Читать книгу The Rise of the Democracy - Joseph Clayton - Страница 24

Anselm was sixty when, in 1093, William II. named him for the Archbishopric of Canterbury. In vain Anselm, who was Abbot of the famous monastery of Bec, in Normandy, protested that he was too old, and that his business was not with high place and power in this world. The King seemed to be dying, and the bishops gathered round the sick bed would not hear of any refusal on Anselm's part. They pushed the pastoral staff into his hands, and carried him off to a neighbouring church, while the people shouted "Long live the bishop!"

What everybody felt was that with Anselm as Archbishop things might be better in England, for Anselm's reputation stood very high. He had been the friend of Lanfranc, the late Archbishop; he had been an honoured guest at the Court of William the Conqueror; and he was known for his deep learning, his sanctity of life, and simple, disinterested devotion to duty. It was hoped that with a man of such holiness at Canterbury some restraint might be placed on the lawless tyranny of the Red King. Lanfranc had been the trusted counsellor and right hand of the Red King's father: why should not Anselm bring back the son to the paths of decency—at least? The Archbishop of Canterbury was the chief man in the realm next to the king, and for three years since Lanfranc's death the see had been kept vacant that William Rufus might enjoy its revenues for his own pleasure. It was not unreasonable that men should look to the appointment of Anselm as the beginning of an amendment in Church and State. The trouble was that William stuck to his evil courses.

The rule of William the Conqueror had been stern and harsh, and his hand had been heavy on the English people. But there had been law and justice in the rule; religion and morality had been respected, and peace and security obtained.

The rule of the Red King was not only grievous, it was arbitrary, capricious, cruel, and without semblance of law. The austerity of the Conqueror had been conspicuous; equally conspicuous was the debauchery of his son. The Conqueror had been faithful and conscientious in seeing that vacancies in the Church were filled up quickly and wisely. The Red King preferred to leave bishoprics and churches empty so that he might annex the profits. Lanfranc, a wise and just man, had been the Minister of the Conqueror; the Red King made Ranulf (nicknamed the Torch or Firebrand)—a clever, unprincipled clerk—Bishop of Durham and Justiciar. It was Ranulf who did the King's business in keeping churches and bishoprics vacant, in violation of law and custom; it was Ranulf who plundered the King's vassals and the people at large by every kind of extortion, thwarted the protests of Anselm, and encouraged William in his savage profligacies.

Meek and gentle as Anselm was, he had all the courage that comes of a lofty sense of responsibility to God, and he stood before kings as the Hebrew prophets of old had stood, calm and fearless. At Christmas, 1092, three months before his nomination to the See of Canterbury, Anselm was in England over the affairs of his monastery, and William invited him to Court and treated him with great display of honour. Then some private talk took place between the two, and Anselm said plainly that "Things were spoken daily of the King, openly or secretly, by nearly all the men of his realm, which were not seemly for the King's dignity." From that time Anselm stayed in England, for William refused to give him leave to return to Normandy.

Then in March, 1093 came the King's sickness, which most men expected to be mortal. Anselm was summoned, and on his arrival bade the King "make a clean confession of all that he knows that he has done against God, and promise that, should he recover, he will without pretence amend in all things. The King at once agreed to this, and with sorrow of heart engaged to do all that Anselm required and to keep justice and mercy all his life long. To this he pledged his faith, and made his bishops witness between himself and God, sending persons in his stead to promise his word to God on the altar. An edict was written and sealed with the King's seal that all prisoners should be set free in all his dominions, all debts forgiven, all offences heretofore committed pardoned and forgotten for ever. Further, good and holy laws were promised to the whole people, and the sacred upholding of right and such solemn inquest into wrongdoing as may deter others."^[3]

William did not die, and his repentance was short-lived; but the one act of grace he did before leaving his sick bed was to fill up the empty throne at Canterbury by the appointment of Anselm—Anselm's protests of unfitness notwithstanding. Then, on the King's recovery, as though to make up for the penitence displayed, all the royal promises of amendment were broken without shame, and "all the evil which the King had wrought before he was sick seemed good by the side of the wrong which he did when he was returned to health." The prisoners who had been pardoned were sent back to prison, the debts which had been cancelled were re-claimed, and all legal actions which had been dropped were resumed. Anselm was now enthroned at Canterbury, and his appointment could not be revoked; but the King was quick to show his displeasure at the new Archbishop.

The first point raised by William was that those lands belonging to the See of Canterbury, which had been made over to military vassals of the Crown while the archbishopric was vacant, should remain with their holders. Anselm said at once that this was impossible. He was responsible for the administration of all the estates of Canterbury, and to allow these lands to be alienated to the Crown was to rob the poor and needy who, it was held, had a just claim on the property of the Church. Besides, Anselm saw that the lands would never be restored once an Archbishop confirmed their appropriation by the King's military tenants. There was no one in all England save Anselm who dared withstand the Crown, and had he yielded on this matter resistance to the tyranny of the Red King would only have been harder on the next occasion.

Then came the question of a present of money to the King, the customary offering. Anselm brought five hundred marks (£333), a very considerable sum in those days, and William, persuaded by some of his courtiers that twice the amount ought to have been given, curtly declined the present. Anselm, who disliked the whole business of these gifts to the Crown, for he knew that many a Churchman bought his office by promising a "free" gift after institution, solemnly warned William that money given freely as his was given was better than a forced tribute, and to this William answered that he wanted neither the Archbishop's money nor his preaching or company.

