Problems of Construction in Reading Anselm's Letters
The Letters Physical Separation and Spiritual Union Problems of Construction in Reading Anselm's Letters
F. S. Schmitt's critical edition of Anselm's works contains 475 letters, the vast majority written by Anselm but including some written to Anselm. The letters have been the subject of controversy on several fronts.
The first is over whether Anselm himself made a collection of his letters late in his life, during his second exile. The controversy is focused on Anselm's later letters written as archbishop since it is accepted that Anselm made a collection of the letters he wrote as prior and abbot of Bec. As a factual matter, the dispute between Richard Southern, Walter Fröhlich, and Sally Vaughn turns on the dating of an important manuscript collection of Anselm's letters—whether it was made during Anselm's lifetime or later, but the deeper issue is whether Anselm used his letters as a vehicle for crafting his image.1 Fröhlich and Vaughn have used the letters and 1. At issue is the dating of a manuscript at Lambeth Palace known as Lambeth MS 59. During his critical edition building on the work of Wilmart, Schmitt concluded this collection was done under Anselm's direction. See F. S. Schmitt, S. Anselmi cantuariensis archiepiscopi opera omnia, vol. 1,
234–39; and F. S. Schmitt, "Die unter Anselm veranstaltete Ausgabe seiner Werke und Briefe: die
Codices Bodley 271 und Lambeth 59," Scriptorium 9 (1955): 64–75. Walter Fröhlich lays out his account of the manuscript traditions of Anselm's letters in the introduction to the first volume of his three-volume translation, The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian
Publications, 1990), vol. 1, 26–39. Southern's objections to this conclusion were stated in his St.
Anselm and His Biographer: A Study of Monastic Life and Thought 1059–c. 1130 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1963), 67–68, in his own account of the history of the manuscripts of Anselm's letters given in Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990), 459–82, and in his article, "Sally Vaughn's Anselm: An Examination of the Foundations,"
Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 20 (1988): 192–202. Vaughn defends the view that Lambeth MS 59 is a collection made under Anselm's direction in her reply to Southern, "Anselm: Saint and Statesman," Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 20 (1988): 212–
16. A recent dissertation develops a new theory of the letters, critical of both Southern
Physical Separation and Spiritual Union Anselm's role as collector, including the omission of certain letters, to argue that the picture of Anselm that emerges in the letters is one of Anselm's own construction; on this view Anselm self-consciously sets out to portray himself as an example for others in his roles as monk, teacher, and administrator in the letters, individually and as a collection.2 Richard Southern argued vehemently against both the factual claim that the manuscript containing the most complete collection of Anselm's letters was made during Anselm's life and under his direction and even more strongly against any notion that Anselm politically manipulated his image in the letters, finding that such suggestions make Anselm deceitful and hypocritical.3 Southern's two deeply influential works on Anselm painted him as both uninterested and inept at political and worldly affairs, taking at face value Anselm's expressions, notably, of intense aversion to being made archbishop and even abbot as evidence of Anselm's lack of interest in power, showing his desire only for the spiritual life of monk and theologian.4 Vaughn and, to a lesser degree, Fröhlich have disputed this picture. Vaughn has argued (with what even Southern admits is a great deal of verve and evidence) for Anselm's political interests and skills. However, some have protested that she completely neglects the religious and monastic aspects of Anselm, "secularizing him arbitrarily" and viewing as insincere Anselm's pious protestations in light of his actions to secure power.5 Fröhlich finds no inherent conflict between Anselm as monk and powerful prelate, while he admits that the difference between these roles and argues for Anselm's self-conscious shaping of his image in his letters. Though not quite to the degree Vaughn does, he and Fröhlich, arguing that Anselm made not one but two or three or more letter collections during his life but that we have no manuscript directly or purely connected to any collection made by Anselm. See Samu K. Niskanen, The Letter Collections of Anselm of Canterbury, Ph.D. diss. (Helsinki,
2009). Niskanen very generously sent me a copy of his dissertation. Niskanen's conclusion on Lambeth 59 is that it was made after Anselm's death. As Niskanen points out, this does not mean that he fully supports Southern's view since he does think Anselm made letter collections and perhaps one included material from his Canterbury period. Niskanen, 76–78, 81–87; see also Richard Sharpe,
"Anselm as Author: Publishing in the Late Eleventh Century," Journal of Medieval Latin 19 (2009):
29, 67–68, n. 18; 70, 75.
