First, a quick reminder that today is the last day to get a copy of "The Dilemma of Arnulf of Lisieux" for free. Click on the book jacket to go straight to the book's page on Amazon. 

Originally Posted on Thursday, August 09, 2012 11:37 AM

Then we'll take a look at the role Arnulf played in the English Civil War.  From the beginning, Arnulf followed the example  of the bishops of Normandy in supporting King Stephen against the claims of Matilda. Stephen was, of course, a Frenchman, but then too, so was Matilda's husband Geoffrey of Anjou. Arnulf, hoping to become a bishop himself, knew he needed the support of the ruler of Normandy, and he followed the guidance of his uncle, John of Lisieux.

In 1139, the two claimants to the English throne brought their case before the pope at the Second Lateran Council.  Because of his growing reputation as an attack dog, Arnulf was asked to argue the case against Matilda.  There is no record of what he said, but letters from those who were there make it pretty clear.

Arnulf called Matilda a royal bastard, just like her 22 other illegitimate siblings.  Why? Well, he said, Henry I found his wife, Maud, in a nunnery . But since he needed a wife with Anglo-Saxon blood, he forced her to leave and marry him.  She had taken final vows as a nun, Arnulf assured his listeners.  Therefore, the marriage was illegal and Matilda, the only child of that union, was not Henry's legal heir. Was it true? 

Historians still argue the case. For Arnulf, it didn't matter.  The charge was simply a rhetorical trick that allowed him to use church teachings against a political foe. (Does any of that sound familiar today?)

Pope Innocent did not rule in favor of one or the other side but simply dismissed them, but he later gave tacit approval to Stephen by recognizing his occupation of England. Did that mean Arnulf had chosen the right side?  Not so fast! In Normandy, Geoffrey of Anjou laid liege to the city of Lisieux.  Bishop John set fire to the city rather than surrender to Geoffrey, but his defiance did little good.  When John died in 1141, Arnulf was in line for the bishopric, but Geoffrey prevented him from taking his seat until he paid a huge fine. 

And then, of course, the two sides found a way to settle their own dispute, in a way that left Matilda's son Henry as the lawful king of England and ruler of Normandy. You might guess that the young Henry II was not amused by the bishop who had publicly called his mother a bastard.

Originally Posted on Wednesday, August 08, 2012 9:49 AM

Arnulf’s next venture into notoriety came when he became involved in the English Civil War of 1135-1154.  But before we can get into Arnulf’s role, we need to start with a brief background.  After the Norman Conquest of 1066, the sons of William the Conqueror split up their father’s kingdoms. William Rufus ruled England until someone mistook his head of red hair for a fox and shot him during a hunting expedition.  He was quickly replaced on the English throne by his younger brother Henry, although there were those who wondered if the fatal arrow was really fired by accident. 

Henry I was a prolific king, if nothing else. He spawned some 22 illegitimate children, but unfortunately his only legal heir was a daughter Matilda, whom he shipped off at an early age to marry the German emperor.  Before Henry’s death, he tried to make all his barons swear to support Matilda’s claim to the throne, but a deathbed oath is hard to enforce once you are dead.  

Matilda’s claim to the throne was always weakened by her gender, but there were other considerations as well. After the Emperor’s death, she remarried Geoffrey of Anjou, a Frenchman. At the time of her father’s death, she was living in France, was heavily pregnant with a third child, and could not travel to England to claim her promised throne. 

Stepping into the breach came her cousin Stephen of Blois, son of William the Conqueror’s youngest daughter, Adela.  Stephen’s claim to England therefore also passed through the female line, but he had the advantage of being in England when Henry I died.  He seized the throne, the barons accepted the fait accompli, and Matilda’s husband declared war. The war waged on for nearly 20 years, with first one side and then the other claiming minor victories.  

One of Matilda’s illegitimate brothers managed to capture Stephen in 1141 and lock him up, so that Matilda could make a triumphant entry into London.  Too triumphant! Her arrogance so irritated the people that they turned against her and helped Stephen’s forces besiege her at Oxford.  She escaped in a snowstorm by wearing a white cloak as camouflage.  She eventually returned to Normandy, leaving her young son Henry to carry on the battle. 

Stephen’s desire to claim England weakened after his wife and only son both died.  He signed a compromise (Treaty of Wallingford, 1153) with Matilda’s young son Henry.  It allowed him to hold onto the throne of England until his death, after which Matilda’s son Henry claimed the throne as Henry II in 1154.

Next time we'll look at Arnulf's role in all of this.

Originally Posted on Tuesday, August 07, 2012 9:31 AM

Today, let's get back to Arnulf of Lisieux, who began to shape his own reputation during a papal schism.  After the death of Pope Honorius in 1130, a disputed election and a split in the College of Cardinals led to the consecration of two popes.  One of them was a Roman and a Benedictine monk by the name of Pietro Pierleone.  Thirty cardinals supported his election. He took the name Anacletus II and soon won the support of southern Germany, the people of Rome and almost all of Italy, and a few Frenchmen, including Gerard of Angouleme.

The second pope was  a reluctant cardinal, Gregory Papareschi. A faction of only eight cardinals elected him and seated him on the papal throne, but they had the advantage of being seen as the "older and wiser" members of the College. Gregory became known as Innocent Ii, but he was soon driven out of Rome to take refuge in France, where he had the support of such young reformers as Peter the Venerable and Bernard of Clairvaux, along with almost all of northern Europe.

