resolute in purpose, stern towards those who persisted in opposing his policy, and not over-scrupulous as to the justice of the means which he employed in carrying it out, or the sufferings which it entailed on others, he was in many respects like his master and friend, William the Conqueror, and men looked on the king and the archbishop as well matched in strength of character (Brevis Relatio, p. 10). In Lanfranc there was, moreover, the subtlety of the Italian lawyer, and his

power of drawing distinctions, the quickness of his perception, and the acuteness of his intellect must have rendered him vastly superior to the churchmen and nobles of the court. Combined with these traits were others more suited to his profession, for he was humble, munificent, and, when no question of policy was concerned, gentle and considerate towards all.-HUNT, REV. WILLIAM, 1892, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XXXII, p. 88.

He was a second Augustin; superior to those of his age in the acuteness of his understanding and powers of logic; and equal to the most illustrious men of his day for virtue and piety. TENNEMANN, WILHELM GOTTLIEB, 1812, A Manual of the History of Philosophy, tr. Johnson, p. 217.

The man who exerted the most important influence on the theological and philosophical turn of the twelfth century.

In Anselm, we see the different main directions of the spirit that actuated his times harmoniously combined; but the spiritual elements that were blended together in him became separated in the progress of the spiritual life of this period, and proceeded to antagonisms, which belong amongst the most significant appearances of the twelfth century.-NEANDER, AUGUSTUS, 1825-52, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, tr. Torrey, vol. VIII, pp. 10, 23.

Anselm was equal to Lanfranc in learning, and far exceeded him in piety. In his private life he was modest, humble, and sober in the extreme. He was obstinate only in defending the interests of the church of Rome, and, however we may judge the claims themselves, we must acknowledge that he supported them from conscientious motives. Reading and contemplation were the favourite occupations of his life, and even the time required for his meals, which were extremely frugal, he employed in discussing philosophical

and theological questions. By his rare genius he did much towards bringing metaphysics into repute. He laid the foundation of a new school of theology, which was free from the servile character of the older writers, who did little more than collect together a heap of authorities on the subjects which they treated. Monologium and the Proslogium are admirable specimens of abstract reasoning. His reading was extensive, and his style is clear and vigorous.-WRIGHT, THOMAS, 1846, Biographia Britannica Literaria, vol. II, p. 59.

The

Scholasticism, of which Anselm was the first representative, freed the church from the yoke of royalty, but only to chain it to the Papal chair.-D'AUBIGNE, J. H. MERLE, 1853, History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, tr. White, vol. v, bk. xvii, ch. v.

In what lively colours does the prelate's last wish, his regret at being unable to finish a philosophical work, paint for us the active mind and firm will of the immortal philosopher! History offers no other example of a man sharing in such violent and multiplied contests, yet remaining throughout devoted to such metaphysical speculations as seem to require an undisturbed mind and a life of external calm. Amidst so much commotion and trouble, Anselm carried on side by side his theological and philosophical researches, and a correspondence of immense extent.

In such a man no doubt the uprightness and simplicity of his soul doubled the powers of his intellect. His range of thought was as wide as his courage was invincible. Care for the good of individual souls was as powerful with him as his ardent zeal for the interests of the universal Church. Amidst the deepest tribulations of all kinds, Anselm guided with most scrupulous attention the conduct of his sister, his brother-in-law, and of his nephew whom he had the happiness of drawing into the cloister. With that tenderness of heart which was a secret of his time, he was neither limited to the narrow sphere of family life nor the wider one of a special church. He governed the consciences of a vast number of pious women, monks, and foreigners.-MONTALEMBERT, CHARLES FORBES, 1860-68, The Monks of the West, vol. VII, p. 284.

It is no disparagement to the powerful a priori arguments that have characterized modern Protestant theology, to say, that the argument from the necessary nature of the Deity, is unfolded in these tracts of Anselm with a depth of reflection, and a subtlety of metaphysical acumen, that places them among the finest pieces of Christian speculation. . . Anselm is the first instance in which the theologian plants himself upon the position of philosophy, and challenges for the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction, both a rational necessity, and a scientific rationality. SHEDD, WILLIAM G. T., 1863, A History of Christian Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 231, vol. II, p. 275.

