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when the clergy elected, when the prelates compelled, when my master summoned me to the office. He, by authority of the apostolic see, laid this burthen upon my shoulders, and with this staff ordered me to be invested with the episcopal degree. You now require from me the pastoral staff which you did not deliver, and take from me the office which you did not confer: and I, who am not ignorant of my own insufficiency, obeying the decree of this holy Synod, resign them, not to you, but to him by whose authority I received them!" So saying, he advanced to the tomb of King Edward the Confessor, and addressed himself to the dead: "Master," said he, "thou knowest how unwillingly I took upon myself this charge, forced to it by thee! for although neither the choice of the brethren, nor the desire of the people, nor the consent of the prelates, nor the favour of the nobles, was wanting; thy pleasure predominated more than all, and especially compelled me. Behold a new King, a new law, a new Primate! they decree new rights, and promulgate new statutes. Thee they accuse of error in having so commanded; me of presumption in having obeyed. Then indeed thou wert liable to error, being mortal; but now, being with God, thou canst not err! Not therefore to these, who require what they did not give, and who, as men, may deceive and be deceived, but to thee who hast given, and who art beyond the reach of error or ignorance, I render up my staff! to thee I resign the care of those whom thou hast committed to my charge!" With that he laid his crosier upon the tomb, and took his seat as a simple monk among the monks.

The solemnity of such an appeal, from a venerable old man, might well induce the Synod to desist from its injurious purpose: but it is affirmed, that where he deposited the crosier there it remained, fast' imbedded in the stone, and that in deference to this miraculous manifestation, he was permitted to retain his see. If the miracle were reported at the time, it was probably used by Lanfranc as a means for inducing William to let the proceedings cease, and saving him from the appearance of being foiled in his intent. Like most churchmen of those ages, Lanfranc, though a great, and in many respects a meritorious man, was not scrupulous in the use of such arts. There were other things wherein 1 Acta Sanctorum, Jan. t. ii. 247.

he conformed to the spirit of his church in the worst parts of that audacious system which was about his time matured. He promoted its favourite object of imposing celibacy upon the clergy, by procuring a decree that no priest should take a wife, nor any married man be ordained; more than this could not then be effected, and the married clergy were still numerous and powerful enough to avert the separation which the Pope would fain have enforced. He was also a zealous advocate for transubstantiation, which prodigious dogma had hardly been heard of in this island before his time.

Under a weak prince Lanfranc might have borne a distinguished part, in furthering the usurpations of the Romish see; he had to deal with one who was able and resolute, as well as violent, and their knowledge of each other served as a salutary restraint upon both. With the view of strengthening an invalid title to the succession, William had solicited the Pope's approbation of his claim, and had displayed a consecrated banner at the battle of Hastings. But when Gregory VII. (the memorable Hildebrand) afterwards required in return that he should do fealty for the crown of England, and take better care for the payment of the money which his predecessors were wont to send to Rome, he promised to remit the arrears, but refused the fealty, because he had never engaged to perform it, nor had it ever been done by the Kings of England before him. Amid all the difficulties and dangers that beset his throne, William would not abate one jot of his rights in deference even to the imperious Hildebrand. He forbade the clergy to go out of the kingdom, or to acknowledge a Pope, or to excommunicate a noble without his permission, or to publish any letters from Rome till he should have approved them. He separated the ecclesiastical from the civil courts, with which they had hitherto been conjoined. And he deprived the clergy of many of their lands, and subjected the rest to military service.

These measures, some of which were in themselves injurious, and all in direct opposition to the pretensions of the papacy, could not easily be brooked by the Primate; and at one time Lanfranc felt so severely the difficulties wherewith he had to contend, that he entreated the Pope to release him from a situation which made his life a burthen. By yielding, however,

sometimes where resistance would have been vain, he was enabled at others to defend the rights of the clergy, and of the people; and when William's half brother Odo usurped and annexed to his own possessions five and twenty manors belonging to the Church of Canterbury, Lanfranc appealed to the laws, and after a public trial, on Pinnendon Heath, recovered them, to the great joy and benefit of the tenants, who thus continued under the easiest and most liberal of all tenures. William had that high respect for his integrity, that when he went beyond sea he left him sole Justiciary of the kingdom. The favour which he possessed had not been acquired by servile acquiescence to the King's will, nor any other unworthy means. One day when a minstrel exclaimed, as William sate at table in his court in a dress resplendent with gold and jewels, that he beheld a visible God, Lanfranc called upon the King not to permit such blasphemous adulation, and the flatterer accordingly was punished with stripes instead of receiving the reward which he expected.2

4

Lanfranc rebuilt Canterbury. Cathedral with stone from the fine3 quarries near Caen; he founded also two hospices without the city walls, and erected stone mansions for himself on most of his estates. His revenues enabled him to make this princely expenditure, while he annually bestowed in alms 5007., a sum equivalent to full twelve times the amount in these days. His benevolence towards the monks of his own Church extended to their relations, none of whom he suffered to be distressed by want. Under his primacy no promotion in the Church was to be obtained by purchase, neither was any unfit person raised to the episcopal rank. And by his influence with the King, the trade in slaves, who were sold to Ireland, was prohibited; for though good old Wulstan was the first who raised his voice against this iniquity, the King would hardly have relinquished the great profit which accrued to him from it without Lanfranc's interference."