Now enter Arnulf. He was still a minor clergyman, just learning his trade, but he was highly skilled in the use of words as weapons.  My book reveals that St. Bernard hired him to write a particularly nasty article addressed to Gerard of Angouleme. In it, Arnulf demanded to know how Gerard could possibly support a man as evil as Anacletus II.  The accusations go on and on: he led a debauched youth, full of sinful indiscretions -- he raped his own sister and fathered her children, so that his nephews were really his sons. He also kept a mistress in the Vatican, hiding her by having her dress like a man. Were those charges true?  Probably. The transvestite mistress is pretty well documented, and the sons/nephews were ever favored by their doting father/uncle.

Then came the nastiest charge of all, one that Arnulf formed  as a denial, saying that he refused to mention the fact that . . . (wait for it! ) . . . Anacletus was really a Jew and the son of a Jew. How could such a man now lead the church? Arnulf thus played right into the hands of a rising wave of dangerous anti-Semitism that was sweeping through Europe.  

Was the charge true?  It may have been true that one of Pietro Perleoni's eight great-grandparents was a converted Jew.  But Pietro was a Benedictine monk, and there was no evidence that he had ever practiced Judaism.  It was simply character assassination in one of its ugliest forms.

In the end, Pope Innocent II won.  Anacletus II died in 1138, and St. Bernard argued so emotionally about the saintly character of Innocent that the schism failed to elect another anti-pope, As for Arnulf, he had achieved one important goal -- he wanted fame.  Almost all of Europe now recognized his name as the author of that vicious piece of invective. But he was also labelled as a man you did not want as your enemy.  People knew that he would not hesitate to lie, exaggerate, and attack from behind.  He would do and say whatever it took to achieve his purposes.

But now he faced another hurdle.  Could he prove himself to be worthy of a bishopric?

This may be my only blog post for the next few days. it's a rough week.  A horrible, terrible stinky bad week.

As many of you recognized by sending greetings via Facebook, today is my birthday, and I'm feeling pretty old.  it was bad enough hitting the 3/4 of a century last year. Today I move beyond that, and the view is not pretty.  Of course plans have changed since my husband died in January.  We had booked a trip for this week.  We won a contest for couples who had met while in school at Kent State.  The prize: a night in the presidential suite of the university hotel, dinner in the hotel restaurant and chocolates and champagne at bed-turn-down. Not happening, of course.  I was able to pass the prize on to a family member, but my Lean Cuisine lunch was something of a come-down.  Then I spent the rest of the day doing paperwork, getting names changed on the house title and our Sam's card. Neither one was easy, but Sam's clearly won the bureaucracy award.

And it doesn't get better from here. This is the weekend of the Tennessee Lions' State Convention, starting Friday. I'm not going, of course, because it's on the other side of the world's widest state, and there's no one else going from here  -- so too far for me to drive by myself with only partial vision.  And that means I'm missing the state necrology service, where they will retire Floyd's Lions pin and put it on display for the coming year.  And finally, Sunday is Mother's Day -- a holiday I quit observing in 2000, when my only child died of cancer. 

So it's a horrible week, and I hope you'll forgive the lack of postings until the sun comes back out from behind this black cloud hanging over my disposition.  I think I'll go scrub the bathroom.  Might as well take advantage of a bad mood to get something useful accomplished.

There’s a story making the rounds on the Internet today  about an elderly couple and their cocker spaniel who were involved in a traffic stop for having tinted car windows that were darker than Georgia law allowed. The over-zealous cop had made them get out of the car and stand along the road for nearly half an hour while he tried to get them to admit they were drug dealers.

Internet outrage abounds. The “victims”  have lost all respect for law enforcement. People are screaming profiling, police brutality, “cops are criminals,” all the ugly stuff we hear every day. But for some reason, this really tipped the scales for me. Is Facebook teaching us to carry everything to its illogical conclusion? Have we forgotten how to laugh at the small absurdities?

I was reminded of the only time I was ever accused of drug smuggling. Yep, me. It was 1973, and we were in the process of moving from Key West, FL, to North Bay, Ontario, in the middle of winter.  In the car we had a two-year-old and four cats along with suitcases and supplies to last us for a couple of weeks while we waiting to find housing at my husband’s new military assignment. We left Florida in 85 degree weather. Reports said North Bay was at 40 below!  We had stopped in Ohio to visit parents and purchase some winter clothing, and my mother (bless her heart!) had stuck in a bag of premium home-grown catnip to keep the kitties mellow on the last leg of the journey.

We arrived at the US/Canada border on a very cold morning, only to be told by the authorities that they needed to search our car. So we unpacked the car and lined up the suitcases, the cat carriers, the boy’s car seat, the disposable litter boxes, the cooler full of snacks, and the carton of emergency household items (aspirin, toilet paper, alarm clock, etc.). And what did those authorities find? That bag of premium home-grown catnip, which they immediately assumed was marijuana. We were there a long time, even feeding the cats some of the catnip just to prove that’s what it was.

We giggled about it then, and still do. It never once occurred to us that we were being profiled or that we were victims of police brutality. We didn’t think to call the officers’ supervisor and demand that they be fired. It was an adventure in absurdity, and it still makes a good story. I’m afraid people are losing the sense of humor that allows them to take the little things in stride. Wouldn’t we all be happier if more people saved their indignity for the real injustices of this world? Surely there are enough of those to go around.