He was a close friend of Pope Urban II and prominent in the Crusade of 1101, whose Lombard contingent he led and on which he died.
He preached the crusade throughout Lombardy, where there had been little enthusiasm for the first one, but where his influence sparked a wave of zeal: crowds greeted him chanting "Ultreja!
Albert, Count of Parma, the brother of the Antipope Guibert, was there as a representative of the resolution of the church-state conflicts which enveloped Lombardy in the final decades of the eleventh century.
The army proceeded by land through Carinthia, with the permission of Duke Henry V, and then through Bulgaria without incident, relying on Anselm's negotiations with Alexius I Comnenus, Byzantine emperor, to assure them of markets and supplies.
At Constantinople, rioting broke out, but he and Albert quelled it with ease and he refused the rich gifts offered by the emperor, who ferried the soldiery across the Bosphorus.