77. TO LANFRANC,: Archbishop Of Canterbury.
The Letters of St. Anselm
May the Lord direct your path in his sight,4 and having guided your heart, may the Lord grant you what your heart desires and fulfill all your mind.5 Amen. c. spring, 1077.
NOTES 1. Roger seems to have stayed on at Canterbury after Vitalis had left for Bee, see Ep 74 and Rule I: 193-4.
2. Ps 118:32.
3. Cf. Ex 23:19.
4. Ps 5:9.
5. Ps 19:5.
77. TO LANFRANC,
ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.
Anselm thanks Lanfrancfor his comments on the Monologion. Despite the pain fulness of the criticism, Anselm assures Lanfranc of his enduring filial love. He demonstrates that Lanfranc's objection that the work lacks authorities is irrele vant and again begs for Lanfranc's decision on the fate of his work.
TO HIS LORD AND FATHER, ARCHBISHOP LANFRANC, WORTHY OF
THE LOVE AND RESPECT OF THE SONS OF THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH:
BROTHER ANSELM, HIS SERVANT IN OBEDIENCE, HIS SON IN
AFFECTION, HIS DISCIPLE IN TEACHING, WISHES HIM THE BEST HE
CAN.
MY HEART GIVES BOUNDLESS THANKS to your high ness who, amid so many important duties of your dignity, neither feels annoyed at the idleness of my verbosity nor refuses to pay attention to it with paternal kindness and to correct it with kind wisdom.1 That you ask that my love for you not grow cool because of these [corrections]—since
God and his saints witness that you do this with love and indeed I myself attest to your conscientiousness in this par ticular matter. Far be it from me, therefore, to feel irritated at receiving advice which I sought from regions across the
The Letters of St. Anselm sea with keen desire and which you with sincere affection sent me. Gratefully, therefore, do I receive your paternal admonition and humbly do I offer you my answer.
With regard to the things which are mentioned in that little work and which you advise with wholesome and wise counsel should be very meticulously weighed in the balance of the mind and discussed with those learned in the holy books [of the Bible], and should be fortified by divine authority when reason fails: this I have done as well as I could, both before and after your amiable paternal admo nition. This was my intention throughout the whole dis putation, whatever its quality, that in it I should never state anything at all unless I saw that it could readily be defend ed either by canonical writings or by the words of blessed
Augustine. And now, whenever I reconsider what I said, I cannot conceive of having stated anything else myself. No reasoning of mine could convince me, however necessary it seemed, to venture to speak first about the things you included in your letter about that little work of mine, and certain other things which you did not include. For blessed
Augustine with his profound arguments so proves these same points in his book De Trinitate that, discerning the same things with my own limited reasoning, I might speak, trusting in his authority.2
I say this not to defend any of the things I said to you but to demonstrate that I did not presume to state them on my own but took them over from someone else. But what ever the situation: that work awaits your command, to be either preserved or destroyed on your authority. Certain things I said there could, however, have been better said in a different way, and they have been said so badly by me that they can more easily be understood wrongly than rightly. And just as I distrust my own lack of under standing, which I do not deny, so I trust your wisdom and I hope that these matters can be corrected. Wherefore, what you say about this little work is to be discussed with you.
The Letters of St. Anselm
may it be done according to the benevolent will of God, so that what I wish for and the other works may be granted.3 c. spring 1077.
NOTES 1. The work in question is the Monologion; see Ep 72. Anselm did not preserve Lanfranc's answer to Ep 72, to which he himself here replies; see Southern, Anselm, 51; and Introduction above.
2. Anselm insists that his work conforms to the authority of Saint Augustine and does not contain anything new or unorthodox. This point is repeated in the Preface to the Monologion: 'If it shall seem to anyone that in this short work I have set forth some doctrine which either is altogether new or else departs from the truth, then ... let him first look carefully at the books of On The Trinity by ... Augustine, and then let him judge my short work by comparison with these books.' He adds, 'I beseech and adjure anyone who wants to copy this short work to make sure to append this preface at the very front before the chapter-titles themselves. For if someone knows at the out set with what intent and in what manner the discussion has been con ducted, I believe that he will be greatly aided in understanding what he will read in the work itself.' AOO 1:8, trans. by J. Hopkins and H.W. Richardson, in Anselm of Canterbury (Toronto, 1974) 1:4.
3. For the early circulation of the Monologion, see AOO 68*-78*.