Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/638

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the crusade. Since Anselm's work had begun, the world had been filled with the personal fame of the Pontiff in whose cause he had striven. In the same council which had stirred the common heart of Christendom Urban had denounced those customs of England to which Anselm had conformed in his own appointment and which he had promised to defend against all men. The rules laid down at Clermont against the acceptance of ecclesiastical benefices from lay hands not only condemned his own appointment, made before those decrees were issued; it condemned also the consecrations to the sees of Hereford and Worcester which he had himself performed since they had been issued. Amid the reign of unlaw, amid the constant breaches of discipline, the frightful sins against moral right, which he had daily to behold and which he was kept back from duly censuring, with none to support him outwardly, none but a few chosen ones to understand his inward thoughts, it is not wonderful if distant Rome seemed to him a blessed haven of rest from the troubles and sorrows of England. Let him flee thither at any cost, and have peace. Let him seek the counsel of the ghostly superior to whom he looked up in faith, and to whom he had been so faithful; to him he would open his soul; from him he would receive guidance, perhaps strength, in a course which was beset with so many difficulties on all sides. Rome, seen far away, looked pure and holy; its Pontiff seemed the one embodiment of right and law, the one shadow of God left upon earth, in a world of force and falsehood and foulness of life, a world where the civil sword was left in the hands of kings like William and Philip, and where an Emperor like Henry still wielded it in defiance of anathemas. At such a distance he would not see that the policy of Popes had already learned to be even more worldly and crooked than that of kings and emperors. He had not