clergy. Stephen owed his crown to Henry (1135), but they quarrelled when Stephen refused to give Henry the primacy; and the bishop took up the cause of Roger of Salisbury (1139). After the battle of Lincoln (1141) Henry declared for Matilda; but finding his advice treated with contempt, rejoined his brother’s side, and his successful defence of Winchester against the empress (Aug.–Sept. 1141) was the turning-point of the civil war. The expiration of his legatine commission of 1144 deprived him of much of his power. He spent the rest of Stephen’s reign in trying to procure its renewal. But his efforts were unsuccessful, though he made a personal visit to Rome. At the accession of Henry II. (1154) he retired from the world and spent the rest of his life in works of charity and penitence. He died in 1171. Henry seems to have been a man of high character, great courage, resolution and ability. Like most great bishops of his age he had a passion for architecture. He built, among other castles, that of Farnham; and he began the hospital of St Cross at Winchester.
Authorities.—Original: William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum; the Gesta Stephani. Modern: Sir James Ramsay, Foundations of England, vol. ii.; Kate Norgate’s Angevin Kings; Kitchin’s Winchester.
HENRY OF GHENT [Henricus a Gandavo] (c. 1217–1293),
scholastic philosopher, known as “Doctor Solennis,” was born
in the district of Mude, near Ghent, and died at Tournai (or
Paris). He is said to have belonged to an Italian family named
Bonicolli, in Flemish Goethals, but the question of his name
has been much discussed (see authorities below). He studied
at Ghent and then at Cologne under Albertus Magnus. After
obtaining the degree of doctor he returned to Ghent, and is
said to have been the first to lecture there publicly on philosophy
and theology. Attracted to Paris by the fame of the university,
he took part in the many disputes between the orders and the
secular priests, and warmly defended the latter. A contemporary
of Aquinas, he opposed several of the dominant theories of the
time, and united with the current Aristotelian doctrines a strong
infusion of Platonism. He distinguished between knowledge
of actual objects and the divine inspiration by which we cognize
the being and existence of God. The first throws no light upon
the second. Individuals are constituted not by the material
element but by their independent existence, i.e. ultimately by
the fact that they are created as separate entities. Universals
must be distinguished according as they have reference to our
minds or to the divine mind. In the divine intelligence exist
exemplars or types of the genera and species of natural objects.
On this subject Henry is far from clear; but he defends Plato
against the current Aristotelian criticism, and endeavours to
show that the two views are in harmony. In psychology, his
view of the intimate union of soul and body is remarkable.
The body he regards as forming part of the substance of the
soul, which through this union is more perfect and complete.
Works.—Quodlibeta theologica (Paris, 1518; Venice, 1608 and 1613); Summa theologiae (Paris, 1520; Ferrara, 1646); De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis (Cologne, 1580).
Authorities.—F. Huet’s Recherches hist. et crit. ... de H. de G. (Paris, 1838) has been superseded by F. Ehrle’s monograph in Archiv für Lit. u. Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters, i. (1885); see also A. Wauters and N. de Pauw in the Bull. de la Com. royale d’histoire de Belgique (4th series, xiv., xv., xvi., 1887–1889); H. Delehaye, Nouvelles Recherches sur Henri de Gand (1886); C. Werner, Heinrich von Gent als Repräsentant des christlichen Platonismus im 13ten Jahrh. (Vienna, 1878); A. Stöckl, Phil. d. Mittelalters, ii. 738-758; C. Bréchillet Jourdain, La Philosophie de St Thomas d’Aquin (1858), ii. 29-46; Alphonse le Roy in Biographie nationale de Belgique, vii. (Brussels, 1880); and article Scholasticism.
HENRY OF HUNTINGDON, English chronicler of the 12th
century, was born, apparently, between the years 1080 and 1090.
