Bec under Anselm. The fame of the new Abbot of Bec and of his house, great already, now grew still greater. Learning had shone at Bec ever since Lanfranc came thither; but hitherto it had shone only in the second rank. It now took the chief seat in the person of Abbot Anselm. He was sought by men from all parts as a friend, a teacher, a spiritual adviser. Of the open-handed hospitality of Bec it was not, we are told, for Norman neighbours to speak; those might speak who had found their way thither from the distant lands of Burgundy and Spain.[1031] His widespread fame. The whole Latin world drank in with eagerness the teaching of Anselm.[1032] Scholars of all lands came to sit at his feet. Noble ladies in their widowhood sought his neighbourhood and spiritual direction, and received the honourable title of mothers of the house.[1033] His correspondence. Like all the saints and scholars of his day, he had a crowd of correspondents of all classes; amongst them we see Countess Ida of Boulogne and the Conqueror’s renowned daughter Adela.[1034] Intercourse between Bec and England. And throughout his life and letters we see constant signs of the daily intercourse which, as naturally followed on the circumstances of the time, was ever going on between Normandy and England. The endless going to and fro between the two countries strikes us at every step.[1035] There was an interchange of men; if many Normans found their way to England, some Englishmen found their way to Normandy. Bec had already begun to give bishops to England. Lanfranc had placed two monks of his old house in the episcopal chair of Rochester.[1036] The second of them, the famous Gundulf, had been, when at Bec, the familiar friend of Anselm, who spoke little himself, but who listened to the great teacher, and wept at his touching words.[1037] On the other hand, in the house of Bec itself there were monks who were English of the Old-English stock, monks whom Lanfranc thought fit to call back to their own land and to the monastery of which he was the spiritual father.[1038]
Anselm had thus many ties of friendship and kindly association with England, even before he had any official connexion with the land or its inhabitants. And a strictly official connexion began long before he became archbishop. Lands of Bec in England. The Abbot of Bec had both temporal possessions and spiritual duties within our island. He was the lord of English estates and the spiritual father of brethren settled on English soil. The house of Bec appears in four places in Domesday as holder of lands in England; but one manor only was held in chief of the king. The church of Saint Mary of Bec held the lordship of Deverel in Wiltshire, once the possession of Brihtric, whether the son of Ælfgar or any less famous bearer of the name. This had been the gift of Queen Matilda, and it is worth noting that the value of the land had lessened in the few years between her death and the taking of the Survey.[1039] A smaller estate at Swinecombe in Oxfordshire, held of Miles Crispin, was more lucky; it had grown in value by one third.[1040] In Surrey the house held lands at Tooting and Streatham, the gift of Richard of Clare or of Tunbridge, him of whom we have so often heard. The possessions of Bec at Tooting, which had sunk to one fifth of their ancient value at the time of their grant to the abbey, had risen again to the value at which they were rated in the days of King Eadward.[1041] The business arising out of these lands, all seemingly held in demesne, with a mill, churls, slaves, and other dependents, must have called for some care on the part of the abbot or of those whom he employed for the purpose. And it would seem that, on the whole, the monastic body had been a careful husband of its English estates. In after times also Bec became the head of several alien priories in England; but one only of these can be carried back with certainty to Anselm’s day. This was the priory of Clare in Suffolk, afterwards moved to Stoke, which was founded as a cell to Bec while Anselm was abbot.[1042] The dependent priory of Clare. 1090. It was the gift of Gilbert of Clare, brother of Richard the other benefactor of the house, a house which seems to have had special attractions for the whole family of Count Gilbert.
