The Middle Ages produced no more interesting man than Anselm, Abbot of
Bec and Archbishop of Canterbury,--not merely a great prelate, but a
great theologian, resplendent in the virtues of monastic life and in
devotion to the interests of the Church. He was one of the first to
create an intellectual movement in Europe, and to stimulate theological
inquiries.
Anselm was born at Aosta, in Italy, 1033, and he died in 1109, at the
age of 76. He was therefore the contemporary of Hildebrand, of Lanfranc,
of Bérenger, of Roscelin, of Henry IV. of Germany, of William the
Conqueror, of the Countess Matilda, and of Urban II. He saw the first
Crusade, the great quarrel about investitures and the establishment of
the Normans in England. Aosta was on the confines of Lombardy and
Burgundy, in a mountainous district, amid rich cornfields and fruitful
vines and dark, waving chestnuts, in sight of lofty peaks with their
everlasting snow. Anselm belonged to a noble but impoverished family;
his father was violent and unthrifty, but his mother was religious and
prudent. He was by nature a student, and early was destined to monastic
life,--the only life favorable to the development of the intellect in a
rude and turbulent age. I have already alluded to the general ignorance
of the clergy in those times. There were no schools of any note at this
period, and no convents where learning was cultivated beyond the
rudiments of grammar and arithmetic and the writings of the Fathers. The
monks could read and talk in Latin, of a barbarous sort,--which was the
common language of the learned, so far as any in that age could be
called learned.
The most famous place in Europe, at that time, where learning was
cultivated, was the newly-founded abbey of Bec in Normandy, under the
superintendence of the Archbishop of Rouen, of which Lanfranc of Pavia
was the prior. It was the first abbey in Normandy to open the door of
learning to the young and inquiring minds of Western Europe. It was a
Benedictine abbey, as severe in its rules as that of Clairvaux. It would
seem that the fame of this convent, and of Lanfranc its presiding genius
(afterwards the great Archbishop of Canterbury), reached the ears of
Anselm; so that on the death of his parents he wandered over the Alps,
through Burgundy, to this famous school, where the best teaching of the
day was to be had. Lanfranc cordially welcomed his fellow-countryman,
then at the age of twenty-six, to his retreat; and on his removal three
years afterwards to the more princely abbey of St. Stephen in Caen,
Anselm succeeded him as prior. Fifteen years later he became abbot, and
ruled the abbey for fifteen years, during which time Lanfranc--the
mutual friend of William the Conqueror and the great Hildebrand--became
Archbishop of Canterbury.
During this seclusion of thirty years in the abbey of Bec, Anselm gave
himself up to theological and philosophical studies, and became known
both as a profound and original thinker and a powerful supporter of
ecclesiastical authority. The scholastic age,--that is, the age of
dialectics, when theology invoked the aid of philosophy to establish the
truths of Christianity,--had not yet begun; but Anselm may be regarded
as a pioneer, the precursor of Thomas Aquinas, since he was led into
important theological controversies to establish the creed of Saint
Augustine. It was not till several centuries after his death, however,
that his remarkable originality of genius was fully appreciated. He
anticipated Descartes in his argument to prove the existence of God. He
is generally regarded as the profoundest intellect among the early
schoolmen, and the most original that appeared in the Church after
Saint Augustine. He was not a popular preacher like Saint Bernard, but
he taught theology with marvellous lucidity to the monks who sought the
genial quiet of his convent. As an abbot he was cheerful and humane,
almost to light-heartedness, frank and kind to everybody,--an exception
to most of the abbots of his day, who were either austere and rigid, or
convivial and worldly. He was a man whom everybody loved and trusted,
yet one not unmindful of his duties as the supreme ruler of his abbey,
enforcing discipline, while favoring relaxation. No monk ever led a life
of higher meditation than he; absorbed not in a dreamy and visionary
piety, but in intelligent inquiries as to the grounds of religious
belief. He was a true scholar of the Platonic and Augustinian school;
not a dialectician like Albertus Magnus and Abélard, but a man who went
beyond words to things, and seized on realities rather than forms; not
given to disputations and the sports of logical tournaments, but to
solid inquiries after truth. The universities had not then arisen, but a
hundred years later he would have been their ornament, like Thomas
Aquinas and Bonaventura.
Like other Norman abbeys, the abbey of Bec had after the Conquest
received lands in England, and it became one of the duties of the abbot
to look after its temporal interests. Hence Anselm was obliged to make
frequent visits to England, where his friendship with Lanfranc was
renewed, and where he made the acquaintance of distinguished prelates
and abbots and churchmen, among others of Eadmer, his future biographer.
It seems that he also won the hearts of the English nobility by his
gentleness and affability, so that they rendered to him uncommon
attentions, not only as a great ecclesiastic who had no equal in
learning, but as a man whom they could not help loving.
The life of Anselm very nearly corresponded with that of the Conqueror,
who died in 1087, being five years older; and he was Abbot of Bec during
the whole reign of William as King of England. There was nothing
particularly memorable in his life as abbot aside from his theological
studies. It was not until he was elevated to the See of Canterbury, on
the death of Lanfranc, that his memorable career became historical. He
anticipated Thomas Becket in his contest to secure the liberties of the
Church against the encroachments of the Norman kings. The cause of the
one was the cause of the other; only, Anselm was trained in monastic
seclusion, and Becket amid the tumults and intrigues of a court. The one
was essentially an ecclesiastic and theologian; the other a courtier and
statesman. The former was religious, and the latter secular in his
habits and duties. Yet both fought the same great battle, the essential
principle of which was the object of contention between the popes and
the emperors of Germany,--that pertaining to the right of investiture,
which may be regarded, next to the Crusades, as the great outward event
of the twelfth century. That memorable struggle for supremacy was not
brought to a close until Innocent III made the kings of the earth his
vassals, and reigned without a rival in Christendom. Gregory VII had
fought heroically, but he died in exile, leaving to future popes the
fruit of his transcendent labors.