Thereupon Anselm retired and gave the money to the poor, determined that he, for his part, would make no attempt to purchase William's goodwill. Henceforth William was equally determined that Anselm should have no peace in England. It was hateful to the King that there should be anyone in the realm who acknowledged a higher authority than the Crown, and Anselm made it too plain that the Archbishop rested his authority not on the favour of the Crown, but on the discipline of the Christian religion. William was King of England indisputably, but there was a higher power than the King, and that was the Pope. William himself never dreamed of denying the divine authority of the Pope in spiritual matters; no one in all Christendom in the eleventh and twelfth centuries questioned that at Rome was a court of appeal higher than the courts of kings. Strong rulers like William the Conqueror might decline to submit to Rome on a personal question of marriage, but Rome was the recognised centre of religion, the headquarters of the Christian Church, and the supreme court of appeal. Apart from Rome there was no power that could curb the fierce unbridled tyranny of the kings of the earth, and the power of Rome was a spiritual weapon, for the Pope had no army to enforce his decisions. So Anselm, conscious of this spiritual authority, refused to bow to the lawless rule of the Red King; and his very attitude, while it encouraged men to lift up their hearts who erstwhile had felt that it was hopeless and useless to strive against William,^[4] enraged the Red King to fury.

The things he wanted to forget were that the chief representative of the Christian religion was a greater person than the King of England, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury could be a Christian minister rather than a King's man.^[5] And Anselm was the constant witness to the Christian religion, and, by his very presence, a rebuke to the crimes and cruelties of the Court of the Red King. William actually wrote to the Pope, naturally without any success, praying him to depose Anselm, and promising a large annual tribute to Rome if the request was granted.

For years the uneven contest was waged. The bishops generally avoided Anselm, and were only anxious to be accepted by the King as good servants of the Crown, with the result that William despised them for their servility. But the barons began to declare their respect for the brave old man at Canterbury.

At last, when Anselm was summoned to appear before the King's Court, to "do the King right," on a trumped-up charge of having failed to send an adequate supply of troops for the King's service, he felt the position was hopeless. Anselm's longing had been to labour with the King, as Lanfranc had laboured, to promote religion in the country, and he had been frustrated at every turn. The summons to the King's Court was the last straw, for the defendant in this Court was entirely at the mercy of the Crown. "When, in Anglo-Norman times you speak of the King's Court, it is only a phrase for the King's despotism."^[6] Anselm took no notice of the King's summons, and decided to appeal to Rome. For a time William refused permission for any departure from England, but he yielded in 1097, and Anselm set out for Rome.

He stayed at Rome and at Lyons till William was dead, for the Pope would not let him resign Canterbury, and could do nothing to bring the King to a better mind. Then, on the urgent request of Henry I., he returned to England, and for a time all went well. Henry was in earnest for the restoration of law and religion in England, and his declaration, at the very beginning of his reign—the oft-quoted "charter" of Henry I.—to stop the old scandals of selling and farming out Church lands, and to put down all unrighteousness that had been in his brother's time, was hailed with rejoicing.

Anselm stood loyally by Henry over the question of his marriage with Edith (who claimed release from vows taken under compulsion in a convent at Romsey), and his fidelity at the critical time when Robert of Normandy and the discontented nobles threatened the safety of the Crown was invaluable. But Henry was an absolutist, anxious for all the threads of power to be in his own hands; and just when a great Church Council at the Lateran had decided that bishops must not be invested by kings with the ring and staff of their office, because by such investiture they were the king's vassals, Henry decided to invite Anselm to receive the archbishopric afresh from the King's hands by a new act of investiture. To Anselm the abject submission of the bishops to the Red King had been a painful spectacle; and now Henry was making a demand that would emphasise the royal supremacy, and the demand was intolerable and impossible. Again Anselm stood practically alone in his resistance to the royal will, and again the question in dispute was whether there was any power in England higher than the Crown. The papal supremacy was no more under discussion than it had been under William. All that Henry wanted was that the archbishops and bishops should acknowledge that their authority came from the Crown; and at Henry's request Anselm, then 70 years old, again journeyed to Rome to lay the matter before the Pope.

Pope Paschal was fully alive to the mischief of making the bishops and clergy mere officers of kings, and it was soon seen there could be no dispensations from Rome even for Henry. All that the Pope would allow was that bishops might do homage to the Crown for their temporal rights, and with this Henry had to be content.

It was three years later before Anselm returned, and his course was now nearly run. He died at peace on April 21st, 1109, having wrought to no small purpose for religious liberty and the independence of the clergy. (The demand for political and social independence always follows the struggle for independence in religion.) Anselm spent the greater part of his life after his enthronement at Canterbury in battling for independence of the Crown; a century later Archbishop Stephen was to carry the battle still further, and win wider liberties for England from the Crown.

Of Anselm's general love of liberty and hatred of all tyranny many stories are told. One fact may be recalled. The Church Synod, which met at Westminster in 1102, at Anselm's request, attacked the slave trade as a "wicked trade used hitherto in England, by which men are sold like brute animals," and framed a Church rule against its continuance.

In spite of this decree, serfdom lingered in England for centuries, but hiring superseded open buying and selling of men. (The African slave trade was the work of the Elizabethan seamen, and was excused, as slavery in the United States was excused, by the Protestant Churches on the ground of the racial inferiority of the negro.)