Law-suits. Anselm was thus a land-owner on both sides of the sea, and, little as he loved temporal business, he could not wholly escape it. No man, no society of men, in either the Normandy or the England of those days, could hope to keep clear of law-suits. The house of Herlwin, new as it was and holy as it was, seems to have been entangled in not a few. Anselm’s desire to do justice. Anselm’s chief wish was that in these disputes justice should be done to all concerned. There were among the monks of Bec, as among the monks of other houses, men who knew the law and who were skilful in legal pleadings. The Abbot had sometimes to charge them to make no unfair use of their skill, and not to strive to win any advantage for the house but such as was strictly just.[1043] Otherwise, as far as he could, he entrusted mere worldly affairs—the serving of tables—to others.[1044] Yet he could not avoid journeys beyond sea on behalf of the house. He was thus more than once compelled to visit England. His first visit to England. 1078. He crossed the sea in the first year of his appointment as abbot. He came to Canterbury; he was received with mickle worship by Lanfranc and the monks of Christ Church.[1045] The first touch of English soil seems to have changed the Burgundian saint, the Norman abbot, into an Englishman and an English patriot. It was now that he made the memorable discourse in which he showed that English Ælfheah was a true martyr.[1046] His friendship with the monks of Christ Church. The Abbot of Bec did not scorn to be admitted into the brotherhood of the monks of Christ Church, and to dwell with them as one of themselves.[1047] It was the time when Lanfranc was doing his work of reform among them,[1048] a work which was doubtless helped by the sojourn and counsel of Anselm. With the more learned among them he lived familiarly, putting and answering questions, both in profane and sacred lore.[1049] And among them he made one friend, English by blood and name, whose memory is for ever entwined with his own. Eadmer. It was now that Eadmer, then a young monk of the house, won his deep regard, and attached himself for ever to the master whose acts he was in after times to record.[1050]
Anselm’s general popularity in England. But it was not only in the church which was one day to be his own, or among men of his own order only, that Anselm made friends in England. He made a kind of progress through the land, being welcomed everywhere, as well in the courts of nobles as in the houses of monks, nuns, and canons.[1051] Everywhere he scattered the good seed of his teaching, speaking to all according to their several callings, to men and women, married and unmarried, monks, clerks, laymen, making himself, as far as was lawful, all things to all men.[1052] Scholar and theologian as Anselm was, his teaching was specially popular; His preaching. he did not affect the grand style, but dealt largely in parables and instances which were easy to be understood.[1053] The laity therefore flocked eagerly to hear him, and every man rejoiced who could win the privilege of personal speech with the new apostle.[1054] The men of that age, stained as many of them were with great crimes—perhaps all the more because their crimes were of a kind which they could not help feeling to be crimes—commonly kept enough of conscience and good feeling to admire in others the virtues which they failed to practise themselves. William Rufus himself had moments when goodness awed him. It was only a few exceptional monsters like the fiend of Bellême whom no such feelings ever touched. His love for England. Anselm became the idol of all the inhabitants of England, without distinction of age or sex, of rank or race. The land became to him yet another home, a home which he loved to visit, and where he was ever welcome.[1055] His alleged miracles. Men sought to him for the cure of bodily as well as spiritual diseases; and we read of not a few cases of healing in which he was deemed to be the agent, cases in which modern times will most likely see the strong exercise of that power which, from one point of view, is called imagination, and from another faith.[1056] The highest in estate and power were the most eager of all to humble themselves before him. His friendship with the Conqueror; We have seen how the elder William, ever mild to good men, was specially mild to Anselm, how he craved his presence on his death-bed, and how Anselm, unable to help his master in life, was among those who did the last honours to him in death.[1057] We are told that there was not an earl or countess or great person of any kind in England, who did not seek the friendship of Anselm, who did not deem that his or her spiritual state was the worse if any opportunity had been lost of doing honour or service to the Abbot of Bec.[1058] Like some other saints of his own and of other times, he drew to himself the special regard of some whose characters were most unlike his own. with Earl Hugh. Earl Hugh of Chester, debauched, greedy, reckless, and cruel, beyond the average of the time, is recorded as being a special friend of the holy man.[1059] Hugh’s changes at Chester. He who rebuked kings doubtless rebuked earls also; but it would have been a better sign of reformation, if Hugh, under the teaching of Anselm, had learned to spare the eyes either of brother nobles or of British captives, than if he was merely led to place monks instead of canons at Saint Werburh’s, and in the end to take the cowl among them himself.
Feeling as to the vacancy of the archbishopric. 1092. But the planting of monks at Saint Werburh’s had no small effect on the destiny of Anselm and of England. In the course of the year which saw the annexation of Cumberland men began to be thoroughly wearied of the long vacancy of the archbishopric. It may be that the great gathering at Lincoln had brought home to every Vacancy of Lincoln.mind the great wrong under which the Church was suffering. The bishops of the land had come together to a great ecclesiastical rite; but they had come together as a body without a head. And they had parted under circumstances which made the state of things even worse than it had been when they met. The death of Remigius had handed over another bishopric to the wardship of Flambard. The land from the Thames to the Humber, the great diocese which took in nine shires, was to be left without a shepherd as long as Rufus and Flambard should think good. That is, it was to be left till some one among the King’s servants should be ready to do by Lincoln as Herbert Losinga had done by Thetford. Men began to say among themselves that such unlaw as this could not go on for ever; the land could not abide without a chief pastor; an archbishop must soon come somehow, whether the King and Flambard willed it or not. Anselm looked to as the coming archbishop. The feeling was universal; and with it another feeling was almost equally universal; when the archbishop should come, he could come only in the shape of the man who was of all men most worthy of the office, the man whom all England knew and loved as if his whole life had been spent within her seas, the holy Abbot of Bec.[1060] That such was the general feeling in England soon became known out of England; it became known at Bec as at other places; it was not hidden from the Abbot of Bec himself.
