28. THE GREAT LANFRANC.

For Lanfranc I feel a tender and almost affectionate respect. He was a humble-minded, but, all the more, a great bishop. Born in Pavia, he had been nurtured in Ghibelline ideas; he was therefore, naturally, of Hincmar's school, and accepted the traditions of Frankfort. The Decretals, it is true, had now during two centuries been transforming the Latin canons, and he no more doubted their authority than he did that of the Gospels. He was a personal friend of Hildebrand, and loved him. All the more may we wonder that he successfully opposed that gigantic creator of pontifical despotism, and stood in the eleventh century under William I. just about where, in the sixteenth, we shall find Archbishop Warham with his convocation under Henry VIII. Let us note some of the landmarks which Lanfranc would not suffer even Gregory to remove.

29. OLD LANDMARKS.

Hardly had William seated himself on his throne when Gregory made his first move of aggression. William was in debt to him for encouraging his invasion, and he had invited Gregory to accept his reward. Consequently two Roman cardinals appear on the scene as Legates, and were bold enough to introduce an unprecedented assault upon Anglican liberties, summoning the bishops and clergy to a council at Winchester. Here Stigand was deposed, most uncanonically. However, Lanfranc waited

1 Like Sancroft, under William III.

for no bulls from Gregory, but was duly consecrated by eight of his comprovincials, thus perpetuating the ancient succession. Nor did he wait for a pall from Rome to assume his authority as a metropolitan. Note, therefore, that even under Hildebrand no such formalities were of any account in England. Palls had been sent since Augustine's time, but with no other apparent motive than that of patriarchal recognition. But if William had paid off Gregory in a matter which suited his own convenience, when he wanted to get rid of Stigand, he was now inclined to show himself an English king, and to resist further aggression. The papal legate, Hubert, in the name of the pontiff, demanded two things, (1) the payment of Peter-pence, said to be in arrears, and (2) homage, as from a vassal to his suzerain. William, perhaps, did not know that Peter-pence, as such, had not been paid by former kings. Under them the tribute was paid for the support of their own English college at Rome. Nevertheless, he was willing to settle the cash account without dispute. As to the homage, he growled out a reply worthy of the bluff Harry Tudor: "Homage to thee I do not choose to do; I never promised it, nor do I find that it was ever done by my predecessors to thine."

30. AN ANGLICAN PRIMATE.

Gregory had relied on Lanfranc to support this claim, and he now reproached his friend, as forgetting the feelings he had formerly professed, of devotion to him and the Roman see. If William

was an English king, Lanfranc now rose to his position as an English primate, and replied, “I am ready to yield to your commands in everything according to the canons.” Here was the noteworthy difference between the Papacy, as interpreted by Gallicans and Anglicans, and that Paparchy which Gregory was trying to stretch over all the churches, but of which England as yet knew nothing. This latter could not be, even nominally, reconciled with Nicene canons. Lanfranc further said, that he had advised William to do as the Pope desired, adding, however, curtly and tartly, in the true Anglican spirit: "The reason why he utterly rejects your proposal he has himself made known to your legate orally, and to yourself by letter." This was not what the tamer of kings and superiors could put up with from an Anglican primate. Thank God, he found in Lanfranc one who would not go to Canossa. most important as a landmark to note the pontifical assumptions and the Anglican position at this juncture. Thus then wrote Hildebrand to Lanfranc: "Take care to make your appearance at Rome, within four months from this date. . . . Thus may you make amends for a disobedience we have so long overlooked. If these apostolic mandates are unheeded, . . . know this for certain, you shall be severed from the grace of St. Peter, and utterly stricken by his authority; in other words, you shall be wholly suspended from your episcopal office." What happened? Here was the Paparchy (A. D. 1081), and where was Anglicanism at that date? Dean Hook tells the whole

It is

story in a line: "The Archbishop of Canterbury did not go, and Lanfranc was not suspended."

31. CYPRIOTE AUTONOMY.

In other words, the Church of England was still a Nicene church, and stood upon the ancient canons. It was just at this time that the Emperor had called a council at Brixen, in the Tyrol, which, in the spirit of Frankfort, had deposed Gregory and elected an antipope calling himself Clement III. Note, then, another proof that neither the Church in England, nor its primate, imagined that communion with the Pope was requisite to Catholic communion; for in this great matter Lanfranc took no pains to be in communion with Gregory, nor was he even influenced by Gregory's threat of excommunication "from the grace of Peter" to seek relief under the rival pontiff. To foreign inquiries upon the subject he returned this cool and truly English reply, as if with the Cypriote canon in his mind: "Our island has not yet rejected Gregory, but it has not decided upon tendering obedience to Clement: when both sides have been heard, we shall be better qualified to come to a resolution in the case." He speaks with calm indifference, but rather as an umpire than as a subject. There are abundant proofs that, even at this date, the Anglican Church was everywhere recognized as maintaining an exceptional position, other than that of the Latin churches connected with "the Holy Roman Empire." Seventeen years later, at the Council of

Bari, A. D. 1098, when Anselm's spare and modest figure was hidden from Urban II., at a humble distance from his throne, he cried out, "Anselm, father and master, where art thou?" When he very meekly advanced, the pontiff gave him a privileged seat, and added, "We include him indeed in our œcumene,1 but as the pope of another acumene." Whatever meaning he may have attached to his almost prophetic words, it is evident that he regarded him as a patriarch, and as somewhat which others were not. Lanfranc, I suppose, speaks of "our island" in that very sense: orbis alter, another æcumene, no part of the Roman Empire.

32. ANGLICAN LIBERTIES ASSERTED.

Under William and this great primate what were called Gallican maxims two centuries later were thus laid down as Anglican liberties:- (1.) The Carolingian position of the royal supremacy was maintained; the king, like Charles and Constantine, was evêque au dehors, the principle afterwards restored under Warham, and less practically reaffirmed under Louis XIV. just six hundred years from the times we are now considering. Yet fools and knaves affirm perpetually that this was an invention of Henry VIII. (2.) If two or more popes were claimants of St. Peter's throne, the right of choosing his pope was vested in the king. This defeats all such ideas as were formulated at Trent,

1 "Orbis seems here to have this significance. See William of Malmesbury (ed. Migne), p. 1493.