Lanfranc died in 1089,--the ablest churchman of the century next to the
great Hildebrand, his master. It was through his influence that England
was more closely allied with Rome, and that those fetters were imposed
by the popes which the ablest of the Norman kings were unable to break.
The Pope had sanctioned the atrocious conquest of England by the
Normans--beneficially as it afterwards turned out--only on the
condition that extraordinary powers should be conferred on the
Archbishop of Canterbury, his representative in enforcing the papal
claims, who thus became virtually independent of the king,--a spiritual
monarch of such dignity that he was almost equal to his sovereign in
authority. There was no such See in Germany and France as that of
Canterbury. Its mighty and lordly metropolitan had the exclusive right
of crowning the king. To him the Archbishop of York, once his equal,
had succumbed. He was not merely primate, but had the supreme control of
the Church in England. He could depose prelates and excommunicate the
greatest personages; he enjoyed enormous revenues; he was vicegerent
of the Pope.
Loth was William to concede such great powers to the Pope, but he could
not be King of England without making a king of Canterbury. So he made
choice of Lanfranc--then Abbot of St. Stephen, the most princely of the
Norman convents--for the highest ecclesiastical dignity in his realm,
and perhaps in Europe after the papacy itself. Lanfranc was his friend,
and also the friend of Hildebrand; and no collision took place between
them, for neither could do without the other. William was willing to
waive some of his prerogatives as a sovereign for such a kingdom as
England, which made him the most powerful monarch in Western Europe,
since he ruled the fairest part of France and the whole British realm,
the united possession of both Saxons and Danes, with more absolute
authority than any feudal sovereign at that time possessed. His
victorious knights were virtually a standing army, bound to him with
more than feudal loyalty, since he divided among them the lands of the
conquered Saxons, and gave to their relatives the richest benefices of
the Church. With the aid of an Italian prelate, bound in allegiance to
the Pope, he hoped to cement his conquest. Lanfranc did as he
wished,--removed the Saxon bishops, and gave their sees to Normans.
Since Dunstan, no great Saxon bishop had arisen. The Saxon bishops were
feeble and indolent, and were not capable of making an effective
resistance. But Lanfranc was even more able than Dunstan,--a great
statesman as well as prelate. He ruled England as grand justiciary in
the absence of the monarch, and was thus viceregent of the kingdom. But
while he despoiled the Saxon prelates, he would suffer no royal
spoliation of the Norman bishops. He even wrested away from Odo,
half-brother of the Conqueror, the manors he held as Count of Kent,
which originally belonged to the See of Canterbury. Thus was William,
with all his greed and ambition, kept in check by the spiritual monarch
he had himself made so powerful.
On the death of this great prelate, all eyes were turned to Anselm as
his successor, who was then Abbot of Bec, absorbed in his studies. But
William Rufus, who had in the mean time succeeded to the throne of the
Conqueror, did not at once appoint any one to the vacant See, since he
had seized and used its revenues to the scandal of the nation and the
indignation of the Church. For five years there was no primate in
England and no Archbishop of Canterbury. At last, what seemed to be a
mortal sickness seized the King, and in the near prospect of death he
summoned Anselm to his chamber and conferred upon him the exalted
dignity,--which Anselm refused to accept, dreading the burdens of the
office, and preferring the quiet life of a scholar in his Norman abbey.
Like Thomas Aquinas, in the next century, who refused the archbishopric
of Naples to pursue his philosophical studies in Paris, Anselm declined
the primacy of the Church in England, with its cares and labors and
responsibilities, that he might be unmolested in his theological
inquiries. He understood the position in which he should be placed, and
foresaw that he should be brought in collision with his sovereign if he
would faithfully guard the liberties and interests of the Church. He was
a man of peace and meditation, and hated conflict, turmoil, and active
life. He knew that one of the requirements of a great prelate is to have
business talents, more necessary perhaps than eloquence or learning. At
last, however, on the pressing solicitation of the Pope, the King, and
the clergy, he consented to mount the throne of Lanfranc, on condition
that the temporalities, privileges, and powers of the See of Canterbury
should not be attacked. The crafty and rapacious, but now penitent
monarch, thinking he was about to die, and wishing to make his peace
with Heaven, made all the concessions required; and the quiet monk and
doctor, whom everybody loved and revered, was enthroned and consecrated
as the spiritual monarch of England.
Anselm's memorable career as bishop began in peace, but was soon clouded
by a desperate quarrel with his sovereign, as he had anticipated. This
learned and peace-loving theologian was forced into a contest which
stands out in history like the warfare between Hildebrand and Henry IV.
It was the beginning of that fierce contest in England which was made
memorable by the martyrdom of Becket. Anselm, when consecrated, was
sixty years of age,--a period of life when men are naturally timid,
cautious, and averse to innovations, quarrels, and physical discomforts.
The friendly relations between William Rufus and Anselm were disturbed
when the former sought to exact large sums of money from his subjects to
carry on war against his brother Robert. Among those who were expected
to make heavy contributions, in the shape of presents, was the
Archbishop of Canterbury, whose revenues were enormous,--perhaps the
largest in the realm next to those of the King. Anselm offered as his
contribution five hundred marks, what would now be equal to £10,000,--a
large sum in those days, but not as much as the Norman sovereign
expected. In indignation he refused the present, which seemed to him
meagre, especially since it was accompanied with words of seeming
reproof; for Anselm had said that "a free gift, which he meant this to
be, was better than a forced and servile contribution." The King then
angrily bade him begone; "that he wanted neither his money nor his
scolding." The courtiers tried to prevail on the prelate to double the
amount of his present, and thus regain the royal favor; but he firmly
refused to do this, since it looked to him like a corrupt bargain.
Anselm, having distributed among the poor the money which the King had
refused, left the court as soon as the Christmas festival was over and
retired to his diocese, preserving his independence and dignity.