Earl Hugh seeks help from Anselm in his reforms. 1092. At the time which we have now reached Earl Hugh was planning his supposed reforms at Saint Werburh’s. Designing to fill the minster with monks, he would have his monks from the place where the monastic life was most perfectly practised; the men who were to kindle a new light at Chester must come from Bec.[1061] It was in the end from Bec that the first abbot Richard and his brethren came to wage that strife which we are told was so specially hard-fought in that region.[1062] But the founder further wished the work to be done under the eye of the Abbot of Bec himself; so, trusting in his old friendship, Earl Hugh prayed Anselm to come to him. His prayer was backed by that of other nobles of England;[1063] the monks of Bec too deemed that either the affairs of Saint Werburh’s or some other business of the monastery called for their abbot’s presence in England.[1064] Anselm refuses to go. But Anselm at first steadily refused to go; the general rumour had reached his own ears; he had been told that, if he went to England, he would certainly become Archbishop of Canterbury. His motives. He shrank from the acceptance of such an office; he shrank yet more from doing anything which might even have the look of seeking for such an office. It might be a question of casuistry whether the command of Maurilius to accept any preferment that might be offered could have any force beyond the life and the province of Maurilius; yet that command may have made Anselm yet more determined to keep out of the way of all danger of having the see of Canterbury offered to him. He refused to go to England, when it was possible that his object in going might be cruelly misconstrued.[1065] Hugh’s sickness and second message. Another message came, announcing that Earl Hugh was smitten with grievous sickness, and needed the spiritual help of his friend. Moreover Anselm need not be afraid; there was nothing in the rumours which he had heard; he stood in no danger of the archbishopric.[1066] In this Hugh most likely spoke the truth. Others had brought themselves to believe that there must soon be an archbishop, and that that archbishop must be Anselm. But they had no ground for thinking that anything of the kind would happen, except that it was the best thing that could happen. The Earl of Chester was as likely as any man except Flambard to know the King’s real mind; and what followed makes it plain that as yet Rufus had no thought of filling the archbishopric at all. The third message. Still Anselm would not go till a third message from the Earl appealed to another motive. It would not be for the soul’s health of Anselm himself if he stayed away when his friend so deeply needed his help.[1067] To this argument Anselm yielded; for the sake of friendship and of his friend’s spiritual welfare, he would go, let men say what they would about his motives for going.[1068]
He is bidden to go by his monks. But the invitation of Earl Hugh was not Anselm’s only motive for his journey. Another cause was added which a little startles us. The business of the abbey in England, business to be done with the King, still called for the abbot’s presence there. The monks sought to have the royal exactions on their English lands made less heavy.[1069] At this moment Anselm was not at Bec; he was spending some days at Boulogne with his friend and correspondent Countess Ida.[1070] While there, he received a message from Bec, bidding him, by virtue of the law of obedience, not to come back to the abbey till he had gone into England and looked after the matters about which he was needed there.[1071] Such a message as this from monks to their abbot sounds to us like a reversal of all monastic order; but it seems to have been held that, while each monk undoubtedly owed obedience to the abbot, the abbot himself owed obedience to the general vote of the convent. To these two influences, the law of obedience and care for Earl Hugh’s soul, Anselm at last yielded. He set sail from Boulogne or Whitsand, and landed at Dover. Anselm goes to England. He was now within what was presently to be his own province, his own diocese; and that province he was not again to leave till he sought shelter on the mainland in the character of archbishop and confessor.
