court for an imputed breach of the king's prerogative. This was a warning of the troubles that were coming. On December 4th. Anselm was consecrated by the archbishop of York to be “Primate of all Britain." For awhile there was peace between Anselm and the king, but within a year there arose a memorable struggle between them on the question of the royal prerogatives. 3. Rival Popes.—Early in 1095, Anselm desired leave from the king to visit Rome to receive his pall from the pope, "From which pope?" demanded Rufus, for there were again two claimants to the papal tiara; Clement III., who reigned at St. Angelo, and Urban II., who occupied the Lateran palace, each of whom spent most of their time in excommunicating the friends of the other. As yet the Church of England had recognised neither. France and Normandy had admitted Urban's claims, and as the Abbey of Bec was in Normandy, Anselm had declared before his consecration that he considered Urban to be the true pope. He answered the king's question accordingly. "But," said Rufus, "by my father's laws no one may acknowledge a pope in England without my sanction, and I have not acknowledged Urban." To settle the dispute, an assembly of peers was held at Rockingham, beginning on Mid-Lent Sunday in 1095. Anselm desired to make the matter one of religious conviction; but the nobles pointed out that he was charged with violating the English customs and laws, and declined to discuss it other than as a question of feudal suzerainty. On the second day of the meeting the prelates and barons distinctly accused Anselm of attempting to deprive the king of his sovereign power. "Give up this Urban," said they, "cast off this yoke of bondage; aet in freedom as becomes an archbishop of Canterbury, and submit to the king's will." But he refused. The next day, when the bishop of Durham declared that Anselm should be prosecuted for high treason if Urban were not renounced, the archbishop denied that his allegiance to that pope was inconsistent with his oath of fidelity to the king.1 He was, however, declared an outlaw, and, by the king's command, the bishops renounced their obedience to him. The nobles distinguishing between Anselm as the king's vassal and as their primate, refused to comply with a similar mandate, for they said " we 1 The essence of the conflict appears in this reply, and in the rejoinder of Rufus, hat "while he lived he would endure no equal in his realm." were never the archbishop's men, we have not sworn fealty to him as the bishops have done, and therefore have no oath to abjure." Many of the archbishop's friends were now, imprisoned, or banished, and the revenues of the cathedrals once more seized by the king. So the affair remained for months. Meanwhile the wily monarch had sent some ambassadors to Rome to find out which pope was accounted the lawful one in that city. If a pall was necessary to make an archbishop, it did not concern Rufus where it came from; but what did trouble him was that one of his subjects should consider a foreign bishop his king's superior in any matter. Above all, he would like to be rid of such an independent man as Anselm proved to be. His messengers were instructed to approach the popular pope, and obtain from him a pall, so that the king might bestow it on whom he pleased. Of course Urban was only too pleased to be recognised by the king of England, and receive the homage of his envoys and their valuable presents. He sent a pall back with them in charge of the bishop of Albano, whom William Rufus received with due honour, thus publicly acknowledging Urban as rightful pope, but he was unable to persuade the legate to declare the deposition of Anselm, that was an impossible course even for the pope to pursue. At least, thought Rufus, he will allow me to invest him with his badge of office. 'No,' said Anselm, 'his predecessor had received the pall from none other than the pope.' The legate, therefore, laid it on the high altar of Canterbury cathedral, whence Anselm, barefooted, took it, and claimed thereby to have received his commission direct from St. Peter. Rufus tried to obtain from him a suitable payment in consideration of his not having to go to Rome for the pall, but this too the archbishop refused, and the king was obliged to give way. The reconciliation that took place was only superficial, although Anselm was permitted to perform his official duties for a season. During this time of peace an important episcopal act was performed by Anselm, for, in 1096, Malchus, one of the monks of Winchester, was consecrated to the see of Waterford, in Ireland, then first created. at the request of Donald, bishop of Dublin. Both these bishops, Donald and Malchus, professed canonical obedience to the see of Canterbury; which shows that the Churches of England and Ireland were then in close communion, if not actually united with each other; and that the importance of Canterbury was growing G 4. Anselm's Appeal to Rome.-About this time what are known as the Crusades commenced. They were warlike enterprises started in defence of the Christian liberty against attacks from the Saracens and Turks in the East and in the Holy Land. They were called the Crusades because all who took part in them wore the badge of the cross on some part of their attire. To distinguish the people of the different nations who took part in them, coloured crosses were adopted. William Rufus had an eye to the conquest of Normandy from his brother Robert, but Robert joined in the enthusiasm of the Crusaders and willingly relinquished for a time his government of Normandy on condition of receiving a large sum of money from Rufus for the equipment of his expedition. To raise this money the English king made heavy calls on his feudal barons, and on the abbots and prelates who held their benefices as his men. So exacting were his demands that the clergy were obliged to surrender the sacred vessels of the sanctuaries, and strip the churches of their marketable treasures. He also wanted money and men for his conquest in Wales, which the prelates as well as