B OOKS.

LIVES OF THE ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY.* Tin second volume of Dr. Hook's Lives of the Primates is likely to prove one of the most interesting. Lanfranc, Anselm, Becket, and Stephen Langton belong to the heroic times of the Church, and were great without the mitre. Dr. Hook is in many respects equal tc his subject. He is not a thorough master of our early annals, but he is creditably anxious to do his work well, and the present volume is an immense advance on the first in real research. The style is straightforward and interesting, and the author's genuine honesty of purpose and. hearty desire to be tolerant do duty very largely, for philosophical insight. The advance which we have made during the last hundred years in history can hardly be better estimated than by comparing such a work as this with the introduction to Robertson's " Charles V.," and seeing what Hallam, Palgrave, Dean Milman, and Mr. Church have done for their successors. More than this we can hardly say. A historian who calls Lanfranc an Imperialist and Anselm a Papist, who knows no deeper explanation of medireval miracles than imposture or delusion, and who regards the biographies of the Primates as a history of the Church of England," evidently has a special standard of criticism, and if he be not right is very wrong. Passing over the first point, which we shall examine more in detail, and the second, on which students of comparative mythology, as expounded, for instance, by Mr. Grote, can scarcely have two opinions, we will briefly say why we differ from Dr. Hook on the third. The cardinal feature of the Medireval Church wag, that it Atm of the Archbishops of Canterbury. By Walter Farquhar Hook, D.D., Dean of Chichester. VoL IL Anglo-Norman Period. Richard Bentley. claimed to be universal, not national, and one cardinal feature of medireval society was its broad recognition of individual liberties. The Archbishop of Canterbury, therefore, was in no proper sense head of the English Church, as our kings under all limitations were of the State. Not to mention that the nation might alter its constitution, but that the whole English Church co' uld not change its fundamental laws, without virtually renouncing its European character, our primates were limited , in every direction by the Popes, by Convocation, by the liberties of the monastic orders, by the tern. . rights of the crown. As their supremacy was rather matter of . •ity than of essential power, so it was possible for them to remain outside the great religious movements of the day.. Dr. Hook derives an interesting description of the first coming of the Franciscans into England, from Professor Brewer's " Monumenta Franciscans?' It was the beginning of a change that renewed and transformed the Mediaeval Church, bat Stephen Langton had no other connexion with it than giving the brothers his license to preach in the diocese. Again, a Church history ought to be the record of religious thought underlying the lives of saints, and the changes of discipline. Accidentally one or two of our primates—as for instance Anselm and Becket—have been typical men; but when he comes to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Dr. Hook will find that Bradwardine was a very inadequate representative of the mighty speculations that occupied Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, Occharn, and Wycliffe.

The life of Lanfranc, which comes first in the present volume, is a Lair specimen of the author's merits and defects. It has been written at some disadvantage, as it had not been made the subject of special studies like Mr. Church's on Anselm, and Canon Robertson's on Becket. Nevertheless, by carefully studying Lanfranc in his own works and contemporarydomunents, DIr.Hook has produced a vivid and correct personal history. In particular he has escaped being misled by Thierry's specious narrative, and the fiction of a systematic persecution in the Anglo-Saxon Church is dismissed, we may fairly hope, never to reappear. The omission to give any accurate account of Lanfranc's greatest work, the treatise against Berengarius, for which the reader is referred to Du Pin, and the large quotations from a trifling and probably a spurious work, the "Elu,cidarium," a sort of catechism for beginners, are great faults of judgment, and indicate some misconception of the times, though they do not affect our confidence in Dr. Hook's candour. But what are we to say of such a phrase as Lanfranc's "resistance to Papal aggression ?" The facts of the Primate's relations with Rome are easily summed up. When he was yet a rising man, with his path in life to make, he risked a quarrel with William the Bastard, who was almost as impatient of opposition as of injury, until the duke had made satisfaction for an uncanonical marriage. An Italian, a politician, and a churchman, Lanfranc steadily espoused the side which Hildebrand headed, and adhered with creditable fidelity to his fortunes, when he had been formally deposed, and an anti-Pope raised up against him. He visited Rome to receive the pallium, and by his own account advised the Conqueror to do homage to the Holy See for England. His admonition to Bishop Herebert to "devote himself to the study of Scripture and the decrees of the Roman Pontiff and the sacred canons," is rather couched in the phraseology of a Becket than of a Grostete. It is surely not safe to disregard evidence of this sort, because at one period of his life Lanfranc, apparently following out the king's wishes and his own policy, supported the Bishop of Thetford against the Abbot of St. Edmund's, a Papal prote:qi, and evaded a summons to Rome, being then about seventy= years old. Nor does Dr. Hook seem to us thoroughly to understand the nature of the change which William and Tanfranc introduced into the relations of Church and State. In the first place, it is wrong to say that among the Anglo.Saxons there was no distinction between lay and ecclesiastical jurisdiction; the mere fact that we have a volume of Anglo-Saxon Church Canons by the side of a

volume of Anglo-Saxon Common Law, is sufficient evidence to the contrary. Rather the Church had a double life as part of the State, and as a separate corporation. In his capacity as citizen, the Bishop presided in the county court, to see justice done between man and man; it is even probable that he might call a special court of his own, when there was question of any great crime. But his spiritual jurisdiction was quite separate from this, and while crime in the secular courts was matter of money compromise, or punished by death, mutilation, or outlawry,the Church chastised thecriminal on its ownaccount by-penance and seclusion. A man might be sentenced by one court or by both, pretty much at chance. The system was a clumsy one, and could scarcely have lasted long under any circumstances. It was especially odious to strong churchmen like Lanfranc, who dreaded lest the Church should be secularized, morally and politically,. by in termixture with the world. William, as a devoid man in has way, was probably anxious to make the Church efficient, and his strong, practical sense of order may have seen the evils of two concur rent jurisdictions in one court. Perhaps the conflict of canon and common law was already perceptible. Nevertheless, the Church

gained most by the change, and the measure must probably be taken as one of several in a concordat, intended to adjust the relations of rival powers. A distinct recognition of the monarch's temporal headship was a fair equivalent for the right of the Church to legislate for the clergy.

