Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman, Anglican, and Monastic Martyrologies. Authorities: — His life by Eadmer, his friend, (d. circ. 1124.) Ordericus Vitalis (d. 1142), Florence of Worcester (d. 1x18), William of Malmesbury (d. 1141). A very full and beautiful life of S. Anselm has been written by Dean Church, from which this brief notice is condensed. ] The scene of S. Anselm’s birth-place, Aosta, is familiar to the crowds who are yearly attracted to the neighbourhood by the love of Alpine grandeur, and the interest of Alpine adventure, and who pass through it on their way to and from the peaks and valleys of the wonderful region round it. Closely overhanging the city on the south, rises rapidly a wall of sub-Alpine mountain, for great part of the day in shadow, pierced by ravines, with woods and pastures hanging on its steep flanks, but towering up at last into the dark precipices of the Becca di Nona and the peak of Mont Emilius. At the upper end of the valley towards the west, seen over a vista of walnuts, chestnuts and vines, appear high up in the sky, resting as it were on the breast of the great hills, the white glaciers of the Ruitor, bright in sunshine, or veiled in storms; and from the bridge over the torrent which rushes by the city from the north, the eye goes up to the everlasting snows of the domed Velan, and the broken pikes of the Grand Combin. The legends of the valley have not forgotten Anselm; they identify the village where he lived, Gressan the tower which was the refuge of his family, the house in the suburbs of the city where he was bom; in the sacristy of the cathedral they show his relics along with those of the local saints, S. Gratus and S. Jucundus.

The parents of Anselm were accounted noble, and had property, for which they paid homage as vassals to the count of Maurienne. His father was an unthrifty and violent man; his mother a good woman and a prudent house-wife, who used to talk to her child, as mothers do, about God, and his saints, and of heaven. Anselm was born about 1033, and from his boyhood he seems to have been a student, and felt early the common attractions of the age for the monastic life. Then came a time of reaction; health and youth and prosperity were pleasant, and put the thoughts of a religious life out of his mind. Even his keen love of study gave way before the gaieties and sports of his time of life. His affection for his mother was a partial restraint on him; but when she died, “ the ship of his heart lost its anchor, and drifted off altogether into the waves of the world.”

But family disagreements sprang up. His biographer, perhaps Anselm himself too in after life, saw the hand of Providence in his father’s harshness to him, which no submission could soften, and which at last drove him in despair to leave his home, and after the fashion of his countrymen to seek his fortune in strange lands. He crossed Mont Cenis with a single clerk for his attendant, and he did not forget the risk and fatigue of the passage. He spent three years in France and Burgundy, and then, following the track of another Italian, Lanfranc of Pavia, he came to Normandy, and remained for a time at Avranches, where Lanfranc had once taught Finally, he followed Lanfranc, now a famous master, to the monastery where he had become prior, the newly-founded monastery of Bee. Bee was a school as well, and there Anselm, along with other young men whom the growing wish to learn had drawn thither, settled himself, not as a monk but as a student, under Lanfranc. Teacher and pupil, besides both being Italians, had much to draw them together; and a friendship began between them, which, in spite of the difference between the April ».] 3 ". Anselm.

two men, and the perhaps unconscious reserve occasioned by it, continued to the last, genuine and unbroken. Lanfranc was a man of strong practical genius. Anselm was an original thinker of extraordinary daring and subtlety. But the two men had high aims in common; they knew what they meant, and they understood each other's varied capacities for their common task. They found themselves among a race of men of singular energies and great ambition, but at a very low level of knowledge, and with a very low standard of morality; illiterate, undisciplined, lawless. To educate and to reform, to awaken the Normans to the interest of letters and the idea of duty, were the double object of both Lanfranc and Anselm, the key to their unwearied zeal to reorganize and infuse fresh vigour into the monastic sysbem. When Anselm had, as we should say, followed Lanfranc's lectures for some time, the question presented itself to what use he should devote his life. His father's inheritance had fallen to him; should he be a monk at Bee, a hermit in the wilds, or a noble in his father's house, administering his patrimony for the poor? He put himself into Lanfranc's hands. Lanfranc referred him to the archbishop of Rouen. The archbishop advised him to become a monk. It is hard to see what better advice in those times he could have given to a man consumed by the passion at once for knowledge and for the highest ideal of life. Anselm became a monk at Bee in the twenty-seventh year of his age, in 1060;, in three years' time he succeeded Lanfranc as prior; fifteen years after this, in 1078, Herluin, the founder, died, and Anselm was chosen abbot; and he governed Bee as abbot for thirteen years more. Lanfranc had set a high example; he was the kindler of light and force among the Norman clergy. Anselm carried on his work. But it would not be easy to find two more different men. Lanfranc's equal might be found among many distinguished churchmen of the Middle Ages. The man who succeeded him was one who, to a child-like singleness and tenderness of heart, joined an originality and power of thought which rank him, even to this day, among the few discoverers of new paths in philosophical speculation. Fixed at Bee, the philosophic inquirer settled to his toil, and reverently and religiously, yet fearlessly, gave his reason its range. His biographer records the astonishment caused by his attempts to “ unravel the darkest, and before his time the unsolved or unusual questions concerning the Divine Nature, and our faith, which lay hid, covered by much darkness, in the Divine Scriptures.” The men of his day, as we see, recognized in him something more than common as an enquirer and a thinker; but it was reserved for much later times to discern how great he was. The fruits of his activity at Bee are shown in two works which have gained him his place among the great thinkers of Christian Europe — two short treatises on the deepest foundations of all religion, examples of the most severe and abstruse exercise of mind. The first of these is the “ Monologium,” an investigation of what reason alone shows God to be. It is an argument from ideas, in the sense in which Plato spoke of them, as grounds accounting to reason for all that is matter of experience. But he was not satisfied with the Monologium, a chain consisting of many links, and he was tormented with the longing to discover some one argument — short, simple, seif, sufficing — by which to demonstrate in a clear and certain manner the existence and perfections of God. Often on the point of grasping what he sought, and as often baffled by what escaped his hold, unable in his anxiety to sleep or to take his meals, he despaired of his purpose; but the passionate desire would not leave him. It intruded on his prayers, and interrupted his duties, till it came to appear to him like a temptation of the devil. At last, in the watches April ax.].S'. Anselm.

of the night, in the very stress of his efforts to keep off the haunting idea, “ in the agony and conflict of his thoughts,” the thing which he had so long given up hoping for presented itself, and filled him with joy. The result was the famous argument of the “ Proslogion,” the argument which was revived by Descartes, and which has been accepted by Hegel, the objective reality of the idea, or that the notion of God in the human mind necessarily involves the reality of the idea.