A breach had not been made, but the irritation was followed by coolness;
and this was increased when Anselm desired to have the religious posts
filled the revenues of which the King had too long enjoyed, and when, in
addition, he demanded a council of bishops to remedy the disorders and
growing evils of the kingdom. This council the angry King refused with a
sneer, saying, "he would call the council when he himself pleased, not
when Anselm pleased." As to the filling the vacancies of the abbeys, he
further replied: "What are abbeys to you? Are they not mine? Go and
do what you like with your farms, and I will do what I please with my
abbeys." So they parted, these two potentates, the King saying to his
companions, "I hated him yesterday; I hate him more to-day; and I shall
hate him still more to-morrow. I refuse alike his blessings and his
prayers." His chief desire now was to get rid of the man he had elevated
to the throne of Canterbury. It may be observed that it was not the Pope
who made this appointment, but the King of England. Yet, by the rules
long established by the popes and accepted by Christendom, it was
necessary that an archbishop, before he could fully exercise his
spiritual powers, should go to Rome and receive at the hands of the Pope
his pallium, or white woollen stole, as the badge of his office and
dignity. Lanfranc had himself gone to Rome for this purpose,--and a
journey from Canterbury to Rome in the eleventh century was no small
undertaking, being expensive and fatiguing. But there were now at Rome
two rival popes. Which one should Anselm recognize? France and Normandy
acknowledged Urban. England was undecided whether it should be Urban or
Clement. William would probably recognize the one that Anselm did not,
for a rupture was certain, and the King sought for a pretext.
So when the Archbishop asked leave of the King to go to Rome, according
to custom, William demanded to know to which of these two popes he would
apply for his pallium. "To Pope Urban," was the reply. "But," said the
King, "him I have not acknowledged; and no man in England may
acknowledge a pope without my leave." At first view the matter was a
small one comparatively, whether Urban was or was not the true pope.
The real point was whether the King of England should accept as pope the
man whom the Archbishop recognized, or whether the Archbishop should
acknowledge him whom the King had accepted. This could be settled only
by a grand council of the nation, to whom the matter should be
submitted,--virtually a parliament. This council, demanded by Anselm,
met in the royal castle of Rockingham, 1095, composed of nobles,
bishops, and abbots. A large majority of the council were in the
interests of the King, and the subject at issue was virtually whether
the King or the prelate was supreme in spiritual matters,--a point which
the Conqueror had ceded to Lanfranc and Hildebrand. This council
insulted and worried the primate, and sought to frighten him into
submission. But submission was to yield up the liberties of the Church.
The intrepid prelate was not prepared for this, and he appealed from the
council to the Pope, thereby putting himself in antagonism to the King
and a majority of the peers of the realm. The King was exasperated, but
foiled, while the council was perplexed. The Bishop of Durham saw no
solution but in violence; but violence to the metropolitan was too bold
a measure to be seriously entertained. The King hoped that Anselm would
resign, as his situation was very unpleasant.
But resignation would be an act of cowardice, and would result in the
appointment of an archbishop favorable to the encroachments of the King,
who doubtless aimed at the subversion of the liberties of the Church and
greater independence. Five centuries later the sympathies of England
would have been on his side. But the English nation felt differently in
the eleventh century. All Christendom sympathized with the Pope; for
this resistance of Anselm to the King was the cause of the popes
themselves against the monarchs of Europe. Anselm simply acted as the
vicegerent of the Pope. To submit to the dictation of the King in a
spiritual matter was to undermine the authority of Rome. I do not
attempt to settle the merits of the question, but only to describe the
contest. To settle the merits of such a question is to settle the
question whether the papal power in its plenitude was good or evil for
society in the Middle Ages.
One thing seems certain, that the King was thus far foiled by the
firmness of a churchman,--the man who had passed the greater part of his
life in a convent, studying and teaching theology; one of the mildest
and meekest men ever elevated to high ecclesiastical office. Anselm was
sustained by the power of conscience, by an imperative sense of duty, by
allegiance to his spiritual head. He indeed owed fealty to the King, but
only for the temporalities of his See. His paramount obligations as an
archbishop were, according to all the ideas of his age, to the supreme
pontiff of Christendom. Doubtless his life would have been easier and
more pleasant had he been more submissive to the King. He could have
brought all the bishops, as well as barons, to acknowledge the King's
supremacy; but on his shoulders was laid the burden of sustaining
ecclesiastical authority in England. He had anticipated this burden, and
would have joyfully been exempted from its weight. But having assumed
it, perhaps against his will, he had only one course to pursue,
according to the ideas of the age; and this was to maintain the supreme
authority of the Pope in England in all spiritual matters. It was
remarkable that at this stage of the contest the barons took his side,
and the bishops took the side of the King. The barons feared for their
own privileges should the monarch be successful; for they knew his
unscrupulous and tyrannical character,--that he would encroach on these
and make himself as absolute as possible. The bishops were weak and
worldly men, and either did not realize the gravity of the case or
wished to gain the royal favor. They were nearly all Norman nobles, who
had been under obligations to the crown.
The King, however, understood and appreciated his position. He could not
afford to quarrel with the Pope; he dared not do violence to the primate
of the realm. So he dissembled his designs and restrained his wrath, and
sought to gain by cunning what he could not openly effect by the
exercise of royal power. He sent messengers and costly gifts to Rome,
such as the needy and greedy servants of the servants of God rarely
disdained. He sought to conciliate the Pope, and begged, as a favor,
that the pallium should be sent to him as monarch, and given by him,
with the papal sanction, to the Archbishop,--the name of Anselm being
suppressed. This favor, being bought by potent arguments, was granted
unwisely, and the pallium was sent to William with the greatest secrecy.
In return, the King acknowledged the claims of Urban as pope. So Anselm
did not go to Rome for the emblem of his power.
The King, having succeeded thus far, then demanded of the Pope the
deposition of Anselm. He could not himself depose the archbishop. He
could elevate him, but not remove him; he could make, but not unmake.
Only he who held the keys of Saint Peter, who was armed with spiritual
omnipotence, could reverse his own decrees and rule arbitrarily. But for
any king to expect that the Pope would part with the ablest defender of
the liberties of the Church, and disgrace him for being faithful to
papal interests, was absurd. The Pope may have used smooth words, but
was firm in the uniform policy of all his predecessors.
