Shame of the bishops.
The King further examines the bishops. the bishops were covered with confusion; they felt that all eyes were turned on them, and that their apostasy was loathed of all.[1] This and that bishop was greeted, seemingly by this or that earl or baron, with the names usual in such cases, Judas, Pilate, and Herod.[2] Then the King put the trembling bishops through another examination. Had they abjured all obedience to Anselm, or only such obedience as he claimed by the authority of the Roman Pontiff?[3] The question was hard to answer. Anselm does not seem to have claimed any obedience by virtue of the authority of the Pope; he had simply refused to withdraw his own obedience from the Pope. Some therefore answered one way, some another. But it was soon plain which way the King wished them to answer. The real question in William's mind had nothing to do with the Pope; any subtlety about acknowledging this or that Pope was a mere excuse. It was Anselm himself, as the servant of God, the man who spake of righteousness and temperance and judgement to come, that Rufus loathed and sought to crush. Those bishops therefore who said that they had abjured Anselm's obedience utterly and without condition were at once
- [Footnote: Lanfranc. It is significant that it should be in answer to the lay lords and
not to the bishops.]
- ↑ Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 30. "Episcopi hæc videntes, confusione vultus sui operti sunt, intelligentes omnium oculos in se converti, et apostasiam suam non injuste a cunctis detestari." It must be remembered that apostasia is a technical term, meaning, besides its usual sense, a forsaking of his monastic vows and calling by a professed monk. Eadmer speaks of the bishops as guilty of a like offence towards their metropolitan.
- ↑ The picture is very graphic; "Audires si adesses, nunc ab isto, nunc ab illo istum vel illum episcopum aliquo cognomine cum interjectione indignantis denotari, videlicet Judæ proditoris, Pilati, vel Herodis horumque similium." One of the bishops had been likened to Judas some years before on somewhat opposite grounds.
- ↑ "Requisiti a rege, utrum omnem subjectionem et obedientiam, nulla conditione interposita, an illam solam subjectionem et obedientiam, quam prætenderet ex autoritate Romani pontificis, Anselmo denegassent."
