Anselm of Canterbury: Nature, Order and the Divine 9004716297, 9789004716292

Table of contents :
Front Cover
‎Half-Title Page
‎Series Title Page
‎Title Page
‎Copyright Page
‎Contents
‎Preface and Acknowledgements
‎Abbreviations
‎Notes on Contributors
‎Editors’ Note
‎Introduction (Logan)
‎Part 1. Monologion and Proslogion
‎Chapter 1. Place (Locus) in Anselm’s Metaphysics and the Multilocality of Angels (Kunitz-Dick)
‎Chapter 2. Does Anselm Define God? (Scherb)
‎Chapter 3. Divine Order—Created Order (Demetracopoulos)
‎Chapter 4. The Teaching of the Trivium at Bec and Its Bearing on Anselm’s Programme of Fides Quaerens Intellectum (Archambault)
‎Chapter 5. Anselm’s Faith as Orientation, Criterion and Promotion of Philosophical Inquiry (Di Ceglie)
‎Chapter 6. An Anselmian Cosmological Proof of the Existence of God (Campbell)
‎Chapter 7. Denying the Divine (Logan)
‎Chapter 8. The Role of Spiritual Senses in the Argument of the Proslogion (Vendsel)
‎Part 2. The Three Early Dialogues, De Grammatico and De Concordia
‎Chapter 9. Free Will and Grace (Colish)
‎Chapter 10. What Justice Owes to Knowledge (Brouwer)
‎Chapter 11. Anselm on Truth as Free (Brown)
‎Chapter 12. Similis Deo or Cum Deo Esse? (Göbel)
‎Chapter 13. Nec Plus Nec Minus (Fedriga and Limonta)
‎Chapter 14. On Truth, Sight and Zoology (Farrant)
‎Part 3. Cur Deus Homo
‎Chapter 15. Anselm on Justice, Nature and Reason (van Vreeswijk)
‎Chapter 16. Cur Mundi Renovatio (Xavier)
‎Chapter 17. Conversatio angelorum (Cresswell)
‎Chapter 18. Did Anselm Also Compose the Cur Deus Homo with Invisible Muslim Interlocutors in Mind? (de Gaal)
‎Part 4. Eadmer and Epistolae
‎Chapter 19. Monks and Milites (Forbes)
‎Chapter 20. The Death of Anselm (Hargreaves)
‎Part 5. Addendum
‎Chapter 21. Anselm and John Gualbert’s Prayers for Enemies (Yamazaki)
‎Index
Back Cover

Citation preview

Anselm of Canterbury

Anselm Studies and Texts Managing Editor Giles E.M. Gasper (University of Durham)

Editorial Board Marcia Colish (†) (Yale University) Jay Diehl (Long Island University) Bernd Goebel (Fulda Faculty of Theology) Ian Logan (University of Oxford) Lauren Mancia (Brooklyn College, cuny) Eileen C. Sweeney (Boston College)

volume 8

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/as

Anselm of Canterbury Nature, Order and the Divine

Edited by

Ian Logan Alastair R.E. Forbes

leiden | boston

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Logan, Ian, 1950- editor. | Forbes, Alastair R. E., editor. Title: Anselm of Canterbury : nature, order and the divine / edited by Ian Logan, Alastair R.E. Forbes. Other titles: Anselm studies and texts ; 8. Description: Boston : Brill, 2025. | Series: Anselm studies and texts, 2468-4333 ; 8 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2024055280 (print) | lccn 2024055281 (ebook) | isbn 9789004716292 (hardback) | isbn 9789004716308 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Anselm, Saint, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1033-1109–Criticism and interpretation. | Theology, Doctrinal–History–Middle Ages, 600-1500. Classification: lcc BR754.A56 A555 2025 (print) | lcc BR754.A56 (ebook) | ddc 189/.4–dc23/eng/20241209 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024055280 lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024055281

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface. issn 2468-4333 isbn 978-90-04-71629-2 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-71630-8 (e-book) doi 10.1163/9789004716308 Copyright 2025 by Ian Logan and Alastair R.E. Forbes. Published by Koninklijke Brill bv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill bv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Brill Wageningen Academic, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau and V&R unipress. Koninklijke Brill bv reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill bv via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Professor Richard Campbell (1939–2022) and Professor Marcia L. Colish (1937–2024) In Memoriam

∵

Contents Preface and Acknowledgements xi Abbreviations xii Notes on Contributors xiii Editors’ Note xvii Introduction 1 Ian Logan

part 1 Monologion and Proslogion 1

Place (Locus) in Anselm’s Metaphysics and the Multilocality of Angels 21 Alisa Kunitz-Dick

2

Does Anselm Define God? 39 Jürgen Ludwig Scherb

3

Divine Order—Created Order The Inapplicability of Aristotle’s Categories to God in Anselm’s Monologion and Proslogion 55 John A. Demetracopoulos

4

The Teaching of the Trivium at Bec and Its Bearing on Anselm’s Programme of Fides Quaerens Intellectum 88 Jacob Archambault

5

Anselm’s Faith as Orientation, Criterion and Promotion of Philosophical Inquiry 111 Roberto Di Ceglie

6

An Anselmian Cosmological Proof of the Existence of God Richard Campbell

135

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7

Denying the Divine Anselm and Atheism 167 Ian Logan

8

The Role of Spiritual Senses in the Argument of the Proslogion Michael Vendsel

193

part 2 The Three Early Dialogues, De Grammatico and De Concordia 9

Free Will and Grace Method and Model in Anselm’s De Concordia Marcia L. Colish

217

10

What Justice Owes to Knowledge A Study in Anselm’s Ethics 232 Christian Brouwer

11

Anselm on Truth as Free Montague Brown

12

Similis Deo or Cum Deo Esse? On Happiness and the Convergence of Proto-Kantian and Aristotelian (as well as Augustinian) Motives in Anselm’s Analysis of Moral Choice 265 Christian Göbel

13

Nec Plus Nec Minus The Ethics of Language in Anselm’s Work and Letters 288 Riccardo Fedriga and Roberto Limonta

14

On Truth, Sight and Zoology Reading Alexander Neckam’s De naturis rerum through the Anselmian Lens of Truth 301 Timothy Farrant

249

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part 3 Cur Deus Homo 15

Anselm on Justice, Nature and Reason Roman Sources for Cur Deus Homo 331 Bernard van Vreeswijk

16

Cur Mundi Renovatio Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo Revisited Maria Leonor Xavier

348

17

Conversatio angelorum The Monk’s Angelic Vocation and the Order of Redemption 362 Rachel Cresswell

18

Did Anselm Also Compose the Cur Deus Homo with Invisible Muslim Interlocutors in Mind? 381 Emery de Gaal

part 4 Eadmer and Epistolae 19

Monks and Milites Order in Anselm’s Court Analogy 403 Alastair R.E. Forbes

20

The Death of Anselm 429 Barbara Hargreaves

part 5 Addendum 21

Anselm and John Gualbert’s Prayers for Enemies 451 Hiroko Yamazaki Index

457

Preface and Acknowledgements This volume, Anselm of Canterbury: Nature, Order and the Divine, originates in papers presented at the conference of the same name held at St Chad’s College, Durham University, and Ushaw College, Durham, in July 2019 under the aegis of the International Association for Anselm Studies and the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, in association with the Durham Centre for Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. The theme of the conference and of this book is the working out in Anselm’s thought of certain underlying structural or organising features, all of which were profoundly affected by the early medieval Catholic world-view and its socio-political context. In particular, the volume addresses: – Anselm’s understanding of the natural, created world; – his sense of the order that permeates all aspects of reality, created and divine, ethical and social; and – his engagement practically and theoretically, intellectually and spiritually with the God of Christian faith. The investigations that follow make important and insightful contributions to understanding how this relationship between nature, order and the divine is articulated in and beyond Anselm’s thought. The editors are especially grateful to Professor Giles E.M. Gasper of Durham University for his leading role in organising this event.

Abbreviations Anselm’s Works (and the Pro Insipiente) cdh dc dcd dcv dg div dla dpss dv E M om P pi R

Cur Deus Homo De Concordia De Casu Diaboli De Conceptu Virginali De Grammatico (Epistola) De Incarnatione Verbi De Libertate Arbitrii De Processione Spiritus Sancti De Veritate Epistolae (Numbers reference those given in aoo.) Monologion Orationes sive Meditationes Proslogion Pro Insipiente Responsio

Other Abbreviations aoo

S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961); reprinted in two volumes with an additional ‘Prolegomena’ (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968). cc cm Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis cc sl Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina csel Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum pl Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina, Jacques-Paul Migne, ed., vols. 1– 221 (Paris, 1844–1865). va Eadmer of Canterbury, Vita Sancti Anselmi, Richard William Southern, ed., The Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962).

Notes on Contributors Jacob Archambault holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Doctoral Certificate in Medieval Studies from Fordham University. His main research focuses on formal consequence and its development in medieval logic. He currently works as a software engineer in Louisville, KY, USA. For further information on Jacob’s research, visit https://​ jacobarchambault.com. Christian Brouwer Ph.D. (2000), is Professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Philosophy and Social Sciences Faculty. Besides several studies on Anselm, he co-edited with Odile Gilon, Liberté au moyen âge, (Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2017, Annales de l’institut de philosophie de l’université de Bruxelles). Montague Brown is Professor of Philosophy at Saint Anselm College, Director of the Institute for Saint Anselm Studies, and Editor of The Saint Anselm Journal. He is author of Freedom, Philosophy, and Faith: The Transformative Role of Judeo-Christian Freedom in Western Thought and Reason, Revelation and Metaphysics: The Transcendental Analogies. Richard Campbell DPhil (Oxford), was Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at The Australian National University. He was author of From Belief to Understanding (anu, 1976), Rethinking Anselm’s Arguments (Brill, 2018) and A Cosmological Reformulation of Anselm’s Proof That God Exists (Brill, 2022) Marcia L. Colish Ph.D. (Yale), was Frederick B. Artz Emerita Professor of History at Oberlin College and author of The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge (1968), The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Brill, 1985) and Peter Lombard (Brill, 1994). Rachel Cresswell completed her DPhil in Theology in 2020 at the University of Oxford, where she is currently Departmental Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History at the Faculty of Theology and Religion. She has published on Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas and medieval theories of atonement.

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notes on contributors

John A. Demetracopoulos Ph.D. (2001), is Professor of Byzantine and Scholastic Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Patras, Greece. He is the director of the Linos Benakis Centre for Greek and Latin Philosophical Literature, where he mainly runs the Thomas de Aquino Byzantinus project. Fr. Emery de Gaál Ph.D., is Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary, Illinois, USA. He has authored, i.a., The Art of Equanimity: A Study on the Theological Hermeneutics of St. Anselm of Canterbury (2002) and O Lord, I seek Your Countenance. Explorations and Discoveries in Pope Benedict xvi’s Theology (2018). Roberto Di Ceglie Ph.D. (2003 and 2020), is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Pontifical Lateran University (Vatican City). He is author of Aquinas on Faith, Reason, and Charity (Routledge 2022) and God, the Good, and the Spiritual Turn in Epistemology (Cambridge University Press 2023). Timothy Farrant completed his DPhil in Theology & Religion at Pembroke College, Oxford. He has interests in medieval cultural history, historical theology, and practical theology. He has recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the States and is currently working on a monograph for Durham University imems Press. Riccardo Fedriga is Professor of History of Ideas at the University of Bologna. He has published several articles and books on epistemology, philosophy of mind and action in medieval thought, including Safeguarding Free Will: William Ockham, Walter Chatton, and Richard Kilvington on the Will (2022) and Willing and Understanding, with Monika Michalowska (Brill, 2023), Alastair R.E. Forbes is a Ph.D. researcher in the Department of History at Durham University. His research focusses on the presentation of knighthood and social order within monastic thought and texts in the years c. 1050–1150. Christian Göbel Ph.D. (Phil.), Ph.D. (Theol.), is Professor of Philosophy at Assumption University in Worcester, MA (usa). He has written and edited nine books and

notes on contributors

xv

numerous articles on a wide range of topics in philosophy and theology, including (in German) Philosophy and Ecumenism: Anselm of Canterbury and the Logic of Christianity (Munich: Utz, 2015). Barbara Hargreaves Ph.D. in History at Durham University (2021), is a registered nurse and midwife. Alisa Kunitz-Dick (Ph.D., Cantab, 2013), is an independent scholar and teachers in the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge. She specialises in early medieval metaphysics and is the author of numerous articles and book chapters, including in Ibn Gabirol (Avicebron): Latin and Hebrew Philosophical Traditions (Brepols, 2023). Roberto Limonta is a Ph.D. student at the University of Salerno and a Non-Stipendiary Subject Expert in Medieval Philosophy at the University of Parma. He is the editor of Pier Damiani, Sull’onnipotenza divina (Milan 2020) and author of Il demone sottile. Scienza e mito dell’intelligenza diabolica (Milan 2023). Ian Logan Ph.D. (1987), is Senior Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall and the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. He is author of Reading Anselm’s Proslogion: The History of Anselm’s Argument and Its Significance Today (Ashgate, 2009; Routledge, 2016) and a contributor to S. Bullivant & M. Ruse (eds.), The Cambridge History of Atheism (cup, 2021). Jürgen Ludwig Scherb Ph.D., taught Philosophy at the University of Munich from 2000–2012. He currently teaches Catholic Religion and Philosophy at the European School of Munich. He is the author of Anselms philosophische Theologie (Kohlhammer, 2000). Michael Vendsel Ph.D. (2014), teaches Humane Letters at Great Hearts Academy and serves as an adjunct professor of philosophy for Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, Texas.

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Bernard J.D. van Vreeswijk Ph.D. (2022), is minister of the Protestantse Kerk in Nederland in The Hague. He has written his Ph.D. thesis (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and several articles on Anselm and his concepts of justice and satisfaction. Maria Leonor Xavier Ph.D. (1994), is Senior Associate Professor at the School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon. She is author of: Three Questions on God (lap, 2016); “The Presence of Saint Anselm in André do Prado’s Horologium Fidei.” The Saint Anselm Journal v.17, n. 2 (2022), 87–102. Hiroko Yamazaki Ph.D., is Professor Emerita of Bunkyo University (Tokyo) since 2023. Her publications include ‘The Cyclic Structure of St. Anselm’s Prayer to Mary’, Catholic Studies, No. 84 (the Theological Society of Sophia University, Tokyo, 2015) and ‘Anselm and the Problem of Evil’, Anselm Studies, vol. 2 (Kraus International Publications, 1988).

