The antique reminiscence fills this jingle, as it does the sensuous

And so on from century to century. At the beginning of the twelfth, a Pisan poet celebrates Pisa’s conquest of the Balearic Isles:

For an eleventh-century example of more literary verse, one may turn to the metres of Alphanus, a noble Salernian, lover of letters, pilgrim traveller, archbishop of his native town, and monk of Monte Cassino, the parent Benedictine monastery, which had been the cultured retreat of Paulus Diaconus in the time of Charlemagne. It was destroyed by the Saracens in 884. Learning languished in the calamitous decades which followed. But the convent was rebuilt, and some care for learning recommences there under the abbot Theobald (1022-1035). The monastery’s troubles were not over; but it re-entered upon prosperity under the energetic rule of the German Richer (1038-1055).[303] Shortly after his death two close friends were received among its monks, Alphanus and Desiderius. The latter was of princely Lombard stock, from Beneventum. He met Alphanus at Salerno, and there they became friends. Afterwards both saw something of the world and experienced its perils. Desiderius was born to be monk, abbot, and at last pope (Victor III.) against his will. Alphanus, always a man of letters, was drawn by his friend to monastic life. Long after, when Archbishop of Salerno, he gave a refuge and a tomb to the outworn Hildebrand.

The rebuilding and adorning of Monte Cassino by Desiderius with the aid of Greek artists is a notable episode in the history of art.[304] Under the long rule of this great abbot (1058-1087) the monastery reached the summit of its repute and influence. It was the home of theology and ecclesiastical policy. There law and medicine were studied. Likewise “grammar” and classic literature, the latter not too broadly, as would appear from the list of manuscripts copied under Desiderius—Virgil, Ovid, Terence, Seneca, Cicero’s De natura deorum. But then there was the whole host of early Christian poets, historians, and theologians. Naturally, Christian studies were dominant within those walls.

Alphanus did not spend many of his years there. But his loyalty to the great monastery never failed, nor his intercourse with its abbot and monks. He has left an enthusiastic poem descriptive of the place and the splendour of its building.[305] A general and interesting feature of his poetry is the naturalness of its classical reminiscence and its feeling for the past, which is even translated into the poet’s sentiments toward his contemporaries and toward life. In his metrical verses ad Hildebrandum archidiaconum Romanum, his stirring praise of that statesman is imbued with pagan sentiment.

Perhaps the glyconic metre of this poem was too much for Alphanus. His awkward constructions, however, constantly reflect classic phrases. And how naturally his mind reproduced the old pagan—or fundamental human—views of life, appears again in his admiring sapphics to Romuald, chief among Salerno’s lawyers:

Further stanzas follow on Romuald’s wealth, station, and mundane felicity. Then comes the sudden turn, and Romuald is praised for having spurned them all:

Apparently Romuald had become a monk:

This turn of sentiment curiously accorded with the poet’s own fortune and way of life; for Alphanus, with all his love of antique letters, was also a monk and an ascetic, of whom a contemporary chronicler tells that in Lent he ate but twice a week and never slept on a bed. Yet monk, and occasional ascetic, as he was, the ordinary antique-descended education and inherited strains of antique feeling made the substratum of his nature, and this although he could inveigh against the philosophic and grammatical studies flourishing in a neighbouring monastery, and advise one of its studious youths to turn from such:

Eleventh-century Italian “versificatores” were interested in a variety of things. Some of them gave the story of a saint’s or bishop’s life, or were occupied with an ecclesiastic theme. Others sang the fierce struggle between rival cities, or some victory over Saracens, or made an idyl of very human love with mythological appurtenances. The verse-forms either followed the antique metres or were accentual deflections from them with the new added element of rhyme; the ways of expression copied antique phrase and simile, except when the matter and sentiment of the poem compelled another choice. In that case the Latin becomes freer, more mediaeval, ruder, if one will; and still antique turns of expression and bits of sentences show how naturally it came to these men to construct their verses out of ancient phrases. Yet borrowed phrases and the constraint of metre impeded spontaneity, and these feeble versifiers could hardly create in modes of the antique. A fresher spirit breathes in certain anonymous poems, which have broken with metre, while they give voice to sentiments quite after the feeling of the old Italian paganism. In one of these, from Ivrea, the poet meets a nymph by the banks of the Po, and in leonine elegiacs bespeaks her love, with all the paraphernalia of antique reference, assuring her that his verse shall make her immortal, a perfectly pagan sentiment—or affectation:

It is obvious that in the tenth and eleventh centuries there were Italians whose sentiments and intellectual interests were profane, humanistic in a word. These men might even be high ecclesiastics, like Liutprand, Bishop of Cremona (d. 972).[309] He was of Lombard stock, and yet a genuine Italian, bred in an atmosphere of classical reminiscence and contemporary gossip and misdeed. Politically, at least, the Italy of John XII. was not so much better than its pope; and the Antapodosis of Liutprand goes along in its easy, and often dramatic way, telling of crime and perfidy, and showing scant horror. It was a general history of the historian’s times, written while in exile in Germany; for Liutprand had been driven out of Italy by King Berengar, whom he had once served. He hated Berengar and his wife, and although well received at the Court of the great Otto, he did not love his place of exile.[310]

In exile Liutprand wrote his book to requite Berengar. The work had also a broader purpose, yet one just as consolatory to the writer. It should acknowledge and show the justice of the divine judgments exemplified in history. Herein lay a fuller, although less Italian, consolation for his exile than in Berengar’s requital. Liutprand keeps in mind Boëthius and his De consolatione, and regards his own work as a Consolation of History, as that of Boëthius was a Consolation of Philosophy. The paths of Liutprand’s Consolation are as broad as the justice and power of the Trinity, “which casts down these for their wicked deeds and raises up those for their merits’ sake.”[311]

Quite explicitly he explains the title and reason of his work at the opening of its third book:

Liutprand’s narrative is breezy and interspersed with ribald tales. The writer meant to amuse his readers and himself. These literary qualities give picturesqueness to his well-known Embassy to Constantinople, where he was sent by Otto the Great, for purposes of peace and to ask the hand of the Byzantine princess for Otto II. The highly coloured ceremonial life of the Greek Court, the chicane and contemptuous treatment met with, the spirited words of Liutprand, and the rancour of this same thwarted envoy, all appear vividly in his report.[313]

There were also many laymen occupied with Latin studies. Such a one was Gunzo of Novara, a curiously vain grammarian of the second half of the tenth century. According to his own story, the fame of his learning incited Otto the Great to implore his presence in Germany. So he condescended to cross the Alps, with all his books, perhaps in the year 965. On his way he stopped with the monks of St. Gall, themselves proud of their learning, and perhaps jealous of the southern scholar. As the weary Gunzo was lifted, half frozen, from his horse at the convent door, and the brethren stood about, a young monk caught at a slip in grammar, and made a skit on him—because, forsooth, he had used an accusative when it should have been an ablative.

Gunzo neither forgave nor forgot. Passing on to the rival congregation of Reichenau, he composed a long and angry epistle of pedantic excuse and satirical invective, addressed to his former hosts.[314] In it he parades his wide knowledge of classic authors, justifies what the monks of St. Gall had presumed to mock as a ridiculous barbarism, and closes with a prayer for them in hexameters. His letter contains the interesting avowal, that, although the monk of St. Gall had wrongly deemed him ignorant of grammar, his Latin sometimes was impeded by the “usu nostrae vulgaris linguae, quae latinitati vicina est.” So a slip would be due not to unfamiliarity with Latin, but to an excessive colloquial familiarity with the vulgar tongue which had scarcely ceased to be Latin—an excuse no German monk could have given. It is amusing to see an Italian grammarian of this early period enter the lists to defend his reputation and assuage his wounded vanity. Later, such learned battles became frequent.[315]

