In the midst of his scholastic and controversial activities Lanfranc became a political force. While merely a prior of Bec he led the opposition to the uncanonical marriage of Duke William with Matilda of Flanders (1053) and carried matters so far that he incurred a sentence of exile. But the quarrel was settled when he was on the point of departure, and he undertook the difficult task of obtaining the pope’s approval of the marriage. In this he was successful at the same council which witnessed his third victory over Berengar (1059), and he thus acquired a lasting claim on William’s gratitude. In 1066 he became the first abbot of St Stephen’s at Caen, a house which the duke had been enjoined to found as a penance for his disobedience to the Holy See. Henceforward Lanfranc exercised a perceptible influence on his master’s policy. William adopted the Cluniac programme of ecclesiastical reform, and obtained the support of Rome for his English expedition by assuming the attitude of a crusader against schism and corruption. It was Alexander II., the former pupil of Lanfranc, who gave the Norman Conquest the papal benediction—a notable advantage to William at the moment, but subsequently the cause of serious embarrassments.
Naturally, when the see of Rouen next fell vacant (1067), the thoughts of the electors turned to Lanfranc. But he declined the honour, and he was nominated to the English primacy as soon as Stigand had been canonically deposed (1070). The new archbishop at once began a policy of reorganization and reform. His first difficulties were with Thomas of Bayeux, archbishop-elect of York, who asserted that his see was independent of Canterbury and claimed jurisdiction over the greater part of midland England. Lanfranc, during a visit which he paid the pope for the purpose of receiving his pallium, obtained an order from Alexander that the disputed points should be settled by a council of the English Church. This was held at Winchester in 1072. Thanks to a skilful use of forged documents, the primate carried the council’s verdict upon every point. Even if he were not the author of the forgeries he can scarcely have been the dupe of his own partisans. But the political dangers to be apprehended from the disruption of the English Church were sufficiently serious to palliate the fraud. This was not the only occasion on which Lanfranc allowed his judgment to be warped by considerations of expediency. Although the school of Bec was firmly attached to the doctrine of papal sovereignty, he still assisted William in maintaining the independence of the English Church; and appears at one time to have favoured the idea of maintaining a neutral attitude on the subject of the quarrels between papacy and empire. In the domestic affairs of England the archbishop showed more spiritual zeal. His grand aim was to extricate the Church from the fetters of the state and of secular interests. He was a generous patron of monasticism. He endeavoured to enforce celibacy upon the secular clergy. He obtained the king’s permission to deal with the affairs of the Church in synods which met apart from the Great Council, and were exclusively composed of ecclesiastics. Nor can we doubt that it was his influence which shaped the famous ordinance separating the ecclesiastical from the secular courts (c. 1076). But even in such questions he allowed some weight to political considerations and the wishes of his sovereign. He acknowledged the royal right to veto the legislation of national synods. In the cases of Odo of Bayeux (1082) and of William of St Calais, bishop of Durham (1088), he used his legal ingenuity to justify the trial of bishops before a lay tribunal. He accelerated the process of substituting Normans for Englishmen in all preferments of importance; and although his nominees were usually respectable, it cannot be said that all of them were better than the men whom they superseded. For this admixture of secular with spiritual aims there was considerable excuse. By long tradition the primate was entitled to a leading position in the king’s councils; and the interests of the Church demanded that Lanfranc should use his power in a manner not displeasing to the king. On several occasions when William I. was absent from England Lanfranc acted as his vicegerent; he then had opportunities of realizing the close connexion between religious and secular affairs.