2. See Fröhlich, "Introduction," in vol. 1 of The Letters of Saint Anselm, 39–52, a reworking of his paper, "The Letters Omitted from Anselm's Collection of Letters," Anglo-Norman Studies 6 (1984):
58–72. Vaughn accepts Fröhlich's thesis and builds on it in Sally N. Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan: The Innocence of the Dove and the Wisdom of the Serpent (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1987).
3. Southern, "Sally Vaughn's Anselm," 183–87.
4. This view underlies much of both Southern's St. Anselm and His Biographer and Portrait in a Landscape. For specific conclusions to this effect, see Portrait in a Landscape, 437–40.
5. Paschal Baumstein, OSB, "Revisiting Anselm: Current Historical Studies and Controversies," Cistercian Studies 28, no. 3/4 (1993): 213. Southern, "Sally Vaughn's Anselm," 181–83.
Physical Separation and Spiritual Union views Anselm as politically astute and competent, in contrast to Southern's notion of Anselm's otherworldly incompetence.6 Fröhlich argues that Anselm self-consciously set out to make a collection of his letters, following Schmitt's lead.7 Fröhlich supports his claim by reference to letters which have survived but which were not included in what seems to have been Anselm's most complete collection; these letters were omitted because they would have showed Anselm in a less favorable light.8 Paschal Baumstein, while criticizing Vaughn, has suggested a way of synthesizing these pictures by uniting them under Anselm's commitment to securing not his own power but "God's honor."9 In a sense, this is a view consistent with Vaughn's. Vaughn neither claims that Anselm enjoyed and desired power (only that he felt called to it) nor that he sought personal power or advantage (only the success and protection of Bec, Canterbury, and the church).10
The practice of authors making their own letter collections, as, for example, Lanfranc did, was widespread in the tenth and eleventh centuries.11 This period is "the golden age of letter writing," in which there was a huge increase in the quantity, quality, and type of letters and letter collections. This development corresponds to a period of increased travel and dramatic improvements in literacy and learning. These changes were fueled by the religious revival and the growth of new schools, which produced not only new letter writers but new topics for letters.12
Letters were important literary products, prized and kept as significant gifts by those who received them and as literary works akin in function to the modern memoir by those who wrote them. They were meant to be read aloud and publicly shared. Thus letters from this period are selfconscious literary products as artfully composed as histories and treatises. This does not mean, of course, that they are not true records of the 6. Walter Fröhlich, "Anselm's Weltbild as Conveyed in His Letters," Anselm Studies 2 (1988):
483–525.
7. See n. 1.
8. See Fröhlich, The Letters of Saint Anselm, vol. 1, 39–52, and "Letters Omitted," 58–72. Even though Niskanen disagrees that we have a manuscript representing a collection made by Anselm and is skeptical about Fröhlich's claims for many of the letters supposedly purposely omitted from the collection, he concedes that the manuscripts we have show evidence of authorial shaping and that Anselm "surely censored" the collection. Niskanen is also convinced that the collection at Christ Church did reflect the desire to present a certain picture of Anselm and of Christ Church as "mother church" of England. Niskanen, Letter Collections of Anselm, 161–67.
9. Baumstein, "Revisiting Anselm," 215.
10. Vaughn, "Anselm: Saint and Statesman," 205–9.
11. For my remarks on letter writing and letter collections, I rely on Giles Constable, Letters and Letter-Collections (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1976). See especially, 11–16, 26–38, 56–62.
12. Constable, Letters and Letter-Collections, 31–33.
Physical Separation and Spiritual Union views of their authors or the events or feelings they relate, but it does mean they must be read as literary works, as crafted rather than the product of careless spontaneity.
