who stood forth as the champion of right against both political and moral wrong in the days when both political and moral wrong were at their darkest.
Comparison of Lanfranc and Anselm.
Anselm not preferred in England by the Conqueror.
I have already pointed out the contrast between the
characters of Lanfranc and Anselm, in recording one
memorable discourse between them, in which Anselm
won Lanfranc over to a better mind in the matter of
our English Ælfheah.[1] The calling and the work of
the two men were different; and the work of Anselm
implied the earlier work of Lanfranc. Lanfranc was,
after all, in some sort a conqueror of the English Church,
and the character of a conqueror was one in which
Anselm could never have shown himself. Lanfranc was
a statesman, one whose policy could spread itself far beyond
the bounds of this or that kingdom or nation, but
whose very policy compelled him not to let the distinctions
of kingdoms and nations slip out of his sight. To
Anselm we could almost fancy that such distinctions
were of small account. He was the servant of God and
the friend of all God's creatures; he perhaps hardly
stopped to think whether those whose souls and bodies
he was ever ready to help were Burgundian, Norman,
or English. With such a spirit as this, he could not
have done Lanfranc's work; and it is worthy of remark
that the Conqueror, who so greatly valued him, seems
never to have thought of him for any preferment in England.
Lanfranc had to carry out a policy, in some measure
harsh and worldly, but which, granting his own position
and that of his master, could not be avoided. Anselm
fittingly came after him, at a time when national distinctions
and national wrongs were almost forgotten in
the universal reign of evil, to protest in the name of universal
right, and in so doing to protest against particular
and national wrongs. He would have been out of place
- ↑ See N. C. vol. iv. p. 441.