The immediate business of Anselm led him to Chester, and to the place, wherever it was, where the King was to be found. We are told that he made the best of his way to his sick friend,[1072] who was so eager for Anselm’s coming that he despised all other spiritual help.[1073] But it is plain that he tarried on the road to see the King. From Dover his first stage was Canterbury. Anselm at Canterbury. September 8, 1092. There he was alarmed by the welcome given him by a crowd of monks and laymen who hailed him as their future archbishop. It was a high festival, the Nativity of our Lady; but Anselm, wishing to give no encouragement to such greetings as he had just received, declined to officiate at the celebration of the feast. He tarried but one night in the city, and left it early the next morning.[1074] His first interview with Rufus. He then went to the King. The reception which he met with showed that Rufus must have been for the moment in one of his better moods. Anselm indeed was a chosen friend of his father, and he had given him no personal offence. As soon as the approach of the Abbot of Bec was announced, the King arose, met him at the door, exchanged the kiss of peace, and led him by the hand to his seat.[1075] A friendly discourse followed. Perhaps the very friendliness of William’s greeting brought it more fully home to Anselm’s mind that it would be a failure of duty on his own part if he spoke only of the worldly affairs of his abbey. Anselm’s rebuke of the King. He must seize the moment to give a word of warning to a sinner whose evil deeds were so black, and who disgraced at the same time so lofty an office and such high natural gifts. Anselm asked that all others might withdraw; he wished for a private interview with the King. The affairs of the house of Bec were, for the moment at least, passed by; the welfare of the kingdom of England, and the soul’s health of its king, were objects which came first. Anselm told Rufus in plain words that the men of his kingdom, both secretly and openly, daily said things of him which in no way became his kingly office.[1076] From later appeals of Anselm to the conscience of Rufus, we may conceive that this general description took in at once the special wrongs done to the Church, the general abuses of William’s government, and the personal excesses of William’s own life. Anselm was not the man to hold his peace on any one of those three subjects; but we have no details of Anselm’s discourse from his own biographer, nor does he give us any notice of the way in which William received his rebuke.[1077] Yet it would seem that the milder mood of the Red King had not wholly passed away. If Anselm had been thrust aside with any violent or sarcastic answer, it would surely have passed into one of the stock anecdotes of the reign. Our only other description of the scene paints Rufus as held back from any disrespectful treatment of Anselm by a lingering reverence for the friend of his parents. He turned the matter off with a laugh. He could not hinder what men chose to say of him; but so holy a man as Anselm ought not to believe such stories.[1078] It is not even clear whether Anselm brought himself to speak at all on the particular business which had brought him to the King’s presence. Settlement of the affairs of Bec. King and Abbot parted; it would seem that nothing was done about the affairs of Bec for the present; but we may gather that, at some later time, the lands of the monastery were relieved from the burthens of which they complained.[1079]
Anselm at Chester. Anselm now went on to Chester, where he found his friend Earl Hugh restored to health. But the change in the foundation at Saint Werburh’s still needed his presence, and the special affairs of his own house had also to be looked to. Between these two sets of affairs, Anselm was kept in England for five months. The King refuses him leave to go back. February, 1093. He then wished to go back to Normandy; but the King’s leave, it seems, was needed, and the King’s leave was refused.[1080]
This refusal is worth notice. It does not seem to have been done in enmity; at least it was not followed by any kind of further wrong-doing on the King’s part towards Anselm. William’s feeling towards Anselm. It really looks as if William had, not indeed any fixed purpose of appointing Anselm to the archbishopric, but a kind of feeling that he might be driven to appoint him, a feeling that things might come to a stage in which he could not help naming some archbishop, and that, if it came to that stage, he could not help naming Anselm. It is plain from what follows that the thought of Anselm as a possible archbishop was in the King’s mind as well as in the minds of others. But certainly no offer or hint was at this stage made by William, nor was anything said to Anselm about the matter by any one else.[1081] Men no doubt knew Anselm’s feelings, and avoided the subject. But at one point during these five months the vacancy of the archbishopric was brought very strongly before Anselm’s mind, though Christmas Assembly, 1092–1093.not in a way which suggested his own appointment rather than that of anybody else. When the Midwinter Gemót of this year was held, the long vacancy, and the evils which flowed from it, The vacancy discussed by the Witan. became a matter of discussion among the assembled Witan. But they did not venture to attempt any election, or even to make any suggestion of their own; they did not even make any direct petition to the King to put an end to the vacancy. Petition of the Assembly to the King. A resolution was passed—our contemporary guide doubted whether future ages would believe the fact—that the King should be humbly petitioned to allow prayers to be put up throughout the churches of England craving that God would by his inspiration move the King’s heart to put an end to the wrongs of his head church and of all his other churches by the appointment of a worthy chief pastor.[1082] We thus see that the power of ending or prolonging the vacancy is acknowledged to rest only with the King; it is not for the Witan to constrain, but only for God to guide, the royal will. But we further see that the right of ordaining religious ceremonies is held to rest with the King and his Witan, just as it had rested in the days of Cnut.[1083] The unanimous petition of the Assembly was laid before the King. He was somewhat angry, but he took no violent step. He agreed to the matter of the address, but in a scornful shape. Prayers for the appointment of an archbishop. “Pray as you will; I shall do as I think good; no man’s prayers will do anything to shake my will.”[1084] To draw up a proper form of prayer was the natural business of the bishops; and they had among them one specially skilled in such matters in the person of Osmund of Salisbury. But they all agreed to consult the Abbot of Bec, and to ask him to draw up a prayer fitted for the purpose. Anselm draws up a form of prayer. Anselm, after much pressing, agreed; he drew up the prayer; it was laid before the Assembly, and his work was approved by all.[1085] The Gemót broke up, and prayers were offered throughout England, according to Anselm’s model, for the appointment of an archbishop, a prayer which on most lips doubtless meant the appointment of Anselm himself.[1086]