Lanfranc

“ 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. ”

“ He was carefully carrying a cat behind him on the saddle, comfortably restrained from using her claws, and Lanfranc explained that he had sometimes been grievously annoyed by mice at his destination, and had provided this practical ally. One can almost see the twinkle in the good man's eyes, and the faces of the surprised scholars who had been looking forward with awe and dread to their first encounter with so renowned a man. ”

“ Herlwin, the founder and abbot, gladly received him as a member of the convent, and found his knowled of affairs very useful. Lanfranc applied himself to the study of the Ignorant as the abbot was of wordly learning, for he had passed his life as a warrior, Lanfranc listen with admiration to his expositions of the Bible, and obeyed him and the prior implicitly in all things. Being dissatisfied with the character of his fellow-monks, and knowing of that some of them envied him, for the abbot treated him with respect and affection, he formed the design of becoming a hermit. ”

“ For this admixture of secular with spiritual aims there was considerable excuse. By long tradition the primate was entitled to a leading position in the king’s councils; and the interests of the Church demanded that Lanfranc should use his power in a manner not displeasing to the king. On several occasions when William I. was absent from England Lanfranc acted as his vicegerent; he then had opportunities of realizing the close connexion between religious and secular affairs. ”

“ Submitted to the eloquence, the promises, the craft, of that master intellect, and to the awe of that imposing presence; unassisted by the courage which inferiors take from numbers, one by one yielded to the will of the Count, and subscribed his quota for monies, for ships, and for men. And while this went on, Lanfranc was at work in the Vatican. At that time the Archdeacon of the Roman Church was the famous Hildebrand. This extraordinary man, fit fellow- spirit to Lanfranc, nursed one darling project, the success of which indeed founded the true temporal power of the Roman pontiffs. ”

“ Ralph faced her desperately. 'My love, thou knowest our wedding was against the express mandate of the king. Lanfranc, the king's man, whom he made Primate of all England,—in place of the holy Stigand, whom he unjustly deprived, and who yet languishes in prison,—hath turned bitterly against thy brother of Hereford, whom whilom he was wont to treat as a son, and has set a ban of excommunication upon him.'
A low cry of horror escaped from Emma. ”

“ While Lanfranc waged his great battle with Berengarius about the doctrine of the Eucharist, and came out a victorious champion for the church, and won William's cause with the Pope with most skilful pleading of the value of Norman loyalty to the See of Rome, his humbler brethren [Pg231] tended their bees and ploughed straight furrows and taught the country children their letters. Such a centre of learning and of useful industry as Bec was the best flower of civilization. Lanfranc himself was true to his vow of humility. ”

“ In his third year he consecrated Peter at Gloucester as bishop of Lichfield or Chester. This year also a great council was held at a place called Pennenden Heath [near Maidstone] , in which Lanfranc proved that he and his church held their lands and their rights by sea and by land, as freely as the king held his: excepting in three cases: to wit, if the highway be dug up; if a tree be cut so as to fall upon it; and if murder be committed and blood spilt: when a man is taken in these misdeeds, the fine paid shall belong to the king; otherwise their vassals shall be free from regal exactions. ”

“ He had many a secret conference with Lanfranc, who had been chief adviser and upholder of the invasion. The priest-statesman seems almost a greater man than the soldier-statesman; many a famous deed of that age was Lanfranc's suggestion, but nobody knew better than these two that the conquest of England was hardly more than begun, and long and deep their councils must have been when the noise of shouting in the streets had ended, and the stars were shining above Caen. ”

“ The difficulty of finding a proper successor to Stigand was not overlooked. Without delay, the legates prepared to bestow the archbishopric of Canterbury on Lanfranc of Pavia, one of the greatest scholars and most remarkable men of the century in which he lived.
Lanfranc was a native of the city of Pavia, and a man of gentle blood. A scholar by nature, he early applied himself to those studies which enabled him to figure as the leader of the intellectual movement of the age. ”

“ He attended the new king's court at Christmas, and ot must have been against his will that the king then reinstated Bishop Odo, the archbishop's implacable enemy, as Earl of Kent. On the death of Abbot Scotland in September 1087, Lanfranc renewed his attack on the independence of St. Augustine's, and hallowed as abbot Guy, apparently the king's nominee. The next day Lanfranc, accompanied by bishop Odo as Earl, wnet to the monastety, and demanded if the monks would accept Guy as their abbot. They refused. He bade all who would not submit to leave the house, and installed Guy. ”

“ That they were the Conqueror’s last wishes was no small matter, and Lanfranc had every personal reason to incline him the same way. To make William Rufus king was to promote the man who stood in a special relation to himself, who had been in some sort his pupil, and whom he had himself girded with the belt of knighthood. [11] And it really seems as if there was no other elector besides Lanfranc himself. For once in our history we read of a king succeeding without any formal election, without any meeting of the Witan before the coronation. ”

“ As long as two men so strong as William and Lanfranc worked in harmony-the one supreme alike in church and in state, the other administering the affairs of the church-there was no risk that the spiritual power would come into collision with the temporal. When Lanfranc was himself consecrated, he declined to consecrate Thomas of Bayeux to the see of York until Thomas made profession of canonical obedience to the church of Canterbury. Thomas appealed to the king, who at first took his part, but Lanfranc convinced the whole court of the justice of his claim ”

“ For a long time men were in doubt whither his nature would carry and incline him. At first, during the life of archbishop Lanfranc, he shrank from any kind of crime, so that men hoped he would prove an unexampled mirror of royalty; and after Lanfranc’s death, he wavered for a time, poised between good and evil courses ”