Meanwhile political troubles came so thick and heavy on the King, some
of his powerful nobles being in open rebellion, that he felt it
necessary to dissemble and defer the gratification of his vengeance on
the man he hated more than any personage in England. He pretended to
restore Anselm to favor. "Bygones should be bygones." The King and the
Archbishop sat at dinner at Windsor with friends and nobles, while an
ironical courtier pleasantly quoted the Psalmist, "Behold, how good and
how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!"
The King now supposed that Anselm would receive the pallium at his royal
hands, which the prelate warily refused to accept. The subject was
carefully dropped, but as the pallium was Saint Peter's gift, it was
brought to Canterbury and placed upon the altar, and the Archbishop
condescended, amid much pomp and ceremony, to take it thence and put it
on,--a sort of puerile concession for the sake of peace. The King, too,
wishing conciliation for the present, until he had gained the possession
of Normandy from his brother Robert, who had embarked in the Crusades,
and feeling that he could ill afford to quarrel with the highest
dignitary of his kingdom until his political ambition was gratified,
treated Anselm with affected kindness, until his ill success with the
Celtic Welsh put him in a bad humor and led to renewed hostility. He
complained that Anselm had not furnished his proper contingent of forces
for the conquest of Wales, and summoned him to his court. In a secular
matter like this, Anselm as a subject had no remedy. Refusal to appear
would be regarded as treason and rebellion. Yet he neglected to obey the
summons, perhaps fearing violence, and sought counsel from the Pope. He
asked permission to go to Rome. The request was angrily refused. Again
he renewed his request, and again it was denied him, with threats if he
departed without leave. The barons, now against him, thought he had no
right to leave his post; the bishops even urged him not to go. To all of
whom he replied: "You wish me to swear that I will not appeal to Saint
Peter. To swear this is to forswear Saint Peter; to forswear Saint Peter
is to forswear Christ." At last it seems that the King gave a reluctant
consent, but with messages that were insulting; and Anselm, with a
pilgrim's staff, took leave of his monks, for the chapter of Canterbury
was composed of monks, set out for Dover, and reached the continent
in safety.
"Thus began," says Church, "the system of appeals to Rome, and of
inviting foreign interference in the home affairs of England; and Anselm
was the beginning of it." But however unfortunate it ultimately proved,
it was in accordance with the ideas and customs of the Middle Ages,
without which the papal power could not have been so successfully
established. And I take the ground that the Papacy was an institution of
which very much may be said in its favor in the dark ages of European
society, especially in restraining the tyranny of kings and the
turbulence of nobles. Governments are based on expediencies and changing
circumstances, not on immutable principles or divine rights. If this be
not true, we are driven to accept as the true form of government that
which was recognized by Christ and his disciples. The feudal kings of
Europe claimed a "divine right," and professed to reign by the "grace of
God." Whence was this right derived? If it can be substantiated, on what
claim rests the sovereignty of the people? Are not popes and kings and
bishops alike the creation of circumstances, good or evil inventions, as
they meet the wants of society?
Anselm felt himself to be the subject of the Pope as well as of the
King, but that, as a priest, his supreme allegiance should be given to
the Pope, as the spiritual head of the Church and vicegerent of Christ
upon the earth. We differ from him in his view of the claims of the
Pope, which he regarded as based on immutable truth and the fiat of
Almighty power,--even as Richelieu looked upon the imbecile king whom he
served as reigning by divine right. The Protestant Reformation
demolished the claims of the spiritual potentate, as the French
Revolution swept away the claims of the temporal monarch. The "logic of
events" is the only logic which substantiates the claims of rulers; and
this logic means, in our day, constitutional government in politics and
private judgment in religion,--the free choice of such public servants,
whatever their titles of honor, in State and Church, as the exigencies
and circumstances of society require. The haughtiest of the popes, in
the proudest period of their absolute ascendancy, never rejected their
early title,--"servant of the servants of God." Wherever there is real
liberty among the people, whose sovereignty is acknowledged as the
source of power, the ruler is a servant of the people and not their
tyrant, however great the authority which they delegate to him, which
they alone may continue or take away. Absolute authority, delegated to
kings or popes by God, was the belief of the Middle Ages; limited
authority, delegated to rulers by the people, is the idea of our times.
What the next invention in government may be no one can tell; but
whatever it be, it will be in accordance with the ideas and altered
circumstances of progressive ages. No one can anticipate or foresee the
revolutions in human thought, and therefore in human governments, "till
He shall come whose right it is to reign."
Taking it, then, to be the established idea of the Middle Ages that all
ecclesiastics owed supreme allegiance to the visible head of the Church,
no one can blame Anselm for siding with the Pope, rather than with his
sovereign, in spiritual matters. He would have been disloyal to his
conscience if he had not been true to his clerical vows of obedience.
Conscience may be unenlightened, yet take away the power of conscience
and what would become of our world? What is a man without a conscience?
He is a usurper, a tyrant, a libertine, a spendthrift, a robber, a
miser, an idler, a trifler,--whatever he is tempted to be; a supreme
egotist, who says in his heart, "There is no God." The Almighty Creator
placed this instinct in the soul of man to prevent the total eclipse of
faith, and to preserve some allegiance to Him, some guidance in the
trials and temptations of life. We lament a perverted conscience; yet
better this than no conscience at all, a voice silenced by the combined
forces of evil. A man must obey this voice. It is the wisdom of the
ages to make it harmonious with eternal right; it is the power of God to
remove or weaken the assailing forces which pervert or silence it.
See, then, this gentle, lovable, and meditative scholar--not haughty
like Dunstan, not arrogant like Becket, not sacerdotal like Ambrose, not
passionate like Chrysostom, but meek as Moses is said to have been
before Pharaoh (although I never could see this distinguishing trait in
the Hebrew leader)--yet firmly and heroically braving the wrath of the
sovereign who had elevated him, and pursuing his toilsome journey to
Rome to appeal to justice against injustice, to law against violence.