Gunzo died as the tenth century closed. Other Italians of his time and after him crossed the Alps to learn and teach and play the orator. From the early eleventh century comes a satirical sketch of one. The subject was a certain Benedict, Prior of the Abbey of St. Michael of Chiusa, and nephew of its abbot—therefore doubtless born to wealth and position. At all events as a youth he had moved about for nine years “per multa loca in Longobardia et Francia propter grammaticam,” spending the huge sum of two thousand gold soldi. His pride was unmeasured. “I have two houses full of books; there is no book on the earth that I do not possess. I study them every day. I can discourse on letters. There is no instruction to be had in Aquitaine, and but little in Francia. Lombardy, where I learned most, is the cradle of knowledge.” So the satire makes Benedict speak of himself. Then it makes a monk sketch Benedict’s sojourn at a convent in Angoulême: “He knows more than any man I ever saw. We have heard his chatter the whole day. O quam loquax est! He is never tired. Wherever he may be, standing, sitting, walking, lying, words pour from his mouth like water from the Tigris. He orders the whole convent about as if he were Abbot. Monks, laity, clergy, do nothing without his nod. A multitude of the people, knights too, were always hastening to hear him, as the goal of their desires. Untired, hurling words the entire day, he sends them off worn out. And they depart, saying: Never have we seen sic eloquentem grammaticum.”[316]

Another of these early wandering Italian humanists won kinder notice, a certain Lombard Guido, who died where he was teaching in Auxerre, in 1095, and was lamented in leonine hexameters: “Alas, famous man, so abounding, so diligent, so praised, so venerated through many lands—

Let Gaul grieve, and thou Philosophy who nourished him: Grieve Grammar, thou. With his death the words of Plato died, the work of Cicero is blotted out, Maro is silent and the muse of Naso stops her song.”[317]

A final instance to close our examples. In the middle of the eleventh century flourished Anselm the Peripatetic, a rhetorician and humanist of Besate (near Milan). In his Rhetorimachia he tells of a dream in which he finds himself in Heaven, surrounded and embraced by saintly souls. Their spiritual kisses were still on his lips when three virgins of another ilk appear, to reproach him with forsaking them. These are Dialectic and Rhetoric and Grammar—we have met them before! Now the embraces of the saints seem cold! and to the protests of the blessed throng that Anselm is theirs, the virgins make reply that he is altogether their own fosterling. Anselm gives up the saints and departs with the three.[318] This was his humanistic choice.

This rather pleasant dream discloses the conflict between Letters and the call of piety, which might harass the learned and the holy in Italy. Distrust of the enticements of pagan letters might transform itself to diabolic visions. Such a tale comes from the neighbourhood of Ravenna, in the late tenth century. It is of one Vilgard, a grammarian, who became infatuated with the great pagan poets, till their figures waved through his dreams and he heard their thanks and assurances that he should participate in their glory. He foolishly began to teach matters contrary to the Faith, and in the end was condemned as a heretic. Others were infected with his opinions, and perished by the sword and fire.[319]

Evidently Vilgard’s profane studies made him a heretic. But, ordinarily, the Italians with their antique descended temperament were not troubled in the observance and the expression of their Faith by the paganism of their intellectual tastes. Such tastes did not produce open heretics in Italy in the eleventh century any more than in the fifteenth. A pagan disposition seldom prevented an Italian from being a good Catholic.

Yet the monastic spirit in Italy, as elsewhere, in the eleventh century defied and condemned the pagan literature, and in fact all Latin studies beyond the elements of grammar. The protest of the monk or hermit might represent his individual ignorance of classic literature; or, as in the case of Peter Damiani, the ascetic soul is horrified at the seductive nature of the pagan sweets which it knows too well. Peter indeed could say in his sonorous Latin: “Olim mihi Tullius dulcescebat, blandiebantur carmina poetarum, philosophi verbis aureis insplendebant, et Sirenes usque in exitium dulces meum incantaverunt intellectum.”[320] So a few decades after Peter’s death, Rangerius, Bishop of Lucca, writes the life of an episcopal predecessor in elegiacs which show considerable knowledge of grammar and prosody; and yet he protests against liberal studies—philosophy, astronomy, grammar—with pithy commonplace:

So with the Italians the antique never was an influence brought from without, but always an element of their temperament and faculties. We have not seen that they recast it into novel and interesting forms in the eleventh century; yet they used it familiarly as something of their own, being quite at home with it. As one may imagine some grand old Roman garden, planned and constructed by rich and talented ancestors, and still remaining as a home and heritage to descendants whose wealth and capacities have shrunken. The garden is somewhat ruinous, and fallen to decay; yet these sons are still at home in it, their daily steps pursue its ancient avenues; they still recline upon the marble seats by the fountains where perhaps scant water runs. Fauns and satyrs—ears gone and noses broken—with even an occasional god, still haunt the courts and sylvan paths, while everywhere, above and about these lazy sons, the lights still chase the shadows, and anon the shadows darken the green and yellow flashes. Perhaps nothing in the garden has become so subtly in and of the race as this play of light and shade. And when the Italian genius shall revive again, and children’s children find themselves with power, still within this ancient garden the great vernacular poems will be composed; great paintings will be painted in its light and shade and under the influence of its formal beauties; and Italian buildings will never escape the power of the ruined structures found therein.

IV

In the tenth and eleventh centuries, as remarked already, studiously inclined people made no particular selection of one study rather than another. But men discriminated sharply between religious devotion and all profane pursuits. Energies which were regarded as religious might have a political-ecclesiastical character, and be devoted to the purification and upbuilding of the Church; or they might be intellectual and aloof; or ascetic and emotional. All three modes might exist together in religious-minded men; but usually one form would dominate, and mark the man’s individuality. Hildebrand, for example, was a monk, fervent and ascetic; but his strength was devoted to the discipline of the clergy and the elevation of the papal power. In the great Hildebrandine Church which was his more than any other man’s achievement, the organizing and political genius of Rome re-emerges, and Rome becomes again the seat of Empire.[322]

Eminent examples of Italians who illustrate the ascetic-emotional and the intellectual mode of religious devotion are the two very different saints, Peter Damiani and Anselm. The former, to whom we shall again refer when considering the ideals of the hermit life, was born in Ravenna not long after the year 1000. His parents, who were poor, seem to have thought him an unwelcome addition to their already burdensome family. His was a hard lot until he reached the age of ten, when his elder brother Damianus was made an archpresbyter in Ravenna and took Peter to live with him, to educate the gifted boy. From his brother’s house the youth proceeded in search of further instruction, first to Faenza, then to Parma. He became proficient in the secular knowledge comprised in the Seven Liberal Arts, and soon began to teach. A growing reputation brought many pupils, who paid such fees that Peter had amassed considerable property when he decided upon a change of life. For some years he had been fearful of the world, and he now turned from secular to religious studies. He put on haircloth underneath the gentler garb in which he was seen of men, and became earnest in vigils, fasts, and prayers. In the night-time he quelled the lusts of the flesh by immersing himself in flowing water; he overcame the temptations of avarice and pride by lavishly giving to the poor, and tending them at his own table. Still he felt unsafe, and yearned to escape the dangers of worldly living. A number of hermits dwelt in a community known as the Hermitage of the Holy Cross of Fonte Avellana, near Faenza; Peter became one of them shortly before his thirtieth year. They lived ascetically, two in a cell together, spending their time in watching, fasting, and prayer: thus they fought the Evil One. Damiani was not satisfied merely with following the austerities practised at Fonte Avellana. Quickly he surpassed all his fellows, except a certain mail-clad Dominic, whose scourgings he could not equal. His chief asceticism lay in the temper of his soul.

From this congenial community (the hermits had made him their prior) Damiani was drawn forth to serve the Church more actively, sorely against his will, and was made Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia by Pope Stephen IX. in 1058. It was indeed the hand of Hildebrand, already directing the papal policy, that had fastened on this unwilling yet serviceable tool. Peter feared and also looked askance upon the relentless spirit, whom he called Sanctus Satanas, not deeming him to be altogether of the kingdom of heaven. He deprecates his censure upon one occasion: “I humbly beg that my Saint Satan may not rage so cruelly against me, and that his worshipful pride may not destroy me with long-reaching rods; rather, may it, appeased, quiet to a calm around his servant.” In this same letter, which is addressed to the two conspiring souls, Pope Alexander II. and Archdeacon Hildebrand, he sarcastically likens them to the Wind and the Sun of Aesop’s fable, who contended as to which could the sooner strip the Traveller of his cloak.[323] Peter’s tongue was sharp enough, and apt to indulge in epigram:

And another squib he writes on Hildebrand:

It was, however, for his own soul that Damiani feared, while in the service of the Curia. To Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino, he exclaims: “He errs, Father, errs indeed, who imagines he can be a monk and at the same time serve the Curia. Ill he bargains, who presumes to desert the cloister, that he may take up the warfare of the world.”[325]

Albeit against his will, Damiani became a soldier of the Church in the fields of her secular militancy against the world. He was sent on more than one important mission—to Milan, to crush the married priests and establish the Pope’s authority, or to Mainz, there to quell a rebellious archbishop and a youthful German king. Such missions and others he might accomplish with holy strenuousness; his more spontaneous zeal, however, was set upon the task of cleansing the immoralities of monks and clergy. In spite of his enforced relations with the powers of the world, he was a fiery reforming ascetic, a scourge of his time’s wickedness, rather than a statesman of the Church. His writings were a vent for the outcries of his horror-stricken soul. The corruption of the clergy filled his nostrils: they were rotten, like the loin-cloth of Jeremiah, hidden by the Euphrates; their bellies were full of drunkenness and lust.[326] As for the apostolic see:

These, with other verses written in tears, relate to schisms of pope and antipope which so often rent the papacy in Peter’s lifetime.[328] He never ceased to cry out against monks and clergy, denouncing their simony and avarice, their luxury, intemperance and vile unchastity, their viciousness of every kind. Such denunciations fill his letters, while many of his other writings chiefly consist of them.[329] They culminate in his horrible Liber Gomorrhianus, which was issued with the approval of one pope, to be suppressed by another as too unspeakable.

Naturally over so foul a world, flame and lower the terrors of the Day of Judgment. For Damiani it was near at hand. He writes to a certain judge:

Beware of penitence postponed!

From Damiani’s stricken thoughts upon the wickedness of the age, we may turn to the more personal disclosures of one who wrote himself Petrus peccator monachus. There is one tell-tale letter of confession to his brother Damianus, whom he loved and revered:

The penitent saint then shows from Scripture how that our hearts ought to be vessels of tears, and concludes with casting himself at the feet of his beloved “father” in entreaty that he would interpose the shield of his holy prayers between his petitioner and that monster, and exorcise its serpentine poison, and also that he would ever pour forth prayers to God, and beseech the divine mercy in behalf of all the other vices confessed in this letter.[332]

A strange confession this—or, indeed, is it strange? This cowled Peter Damiani who passes from community to community, seeing more keenly than others may, denouncing, execrating every vice existent or imagined, who wears haircloth, goes barefoot, lives on bread and water, scourges himself with daily flagellations, urging others to do likewise,—this Peter Damiani is yet unable quite to scourge out the human nature from him, and evidently cannot always refrain from that jocularity and inepta laetitia for which the Abbess Hildegard also saw sundry souls in hell.[333] Perhaps, with Peter, revulsions from the strain of austerity took the form of sudden laughter. His imagination was fine, his wit too quick for his soul’s safety. His confession was no matter of mock humility, nor did he deem laughter vulgar or in bad taste. He feared to imperil his soul through it. Of course, in accusing himself of other, and as we should think more serious crimes—drunkenness, robbery, perjury—Peter was merely carrying to an extreme the monkish conventions of self-vilification.

If it appears from this letter that Damiani had been unable quite to scourge his wit out of him, another letter, to a young countess, will show more touchingly that he had been unable quite to fast out of him his human heart.

Peter then continues with excellent advice for the young noblewoman, exhorting her to deeds of mercy and kindness, and warning her against the enjoyment of revenues wrung from the poor.[334] Indeed Damiani’s writings contain much that still is wise. His advice to the great and noble of the world was admirable,[335] and though couched in austere phrase, it demanded what many men feel bound to fulfil in the twentieth century. His little work on Almsgiving[336] contains sentences which might be spoken to-day. He has been pointing out that no one can be exercising the ascetic virtues all the time: no one can be always praying and fasting, washing feet and subjecting the body to pain. Some people, moreover, shun such self-castigation. But one can always be benevolent; and, though fearing to afflict the body, can stretch forth his hand in charity: “Those then who are rich should seek to be dispensers rather than possessors. They ought not to regard what they have as their own: for they did not receive this transitory wealth in order to revel in luxury, but that they should administer it so long as they continue in their stewardship. Whoever gives to the poor does not distribute his own but restores another’s.”[337]

