Publica, sunt flores vestis sollennis, et uno
Illa colore nitent, sed mille coloribus illi.”
[1014] Eadmer (Vit. Ans. i. 1. 1.) carefully marks the geography of Aosta. It is “Augusta civitas, confinis Burgundiæ et Langobardiæ.” I have collected some passages on this head in Historical Geography, p. 278. The French writers De Rémusat (Saint Anselme, 21), Charma (4), and specially M. Croset-Mouchet (55), as a neighbour, seem to have caught the Burgundian birth of Anselm better than the English. Yet Charma, who knows that Aosta was Burgundian, calls Anselm an Italian, perhaps on account of the Lombard birth of his father.
[1015] M. Croset-Mouchet (57) is very anxious to connect Anselm’s mother with the house of the Counts of Savoy. He gives a genealogical table at the end of his book, where the pedigree of Ermenberga is traced up to Ardoin the Third, Count of Turin and Marquess in Italy. He seems however to be not very certain about the matter, and it does not greatly affect Anselm’s career either at Bec or at Canterbury.
[1016] Pope Urban (Hist. Nov. 45) counsels Anselm to avoid the unhealthy season at Rome, “quia urbis istius aër multis et maxime peregrinæ regionis hominibus nimis est insalubris.” Later in the story (Hist. Nov. 72), Ivo of Chartres gives him a like piece of advice about Italy generally; “Accepit ab Ivone et a multis non spernendi consilii viris, satius fore cœptum iter in aliud tempus differendum, quam Italicis ardoribus ea se tempestate cum suis tradere cruciandum. Nimis etenim fervor æstatis ita ubique, sed maxime, ut ferebatur, in Italia, tunc temporis quæque torrebat, ut incolis vix tolerabilis, peregrinis vero gravis et importabilis.” The difference of air between Aosta and Rome or Italy generally does not depend upon the boundaries of kingdoms; but here Anselm is distinctly reckoned as a “peregrinus homo” in Italy no less than Eadmer or Ivo or Pope Urban himself.
[1017] See N. C. vol. iv. p. 441.
[1018] See above, [p. 49], and N. C. vol. iv. p. 579.
[1019] Will. Malms. iv. 315. “Simul et supersedendum est in historia, quam reverendissimi Edmeri præoccupavit facundia.”
[1020] I feel towards Dean Church almost as William of Malmesbury felt towards Eadmer. But he of course looks at Anselm from a point of view somewhat different from mine. And he had not been led to notice that earlier action of William of Saint-Calais which from my point of view is all-important for the story of Anselm.
[1021] This beautiful story is told by Eadmer at the very beginning of the Life, i. 1. 2.