Editors’ Note Schmitt’s edition of Anselm’s Opera Omnia (aoo) is the text that we use to reference citations from Anselm’s works, giving volume, page and line numbers. The text of Anselm’s non-epistolary writings, which comprises the first two volumes of aoo and part of the third, is rightly based on the edition contained in Oxford Ms Bodley 271, written at Christ Church, Canterbury, around or just after the time of Anselm’s death in 1109.1 In this manuscript, as in all the extant manuscripts bar two (Douai, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms 354, and Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms 539 [A. 366]), the author of the Pro Insipiente (pi) remains anonymous. Schmitt, whilst retaining the anonymous title, choses to follow the Maurist Dom Gerberon’s 1675 edition of Anselm’s writings in referring to Gaunilonis Pro Insipiente in the title at the top of pages aoo, i:127 & 129. This identification of the author of pi with a certain Gaunilo of Marmoutier (who in turn is to be identified with Guanilon [sic] of Marmoutier, comte de Montigni2) was not established by rigorous philological and codicological analysis, but by repetition of the Maurist account, and remains open to dispute.3 Nevertheless, the modern convention is to refer to the author as Gaunilo [sic], so the editors have chosen to retain this name as a placeholder for that of the author, except with reference to the title given to pi itself.

1 Ian Logan, ‘Ms. Bodley 271: Establishing the Anselmian Canon?’, The Saint Anselm Journal, 2.1 (Fall 2004), pp. 67–80. 2 See Edmond Martène, Mémoires De La Société Archéologique De Touraine, Tomes xxiv–xxv, Histoire De L’abbaye De Marmoutier, Tomes i–ii, Casimir Chevalier, ed. (Tours: GuillandVerger/Georget-Joubert, 1874–1875), Tome 1, pp. 363–365. Although written in the first decade of the eighteenth century, this work was not published until the 1870s. 3 On the weakness of the case for Gaunilo, see Konrad Goehl and Johannes Mayer, ‘Deus in cogitatione existens: Der Appendix zum “Proslogion” des Anselm von Canterbury—oder: Kann Gaunilos Nicht-Sein gedacht werden?’ in Konrad Goehl and Johannes Gottfried Mayer, eds., Editionen und Studien zur lateinischen und deutschen Fachprosa des Mittelalters: Festgabe für Gundolf Keil (Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen und Neumann, 2000), pp. 339–354. Note also the argument that Ralph of Battle was the author of pi, in Bernd Goebel and Christian Tapp, ‘Der kosmologische Gottesbeweis des Ralph von Battle. Rekonstruktion, Kritik und Einordnung’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 104 (2022), pp. 509–538, esp. pp. 531–536.

Introduction Ian Logan

The contributions in this volume arise out of the Conference, ‘Anselm of Canterbury: Nature, Order and the Divine’, held at Durham University in 2019. The chapters exhibit the diverse nature of the approaches taken to the study of Anselm’s life, thought and influence by philosophers, theologians and historians, and are grouped into four parts plus an addendum according to the Anselmian works on which they are primarily focussed. Before proceeding in this introduction to a consideration of the individual chapters, I will first say something about Anselm’s usage of the terms, nature, order and the divine and how they relate to his understanding of the world. The most influential of Anselm’s writings amongst philosophers are the Monologion (M) and Proslogion (P) (see Part i). Almost as important are the De Libertate Arbitrii (dla), De Veritate (dv) and De Casu Diaboli (dcd), as well as De Grammatico (dg) and De Concordia (dc) (see Part ii). For theologians, in addition, the focus remains primarily on Cur Deus Homo (cdh) (see Part iii), in spite of the importance of De Incarnatione Verbi (div), De Conceptu Virginali, (dcv) and De Processione Spiritus Sanci (dpss). For historians, Eadmer’s Vita Anselmi (va) and the Epistolae (E) (see Part iv) are also of major significance for understanding Anselm’s life and monastic, ecclesiastical and political relations. Other important sources are the Orationes sive Meditationes (om) (see the Addendum), Eadmer’s Historia Novorum and the various texts brought together in Southern and Schmitt’s Memorials of St. Anselm, including the De humanis moribus (or De similitudinibus), the Dicta Anselmi et quaedam miracula, the De beatitudine perennis vitae and the Philosophical Fragments.1 Given the care Anselm took to ensure that his ‘published’ works reflected his finished position, we should treat with caution any writings that he did not ‘publish’ himself.2 Nonetheless, these works give us a clear impression of the effect that Anselm’s words and deeds had on those closest to him. Language concerning God and the divine is pervasive throughout Anselm’s writings, except dg, in which it does not appear at all. The terms ‘nature’ and ‘order’, though less frequent are important nonetheless, forming part of 1 Richard William Southern and Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, eds., Memorials of St. Anselm (London: oup for the British Academy, 1969). 2 See Richard Sharpe, ‘Anselm as Author: Publishing in the Late Eleventh Century’, The Journal of Medieval Latin, 19 (2009), pp. 1–87.

© Ian Logan, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_002

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the intellectual and linguistic ‘scaffolding’ within which Anselm constructs his philosophical, theological, pastoral and spiritual writings. Thus, Anselm puts the term ‘nature’ to many uses, whether referencing the essential characteristics of God, man or the created world, whilst his use of the term ‘order’ reflects his pastoral role in maintaining a social and spiritual harmony. Both nature and order point to the divine origin and end of human existence. The terms ‘natura’, ‘ordo’ and ‘divinitas’ are distinguished by their respective clusterings in the tractates, letters and prayers. ‘Natura’ and its cognates occur 380 times in the tractates, most frequently in the M—130 times, cdh— 75 times, and div—44 times, but only 16 times in the letters and 15 times in the much briefer om. ‘Ordo’ and its cognates, on the other hand, occur only 29 times in the tractates (of which 16 occurrences are in cdh), but 124 times in the letters, and 4 times in om. The term ‘divinitas’ and its cognates occur evenly in both tractates and letters, 88 and 81 times respectively, but only twice in om. They occur most frequently in cdh—25 times; dpss—13 times; and div—13 times, and not at all in dg. However, ‘deus’ and ‘deitas’ and their cognates occur 1693 times in the tractates, 1546 times in the letters and 322 times in om. The three works in which ‘deus’ and its cognates occur most frequently are again: cdh—500 times; dpss—377 times; div—212 times.3 The relative paucity of references to ‘deus’ and ‘deitas’ in M (only 11 references in all) is due to Anselm’s decision in that work to proceed sola ratione, avoiding appeals to Scripture.4 In the much briefer P, we find 74 references to ‘deus’ and ‘deitas’.5 The following table presents this word frequency data in the context of the totality of Anselm’s ‘published’ writings. table 1

Word frequency

Tractates6 Nature Order

380 29

om 15 4

Letters7

Totals

16 124

411 157

3 Note that trinitarian terminology (Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, etc.) is not included here. 4 See M1 (aoo, i.13.11): ‘sola ratione persuadere’; and MPreface (aoo, i.7.7–8): ‘quatenus auctoritate scripturae penitus nihil in ea persuaderetur’. 5 The total word count for each of the works mentioned here is approximately as follows: cdh—23,700 words; M—22,200 words, dpss—14,000 words; div—8,000 words; P—6,500 words; dg—6,000 words. 6 Excluding the Pro Insipiente and div prior recensio. 7 Sent, not received, by Anselm.

3

introduction table 1

Word frequency (cont.)

Tractates Divinity God/Deity Column Totals aoo Totals8

1

88 1693 2190 132500

om

Letters

Totals

2 81 171 322 1546 3561 343 1767 4300 24200 109000 265700

Anselm’s World: The Nexus of Nature, Order and the Divine

The structure of Anselm’s world is characterised by hierarchies. Everything has a place above, alongside or below other things. It is a world in which right order and true order are constituted as manifestations and vestiges of a divine order that proceeds from the divine nature, expressed in a created order with its hierarchy of natures, substances, functions, properties and roles. This order appears to be stable and fixed, like that of Aristotle, so that it can be divided and defined, and the natures and essences of things determined according to the method of Porphyry’s Isagoge and Boethius’De Divisione. It is because nature is so ordered that the human intellect can investigate it and its Creator. In the created order men are below angels, but God can disrupt hierarchies, placing what is lower above what was previously higher. In the case of human and angelic natures, the presence of rationality, a characteristic (or, in Aristotelian terms, a specific difference) shared by both, has left open a space for freedom and the possibility of self-interested choices, which can disrupt and have, in fact, already disrupted the created order. The universe has become disordered as a result of the actions of angels and humans. In spite of the greatness of his God, Anselm’s universe appears restricted, when compared with that of a later Augustinian, Blaise Pascal, who understands the universe in terms of two infinities—one great and one small—both of which are outside of man’s grasp.9 Such an understanding follows on from the post-medieval scientific and technological advances associated with the invention of the telescope and of the microscope, the heliocentric account of

8 aoo Totals include stopwords—est, et, quod, non, etc. 9 See Pascal, Pensées, 230 H9—‘Disproportion de l’homme’ in Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Philippe Sellier, ed. (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2011), pp. 260–269.

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the solar system, the development of the experimental method and the development of mathematical accounts of the universe.10 Whilst for Pascal the universe stretches well beyond our ability to understand it,11 for Anselm there is an ordered universe which matches in intelligibility the level of our understanding. For Anselm, being ‘greater than can be thought’ is a unique attribute of God, not of the universe.12 God’s greatness (magnitudo) is distinct from and superior to physical greatness,13 and on that basis his notion of ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’ is to be distinguished from that of Seneca, for whom it describes the magnitude of the world.14 Anselm’s universe is characterised in terms of the graspable relationship of microcosm and macrocosm and not of ungraspable infinities. Anselm adheres, if indirectly, to the ancient geocentric descriptions of the universe, and is influenced by the accounts of Plato’s Timaeus as interpreted by Calcidius, Macrobius’ commentary on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis and Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book iii, 9, which also appeals explicitly to Plato’s Timaeus.15 This highly-ordered universe with the earth at its centre is constrained by the uniform and eccentric circular motion and epicycles of the planets and spheres, in which nature is neatly contained and the natural sciences have a real, but limited, role. In E42, written to the monk, Maurice, Anselm requests a good copy of Bede’s De temporibus to be used in correcting the edition(s) held at Bec, indicating perhaps a wider interest in Bede’s cosmology. However, for Bede ‘observing the true order of time was a matter of faith and devotion to God’.16 Here the order of the universe determines the litur10

11

12 13 14 15

16

This fundamental shift, metaphysical as well as mathematical and scientific, is described in some detail in Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957). Anselm exhibits no awareness of the contemporaneous discussions concerning the astrolabe in works such as the De Mensura Astrolabii of Hermannus Contractus (of Reichenau). Pascal, Pensées, 220, p. 255: ‘La dernière démarche de la raison est de reconnaître qu’il y a une infinité de choses qui la surpassent. Elle n’est que faible si elle ne va jusqu’à connaître cela. Que si les choses naturelles la surpassent, que dira-t-on des surnaturelles?’ Cf. P15 (aoo, i.112.14–15): ‘es quiddam maius quam cogitari possit’. M2 (aoo, i.15.19–20): ‘Dico autem non magnum spatio, ut est corpus aliquod; sed quod quanto maius tanto melius est aut dignius, ut est sapientia’. See below the discussions in Di Ceglie, Archambault and Logan. Calcidius and Macrobius are present in the 12th century catalogue from Bec. See Gustav Becker, Catalogi Bibliothecarum Antiqui (Bonn: Max Cohen et filium, 1885), p. 266, item 158, and Henri Omont, Catalogue Général des Manuscripts des Bibliothèques Publiques de France: Départements—Tome ii: Rouen (suite et fin) (Paris: Librarie Plon 1888), p. 394, item 160. (See the contribution of Alisa Kunitz-Dick.) Máirín MacCarron, Bede and Time: Computus, Theology and History in the Early Medieval World (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), p. 2.

introduction

5

gical order of Christian worship and monastic prayer, and the latter is what drives the investigation of the former, rather than an interest in ‘science’ per se. Science is of interest in so far as it is relevant to God’s saving work, a view expressed by Augustine in Enchiridion 3.9, who writes that when ‘considering what ought to be believed in the sphere of religion, we do not need to inquire into the nature of things as did those whom the Greeks call physikoi’.17 According to Augustine (De Genesi ad litteram, Book ii, 9, 20), ‘the Spirit of God who was speaking through [the writers of Scripture] did not wish to teach people about such things which would contribute nothing to their salvation’.18 This is not to say that Anselm does not express an interest in the natural order of things. Anselm’s world is constructed out of the four elements.19 These elements (earth, water, air, fire) are the bases for the four bodily humours found in the pre-Anselmian medical works derived from Hippocrates and Galen— blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. The proper balance between these humours in the human body was held to be responsible for the health and temperament of the individual. Such theories were the basis for many medical treatments, the justifications for which are incompatible with presentday medical science, e.g., blood-letting, which was intended to balance the humours. However, they are not simply concerned with the practical application of healing the sick, but indicate a theoretical interest in the structure of the natural order as it applies to men, ‘the study of the elements as they are composed in human bodies’.20 This universe was brought into existence by a divine act of creation, described in the book of Genesis, and expounded in detail by Augustine in his De Genesi ad litteram. It was this divine act which formed the basis of everything (other than God) that exists, material and spiritual. It meant that all things were intimately united, so that prayer can produce physical effects and physical acts can effect spiritual change. In this universe, ‘freedom’ is the freedom

17 18 19

20

Augustine of Hippo, The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Charity in Augustine: On Christian Belief, Edmund Hill et al, trans. (New York: New City Press, 2005), p. 277. Augustine of Hippo, The literal meaning of Genesis in Augustine, On Genesis, Edmund Hill, trans. (New York: New City Press, 2002), p. 202. See M7 (aoo, i.20.30–21.3): ‘Non autem dubito omnem hanc mundi molem cum partibus suis sicut videmus formatam, constare ex terra et aqua et aëre et igne, quae scilicet quattuor elementa aliquomodo intelligi possunt sine his formis quas conspicimus in rebus formatis, (…)’. Giles E.M. Gasper and Faith Wallis, ‘Anselm and the Articella’, Traditio, 59 (2004), pp. 129– 174, p. 168. On Anselm’s requests for medical books, such as the Aforismus of Hippocrates and a De pulsibus (that of Galen?) in E43 and E60, see Gasper and Wallis, ‘Anselm’, passim.