But Anselm was not only a thinker; he was eminently a teacher. His chief care was devoted to the young men in his school, whose minds were to be formed for work to come, and who were not too old to learn, or to be kindled with high purposes, and quickened into fresh enterprises of thought Gifted with singularly keen insight into men's hearts, and with quick and wide sympathy, Anselm's influence reached to wherever he came in contact with men, inside his monastery or without The words of Christ and Heaven were ever on his lips, but they were words for all. His correspondence shows how, as time went on, his relations with persons of all classes extended; and he cared for all, and willingly worked for all Whole days, says Eadmer, he would spend in giving advice to those who claimed it, and then the night would be spent in correcting the illwritten copies of books for the library. His care and his toil were for all within his spiritual household, and flowed over beyond it; but his love and his interest were for the younger men, for minds not yet dulled to the wonder and great ends of living.

Why the young turned so enthusiastically to one who thus sympathised with them, may be understood from the following conversation, in which Anselm's good sense and freedom of mind appear in contrast with the current ideas of his time, which were not those of the eleventh century only. An abbot, says Eadraer, who was looked upon as a very religious man, was one day deploring to Anselm the impossibility of making any impression on the boys who were brought up in his monastery. “ What are we to do with them ?” he asked in despair. “ Do what we will they are perverse and incorrigible; we do not cease beating them day and night, and they only get worse.” “ What do they turn into when they grow up ?” asked Anselm. “ They turn only dull and brutal,” was the answer, “ what are we to do with them? In every way we constrain them to improve, and it is no use.” " Constrain them I” exclaimed Anselm. “Tell me, my lord abbot, if you planted a tree in your garden, and tied it up on all sides, so that it could not stretch forth its branches, what sort of tree would.it turn out when, after some years, you gave it room to spread ? Would it not be good for nothing, full of tangled and crooked boughs ? And whose fault would this be but yours, who had put such constant restraint upon it ? And this is just what you do with your boys. You plant them in the garden of the Church that they may grow and bear fruit to God. But you cramp them round to such a degree with terrors and threats and blows, that they are utterly debarred from the enjoyment of any freedom. And thus injudiciously kept down, they collect in their minds evil thoughts tangled like thorns; they cherish and feed them, and with dogged temper elude all that might help to correct them. And hence it comes thus.” A strange and touching history in Eadmer — strange with those ways of thought, which their unquestioned naturalness then render doubly wonderful now, — touching from that depth of affection which all times know and can understand — shows how Anselm had learned his own lesson. When he was made prior, after only three years’ profession, over the heads of the older inmates of Bee, a April n.] •51 Anselm.

strong feeling of jealousy was shown, and a party formed against him in the monastery. With them was one of the younger monks, named Osbem, whose hatred of Anselm was extreme, who pursued him with the “savageness of a dog ” (canino more). Anselm, who saw that he had character and talent, began by the most forbearing and immovable good-humour, and by giving him in return the fullest indulgence compatible with the discipline of the house. In time Osbem was softened, and became deeply attached to him. Then, gaining influence over him, Anselm step by step withdrew the early indulgences, and accustomed him to the severities of the monastic life, “punishing him not only with words but with stripes.” Osbem stood the test, and was ripening into manly strength. But there came a fatal illness. Then Anselm watched and waited on him like a mother; “day and night was at his bedside, gave him his food and drink, ministered to all his wants, did everything himself that might ease his body and comfort his soul.” When the end came, and Osbem was dying, Anselm gave him a last charge. He bade him, speaking as friend to friend, to make known after his death, if it were possible, what had become of him. “ He promised and passed away.” During the funeral Anselm sat apart in a comer of the church, to weep and pray for his friend; he fell asleep from heaviness and sorrow, and had a dream. He saw certain very reverend persons enter the room where Osbem had died, and sit round for judgment; and while he was wondering what the doom would be, Osbem himself appeared, like a man just recovering from illness, or pale with loss of blood. Three times, he said, had the old serpent risen up against him, but three times he fell backwards, and “ the Bearward of the Lord (Ursarius Domini) had delivered him.” Then Anselm awoke, and believed that Osbera’s sins were pardoned, and that God's angels had kept off his foes “ as the bearwards keep off the bears.” Death did not seem to break the friendship. Osbem’s memory was in Anselm's prayers, and his letters show how deep and tender was the surviving affection. He prays his friends to offer for Osbern the prayers and masses which they would offer for himself. “Wherever Osbern is,” he writes to his friend Gundulf, “his soul is my soul Let me, then, while I am alive, receive in him whatever I might have hoped to receive from friendship when I am dead; so that then they need do nothing for me. Farewell ! farewell I mi carissime; and that I may recompense you according to your importunity, I pray, and I pray, and I pray, remember me, and forget not the soul of Osbern my beloved. If I seem to burden you too much, then forget me and remember him.” Whatever the shape in which such feelings clothe themselves, they are not less real for their shape; and to all who feel the mystery and obscurity of our condition, that deep reality will gain their respect and sympathy. Eadmer, or some other of his friends, made a collection of his sayings and comparisons, and his common modes of presenting moral and religious topics, very miscellaneous in selection, and unequal in worth, but giving probably an unstudied representation of his ordinary manner of discourse. “He taught,” says Eadmer, “not as is the wont with others, but in a widely different fashion, setting forth each point under common and familiar examples, and supporting it by the strength of solid reasons, without any veils or disguises of speech.” There is a touch of grim appreciation of the ludicrous in his comparison of himself, peacefully living with his monks, or going forth among men of the world, to the fate of the owl which ventures into the day; while she sits with her “ little ones in her cave, she is happy, and it is well with her; but when she falls among April as.] S. Anselm.

the crows and rooks, and other birds, one attacks her with beak, another with claws, another buffets her with wings, and it goes ill with the owl” There is a deeper touch of sympathy for distress and suffering in the story of the hare, which, when he was riding one day, after he had become archbishop, from Windsor to Hayes, the young men about him started and chased with their dogs. The hare took refuge under the feet of his horse. Anselm reined in his horse, and forbade them to hurt the creature, while, so the story goes, the dogs surrounded the hare and licked it, doing it no harm. When the soldiers crowded round with noisy triumph at the capture, Anselm burst into tears. “ You laugh,” he said, “ but for the poor unhappy creature there is nothing to laugh at or be glad for; its mortal foes are about it, and it flies to us for life, in its own way beseeching for shelter. You see the image of the departing soul of man.” Then he rode on, and with loud voice forbade that the dogs should touch the hare; and the creature, glad and at liberty, darted off to the fields and woods. In the year 1078, Anselm became abbot, and his connection with England began. Bee, with the other Norman abbeys, had since the Conquest received possessions in England, and the new abbot went over to view the abbey lands, and to visit his old master, Lanfranc. At Canterbury he was welcomed at the great monastery, and became one with the brotherhood of its monks, most of them probably Englishmen. There he made the acquaintance of Eadmer, then a stripling; and Eadmer's first remembrance of him seems to be of the brotherly way in which he lived with the English monks, and of the original and unusual way in which, in his discourses in cloister or in chapter, he put before them the aims and duties of their state. Lanfranc was then full of the changes which he wished to introduce into the monastic and ecclesiastical organization of England; and Anselm, though he undoubtedly fully sympathised with his master's object, used his influence to temper Lanffanc's sternness, and soften his Norman and Latin prejudices. Anselm, no Norman, and with a larger heart than the Normans, warmed towards the English with something of the love and sympathy which had filled the soul of the great Roman pope who sent us S. Augustine; and the respect which he showed to the defeated race, impressed the foreigners who had become their masters. In his visit, more than once repeated, to the abbey lands about England, he became known. Eadmer dwells especially on the contrast between his way of teaching and that customary with others, and on his preference for plain reasons, popular illustrations, and straightforward speech which all could understand. He was welcome to old and young, rich and poor; he touched the hearts of English monks, and won the respect of Norman soldiers. But this general account is confirmed by the effect of Anselm's character on William in his later stem and gloomy days. “To all others so harsh and terrible, in Anselm's presence he seemed, to the wonder of the bystanders, another man, so gracious and easy of speech." Years after, when king William was on his forlorn deathbed, Anselm was the man whom he most wished to see.