He reached the old capital of the world in midwinter, after having spent
Christmas in that hospitable convent where Hildebrand had reigned, and
which was to shield the persecuted Abélard from the wrath of his
ecclesiastical tormentors. He was most honorably received by the Pope,
and lodged in the Lateran, as the great champion of papal authority.
Vainly did he beseech the Pope to relieve him from his dignities and
burdens; for such a man could not be spared from the exalted post in
which he had been placed. Peace-loving as he was, his destiny was to
fight battles.
In the following year Pope Urban died; and in the following year William
Rufus himself was accidentally killed in the New Forest. His death was
not much lamented, he having proved hard, unscrupulous, cunning, and
tyrannical. At this period the kings of England reigned with almost
despotic power, independent of barons and oppressive to the people.
William had but little regard for the interests of the kingdom. He built
neither churches nor convents, but Westminster Hall was the memorial of
his iron reign.
Much was expected of Henry I., who immediately recalled Anselm from
Lyons, where he was living in voluntary exile. He returned to
Canterbury, with the firm intention of reforming the morals of the
clergy and resisting royal encroachments. Henry was equally resolved on
making bishops as well as nobles subservient to him. Of course harmony
and concord could not long exist between such men, with such opposite
views. Even at the first interview of the King with the Archbishop at
Salisbury, he demanded a renewal of homage by a new act of investiture,
which was virtually a continuance of the quarrel. It was, however,
mutually agreed that the matter should be referred to the new pope.
Anselm, on his part, knew that the appeal was hopeless; while the King
wished to gain time. It was not long before the answer of Pope Pascal
came. He was willing that Henry should have many favors, but not this.
Only the head of the Church could bestow the emblems of spiritual
authority. On receiving the papal reply the King summoned his nobles and
bishops to his court, and required that Anselm should acknowledge the
right of the King to invest prelates with the badges of spiritual
authority. The result was a second embassy to the Pope, of more
distinguished persons,--the Archbishop of York and two other prelates.
The Pope, of course, remained inflexible. On the return of the envoys a
great council was assembled in London, and Anselm again was required to
submit to the King's will. It seems that the Pope, from motives of
policy (for all the popes were reluctant to quarrel with princes), had
given the envoys assurance that, so long as Henry was a good king, he
should not be disturbed, and that oral declarations were contrary to his
written documents.
This contradiction and double dealing required a new embassy to Rome;
but in the mean time the King gave the See of Salisbury to his
chancellor, and that of Hereford to the superintendent of his larder.
When the answer of the Pope was finally received, it was found that he
indignantly disavowed the verbal message, and excommunicated the three
prelates as liars. But the King was not disconcerted. He suddenly
appeared at Canterbury, and told Anselm that further opposition would be
followed by the royal enmity; yet, mollifying his wrath, requested
Anselm himself to go to Rome and do what he could with the Pope. Anselm
assured him that he could do nothing to the prejudice of the Church. He
departed, however, the King obviously wishing him out of the way.
The second journey of Anselm to Rome was a perpetual ovation, but was of
course barren of results. The Pope remained inflexible, and Anselm
prepared to return to England; but, from the friendly hints of the
prelates who accompanied him, he sojourned again at Lyons with his
friend the archbishop. Both the Pope and the King had compromised;
Anselm alone was straightforward and fearless. As a consequence his
revenues were seized, and he remained in exile. He had been willing to
do the Pope's bidding, had he made an exception to the canons; but so
long as the law remained in force he had nothing to do but conform to
it. He remained in Lyons a year and a half, while Henry continued his
negotiations with Pascal; but finding that nothing was accomplished,
Anselm resolved to excommunicate his sovereign. The report of this
intention alarmed Henry, then preparing for a decisive conflict with his
brother Robert. The excommunication would at least be inconvenient; it
might cost him his crown. So he sought an interview with Anselm at the
castle of l'Aigle, and became outwardly reconciled, and restored to him
his revenues.
"The end of the dreary contest came at last, in 1107, after vexatious
delays and intrigues." It was settled by compromise,--as most quarrels
are settled, as most institutions are established. Outwardly the King
yielded. He agreed, in an assembly of nobles, bishops, and abbots at
London, that henceforth no one should be invested with bishopric or
abbacy, either by king or layman, by the customary badges of ring and
crosier. Anselm, on his part, agreed that no prelate should be refused
consecration who was nominated by the King. The appointment of bishops
remained with the King; but the consecration could be withheld by the
primate, since he alone had the right to give the badges of office,
without which spiritual functions could not be lawfully performed. It
was a moral victory to the Church, but the victory of an unpopular
cause. It cemented the power of the Pope, while freedom from papal
interference has ever been dear to the English nation.
When Anselm had fought this great fight he died, 1109, in the sixteenth
year of his reign as primate of the Church in England, and was buried,
next to Lanfranc, in his abbey church. His career outwardly is memorable
only for this contest, which was afterwards renewed by Thomas Becket
with a greater king than either William Rufus or Henry I. It is
interesting, since it was a part of the great struggle between the
spiritual and temporal powers for two hundred years,--from Hildebrand to
Innocent III. This was only one of the phases of the quarrel,--one of
the battles of a long war,--not between popes and emperors, as in
Germany and Italy, but between a king and the vicegerent of a pope; a
king and his subject, the one armed with secular, the other with
spiritual, weapons. It was only brought to an end by an appeal to the
fears of men,--the dread of excommunication and consequent torments in
hell, which was the great governing idea of the Middle Ages, the means
by which the clergy controlled the laity. Abused and perverted as this
idea was, it indicates and presupposes a general belief in the
personality of God, in rewards and punishments in a future state, and
the necessity of conforming to the divine laws as expounded and
enforced by the Christian Church. Hence the dark ages have been called
"Ages of Faith."