Later centuries have cast down the whole structure that Anselm and the men of his day laboriously built up. But thought and nobleness of character are longer-lived than the causes which they consecrate; and it can hardly be fanciful to associate the peculiar virtues of the Anglican Church, sobriety of tone and independence of popular clamour, with the example of severe reason and fearless love of truth in the greatest of mediæval primates. Anselm as a thinker may be placed by the side of Kant.

The philosophy of Anselm is, in a certain sense, the key-note to all mediæval literature. -PEARSON, CHARLES H., 1867, History of England During the Early and Middle Ages, vol. 1, pp. 463, 608, 609.

He died, leaving a name equally illustrious as a scholar and as a divine.-WILLIAMS, FOLKESTONE, 1868, Lives of the English Cardinals, vol. 1, p. 61.

St. Anselm, one of the most remarkable men and most attractive characters, whole Christian history. not only of the Middle Ages but of the Anselm's character, has joined his name at once with those who had stood for truth in the face of kings and multitudes, and with one who was the type of the teachers of children in the first steps of knowledge: the masters of thought and language in its highest uses and its humblest forms; David; with the preacher who thundered with the seer whose parable rebuked King against Antioch and Constantinople; with the once famous grammarian, St. Jerome's master, from whom the Middle Age schools learnt the elementary laws which govern human speech, and out of whose book of rudiments Anselm had doubtless taught his pupils at Bec:

"Nathan the seer, the metropolitan

John Chrysostom, Anselm, and he whose

hands

Donatus-deigned the primer's help to plan."

It is his right place:-in the noble company of the strong and meek, who have not been afraid of the mightiest, and have not disdained to work for and with the lowliest capable of the highest things; content, as living before Him with whom there is neither high nor low, to minister in the humblest.-CHURCH, R. W., 1870, Saint Anselm, pp. 6, 303.

The moral of the life of Anselm is the immortality there is in thought. Anselm the monk would long since have been forgotten with the multitude of other monks who said their quiet prayers in a thousand monasteries during the eleventh century. Anselm the Archbishop and Statesman might have been remembered longer, but only by historians and students of the by-ways of history. But Anselm the Thinker, who succeeded in thinking out a new theological argument and a new form of Christian doctrine, will have a name forever among the leaders of human opinion. His theory of the Atonement, mutilated, indeed, and dilapidated, is, nevertheless, still preached in numerous pulpits by honest men who think they have found it in the Bible, not knowing

that it came to them from the brain of an Italian monk meditating by the Seine some centuries ago.--CLARKE, JAMES FREEMAN, 1881, Events and Epochs in Religious History, p. 156.

It was not only in the church which was one day to be his own, or among men of his own order only, that Anselm made friends in England. He made a kind of progress through the land, being welcomed everywhere, as well in the courts of nobles as in the houses of monks, nuns, and canons. Everywhere he scattered the good seed of his teaching, speaking to all according to their several callings, to men and women, married and unmarried, monks, clerks, laymen, making himself, as far as was lawful, all things to all men. Scholar and theologian as Anselm was, his teaching was specially popular; he did not affect the grand style, but dealt largely in parables and instances which were easy to be understood. The laity therefore flocked eagerly to hear him, and every man rejoiced who could win the privilege of personal speech with the new apostle. FREEMAN, EDWARD A., 1882, The Reign of William Rufus and the Accession of Henry the First, vol. 1, p. 378.

