Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie, and this is episode 483, Standing on Ceremony.

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The final two years of the 11th century feel like someone was trying to tie up a bunch of

plot lines before they start season 12.

Because things are moving fast and everybody's suddenly in different countries.

And inevitably, some of these characters are not going to have their contracts renewed.

And in the middle of all of this, Anselm is just flatly refusing to exit stage left.

Now, if you remember, the last time that we heard from him, his boss, the Pope, had just ordered him to Rome. And Anselm finally arrived in the city

by late April of 1098, where he stayed at the Lateran Palace for 10 days. And that meant that

Pope Urban II and his staff had to deal with Anselm and listen to all of his complaints for

10 long days. And there were a lot of complaints. In fact, in telling this part,

Edmner notes some of the stories that are being told about Rufus, but he adds that even he won't

vouch for them. And when your own biographer is all, okay, I will write that down for you, but I am not

sure that really happened, well, you know you're ranting your way into crazy town. And it's not like the Pope didn't have a lot going on already.

I mean, this guy had recently launched this minor little thing called the Crusade.

And on top of that, there was also the ongoing Norman conquest of Southern Italy,

which was probably front of mind for the Pope considering the

proximity. And yeah, I haven't talked about what was going on there, but basically, the Normans during

this period were a huge problem generally. They weren't just attacking Maine in France and Wales.

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