There can be no doubt that towards the end of the Conqueror's reign the fame of the school of Bee was preeminent in his dominions, above all other places of religion and learning; and that, next to the illustrious name of its creator, Lanfranc, was that of Anselm, bis pupil and successor at Bee. There can be little doubt, either, that when Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury died, the thoughts of all who looked upon him as the great ecclesiastical leader of his day, turned to Anselm, as the man to carry on April at.] 61 Anselm.

his work. Everything pointed him out as the fittest man that Normandy could fnmish to take the great place which Lanfianc had left vacant He would probably have been the Conqueror's choice; and by all who desired, for whatever reason, that the see of Canterbury [a bishop’s “see” is his diocese, named from his seat (Latin sedes)] should be filled in a way suitable to its eminence and importance, he was marked at once as the person whom it would most become the Conqueror's son to choose.

But for such appointments, which had been a matter of great consequence with his father, William the Red had little care. Lanfianc was gone, and Ralph Flam bard was the king's new counsellor; and even that age of violence was shocked when, instead of naming an archbishop of Canterbury, the king of England seized the possessions of the see, and, that he might rack its revenues, refused to fill it up. For nearly four years this lasted, and the patience with which the scandal was endured, — keenly felt as it was even by the rough barons of William's court, — is the measure of what a bold bad king could do, who knew how to use his power. A contemporary picture of the actual state of things in a case like this is valuable. Eadmer was a monk at Canterbury, and describes what passed before his eyes. “ The king,” he says, “ seized the church at Canterbury, the mother of all England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the neighbouring isles; all that belonged to it, within and without, he caused to be inventoried by his officers; and after fixing an allowance for the support of the monks, who there served God, he ordered the remainder to be set at a rent and brought into his domain. So he put up the Church of Christ to sale, giving the power of lordship over it to any one who, with whatever damage to it, would bid the highest price. Every year, in wretched succession, a new rent was set; the king would allow no bargain to remain settled, but whoever promised more ousted him who was paying less, unless the former tenant, giving up his original bargain, came up of his own accord to the offer of the later bidder. You might see, besides, every day, the most abandoned of men on their business of collecting money for the king, marching about the cloisters of the monastery, regardless of the religious rule of God's servants, and with cruel and threatening looks, giving their orders on all sides; uttering menaces, lording it over every one, and showing their power to the utmost. What scandals and quarrels and irregularities arose from this I hate to remember. The monks of the Church were some of them dispersed at the approach of the mischief, and sent to other houses, and those who remained suffered many tribulations and indignities. What shall I say of the Church tenants, who were ground down by such wasting and misery; so that I might doubt, but for the evils which followed, whether with bare life they could have been more cruelly oppressed? Nor did all this happen only at Canterbury. The same savage cruelty raged in all her daughter churches in England which, when bishop or abbot died, at that time fell into widowhood. And this king, too, was the first who ordained this woeful oppression against the churches of God; he had inherited nothing of this sort from his father; he alone, when the churches were vacant, kept them in his own hands. And thus wherever you looked, there was wretchedness before your eyes; and this distress lasted for nearly five years over the Church of Canterbury, always increasing, always, as time went on, growing more cruel and evil”

In the year 1092 Hugh of Avranches, earl of Chester, an old friend of Anselm's, invited him over to England to organize a house in which he had instituted monks for seculars, S. Werburga's at Chester. Hugh the Wolf, one of the Conqueror's march lords on the Welsh border, is painted for us with much vividness in one of the rude but vigorous April ax.] •S'. Anselm.

portraits which Orderic liked to draw, a violent, loose-living, but generous barbarian, honouring self-control and a religious life in others, though he had little of it himself; living for eating and drinking, for wild and wasteful hunting* by which he damaged his own and his neighbours lands; very open-handed, so fat that he could hardly stand; very fond of the noise and riotous company of a great following of retainers, old and young, yet keeping about him also a simple-minded religious chaplain, whom he had brought with him from Avranches, and who did his best, undiscouraged, though the odds were much against him, to awaken a sense of right in his wild flock. It is one of the puzzles of those strange days, what there could have been in common between earl Hugh and Anselm to have been the foundation of the mutual regard which from old date seems to have been acknowledged between them. Anselm, however, declined the earl's invitation. It was already whispered about that if he went to England he would be archbishop. Such a change was, in truth, entirely against his own inclination and habits of life, and he had made up his mind against accepting it; but he would not give room to suspicions by seeming to put himself in the way of it. Again earl Hugh sent for him; he was sick, and wanted the help of an old friend. Anselm’s sensitive conscience was perplexed; to refuse to go seemed like putting the care of his own character for disinterestedness above the wishes and perhaps the real needs of one who had been from old time his familiar friend. So, commending his intention and purpose to God, he went to Boulogne and crossed to Dover. He came to Canterbury, meaning to remain there the next day, which was a festival; but he was met with cries of welcome, as the future archbishop, and he hurried away at once. At the court, which he passed on his way to Chester, he was received with great honour even by the king. There he and the Red King had their first experience of one another. At a private interview Anselm, instead of entering, as the king expected, on the affairs of the monastery, laid before him, in the unceremonious fashion of those times, the complaints and charges which were in every one's mouth against his government “ Openly or secretly, things were daily said of him by nearly all the men of his realm which were not seemly for the king's dignity." It is not said how William received the appeal, and they parted. Anselm went to Chester, and found earl Hugh recovered. But the affairs of Bee, and the ordering of the Chester monastery, had still to be arranged, and Anselm was kept on nearly five months in England. The talk about the archbishopric dropped, and he ceased to think about it; but when he wished to return to Normandy, the king refused to give him the necessary leave to go out of the realm. The nobles and bishops who had perhaps hoped that Anselm's being on the spot might bring matters to a point, and were disappointed at the king's showing no signs of relenting, had recourse, in their despair of any direct influence, to a device which, even to Eadmer, seemed a most extraordinary one, and treated their fierce king as if he were an impracticable child who could only be worked upon by roundabout means. By one of the quaintest of all the quaint and original mixtures of simplicity and craft of which the Middle Ages are full, it was proposed at the meeting of the court at Gloucester at Christmas 1092, that the king should be asked by his barons and bishops, who were troubled and distressed at the vacancy of Canterbury, to allow prayers to be said in all the churches of the realm that God would put it into the king's heart to raise up the widowed see from its scandalous and unprecedented desolation. He was “ somewhat indignant " at the suggestion when it was first laid before him, but he assented to it, April ax.] S. Anselm.

