The Medieval Mind. Henry Osborn Taylor
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:
“Dearly beloved brothers and sons, I am, as you know, about to leave this kingdom. The contention with our lord the king as to Christian discipline, has reached this pass that I must either do what is contrary to God and my own honour, or leave the realm. Gladly I go, hoping through the mercy of God that my journey may advance the Church’s liberty hereafter. I am moved to pity you, upon whom greater tribulations will come in my absence. Even with me here you have not been unoppressed, yet I think I have given you more peace than you have had since the death of our Father Lanfranc. I think those who molest you will rage the more with me away. You, however, are not undisciplined in the school of the Lord. Nevertheless I will say something, because, since you have come together within the close of this monastery to fight for God, you should always have before your eyes how you should fight.
“All retainers do not fight in the same way either for an earthly prince, or for God whose are all things that are. The angels established in eternal beatitude wait upon Him. He has also men who serve Him for earthly benefits, like hired knights. He has also some who, cleaving to His will, contend to reach the kingdom of heaven, which they have forfeited through Adam’s fault. Observe the knights who are in God’s pay. Many you see leading a secular life and cleaving to the household of God for the good things which they gain in His service. But when, by God’s judgment, trial comes to them, and disaster, they fly from His love and accuse Him of injustice. We monks—would that we were such as not to be like them! For those who cannot stand to their professed purpose unless they have all things comfortable, and do not wish to suffer destitution for God, how shall they not be held like to these? And shall such be heirs of the kingdom of heaven? Faithfully I say, No, never, unless they repent.
“He who truly contends toward recovering the kingdom of life, strives to cleave to God through all; no adversity draws him from God’s service, no pleasure lures him from the love of Him. Per dura et aspera he treads the way of His commands, and from hope of the reward to come, his heart is aflame with the ardour of love, and sings with the Psalmist, Great is the glory of the Lord. Which glory he tastes in this pilgrimage, and tasting, he desires, and desiring, salutes as from afar. Supported by the hope of attaining, he is consoled amid the perils of the world and gladly sings, Great is the glory of the Lord. Know that this one will in no way be defrauded of that glory of the Lord, since all that is in him serves the Lord, and is directed to winning this reward. But I see that there is no need to say to you another word. My brothers, since we are separated now in grief, I beseech you so to strive that hereafter we may be united joyfully before God. Be ye those who truly wish to be made heirs of God.”
The clarity and gentle love of this high argument is Anselm. Now the story follows of Anselm and Eadmer and another monk travelling on, sometimes unknown, sometimes acclaimed, through France to Italy and Rome. Anselm’s face inspired reverence in those who did not know him, and the peace of his countenance attracted even Saracens. Had he been born and bred in England, he might have managed better with the Red King. He never got an English point of view, but remained a Churchman with Italian-Hildebrandine convictions. Of course, two policies were clashing then in England, where it happened that there was on one side an able and rapacious tyrant, while the other was represented by a man with the countenance and temperament of an angel. But we may leave Anselm now in Italy, where he is beyond the Red King’s molestation, and turn to his writings.
Their choice and treatment of subject was partly guided by the needs of his pupils and friends at Bec and elsewhere in Normandy or Francia or England. For he wrote much at their solicitation; and the theological problems of which solutions were requested, suggest the intellectual temper of those regions, rather than of Italy. In a way Anselm’s works, treating of separate and selected Christian questions, are a proper continuation of those composed by northern theologians in the ninth century on Predestination and the Eucharist.[345] Only Anselm’s were not evoked by the exigency of actual controversy as much as by the insistency of the eleventh-century mind, and the need it felt of some adjustment regarding certain problems. Anselm’s theological and philosophic consciousness is clear and confident. His faculties are formative and creative, quite different from the compiling instincts of Alcuin or Rabanus. The matter of his argument has become his own; it has been remade in his thinking, and is presented as from himself—and God. He no longer conceives himself as one searching through the “pantries” of the Fathers or culling the choice flowers of their “meadows.” He will set forth the matter as God has deigned to disclose it to him. In the Cur Deus homo he begins by saying that he has been urged by many, verbally and by letter, to consider the reasons why God became man and suffered, and then, assenting, says: “Although, from the holy Fathers on, what should suffice has been said, yet concerning this question I will endeavour to set forth for my inquirers what God shall deign