Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/670

 such unbecoming worship. And we are most touched of all to hear how, among all these honours, Anselm was commonly spoken of in Rome, not by his name, not by the titles of his office, but simply as "the holy man." At Rome, that name might have a special meaning. It was well deserved by the one suitor at the Roman throne who abstained from the use of Rome's most convincing argument.

But in the record of Anselm's wanderings there is one tale which comes home more than any other to the hearts of Englishmen, a tale which carries us back, if not strictly to the days of English freedom, at least to the days when we had a conqueror whom we had made our own. The fathers are gathered at Bari, in the great minster of the Lykian Nicolas, where the arts of northern and southern Christendom, the massiveness of the Norman, the finer grace of the Greek, are so strangely blended in the pile which was then fresh from the craftsman's hand. There, in his humility, the pilgrim from Canterbury takes to himself a modest place amongst the other bishops, with the faithful Eadmer sitting at his feet. The Pope calls on his father and master, Anselm Archbishop of the English, to arise and speak. There, in the city so lately torn away from Eastern Christendom, Anselm is bidden to justify the change which Latin theology had made in that