adding, as his view of the matter, “ that the Church might ask what it liked, but he should not give up doing what he chose." The bishops took him at his word, and the person to whom they applied to draw up the form of prayer was Anselm. Prayers were accordingly ordered throughout all the churches of England, and the court broke up. When the king’s temper was sounded, he was as obstinate as ever. One of his chief men in familiar talk spoke of the abbot of Bee as the holiest man he had ever known; “he loved God only, and, as was plain in all his ways, desired nothing transitory." “Not even the archbishopric?" rejoined William, with his characteristic scoff. The other maintained his opinion, and said that there were many who thought the same. “If he thought that he had but the least chance of it," said the king, “ would he not dance and clap his hands as he rushed to embrace it? But," he added, “by the Holy Face of Lucca,” (his usual oath,) “ neither he nor any one else at this time shall be archbishop except myself." The king was still at Gloucester, when, in the beginning of 1093, he was seized with a dangerous illness The times were so unsettled, that the anxiety caused by it brought back the bishops and great men who had just dispersed. William thought himself dying, and he looked back and looked forward with the feelings so common in those days, when men were reckless in health, and helpless in the hour of need. His barons as well as his bishops spoke their minds plainly, and pressed for reparation and amendment And now, as was natural, the influence of a spiritual counsellor like Anselm was at once thought of. He was staying, ignorant of the king’s illness, somewhere not far from Gloucester, when he was summoned in all haste to attend upon the dying man. The king, who believed himself and was believed by others to be dying, was dying with the vacant archbishopric in his possession and on his conscience. There could be no question now with him about getting free from the perilous load. But who was to be archbishop? All waited for the king to name him. He named Anselm. Anselm, he said, was most worthy of it When the king's choice was announced to Anselm, he trembled and turned pale. The bishops came to bring him to the king, to receive the investiture of the archbishopric in the customary way, by the delivery of a pastoral staff. Anselm absolutely refused to go. At last they dragged him by main force to the sick king's room. William, in his anguish and fear, was deeply anxious about the matter, and entreated him with tears, by the memory of his father and mother, who had been Anselm's friends, to deliver their son from the deadly peril in which he stood. The sick man’s distress moved some of the bystanders, and they turned with angry remonstrances on Anselm. “ What senseless folly this was ! The king could not bear this agitation. Anselm was embittering his dying hours, and on him would rest the responsibility of all the mischiefs that would follow, if he would not do his part by accepting the pastoral charge.” Anselm in his trouble appealed for encouragement to two of his monks, Baldwin and Eustace, who were with him. “ Ah, my brethren, why do not you help me?” “Might it have been the will of God,” he used to say, speaking of those moments, “I would, if I had the choice, gladly have died, rather than been raised to the archbishopric.” Baldwin could only speak of submitting to the will of God; and burst, says Eadmer, into a passion of tears. Then the king bade them all fall at Anselm's feet to implore his assent; he, in his turn, fell down before them, still holding to his refusal Finally, they lost patience; they were angry with him, and with themselves for their own irresolution. The cry arose, “ A pastoral staff ! a pastoral staff 1” They dragged him to April *i.] S. Anselm.

the king’s bedside, and held out his right arm to receive the stafL But when the king presented it, Anselm kept his hand firmly clenched, and would not take it They tried by main force to wrench it open; and when he cried out with the pain of their violence, they at last held the staff closely pressed against his still closed hand. Amid the shouts of the crowd, “ Long live the bishop,” with the Te Deum of the bishops and clergy, he was carried, rather than led, to a neighbouring church, still crying out, “ It is nought that ye are doing, it is nought that ye are doing.” He himself describes the scene in a letter to his monks at Bee. “ It would have been difficult to make out whether madmen were dragging along one in his senses, or sane men a madman, save that they were chanting, and I, pale with amazement and pain, looked more like one dead than alive.” From the church he went back to the king: “ I tell thee, my lord king,” he said, “that thou shalt not die of this sickness; and hence I wish thee to know how easily thou mayest alter what has been done with me, for I have not acknowledged nor do I acknowledge its validity.” Then, when he had left the king’s chamber, he addressed the bishops and nobles who were escorting him. They did not know, he said, what they had been doing. They had yoked together to the plough the untameable bull with the old and feeble sheep, and no good would come of the union. The plough was the Church of God, and the plough in England was drawn by two strong oxen, the king and the archbishop of Canterbury; the one by his justice and power in things of this world, the other by his teaching and governance in things divine. Then he returned to his lodging. He was almost overcome and faint with distress; they brought him holy water and made him drink it This happened on the First Sunday in Lent [the forty days of fasting before Easter], March 6, 1093. The king immediately ordered that he should be invested with all the temporalities [the lands and income attached to a bishopric] of the see, as Lanfranc had held them. There was plainly no escape. His acceptance was the one chance open for better things. If there was to be an archbishop, it must be Anselm. On cooler thoughts, he recognized what had happened as the will of God; though, j as he said, whether in mercy or wrath, he could not tell, and he bowed to it !

But the king got well, and with health came regrets for the engagements made on his sick-bed. “ Then arose such misery and suffering through the whole realm, that whoever remembers it cannot remember to have seen anything like it in England. All the evil which the king had done before he was sick seemed good in comparison with the evils which he did when restored to health." He seemed to look back on his illness with fierce bitterness. Gundulf, bishop of Rochester, an old pupil and friend of Anselm’s at Bee, and the king’s chief architect, remonstrated. “Be assured, bishop," was the answer, perhaps in half-jest to people who understood no jesting on such matters, “that, by the Holy Face of Lucca, God shall never have me good for the ill that He has brought on me." But he had shown no wish to revoke Anselm’s appointment On the 5th of September he came to Canterbury, and was enthroned. On the very day of the solemnity Ralph Flambard appeared there, with his airs of insolence and his harshness, to disturb the festivities by a suit in the king’s name against some of the archbishop’s tenants. The people’s minds were deeply wounded at the insult; that “ a man like Anselm should not be allowed to pass the first days of his dignity in peace." He himself took it as a presage of what awaited him.

