Note on the Text and Translators XXIV
NOTE ON THE TEXT AND
TRANSLATORS
This book is the first English edition of all of Anselm's major works to appear in one convenient volume. In compiling it we invited several skilled Latinists to submit translations of various texts. The translators were given a relatively free hand, on the principle that we wanted renderings which were responsive to Anselm's qualities as a stylist and thinker and as unconstrained as possible by the imposition of a list of standard renderings. For, despite Anselm's own consistency of thought and usage, there are real difficulties with any attempt to translate the same word in the same way on every page.
In the treatises he grouped together early in his career, on the study of Holy Scripture, ratio may often naturally be rendered as 'reason' in English. But in Why God Became Man the word ratio may more appropriately become 'logic'. Another term which presents huge difficulties is :ustitia. It means both 'righteousness' and 'justice' and the play of that double meaning in the Vulgate translation of the Bible was of endless importance in Anselm's own thinking.
Thinking of the age of Anselm, at no period of the development of Latin as a living language perhaps was there so strong an awareness of the equivocal character of many terms and the multiplicity of usus loquendi or 'ways of speaking'. To insist on one English word rather than the other at every point seemed to us to be a mistake. It would be to go back to a method of translation de verbo ad verbum, word for word, which turned out to have many disadvantages in the period shortly after Anselm's lifetime when scholars in the West set about bringing translations of Aristotle's writings into use in the schools. So we have encouraged our translators to follow their instincts and have sought to impose as light an editorial hand as possible.
All translations except that of the Philosophical Fragments are made from the edition by F S. Schmitt, Anselmi Opera Omnia (6 vols., Rome and Edinburgh, 1936-68). The translation frodm the Philosophical Fragments comes from R. W. Southern and FE. S.
Schmitt, Memorials of St Anselm (London, 1969).
Note on the Text and Translators XXV The Translators Simon Harrison: Letter to Archbishop Lanfranc; Monologion; M. J.
Charlesworth: Proslogion, Pro Insipiente (On Behalf of the Fool), by Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, Reply to Gaunilo; D. P. Henry: De Grammatico (Dialogue on Literacy and the Literate), Philosophical Fragments; Ralph McInerny: On Truth, On Free Will, On the Fall of the Devil; Richard Regan: On the Incarnation of the Word, On the Procession of the Holy Spirit; Janet Fairweather: Why God Became Man;
Camilla McNab: On the Virgin Conception and Original Sin; Thomas Bermingham: De Concordia (The Compatibility of God's Foreknowledge, Predestination, and Grace with Human Freedom).