St. Anselm: Reluctant Archbishop?

In 1079, a few months after his consecration as abbot of Bec, St. Anselm set off for England to look after the abbey's lands there. In the course of his journey he stopped to visit Lanfranc, his predecessor as prior of Bec and now archbishop of Canterbury. Milo Crispin reports that when Anselm was returning to bed one night after Matins he found a gold ring in his possession. Crossing himself to determine whether it was some kind of vision sent by the devil to tempt him, he found that the ring was no illusion. After showing it to all the officials of Christ Church, Canterbury, and failing to find the owner, he sold it, giving the proceeds to the Christ Church monks. Lanfranc, hearing the story, interpreted it as a sign that Anselm would one day succeed him as archbishop just as Anselm had earlier succeeded him as prior of Bec.Some years later, when the archbishopric was offered to Anselm, he pubicly opposed the appointment, repeatedly denying that he desired the office, and writing numerous letters refuting allegations that he was guilty of cupidity. Modern scholars, taking Anselm's protestations at face value, have cast him as a reluctant archbishop who would have preferred the quiet life at Bec to the storm at Canterbury. But is their conclusion necessarily true? Reluctance to assume important prelacies was an old medieval tradition, and one that Anselm evidently followed. An Anglo-Norman bishopric was a high and lucrative political position, often given as a reward for service to the king or duke. It was eagerly sought by careerists who desired to enrich themselves with the substantial lands and incomes that accompanied the episcopal office. The archbishopric of Canberbury was not only the highest prelacy in England, but one of the kingdom's three richest fiefs, lay or ecclesiastical. For Anselm to express a desire for such an office would be to compromise his saintly reputation and to cast himself in the mold of an ambitious courtier rather than as a servant of the Church. But certain of An-selm's actions suggest that in fact he aspired to the archbishopric, expecting to fulfil Lanfranc's prophecy and, as Milo Crispin implies, to follow in his footsteps.