90. TO LANFRANC,: Archbishop Of Canterbury.
The Letters of St. Anselm
90. TO LANFRANC,
ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.
Anselm expresses his gratitude for Archbishop Lanfranc's help in their great need, sends monks to Canterbury as requested, and confesses that he has mean while used for urgent needs the gold sent to be made into a chalice.
TO HIS REVEREND LORD AND MOST GRACIOUS FATHER,
ARCHBISHOP LANFRANC: BROTHER ANSELM WITH HIS
CO-SERVANTS AND FELLOW-MONKS, THE BROTHERS OF THE
MONASTERY OF BEC, WISHING WHAT IS THEIRS.
IN THIS DOCUMENT we send great thanks for your great and repeated generosity and we keep great thanks in our hearts for your great and constant goodwill. Your abun dance is by God's bounty so great that no matter how often you supply our need it cannot in any way decrease. In any case, your goodwill is so great that your abundance could more quickly dry up than your goodwill diminish. May
God, who caused you to will and to act according to his goodwill,1 preserve both these qualities. We choose him to recompense your holiness for bestowing so many things on us, indeed, for giving us financial help we offer him as debtor and sponsor on our behalf. In the security of know ing that you will receive a thousandfold, continue giving joyfully, therefore, as you have begun well for we neither want, nor is our guarantor able, to deceive either you or us.
We send your servants and sons, our brothers,2 to fol low in your footsteps, and just as they go at your command so we have told them either to stay or return or do any thing at all according to your disposition.
Your son, whom they call the abbot of Bee,3 has borrowed from your servant, brother Anselm, the gold you sent for a chalice. The latter did not have anyone to make the chalice and the former meanwhile needed the gold. But according to our agreement the gold will be returned, formed into a chalice, and in the form you most like for a chalice. In the meantime however, your servant will use the chalice4 which
The Letters of St. Anselm
you used as Prior of Bee, and had given to your successor as prior.5 Indeed you should know that the latter would never have consigned the gold except with your sanction.
Since you commanded, you sanctioned. It is obvious enough to anyone who wants to see that the son, except under the sanction of the father and lord, cannot deceive the servant. c. 1080.
NOTES 1. Cf. Phil 2:13.
2. At the request of Richard and Rohais of Clare, Anselm is sending monks of Bee to England to form the nucleus of what later became the Priory of Saint Neots in Huntingdonshire. The small group of monks numbered Richard, Henry the cellarer, Henry de Gournay and others; see Ep 96 and M. Chibnall, 'The Relations of St Anselm with the English Dependencies of the Abbey of Bee 1079-1093', in Spicilegium Beccense I (Paris, 1959) 525-526, and M. Chibnall, 'Some Aspects of the Norman Monastic Plantation in England', La Normandie Benedic tine (Lille, 1967) 399-415, here 405. Anselm recommended these monks to Archbishop Lanfranc, to Bishop Gundulf (Ep 91), to Abbot Bald win of Bury St Edmunds (Ep 92), and to Prior Henry at Christ Church,
Canterbury (Ep 93).
3. Anselm is speaking of himself.
4. See Ep 1.
5. Prior Anselm.