“ Anselm.” From this we may fairly conclude that the work of Lanfranc was of very inferior character. It is now said by some, that parts of the walls of the present crypt at the west end belong to this early period, “after the Roman manner;” Willis considered this to be of the time of Lanfranc.{36}
During the first fifteen or twenty years of the twelfth century, and of the reign of Henry I., there was no perceptible change of style; the numerous great works which had been begun during the preceding twenty years were carried on, and many of them were completed. ”

“ I have already referred to his haughty language to Lanfranc, yet the English bishops continued, year after year, to ignore the imperious summons to attend his Roman synods. In 1079 Gregory wrote to Lanfranc that he understood that the King prevented them from coming, and was surprised that the "superstitious love" or fear of any man should come between him and his duty. [215] Lanfranc still evaded, almost fooled, him, and, when Gregory threatened to suspend him, affected to be engaged in examining the claims of an Anti-Pope whom Henry IV. had set up. ”

“ William could forgive rebels, but he could not bear the personal rebuke even of his friend. Under this feeling he punishes a whole body of men for the offence of one. To lay waste the lands of Bec for the rebuke of Lanfranc was like an ordinary prince of the time; it was unlike William, if he had not been stirred up by a censure which touched his wife as well as himself. But above all, the bargain between William and Lanfranc is characteristic of the man and the age. Lanfranc goes to Rome to support a marriage which he had censured in Normandy. ”

“ LANFRANC (1005?–1089) , Archbishop of Canterbury, born about 1005 (Marillon) , was son of Hanbald and Roza, citizens of Pavia, of senatorial rank. Hanbald, who was a lawyer, held office in the civic magistracy. From early youth Lanfranc was educated in all the secular learning of the time, and seems to have had a knowledge of Greek. Specially applying himself to the study of law he became so skillful a pleader that while he was a young man the older advocates of the city were worsted by his knowledge and eloquence, and his opinions were adopted by doctors and judges. ”

“ His first difficulties were with Thomas of Bayeux, archbishop-elect of York, who asserted that his see was independent of Canterbury and claimed jurisdiction over the greater part of midland England. Lanfranc, during a visit which he paid the pope for the purpose of receiving his pallium, obtained an order from Alexander that the disputed points should be settled by a council of the English Church. This was held at Winchester in 1072. Thanks to a skilful use of forged documents, the primate carried the council’s verdict upon every point. ”

“ Thus speaking, he struck his staff into the stone tomb, and behold it sank in and stood erect, so that they who stood by could not move it neither to the right nor the left. Word was sent to Lanfranc, who had remained with the council in St. Catherine's Chapel, and he indignantly sent Gundulph, Bishop of Rochester, to put an end to this foolish story and carry the staff away. But Gundulph was powerless to move it, and on his evidence Lanfranc himself came with the king. Still every effort was in vain, and at last Lanfranc commanded Wulstan to take back the staff. ”

“ His speech had produced some reaction in his favour.
"It is, as we said before, a question of evidence," said the King. "Is any forthcoming on one side or the other? for as yet neither party has really shown who burnt the priory and the monks therein. We have only assumptions, and they are not facts."
Lanfranc looked at the King, as if asking permission to speak. The King bent his head, and the Archbishop began, addressing Etienne:
"Amongst the followers of thy father, was there a warrior named Guy, son of Roger, born at Malville?" ”

“ This good management enabled Lanfranc to devote large sums to pious objects, and Gundulf while acting as the archbishop's steward on one occasion fed the poor of London at a time of scarcity (Vita) . Anselm wrote several letters to him in most affectionate terms (Epp. I., epp. 4, 7, 14sqq.) In 1076 the see of Rochester fell vacant by the death of Ernost, one of the monks who had followed Lanfranc from Caen. ”

“ The two men who successively occupied the position of Archbishop of Canterbury after the Conquest are of special importance both from an ecclesiastical and from an educational point of view. Lanfranc had acquired a reputation as a schoolmaster before he took up residence in this country. His first school was conducted at Avranches, where he attracted many scholars; subsequently he entered the monastery of Bec, where he opened a school in connection with the monastery, the fame of which spread widely. ”

“ In these synods bishops and abbots were deposed, and many new canons were made. This was the time when Pope Gregory the Seventh was trying to forbid the marriage of the clergy everywhere. In England the secular clergy were very commonly married, both the parish priests and the canons in the secular minsters. The rule which Lanfranc laid down was that no canon should even keep a wife to whom he was already121 married; but the parish priests were allowed to keep their wives, only the unmarried were not to marry, nor was any married man to be ordained. Lanfranc was a monk and a favourer of monks ”

“ He consecrated Lanfranc to the see of Canterbury in 1070, was present at the council that Lanfranc held in London in 1075, and died in that year. The citizens of London are said to have long kept his day, honouring him doubtless for his connection with the Conqueror's charter, and they placed a laudatory epitaph on his tomb in the middle of the nave of St. ”

“ A more austere kind of learning came in with the Norman Conquest. Lanfranc and Anselm introduced at Canterbury a devotion to science, to the doctrines of theology and jurisprudence, and to the new discoveries which Norman travellers were bringing back from the schools at Salerno. Lanfranc imported a large quantity of books from the Continent. He would labour day and night at correcting the work of his scribes ”

“ Acting under the advice of Lanfranc, he had sought and obtained Edith in marriage, and had thereby, like Henry Beauclerc, united the claims of conquerors and conquered in his person. He had obtained from the king a promise of free pardon to all the refugees yet in the Dismal Swamp, where it will be remembered the poor English had fled, who were unfit to accompany Wilfred to the Camp of Refuge, and had thereupon invited them all to rebuild their old homes and dwell in them. ”