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to choose what is right and just, to discern the true from the false. We are not created simply to choose but to choose what is good and true. We cannot do this unaided, because our first parents in Eden threw away this capacity for freedom. Thus, in an arbitrary act of deluded self-interest, humanity underwent a misera mutatio.21 Only with God’s aid can we now choose the good and the true. Whilst in the Platonic/Socratic tradition ‘goodness is the true cause (aitia) of the beneficent arrangement of the natural world’,22 it is the Christian Augustinian tradition, of which Anselm is such a proficient exponent, that identifies this cause with the highest good (summum bonum), which is responsible for creating and maintaining the natural order of the universe.23 The nature Anselm encounters in the world is not the perfect nature of God and his first creation, but that of the fallen, disordered universe. If rectitude is right order, then its loss is devasting, for without rectitude there can be no truth, justice or freedom, as the mutually defining relationships of these terms for Anselm indicate.24 For Anselm, monasteries are the ‘central points of cohesion in the social order’.25 He is particularly concerned to maintain that order, ensuring that monks and nuns remain faithful to their commitment to stabilitas. In his letter to Gunhilde, the daughter of the last Anglo-Saxon king, Harold (ii) Godwinson, he shifts from stern admonition to loving encouragement. Gunhilde’s only hope of avoiding damnation is to return to the monastic life.26 21 22

23

24

25 26

P1 (aoo, i.99.6): ‘Misera mutatio! De quanto bono in quantum malum!’ Donald Zeyl and Barbara Sattler, ‘Plato’s Timaeus’ in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 Edition), url = https://plato.stanford.edu/​ archives/sum2022/entries/plato‑timaeus/. Retrieved 23rd June 2023. Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book iii, 12 in Boethius, The Theological Tractates; The Consolation of Philosophy, Hugh Fraser Stewart et al., trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1973, pp. 298f.): ‘Mundus hic ex tam diversis contrariisque partibus in unam formam minime convenisset, nisi unus esset qui tam diversa coniungeret. Coniuncta vero naturarum ipsa diversitas invicem discors dissociaret atque divelleret, nisi unus esset qui quod nexuit contineret. Non tam vero certus naturae ordo procederet nec tam dispositos motus locis, temporibus, efficientia, spatiis, qualitatibus explicarent, nisi unus esset qui has mutationum varietates manens ipse disponeret. Hoc quidquid est quo condita manent atque agitantur, usitato cunctis vocabulo deum nomino’. For truth see, dv11 (aoo, i.191.19–20): ‘veritas est rectitudo mente sola perceptibilis’. For justice, see dv12 (aoo, i.194.26): ‘Iustitia igitur est rectitudo voluntatis propter se servata’. For freedom of the will, see dla3 (aoo, i.212.19–20): ‘libertas arbitrii est potestas servandi rectitudinem voluntatis propter ipsam rectitudinem’. Richard William Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 182. E168 (aoo, iv.44.45–46): ‘Impossibile namque est te ullo modo posse salvari, nisi ad habitum et propositum abiectum redieris’.

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Just as true freedom involves doing God’s will, so the good member of society is someone who obeys the legitimate authority of divinely appointed Church leaders and secular rulers, and who obeys their father, mother and elders. Anselm’s was a world in which disobedience was often severely punished— whether in the home, the classroom, the workshop, the monastery, the parish, the village or the manor. In this society, the majority of people, who might be popularly termed ‘peasants’, were engaged in hard, often back-breaking work and lived in closed communities in which there were relatively few opportunities for escape or preferment. The paths out of such a life, if one could find them, lay in the Church (pilgrimage and regular clerical life such as that of monasticism), in education for a few, in military service (numerous local disputes, wider wars and Crusades), in the towns, and so on. But even in the latter context, the attitude of those in authority could be harsh. However, for Anselm right order required that the justice imparted by authority was balanced with compassion and mercy. Thus, he wrote in his letter to William, his successor as abbot at Bec, the role of the abbot was to combine grace and justice in order to maintain ‘the order of the monastery by inviolate rectitude (monasterii ordo inviolata rectitudine)’.27 It is customary to draw on Anselm’s distinction between faith and reason and to seek to establish the precise nature of the relationship between them in Anselm’s thought. One should note then that at the beginning of cdhi.1, Anselm’s interlocutor, Boso, speaks of the right order (recte ordo) in which the question of the relationship of faith and understanding should be approached. Right order places faith and authority before understanding and reason without supplanting them.28 All authority has its origins in divine authority. And this ‘fact’ is essential to understanding how Anselm works out the distinction between faith and reason in his thought, seeking to establish the precise nature of the relationship between them. The role given to authority by Anselm is consistent with that of the ecclesial and civil society in which he lives. However, in cdhi.1 Boso continues: ‘So, it seems to me negligence if, after we have been confirmed in the faith, we do not make an effort to understand what we believe’.29 The place of authority in Anselm’s intellectual landscape is not to end debate and simply impose solutions, but to initiate and direct debate and discussion.

27 28

29

E165 (aoo, iv.39.34–35). aoo, ii.48.16–17: ‘Sicut rectus ordo exigit ut profunda Christianae fidei prius credamus, quam ea praesumamus ratione discutere’. On this point, see in particular the discussion in Jacob Archambault’s chapter. aoo, ii.48.17–18: ‘ita negligentia mihi videtur, si, postquam confirmati sumus in fide, non studemus quod credimus intelligere’.

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Part 1—Monologion and Proslogion

In the first chapter, ‘Place (Locus) in Anselm’s Metaphysics and the Multilocality of Angels’, Alisa Kunitz-Dick positions Anselm as a distinctive voice in a tradition including Plato, Calcidius, Augustine, John Damascene, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Place is not simply a physical but also a metaphysical concept for Anselm and can be looked at in three different ways: as what fully confines, what partially confines and what does not confine at all. The first of these applies to corporeal substances, which are individuated by place, the second to angels and souls, which as a result can be in multiple locations but not everywhere, and the third to highest nature, which is not in place but is a kind of super-place in which all place itself is confined. In this sense God is everywhere, in all places. For Anselm this means that some things, such as angels, because they are only partially confined by space, can be in ‘multiple locations simultaneously’. In the case of human beings Anselm is clear that it is this multi-locality that enables the soul to be in all the different parts of the body.30 In spite of the limitations of his pre-modern understanding of the universe, Anselm’s ‘entity like’ conception of place allows for considerations that might prove fruitful for modern physics. The question of the relation of the natural and divine orders to the order of language underlies the chapters of Jürgen Ludwig Scherb (‘Does Anselm define God?’) and John A. Demetracopoulos (‘Divine Order—Created Order: The Inapplicability of Aristotle’s Categories to God in Anselm’s Monologion and Proslogion’). Scherb presents an eirenic discussion concerning the disputed question of the definability of God. Looking at ancient and modern concepts of definition, he detects a solution that permits one to see Anselm’s description of God, aliquid/id quo nihil maius cogitari potest, as a definition in one sense at least. If one can have ‘substantial’ definitions of accidents as Anselm’s precursor, Boethius, argues, then it may be possible as Anselm suggests in M27 to speak of God in transcategorical or what Scherb calls ‘second order’ terms. In fact, in dv11 and 12, Anselm does define concepts such as truth and justice without reverting to substantial definition. Working within the framework of Desmond Henry’s account of Boethian description and definition, Scherb notes that nevertheless Anselm does not employ ‘definitoric terminology’ in his ‘definition’ of God. The question arises as to whether we can really talk of God at all. In discussing the inapplicability of the Aristotelian Categories to the divine being, John 30

P13 (aoo, i.111.2–3): ‘Si enim non esset anima tota in singulis membris sui corporis, non sentiret tota in singulis’.

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A. Demetracopoulos takes as his starting point the Augustinian ‘theonymical’ tradition and Augustine’s treatment of Aristotle’s Categories particularly as developed in the De statu animae of Claudianus Mamertus and the De Trinitate of Boethius. Tracing these developments forward to Anselm, we find, according to Demetracopoulos, that the first 28 chapters of the Monologion constitute a kind of treatise on Aristotle’s Categories and their applicability to God. The conclusion of Demetracopoulos’ argument is that for Anselm, ‘God per se cannot be grasped at all’. We can only know certain distinctive features (proprietates) of God as they present themselves to us, but not that proprietas which is distinctive of God in Himself (per se). That this proprietas of God cannot be known to us calls into question the sense in which we can make the move from definitions of constitutive propria to definition of God. As Demetracopoulos points out, for Anselm we can know God per aliud, but the sense in which such knowledge could constitute the basis for a definition remains a debatable point. The arts of the trivium (grammar, dialectic and rhetoric) capture the expression of the order of creation within the order of language. They must be studied rigorously and handled with care, if one is to be able to articulate the divine plan for the created order, always bearing in mind that there is a divine authority that sits above these human disciplines against which their outcomes must be measured. In ‘The Teaching of the Trivium at Bec and its Bearing on Anselm’s Programme of Fides Quaerens Intellectum’, Jacob Archambault sets out Anselm’s view of the relationship between faith and reason/understanding within the context of the trivium as taught at Bec. He attempts from a dialectical perspective to disentangle Anselm’s use of the terms, fides and intellectus, looking back in particular to Boethius, who writes in his commentary on Cicero’s Topics: ‘Therefore we may define “topic” as the seat of an argument, and “argument” as the ratio that grants fides to a doubtful matter’. In his chapter, ‘Anselm’s Faith as Orientation, Criterion and Promotion of Philosophical Inquiry’, Roberto Di Ceglie looks at ‘theological origins of the argument for the existence of God’ in P2–4. He maintains that ‘it is precisely the theological origins’ of Anselm’s proofs that provided the conditions for such a rigorous philosophical inquiry. Faith as criterion for philosophy is a commitment of the will to divine revelation, which entails that ‘the faithful are persuaded that reason, if it works in accordance with its nature, i.e., God’s plan, will not lead them to deny what they already believe by faith’. For Anselm, ‘our rational faculties, if employed in accordance with their nature, cannot contradict what—as believer—he mostly cared about, i.e., his religious faith’. Approaching the matter from a different direction, in his ‘An Anselmian Cosmological Proof of the Existence of God’, Richard Campbell seeks to provide an account of Anselm’s distinctive notion of God in P and the argument which is

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based on it. Just as the divine and natural orders are distinct, but not in conflict, so there is no conflict between the order of faith and the order of reason. Campbell makes a connection between Anselm’s claim that what is other than God can be thought not to exist and the cosmological claims of the first clause of the Nicene Creed, uniting the natural world with the creator God in an innovative reading of P as a cosmological argument. He identifies in P what he refers to as Anselm’s ‘Intelligibility and Inconceivability Principles’ and two related rules of inference, which he calls the ‘Conceivability Rule’ and the ‘Distributing Conceivability Rule’. From the premise, ‘Every observable thing which exists in the universe at some time did not exist at some previous time’ and making use of Anselm’s description of ‘something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought’, his Conceivability rules of inference and his argumentative strategies, Campbell attempts to show how it is possible to deduce the conclusions of Anselm’s argument. This leads naturally to the question of what Anselm made of the fact that the arguments he considered so truth revealing and supporting were not persuasive to unbelievers. In the case of M and P we are talking about atheists in some sense, in cdh about Muslims who deny the Catholic doctrine of God, in dpss the Greek church which rejects the use of the filioque clause of the Creed. In my own chapter (Ian Logan, ‘Denying the Divine: Anselm and Atheism’), I touch on some aspects of Anselm’s treatment of the question of unbelief and its origins. The disruption to the natural/created order has rendered man’s rational soul subject to foolishness, but foolishness is a potential characteristic of the rational and not an indicator of a lack of reason. As Anselm writes in dcv3, ‘since injustice cannot exist except where justice ought to be, original sin, which is injustice, cannot exist except in a rational nature’.31 Thus, this foolish unbelief does not reveal that man’s reason has been destroyed as a result of the fall, but that man lacks the justice which Adam freely lost and lacks the ability to regain it by his own actions.32 Michael Vendsel (‘The Role of Spiritual Senses in the Argument of the Proslogion’) maintains that the doctrine of the spiritual senses plays an important but neglected role in P. This ‘perceptual capacity’ for the divine is analogous to the corporeal senses. Vendsel traces the development of this doctrine from Plato through Aristotle and the Biblical tradition to Origen, and how it is taken up by Augustine in his presentation of the senses in Confessions 10. He identifies 31 32

aoo, ii.143.10–11: ‘Quare quoniam iniustitia non potest esse nisi ubi iustitia debet esse, originale peccatum quod est iniustitia, non est nisi in natura rationali’. See also cdhii.4. dciii.7 (aoo, ii.273.19–20): ‘Quoniam ergo peccando deseruit iustitiam, ad peccatum illi imputatur impotentia, quam ipsa peccando sibi fecit’.

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a parallel with Augustine in Anselm’s understanding of the spiritual senses and argues that they play a major organizing role in P as a whole. With his understanding of the spiritual senses in that work, Anselm ‘is inviting the reader into a second kind of experience, one initiated by an inward turn and premised on spiritual rather than corporeal senses’. In this way Anselm can be understood as forestalling the later criticism that his argument aims ‘to arrive at God independently of experience’.

3

Part 2—The Three Early Dialogues, De Grammatico and De Concordia

Whilst arriving at a view different to the truths expressed by legitimate authority is to arrive at error, it is not sufficient to cite authority to justify one’s interpretation of what authority teaches. One must show that the position is consistent with authority and that the interpretation of that authoritative truth is not better articulated elsewhere. This is surely what Anselm is doing in dc, where, as Marcia L. Colish (‘Free Will and Grace: Method and Model in Anselm’s De Concordia’) shows, ‘Anselm does not treat his chosen proof-texts as selfexplanatory; they need to be understood in terms of the interaction of grace and free will he proposes’. In her chapter, Colish seeks to explain Anselm’s ‘striking departure’ in dc from his usual method (expressed for instance in the early dialogues, dv, dla, dcd). A comparison between dciii and Cassian’s Collation 13 suggests both Anselm’s appropriation of ‘Cassian’s strategy of argument’, and ‘the independence of his own position vis-à-vis Augustine and Cassian alike’. In their accounts of post-lapsarian anthropology, both Cassian and Anselm allow free will a ‘more extensive and robust’ role than Augustine does. However, Anselm interprets St. Paul ‘as affirming that we are led to sin not by our natural endowments, inclinations, and aptitudes but by our voluntary use of them’, rejecting ‘Cassian’s notion that we can be forced to sin or be saved against our will’. Whereas Cassian does not mention baptism, Anselm stresses ‘its curative effects on our post-baptismal exercise of free choice’. Colish concludes that in dciii, Anselm ‘places his own stamp on the collaboration of free will with grace in recovering the rectitude that he holds essential’. The dividing line between the different orders of rational beings has been crossed as a result of the action of the God-man, as Anselm sets out in cdh. The ontological precondition for the replacement of the fallen angels by men is the shared rationality of angels and humans. As Christian Brouwer points out in ‘What Justice owes to Knowledge: A Study in Anselm’s Ethics’, for Anselm, this feature of God’s just order could not have been known to the angels prior

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to the fall of the devil. For God’s ways are beyond the understanding even of the angels.33 This lack of knowledge on the part of the devil does not mitigate his fault, since, as Brouwer makes clear, for Anselm the devil does not chose justice for its own sake. Moreover, it follows that in order to act justly, i.e., preserve justice for its own sake, humans too must possess some ignorance of God’s plan and of the outcome of their actions. Starting with Anselm’s definition of justice in dv12, we see that justice (rectitude of the will kept for its own sake) and truth (rectitude perceptible by the mind alone) are ‘species’ of rectitude. Brouwer concludes that Anselm places justice in the will, but rational knowledge is required to will the rectitude of the object of the willing and to make judgements concerning the good and justice. Furthermore, rational knowledge is limited so that we do not have full knowledge of the consequences of our actions. In ‘Anselm on Truth as Free’, Montague Brown sets out to align Anselm’s concept of truth as rectitude with his notion of rational necessity, in order to show its consistency with ‘the free creation of the world, the freedom of our intelligence and choice, and therefore the freedom of truth’ itself. Brown describes how in Anselm’s understanding of rectitude, he moves from a focus on necessary (theoretical) reason to practical or moral (free) reason. Anselm’s necessary truths are not those of a closed metaphysical system. They ‘transcend all we can conceive or even hope for’ and ‘call for our free assent’. Thus, the ‘absolute precedence of grace’ is preserved. In ‘Similis Deo or Cum Deo Esse: On Happiness and the Convergence of ProtoKantian and Aristotelian (as well as Augustinian) Motives in Anselm’s Analysis of Moral Choice’, Christian Göbel addresses Anselm’s moral/ethical theory. For Anselm, there are ‘two forms—one immanent, one transcendent—of fulfilling the desire for happiness: being like God (similis Deo esse) and being with God’. As the subtitle suggests, Göbel seeks to place Anselm’s thought here within a broader contextual discussion. Göbel argues against Katherin Rogers’ view of Anselm as an Aristotelian eudaemonist. Anselm is not so much an Aristotelian eudaemonist as an Augustinian beatitudinist, the latter notion better capturing the ‘additional, transcendent dimension of Christian anthropology and ethics’. The title of Riccardo Fedriga and Roberto Limonta’s chapter, ‘Nec Plus Nec Minus: The Ethics of Language in Anselm’s Work and Letters’, alludes to a phrase employed by Anselm in dv11 and dla1, with reference to his definitions of veritas and libertas arbitrii: ‘nec plus nec minus’. This phrase reflects a linguistic

33

dcd23 (aoo, i.270.5–6): ‘sed quoniam iudicia dei abyssus multa et investigabiles viæ eius, nequivit comprehendere an deus faceret quod iuste facere posset’.

