Anselm of Aosta.
His parentage. again to the Rhone.[1] Anselm of Aosta and of Canterbury came from that deep valley which, after all changes, is still Cisalpine Gaul. He came from that small outlying fragment of the Middle Kingdom which has not risen to the destiny of Unterwalden and Bern, of Lausanne and Geneva, but which has escaped the destiny of Bresse and Bugey, of Chablais and Nizza, of royal Arles and princely Orange, and of Hugh's own home by the city of Gratian.[2] The vale of Aosta, still Burgundian in its speech and buildings, the last remnant of the great Burgundian dominion of its lords, still gives a title to princes of the house of its earliest and of its latest Humbert. The father of Anselm, no less than the father of Lanfranc, was of Lombard birth. But Gundulf had been fully adopted at Aosta, and his son, born on Burgundian soil, son of a Burgundian mother of lofty, perhaps of princely stock,[3] must be reckoned as belonging to the
- ↑ I must venture to admire, though the poet has forsaken the natural
Saturnian of Nævius and Walter Map for the foreign metre of Homer, the
lines in which one of the biographers of Saint Hugh (Metrical Life,
Dimock, p. 2) describes the country of his hero;
"Imperialis ubi Burgundia surgit in Alpes,
Et condescendit Rhodano, convallia vernant,
Duplicibus vestitur humus; sunt gramina vestis
Publica, sunt flores vestis sollennis, et uno
Illa colore nitent, sed mille coloribus illi." - ↑ Eadmer (Vit. Ans. i. 1. 1) carefully marks the geography of Aosta. It is "Augusta civitas, confinis Burgundiæ et Langobardiæ." I have collected some passages on this head in Historical Geography, p. 278. The French writers De Rémusat (Saint Anselme, 21), Charma (4), and specially M. Croset-Mouchet (55), as a neighbour, seem to have caught the Burgundian birth of Anselm better than the English. Yet Charma, who knows that Aosta was Burgundian, calls Anselm an Italian, perhaps on account of the Lombard birth of his father.
- ↑ M. Croset-Mouchet (57) is very anxious to connect Anselm's mother with the house of the Counts of Savoy. He gives a genealogical table at the end of his book, where the pedigree of Ermenberga is traced up to Ardoin the Third, Count of Turin and Marquess in Italy. He seems however to be not very certain about the matter, and it does not greatly affect Anselm's career either at Bec or at Canterbury.