This sounds modern—it also sounds like Seneca.[338] Yet Damiani was no modern man, nor was he antique, but very fearful of the classics. Having been a rhetorician and grammarian, when he became a hermit-monk he made Christ his grammar (mea grammatica Christus est).[339] Horror-stricken at the world, and writhing under his own contamination, he cast body and soul into the ascetic life. That was the harbour of escape from the carnal temptations which threatened the soul’s hope of pardon from the Judge at the Last Day. Therefore Peter is fierce in execration of all lapses from the hermit-life, so rapturously praised with its contrition, its penitence, and tears. His ascetic rhapsodies, with which, as a poet might, he delighted or relieved his soul, are eloquent illustrations of the monastic ideal.[340]

Other men in Italy less intelligent than Damiani, but equally picturesque, were held by like ascetic and emotional obsession. Intellectual interest, however, in theology was less prominent, because the Italian concern with religion was either emotional or ecclesiastical, which is to say, political. The philosophic or dialectical treatment of the Faith was to run its course north of the Alps; and those men of Italian birth—Anselm, Peter Lombard, Bonaventura, and Aquinas—who contributed to Christian thought, early left their native land, and accomplished their careers under intellectual conditions which did not obtain in Italy. Nevertheless, Anselm and Bonaventura at least did not lose their Italian qualities; and it is as representative of what might come out of Italy in the eleventh century that the former may detain us here.

The story of Anselm is told well and lovingly by his companion Eadmer.[341] His life, although it was drawn within the currents of affairs, remained intellectual and aloof, a meditation upon God. It opens with a dream of climbing the mountain to God’s palace-seat. For Anselm’s boyhood was passed at Aosta, within the shadows of the Graian Alps.[342] Surely the heaven rested upon them. Might he not then go up to the hall where God, above in the heaven, as the boy’s mother taught, ruled and held all?

A pious mother had been the boy’s first teacher. Others taught him Letters, till he became proficient, and beloved by those who knew him. He wished to be made a monk, but a neighbouring abbot refused his request, fearing the displeasure of Anselm’s father, of whom the biographer has nothing good to say. The youth fell sick, but with returning health the joy of living drew his mind from study and his pious purpose. Love for his mother held him from over-indulgence in pastimes. She died, and with this sheet-anchor lost, Anselm’s ship was near to drifting out on the world’s slippery flood. But here the impossible temper of the father wrought as God’s providence, and Anselm, unable to stay with him, left his home, and set out across Mount Senis attended by one clericus. For three years he moved through Burgundy and Francia, till Lanfranc’s repute drew him to Bec. Day and night he studied beneath that master, and also taught. The desire to be a monk returned; and he began to direct his purpose toward pleasing God and spurning the world.

But where? At either Cluny or Bec he feared to lose the fruit of his studies; for at Cluny there was the strictness of the rule,[343] and at Bec Lanfranc’s eminent learning would “make mine of little value.” Anselm says that he was not yet subdued, nor had the contempt of the world become strong in him. Then the thought came: “Is this to be a monk to wish to be set before others and magnified above them? Nay,—become a monk where, for the sake of God, you will be put after all and be held viler than all. And where can this be? Surely at Bec. I shall be of no weight while he is here, whose wisdom and repute are enough for all. Here then is my rest, here God alone will be my purpose, here the single love of Him will be my thought, and here the constant remembrance of Him will be a happy consolation.”

Scripture bade him: Do all things with counsel. Whom but Lanfranc should he consult? So he laid three plans before him—to become a monk, a hermit, or (his father being dead) for the sake of God administer his patrimony for the poor. Lanfranc persuaded Anselm to refer the decision to the venerable Archbishop of Rouen. Together they went to him, and such, says the biographer, was Anselm’s reverence for Lanfranc, that on the way, passing through the wood near Bec, had Lanfranc bade him stay in that wood, he would not have left it all his days.