It now remains to us to contemplate Anselm as a theologian and
philosopher,--a more interesting view, for in this aspect his character
is more genial, and his influence more extended and permanent. He is one
of the first who revived theological studies in Europe. He did not teach
in the universities as a scholastic doctor, but he was one who prepared
the way for universities by the stimulus he gave to philosophy. It was
in his abbey of Bec that he laid the foundation of a new school of
theological inquiry. In original genius he was surpassed by no
scholastic in the Middle Ages, although both Abélard and Thomas Aquinas
enjoyed a greater fame. It was for his learning and sanctity that he was
canonized,--and singularly enough by Alexander VI., the worst pope who
ever reigned. Still more singular is it that the last of his successors,
as abbot of Bec, was the diplomatist Talleyrand,--one of the most
worldly and secular of all the ecclesiastical dignitaries of an
infidel age.
The theology of the Middle Ages, of which Anselm was one of the greatest
expounders, certainly the most profound, was that which was systematized
by Saint Augustine from the writings of Paul. Augustine was the oracle
of the Latin Church until the Council of Trent, and nominally his
authority has never been repudiated by the Catholic Church. But he was
no more the father of the Catholic theology than he was of the
Protestant, as taught by John Calvin: these two great theologians were
in harmony in all essential doctrines as completely as were Augustine
and Anselm, or Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. The doctrines of theology,
as formulated by Augustine, were subjects of contemplation and study in
all the convents of the Middle Ages. In spite of the prevailing
ignorance, it was impossible that inquiring men, "secluded in gloomy
monasteries, should find food for their minds in the dreary and
monotonous duties to which monks were doomed,--a life devoted to
alternate manual labor and mechanical religious services." There would
be some of them who would speculate on the lofty subjects which were the
constant themes of their meditations. Bishops were absorbed in their
practical duties as executive rulers. Village priests were too ignorant
to do much beyond looking after the wants of hinds and peasants. The
only scholarly men were the monks. And although the number of these was
small, they have the honor of creating the first intellectual movement
since the fall of the Roman Empire. They alone combined leisure with
brain-work. These intellectual and inquiring monks, as far back as the
ninth century speculated on the great subjects of Christian faith with
singular boldness, considering the general ignorance which veiled
Europe in melancholy darkness. Some of them were logically led "to a
secret mutiny and insurrection" against the doctrines which were
universally received. This insurrection of human intelligence gave great
alarm to the orthodox leaders of the Church; and to suppress it the
Church raised up conservative dialecticians as acute and able as those
who strove for emancipation. At first they used the weapons of natural
reason, but afterwards employed the logic and method of Aristotle, as
translated into Latin from the Arabic, to assist them in their
intellectual combats. Gradually the movement centred in the scholastic
philosophy, as a bulwark to Catholic theology. But this was nearly a
hundred years after the time of Anselm, who himself was not enslaved by
the technicalities of a complicated system of dialectics.
Naturally the first subject which was suggested to the minds of
inquiring monks was the being and attributes of God. He was the
beginning and end of their meditations. It was to meditate upon God that
the Oriental recluse sought the deserts of Asia Minor and Egypt. Like
the Eastern monk of the fourth century, he sought to know the essence
and nature of the Deity he worshipped. There arose before his mind the
great doctrines of the trinity, the incarnation, and redemption. Closely
connected with these were predestination and grace, and then "fixed
fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute." On these mysteries he could
not help meditating; and with meditation came speculation on
unfathomable subjects pertaining to God and his relations with man, to
the nature of sin and its penalty, to the freedom of the will, and
eternal decrees.
The monk became first a theologian and then a philosopher, whether of
the school of Plato or of Aristotle he did not know. He began to
speculate on questions which had agitated the Grecian schools,--the
origin of evil and of matter; whether the world was created or
uncreated; whether there is a distinction between things visible and
invisible; whether we derive our knowledge from sensation or reflection;
whether the soul is necessarily immortal; how free-will is to be
reconciled with God's eternal decrees, or what the Greeks called Fate;
whether ideas are eternal, or are the creation of our own minds. These,
and other more subtile questions--like the nature of angels--began to
agitate the convent in the ninth century.
It was then that the monk Gottschalk revived the question of
predestination, which had slumbered since the time of Saint Augustine.
Although the Bishop of Hippo was the oracle of the Church, and no one
disputed his authority, it would seem that his characteristic
doctrine,--that of grace; the essential doctrine of Luther also,--was
never a favorite one with the great churchmen of the Middle Ages. They
did not dispute Saint Augustine, but they adhered to penances and
expiations, which entered so largely into the piety of the Middle Ages.
The idea of penances and expiations, pushed to their utmost logical
sequence, was salvation by works and not by faith. Grace, as understood
by the Fathers, was closely allied to predestination; it disdained the
elaborate and cumbrous machinery of ecclesiastical discipline, on which
the power of the clergy was based. Grace was opposed to penance, while
penance was the form which religion took; and as predestination was a
theological sequence of grace, it was distasteful to the Mediaeval
Church. Both grace and predestination tended to undermine the system of
penance then universally accepted. The great churchmen of the Middle
Ages were plainly at war with their great oracle in this matter, without
being fully aware of their real antagonism. So they made an onslaught on
Gottschalk, as opposed to those ideas on which sacerdotal power
rested,--especially did Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, the greatest
prelate of that age. Persecuted, Gottschalk appealed to reason rather
than authority, thus anticipating Luther by five hundred years,--an
immense heresy in the Middle Ages. Hincmar, not being able to grapple
with the monk in argument, summoned to his aid the brightest intellect
of that century,--the first man who really gave an impulse to
philosophical inquiries in the Middle Ages, the true founder of
scholasticism.