The l,ife of Anselm is in every way less satisfactory than that of Lanfrai, except in sustained interest. It was, perhaps, necessary to omit) all but the most cursory notice of Anselm's philosophy, though itch silence towards the first and greatest master of realism sufficie OA refutes the notion that the lives of the primates are a

Church history. But the want of interest in these speculations, which has made Dr. Hook acquiesce quietly in the omission,.seems also to disqualify him from properly estimating the contests in which Anslem was engaged. Anselm's want of tact in urging unpleasant reforms at unseasonable times upon the king, is the fact that chiefly impresses his biographer. It is difficult to conceive what amount of tact would have enabled any man to recover Church lands from the clutch of William Rufus, or what season would have been found appropriate for pious exhortation with a prime who spared neither man in his wrath, nor woman in his lust. Taking the lowest ground, that of money matters, the king's claims, the extent of which Dr. Hook seems hardly to understand, involved not only many manors, but a dangerous right to succeed to tenants dying without heirs, and Anselm only wished that the case should be decided in the courts of law.

Nor can Anselm, who had expressly declared before his consecration, that he acknowledged and meant to acknowledge Pope Urban, be fairly accused of breaking his oath of fealty when he afterwards acted up to that declaration. Yet the real question between him and Rufus, if it be simply stated, was, that the Archbishop felt himself unable to govern the Church unless a synod were called to reform abuses, and that William wished to sell his consent for a sum of money or a cession of Church privileges. That Anselm was a bad man of

business, and eminently unfit to superintend military levies, may be readilygranted, and so far the king had ajust cause of complaint against his premier vassal. But Dr. Hook ought scarcely to have omitted mentioning that the primate did not leave England in despair till his friends and adherents bad been imprisoned, and that he was grossly insulted by the king's orders in the very act of departing. Perhaps i no other churchman n those times would have borne repeated outrage and insult without any recourse to spiritual weapons. The Red King died, and on the accession of Henry I. Anselm found him self again engaged in dispute for the rights of the Church. The question whether Pope or King was to invest bishops with their sees implied practically whether the Church was to be feudalized or inde pendent. Sovereigns everywhere of course wished it to be under their control; Popes desired to set their feet on the necks of princes; and common sense and circumstances at last effected a compromise. Without thinking, as Dr. Hook does, that a contest "which lasted fifty-six years, occasioned sixty battles, and caused the loss of two millions of lives," could have been altogether prevented by any pos sible arrangement in the first instance, we believe this country owes it to Anselm that not a drop of English blood was wasted in that unhappy war of opinion. The churchman, who had freely suspended the 13a13.

over Duke Robert's head, when it was an object to prevent a civil war, endured exile, the confiscation of his estates, and the misery of

hearing that the English Church was in disorder through his absence, and was content to suffer, expostulate, and at last threaten. Dr. Hook speaks of Anselm as "entirely under the influence of the

king," and as induced by flattery and promises to take part against

the rightful heir. The exact value of Robert's right of primogeniture against his father's known will, the election of the English peers, and the approbation of the Church, was really ail in the twelfth cen tury, except as an excuse for bloodshed. Anselm's strong support of Henry—a capable, and, inthe main, ajust ruler—against his vicious and unworthy elder brother, is said by Eadmer, the archbishop's chaplain, to have rested on public grounds, and in "the hope, as it were, of a new resurrection" from national calamities. Surely this is the more probable account, and it is not the least praise of a devout and studious recluse that he was able to understand a political crisis, and preferred the hope of good laws to the red cross of a crusader.

Our space precludes us from following Dr. Hook through the lives of Becket, Hubert Walter, and Stephen langton. The life of

Becket is perhaps the best in the book ; the many excellent works

that have lately been published on the subject having, in fact, reduced the chances of positive error in the compiler within very narrow limits.

Dr. Hook will probably be the first to thank us for calling his atten

tion to two or three trifling omissions, or inaccuracies, in his later biographies. In his account of the controversy at Battle Abbey, he is evidently not aware that the mutilated speeches of Henry II. and

Becket are given with one or two important additions in Spelman and Wilkins. He will find an excellent review of William Fitz Osbert's history in Sir F. Palgrave's introduction to the "Rotuli Curiae Regis." He is mistaken in thinking that Richard I. only did homage for Provence ; Hoveden expressly states that he did it for England, and, in fact, the act would have had no political significance whatever

if it had merely, been in acknowledgment of a new fief. Trivet is

an older authority for Stephen Langton's division of the Bible into chapters than Bale or Pits, and at once more authentic and more full than "a nameless manuscript in the Bodleian." These, of course, are mere trifles. The substantial imperfections which we have noticed in Dr. Hook's treatment of history are of a kind which we fear he is

never likely to correct. He cannot acquire insight or breadth of thought ; he is scarcely likely to retrace his steps and work with fuller knowledge on his own plan ; and he ma; easily content himself with the success which his merits of style and broad common sense are certain to command. After all, he has produced an interesting and valuable book, but it is not a history.