Southern's objections to Vaughn's claim that Anselm was "acting out topoi," such as the reluctance for power, or in any way constructed his correspondence assume a modern, essentially romantic notion of sincerity—that artifice and formality are inherently opposed to honesty, and that individuality is valued over falling under a type. One need not appeal to Anselm's Platonism to justify his understanding and presentation of himself as and through exempla, as Vaughn does.13 That the path toward understanding of a particular is through grasping it as falling under a universal is as much Aristotelian as Platonic. Anselm did not need to consult either Aristotle or Plato to make his own actions and feelings intelligible to himself and others by fitting them into known patterns of action; it is more likely that such typological ways of thinking would have come to him as a medieval person and a Benedictine monk than through philosophy.
We can easily see that Anselm, so careful about his treatises and prayers, giving direction about how they are to be read and understood, protesting when they were wrongly or incompletely copied, is a very selfconscious author. He thinks about the impression his works will give and the way they will be interpreted by a larger public. Given the practices of the time and the fact that Anselm is so careful and self-conscious, we must assume that he thought of his letters as part of his legacy, whether he actually oversaw the full collection or collections. It is utterly consistent with this picture that Anselm, as Fröhlich puts it, "conceived his letter collection to be a work of literature forming the complementary part of his philosophical and theological writings," whose function was to "serve as a model and precedent" of public conduct, a "manual of good examples" for others to follow.14 Such a view does not entail taking the letters as a whole as a literary unit, nor the assumption that Anselm manipulated the content of any letter in any collection he might have made.
We cannot assume that the letters are a finished literary work as a whole, but we can say that they are individually more a public literary product than modern or contemporary letters. Moreover, as we shall see, there are themes which predominate in the letters, adumbrating an account of friendship and community, which gives further warrant for reading them as a group.
13. Vaughn, "Anselm: Saint and Statesman," 210–11.
14. Fröhlich, The Letters of St. Anselm, vol. 3, 6.
Physical Separation and Spiritual Union Fröhlich describes the letters as falling under three general topics: spiritual, educational and administrative, corresponding to Anselm's three roles as monk, teacher, and administrator. By Fröhlich's estimate, roughly 60 percent of the letters are addressed to monks and nuns containing spiritual advice. There are not very many letters pertinent specifically to Anselm's role as teacher, though there are some which accompanied the sending of his works and which answer questions, for example, a discussion of the problem of "nothing," a discussion of "substance" and "person" as used of the Trinity.15 His response to Roscelin on the Trinity, though not collected as one of his letters, began as a letter and as an expansion of several letters on Roscelin's views Anselm did send.16 Anselm expressed his role as teacher through his speculative writings much more than in his letters. The other major portion of the letters, most of them from Anselm's time as archbishop, have their larger significance in defining Anselm's role as defender of the church against the power of the king. The letters represent praxis to complement the theoria of Anselm's other works, his attempt to enact his vision of the real and the good.
Based on Fröhlich's division of the topics of the letters, this discussion falls into two parts, the first focusing on Anselm's letters as prior and abbot of Bec written to his fellow monks and, second, his letters as archbishop expanding the reach of and putting to work his notions of friendship and community. The bulk of my discussion is about Anselm's letters concerned with spiritual direction; the discussion of Anselm's role as teacher is taken up fully in my discussion of his speculative works. Detailed analysis of Anselm's roles in the controversies that marked his tenure as archbishop—the dispute with William II over the so-called usus atque leges (put into place in England by William the Conqueror, placing the power of the king above that of the church), the dispute with Henry I over the investiture of clerics as in the power of church or king, the reform of the English church, and the quarrel with York over Canterbury's supremacy—fall outside the scope of this study. Later letters on these topics are considered here only in so far as they shed light on and are an expansion of Anselm's notions of friendship, community and relations between the divine and secular cities.
15. Ep. 97, S III, 224–28; Ep. 204, S IV, 95–97.
16. For a discussion of Anselm's letter about Roscelin, Epistola de incarnatione Verbi, and Anselm's other letters on this topic see chapter 6.