The queen, “Maud the Good”, who had always regarded him with the highest reverence and had corresponded with him in his exile, went before him from stage to stage, to direct the preparations for his entertainment. He soon after joined with the archbishop of York in consecrating five bishops, among whom were his old antagonist William of Warelwast and the two who had refused to be consecrated in the primate’s absence.

A council was held at Westminster in 1107, when the king formally relinquished the privilege of investiture, and the archbishop promised to tolerate the ceremony of homage, notwithstanding the condemnation which Urban had pronounced against it. The king had conceded, and Anselm was congratulated by his correspondents as victorious; yet in truth Henry, by giving up an indifferent formality, was able to retain the old relations of the crown with the hierarchy, and even the nomination of bishops. At this council, and at one held in the following year, the canons against the marriage of ecclesiastics were renewed with great strictness; but the pope consented for a time that the sons of clergymen might be admitted to orders, on the remarkable ground that “almost the greater and the better part of the English clergy” were derived from this class.

During the short remainder of his life, Anselm enjoyed the friendship and respect of Henry. Notwithstanding his growing infirmity, he continued to write on theological and philosophical subjects; on his death-bed he expressed a wish that he might be permitted to live until he had solved a question as to the origin of the soul—because he feared that no other person would be able to give a right solution. After his death, which took place in April 1109, the primacy was allowed to remain vacant until 1114, when it was conferred on Ralph, bishop of Rochester, who had administered its affairs during the interval.

 

 

CHAPTER VI.

FROM THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR HENRY IV TO THE CONCORDAT OF WORMS.

A.D. 1106-1122.

 

 

HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH FROM THE APOSTOLIC AGE TO THE REFORMATION A.D. 64-1517