was of course impossible. The pall was laid on the altar of Christ-church cathedral, that there might be no question whether pope or king had given it; and Anselm invested himself. A peace was patched up, and lasted for some months. When the question of buying Normandy arose (1086 a.d.), Anselm, in his anxiety to conciliate the king, contributed two hundred marks, which he borrowed from the treasury of his cathedral. William began to hold out hopes that he would permit the meeting of a synod when the kingdom had rest from war. A peace with the Welsh soon afterwards appeared to promise Anselm the fulfilment of his hopes: it led to a new quarrel; the king complained that the archbishop's contingent had been badly armed and provisioned, and summoned him before the feudal court. Anselm begged for leave to visit Rome and consult the pope. William cynically refused. "The primate is no such sinner as to need papal absolution; and is much more capable of advising Urban, than Urban of advising him." But he gave him to understand at the same time that all proceedings might be avoided, if only the points discussed at Rockingham were given up. The bishops told their chief that they were plain men, who confessed to loving their kindred and this world; if he in his sublimity chose to look only to God, he must not expect their support. "Ye have said well," answered Anselm; "go ye to the king: I will trust myself in God's hands." At a fresh interview with Rufus, Anselm at last obtained permission to leave the kingdom. Before departing he blessed the king, who bowed to receive the benediction. But William, who had already imprisoned or banished the primate's most trusted friends, would not let him leave the country without a fresh indignity. A special envoy was despatched to search his baggage at Dover, that no concealed treasure might be taken out of the kingdom. The insulting ceremony was performed on the beach before a crowd of indignant by-standers (October, 1097 A.D.)

Anselm spent nearly two years in Italy, conciliating the affection and respect of all who knew him. Even Saracen soldiers, when he passed through their camp, used to crowd

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round him and bless him; and some were only restrained by fear of persecution from joining the faith which such a man professed. But the pope, who was now fully engrossed with his own difficulties, did not care to provoke the enmity of the king of England. Anselm left Italy in despair, and took refuge with the archbishop of Lyons. More than a year had thus passed when he received the news of William's death, and letters from Henry imploring him to return. King and primate soon met upon friendly terms; Anselm easily overlooked the slight to his rank in Henry's consecration by another prelate; and the king was overjoyed to have secured so powerful an ally. In fact, within a year Anselm had rendered the king two important services. He had legalized, though with reluctance, Henry's marriage with the Saxon princess Edith; and by threatening to put Robert under ban, he had deprived the Norman invasion of half its strength. The decision with which he acted in this political crisis is remarkable. He even made a speech to the army, exhorting them to keep faith with the king. But when the danger was past, a new subject of dispute between himself and the crown came up. Anselm, during his stay in Italy, had heard the pope in council solemnly curse all priests who consented to receive investiture of their benefices from laymen, and to do homage for church property as for fiefs. Anselm therefore told the king from the first, that he could not do homage to him for the archbishopric as he had done to William Rufus. The king was disturbed, but dared not take any strong steps. It was agreed that the church property should be restored, and an appeal made to the pope for a special indulgence to the old customs of England.

The point at issue was one of the last importance. Every bishop on his consecration was entitled to receive certain lay fiefs, from which his principal revenue was derived. For these he was accustomed to do homage in the ordinary feudal fashion, kneeling, placing his hands between his lord's hands, and promising to become his man "from that day forward, of life, and limb, and earthly worship." These strong phrases were of course limited by the recognized duties of a

328

DANGER OF FEUDALISM IN THE CHURCH.