the barons were bound by the feudal laws to provide in their measure. Archbishop Anselm was not behindhand in performing these obligations, and even went so far as to advance some funds entrusted to him for the cathedral chapter, pledging part of his archiepiscopal revenues for their repayment. But Rufus wanted occasion to deprive Anselm, and he complained that the archbishop's quota of men and means to the Welsh army was insufficient. He cited Anselm to exonerate himself before the king's court. As this was not a question of ecclesiastical order, but one of feudal service in which the king was absolute master, the archbishop was now in a dilemma. Therefore, for his personal safety, Anselm refused to attend the court, and when his case came on for hearing he craved permission through some of the nobles to go to Rome for advice. The king thrice refused this request, but at last offered to permit his absence from the kingdom on condition that he should not take out of the country any treasures belonging to the crown, and that he should not attempt to introduce papal jurisdiction into England by appealing to the see of Rome against his king. Anselm evasively fenced with this proviso, but the king, who was as heartily glad to be rid of the archbishop as the latter was to go, finally agreed to his unconditional departure. Anselm dressed himself in the guise of a pilgrim with his scrip and staff, and once more appeared before William Rufus to bestow upon him his parting blessing. They never met again; and as soon as Anselm had left the kingdom Rufus confiscated once more the revenues of the see. Arrived at Rome Anselm was received with great respect, but he soon found that the theories he had imbibed at Bec respecting the immaculate and infallible pope had no practical reality, for Urban would rather dissemble to Anselm, who upheld the spiritual claims of the Papacy, than forfeit his chance of temporal jurisdiction in England by offending its king. After travelling about Italy for some time as the honoured guest of different monas teries by reason of his learning and sanctity, during which time also he wrote his immortal work on the Incarnation of the Saviour, Anselm was invited to attend the council of Bari, at which the alleged heresy of the Eastern Church, respecting the Procession of the Holy Ghost, was to be debated. Anselm was introduced by Urban to the council as an equal, as the pope or "apostolic vicar of a second world," that is, chief bishop of another country, for "pope" only means "father," and has no higher signification than the term "patriarch," by which the chief bishops of the Eastern churches are known. Anselm's pulpit eloquence and great learning caused the council to decide unanimously against the Eastern doctrine, and enlisted the sympathy of the bishops present on his personal behalf. Between such a champion of Church doctrine and the tyrannous king of England Urban no longer hesitated, and he urged the council to permit sentence of anathema and excommunication to be issued against Rufus, which was only averted at the entreaty of Anselm. Messengers were sent to England with letters from the pope, demanding from the king restitution of Anselm's temporalities; but William Rufus expelled them from his dominions, and the historian of Malmesbury says that Warelwast, one of the English clergy, was sent with a large A PILGRIM. bribe to the pope, to prevent Anselm's cause coming to a satisfactory termination; although "he blushes to record that in so great a man as Urban, self respect and zeal for God had fallen so low that he perverted justice for money." In the meantime, with the aid of Ralph, the justiciar, who was now bishop of Durham and “general impleader and exactor of the whole kingdom," William Rufus seized and sold the revenues of many Church preferments. In the year 1099 a synod was held at Rome which condemned all ecclesiastical appointments made by laymen; for in other countries of Europe, as well as in England, there had been from the time of Hildebrand a conflict between the emperors and kings against the popes on the subject of church patronage, and the right to invest the bishops with the insignia of office,' which is said to have lasted fiftysix years, occasioned sixty battles between the papal and secular armies (for the pope had now a standing army), and the loss of two millions of lives. Anselm hoped that his cause would be finally decided at this synod, but he was doomed to disappointment, and when he found that the pope had no real intention of assisting him against the king, he left Rome and went to Lyons. The next year Pope Urban died. William Rufus, too, was shot by an arrow when hunting in the New Forest which his father had desolated Hampshire to make, and where his brother Richard had met his death in some mysterious way. He was buried at Winchester, and succeeded by his younger brother Henry, A.D. 1100. 5. Anselm and Henry I.-Duke Robert of Normandy was the rightful successor to Rufus, but he was absent on the Crusade in Normandy. Knowing himself to be an usurper, it was Henry's policy to be conciliatory, and he, perceiving that the simony and sacrilege of his brother had alienated the influence of the Church, decided to abandon all such evil practices. Ralph, the notorious bishop of Durham, who had by this time completed the erection of the nave and aisles of Durham Cathedral, he imprisoned in the Tower, 1 Investiture is the ceremony by which a bishop was formally invested with the right to exercise his judicial functions; just as the ceremony of transferring an estate from one person to another by means of symbols, referred to on page 106, gave the right to hold property. The "investiture" of a bishop consisted in presenting him with a pastoral staff to signify his authority over the flock committed to him, and a ring which symbolised his marriage to the Church, in short the investiture of a bishop related to the spiritual part of his office. Prior to Anselm's time the English kings had always exercised the right of bestowing these symbols of office. |