His father, by name Nicholas, was a clerk, who became archdeacon
of Cambridge, Hertford and Huntingdon, in the time of Remigius,
bishop of Lincoln (d. 1092). The celibacy of the clergy was not
strictly enforced in England before 1102. Hence the chronicler
makes no secret of his antecedents, nor did they interfere with
his career. At an early age Henry entered the household of
Bishop Robert Bloet, who appointed him, immediately after
the death of Nicholas (1110), archdeacon of Hertford and
Huntingdon. Henry was on familiar terms with his patron;
and also, it would seem, with Bloet’s successor, by whom he
was encouraged to undertake the writing of an English history
from the time of Julius Caesar. This work, undertaken before
1130, was first published in that year; the author subsequently
published in succession four more editions, of which the last
ends in 1154 with the accession of Henry II. The only recorded
fact of the chronicler’s later life is that he went with Archbishop
Theobald to Rome in 1139. On the way Henry halted at Bec,
and there made the acquaintance of Robert de Torigni, who
mentions their encounter in the preface to his Chronicle.
The Historia Anglorum was first printed in Savile, Rerum Anglicarum scriptores post Bedam (London, 1596). The first six books excepting the third, which is almost entirely taken from Bede, are given in Monumenta historica Britannica, vol. i. (ed. H. Petrie and J. Sharpe, London, 1848). The standard edition is that of T. Arnold in the Rolls Series (London, 1879). There is a translation by T. Forester in Bohn’s Antiquarian Library (London, 1853). The Historia is of little independent value before 1126. Up to that point the author compiles from Eutropius, Aurelius Victor, Nennius, Bede and the English chronicles, particularly that of Peterborough; in some cases he professes to supplement these sources from oral tradition; but most of his amplifications are pure rhetoric (see F. Liebermann in Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte for 1878, pp. 265 seq.). Arnold prints, in an appendix, a minor work from Henry’s pen, the Epistola ad Walterum de contemptu mundi, which was written in 1135. It is a moralizing tract, but contains some interesting anecdotes about contemporaries. Henry also wrote epistles to Henry I. (on the succession of kings and emperors in the great monarchies of the world) and to “Warinus, a Briton” (on the early British kings, after Geoffrey of Monmouth). A book, De miraculis, composed of extracts from Bede, was appended along with these three epistles to the later recensions of the Historia. Henry composed eight books of Latin epigrams; two books survive in the Lambeth MS., No. 118. His value as a historian, formerly much overrated, is discussed at length by Liebermann and in T. Arnold’s introduction to the Rolls edition of the Historia. (H. W. C. D.)
HENRY OF LAUSANNE (variously known as of Bruys, of
Cluny, of Toulouse, and as the Deacon), French heresiarch of
the first half of the 12th century. Practically nothing is known
of his origin or early life. He may have been one of those
hermits who at that time swarmed in the forests of western
Europe, and particularly in France, always surrounded by
popular veneration, and sometimes the founders of monasteries
or religious orders, such as those of Prémontré or Fontevrault.
If St Bernard’s reproach (Ep. 241) be well founded, Henry was
an apostate monk—a “black monk” (Benedictine) according
to the chronicler Alberic de Trois Fontaines. The information
we possess as to his degree of instruction is scarcely more precise
or less conflicting. When he arrived at Le Mans in 1101, his
terminus a quo was probably Lausanne. At that moment
Hildebert, the bishop of Le Mans, was absent from his episcopal
town, and this is one of the reasons why Henry was granted
permission to preach (March to July 1101), a function jealously
guarded by the regular clergy. Whether by his prestige as a
hermit and ascetic or by his personal charm, he soon acquired
enormous influence over the people. His doctrine at that date
appears to have been very vague; he seemingly rejected the
invocation of saints and also second marriages, and preached
penitence. Women, inflamed by his words, gave up their jewels
and luxurious apparel, and young men married courtesans in
the hope of reclaiming them. Henry was peculiarly fitted for
a popular preacher. In person he was tall and had a long
beard; his voice was sonorous, and his eyes flashed fire. He
went bare-footed, preceded by a man carrying a staff surmounted
with an iron cross; he slept on the bare ground, and lived by
alms. At his instigation the inhabitants of Le Mans soon began
to slight the clergy of their town and to reject all ecclesiastical
authority. On his return from Rome, Hildebert had a public
disputation with Henry, in which, according to the bishop’s
Acta episcoporum Cenomannensium, Henry was shown to be
less guilty of heresy than of ignorance. He, however, was forced
to leave Le Mans, and went probably to Poitiers and afterwards
to Bordeaux. Later we find him in the diocese of Arles, where
the archbishop arrested him and had his case referred to the
tribunal of the pope. In 1134 Henry appeared before Pope
Innocent III. at the council of Pisa, where he was compelled