priest to the church, and only bound the new prelate to perform the duties of a citizen by aiding his lord with money, in council, and in the field. But the office of bishop itself was conferred by the king, who put ring and crozier into the priest's hands in exactly the same way as he gave arms to a military tenant. Thus by a confusion of ideas, like that which had made fiefs hereditary, property and office were conveyed in one ceremony, and the man was bound, as it were, to the soil of his new estates by the obligation of common services. This virtually made the king head of the church; and the only trace of connection with Rome lay in the pall which was conferred by the Roman see. Under the Anglo-Saxon kings, church and state had been inextricably intertwined; and feudalism, although practically established, had not been systematized by the subtle intellects of lawyers, and had not stamped itself on the thought of the age as a necessary condition of life. The times were changed, and the church was in danger of becoming a mere department of the state; its powers of moral censorship had been limited; its right of free action taken away; its connection with Rome controlled. All this had been done by the strong will and resolute hand of the Norman kings. Yet no one doubted that the church had a separate mission upon earth, and ought to be independent in its own sphere. The experience of more than seven centuries has shown that two distinct powers, the secular and the ecclesiastical, cannot occupy the same dominion with analogous jurisdictions and equal dignity. But had that impossibility been foreseen in the eleventh century, every rightminded man would have decided that the state, governed by earthly princes, ought to give way to the church, with the vicar of Christ at its head. Anselm had felt painfully, in his own experience, that his position as tenant-in-chief impeded the discharge of his duties as bishop. As a reasonable man, he must also have considered the other side of the question. If the bishop did no homage to the king, he owed him no service; and the state would thus lose its claim to the taxes and military service due from the many thousand tenants on

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church property, who would constitute a separate kingdom within the four seas, with interests of its own, at times perhaps hostile to the crown. The prescriptive rights of the state, derived from immemorial usage, were not lightly to be encroached upon. It is probable, therefore, that the archbishop would have done nothing of himself to define the respective spheres of priest and citizen. But when the question was decided for him by the highest church authority, he obeyed orders without hesitation, and at the age of sixty-nine set himself with impassive serenity to begin a new struggle, without friends, with a more powerful foe, in the teeth of calumny, amid suffering and exile.

The steps of Anselm's second contest may be briefly resumed. The first embassy to Rome having returned unsuccessfully, Henry sent another, consisting of Gerard, archbishop of York, and the bishops of Chester and Norwich. These men came back with a letter, in which Paschal, now pope, flatly refused the king's request, but they professed to have private instructions of another kind: the pope could make no outward difference between princes; but he would not insist on his right so long as Henry was a dutiful son of the church. Anselm's representatives at Rome knew nothing of this secret compromise, and refused to believe it; they were answered that the word of bishops was stronger evidence than parchments. The plea was valid, if it were true, for the frequent forgeries of those days very much detracted from the value of written documents. But as the bishops were men of low character; as Paschal solemnly denied the charge, and excommunicated them; as they bore their sentence, and the public reproach, without making any defence, it may fairly be supposed that they had been bribed to invent a specious falsehood. Henry, however, assumed their statements to be true, and proceeded to nominate new bishops. It was easier to find courtly prelates who would consecrate, than worthless priests to accept sees uncanonically ;, out of three candidates whom Henry had designated, two, one of them an old chancellor, another a royal chaplain, threw up their preferment sooner than accept it from the crown. The

330

ANSELM'S SECOND EXILE.

king now desired to get rid of Anselm, and easily persuaded him to go to Rome, and lay the state of things before the pope. Of course, the pope was firm and made no concession, except that the king was not to be excommunicated at once. But Henry's object was gained; the archbishop was out of England, and was now ordered not to return unless he would do the king's bidding; he preferred remaining at Lyons, and the estates of his see were confiscated (1103 A.D.) During this second exile of three years, Anselm had the misery of hearing that his absence had caused disorder in the English church; his friends implored him to return and save it from ruin; the queen, probably at her husband's bidding, wrote appealing to his spirit of self-sacrifice, and implored him to make himself anathema that he might save the souls of others.1 Anselm was firm; his scholastic habits of thought had eminently fitted him to see the importance of abstract principles. At last his patience was exhausted; he had no right to delay where his own life was so uncertain: he threatened to excommunicate the king. Henry did not care to proceed to extremities; his success in reducing Normandy would be seriously compromised by any continuance of the quarrel; he had roused the whole clergy against him by taxing them under pretence of enforcing discipline, and his wife and sister were Anselm's warmest friends. He restored the revenues of the see, and met Anselm as a friend; the pope was prevailed on to give up the question of homage; and Henry consented to renounce the right of investing with ring and crozier. After many delays, a council was held in London (August, 1107 A.D.) and the compact between church and state formally ratified. The king was henceforth to give the revenues and receive the allegiance of the bishop as of other state officers; the head of the church was to invest him with the symbols of office in the church.

Anselm's political reputation has suffered from the very grandeur of his holy and passionless character. A little more strut and bluster are required for the heroes who tread the

'Anselm, Epist., lib. iii., 93.

2 Wilkins, vol. i., pp. 386, 387.