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paupertas or parsimony which is a guiding principle in Anselm’s thought. The simplicity of the divine order is to be expressed in a human linguistic order ‘free of the dispersive plurality of linguistic references’, which ‘is more true as it becomes poorer’. This ‘linguistic parsimony’ captures the ‘unequivocal identification of the res’ when ‘purified from the ambiguities’ of usus loquendi (see Anselm’s valiant attempts in this regard in De Grammatico) and reflects the taciturnity of Anselm’s letters and the Rule of Saint Benedict. Fedriga and Limonta imply that Anselm’s approach to definition is less expansive than that of Aristotle. For Aristotle, definition is a flexible method of classification, whereas Anselm’s definition is precisive, subtracting from everything that is not essential to the definition (nec plus), but ensuring that what is essential is retained (nec minus). The ‘verbal incontinence’ of the words (voces) of usus loquendi gives way to something closer to the divine word and the naturalia verba of M10. In his exegesis of Alexander Neckam’s De visu, Timothy Farrant (‘On Truth, Sight and Zoology: Reading Alexander Neckam’s De naturis rerum through the Anselmian Lens of Truth’) looks at the account of the stick in Anselm’s dv and Neckam’s De visu, in which the senses lead us to perceive a straight stick as bent or broken. For both Anselm and Neckam, the discovery of truth requires more than physical sense experience. Farrant addresses Neckam’s use of sight imagery, the purpose of which is not an exposition of physical sight, but an attempt to present ‘a deeper sense of seeing’. For Anselm, the senses do not mislead reason, they report what they perceive as they ought. Any ‘fault’ is in the judgement. Farrant seeks to distance Neckham from a literalist ‘scientific’ account of sight, and to show that Neckham’s key concern was the same as it was for Anselm, that is the moral/spiritual. Thus, Neckam is not interested ‘in the advancement of scientific thought’, but ‘uses visual imagery to indicate a deeper reality of things; one that is achieved through a keener sight of the mind’. Beneath the phenomena of nature lie deeper, hidden meanings.

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Part 3—Cur Deus Homo

In his chapter, ‘Anselm on Justice, Nature and Reason: Roman Sources for Cur Deus Homo’, Bernard van Vreeswijk widens the discussion of the influences on Anselm beyond those of Augustine and Boethius to the wider Roman tradition, which is an important source for cdh, particularly for the notion of ‘satisfaction’ that Anselm develops there, influenced by the Ciceronian and Justinian understanding of justice, revenge and reverence. According to van Vreeswijk, Anselm defines satisfaction ‘as the obligation resting on the offender to set right

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his wrong, to restore the damage he has done’. Anselm’s satisfaction theory is not limited to a purely Christian perspective, but takes into account elements of a universal natural law that can appeal to those outside the Church. Yet, although Anselm is influenced by, he seems to purposefully depart from, the Ciceronian and Justinian definitions of justice. Maria Leonor Xavier (‘Cur Mundi Renovatio: Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo Revisited’) seeks to move the understanding of Anselm’s theory of atonement away from the principle of satisfaction to that of the ‘doctrine of the eschatological perfection of creation’. According to Xavier, Anselm takes up ‘the question regarding the restoration of the number of fallen angels in the celestial city’ as a way of answering the question ‘why man?’, which itself leads to the answer to the question ‘why a God-man?’. Man is not simply created as a substitute for the fallen angels, but his presence is required for the completion of God’s creative work. In view of this, Xavier argues for the precedence of the ‘doctrine of the eschatological perfection of creation’ over that of satisfaction. In fact, in cdhii.4, Anselm is clear that God has created human nature, than which nothing is more precious, so that it can rejoice in Him.34 The monastic life plays an important role in Anselm’s understanding of the divine plan for this fallen world. In ‘Conversatio angelorum: The Monk’s Angelic Vocation and the Order of Redemption’, Rachel Cresswell states that ‘it is Anselm’s conception of order which takes centre stage when his theology of atonement turns to the logic of angels’. In cdhi.16 ff., Anselm teaches that humans will replace the fallen angels in the heavenly Jerusalem, a doctrine found in Augustine’s Enchiridion (9.29), but not in Scripture, and which is central to Anselm’s argument in cdh. Yet, according to Cresswell, the chapters in which Anselm discusses this ‘barely feature’ in accounts of the argument of cdh. For Anselm the monastic vocation renders its followers particularly suited to the task of replacing the fallen angels and becoming the equals of the angels in the heavenly city. In ‘Did Anselm also Compose the Cur Deus Homo with Invisible Muslim Interlocutors in Mind?’, Emery de Gaal asks whether Anselm was motivated in part to write cdh in response to contemporary Muslim arguments against the incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, possibly at the invitation of Pope Urban ii, who had recently initiated the First Crusade. De Gaal addresses Muslim attempts to discredit the coherence of Christian beliefs by exclusively rational arguments, and suggests that this may have been a consideration in 34

aoo, ii.99.5–7: ‘At si nihil pretiosius cognoscitur deus fecisse quam rationalem naturam ad gaudendum de se, valde alienum est ab eo, ut ullam rationalem naturam penitus perire sinat’.

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Anselm’s use of the sola ratione method in cdh, a method he had already employed in his earlier writings, Thus, Anselm is just the person to respond to the objections of Muslim rationalists. He does so by seeking to show that the divine nature is greater than Jews and Muslims can understand. In the Incarnation there was no ‘abasement of the divine substance’, but rather ‘human nature was exalted’.35

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Part 4—Eadmer and Epistolae

As Alastair R.E. Forbes shows in ‘Monks and Milites: Order in Anselm’s Court Analogy’, the right order of society for Anselm involves the duty of service to God which is best encapsulated in the monastic life. Even though other orders of life, such as that of the milites in particular, and of laymen more generally, have their legitimate place alongside those of clerics and monks, their members are at great risk of ‘[falling] short of receiving God’s gift of eternal life because of their ties to worldly things’. Moreover, having set out on the monastic path, it is never acceptable to turn back, for this is the ultimate failure in the duty of service to God. Yet, Anselm himself went into exile three times, opening himself up to accusations of ‘abandoning’ his church and monastic community in Canterbury. So, unsurprisingly perhaps, his defenders, such as Eadmer, felt impelled to justify his apparent mercenary behaviour. For his supporters, in ‘not abandoning his spiritual service Anselm persisted instead in his role under God as a laudable monk’. Death and what is beyond it is the source of much introspection. Whilst death, like birth, might be considered the most natural of all human events, it is not part of the original created order. Death enters the world through the sin of Adam and is the most obvious and existentially significant of the physical effects in the created order arising from Adam’s sin.36 Anselm’s own encounter with death is narrated by Eadmer in his Vita Anselmi. Barbara Hargreaves (‘The Death of Anselm’) investigates the circumstances and issues surrounding Eadmer’s account, the themes of monastic death rituals and hagiographical death narratives. Certain elements of the death ritual as

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cdhi.8 (aoo, ii.59.26–29): ‘nullam divinae substantiae significamus humilitatem (…) sed natura hominis creditur exaltata’. Cf. dcv7 (aoo, ii.148.24–25): ‘per unum hominem in hunc mundum peccatum intravit, et per peccatum mors’; dcv22 (aoo, ii.162.21–23): ‘Per unum enim hominem—quod est per Adam—peccatum intravit in hunc mundum, et per peccatum mors’.

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laid out in Lanfranc’s Constitutions, ‘the parts of Lanfranc’s death ritual that focus on the sinfulness of the dying man and his need for forgiveness’, are omitted from Eadmer’s narrative of Anselm’s death. In approaching his death and taking leave of this world, Anselm finds physical food increasingly distasteful, but is sustained by the spiritual food of holy communion, prefiguring the heavenly banquet in which he will soon participate. Nevertheless, the drama of other hagiographical accounts is missing, and Anselm’s is a natural death.

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Addendum

In a note that we include as an addendum, ‘Anselm and John Gualbert’s Prayers for Enemies’, Hiroko Yamazaki provides a brief comparison of Anselm’s Prayer for Enemies (om19) with a similarly titled prayer written by his contemporary and fellow Benedictine, John Gualbert. In doing so, she shows us how Anselm’s distinctive ‘inclusive’ spirituality colours his prayer. Anselm unites himself with his enemies so that both he and they are the subject of the prayer, in which he expresses his unworthiness to mediate on behalf of others.

Bibliography Primary Sources S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961); reprinted in two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968). Augustine of Hippo, The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Charity in Augustine: On Christian Belief, Edmund Hill et al, trans. (New York: New City Press, 2005). Augustine of Hippo, The literal meaning of Genesis in Augustine, On Genesis, Edmund Hill, trans. (New York: New City Press, 2002). Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae in Boethius, The Theological Tractates; The Consolation of Philosophy, Hugh Fraser Stewart et al., trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1973). Boethius’s In Ciceronis Topica, Eleonore Stump, trans. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988). Pascal, Blaise, Pensées, Philippe Sellier, ed. (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2011). Southern, Richard William, and Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, eds., Memorials of St. Anselm (London: oup for the British Academy, 1969).

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Secondary Sources Becker, Gustav, Catalogi Bibliothecarum Antiqui (Bonn: Max Cohen et filium, 1885). Gasper, Giles E.M., and Faith Wallis, ‘Anselm and the Articella’, Traditio, 59 (2004), pp. 129–174. Koyré, Alexandre, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957). MacCarron, Máirín, Bede and Time: Computus, Theology and History in the Early Medieval World (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019). Omont, Henri, Catalogue Général des Manuscripts des Bibliothèques Publiques de France: Départements—Tome ii: Rouen (suite et fin) (Paris: Librarie Plon 1888). Ortlund, Gavin, Anselm’s Pursuit of Joy: A Commentary on the Proslogion (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020). Sharpe, Richard, ‘Anselm as Author: Publishing in the Late Eleventh Century’, The Journal of Medieval Latin, 19 (2009), pp. 1–87. Southern, Richard William, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Zeyl, Donald, and Barbara Sattler, ‘Plato’s Timaeus’ in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 Edition), url = https://plato.stanford​ .edu/archives/sum2022/entries/plato‑timaeus/. Retrieved 23rd June 2023.

part 1 Monologion and Proslogion

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chapter 1

Place (Locus) in Anselm’s Metaphysics and the Multilocality of Angels Alisa Kunitz-Dick

1

Introduction

In Anselm’s Monologion (M) and Proslogion (P), place, or locus, plays a central role in his metaphysics, and this chapter provides the first systematic study of it.1 As this chapter will demonstrate, according to Anselm, place is a thing-like object that limits and, in some cases, individuates, other things. Place has the ability either to confine objects completely, so that they cannot be in another place simultaneously, or partially, so that they can be in multiple places at once, but not everywhere. This is the most revolutionary aspect of his theory, because Anselm shows us that it is possible for one object to be in multiple places at once, or conversely, that what appear to be two objects may be, in fact, one. God, in contrast, is not confined by place at all, but is everywhere, or more accurately, in each thing, acting almost as a super-place even to place itself.

2

Place in Monologion 20

Anselm first begins to write about place in M20, at which point he wants to know where the highest essence, or God, is. Anselm asks whether the highest essence is (a) everywhere and always (ubique et semper), or merely (b) somewhere at some time (alicubi et aliquando), or, (c) nowhere and never (nusquam et numquam). Or, said in another way, Anselm wants to know whether the highest nature is in every place and time (omni loco vel tempore), confined only in some place and time (determinate in aliquo), or in no place or time (in nullo).

1 For previous scholarship on Anselm’s views of place, see the section in this chapter following the examination of Anselm’s theory of place in the Monologion and Proslogion. The translations I have provided are my own, but I have used Jasper Hopkins’ translations as a guide, which are available online at https://jasper‑hopkins.info/ (accessed 10 Nov 2021). I would also like to thank an anonymous reviewer of this chapter for helpful suggestions, which I have incorporated into it.

© Alisa Kunitz-Dick, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_003

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Anselm discounts (c) because he says that it is repugnant that the highest nature is not anywhere or at any time. He gives as a reason that there is no good, or indeed, anything at all without it (quoniam nullum bonum nec penitus aliquid est sine ea). Anselm discounts (b) because it would only be there, at some time and some place, that the highest essence would be able to be (potest aliquid esse), and without the highest essence nothing else can exist, so there would be nothing else existing, except that place and time where the highest essence was. If (a), the highest essence is there through its own power. But since its power is nothing other than itself, its power is not without it. Therefore, Anselm concludes that it is necessary that the highest essence is everywhere and always, in every place and every time.2

3

The Argument in Monologion 21

In M21, Anselm poses additional questions about the ubiquity of the highest nature. He wants to know whether the highest nature is whole in every place and time, or whether a part of it is in place and time, and another part is separate from it. He rejects the latter option because the highest nature would have to have parts, which is incongruent with the definition of the highest nature. He then asks, if the highest nature is whole everywhere and always, how is it this way? Is it whole at once in all places and times but in parts in each individual place and time? Or does it remain whole in distinct places and times? In either case, the highest nature is once again divided into parts, so he rejects these options as well. Anselm decides to revisit the question again, this time looking first at place: First therefore let it be seen if the highest nature can be whole in different places either simultaneously or through different times.3 And then he explains:

2 See M20 (aoo, i.35.29–36.3): ‘Quoniam enim potentiam eius nihil aliud quam ipsam esse manifestum est, nullo modo potentia eius sine ipsa est. Cum ergo non sit alicubi vel aliquando determinate, necesse est ut sit ubique et semper, id est in omni loco vel tempore’. (‘For since it is manifest that its power is nothing other than its esse, its power is in no way without it. Since therefore it is not confined in some place or some time, it is necessary that it is everywhere and always, that is, in every place and time’.) 3 M21 (aoo, i.36.21–23): ‘Primum ergo videatur si summa natura tota possit esse in singulis locis aut simul aut per diversa tempora’.

