Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/867

 LANFRANC

785

LANFRANC

England by Duke William. It is generally supposed that Lanfranc hud much to do with shaping the duke's policy of invasion, obtaining the pope's sanction of the expedition by a papal Bull and the gift of a blessed banner, thereby conferring on the undertaking the appearance of being a holy war against a usurper and a violater of his oath, to some extent, also, identifying it with the cause of ecclesiastical reform, which was well advanced in Normandy, but still very backward in England. Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury at that period, was in very bad odour with all parties; and in 1070, at a great council at Winchester, he was deprived of his office on charges of simony and unca- nonical election.

Lanfranc had been elected to the Archbishopric of Rouen in 1067, but had declined it; now, however, the Conqueror fixed on Lanfranc as his choice of a suc- cessor to Stigand, and Lanfranc w-as at last prevailed upon, unwillingly enough, to yield his consent, at the solicitations of his friends, headed by his former supe- rior, Herluin. After receiving the temporalities of the see from William, he was consecrated at Canterbury on 29 August, by the Bishop of London. He entered on the duties of his high station with advantages of name and learning and experience of the world such as few men have ever brought to a similar office. The king's ecclesiastical policy, which he now, as chief counsellor, largely moulded, was without doubt bene- ficial to the kingdom; for the civil and ecclesiastical courts were separated, and regular synods were held, wherein regulations tending to better discipline were enacted and enforced. 'The Normanizing of the Church further tended to bring the native ecclesiastics into closer touch with the learning and practice of the Continent; and this was effected by replacing nearly all the Saxon bishops and abbots with Normans, on pretexts grave or slight. Whilst the insularity of the native clergy was thus beneficially liroken down, much on the other hand of local practice, laudable in itself, was swept away. Much might well have been retained, but could not stand against the preposses- sions of the dominant party, and the effect generally was the destruction of local customs. In particular, the liturgy lost much of its distinctiveness. Hitherto the Saxon Church had kept in close touch with Rome. "The old Itala version of the Psalms, for instance — that which is used to this day in the choir of St. Peter's at Rome — was everywhere employed in England; but the Norman superiors supplanted that ancient version by the Gallicana, to which they were accustomed. Proof of this may be seen to this day in corrected codices, such as, "for instance, British Museum Addi- tional MS. 37517 (the Bosworth Psalter), which possibly may have undergone revision at the hands of Lanfranc iiimself.

Once, however, that Lanfranc was identified with the English Church, he espoused its cause warmly, upholding the dignity and primacy of his own see, by- refusing to consecrate Thomas of Bayeux to the archiepiscopal See of York till he admitted his de- pendence on that of Canterbury. This dispute was carried to Rome, but was thence referred for settle- ment back to England, where the case was finally decided in favour of Canterbury at a national council held at Winchester, at Easter, 1072. Thomas made his submission to Lanfranc in a council held at Wind- sor at Pentecost of the same year. In connexion with this incident a grave charge has of recent years been brought against Archbishop Lanfranc by H. Bohmer (in "Die Falschungen Erzbischof Lanfranks"), who accuses him of having falsified and forged documents in order to secure the primacy of the See of Caii1crl)ury over that of York. M. Saltet (in " Kevue des Sciences Eccli'siastiques", 1907), and others, have dealt with the (luestion, exonerating Lanfranc from any personal complieitv in these forgeries, if such they were.

Meanwhile Lanfranc had been to Kome in 1071 to VIII.— 50

receive the pallium from .\lexander II, his former pupil at Bee. As Archbishop of Canterbury his influ- ence was so great that he was from time to time con- sulted by bishops not belonging to his own province or obedience, and he helped in the work of reforming the Church in Scotland. He enforced the observance of celibacy among the clergy in accordance with the de- crees renewed in 1076 at a synod held at Winchester; no canons were to be permitted to marry, nor could married men be ordained to the diaconate or the priesthood. But it is clear that at the time a state of degeneracy existed, and that too drastic measures all at once had to be avoided, since clergy already mar- ried were allowed to retain their wives. He resisted an attempt to oust the monks at Canterbury and Winchester in favour of secular canons, and secured papal confirmation of the existing practice which harl come down from the days of St. Augustine of Ciuitcr- bury. Many episcopal sees were at this periotl trans- ferred from obscure villages to rising towns, as Sher- borne to Salisbury, Dorchester (Oxon.) to Lincoln, Thetford to Norwich, and Selsey to Chichester. In 1076 he again visited Rome, and, on the return journey, made a tour of Normandy, during the course of which he had the satisfaction of consecrating the church of his old monastic home at Bee.

The king's attitude towards the Court of Rome more than once placed Lanfranc in a situation of ex- treme dehcacy. WilUam refused to allow the bishops of England to leave the kingdom for the purpose of visiting the pope without his consent. For this Lan- franc appears to have incurred the blame and was re- proved, being, moreover, summoned to Rome, in 10S2, under pain of suspension. He did not go, but it was the infirmities of old age, not contumacy, which pre- vented him from undertaking the long and arduous journey. It is well, also, to remember that a purely political reason for the king's refusal may be assigned, and Lanfranc probably shrank frorn precipitating a rupture between the pope and the king upon a ques- tion of constitutional law.

William introduced the system of feudal tenure for Church lands, which he was enabled to do when be- stowing them upon Norman ecclesiastics, and required homage for them. But only in time did feudal hom- age and ecclesiastical investiture come to be con- founded. It may be safely said that William never dreamt of encroaching upon ecclesiastical privilege, nor of questioning the spiritual supremacy of the Holy See, even when refusing to comply with the request of Gregory VII that he should do homage for his kingdom, and liquidate certain arrears of Peter's- pence. The explanation of the pope's attitude and demand would seem to be that the tribute had come to be looked upon as a token of vassalage, whereas, in its origin, it was unmistakably a free gift. William, while refusing to render homage, promised that the arrears of Peter's-pence should be forthcoming. Capi- tal is sometimes made, too, of the fact that William and Lanfranc adopted a hesitating attitude in the case of the antipope Guibert. or Clement III, in lOSl. All that can be justly inferred is that the}' maintained strict neutrality until such time as the merits of the candidates could be adjudged by proper authority. As that authority was not theirs, neither William nor Lanfranc assumed the prerogative of settling the dis- pute one wav or another. (See Liebermann in "Engl. Hist, liev.", April. 1901, p. :{2S.) In fact, no act of theirs can lie instanocd as showing anything liut the most com[ilete and filial sulimission to the Holy See. (See Martin Rule in "Dublin Rev.", 3rd series, vol. VI, ISSl, pp. 406 sqq.)

I,anfranc strenuously uphelii the rights of his Church of Canterbury, when necessary, by legal action, even against the Comiuenir's lialf-lirolhcr, Odo of Bayeux. He also showed himself a munilicent benefactor to the see, rebuikling the cathedral after its