Writers with nothing else in common have been equally attracted by Anselm. To the student of ecclesiastical biography he is one of the most perfect examples of the piety of the cloister a piety which retains a charm even for those who have rejected all the ideas that gave it birth. Hegel and Cousin found in Anselm a mediæval Descartes who spoke the first word of modern philosophy amid the litanies of the Middle Ages. The student of the constitutional history of England finds Anselm's career to be of the first importance; for during the reign of William Rufus, and during part of that of Henry Beauclerc, Anselm, like Laud in the reign of Charles I., is in reality, as well as in name, the second personage in the realm. To those who care for the honour of the Church of England the name of Anselm is, or ought to be, precious, for in him they have an archbishop who was never timorous either in thought or in action. With his name, if with no other, they can answer the taunt, "Episcopi Anglicani semper pavidi."-GIBB, JOHN, 1883, The Life and Times of St. Anselm, British Quarterly Review, vol. 78, p. 265.

It was not till several centuries after his death, that his remarkable originality of genius was fully appreciated. He anticipated Descartes in his argument to prove the existence of God. He is generally regarded as the profoundest intellect among the early schoolmen, and the most original that appeared in the He was Church after Saint Augustine. not a popular preacher like Saint Bernard, but he taught theology with marvelous lucidity to the monks who sought the genial quiet of his convent. . . He

was a true scholar of the Platonic and Augustinian school; not a dialectician like Albertus Magnus and Abélard, but a man who went beyond words to things, and seized on realities rather than forms; not given to disputations and the sports of logical tournaments, but to solid inquiries after truth. The universities had not then arisen, but a hundred years later he would have been their ornament, like Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura.LORD, JOHN, 1884, Beacon Lights of History, vol. II, pp. 213, 214.

If his philosophical treatises exhibit the profundity, the daring originality, and masterly grasp of his intellect, his meditations and prayers reveal the spiritual side of his nature, the deep humility of his faith, and the fervour of his love towards God, while his letters show him in his more human aspect his tender sympathy and affection, his courtesy and respectfulness, combined with firmness in maintaining what he believed to be right, and in reproving what he believed to be wrong. Thus his writings completely verify the statement of William of Maimesbury that he was thoroughly spiritual and industriously learned "penitus sanctus, learned-"penitus anxie doctus."-STEPHENS, W. R. W., 1885, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. II, p. 29.

In him the two elements-the speculative and logical tendency on the one hand, and the devout and contemplative on the other are so evenly balanced and so thoroughly commingled that he fulfils the ideal of the scholastic theologian.FISHER, GEORGE PARK, 1887, History of the Christian Church, p. 212.

Though Anselm was thus early invested with the aureole of the saint, the process preliminary to his canonisation, committed to the care of Becket by Alexander III. in

1163, was abandoned in consequence of the subsequent troubles; nor was it revived until 1494, and then, in the irony of fate, by Alexander VI. of evil memory. Whether it resulted in a decree does not appear; but Anselm belongs to the number

of those Blessed Doctors whom the ancient and universal consent of the Church has canonised. His feast, 21 April, was raised from a semi-double to a double by Clement XI. in 1720. RIGG, J. M., 1896, St. Anselm of Canterbury, Appendix, p. 284.

Eadmer is a trustworthy historian. DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL, 1824, The Library Companion, p. 157.

As a writer, Eadmer appears under three characters, those of a historian, of a compiler of lives of saints, and of a theologian. His principal historical work, the "Historia Novorum," or history of his own times, in six books, is the most valuable work we possess relating to the events of the reign of William Rufus, and of the earlier part of that of Henry I.

The life of Anselm, in two books, forms a necessary supplement to this history. The "Historia Novorum" was first printed by Selden: it appears to have been very popular in the twelfth century, and is spoken of in high terms of praise by William of Malmesbury. . . Eadmer's theological and miscellaneous writings are brief, and without importance. WRIGHT, THOMAS, 1846, Biographia Britannica Literaria, vol. II, pp. 81, 82.

One distinction belonging to Eadmer's narrative is the nearly entire absence of miracles. He probably considered it improper to introduce such high matter into a composition which did not profess to be of a sacred or spiritual nature. Much of his work, however, is occupied with ecclesiastical transactions, which indeed formed almost the entire home politics, and no small part of the foreign politics also, of that age. He has in particular He has in particular entered largely into the great controversy

between the crown and the pope about investiture; and one of the most curious parts of his history is a long and detailed account which he gives of his own appointment to the bishopric of St. Andrew's in Scotland, and his contest about his consecration with the stout Scottish king, Alexander I.-CRAIK, GEORGE L., 1861, A Compendious History of English Literature and of the English Language, vol. I, p. 102.

