Ecclesiastical grievances.
Wrongs of the church tenants.
He prays the King to fill the vacant abbeys.
There is so much of simple moral grandeur in this
appeal of the righteous man against moral evil that we
might almost have wished that Anselm's discourse had
ended at this point, and that he had not gone on to
speak of matters which to us seem to have less of a
moral and more of a technical nature. Yet Anselm
would doubtless have thought himself faithless to his
duty, if he had left the King's presence without making
a special appeal about the special grievances of ecclesiastical
bodies. Moreover the wrongs of the bishoprics and
abbeys were distinctly moral wrongs; the King's doings
involved breach of law, breach of trust; they were
grievances on which the head of the ecclesiastical order
was, as such, specially bound to enlarge. But they were
also grievances which did not touch the ecclesiastical
order only; the wrongs done to the tenants of the
vacant churches are constantly dwelled on as one of the
worst features of the system brought in by Rufus and
Flambard. Anselm therefore deemed it his duty, before
he parted from the King, to say a word on this matter
also, a matter in which there could be no doubt that the
King himself was the chief sinner. No bishopric was
now vacant; but several abbeys, Saint Alban's among
them, were in the hands of Flambard. Such a state of
things called for his own care as Primate; he appealed
to William to give him his help as King. In the monasteries
which were left without rulers discipline became
lax; the monks fell into evil courses; they died without
confession. He prayed the King to allow the appointment
of abbots to the vacant churches, lest he should
draw on himself the judgement which must follow on
the evils to which their vacancies gave cause.[1] The
King seems to have been less able to endure this rebuke
- ↑ "Ne in destructione monasteriorum et perditione monachorum tibi, quod absit, damnationem adquiras."
