Anselm at Rome.
Council of Lateran. the look which won all hearts. Instead of harming him, Odo received his kiss and sought his blessing, and sent him under a safe guard to the borders of his duchy.[1] We read how the likeness of that venerable face had been painted by cunning limners in the interest of Clement, that the robbers who were sent to seize the faithful follower of Urban might better know their intended victim. We read with some national pride how, at his first interview with Urban, when Anselm bowed himself at the Pontiff's feet, he was raised, received to his kiss, and seated by him as one of equal rank, the Pope and Patriarch of another world. We read how, in the great gathering in the head church of the city and of the world, when no man knew what was the fitting place in a Roman council for a guest such as none had ever seen before, the English Archbishop was placed at the papal bidding in a seat of special honour. Anselm took his seat in that apse which was spared when papal barbarism defaced the long arcades of Constantine, when the patriarchal throne of the world was cast forth as an useless thing,[2] but which the more relentless havoc of our own day, eager, it would seem, to get rid of all that is older than the dogmas of modern Rome, has ruthlessly swept away. We read how visitors and pilgrims from England bowed to kiss the feet of Anselm, as they would have kissed those of Urban himself, and how the humble saint ever refused
- ↑ Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 42. We are told that the Duke, "succensus amore pecuniæ quam copiosam illum ferre rumor disperserat, proponit animo eam ipsi auferre." But there is really nothing in what Odo is said to have done which implies any such bad purpose. Perhaps Eadmer judged him uncharitably.
- ↑ See Historical Essays, Third Series, p. 20. On my last visit to Rome (1881) I found the apse of Saint John Lateran destroyed, not by Huns or Turks, but by its own chapter, with the approval, it is said, of its present and late bishops. I believe there is some pretence of enlarging the church, and of replacing the mosaics in a new apse.