Two objects of considerable importance were effected during this primacy. One was the removal of episcopal sees from those places which had fallen to decay, into prosperous and growing towns: the other was the establishment of one liturgy throughout

1 Acta Sanctorum, Maii, t. vi. 841.

2 Ibid. 846.

'William of Malmsbury, Sharpe's translation, 342—345.

3 Ibid. 841. 5 Ibid. 345.

the kingdom. This uniformity was brought about in consequence of a scandalous fray at Glastonbury. Thurstan, the Norman Abbot, chose to introduce a service there which the monks opposed; he brought armed men to support his authority; the monks defended themselves with whatever was at hand, forms, candlesticks, even the crucifix itself, till eight were wounded, and two killed upon the steps of the high altar. Both parties having been culpable in this unpardonable transaction, the Abbot was sent back to Normandy, and the monks distributed in different convents; and that no farther disputes might arise from the same cause, a service was compiled by Osmund Bishop of Salisbury, and introduced into all the churches.'

2

It is to be regretted that Lanfranc, to whom England is beholden for the restoration of letters, and who was indeed the light of his age, should so far have partaken the spirit of the Romish Church, as to abet its fraudulent arts, if not actually to practise them himself. When his cathedral was rebuilt, he removed the body of Dunstan with all solemnity; it was a becoming act; but he ordered Osbern, the lying biographer of that arch-deceiver, to preach upon his miracles; and the more to honour the translation, a devil was cast out of a possessed monk, with as many plain circumstances of imposture as ever were apparent in any such exhibition. such exhibition. An artifice, proceeding from the same system of deceit, was either devised or encouraged by him to bring about the election of one whom he approved for his successor. Anselm, Abbot of Bec, in Normandy, the person whom he thought best fitted to uphold the interests of the church, had come to visit Lanfranc; returning to rest one night after matins, he found a gold ring in the bed, and suspecting, it is said, at first, that the Devil might have some concern in putting it there, he made a cross upon it before he ventured to take it up. No one in the monastery owned the ring, and Anselm therefore ordered it to be sold for the benefit of the house; but Lanfranc, when the circumstance was told him, remarked, that Anselm was certainly destined to succeed him in the primacy.*

The pretensions of the Roman Church had at this time been carried to their highest pitch by Gregory VII., one of those rest

1 Fuller, b. iii. p. 8. § 23.

2 Acta SS. Maii, t. vi. p. 832.
Ibid. t. vi. p. 847.

Acta Sanctorum, Maii, t. vii. p. 813.

less spirits who obtain an opprobrious renown in history for disturbing the age in which they live. The Romanists themselves acknowledge now the inordinate ambition of this haughty Pontiff, who may be deemed the founder of the papal dominion; but during many centuries he was held up as an object of admiration to the Christian world, and still holds his place as a saint in the Romish Calendar. His sanctity, the legends of that Church' relate, was prefigured in childhood, by sparks proceeding from his garments, and by a lambent light which appeared to issue from his head. He himself affirmed that, in a dream, there went forth fire from his mouth, and set the world in flames; and his enemies, who vilified him as a sorcerer, admitted that such a vision was appropriate to one who was indeed a firebrand. Another of his dreams was, that he saw St. Paul clearing out dung from his church, wherein cattle had taken shelter, and calling upon him to assist him in the work; and certain persons who were keeping vigils in St. Peter's Church, beheld, in a waking vision, St. Peter and Hildebrand labouring at the same task. By such artifices his reputation for sanctity was established among the people, while he obtained promotion for his activity and talents; till at length, rather by intrigue and popular outcry than by canonical election, he was chosen Pope. Hitherto the Popes had recognised the supremacy of the Emperors, by notifying to them their election before they were consecrated, and having that ceremony performed in the presence of an imperial envoy. Hildebrand conformed to this, being conscious that his elevation was informal, and glad to have it thus ratified. The use he made of the power which he had thus obtained was to throw off all dependence upon the temporal authority, and establish a system, whereby Rome should again become the mistress of the world. A grander scheme never was devised by human ambition; and wild as it may appear, it was, at that time, in many points so beneficial, that the most upright men might conscientiously have laboured to advance it. Whether the desire of benefiting mankind had any place among the early impulses of Hildebrand, may well be doubted, upon the most impartial consideration of his conduct; but in preparing the way for an intolerable

1 Acta Sanctorum, Maii, t. vi. p. 113.
Ibid. p. 114.

2 Ibid. p. 114.

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