On the 4th of December, 1093, he was consecrated by the archbishop of York, in the presence of nearly all the English bishops. According to the old ritual, the Book of April si.] S. Anselm.

the Gospels, opened at random, was laid on the shoulders of the newly-consecrated prelate, and the passage at which it opened was taken as a sort of omen of his episcopate. The passage which turned up was, “ He bade many, and sent his servant at supper-time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready. And they all with one consent began to make excuse.” His first intercourse with the king was friendly, but it was soon clouded. William was in the midst of his projects against his brother Robert, and money was his great want Among others who offered their presents, Anselm, urged by his friends, brought five hundred marks. But Anselm’s five hundred marks were refused. He went to the king and expostulated. “ It was his first present, but not his last, and a free gift was better than a forced and servile contribution.” His words implied a reproof of the king’s system of extortion, and William answered angrily that he wanted neither his money nor his scolding, and bade him begone. Anselm thought, says Eadmer, of the words of the Gospel which had been read on the day when he first entered his cathedral — “ No man can serve two masters.” But the refusal was a relief. A sum of money in the shape of a free gift, after a man was consecrated, was one of the ways in which Church offices were sold and bought Implacable opposition to this system was one of the main points in the policy of the reforming party with whom Anselm sympathised. He congratulated himself that he was saved even from the appearance of a corrupt bargain for the archbishopric. He was urged to regain the king’s favour by doubling his present, but he refused; he gave away the money to the poor, and left the court when the Christmas festival was over. He soon met William again. With the rest of the great men of England he was summoned in February 1094, to meet the king at Hastings, where he was waiting for a fair wind to carry him over to Normandy. He wanted some check to the unbridled licence of manners to which the contemporary chronicles bear ample and detailed evidence; and he wanted important religious posts, like those of the abbots of the monasteries, to be filled up. The customary remedy for disorders, well known in England as in Normandy, was a council of bishops, meeting with the king’s sanction, whose regulations were to be backed by his authority, Anselm asked for such a council, “by which Christian religion, which had well-nigh perished in many men, might be restored,” and the influence of its teachers revived and strengthened. William demurred. He would call a council only at his own time, when he pleased, not when Anselm pleased; and, with a sneer, he asked what the council was to be about? “The whole land,” said Anselm, “unless judgment and discipline are exercised in earnest, will soon be a Sodom.” William was not pleased, and answered shortly, “What good would come of this matter for you?” “If not for me, at least, I hope, for God and for you.” “ Enough,” said the king, “ talk to me no more about it” Anselm thought that in these ungracious answers the old anger about the money might be working; and he resolved to send a message by the bishops asking for the king’s friendship. “ If he will not give it me, let him say why; if I have offended, I am ready to make amends.” “No,” the king answered; “I have nothing to accuse him of; but I will not grant him my favour, because I do not hear any reason why I should.” The bishops brought him back the reply, and Anselm asked what he meant by “ not hearing why he should.” The bishops saw no difficulty in understanding him. “ The mystery,” they said, “ is plain. If you want peace with him, you must give him money.” “Give him the five hundred marks you offered,” was April n.

vS. Anselm. their advice, “ and promise as much more, and he will give you back his friendship. We see no other way of getting out of the difficulty, and we have no other for ourselves.” “ Far be it from me/’ said Anselm, “ to take this way out of it” When William was told of this, he sent back the following answer: “Yesterday I hated him much, to-day still more; to-morrow and ever after he may be sure I shall hate him with more bitter hatred. As father and archbishop I will never hold him more; his blessings and prayers I utterly abhor and refuse.”

The signs of the approaching storm had shown themselves. William had found that the new archbishishop was not a man to be frightened by rough words into compliance with arbitrary and unreasonable demands. Anselm had found what he had anticipated, that the king, once more in health, with his political objects before him and his need of money pressing him, would not listen to remonstrances, nor change his ways. Naturally enough, the king thought he had made a great mistake in forcing the archbishopric on Anselm. He began to think how he could force it from him. Occasions for attempting this were not likely to be wanting. But William was absent for a while in Normandy, and the evil day was postponed. On his return, however, it broke out afresh. A new cause of difference was opened between him and Anselm. The rule had been established by the popes, and accepted by Western Christendom, that a metropolitan [the archbishop who heads a group of dioceses] must go to Rome to get from the pope his pallium [a woolen band the pope gives to archbishops as a sign of their authority], the white woollen stole with four crosses which was the badge of his office and dignity, and is still the special blazon in the armorial bearings of Canterbury. The usage was an acknowledged one at this time. Lanfranc himself had gone to Rome for the purpose. But the chair of S. Peter was now claimed by two rivals, Urban and Clement Anselm had foreseen a difficulty in the matter. France and Normandy had acknowledged Urban; England had acknowledged neither. Anselm, before his final acceptance, had given fair warning that to him Urban was the true pope; the king had evaded the subject Anselm now asked leave to go to Rome for his pallium. “ From which pope?” asked the king. Anselm had already given the answer to the question, and he could but repeat it, “ From pope Urban.” “Urban,” said the king, “I have not acknowledged. By my customs, by the customs of my father, no man may acknowledge a pope in England without my leave. To challenge my power in this, is as much as to deprive me of my crown.” The question thus raised could not be left unsettled. Anselm demanded that it should be answered by the great council of England. The demand could not be refused, and an assembly was summoned to consider the whole matter, and to give the king advice upon it Accordingly a great meeting of the chief men in Church and State was held at the castle of Rockingham.

The great council — we might almost call it a Parliament — met on Mid-Lent Sunday, March nth, 1095, probably in the church of the castle. There were the bishops, abbots, and nobles; and besides a numerous throng, watching and listening, of “monks, clerics, and layman.” The king did not appear; he had his private council sitting apart, from which messages passed to and fro between him and the archbishop in the larger public assembly.

But with Anselm, the only question that there could be, who was the pope, was, as he had from the first declared, no question at all; he, with Normandy, and all Gaul [roughly modern France and Belgium], had recognized Urban as the true pope. It was part of William's policy of mingled bullying and trickery, the trust placed in evasion and delay by a man who doubted of all men's April ai.J S. Anselm, straightforwardness and disinterestedness, and hoped that with time their selfishness would be his sure ally, that he shut his eyes to what was plain from the first, that the pope whom Anselm had acknowledged he would adhere to. The bishops were in heart, as well as by the forms of the law, the king's men. Some of them had bought their bishoprics, most of them were afraid of William, and were always expecting to have to appease his wrath by heavy gifts of money. They saw, too, that a quarrel of this kind was most dangerous to the already precarious peace of their churches; and they refused to be drawn into it With compliments on Anselm's wisdom, which ought, they said, to be their guide, they declined to give any other advice than that he should submit himself without conditions to the king's will. They were willing, however, to report his words to the king, and the proceedings were adjourned to the morrow. On the Monday, accordingly, they met again, and Anselm repeated his question, to which they gave the same answer. They would advise him only on condition of his submitting himself, without qualification or reserve, to the king's will. It was the answer of cowards, convicted by their own conscience, and knowing that all who heard them knew what was in their conscience. “ Having said these words, they were silent,'' says Eadmer, “and hung down their heads as if to receive what was coming on them." Then Anselm, his eyes kindling, made his appeal “Since you," he said, “the shepherds of the Christian people, and you who are called chiefs of the nation, refuse your counsel to me, your chief, except according to the will of one man, I will go the chief shepherd and Prince of all; I will hasten to the Angel of great counsel, and receive from Him the counsel which I will follow in this my cause, yea, His cause and that of His Church. Know ye, therefore, all of you, that in the things that are God's, I will (April at.

