bring the wider and loftier side of his dominion before his mind. He had thought less of his right to allow or to refuse the acknowledgement of Popes in the days when the regale was asserted by Lanfranc and the pontificale by William of Saint-Calais, than he thought now that the regale was asserted by William of Saint-Calais and the pontificale by Anselm.
The real question hitherto evaded.
Anselm's challenge.
He states the real case.
The shamelessness of the words of William of Saint-Calais
in the mouth of William of Saint-Calais might
have stirred even the meek Anselm to wrath. But he
bore all with patience; he only seized, with all the skill
of his scholastic training, on the palpable fallacy of the
Bishop's argument. The Assembly had come together
to discuss and settle a point of law. Was the duty which
Anselm professed towards the Pope inconsistent or not
with the duty which he no less fully acknowledged
towards the King? On that point not only had no judgement
been given, but no arguments either way had been
heard. Messages had gone to and fro; Anselm had been
implored, advised, threatened; but prayers, advice, and
threats had all assumed that the point which they had
all come there to discuss had already been ruled in the
sense unfavourable to Anselm. William of Saint-Calais
could talk faster than Anselm; but, as he had not
Anselm's principle, so neither had he Anselm's logic.
Anselm saw both his intellectual and his moral advantage.
His answer to the Bishop of Durham took the shape of
a challenge. "If there be any man who wishes to prove
that, because I will not give up my obedience towards
the venerable chief Pontiff of the holy Roman Church,
I thereby break the faith and oath which I owe to my
earthly King, let him stand forth, and, in the name of
the Lord, he will find me ready to answer him where
I ought and as I ought." The real issue was thus at
last stated; Anselm demanded that the thing should