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If therefore it [i.e., the highest nature] is whole simultaneously in different places, there are distinct wholes [of the highest nature] by means of distinct places. For place is distinguished from place, with the result that there are distinct places, so that which is whole in one place, is distinguished from that which at the same time is whole in another place, with the result that there are distinct wholes. For that which is whole in one place, has nothing which is not in that place.4 Anselm argues that if the highest nature were whole simultaneously in different places, this would result in there being multiple highest natures, as many as there are places. He explains that individual places are pre-distinguished from each other, apart from any object is put into them. When an object is put into a place, it is kept by that place from merging into another whole in another place. And if one object could be put into two places at once, it would result in two objects. If this idea of individuation is compared with De Grammatico 20, in which Anselm writes that an individual, such as Plato, is composed of a species and a collectio proprietatum, a collection of properties, it may not appear entirely consistent.5 If, however, Anselm understands ‘belonging to a specific place’ in the way mentioned above to be one property among the collection of properties, then it fits into broader picture of individuation that Anselm paints in his corpus. Anselm continues: (…) Therefore, what is whole in some place, has nothing which at the same time is beyond that place. But concerning that which has nothing outside of any place, nothing belonging to it is at the same time in another place. Therefore that which is whole in some place, has nothing simultaneously in another place.6 He is explaining that that which is whole in one place is completely whole in that place. It does not have anything beyond that whole at the same time. Anselm can consequently conclude:

4 M21 (aoo, i.36.24–28): ‘Si igitur tota est simul in singulis locis, per singula loca sunt singulae totae. Sicut enim locus a loco distinguitur, ut singula loca sint, ita id quod totum est in uno loco, ab eo quod eodem tempore totum est in alio loco distinguitur, ut singula tota sint. Nam quod totum est in aliquo loco, nihil eius est quod non sit in ipso loco’. 5 See dg20 (aoo, i.166.2–5). 6 M21 (aoo, i.36.30–37.1): ‘Quod igitur totum est in aliquo loco, nihil eius est quod eodem tempore sit extra ipsum locum. Sed de quo nihil est extra quemlibet locum, nihil eius est eodem tempore in alio loco. Quare quod totum est in quolibet loco, nihil eius est simul in alio loco’.

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Therefore, [concerning] that which is whole in some place, how can it be whole simultaneously in another place, if nothing from it can be in another place? Since one whole cannot be whole simultaneously in different places whole, it follows that distinct wholes are through distinct places, if something is whole at once in different places.7 Anselm explains that no part of something which is in one place can simultaneously be found in another place. If something were whole in distinct places, it would follow that this something would in fact be multiple. Anselm continues, On this account if the highest nature is whole at one time in all distinct places, as many different places as can be, so many will be the distinct highest natures, which is irrational to think. There is not, therefore, one whole [highest nature] at different places at one time. But if the whole [highest nature] is in different places at different times, when it is in one place, no good and no essence is meanwhile in other places, because without it something cannot exist at all.8 If the highest nature were put into these places, it would be divided. There would be as many highest natures as there are places. As Anselm explains, this is impossible according to the definition of the highest nature. This passage demonstrates that Anselm views places as having the ability to individuate substances, if substances are confined in them. In other words, it is a characteristic of places that they individuate substances. In contrast, if the highest nature were in only one place at one time, then there would be nothing else besides the place where highest nature is, because without the highest nature there could not be anything at all. Anselm concludes, (…) Therefore the highest nature is not present as a whole in distinct places at different times. But if the highest nature is not present as a whole

7 M21 (aoo, i.37.I-5): ‘Quod igitur totum est in aliquo loco: quomodo totum quoque est simul in alio loco, si nihil de eo: potest esse in alio loco? Quoniam igitur unum totum non potest esse simul in diversis locis totum, consequitur ut per singula loca singula sint tota, si in singulis locis simul aliquid est totum’. 8 M21 (aoo, i.37.5–11): ‘Quapropter si summa natura tota est uno tempore in singulis omnibus locis: quot singula loca esse possunt, tot singulae summae naturae sunt; quod irrationabile est opinari. Non est igitur tota uno tempore in singulis locis. At vero si diversis temporibus tota est in singulis locis: quando est in uno loco, nullum bonum et nulla essentia est interim in aliis locis, quia sine ea prorsus aliquid non existit’.

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in distinct places, either at the same time or at different times, it is evident that in no way is the highest nature whole in all distinct places.9 It is then not the case that the highest nature is whole in distinct places at different times or the same times. Both of the possible solutions have failed. With respect to time, Anselm argues in a similar way that the highest nature would be divided if he were whole in the past, present, and future, but he could not be absent from them. In other words, at this point Anselm is left with an apparent contradiction: it is both impossible that the highest nature is everywhere and always, and necessary that he is everywhere and always.

4

The Argument in Monologion 22

Anselm suggests: Perhaps the highest nature is in place and time in such a way that it is not prohibited from being simultaneously whole in different places and times, with the result, however, that there are not many wholes, but one whole alone (…) For they do not seem to be confined by the law of place and time, except those which are in place and time, so that they do not exceed the space of place and the duration of time.10 That is to say, that perhaps the highest nature is somehow present in every place, without being confined in any place. He goes on to say: Therefore concerning those which are of this way [i.e., those which are confined by the law of place and time], it is asserted in all truth that one and the same whole cannot be whole in different places and times simultaneously, so for those which are not of this way [i.e. those which are not confined by that law], one cannot necessarily conclude it. For it seems to be said correctly some place only belongs to a thing whose quantity

9

10

M21 (aoo, i.37.12–15): ‘Non est itaque summa natura tota in singulis locis diversis temporibus. Quod si nec eodem tempore nec diversis temporibus tota est in singulis locis: liquet quia nullo modo est tota in singulis omnibus locis’. M22 (aoo, i.39.4–10): ‘Fortasse quodam modo est summa natura in loco vel tempore, quo non prohibetur sic esse simul tota in singulis locis vel temporibus, ut tamen non sint plures totae sed una sola tota (…) Non enim videntur hac lege loci ac temporis cogi nisi ea quae sic sunt in loco vel tempore, ut loci spatium aut temporis diuturnitatem non excedant’.

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place contains by circumscribing and circumscribes by containing, and that some time only belongs to a thing, whose duration time ends in some way by measuring and measures by ending (…) But that which is observed to have no place or time, that by no means is shown to fall under the law of place and time. Therefore no law of place or time confines any nature in any way, which no place or time encloses by containing.11 Anselm suggests that only some things are confined by place and time. Place contains and circumscribes those things, putting limits on them. Things that are not confined by place or time, however, would have no limits imposed on them. Anselm explains about the highest nature, or its power, that (…) by having made all things by itself, it encloses them by containing them under itself. How also it is not extremely imprudent to say about the highest truth that either place circumscribes its quantity or time measures its duration, which receives no greatness or smallness at all of local or temporal extension?12 The highest nature, in other words, has no local or temporal limit imposed on it. It is not circumscribed by place or by time. Rather, it is unlimited and it encloses all things under itself. Since this is the condition of place and time, that as such whatever belonging to them is enclosed by limits (…) without doubt the highest substance, which is not bound by any containment of place and time, is not bound by any law belonging to them. Therefore, since an inescapable necessity demands that highest essence as a whole be absent from no

11

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M22 (aoo, i.39.10–25): ‘Quare sicut de iis quae huiusmodi sunt, unum idemque totum simul non posse esse totum in diversis locis et temporibus omni ueritate asseritur, ita in iis quae huiusmodi non sunt, id ipsum nulla necessitate concluditur. Iure namque dici videtur quod tantum eius rei sit aliquis locus, cuius quantitatem locus circumscribendo continet et continendo circumscribit; et quod eius solum rei sit aliquod tempus, cuius diuturnitatem tempus metiendo aliquomodo terminat et terminando metitur (…) Quod vero nullum locum aut tempus habere conspicitur, id profecto nullatenus loci aut temporis legem subire convincitur. Nulla igitur lex loci aut temporis naturam ullam aliquomodo cogit, quam nullus locus ac tempus aliqua continentia claudit’. M22 (aoo, i.40.1–5): ‘(…) cuncta a se facta sub se continendo concludat? Quomodo quoque non est impudentis imprudentiae dicere quod summae veritatis aut locus circumscribat quantitatem aut tempus metiatur diuturnitatem, quae nullam penitus localis uel temporalis distentionis magnitudinem suscipit uel parvitatem?’

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place or time, and no law of place or time prohibits it from being present as a whole in every place at once: it is necessary that it is as a whole present at once in all distinct places and times.13 The highest nature, because it is not contained by place or time, is able to be whole simultaneously to all distinct places and times. It is able to do this in a way that is not possible for those things confined by place and time. Anselm reemphasizes his point: For by no means is [the highest nature] confined or prohibited by the law of places and times to be or not to be somewhere or sometime, because in no way is its esse confined within place or time.14 Anselm explains that the highest nature is rather: (…) with place and time than in place and time. For it something is more signified to be contained when it is said to be in something, than when it is said to be with something. For thus it is properly said to be in no place or time, because it is contained by no other at all. And yet it can be said to be in every place and time in its own way, since every other thing is sustained by its [i.e., the highest nature’s] presence lest it fall away into nothing.15 The highest nature, in other words, is present to and sustains all places and times, keeping them from falling away into nothing, but is not confined by those places and times.

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M22 (aoo, i.40.6–19): ‘Quoniam itaque loci haec est et temporis conditio, ut tantummodo quidquid eorum metis clauditur (…) procul dubio summa substantia, quae nulla loci vel temporis continentia cingitur, nulla eorum lege constringitur. Quare quoniam summam essentiam totam et inevitabilis necessitas exigit nulli loco vel tempori deesse, et nulla ratio loci aut temporis prohibet omni loco vel tempori simul totam adesse: necesse est eam simul totam omnibus et singulis locis et temporibus praesentem esse’. M22 (aoo, i.40.24–26): ‘Nullatenus namque cogitur vel prohibetur lege locorum aut temporum alicubi aut aliquando esse vel non esse, quod nullo modo intra locum vel tempus claudit suum esse’. M22 (aoo, i.41.2–7): ‘(…) cum loco vel tempore quam in loco vel tempore. Plus enim significatur contineri aliquid cum dicitur esse in alio, quam cum dicitur esse cum alio. In nullo itaque loco vel tempore proprie dicitur esse, quia omnino a nullo alio continetur; et tamen in omni loco vel tempore suo quodam modo dici potest esse, quoniam quidquid aliud est ne in nihilum cadat ab ea praesente sustinetur’.

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The Solution to the Problem of the Highest Nature’s Omnipresence in Monologion 23

Anselm explains that the highest nature is more rightly described as being in all things which exist, rather than in all places, because places do not cover all which exists: It is evident that the highest nature is not more in all places than in all which exist, not as what is contained but [as that which] contains all things by penetrating them: that is why it is not said to be everywhere in this sense, but rather it is understood to be in all which exist, than merely in all places (…) Therefore the highest nature, is more rightly said to be everywhere according to this meaning, so that it is understood to be in all which exist rather than if it is understood to be only in all places.16 That is, the highest nature is in all and contains them, as if it is the super-place of all places. In summary, thus, for Anselm in M: a) Some things are confined by locus so much so that if something outside of place were put into it, there would result in a multiplicity of that thing. If, for example, a cat were somehow stretched into two difference places simultaneously, two cats would result. b) Place is a semi-entity separate from substances and acts on them to limit them. c) The highest nature is not confined at all by place (or time), so it is everywhere, in all things by penetrating them.

6

The Argument in Proslogion 13:

In P, Anselm reaffirms his positions in M. But he also draws attention to the place of created spirits, by which he means predominately angels, but also souls. He writes:

16

M23 (aoo, i.41.21–42.4): ‘Verum cum constet eandem summam naturam non magis esse in omnibus locis quam in omnibus quae sunt, non velut quae contineatur sed quae penetrando cuncta contineat: cur non dicatur esse ubique hoc sensu, ut potius intelligatur esse in omnibus quae sunt, quam tantum in omnibus locis (…) Quare summa natura secundum rei veritatem aptius dicitur esse ubique secundum hanc significationem, ut intelligatur esse in omnibus quae sunt, quam si intelligitur tantum in omnibus locis’.

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That which is both circumscribed and uncircumscribed at once, though it is somewhere whole, can be simultaneously whole somewhere else, but not everywhere; this is known to be the case with created spirits.17 In other words, an angel can be whole in two or more places at the same at time, but not everywhere, like God is. What is not immediately clear from Anselm’s argument is whether an angel is in a place only when it acts in a place, or whether it possesses some kind of locality all the time. Because Anselm does not distinguish between the two, it appears that he is speaking about the state of angels generally, and thus that he supports the latter position. P thus expands the arguments of M. It adds that, a) There are degrees of confinement by place and time. b) The highest nature is completely unconfined by them, and corporeal substances are completely confined by them. c) Created spirits, however, are only partially confined by place, so that one of them can be in two places at once. Or in other words, what could appear to be two different angels in two different places may be in fact, only one angel.

7

A Summary of Anselm’s Position

For Anselm, place is the kind of entity that limits the extension of objects. In the case of something that is completely confined by place, place is responsible, or at least primarily responsible, for individuating them. Not everything, however, is confined by place. Angels and souls are partially confined by it, so that they can be in multiple locations, but not everywhere, and the highest nature is not confined by it at all.

8

Previous Scholarship on Anselm’s Theory

A number of recent scholars have produced summaries of these passages, but, with the exception of Georgi Kapriev, they have not considered at length the

17

P13 (aoo, i.110.22–111.2): ‘Circumscriptum autem simul et incircumscriptum est, cum alicubi sit totum, potest simul esse totum alibi, non tamen ubique; quod de creatis spiritibus cognoscitur’.