Lanfranc’s greatest political service to the Conqueror was rendered in 1075, when he detected and foiled the conspiracy which had been formed by the earls of Norfolk and Hereford. But this was not the only occasion on which he turned to good account his influence with the native English. Although he regarded them as an inferior race he was just and honourable towards their leaders. He interceded for Waltheof’s life and to the last spoke of the earl as an innocent sufferer for the crimes of others; he lived on terms of friendship with Bishop Wulfstan. On the death of the Conqueror (1087) he secured the succession for William Rufus, in spite of the discontent of the Anglo-Norman baronage; and in 1088 his exhortations induced the English militia to fight on the side of the new sovereign against Odo of Bayeux and the other partisans of Duke Robert. He exacted promises of just government from Rufus, and was not afraid to remonstrate when the promises were disregarded. So long as he lived he was a check upon the worst propensities of the king’s administration. But his restraining hand was too soon removed. In 1089 he was stricken with fever and he died on the 24th of May amidst universal lamentations. Notwithstanding some obvious moral and intellectual defects, he was the most eminent and the most disinterested of those who had co-operated with William I. in riveting Norman rule upon the English Church and people. As a statesman he did something to uphold the traditional ideal of his office; as a primate he elevated the standards of clerical discipline and education. Conceived in the Hildebrandine spirit, his reforms led by a natural sequence to strained relations between Church and State; the equilibrium which he established was unstable, and depended too much upon his personal influence with the Conqueror. But of all the Hildebrandine statesmen who applied their teacher’s ideas within the sphere of a particular national church he was the most successful.
The chief authority is the Vita Lanfranci by Milo Crispin, who was precentor at Bec and died in 1149. Milo drew largely upon the Vita Herluini, composed by Gilbert Crispin, abbot of Westminster. The Chronicon Beccensis abbatiae, a 14th-century compilation, should also be consulted. The first edition of these two sources, and of Lanfranc’s writings, is that of L. d’Achery, Beati Lanfranci opera omnia (Paris, 1648). Another edition, slightly enlarged, is that of J. A. Giles, Lanfranci opera (2 vols., Oxford, 1844). The correspondence between Lanfranc and Gregory VII. is given in the Monumenta Gregoriana (ed. P. Jaffé, Berlin, 1865). Of modern works A. Charma’s Lanfranc (Paris, 1849), H. Boehmer’s Die Fälschungen Erzbischof Lanfranks von Canterbury (Leipzig, 1902), and the same author’s Kirche und Staat in England und in der Normandie (Leipzig, 1899) are useful. See also the authorities cited in the articles on [William I.] and [William II.]
(H. W. C. D.)
LANFREY, PIERRE (1828-1877), French historian and politician, was born at Chambéry (Savoie) on the 26th of October 1828. His father had been one of Napoleon’s officers. The son studied philosophy and history in Paris and wrote historical works of an anti-clerical and rationalizing tendency. These included L’Église et les philosophes au XVIIIe siècle (1855; new edition, with a notice of the author by E. de Pressensé, 1879); Essai sur la révolution française (1858); Histoire politique des papes (1860); Lettres d Evérard (1860), a novel in the form of letters; Le Rétablissement de la Pologne (1863). His magnum opus was his Histoire de Napoléon Ier (5 vols., 1867-1875 and 1886; Eng. trans., 4 vols., 1871-1879), which ceased unfortunately at the end of 1811 with the preparations for the Russian campaign of 1812. This book, based on the emperor’s correspondence published in 1858-1870, attempted the destruction of the legends which had grown up around his subject, and sought by a critical examination of the documents to explain the motives of his policy. In his desire to controvert current misconceptions and exaggerations of Napoleon’s abilities Lanfrey unduly minimized his military and administrative genius. A stanch republican, he was elected to the National Assembly in 1871, became ambassador at Bern (1871-1873), and life senator in 1875. He died at Pau on the 15th of November 1877.
His Œuvres complètes were published in 12 vols. (1879 seq.), and his Correspondance in 2 vols. (1885).
