83. To Abbot Rainald.
The Letters of St. Anselm
NOTES 1. Countess Ida of Boulogne received several letters from Anselm: Epp 114, 131, 167, 244, 247. She was the sister of Godfrey, duke of Lor raine. Her uncle Frederick, who was a monk, was called to Rome by Pope Leo IX to assist in church reforms, became abbot of Montecassino and finally Pope Stephen IX from 2 August 1057-29 March 1058; see also Ep 325. Ida was the second wife of Count Eustace II of Boulogne and brought him the county of Bouillon. They had three sons: Eustace III inherited Boulogne and his father's English honors;
Godfrey and Baldwin were leaders in the first Crusade. Baldwin even tually became first king of Jerusalem from 24 December 1100-2 April
1118; see Epp 235, 324. See also J.C. Andressohn, The Ancestry and Life of Godfrey of Bouillon (Bloomington, Indiana, 1947) 10, 19; F. Barlow,
Edward the Confessor (London, 1970) 307-8; J.F.A. Mason, 'St Anselm's Relations with Laymen: Selected Letters', in Spicilegium Beccense (Paris,
1959) 556-559.
2. Cf. Gal 6:9.
83. TO ABBOT RAINALD.
As requested, Anselm sends Abbot Reginald of Saint Cyprian of Poitiers his Monologion, but fears that critics might unjustly label him a heretic. Follow ing Saint Augustine, Anselm has already successfully refuted some of his critics and warns Reginald not to spread his work to prattlers; if there should be any serious criticism, however, he is to inform him by letter.
TO HIS LORD AND REVEREND FATHER, ABBOT RAINALD1: BROTHER
ANSELM SENDS GREETING.
THIS LITTLE WORK2 which from so great a distance you so earnestly ask of me, I would never send to you if I were able to disobey your will. I fear it may fall into the hands of people who are more interested in criticizing what they hear than in understanding it, who, if they chance to read in it something they had not heard or noticed before, would immediately cry that I had written something unheard-of or contrary to the truth. Since, being so far away, I would be unable to reply to them, they would not only consider themselves to be serving the truth by denying it, but would persuade others that I am a champion of untruth, and these would believe them blindly before they hear what they are censuring.
The Letters of St. Anselm I have already suffered not a little from such hasty criti cism because of what I said, following blessed Augustine, about the persons and substance of God. They now realize that they criticized rashly and in the event are glad to know something they were not previously aware of.3 They did not know that, strictly speaking, it cannot be said that in God there are three persons any more than that there are three substances; for the same reason, for want of a word literally expressing that plurality which is understood in the Most Holy Trinity, the Latins say that we must believe that there are three persons in one substance, whereas the Greeks, no less faithfully, hold that there are three sub stances in one person.4
Wherefore, I urgently entreat your holiness to show this little work not to people who are prattlers or contentious but instead to those who are sensible and discreet. If any one should happen to criticize anything in it in such a way that you consider his reasoning worthy of being answered,
I beg you to inform me charitably by letter, yours or his, of the reason by which he sustains his criticism. Thus, hav ing preserved both the peace of charity and the love of truth either I may be corrected by his criticism or he by my reply. c. 1078.
NOTES 1. Reginald, one of the first readers of Anselm's Monologion, was abbot of Saint Cyprian in Poitiers from 4 November 1073-23 May 1100. Previ ously he had been master of a famous school at the monastery of La
Chaise-Dieu, and monk and prior there; see Epp 70, 71 and his epitaph in L.F.X. Redet, Archives historiques du Poitou III (Poitiers, 1874).
2. The Tittle work' in question is the Monologion; see Ep 72.
3. It is quite likely that Anselm is referring to Lanfranc's criticism of Monologion; see Ep 77.
4. This is Anselm's basic argument for the sermon he gave at the invi tation of Pope Urban II at the Synod of Bari on 1 October 1098 to con firm the filioque in the Creed. Eventually he developed it into De processione Spiritus Sancti, AOO 11:177-219; see W. Frohlich, 'Bischof
Walram von Naumburg', AA 5 (1976) 272-74.