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definition of place that Anselm is employing.18 Kapriev, although he spends more of his article discussing Anselm’s theory of time, has made some astute observations about Anselm’s theory of place. First of all, he also argues that Anselm’s place possesses the power of individuation, and the data in this chapter supports his conclusion. Second of all, he notices that Anselm in M21 characterizes place as not nothing, but something.19 Since this comment of Anselm’s is embedded within M21, in Anselm’s argument that God must be present in all places, because place is something, it is otherwise, as he says, difficult to notice. I add that this description of place noticed by Kapriev is strongly reminiscent of the Timaeus, which will be discussed below, and is probably evidence that Anselm was influenced by it to a degree. Kapriev, however, has omitted observations about place’s structure and Anselm’s conclusion of multilocality. In addition to this scholarship, some studies exist about medieval theories of place and space, but they have left out Anselm: in fact, in general they skip over the entire early medieval period.20 This chapter, however, provides data to fill in this gap.

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See Georgi Kapriev, ‘Räumlichkeit (Ort und Zeit) gemäß Anselm von Canterbury’ in Jan A. Aertsen, ed., Raum und Raumsvorstellungen im Mittelalter [Miscellanea Mediaevalia 25] (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1998), pp. 229–248. He also suggests that Anselm may have proposed the idea of multiple infinities regarding the differences between lack of circumscription among angels and God, pp. 232–234; Ian Logan, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion: The History of Anselm’s Argument and Its Significance Today (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009; London: Routledge, 2016), especially chapter 4; Felix B.A. Asiedu, From Augustine to Anselm: The Influence of De trinitate on the Monologion [Instrumenta Patristica Et Mediaevalia 62] (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), pp. 279ff.; Eileen Sweeney, Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012) pp. 133–134; Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams, Anselm (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) Location 1298–1299, by Kindle e-book. Kapriev, ‘Ort und Zeit’, p. 231. For instance, see Frederik Bakker, Delphine Bellis, and Carla Rita Palmerino, eds., Space, Imagination, and the Cosmos from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2018); Robert Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Cecilia Trifogli, Oxford Physics in the Thirteenth Century (ca. 1250–1270): Motion, Infinity, Place, and Time (Leiden: Brill, 2000); Edward Grant, ‘Place and Space in Medieval Physical Thought’ in Peter K. Machamer and Robert G. Turnbull, eds., Motion and Time, Space and Matter: Interrelations in the History and Philosophy of Science (Columbus, OH.: Ohio State University Press, 1976), pp. 137–167, and also Max Jammer, Concepts of Space: The History of Theories of Space in Physics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1969). Edward Grant, ‘The Medieval Problem of Place: Some Fundamental Problems and Solutions’ in Alfonso Maierù and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, eds., Studi sul xiv secolo in memoria di Anneliese Maier [Raccolta di Studi e Testi, 151] (Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1981) pp. 57–79.

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Anselm’s Sources

Although Anselm’s theory of place is original and creative, it is nevertheless clear that he draws on the ideas of other authors as a springboard to his own.21 For instance, the questions that he is asking about God’s place in M and P were inspired by Augustine’s Confessions. Book I of the Confessions contains meditations about God’s place and the place of the universe with respect to God, and likewise does Book xi.22 Yet although Augustine offers some answers, such as the idea that God is not contained by place, he is mostly exploring these questions. Anselm, in contrast, provides much stronger, definitive solutions, as we have seen above. Another source that was available to Anselm was the Timaeus, by way of Calcidius’ Latin commentary, and it contains aspects that resemble Anselm’s theory of place. In the Timaeus, Plato through Socrates characterizes place as providing a seat, or foundation, for those things which are generated in creation. He is, however, critical of the concept of place, and explains that it is intangible and reachable only by counterfeit reason. The deceptive reasoning proceeds as follows: we suppose that everything which exists, either in the heavens or on earth, are found in place, because this is what we perceive, and, consequently, we think that what does not have a place in the heavens or the

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Anselm, however, is not appreciably influenced by the Categoriae Decem (see Aristoteles Latinus, i.1–5: Categoriae vel Praedicamenta, Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, ed. (Bruges/Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1961), pp. 133–175), which is largely a paraphrase of Aristotle’s Categories. See, for instance: ‘78. Place, however, since it surrounds each body and is occupied by the parts of a body, thus it is apportioned to a common boundary in the same way that a body is, and therefore it is necessary that it coheres [to the same boundaries as the body]. ((…)Locus autem, quoniam corpus quodcumque circumdat et corporis partibus occupatur, ita communi termino partitur quemadmodum partitur et corpus, ac propterea necesse est eum ‘cohaerentem’ (…))’. See also Categoriae Decem, p. 145, for ‘where’ and ‘when’ being in place and time. For Aristotle in the Categories (5a8–14) place is a three-dimension extension coterminous with the body it surrounds (Aristotle, Aristotelis Categoriae et Liber De Interpretatione, Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949)). It does not correspond to the entity-like, limiting place that Anselm depicts. The best source to consult for Aristotle’s concept of place in the Physics as the limit between a containing body and a contained body is Benjamin Morison, On Location: Aristotle’s Concept of Place (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002). Schmitt’s edition of the Monologion and Proslogion contains numerous citations. For example, ‘Videlicet nesciunt, quod ubique sis, quem nullus circumscribit locus’. Augustine of Hippo, Confessionum Libri Tredecim in csel 33, Pius Knöll, ed. (Prague, Vienna and Leipzig: F. Tempsky and G. Freytag, 1896), v.ii, p. 90.

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earth does not exist. In other words, we supply the idea of place to creation. Plato explains that we perceive place as something between being and nonbeing, and having no being itself yet not nothing. Anselm uses similar language in M21, as was noted above. In spite of this, Plato’s characterization of place does not prevent him from including it among the three things, existens locum generationem (being, place, and becoming) that were before the sensible world became ordered.23 In contrast, Anselm does not appear to have been influenced by Calcidius’ commentary on the Timaeus. In his commentary, Calcidius identifies place with matter, unlike Plato, who was ambiguous.24 Calcidius also identifies place as the receptacle for the forms, and asserts that it is immortal, another addition that is not present in the Timaeus.25 Calcidius adds that since sensible forms must have matter (that is, place) for their existence, it is one of the three principles of all things.26 Anselm’s conception of place resembles that in the Timaeus in the way that his place provides a foundation and limitation for corporeal objects and created spirits, enough so that it is reasonable to postulate an influence on him. In contrast to Plato, he is not negative about the idea of place and assigns it positive existence. That is, it is not something constructed by our minds, but exists as a part of creation. Anselm also does not include any of the peculiarities of Calcidius’ commentary: for Anselm place is not matter, it is not eternal, and it was created by the highest nature. Boethius’ De Trinitate also invites comparison. In De Trinitate i, in a passage about how individuals differ from one another, Boethius writes, For if we separate in our mind all accidents from these [individual men], place is still different to all [of them], which we cannot in any way feign; for two bodies do not occupy one place, which is an accident.27

23

24 25 26 27

Calcidius, On Plato’s Timaeus, John Magee, ed. and trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2016), pp. 114–120. This section is from Calcidius’ translation of Plato’s Timaeus, 52a–53c. See for example, Calcidius, On Plato’s Timaeus, §273, p. 552. Calcidius, On Plato’s Timaeus, §344, pp. 664–666; see also § 348, p. 672. Calcidius, On Plato’s Timaeus, §349, pp. 674–676. Boethius, De Trinitate, i 168:57–62: ‘nam vel si animo cuncta ab his accidentia separemus, tamen locus cunctis diversus est, quem unum fingere nullo modo possumus; duo enim corpora unum locum non obtinebunt, qui est accidens’. (Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae. Opuscula theologica. Editio altera, Claudio Moreschini, ed. (Munich/Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2005).)

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According to Boethius, if we imagined that, for example, two men were stripped of all their accidents, they would still differ in place. If we were to try to remove the difference in place among them, they would be the same man. For example, if Cicero and Socrates were stripped of their accidents, they would differ only in place, and if this were removed, they would be the same man, albeit without any accidents. For Anselm, at least in the case of angels and souls, difference among individuals is not made by place because it is possible for one angel or one soul to be in two places at once. It is less clear in the case of completely circumscribed objects, such as men, but it seems that place would individuate objects in a similar manner to the process Boethius describes, with some exceptions. One is that men have souls, so they may have a kind of exemption concerning their souls, and another is that Anselm never characterizes place as an accident. Instead, Anselm only speaks of an object or a container of some kind. Thus, although Anselm and Boethius demonstrate some similarities in their understanding of place, Anselm does not display any signs that he was directly influenced by Boethius; still, it is possible that he was influenced indirectly by some aspects of Boethius’ De Trinitate. In sum, one can see that Anselm’s most significant influences come from a combination of the Timaeus and the Confessions. He borrowed aspects of the definition of place from the Timaeus, and the questions Augustine asked about God’s relationship to place spurred Anselm’s solutions.

10

Anselm’s Theory Compared

When one compares Anselm’s position on place to those of other medieval philosophers, especially with regards to the multilocality of angels, Anselm’s position remains distinctive. For instance, John of Damascus writes in De fide orthodoxa i:13: For [an angel] cannot act in different places at the same time. For God alone acts simultaneously everywhere. The angel, by the swiftness of its nature, and by passing by promptly and swiftly, acts in different places. But God, who is everywhere, and above all things, simultaneously acts in different [places] by one simple act.28 28

John of Damascus, De Fide Orthodoxa i.13 in Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, Vol. ii: Expositio Fidei, Bonifatius Kotter, ed. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1973), pp. 38.33– 39.38: ‘Οὐ γὰρ δύναται κατὰ ταυτὸν ἐν διαφόροις τόποις ἐνεργεῖν. Μόνου γὰρ θεοῦ ἐστι τὸ παν-

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John of Damascus theorizes that angels can move from one place to another place very quickly. He may have in mind that angels can move from one place to another place that is quite distant instantaneously. He does not, however, propose the idea that one angel can be in two places at once. Thomas Aquinas29 in the Summa Theologica, iª q. 52 a. 2 co, argues firmly against the possibility that angels are in many places at once: The power of an angel, because it is finite, does not extend itself to all things, but to one specific something. For it is necessary that whatever is compared to one power, that one something is compared to it [in turn]. Therefore just as all being is compared as one something to the whole power of God, so in this way some particular being is compared as one something to the power of an angel. For that reason since the angel is in place by the application of its power to [a] place, it follows that it is not everywhere, nor in many places, but in one place only.30 According to Aquinas, an angel’s power has a finite extension which can only be extended to as one something. In a similar way, God’s power has an infinite extension, which is applied to all creation as one something. For Aquinas, although creation could be described as being composed of many things, it is treated as one when it is related to the one power of God. In a related way, when an angel is in place by the application of its power to place, its power is extended to one area. This one area could also potentially be described as many places in the same way that all creation, composed of many places, is as

29

30

ταχοῦ κατὰ ταυτὸν ἐνεργεῖν. Ὅ μὲν γὰρ ἄγγελος τάχει φύσεως, καὶ τῷ ἑτοίμως, ἥγουν ταχέως, μεταβαίνειν, ἐνεργεῖ ἐν διαφόποις τόποις· τὸ δὲ Θεῖον πανταχῇ ὄν, καὶ ὑπὲρ τὸ πᾶν πανταχῇ κατὰ ταυτὸν τὸν διαφόρως ἐνεργεῖ μιᾷ καὶ ἁπλῇ ἐνεργείᾳ’. For an additional discussion about angelic place in Aquinas, especially instantaneous motion, and also in Scotus, see Richard Cross, ‘Angelic Time and Motion: Bonaventure to Duns Scotus’ in Tobias Hoffman, ed., A Companion to Angels in Medieval Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 117–148. Thomas Aquinas, st iª q. 52 a. 2 co in Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici (de Aquino) Opera Omnia Iussu Leonis xiii Edita, t. v (Romae: Ex Typographia Polyglotta, 1889). Online edition accessed 31 March 2020, https://www.corpusthomisticum.org/sth1050.html#306 40: ‘Virtus autem Angeli, quia finita est, non se extendit ad omnia, sed ad aliquid unum determinatum. Oportet enim quidquid comparatur ad unam virtutem, ut unum aliquid comparari ad ipsam. Sicut igitur universum ens comparatur ut unum aliquid ad universalem Dei virtutem, ita et aliquod particulare ens comparatur ut aliquid unum ad Angeli virtutem. Unde cum Angelus sit in loco per applicationem virtutis suae ad locum, sequitur quod non sit ubique, nec in pluribus locis, sed in uno loco tantum’.

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one to God. One could even push the interpretation to say that an angel could act in two non-contiguous places by one power, so that these places could be categorised as one place. This construal of the passage, however, does not seem to be the one Aquinas had in mind. By his use of ‘some particular being’ and ‘one place’, Aquinas insists that an angel cannot apply its power to many places. In other words, the angel’s power just happens to be limited in that way. Anselm, needless to say, is not in agreement with Aquinas. If Anselm were given the chance to respond to Aquinas, Anselm might reply that, although an angel is limited in its power so that it cannot be everywhere, it is not limited completely, but only partially. Thus there is nothing to prevent the angel from acting in multiple places simultaneously. If one wanted to call the many places joined by the power of an angel one, this would be acceptable to Anselm. The idea, however, that a finite extension must be confined to just one place is not acceptable to Anselm. John Duns Scotus, in contrast, affirms the position that one angel can be in more than one place simultaneously, at least with some caveats. He argues that an angel can be in a large continuous extension, for instance, three kilometres, if it possesses the power to do so, but the angel may not exceed its natural power. As to whether an angel could be simultaneously in two discontinuous places, he concludes that there is no reason for it or against it. In other words, Scotus does not quite affirm Anselm’s position. Scotus also argues, tentatively, that two or more angels can be in the same place.31 (These views are found in Opus Oxoniense, book ii, distinction 2, question 7, number 2, vol. ii, p. 148 [Critical Edition vi], p. 271], Opus Oxoniense, book ii, distinction 2, question 8, number 2, vol. ii p. 152 [Critical Edition vii, p. 276].32) While Tiziana Suárez-Nani has demonstrated that this view is innovative with regards to Scotus’ near contemporaries,33 this chapter has demonstrated that it is not innovative with respect to earlier medieval philosophers, namely

31

32 33

The most comprehensive studies of Scotus’ theory of place is Tiziana Suárez-Nani, ‘Angels, Space and Place: The Location of Separate Substances according to John Duns Scotus’ in Isabel Iribarren and Martin Lenz, eds., Angels in Medieval Philosophical Inquiry: Their Function and Significance (Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 89–111, and Richard Cross, The Physics of Duns Scotus: The Scientific Context of a Theological Vision (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). See Étienne Gilson, John Duns Scotus: Introduction to His Fundamental Positions, James Colbert, trans. (London, T&T Clark, 2019), p. 317 n. 39. ‘On this point, the Scotist view is innovative both in relation to Aquinas and to his fellow Franciscans of the time succeeding the 1277 condemnation’. (Tiziana Suárez-Nani, ‘Angels, Space and Place’, p. 109.)