The archbishop decided for the monastic life. So Anslem took the vows of a monk at Bec, being twenty-seven years of age. Lanfranc was then Prior, but soon left to become Abbot of St. Stephen’s at Caen.[344] Made Prior in his place, Anselm devoted himself in gentleness and wisdom to the care of the monks and to meditation upon God and the divine truths. He was especially considerate of the younger monks, whose waywardness he guided and whose love he won. The envy of cavillers was stilled. Yet the business of office harassed one whose thoughts dwelled more gladly in the blue heaven with God. Again he sought the counsel of the archbishop; for Herluin, the first Abbot and founder of Bec, still lived on, old and unlettered, and apparently no great fount of wisdom. The archbishop commanded him per sanctam obedientiam not to renounce his office, nor refuse if called to a higher one. So, sad but resolute, he returned to the convent, and resumed his burdens in such wise as to be held by all as a loved father. It was at this period that he wrote several treatises upon the high doctrinal themes which filled his thoughts. Gradually his mind settled to the search after some single proof of that which is believed concerning God—that He exists, and is eternal, unchanging, omnipotent, just, and pitying, and is truth and goodness. This thing caused him great difficulty. Not only it kept him from food and drink and sleep, but what weighed upon him more, it interfered with his devotion to God’s service. Reflecting thus, and unable to reach a valid conclusion, he decided that such speculation was a temptation of the devil, and tried to drive it from his thoughts. But the more he struggled, the more it beset him. And one night, at the time of the nocturnal vigils, the grace of God shed light in his heart, and the argument was clear to his mind, and filled his inmost being with an immense jubilation. All the more now was he confirmed in the love of God and the contempt of the world, of which one night he had a vision as of a torrent filled with obscene filth, and carrying in its flood the countless host of people of the world, while apart and aloof from its slime rose the sweet cloister, with its walls of silver, surrounded by silvery herbage, all delectable beyond conception.

In the year 1078 old Herluin died. Anselm long had guided the convent, and with one voice the brethren chose him Abbot. He reasoned and argued, but could not dissuade them, and in his anxiety he knew not what to do. Some days passed. He had recourse to entreaties; with tears he flung himself prostrate before them all, praying and protesting in the name of God, and beseeching them, if they had any bowels of compassion, to permit him to remain free from this great burden. But they only cast themselves upon the earth, and prayed that he would rather commiserate them, and not disregard the convent’s good. At length he yielded, for the command of the archbishop came to his mind. Such a scene occurs often in monastic history. None the less is it moving when the participants are in earnest, as Anselm was, and his monks.

So Anselm’s life opened; so it sought counsel, gathered strength, and centred to its purpose, pursuing as its goal the thought of God. Anselm had love and gentleness for his fellows; he drew their love and reverence. Yet, aloof, he lived within his spirit. Did he open its hidden places even to Lanfranc? Although one who in his humility always desired counsel, perhaps neither Lanfranc nor Eadmer, the friend whom the Pope gave him for an adviser, knew the meditations of his heart. We at all events should discern little of them by following the outer story of his life. It might even be fruitless to sail with him across the channel to visit Lanfranc, now Primate of England. The biographer has nothing to tell of the converse between the two, although quite rightly impressed at the meeting between him who was pre-eminent in auctoritas and scientia and him who excelled in sanctitas and sapientia Dei. Nor would it enlighten us to follow Anselm’s archiepiscopal career, save so far as to realize that he who lives in the thought of God will fear no brutal earthly majesty, such as that of William Rufus, to admonish whom Anselm once more crossed the Channel after Lanfranc’s death. Whatever this despoiler of bishoprics then thought, he fell sick afterwards, and, being terrified, named Anselm archbishop, this being in the year 1093. One may imagine the unison between them! and how little the Red King’s ways would turn the enskied steadfastness of Anselm’s soul. But the king had the power, and could keep the archbishop in trouble and in peril. Anselm asked and asked again for leave to go to Rome, and the king refused. After more than one stormy scene—the storm being always on the Red King’s part—Anselm made it plain that he would obey God rather than man in the matter. At the very last he went in to the king and his Court, and seating himself quietly at the king’s right he said: “I, my lord, shall go, as I have determined. But first, if you do not decline it, I will give you my blessing.” So the king acquiesced.

The archbishop went first to Canterbury, to comfort and strengthen his monks, and spoke to them assembled together: