Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/23

Anselm had ceased to be an independent kingdom by the death of Rudolph III in 1032, and had become part of the empire. There is some probability that Ermenberga, the mother of Anselm, was a niece of Rudolph III. She was also related to Odo, count of Maurienne, who, by his marriage with Adelaide, marchioness of Susa, added the valley of Aosta to his domains, and became progenitor of the royal house of Savoy. Anselm's father also, Gundulf, who was a Lombard by birth, but thoroughly naturalised at Aosta, seems to have been a kinsman to the Marchioness Adelaide. A comparison of passages in several chroniclers respecting the parentage of Anselm suggests the conclusion that he had royal blood in his veins on his mother's side, but not on his father's. At any rate both parents were well born, and held considerable property under the counts of Maurienne. It probably included the village of Gressan, about three miles south-west of Aosta. Whether a tower at Gressan, called St. Anselm's tower, can have been a part of his parents' dwelling-place, is more than doubtful, but it is likely enough that they had a house here, and the solitary anecdote of Anselm's early childhood bears the impress of the scenery amidst which he must have lived. He imagined that heaven rested upon the mountains; he dreamed that one day he climbed the mountain-side until he reached the palace of the great King, and there having reported to Him the idleness of His handmaidens, whom he had passed, lazily reaping the corn in the valley, he was refreshed with bread of heavenly purity and whiteness by the steward of the divine household (, Vita Ans. i. 2).

It was from his mother that he first learned, as was natural, his religious ideas and love of holy things. She was a good and prudent housewife, as well as a devout woman. His father Gundulf was an impetuous man, liberal and generous to a fault. Anselm seems to have been their only son, and he had an only sister younger than himself, Richera, or Richeza, who married a man named Burgundius, by whom she became the mother of a son who bore his uncle's name. Anselm took great interest in the education of this nephew, and several letters are addressed to him (see esp. Epist. iv. 31, 52). From an early age Anselm was studious, as well as clever and amiable. He made rapid progress in learning, and grew up loving and beloved. He probably received his earliest teaching in the school of the abbey of St. Leger, near Aosta; but after a time he was entrusted to the care of a kinsman as his private tutor, who kept him so closely confined to his studies that his health gave way. He became shy and melancholy. His mother's good sense saved his reason, if not his life; she brought him home and bade her servants let him do exactly what he liked, until he gradually recovered his health and spirits (Cod. 499, Queen of Sweden's collection in Vatican library, copied by Mr. Rule, Life, vol. i. appendix).

Before he was fifteen he began to consider how he might best shape his life according to God, and he became persuaded that there was nothing in the ways of men better than the life of monks. So he went to a certain abbot whom he knew, and begged that he might be made a monk; but the abbot refused on finding that the request was made without his father's knowledge. The boy then prayed for an illness, hoping that it might induce his father to yield to his inclination. The sickness came; he sent for the abbot and implored him, as one who was about to die, to make him a monk without delay. The abbot, however, dreading the displeasure of Anselm's father, still refused; and the lad recovered. A period of reaction followed; his longing for the religious life, and even his ardour for study, cooled; he began to devote himself more to youthful sports, and after the death of his mother, being like a ship parted from its anchor, he drifted yet more completely into a worldly course of life (, Vita, i. 3, 4). Some passages in one of his ‘Meditations’ (xvi.) would, if literally interpreted, imply that he fell into very serious sin; but there is some doubt whether he is speaking in his own person, and, even if he is, the language may be no more than the self-reproaches, rhetorically expressed, of a highly sensitive conscience. For some reason not explained, his father, Gundulf, conceived a great dislike to him, which Anselm's meekness and submission seemed rather to inflame than soften. At last in despair, when he was about twenty-three years of age, he resolved to quit his home and seek his fortune in some other land. He set out northwards, accompanied by a single clerk. In crossing Mont Cenis, Anselm was much exhausted, their provisions were spent, and but for his companion moistening his lips with snow, and the timely discovery of a morsel of bread in the wallet, he must have perished on the road. Having spent three years partly in Burgundy, partly in France, he made his way to Normandy, and took up his abode at Avranches about the year 1059. Here Lanfranc had kept a school; but he had now become prior of the abbey of Le Bec. His fame as a scholar had made that house one of the most renowned seats of learning in western Christendom, and to Bec, after a brief sojourn at Avranches, Anselm also repaired. When Anselm came to Bec, Lanfranc