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Anselm, and that Anselm is much bolder in his affirmation of the discontinuous multilocality of angels than is Scotus. In addition, neither Scotus nor Aquinas appear to have been influenced by or been familiar with Anselm’s writings on this topic.

11

Conclusion

We have seen that Anselm’s idea of place has a number of significant characteristics. For him, place is a thing separate from substances and has the ability to act on objects. It also has the ability to individuate objects, at least hypothetically, which are completely confined by it. God is utterly unconfined by place and as a result is everywhere, and in all beings, including place itself. Some objects, such as angels, are only partially confined by place, and these can be in multiple places at once on account of their partial confinement. This theory, as was said above, is unique to Anselm, with the exception of, to a degree, Duns Scotus. It otherwise differs from his contemporaries’ and also Plato’s and Aristotle’s. Although Anselm’s cosmological model is not accurate enough or exact enough to apply to contemporary scientific theories in a rigorous way, his idea that some objects are able to be in multiple places simultaneously because they have incomplete circumscription, and its consequence, that two objects separate in space could be the same object, have the potential to be useful conceptualizations, or thought-experiments. These thought-experiments could perhaps be applied to understand some problems in modern physics. An example of these problems is quantum entanglement, in which particles separated by a great distance somehow interact with each other.34 For Anselm one object in multiple locations simultaneously can still interact with itself, even if separated by great distances. It can do this because it is only partially limited or circumscribed. Altogether, Anselm’s entity-like conception of place is able to provide a number of wide-reaching and intriguing results.

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For example, John Stewart Bell writes in ‘On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox’, Physics, 1.3 (1964), pp. 195–200 at p. 195: ‘It is the requirement of locality, or more precisely that the result of a measurement on one system be unaffected on a distant system with which it has interacted in the past, that creates the essential difficulty [of quantum entanglement]’.

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Bibliography Primary Sources Aristotle, Aristotelis Categoriae et Liber De Interpretatione, Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949). Augustine of Hippo, Confessionum Libri Tredecim in csel 33, Pius Knöll, ed. (Prague, Vienna and Leipzig: F. Tempsky and G. Freytag, 1896). Boethius, De consolatione Philosophiae. Opuscula theologica. Editio altera, Claudio Moreschini, ed. (Munich and Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2005). Calcidius, On Plato’s Timaeus, John Magee, ed. and trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2016). John of Damascus, De Fide Orthodoxa in Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, Vol. ii: Expositio Fidei, Bonifatius Kotter, ed. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1973). [Pseudo-Augustine], Categoriae Decem in Aristoteles Latinus, i.1–5, Lorenzo MinioPaluello, ed. (Bruges/Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1961), pp. 133–175. S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961); reprinted in two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968). Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae in Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici (de Aquino) Opera Omnia Iussu Leonis xiii Edita, t. iv–xii (Romae: Ex Typographia Polyglotta, 1888–1906).

Secondary Sources Bakker, Frederik, Delphine Bellis, and Carla Rita Palmerino, eds., Space, Imagination, and the Cosmos from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2018). Bell, John Stewart, ‘On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox’, Physics 1.3 (1964), pp. 195– 200. Cross, Richard, ‘Angelic Time and Motion: Bonaventure to Duns Scotus’ in Tobias Hoffman, ed., A Companion to Angels in Medieval Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 117– 148 Cross, Richard, The Physics of Duns Scotus: The Scientific Context of a Theological Vision (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). Gilson, Étienne, John Duns Scotus: Introduction to His Fundamental Positions, James Colbert, trans. (London: T&T Clark, 2019). Grant, Edward, ‘Place and Space in Medieval Physical Thought’ in Peter K. Machamer and Robert G. Turnbull, eds., Motion and Time, Space and Matter: Interrelations in the History and Philosophy of Science (Columbus, OH.: Ohio State University Press, 1976), pp. 137–167. Grant, Edward, ‘The Medieval Problem of Place: Some Fundamental Problems and

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Solutions’ in Alfonso Maierù and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, eds., Studi sul xiv secolo in memoria di Anneliese Maier [Raccolta di Studi e Testi, 151] (Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1981), pp. 57–79. Jammer, Max, Concepts of Space: The History of Theories of Space in Physics, 2nd edition (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1969). Kapriev, Georgi, ‘Räumlichkeit (Ort und Zeit) gemäß Anselm von Canterbury’ in Jan A. Aertsen, ed., Raum und Raumsvorstellungen im Mittelalter [Miscellanea Mediaevalia 25] (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1998), pp. 229–248. Logan, Ian, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion: the history of Anselm’s argument and its significance today (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009/London: Routledge, 2016). Morison, Benjamin, On Location: Aristotle’s Concept of Place (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002). Pasnau, Robert, Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Suárez-Nani, Tiziana, ‘Angels, Space and Place: The Location of Separate Substances according to John Duns Scotus’ in Isabel Iribarren and Martin Lenz, eds., Angels in Medieval Philosophical Inquiry: Their Function and Significance (Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 89–111. Sweeney, Eileen C., Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012). Trifogli, Cecilia, Oxford Physics in the Thirteenth Century (ca. 1250–1270): Motion, Infinity, Place, and Time (Leiden: Brill, 2000). Visser, Sandra, and Thomas Williams, Anselm (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

chapter 2

Does Anselm Define God? Jürgen Ludwig Scherb

1

Introduction

A considerable part of philosophy and theology consists of hermeneutic discussions and debates. One main aim thereof is to clarify arguments and concepts which had been used by renowned authors in classical texts. As a famous example one can mention the arguments of chapters 2–4 of Saint Anselm’s Proslogion (P) and the succeeding debate with Gaunilo of Marmoutier. If one is prepared to disregard questions of logical consequence for a moment there remains a further often heard epistemological question, indeed a quaestio disputata et disputanda: Does Anselm define a monotheistic concept of God in his Proslogion? As almost always in philosophy and theology there are controversial answers. Some of them are positive (e.g., the Kneales,1 Jonathan Barnes2 and many others), and others which are not as numerous are negative (e.g., Logan3 and Tapp/Siegwart4). Moreover, there also exists a middle ground proposal by Richard Heinzmann.5 Presumably following Thomas Aquinas, he speaks of a quasi-definition. In a similar mode, echoing Aquinas and certain remarks of Boethius, Ian Logan reads Anselm’s aliquid/id quo nihil maius cogitari potestformula as a description which plays the role of a middle term in the P arguments. For reasons of simplicity I take those three authors (Barnes (positive), Logan (negative) and Heinzmann (middle ground)) as representatives of the above-mentioned viewpoints. So, we at least partly fulfil the hermeneutic requirement of representative comprehensiveness on an admittedly narrow basis. Indeed, to be tolerably comprehensive we would have to scrutinize much 1 William Kneale and Martha Kneale, The Development of Logic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 201. 2 Jonathan Barnes, The Ontological Argument (London: Macmillan, 1972), pp. 4 ff. 3 Ian Logan, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion: the history of Anselm’s argument and its significance today (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009/London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 18 and 81. 4 Christian Tapp and Geo Siegwart, ‘Did Anselm Define God? Against the Definitionist Misinterpretation of Anselm’s Famous Description of God’, Philosophia, 50 (2022), pp. 2125–2160. 5 Richard Heinzmann, Philosophie des Mittelalters (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1992), p. 172.

© Jürgen Ludwig Scherb, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_004

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more literature on that topic. Despite the contradictory character of the just mentioned proposals on the surface, my answer is conciliatory: all three readings and the corresponding answers to our quaestio are possible, but obviously rest on (i) different readings of the Boethian tradition and (ii) on a different structural interpretation of P2–4 and last but not least (iii) on divergent methodological ideas about definitions. As Geo Siegwart recently argued, the positive answer (e.g., Barnes) needs a more elaborate argumentative backing.6 By recognizing Siegwart’s criticism I shall try to strengthen the positive position and argue that reading P2/S2 (‘[Deus est] aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari potest’) as a definition is at least possible. My strategy is to analyze the just mentioned proposals from a modern point of view, but without neglecting historical texts. That includes a preliminary answer to the following questions: (i) What is a good definition? (ii) Can we read Anselm’s formula aliquid/id quo (…) as a feasible definition? To give a solid answer we have to investigate firstly the Boethian concept of definition and description and see what Anselm says about that matter. Secondly, for hermeneutic reasons we must choose between two modern proposals for a theory of definitions. Finally, I shall present my answer which will give room for both sides, positive or negative, if not three sides (plus Heinzmann’s middle ground suggestion). Following Carnap’s maxim of tolerance it will end with pleading for comprehensive hermeneutics along classical lines which aims at a better understanding of the quidditative (second) order.

2

Preview

The enterprise will start with a short look at Anselm’s program change from sola ratione to fides quaerens intellectum (§3). In a second step (§ 4) we shall see that among constructive readings of P2–4 there are two directions: the fides qua- and the fides quae-reading. As normal language arguments often contain ambiguous terms and therefore can have different interpretations it is not a surprise that both readings seem to be possible. The third step (§ 5) will mention some hermeneutic preliminaries. Then (§6) we will have to decide which of the two available modern theories of definitions suits our hermeneutic aims best or at least better. In the next step (§7) we shall study—following Desmond Henry—Boethius’ ideas of definitions and descriptions. There we may well have to dig a bit deeper into the history of the quidditative question in relation with the predicables. In §8 we shall search three of Anselm’s texts for further indications on substantial definitions and descriptions. Then, on the basis of 6 Tapp and Siegwart, ‘Did Anselm Define God?’, pp. 2132–2140.

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the preceding discussions Logan’s interpretation will be reviewed in § 9. In § 10 I shall summarize the results.

3

Anselm’s Program—A Few Essentials

Roughly following St Augustine and Boethius, the Roman Consul, Anselm modified his program from sola ratione (“by reason alone”) in M to fides quaerens intellectum (“faith seeking understanding”) in P and later. When developing his theory of atonement in cdh, he holds to high logical standards. He aims to proceed via necessary arguments, without relying on the authority of the Bible or the revelation in Christ. Responding to the demands of his brethren Anselm’s works show an uncompromising search for a clear language, as well as simple and sound arguments. Critical analyses of religious and non-religious language play an important role in his effort to establish the ratio fidei. His rigorous logical implementation of these methodological requirements throughout his writings brought Anselm—even among philosophers (e.g., Ernst/Franz7 and Henry8)—the honorary title Father of Scholasticism.

4

A Short Note on P2–4

Anselm’s arguments in P2–4 can be regarded as an early scholastic model for the effort to present his ideas as clearly as possible. Therefore, it is no wonder that these arguments and the appended dispute with Gaunilo recommend themselves as reconstruenda for modern reconstructions, be they formal or informal, sympathetic (Campbell,9 Hinst,10 Meixner,11 Oppenheimer/Zalta,12 7 8 9

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Stephan Ernst and Thomas Franz, eds., Sola ratione: Anselm von Canterbury (1033–1109) und die rationale Rekonstruktion des Glaubens (Würzburg: Echter 2009), p. 10. Desmond Paul Henry, Medieval Logic and Metaphysics: A Modern Introduction (London: Hutchinson, 1972), p. 5. Richard Campbell, From Belief to Understanding: A Study of Anselm’s Proslogion Argument on the Existence of God (Canberra: Australian National University, 1976). See also Richard Campbell’s chapter in this volume. Peter Hinst, ‘A Logical Analysis of the Main Argument in Chapter 2 of the Proslogion by Anselm of Canterbury’ in Friedrich Reinmuth, Geo Siegwart, and Christian Tapp, eds., Theory and practice of logical reconstruction: Anselm as a model case [= Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy 17 (2014)] (Münster: Mentis 2014), pp. 22–44. Uwe Meixner, ‘Der ontologische Gottesbeweis in der Perspektive der Analytischen Philosophie’, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Philosophie, 67 (1992), pp. 246–262. Paul E. Oppenheimer and Edward N. Zalta, ‘On the Logic of the Ontological Argument’, Philosophical Perspectives, 5 (1991), pp. 509–529.

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et al.) or critical (Mackie,13 Millican,14 Morscher,15 et al). There is a great amount of disagreement about how to reconstruct Anselm’s arguments, but there are more or less two directions among sympathetic interpretations: (i) the orthodox fides quae-one, which mainly reads the second sentence of P2 as a definition or at least as an adduction in a modern speech-act sense, that can be used to prove indirectly that something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought exists in intellectu et in re; and (ii) the non-orthodox fides-qua reading, which sees P2–4 as a three-stage-argument from belief to understanding. The latter opts for the identification of God as that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-bethought and that-which-cannot-be-thought-not-to-be as objectives of the 3stage argument (see Campbell16). As a consequence, Campbell must deny that P2/S2 contains a definition or an adduction that is a premise in sensu lato. Here is my point of view: Both readings are possible. Concerning the final evaluation of the soundness of Anselm’s arguments, I tend to side with Campbell and Logan and conclude that the often-heard prejudice that there must be a trickery in Anselm’s arguments can now be seen to be itself the product of philosophical developments from the influence of which the Anselmian community is just beginning to free itself.

5

Hermeneutic Preliminaries

I am not going to repeat all the recent results of new logic-based hermeneutic discussions that have taken place mainly in German speaking countries from the 1990 until now. In summary there are twelve hermeneutic maxims which are designed to promote a better understanding of Anselm.17 I will concentrate on two of them which seem to be extremely relevant for a proper reading of P2–4. The first one is the on-maxim. on stands for the ontological neutrality of the interpretation frame. Following Czesław Lejewski’s language classification

13 14 15

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John Leslie Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), chapter 3. Peter Millican, ‘The One Fatal Flaw in Anselm’s Argument’, Mind, 113 (2004), pp. 437– 476. Edgar Morscher, ‘Was sind und was sollen Gottesbeweise? Bemerkungen zu Anselms Gottesbeweis(en)’ in Friedo Ricken, ed., Klassische Gottesbeweise in der Sicht der gegenwärtigen Logik und Wissenschaftstheorie, 2. durchgesehene und erweiterte Auflage, (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1998), pp. 60–84. Campbell, From belief to understanding. See Jürgen Ludwig Scherb, Anselm besser verstehen, Kapitel xii (forthcoming).

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for classical logics L1 to L5 only L3 (Leśniewski) and L5 (Lejewski) frames are good ones for dealing with ontological problems, such as correct definitions.18 They are ontologically neutral. L1 frames (Aristotle) and L2 frames (Frege, Russell, Quine et al.) are not. Their quantifiers presuppose existence. The so-called free logics (L4-logics) as developed and propagated by Lambert, Bencivenga,19 et al., are halfway solutions, mainly because the particular quantifiers still carry existential load. The second maxim is well-known as Carnap’s tolerance principle. It says that we should prima facie accept interpretations that are logically controllable. So, this is the maxim behind my standpoint that the orthodox fides quae reading and the non-orthodox fides qua reading are both possible and should be tolerated until the arguments for one side clearly weigh heavier than the other. Up to now this has not been the case. This prima facie sounds very optimistic because—as Thomas Kuhn taught us—there may exist an incommensurability concerning background assumptions. Those assumptions may prevail despite a pre-discursive hermeneutic consensus which rests on roughly classical grounds. A step further in that direction seems possible if we confront Campbell and his German supporters’ arguments (e.g., Siegwart) for his fides qua reading of P2–4 with those presented by La Croix, Hopkins and Logan for the fides quae interpretation. But this is a future project.

