Advantages of the synod.
No synod held under Rufus.
Anselm's appeal against the fashionable vices. within his dominions supreme, used that supremacy as the chief ruler of the Church from within, while the younger William turned that same supremacy into a weapon wherewith to assault the Church as an enemy from without. It is plain from the earnestness of Anselm one way—one might almost say, from the earnestness of Rufus the other way—that the synod was a real instrument for the reformation of manners. It is plain that the assembled bishops, when they came together in a body, could do more both for ecclesiastical discipline and for moral improvement than they could do, each one in his own diocese. One cause may have been that, in a synod, the assembled prelates might seem to be really speaking as fathers in God, while the exercise of their local jurisdiction was too much mixed up with the petty and not always creditable details of their courts, with those tricks and extortions of archdeacons and other officials of which we have often heard. Anyhow, as the Roman Senate had good enough left in it to call forth the hatred of Nero, so an ecclesiastical synod had good enough left in it to call forth the hatred of William Rufus. Not one synod had he allowed to be held during the whole time of his reign, now in its seventh year.[1] Anselm earnestly prayed to be allowed to hold one for the restoration of discipline and the reformation of manners. The King answered; "I will see to this matter when I think good; I will act, not after your pleasure but after my own. And, pray," added he mockingly, "when you have got your synod, what will you talk about in it?" The man of God did not shrink from going straight to the crying evil of the time. What weighed most on Anselm's mind
- ↑ Anselm is made to say; "Generale concilium episcoporum ex quo tu rex factus fuisti non fuit in Anglia celebratum, nec retroactis pluribus annis." Yet Lanfranc had held many synods, and one notable one as late as 1085. See N. C. vol. iv. p. 687.
