58. To Prior Henry.
The Letters of St. Anselm
58. TO PRIOR HENRY.
Anselm thanks Prior Henry of Christ Church, Canterbury, for his gift of money but much more for his care and love for Maurice; the prior of Bee promises to return this care and love to Salvius and begs for Osbem's pardon.
TO HIS REVEREND LORD AND FELLOW-BROTHER, DOM PRIOR
HENRY': BROTHER ANSELM SENDS GREETING.
I WRITE YOU MY GREAT THANKS for the gold you sent, but I hold even greater thanks in my heart for the goodwill you have maintained towards me. This I daily experience much more deeply and more dearly in my beloved, our com mon brother Maurice, than in thousands of pieces of gold or silver.2 For I hear from those coming from him that you treat him with such great honor and love that it appears you love me, his loving friend, not a little.
I read the letter you sent to your dearest son, our brother Salvius. In it you so kindly expressed your love for him and bestowed so much more notice on me than I deserve that I turned my mind to the great supplication wisely hidden and secretly prudent therein—so much that I, whom you describe this way as kind to others, am willing to take him whom you so love into my care and affection. And let it come about because you wish it thus. Because I love him for God's sake and his own sake and because he avows that he is a friend of Dom Gundulf, may my love grow even greater because he is loved by Dom Prior Henry.
In that very letter I found a pardon for some fault grant ed with that same spontaneous kindness to your beloved and mine. Since your humble servant, our brother Osbern,3 knowing that like him he sinned not through pride but through ignorance, does not feel he has been forgiven, I perceive that he is sorry for his fault and anxious for pardon.
I pray, therefore, that what you praise in me you show in yourself together with me. Insofar as you suffer with me in your righteous heart over his affliction, forgive Osbern if he sinned against you in anything for the sake of your