57. TO LANFRANC,: Archbishop Of Canterbury.
The Letters of St. Anselm
57. TO LANFRANC,
ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.
Anselm expresses his filial love for Lanfranc but also grumbles about his lack of response.
TO HIS LORD AND FATHER, THE REVEREND ARCHBISHOP
LANFRANC: BROTHER ANSELM, IN EVERYTHING TOTALLY HIS.
AS THE PROPHET ZECHARIAH REPEATS in almost ev ery verse, in recommending the authority of his prophecy, thus said the Lordp so, to make clear who is speaking to whom and in what frame of mind, it pleases me that the letters I send to your paternal highness so often bear at thenhead the inscription 'lord and father' and 'in everything to tally his'. For I do not say that I know how to produce an exact likeness but I have engraved a cypress tree2 on my mind so that whatever I propose in our opening greeting may appear expressed in the finished product. Since there fore, I so often write to you with this address, asking I com plain, and complaining I inquire, why you never write back to me, but write to some 'lord and father' of yours, [whom]
I do not know, identified by just his first initial. But if you write to your servant and son, why do you try to turn up side down, by relative opposition, what you cannot destroy by opposite negation?3 Therefore I pray that whenever I receive a letter from your grace I may either see to whom you are writing or not see to whom you are not writing. c. 1075-1078.
NOTES 1. Zech 1:3.
2. Anselm shows his classical background by quoting Horace, Ars Poetica 11. 19-21: '.. .et fortasse cupressum scis simulare'.
3. See AOO 111:172.