About the Author
THE PRAYERS AND MEDITATIONS OF ST ANSELM WITH THE PROSLOGION
ADVISORY EDITOR: BETTY RADICE
ANSELM, bishop and theologian, was born at Aosta c. 1033, the son of a Lombard nobleman. After a restless youth, he entered in 1059 the monastery of Bec in Normandy, whose prior was then Lanfranc, who was to precede him in the see of Canterbury. During the next thirty years Anselm wrote several of the philosophical and theological works that have been so influential and which earned him the title of ‘the father of scholasticism’. He was elected abbot of Bec in 1078, and in 1093 King William II consented to nominate him to the archbishopric of Canterbury. Henceforth, Anselm’s public life was almost wholly conditioned by dissensions with William II and Henry I over relations between the church and the state as represented by the king. In 1097, due to William II’s determined efforts to get rid of the archbishop, Anselm went to Rome for three years; during that time he wrote Cur Deus Homo, one of the best known works on the Atonement, and attended the Council of Bari. He returned to England when Henry I came to the throne, but Henry soon claimed rights in respect of abbots and bishops that a council in Rome had been unable to recognize; Anselm was again in exile abroad from 1103 to 1107. He died in 1109 in Canterbury.
Benedicta Ward is a member of the Anglican religious community of the Sisters of the Love of God. She holds a degree in history and a D.Phil. from Oxford. Her doctoral thesis has been published as Miracles and the Medieval Mind (1982, reprinted 1987) and she is the author of several books on early monasticism, including most recently a monograph on The Venerable Bede, published in 1991. Sister Benedicta is a member of the Theology Faculty at Oxford and is also a lecturer at Manchester College.