LANG, ANDREW (1844- ), British man of letters, was born on the 31st of March 1844, at Selkirk, Scotland. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy, St Andrews University and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a first class in the final classical schools in 1868, becoming a fellow and subsequently honorary fellow of Merton College. As a journalist, poet, critic and historian, he soon made a reputation as one of the ablest and most versatile writers of the day. His first publication was a volume of metrical experiments, The Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872), and this was followed at intervals by other volumes of dainty verse, xxii. Ballades in Blue China (1880, enlarged edition, 1888), Ballads and Verses Vain (1884), selected by Mr Austin Dobson; Rhymes à la Mode (1884), Grass of Parnassus (1888), Ban and Arrière Ban (1894), New Collected Rhymes (1905). He collaborated with S. H. Butcher in a prose translation (1879) of the Odyssey, and with E. Myers and Walter Leaf in a prose version (1883) of the Iliad, both of them remarkable for accurate scholarship and excellence of style. As a Homeric scholar, of conservative views, he took a high rank. His Homer and the Epic appeared in 1893; a new prose translation of The Homeric Hymns in 1899, with essays literary and mythological, in which parallels to the Greek myths are given from the traditions of savage races; and his Homer and his Age in 1906. His purely journalistic activity was from the first of a varied description, ranging from sparkling “leaders” for the Daily News to miscellaneous articles for the Morning Post, and for many years he was literary editor of Longman’s Magazine; no critic was in more request, whether for occasional articles and introductions to new editions or as editor of dainty reprints. To the study of Scottish history Mr Lang brought a scholarly care for detail, a piquant literary style, and a gift for disentangling complicated questions. The Mystery of Mary Stuart (1901, new and revised ed., 1904) was a consideration of the fresh light thrown on Mary’s history by the Lennox MSS. in the University library, Cambridge, strengthening her case by restating the perfidy of her accusers. He also wrote monographs on The Portraits and Jewels of Mary Stuart (1906) and James VI. and the Gowrie Mystery (1902). The somewhat unfavourable view of John Knox presented in his book John Knox and the Reformation (1905) aroused considerable controversy. He gave new information about the continental career of the Young Pretender in Pickle the Spy (1897), an account of Alastair Ruadh Macdonell, whom he identified with Pickle, a notorious Hanoverian spy. This was followed in 1898 by The Companions of Pickle, and in 1900 by a monograph on Prince Charles Edward. In 1900 he began a History of Scotland from the Roman Occupation, the fourth volume of which (1907) brought Scottish history down to 1746. The Valet’s Tragedy (1903), which takes its title from an essay on the “Man with the Iron Mask,” (see [Iron Mask]), collects twelve papers on historical mysteries, and A Monk of Fife (1896) is a fictitious narrative purporting to be written by a young Scot in France in 1429-1431. Mr Lang’s versatility was also shown in his valuable works on folk-lore and on primitive religion. The earliest of these works was Custom and Myth (1884); in Myth, Literature and Religion (2 vols., 1887, French trans., 1896) he explained the irrational elements of mythology as survivals from earlier savagery; in The Making of Religion (an idealization of savage animism) he maintained the existence of high spiritual ideas among savage races, and instituted comparisons between savage practices and the occult phenomena among civilized races; he dealt with the origins of totemism (q.v.) in Social Origins, printed (1903) together with J. J. Atkinson’s Primal Law. He was one of the founders of the study of “Psychical Research,” and his other writings on anthropology include The Book of Dreams and Ghosts (1897), Magic and Religion (1901) and The Secret of the Totem (1905). He carried the humour and sub-acidity of discrimination which marked his criticism of fellow folk-lorists into the discussion of purely literary subjects in his Books and Bookmen (1886), Letters to Dead Authors (1886), Letters on Literature (1889), &c. His Blue Fairy Tale Book (1889), beautifully produced and illustrated, was followed annually at Christmas by a book of fairy tales and romances drawn from many sources. He edited The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns (1896), and was responsible for the Life and Letters (1897) of J. G. Lockhart, and The Life, Letters and Diaries (1890) of Sir Stafford Northcote, first earl of Iddesleigh.