render obedience to the Vicar of S. Peter; and in those which belong of right to the earthly dignity of my lord the king, I will render him both faithful counsel and service, *0 the best of my understanding and power.” The chief men of the assembly were not prepared for this bold and direct announcement Their irritation broke out in angry and confused clamour, “so that it may be thought that they were declaring him guilty of death and they peremptorily and angrily refused to report Anselm's words to the king, to whose chamber they retired. Anselm, finding no one whom he could trust to inform William of what had passed, went to him, and repeated his words in his presence. William was, of course, very angry. He intended that Anselm should be silenced, as well as forced to submission; and he looked to his bishops especially to silence him. It was not easy for them “to find something to say which should at once soothe the king's wrath, and not openly contradict the alleged words of God.” Eadmer describes their perplexity, as, broken up into knots of two or three, they discussed the matter; while Anselm, who had returned to the church, sat by himself to wait the result, and at last, wearied by the delay, “leaning his head against the wall, fell into a calm sleep.”

At length, late in the day, the bishops with some of the lay nobles came to him from the king. Their language was a mixture of coaxing and menace. “ The king,” they said, “requires peremptorily an immediate settlement, once for all, of the question which had been opened at Gillingham, and adjourned at Anselm's request to the present time. The matter was perfectly plain, and needed no argument The whole realm cried out against him for impairing the honour of their lord's imperial crown; for to take away the customs of the royal dignity was as good as taking away the king's crown; one could not be duly held without the other.” Then they appealed to his pride and self-interest “This Urban could be of no use to him; why not shake off the yoke of subjection to him, and be free, as becomes an archbishop of Canterbury, to fulfil the commands of our lord the king?" Anselm listened patiently, and replied, “ Whoever would prove that, because I will not renounce the obedience of the venerable bishop of the holy Roman Church, I am violating my faith and my oath to my earthly king, let him present himself, and he shall find me prepared to answer him, as I ought, and where I ought” When the bishop of Durham and his companions came to see the meaning of Anselm’s words, “As I ought, and where I ought,” they recognized in it a plea to which they had no answer; for it meant that no man could pass judgment on an archbishop of Canterbury, except the highest judge and authority in Christendom, the pope himself; and the claim came home too powerfully to the minds of men, both as Christians and as Englishmen, for the king’s Norman bishops to think of questioning it The sympathy of the crowd had been with Anselm; but fear of the king had kept down the expression of it to faint murmurs. But now a soldier stepped out of the throng, and kneeling before the archbishop, said, “Lord and father, thy children, through me, beseech thee not to let thy heart be troubled by what thou hast heard; but remember how holy Job on the dunghill vanquished the devil, and avenged Adam, whom the devil had vanquished in Paradise.” The quaint attempt at encouragement cheered Anseim. He perceived that the feeling of the people was with him. “So we were glad, and were more at ease in our minds, being confident, according to the saying, that the voice of the people is the voice of God.” But in the court there was great vexation. “What shall 1 do ? ” says our reporter, Eadmer, literally our reporter, for he was present during the whole session. “Were I to attempt to describe the threats, reproaches, insults, and foul language with which the archbishop was assailed; I should be judged an exaggerator.” On the morrow, Tuesday morning, Anselm and his companions were in their accustomed seats, waiting the king's orders. For a long time none came. As a matter of argument there was nothing to be said; Anselm had the words of God, the authority of the apostle on his side. But his staff and ring could be taken from him by force, and he be expelled the kingdom. The bishop of Durham suggested the last expedient, as one in which the bishops could agree in. Such a termination to the quarrel would be at least the king's act, not their own, as it would be if they passed judgment on him or on his plea. An impracticable and dangerous leader would be got rid of by lay violence, and they would not be compromised. But if the bishops acquiesced, the laymen of the council were dissatisfied. They were beginning to think that things were going too far. The barons refused to agree with the advice of the bishop. “His words did not please them." “What does please you then,” said the king, “ if they do not ? While I live, equal in my realm I will not endure. Go, go, take counsel together, for by God’s countenance, if you do not condemn him, 1 will condem you." One of the shrewdest of them, Robert, count of Mellent, who was hereafter to be one of Anselm's stoutest enemies, answered, apparently with a sense of amusement at the baffled eagerness of the bishops, and perhaps with something of a sportman's admiration for the gallantry of the single-handed defence, “About our counsels, I don't know quite what to say. For when we have been arranging them all day long, and have settled, by talking them over among ourselves, how they are to hold together, he goes to sleep, and thinks no harm; and April 2i.] 6 *- Anselm.

the moment they are opened before him, with one breath of his lips he breaks them as if they were cobwebs.” The king turned again to the bishops: “ What could they do ?” It was out of the question, they said, to judge him; but they agreed in the king's strange suggestion, that though they could not judge him, they could withdraw their obedience from him, and deny him their brotherly friendship. This, then, was agreed upon; and, accompanied by some of the English abbots, they finally announced to the archbishop that they withdrew their obedience from him, as the king also withdrew from him his protection and confidence, and would never more hold him for archbishop and ghostly father. Anselm was to become a kind of outlaw, abandoned by all his brethren, deprived of the king's protection, and out of the king's peace, put to shame before the whole realm. His answer was calm and temperate. There must be two to make a quarrel, and he on his part would not quarrel either with them, or with the king; and, come what might, he should still retain the authority and the name of archbishop of Canterbury. William heard his answer with displeasure; he had probably expected submission or resignation. There was still one more thing to do. The ecclesiastical members of the council had formally deserted Anselm, but the laymen had not The king turned to them; “No man shall be mine,” he said, “ who chooses to be his,” appealing to the feudal feeling about homage; and he called on his barons to follow the example of the bishops. But the tide had now completely turned. They absolutely refused to lend themselves to a precedent so dangerous to all their liberties. The answer altered the whole face of matters. It turned what had seemed the winning side into the beaten and disappointed one. It upset all the king's plans, and the three days' laborious and shifty attempts of the bishop of Durham and his fellows. The laymen, high and low, refused to go with them, and the defeat was confessed. The bishops had made their sacrifice of honour and conscience for nothing; nothing was gained by the public display of their subserviency, which it was not even thought worth while to follow up. On all sides they met mocking eyes and scowling looks.