The work, ("Historia Novorum") is more of an ecclesiastical than a political history. Written with great clearness and elegance.-GAIRDNER, JAMES, 1879, Early Chroniclers of Europe, England, p.66.

It is in the writings of Eadmar, a Benedictine monk of Canterbury, that we find the first indications of original and independent thought and the first faint glimmer of a promise heralding the new national literature. The two most important works of Eadmar are his history of his own times, "Historia Novorum,' and his "Biography of Archbishop Anselm," in which he gives a faithful and somewhat minute account of affairs in England from the time of the Conquest to the year 1112. These works are distinguished for their accuracy of statement and for the soundness of judgment displayed in their composition; and, in describing the struggles of Anselm with William Rufus in defense of the claims of the church against the despotic

exactions of kingly authority, they occasionally rise to the dignity and value of genuine literature. They are the most trustworthy authorities that we have for

the history of the period immediately succeeding the Conquest.-BALDWIN, JAMES, 1883, English Literature and Literary Criticism, Prose, p. 27.

William, quitting his own name of Summerset, assumed that of Malmesbury, because there he had (if not born) his best Preferment. Indeed he was a Duallist in that Convent (and if a Pluralist no ingenious person would have envied him), being Canter of that Church, and Library-Keeper therein. Let me adde, and Library-Maker too, for so may we call his "History of the Saxon Kings and Bishops" before the Conquest, and after it untill his own time; an History to be honoured, both for the Truth and Method thereof. If any Fustiness be found in his Writings, it comes not from the Grape, but from the Cask. The smack of Superstition in his books is not to be imputed to his person, but to the Age wherein he lived and dyed, viz. anno Domini 1142, and was buried in Malmesbury.-FULLER, THOMAS, 1662, The Worthies of England, ed. Nichols, vol. II, p. 448.

William of Malmsbury must be acknowledged both for style and judgment, to be by far the best writer of them all.-MILTON, JOHN, 1670, History of Britain, bk. iv. One of the best of the old English historians. A judicious man. HUME, DAVID, 1762, History of England, ch. i, and ch. vii, note.

Well entitled to stand at the head of our historians of the twelfth century. HENRY, ROBERT, 1771-90, The History of Great Britain, bk. iii, ch. iv.

Of his acquirements as a scholar it is indeed difficult to speak in terms of sufficient commendation. That he had accurately studied nearly all the Roman authors, will be readily allowed by the classical reader of his works. From these

*First published in 1815.

he either quotes or inserts so appositely, as to show how thoroughly he had imbibed their sense and spirit. His adaptations are ever ready and appropriate; they incorporate with his narrative with such exactness that they appear only to occupy their legitimate place. His knowledge of Greek is not equally apparent; at least his references to the writers of Greece are not so frequent, and even these might probably be obtained from translations: from this, however, no conclusion can be drawn that he did not understand the language. With respect to writers subsequent to those deemed classics, his range was so extensive that it is no easy matter to point out many books which he had not seen, and certainly he had perused several which we do not now possess.-SHARPE, JOHN, 1815, tr. William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the Kings of England, Preface.

The modest, faithful, and erudite historian of the twelfth century.-DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL, 1824, The Library Companion, p. 147.

William of Malmesbury deserves to be considered as one of the most remarkable writers of the twelfth century. The first English writer after the time of Bede who attempted successfully to raise history above the dry and undigested details of a chronicle. Next to the Saxon Chronicle, he is the most valuable authority for Anglo-Saxon history. In his annals of the Norman period, and of his own time, he is judicious, and, as far as could be expected, unprejudiced.WRIGHT, THOMAS, 1846, Biographia Britannica Literaria, vol. II, pp. 134, 137, 138.