11. To The Abbot Gerbert.
The Letters of St. Anselm and Meditations, 172: both call her Adelaide; Douglas, 380-381, also refers to a woman named Adelaide, but she was not the Conqueror's daughter but his sister.
2. Flores psalmorum = 'Flowers of the psalms'. Because this work by An selm is mentioned nowhere else, we may assume that it was a collec tion of some of the psalms and not a work he composed.
3. Orationes sive Meditationes in AOO III: 3-91, translated by B. Ward, The Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm (Penguin Classics 1973).
4. 'First meditation to stir up fear of God', in AOO III: 76-79; trans. Ward, Prayers and Meditations, 221-224.
5. 'Thirteenth Prayer to Saint Stephen', in AOO III: 50-54, Ward, Prayers and Meditations, 174-182.
6. 'Sixteenth Prayer to Mary Magdalen', in AOO III: 64-67, Ward, Prayers and Meditations, 201-206.
11. TO THE ABBOT GERBERT.
Anselm thanks Abbot Gerbert of Saint Wandrille, near Rouen, for the kindness he showed to a widow and once more intercedes for her as a friend of her late son.
TO THE LORD AND FATHER, THE VENERABLE ABBOT GERBERT1:
BROTHER ANSELM, WHO IS HIS.
JUST AS WE HAVE TO BELIEVE that where sin abounded, grace exceeded it,2 so we have to act in such a way that where misery abounds mercy may abound yet more. For if grace is spread wherever the offence is greater, how will mercy be contracted when more passion is due? Since what a man has sowed, this also will he reap,3 then, blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.4 Consequently, through this con sideration, trusting in your benevolence, I prostrate myself in spirit at the feet of your holiness, interceding for that poor widow whose soul, in the tribulation of widowhood and poverty you mercifully refreshed for God's sake when you excused her through my intercession of that little debt which the poor woman owed your eminence.
Therefore I beseech you with as many supplications as I can that you not withdraw the hand of consolation which you stretched out to her when she was so greatly pressed down by widowhood and poverty, now that her soul is