At Whitsuntide, Anselm, who had been keeping the festival at his manor of Mortlake, was summoned to the neighbourhood of Windsor, where the king was, and came to Hayes, another of his manors. He was visited the next ! day by nearly all the bishops, and their errand was once more to prevail on him to make up the quarrel by a payment of money. Anselm was inflexible. The king saw that his game had been a false one, and threw it up at last frankly. William was preparing for a busy and critical summer, and he could not afford to offend his chief men. Without more ado he followed their advice, and freely restored Anselm to his favour. Bygones were to be bygones, and he granted that the archbishop should freely exercise his office as the spiritual father of the realm. A year of comparative respite followed. The year 1096 was a busy year for the king. It had begun with the signal vengeance taken by him at Salisbury against the conspirators of the year before, and it was the year of the first crusade. Robert of Normandy, unable to govern, but ready for adventure and fresh conquest, was carried away by the enthusiasm of the time; he had no money, and William saw at last his opportunity arrive. He bought Normandy of his brother for three years. The money was, ! as usual, to be drawn from England. The lands were racked, the churches spoiled of their treasures — their chalices, and reliquaries, and volumes of the Gospels bound in gold and silver. Anselm only suffered as the rest He April ax.] 6 ". Anselm.

had of course to furnish his contribution, and he judged it but reasonable and fitting that he should do so. But other difficulties were soon to return on him. Wales was as troublesome to William as Ireland was to Elizabeth. He marched through the country, but he failed to subdue it; and lost many men and horses in the attempt In 1097 he tried to strike a more serious blow; but little came of it He came back in ill-humour. Anselm again felt it He received a letter from the king, complaining of the contingent soldiers whom the archbishop had sent to the army. The king had him now at his mercy, not on a question of religion, but of feudal service. At the Whitsun meeting, while people were asking what was to come of this charge, whether Anselm would have to pay a large fine, or to submit to the king, and never lift up his head more, he sent a request to the king for permission to go to Rome. The request was a surprise. William refused. But Anselm started. A message followed Anselm, to the effect that, if he went himself, he was to carry nothing away with him belonging to the king. “Does he mean my horses, and dress, and furniture, which he may perhaps call his own ?” The message was a burst of that mere desire to insult and annoy, which William was ashamed of when he had indulged it; and he sent word that Anselm was within ten days to be at the sea, and there the king's officer would meet him, to settle what he might take with him.' The parting then had come, perhaps the leave-taking. Anselm's affectionate nature was moved, and he could not restrain a burst of kindly feeling. Nor was William himself unmoved by it With cheerful and bright countenance he returned to the king: “ My lord," he said, " I go. If it could have been with your good-will, it would have better become you, and been more agreeable to all good people And now, not knowing when I shall see you again, I April is.

commend you to God; and as a spiritual father to his beloved son, as the archbishop of Canterbury to the king of England, I would fain before I go, if you refuse it not, give God's blessing and my own.” “ I refuse not thy blessing,” the king answered. He bowed his head, and Anselm lifted his right hand, and made the sign of the cross on him. And so they parted: on Thursday, Oct 15th, 1097. Anselm returned at once to Canterbury, where, after taking leave of the monks, he took at the altar the pilgrim’s staff and scrip, and set forth to Dover. At Dover he was detained a fortnight by the weather, and he found there the king’s officer, one of the clerks of the royal chapel, William Warelwast, who lived with him during his detention. When at last the wind became fair, and Anselm was embarking, William Warelwast, to the surprise and disgust of the bystanders, came forward, and required all the baggage to be searched. It was meant as a parting indignity; and it came the worse from an ecclesiastic who had been living all the time at Anselm’s table. But no treasure was found; and he and his company landed safely at Witsand. William immediately seized the property of the see, and kept it till his death.

Anselm, in the month of November, 1097, began his winter journey to Italy, accompanied by two friends, Baldwin of Toumai, and Eadmer, who has preserved the curious record of the details of a journey in those days. Their resting-places were generally monasteries. Anselm, of course, was received with honour; but there was, besides, a charm about his personal appearance and manner, which Eadmer delights to dwell upon. Nothing could exceed the honour shewn to Anselm at Rome. “ In assemblies of the nobles, in stations, in processions, he was second only to the pope himself,” says Eadmer. The pope spoke of him as “ the Patriarch, the Apostolicus, or pope of a second April as.) S. Anselm.

world.” Urban had many disputes on his hands, and he would not, if he could help it, add another with so reckless and dangerous a person as the Red King. A year and a half passed, and nothing was done to obtain redress for Anselm, and it became daily more plain that Urban had no intention of going beyond words and threats. Rome was an unhealthy residence for strangers, and Anselm accepted the invitation of the abbot of Telese, on the Calore, near Benevento, to take up his abode with him. The summer heats were intolerable, and the abbot transferred his northern guests to a mountain village called Schiavi. Here, amid his wanderings and troubles, Anselm had a summer of respite and refreshment The little village was perched on a hill-top; and there was no one living in it but the labourers, and a monk who superintended them; the summer sky was deep blue, the mountain air was sweet and fresh; and here were wild pinks, and saxifrage, recalling the dear crags of Aosta, and many a happy ramble in childhood. After his vexed and weary life, the old man's heart leaped up at the charms of nature and repose, and happy mountain memories. “ Here shall be my rest for ever,” he cried out, in the words of the Psalmist; “ here will I dwell, for I have a delight therein.” He went back at once to his old habits of life and trains of thought In the midst of the strife of his last year in England, he had thought out, and had begun to compose a work which was, like other works of his, to open new views of theology, and permanently to affect the thoughts of men. It was his famous dialogue, Cur Deus Homo, in which, seeking rational ground for the Incarnation, he lays down a profound and original theory of the Atonement, which, whether accepted or impugned, has moulded the character of Christian doctrine about it ever since. But he could not long enjoy retirement He had to meet the pope in the camp of the Norman Duke of Apulia, before Capua; and there Eadmer notices again that ever present charm of face and manner, which attracted to him the reverence and interest of the heathen “ Saracens [medieval Christian name for Arab and Muslim peoples] ” of Duke Roger's army. He earnestly entreated the pope to relieve him of the archbishopric, but such a step did not suit the papal policy any more than a decided breach with the king. At last, despairing of redress, “ we understood,” says Eadmer, “that our look for counsel and help was vain, so we resolved to ask leave to return to Lyons.” But the pope would not let Anselm go. A council was to be held at Easter at the Lateran [St. John Lateran, the pope’s cathedral in Rome], and he must wait for it The council met in April, 1099, and various decrees and canons were passed. But when they were to be read in S. Peter's, the crowd being very great, Reinger, bishop of Lucca, a man of tall stature, and loud and ringing voice, was appointed to read them. He began; but when he had got a little way, his countenance kindled, and under the influence of strong emotion he stopped. “ What are we doing here ?*' he said, looking round the assembly. “We are loading men with laws, and we dare not resist the cruelty of tyrants. Hither are brought the complaints of the oppressed; from hence, counsel and help are asked for. And with what result all the world knows and sees. One is sitting among us from the ends of the earth, in modest silence, still and meek. But his silence is a loud cry. This one man has come here in his cruel wrongs to ask for the judgment and equity of the apostolic see. And this is the second year, and what help has he found? If you do not all know whom I mean, it is Anselm, archbishop of England,” and with this he thrice struck his staff violently on the floor, and a burst of breath from his closed teeth showed his indignation.

