Lanfranc of Pavia (Pavia, c. 1005 - Canterbury, 1089)

Lanfranc was a native of Pavia, and followed an education and career as a lawyer in Bologna. He went to Normandy in 1035, perhaps drawn there by his compatriot Suppo, Abbot of Mont Saint-Michel. He taught at the episcopal school of Avranches and then withdrew in 1042 to the abbey of Bec. He became prior in 1045, and then supervisory scholar, transforming Bec into a major theological centre where Yves of Chartres, Anselm of Aosta - who succeeded him - and Anselm of Lucca (the future Pope Alexander II, 1064) all studied. In 1049 Lanfranc supported the opposition of the church to the marriage of William and Matilda of Flanders. He then won the friendship of the Duke, pleaded his cause in Rome, and was appointed the first Abbot of St Stephen in Caen in c.1063. He refused to become Archbishop of Rouen (1067), before accepting the archbishopric of Canterbury from King William, left vacant by the deposition of the Saxon Stigand (1070). Lanfranc supervised the reconstruction of Canterbury cathedral between 1070 and 1077, and undertook to affirm the authority of the archiepiscopal seat over the English church (a judgement against Thomas of Bayeux, Archbishop of York, 1072). Lanfranc also represented the king in England during his frequent absences. His actions were, however, less a mark of hostility in respect of the Anglo-Saxon prelates - the Anglo-Saxon church as a whole was not involved in revolts against Norman power - than a statement that the church desired the support of clerics who had been chosen on the continent, because they had already been steeped in the principles of ecclesiastical reform. The last years of the episcopacy of Lanfranc were marked by conflicts of authority with the new King, William Rufus, whom he had crowned. His intellectual work is important and varied: controversy against the heretical positions of his pupil Béranger of Tours, pure theology and also treatises on canonical law and interpretations of monastic regulations.

Bibliography :

- François Neveux. - La Normandie des ducs aux rois, Xe-XIIe s. - Rennes : Ouest-France, 1998.
- Michel de Boüard. - Guillaume le Conquérant. - Paris : Fayard, 1984.