Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/477

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bishoprics and abbeys he had inferred a right not to nominate to them; so, from his right to judge between contending popes, he inferred the right to do without acknowledging any pope at all. And, if the King acted in this way for his own ends, the country at large seems to have shown a remarkable indifference to the whole controversy. To Englishmen and to men settled in England it was clearly a much greater grievance to be kept without an Archbishop of Canterbury than it was to be left uncertain who was the lawful pope. At this moment the Western Church was divided between the claims of Wibert or Clement, the Imperial anti-pope of the days of Hildebrand, and those of Urban, formerly Odo of Ostia, who, after the short reign of Victor, stepped into Hildebrand's place. In the eyes of strict churchmen Urban was the true Vicar of Christ, and Wibert was a wicked intruder and schismatic. Yet it will be remembered that Lanfranc himself had, when the dispute lay between Wibert and Hildebrand, spoken with singular calmness and caution of a question which to more zealous minds seemed a matter of spiritual life and death. Our own Chronicler seems to have measured popes, as well as kings and bishops, by the standard of possession; he found it hard to conceive a pope that "nothing had of the settle at Rome." Even Anselm's own biographer speaks very quietly on the point. Two rival candidates claimed the popedom; but which was the one rightly chosen no one in England, we are told, knew—or seemingly cared. Another of our guides describes Urban and Clement as alike men of personal merit, and looks