“Brother Reinger,” exclaimed the Pope, “enough, Apni enough. Good order shall be taken about this.” Reinger, drawing his breath, rejoined, “There is good need. For otherwise the thing will not pass with Him who judges justly.” But this burst of feeling led to nothing, and meant nothing. And, indeed, there was really nothing that could be done. Urban was right, a sentence of excommunication launched against William would have been productive of untold evil, and could do no good. “On the following day,” says Eadmer, “we got leave, and we left Rome, having obtained nought of judgment or advice through the Roman bishop, except what I have said.” In the following July, 1099, Urban died. “May God's hatred light on him who cares for it,” was William's remark. “And what sort of person is his successor?” “A man in some respects like Anselm,” was the answer. “ By God's face, then,” said William, “let him keep to himself, for his popeship shall not this time get over me.” But his hour was at hand. On the and August, 1100, he perished by an uncertain hand in the New Forest Anselm received the news at Chaise Dieu, near Brioude, and messenger after messenger arrived from England, from Canterbury, from King Henry, from the great men of the realm, urging his instant return. The land was in suspense till the archbishop went back to sanction what was done, and business was at a standstill in the uncertainty created by his absence. On the 23rd September Anselm landed at Dover, and shortly after he was with the king at Salisbury. Henry at once demanded from the archbishop the renewal of homage, and required that he should receive the archbishopric afresh by a new act of investiture. “ Lofty as the pretensions of the crown had been,” says Sir F. Palgrave, “this demand was entirely unprecedented, at least so far as we can collect from any existing historical evidence. It imported that, on the death of the Sovereign, the archbishop's commission expired — that his office was subordinate and derivative, and the dignity thereof reverted to the crown — it was clear that Henry pledged himself in his own heart and mind not to abate a jot of his supremacy over the clergy; he would exercise his authority in church affairs somewhat more decently than his father, and a great deal more than his brother; but that was all." Anselm, when the demand was made, at once stated his position. He had no choice. The council at Rome, at which he had assisted, had passed its decrees, and by those decrees he was bound. The question of investiture was this. The king and other laymen claimed to invest bishops and abbots with their jurisdiction, by giving them the ring and staffi This the Church had refused to permit, and it insisted on there being some check imposed on the nomination of prelates, lest Church offices should become mere rewards for state services. It was agreed that the matter should be referred to the pope. The answer from Rome was long in coming, but it came at last It expressed readiness to grant favours and indulgences to Henry, but not what he demanded. Pope Paschal plainly set forth the shame and mischief of allowing great church offices to be disposed of by the kings and princes of the time, without an effort to assert their sacredness, and to force the world to acknowledge their spiritual character. A breach now seemed inevitable, but Henry was too wary to allow it to take place at once and irremediably. Fresh embassies were sent, one after another, and finally Anselm himself went to Rome about the matter, and Henry gave evidence of the justice of Anselm's quarrel by two appointments he made. He gave the bishopric of Salisbury to his chancellor Roger, originally a poor priest of Caen, who had pleased Henry by the speed with which he could get through Mass; and the bishopric of Hereford he gave to another Roger, the clerk of his larder. It is hardly wonApril si.] S. Anselm.

derful, with such appointments, made as a matter of course, of men broken into the ways of feudal courts, ecclesiastics in nothing but their qualifications as scribes and accountants, that bishoprics were indifferently filled, and that those who wished to restore the Church to holiness, thought nothing too much to do and to suffer, in order to break down this prescriptive system.

At Rome, Anselm and Warelwast, the king's advocate, appeared before the pope. “ Know all men present,” said Warelwast, after a long advocacy of the king's rights, “ that not to save his kingdom will King Henry lose the investitures of the churches.” “Nor, before God, to save his head, will Pope Paschal let him have them,” was the immediate retort There was nothing more to do at Rome, and Anselm prepared to return to England, to excommunicate the king if he persisted in his claim. But Henry would not suffer him to enter England, and he remained a year and-a-half at Lyons, whilst the king opened fresh and equally ineffectual negotiations with Rome. At last, in the spring of 1105, he set forward to excommunicate Henry. The report spread, and Henry was alarmed. He was too prudent to allow things to come to extremities. Henry met him at the castle of l'Aigle sur Rille in Normandy, and a reconciliation was effected. Anselm was put in possession of the revenues of his see, but Henry still insisted on the old conditions ere he would allow the archbishop to return to Canterbury. But the final arrangement of the dispute took place at London, when in an assembly of bishops, abbots, and nobles, in August, 1107, the king granted and decreed that from that time forth no one should be invested in England with bishopric or abbey by staff and ring, either by the king or by any lay hand; and Anselm on the other part allowed that no one elected to a prelacy should be refused consecration on account of royal April mi.

nomination. This having been settled, bishops were appointed by the king, with the counsel of Anselm, to many of the churches in England, which had long been widowed of their pastors. Anselm had won a great victory.

To have made so marked a change publicly in the relations of bishops to great kings, and to have induced one of the sons of the Conqueror, and that one Henry, the shrewdest, ablest, hardest of them all, to forego part of the customs which he valued at the worth of half his kingdom, was an achievement of which, whatever came of it, no one could mistake the magnitude. It was accomplished, too, with a remarkable absence of those violent measures which were so freely used in other scenes of this same contest on the continent of Europe. That which determined it as much as anything was Anselm's personal character; the boundless reverence, and, still more, the intense love and sympathy called out on all sides, by the union in it of the deepest human tenderness with calm self-command, with unpretending courage, and with that unconscious and child-like meekness, with which he bore these great and singular gifts of intellect, in which by this time he was known to be without a living equal in Christendom. Henry, with all his heavy faults, had eyes for this. He knew that in Anselm he had at Canterbury the greatest Christian bishop of his time. There is little more to be said of Anselm. Henry was loyal to his agreement; and in filling up vacancies, he followed not his own fancy, but took the advice of religious men. Anselm died at Canterbury, peacefully amongst his monks, on the 21st April, being Wednesday in Holy Week, in the year 1109, the sixteenth of his pontificate and the seventy-sixth of his life.

He was first buried next to his friend Lanfranc in the body of the minster of Canterbury, before the great rood April. i. which rose up in the midst of it before the choir. His remains were afterwards translated to the chapel beneath the south-east tower which now bears his name. There they now rest S Oeorgti. 8ee p 301