This man was John Scotus Erigena,--or John the Erin-born,--who was also
a monk, and whose early days had been spent in some secluded monastery
in Ireland, or the Scottish islands. Somehow he attracted the attention
of Charles the Bald, A.D. 843, and became his guest and chosen
companion. And yet, while he lived in the court, he spent the most of
his time in intellectual seclusion. As a guest of the king he may have
become acquainted with Hincmar, or his acquaintance with Hincmar may
have led to his friendship with Charles. He was witty, bright, and
learned, like Abélard, a favorite with the great. In his treatise on
Predestination, in which he combated the views of Gotschalk, he probably
went further than Hincmar desired or expected: he boldly asserted the
supremacy of reason, and threw off the shackles of authority. He
combated Saint Augustine as well as Gottschalk. He even aspired to
reconcile free-will with the divine sovereignty,--the great mistake of
theologians in every age, the most hopeless and the most ambitious
effort of human genius,--a problem which cannot be solved. He went even
further than this: he attempted to harmonize philosophy with religion,
as Abélard did afterwards. He brought all theological questions to the
test of dialectical reasoning. Thus the ninth century saw a rationalist
and a pantheist at the court of a Christian king. Like Democritus, he
maintained the eternity of matter. Like a Buddhist, he believed that God
is all things and all things are God. Such doctrines were not to be
tolerated, even in an age when theological speculations did not usually
provoke persecution. Religious persecution for opinions was the fruit of
subsequent inquiries, and did not reach its height until the Dominicans
arose in the thirteenth century. But Erigena was generally denounced; he
fell under the censure of the Pope, and was obliged to fly, taking
refuge about the year 882 in England,--it is said at Oxford, where there
was probably a cathedral school, but not as yet a university, with its
professors' chairs and scholastic honors. Others suppose that he died in
Paris, 891.
A spirit of inquiry having been thus awakened among a few intellectual
monks, they began to speculate about those questions which had agitated
the Grecian schools: whether genera and species--called
"universals," or ideas--have a substantial and independent existence, or
whether they are the creation of our own minds; whether, if they have a
real existence, they are material or immaterial essences; whether they
exist apart from objects perceptible by the senses. It is singular that
such questions should have been discussed in the ninth century, since
neither Plato nor Aristotle were studied. That age was totally ignorant
of Greek. It may be doubted whether there was a Greek scholar in Western
Europe,--or even in Rome.
No very remarkable man arose with a rationalizing spirit, after Erigena,
until Berengar of Tours in the eleventh century, who maintained that in
the Sacrament the presence of the body of Christ involves no change in
the nature and essence of the bread and wine. He was opposed by
Lanfranc. But the doctrine of transubstantiation was too deeply grounded
in the faith of Christendom to be easily shaken. Controversies seemed to
centre around the doctrine of the real existence of ideas,--what are
called "universals,"--which doctrine was generally accepted. The monks,
in this matter, followed Saint Augustine, who was a realist, as were
also the orthodox leaders of the Church generally from his time to that
of Saint Bernard. It was a sequence of the belief in the doctrine of
the Trinity.
No one of mark opposed the Realism which had now become one of the
accepted philosophical opinions of the age, until Roscelin, in the
latter part of the eleventh century, denied that universals have a real
existence. It was Plato's doctrine that universals have an independent
existence apart from individual objects, and that they exist before the
latter (universalia ANTE rem,--the thought before the thing);
while Aristotle maintained that universals, though possessing a real
existence, exist only in individual objects (universalia IN re,
--the thought in the thing). Nominalism is the doctrine that
individuals only have real existence (universalia POST rem,--the
thought after the thing).
It is not probable that this profound question about universals would
have excited much interest among the intellectual monks of the eleventh
century, had it not been applied to theological subjects, in which
chiefly they were absorbed. Now Roscelin advanced the doctrine, that, if
the three persons in the Trinity were one thing, it would follow that
the Father and the Holy Ghost must have entered into the flesh together
with the Son; and as he believed that only individuals exist in reality,
it would follow that the three persons of the Godhead are three
substances, in fact three Gods. Thus Nominalism logically led to an
assault on the received doctrine of the Trinity--the central point in
the theology of the Church. This was heresy. The foundations of
Christian belief were attacked, and no one in that age was strong enough
to come to the rescue but Anselm, then Abbot of Bec.
His great service to the cause of Christian theology, and therefore to
the Church universal, was his exposition of the logical results of the
Nominalism of Roscelin,--to whom universals, or ideas, were merely
creations of the mind, or conventional phrases, having no real
existence. Hence such things as love, friendship, beauty, justice, were
only conceptions. Plato and Augustine maintained that they are eternal
verities, not to be explained by definitions, appealing to
consciousness, in the firm belief in which the soul sustains itself;
that there can be no certain knowledge without a recognition of these;
that from these only sound deductions of moral truth can be drawn; that
without a firm belief in these eternal certitudes there can be no repose
and no lofty faith. These ideas are independent of us. They do not vary
with our changing sensations; they have nothing to do with sensation.
They are not creations of the brain; they inherently exist, from all
eternity. The substance of these ideas is God; without these we could
not conceive of God. Augustine especially, in the true spirit of
Platonism, abhorred doctrines which made the existence of God depend
upon our own abstractions. To him there was a reality in love, in
friendship, in justice, in beauty; and he repelled scepticism as to
their eternal existence, as life repels death.
Roscelin took away the platform from whose lofty heights Socrates and
Plato would survey the universe. He attacked the citadel in which
Augustine intrenched himself amid the desolations of a dissolving world;
he laid the axe at the root of the tree which sheltered all those who
would fly from uncertainty and despair.
But if these ideas were not true, what was true; on what were the hopes
of the world to be based; where was consolation for the miseries of life
to be found? "There are many goods," says Anselm, "which we
desire,--some for utility, and others for beauty; but all these goods
are relative,--more or less good,--and imply something absolutely good.
This absolute good--the summum bonum--is God. In like manner all that
is great and high are only relatively great and high; and hence there
must be something absolutely great and high, and this is God. There must
exist at least one being than which no other is higher; hence there must
be but one such being,--and this is God."
It was thus that Anselm brought philosophy to the support of theology.
He would combat the philosophical reasonings of Roscelin with still
keener dialectics. He would conquer him on his own ground and with his
own weapons.
