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 Berenger, 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 Angustinian
school; not a dialectician like Albertus Magnus and Abelard, but a
man who went beyond words to things, and seized on realities rather
than forms; not given to disputatious 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 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 l0,000 pounds,--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 Anslem 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
Abelard 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 have
nothing to fear from the clergy.
These oral declarations were contrary to the Pope's written
documents, and this contradiction 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 Abelard 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 Hinemar,
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. Hinemar, 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 Hinemar, or
his acquaintance with Hinemar may have led to his friendship with
Charles. He was witty, bright, and learned, like Abelard, a
favorite with the great. In his treatise on Predestination, in
which he combated the views of Gottschalk, he probably went further
than Hinemar 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 Abelard 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, probably on that account, took 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. Unless in the Irish monastic
schools, 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 Abelard; 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.