Let it not be supposed that this controversy about universals was a mere
dialectical tournament, with no grand results. It goes down to the root
of almost every great subject in philosophy and religion. The denial of
universal ideas is rationalism and materialism in philosophy, as it is
Pelagianism and Arminianism in theology. The Nominalism of Roscelin
reappeared in the Rationalism of Abélard; and, carried out to its
severe logical sequences, is the refusal to accept any doctrine which
cannot be proved by reason. Hence nothing is to be accepted which is
beyond the province of reason to explain; and hence nothing is to be
received by faith alone. Christianity, in the hands of fearless and
logical nominalists, would melt away,--that is, what is peculiar in its
mysterious dogmas. Its mysterious dogmas were the anchors of belief in
ages of faith. It was these which animated the existence of such men as
Augustine, Bernard, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas. Hence their terrible
antagonism even to philosophical doctrines which conflicted with the
orthodox belief, on which, as they thought, the salvation of
mankind rested.
But Anselm did not rest with combating the Nominalism of Roscelin. In
the course of his inquiries and arguments he felt it necessary to
establish the belief in God--the one great thing from which all other
questions radiated--by a new argument, and on firmer ground than that on
which it had hitherto rested. He was profoundly devotional as well as
logical, and original as he was learned. Beyond all the monks of his age
he lived in the contemplation of God. God was to him the essence of all
good, the end of all inquiries, the joy and repose of his soul He could
not understand unless he first believed; knowledge was the fruit of
faith, not its cause. The idea of God in the mind of man is the
highest proof of the existence of God. That only is real which appeals
to consciousness. He did not care to reason about a thing when reasoning
would not strengthen his convictions, perhaps involve him in doubts and
perplexities. Reason is finite and clouded and warped. But that which
directly appeals to consciousness (as all that is eternal must appeal),
and to that alone, like beauty and justice and love,--ultimate ideas to
which reasoning and definitions add nothing,--is to be received as a
final certitude. Hence, absolute certainty of the existence of God, as
it appeals to consciousness,--like the "Cogito, ergo sum." In this
argument he anticipated Descartes, and proved himself the profoundest
thinker of his century, perhaps of five centuries.
The deductions which Anselm made from the attributes of God and his
moral government seem to have strengthened the belief of the Middle Ages
in some theological aspects which are repulsive to consciousness,--his
stronghold; thereby showing how one-sided any deductions are apt to be
when pushed out to their utmost logical consequences; how they may even
become a rebuke to human reason in those grand efforts of which reason
is most proud, for theology, it must be borne in mind, is a science of
deductions from acknowledged truths of revelation. Hence, from the
imperfections of reason, or from disregard of other established truths,
deductions may be pushed to absurdity even when logical, and may be made
to conflict with the obvious meaning of primal truths from which these
deductions are made, or at least with those intuitions which are hard to
be distinguished from consciousness itself. There may be no flaw in the
argument, but the argument may land one in absurdity and contradiction.
For instance, from the acknowledged sinfulness of human nature--one of
the cardinal declarations of Scripture, and confirmed by universal
experience--and the equally fundamental truth that God is infinite,
Anselm assumed the dogma that the guilt of men as sinners against an
infinite God is infinitely great. From this premise, which few in his
age were disposed to deny, for it was in accordance with Saint
Augustine, it follows that infinite sin, according to eternal justice,
could only be atoned for by an infinite punishment. Hence all men
deserve eternal punishment, and must receive it, unless there be made an
infinite satisfaction or atonement, since not otherwise can divine love
be harmonized with divine justice. Hence it was necessary that the
eternal Son should become man, and make, by his voluntary death on the
cross, the necessary atonement for human sins. Pushed out to the
severest logical consequences, it would follow, that, as an infinite
satisfaction has atoned for sin, all sinners are pardoned. But the
Church shrank from such a conclusion, although logical, and included in
the benefits of the atonement only the believing portion of mankind.
The discrepancy between the logical deductions and consciousness, and I
may add Scripture, lies in assuming that human guilt is infinitely
great. It is thus that theology became complicated, even gloomy, and in
some points false, by metaphysical reasonings, which had such a charm
both to the Fathers and the Schoolmen. The attempt to reconcile divine
justice with divine love by metaphysics and abstruse reasoning proved as
futile as the attempt to reconcile free-will with predestination; for
divine justice was made by deduction, without reference to other
attributes, to conflict with those ideas of justice which consciousness
attests,--even as a fettered will, of which all are conscious (that is,
a will fettered by sin), was pushed out by logical deductions into
absolute slavery and impotence.
Anselm did not carry out metaphysical reasonings to such lengths as did
the Schoolmen who succeeded him,--those dialecticians who lived in
universities in the thirteenth century. He was a devout man, who
meditated on God and on revealed truth with awe and reverence, without
any desire of system-making or dialectical victories. This desire more
properly marked the Scholastic doctors of the universities in a
subsequent age, when, though philosophy had been invoked by Anselm to
support theology, they virtually made theology subordinate to philosophy.
It was his main effort to establish, on rational grounds, the existence
of God, and afterwards the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation.
And yet with Anselm and Roscelin the Scholastic age began. They were the
founders of the Realists and the Nominalists,--those two schools which
divided the Church in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and which
will probably go on together, under different names, as long as men shall
believe and doubt. But this subject, on which I have only entered, must
be deferred to the next lecture.
AUTHORITIES.
Church's Life of Saint Anselm; Neander's Church History; Milman's
History of the Latin Church; Stockl's History of the Philosophy of the
Middle Ages; Ueberweg's History of Philosophy; Wordsworth's
Ecclesiastical Biography; Trench's Mediaeval Church History; Digby's
Ages of Faith; Fleury's Ecclesiastical History; Dupin's Ecclesiastical
History; Biographie Universelle; M. Rousselot's Histoire de la
Philosophic du Moyen Age; Newman's Mission of the Benedictine Order;
Dugdale's Monasticon; Hallam's Literature of Europe; Hampden's article
on the Scholastic Philosophy, in Encyclopaedia Metropolitana.