6

Definitions—Two Modern Views

Before discussing the issue whether Anselm defines a monotheistic concept of God we have to take a closer look at the concept of definition—systematically (Suppes and Leśniewski) as well as historically (Boethius and Anselm). From a systematic point of view there exist at least two sets of rules for definitions which we have to evaluate. The first set stems from Patrick Suppes’ 1957 book, Introduction to Logic.20 It has been adopted and refined by Peter Hinst

18 19

20

See Czesław Lejewski and William Haas, ‘Syntax and Semantics of Ordinary Language’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 49 (1975), pp. 127–169. Ermanno Bencivenga, ‘Free Logics’ in Dov M. Gabbay and Franz Guenthner, eds., Handbook of Philosophical Logic, Volume iii: Alternatives in Classical Logic (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986), pp. 373–426. See Patrick Suppes, Introduction to Logic (Princeton, NJ/London: Van Nostrand, 1957), chapter 8.

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(†2018) in the 1990s21 and Geo Siegwart in his 1999 article.22 Their inspiration mainly comes from the mathematical tradition which started with Gottlob Frege. The second set was published in the early 1930s by Stanisław Leśniewski in German,23 and made available to the English reader by Czesław Lejewski in the 1950s.24 Its main sources are Aristotle and the medieval Aristotelian tradition. For reasons of simplicity and without going deeper into historical details, I suggest following Leśniewski’s rule for (i) propositional and (ii) ontological definitions. The latter are two-parted and therefore will be—for reasons of generality and ontological consistency—of primary hermeneutic interest.25 As already mentioned it consists of two parts. (i) […]. α iff β (ii) [a …]: a is ψ iff a is a and φ(a). Here some explanations are in place: “α” represents a proposition suitably embodying the proposition-forming or functor-forming functor to be defined. “β” stands for the defining expression(s) the definiens (vice versa definientia). “ψ” is the constant name or a nominal function that has to be defined.26 Nota bene: the definiens has two parts. The first part ensures ontological consistency.27 With foresight one can—with a certain amount of logical fantasy—see that the second rule is fulfilled by Anselm’s formula, the esse aliquid/id-part (to be something) by a is a and the quo non cogitari potest maius-part (than which a greater cannot be thought) gives us φ(a). Leaving the ontological problems caused by the arbor porphyriana aside for a moment, with ontologically purged Aristotelian eyes the former can be seen as a genus- and the latter as a speciesconcept.

21

22 23 24

25 26 27

Peter Hinst, ‘A Rigorous Set Theoretical Foundation of the Structuralist Approach’ in Wolfgang Balzer and C. Ulises Moulines, eds., Structuralist Theory of Science: Focal Issues, New Results (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996), pp. 233–263. Geo Siegwart, ‘Begriffsbildung’ in Hans Jörg Sandkühler, ed., Enzyklopädie Philosophie i (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1999), pp. 130–140. Stanisław Leśniewski, ‘Über Definitionen in der sogenannten Theorie der Deduktion’, Sprawozdania z Posiedzeń Towarzystwa Naukowego Warszawskiego, 24 (1931), pp. 289–309. Czesław Lejewski, ‘On Leśniewski’s Ontology’, Ratio i (1958), pp. 150–176. Reprinted in Jan T.J. Srzednicki and Vincent Frederick Rickey, eds., Leśniewski’s Systems: Ontology and Mereology (Dordrecht: Springer, 1984), pp. 123–148. Jürgen Ludwig Scherb, ‘Existiert Gott nicht einmal im Verstand? Eine alte Debatte in einem neuen Licht’ in Ernst and Franz, Sola ratione, pp. 87–110. See Desmond Paul Henry, That Most Subtle Question. Quaestio Subtilissima, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), p. 323. See Henry, Medieval Logic, p. 44.

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Boethius on Good Definitions and Descriptions

An historical point of view has to take Boethius’ achievements as well as Anselm’s reception thereof into account. As I underlined in my book on Anselm before, Anselm by no way sticks slavishly to Boethian methodological ideas but adapts them according to his objectives.28 On that basis we can start a discussion with Logan’s 2009 results. My reading of Boethius relies strongly on Henry, Commentary on De Grammatico (= cdg) §7, n3.800b, and That Most Subtle Question (= tmsq) §4.3.29 (i) Firstly, we have to acknowledge that the formula Boethius usually sees as a definition is now called definiens (cf. cdg, p. 142). Applied to Anselm’s formula we could conjecture that the esse aliquid/id …-part which we now would call definiens can—with Boethian eyes—be read as a definition. But secondly (ii) and surely, this would be premature, because his use of the esse-terminology can also include the definiendum as will be confirmed by the third quotation. For orientation I suggest following Henry’s selection of Boethian texts and his translations from tmsq, pp. 210–213. (a) Definitio est oratio quae uniuscuiusque rei quidem esse designat. [A definition is an expression indicating what is really involved in being any given thing.] ((Boethius, De Differentiis Topicis, 1196C.) (b) Quid est autem esse rei? Nihil aliud nisi definitio. Unicuique enim rei interrogatae quid est, si quis quod est esse monstrare voluit, definitionem dicit. [What then is the being of a thing? Only its definition. In answer to the query ‘What is it?’ posed in respect of any given things, whoever wants to show what the being in question is, states the definition.] (Boethius, Commentaria in Porphyrium, 129D.) (c) Ut igitur minuatur animal et homini coaequatur, addimus differentiam. (…) Dico autem hominem esse animal rationale. Sed id nondum coaequatur ad hominem; possunt enim esse animalia rationabilia, sicut Platoni quoque

28 29

See Scherb, Anselms philosophische Theologie, Chapter ii. See Desmond Paul Henry, Commentary on De Grammatico (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974), § 7, n3008b; Henry, That Most Subtle Question, pp. 210ff.

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de astris placet, quae homines non sunt. Addo igitur rursus aliam differentiam, si quoque modo iterum definitio contrahtur, ut fiat homini quod definitur aequale; adiungo igitur ‘mortale’, ac dico hominem esse animal rationale mortale, id aequatur ad hominem. [In order, therefore, to reduce the extent of animal we add the constitutive differentia (…) And so I assert that man is rational animal. But the latter is not yet the equivalent of man, for there can be rational animals other than men, according to the Platonists’ doctrine concerning the stars. I therefore tack on another differentia on the assumption that the definition may in some way or another be reduced in extent so as to render the definition coextensive with man. I therefore add mortal and assert man to be rational mortal animal; this yields equality with man.] (Boethius, Commentaria in Topica Ciceronis, 1101c–d.) A third important piece of information (iii) provided by Henry indicates that in Aristotle’s and Boethius’ eyes only substantial definitions are the good ones. But there is no need for them to belong exclusively to the Aristotelian category of substance. Substantial definitions can also be given of accidents. (d) Multis namque modis fieri definitio potest. Inter quos unus est verus atque integer definitionis modus qui etiam substantialis dicitur; reliqui per abusionem definitiones vocantur. [Definitions can be contrived in various ways. Of these one is the right and complete way of defining and is called ‘substantial’; the rest are not definitions properly so called.] (Boethius, Commentaria in Topica Ciceronis, 1096B.) In Boethius’ writings we can (iv) also find a distinction between substantial definitions and descriptions. The latter seem to be less systematic. Here is Henry’s quotation and his translation: (e) Differt autem definitio a descriptio, quod definitio genus ac differentiam sumit, descriptio subiecti intelligentiam claudit, quibusdam vel accidentibus efficientibus unam proprietatem, vel substantialibus differentiis praeter conveniens genus aggregatis. [Definition differs from description in that a definition involves a genus and differentia, whereas a description circumscribes the notion of a thing

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by making up one property, either from various accidental features, or even by gathering together differentiae constitutive of substances out of relation to their appropriate genus.] (Boethius, De Differentiis Topicis, 1187B–C.) The last quotation from Boethius seems to push us towards Logan’s assessment that Anselm’s aliquid/id … formula has to be read as a description and therefore cannot be a definition. I propose to postpone the imminent debate a little bit. Let us first have a closer look into Anselm’s texts M, P, dv and dg8 to get a more holistic feeling.

8

Anselm on Defining, Definition and Description

Let me first admit that Anselm nowhere in the Monologion (M) and (P) explicitly uses the term definition to designate his aliquid/id …-formula. And this despite the fact that he is indeed familiar with Boethius’ logical works and therefore uses the corresponding terminology such as definire and definitio throughout his more philosophical works, especially in his De Veritate (dv) and De Grammatico (dg). I suggest beginning with M. (i) Firstly, we have to acknowledge that in the early chapters of M Anselm almost always speaks of unum aliquid instead of aliquid or id. We have to keep this in mind when reading P. It can be read as a hint towards nominalisation. (ii) Secondly, in M10 Anselm works with Boethius’ rule for definitions. The example is man. There he uses the genus animal and the two specific differentiae: rationale and mortale to define the noun homo. Quidditatively speaking: being a man is being a rational and mortal living being, which may sound a bit strange in modern English. Following Lejewski throughout his writings on Anselm and medieval logic Henry shows that quidditative speech is the adequate frame for reconstructing such definitions.30 Here is the implicit definition: D1 Homo est animal rationale mortale. [Man is rational mortal animal.] (iii) Thirdly, in M27 Anselm provides another important piece of methodological background information. He states that the divine substance is not

30

Henry, Medieval Logic, pp. 1–15.

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included in Aristotle’s tractatus concerning substances. Therefore, God cannot be seen as a primary or secondary substance in any Aristotelian sense. Consequently, if one regards the substance/accident classification laid down in the arbor porphyriana as a theoretical basis for good definitions one may conclude that there can be no definition of God. But here we have to be cautious! Anselm in M27 only mentions that the divine substance cannot be located within the Aristotelian ontological frame, in modern terms in a first order language. However, throughout M he uses the terms substance, nature and essence mostly connected with superlatives like summa or praestantissima when talking about God and his quiddity (in eo quod quid) in a transcategorial sense. Those quidditative hints may be read as pointers towards a second order language. (iv) Fourthly, in M24 Anselm mentions Boethius’ definition of eternity which is not a primary nor a secondary substance definition. D2 Aeternitas est interminabilis vita simul perfecte tota existens [Eternity is illimitable life existing as a whole all at once and perfectly]. (v) In dv11 and dv12 Anselm defines truth veritas and justice iustitia. There he speaks explicitly of definitio and definire. This shows that he is—as I already mentioned—familiar with this terminology. Here are the two definitions: D3 Veritas est rectitudo mente sola perceptibilis. [Truth is rectitude perceptible only by the mind.] D4 Iustitia est rectitudo voluntatis propter se servata. [Justice is rectitude of the will preserved for its own sake.] Rectitudo seems to play the role of a genus and appendices mente sola perceptibilis and voluntatis propter se servata the differentia part. Here we have definitions not of substances but of constitutive propria. (vi) In dg8 and the preceding chapters Anselm is more explicit. There we can find a clear connection between posse intelligi, definitio and esse. In dg8, echoing Boethius, the teacher asks the student whether the esse of a thing consists in its definitio and the student agrees. Furthermore in dg4, dg5 and dg7 potest intelligi can easily and without loss be replaced by potest definiri. This is a clear sign that those two combinations are synonymous. In the subsequent chapters of dg Anselm also shows that he is familiar with Aristotle’s Categoriae which do not apply to God.

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Logan’s Proposal Revisited

Let us go back to Ian Logan. In his Reading Anselm’s Proslogion, Logan summarizes his interpretation as follows: Anselm presents [in P2/S2] the middle term of his argument. It is not a definition of God, and could not be, since God is not susceptible of definition in the dialectical tradition in which Anselm is operating, i.e. God is not a differentiated species of a higher genus.31 Prima facie one may admit that P2/S2 does not contain a definition of God. However, on the other hand we have to acknowledge that in P4/S6 Anselm identifies God as that than which a greater cannot be thought, which looks very much like definition. But probably Logan thinks that even this proposition from P4 is not a definition in the Boethian sense but at best also a description. In order to make things a bit clearer still, let us have another look at Logan’s position. On page 18 of his book he is more outspoken. Under the headline Definition and Description, he starts with a translation of a quotation from Boethius’ De Divisione. There things are classified threefold: the higher ones, the middle ones and the lower ones. Only the middle ones are suited to come under genera and species and therefore under a definition. Presupposing that Anselm strictly follows Boethius’ explanation Logan writes: In De Topicis Differentiis, Book ii, Boethius states that the difference between definition and description lies in the fact that ‘a definition contains genus and differentiae’, whilst a description involves an ‘understanding of the subject’ through accidents or differentiae ‘apart from the appropriate genus’. Here some critical annotations seem to be appropriate. They are meant to strengthen the positive answer and partly fulfil Siegwart’s wish for stronger plausibility of that position. Even if one is prepared to concede that Anselm has logically and theologically learned a lot from Boethius nevertheless one cannot convincingly maintain that he followed him in every aspect. This would have to be the case for a stringent logical and textual dependence. When reading Anselm there is a point which one has to keep in mind. Anselm is an innovative thinker who superseded his predecessors logically as

31

Logan, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion, p. 91.

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well as theologically. Despite the fact that he nowhere in his writings speaks explicitly of defining a concept of God there exist at least two contexts which are suggestive in that direction: P4 and pi 4. In P4/S6 Anselm explicitly says: Deus enim est id quo maius cogitari non potest. Those two contexts, especially pi 4, show that Aristotle’s and Boethius’ theory of definitions—definitio fit per genus proximum et differentiam specificam—stands in the background of the debate. Gaunilo in pi 4 strongly denies that the two conditions for a good Boethian definition are fulfilled. Anselm on the other hand sticks to a moderate form of intelligibility of his formula (aliquatenus intelligere aliquid quo …). In addition, if one considers the close connection between intelligere and definitio as given in dg4–8 et al. one can perhaps conjecture that a central point in the debate is the possibility of introducing a scholarly acceptable concept of God on broadly Boethian grounds. The reason why Anselm does not use the term ‘God’ in P2, one may surmise, is a psychological and probably didactical if not political one. Psychologically he wants to offer a concept that the insipiens at least partly can understand (sic: aliquatenus intelligere) and thus avoid his prima facie reluctance against using the noun deus. From the insipiens’ perspective—for whatever reason—the word deus cannot be understood at all and therefore cannot be defined (pi 4!). Here we also have a link between defining and understanding. From Anselm’s point of view the concept aliquid quo … at least provides some sort of prima facie neutrality, one which even the insipiens can for the time being accept and somehow understand (aliquo modo intelligere). This interpretation can be strengthened and confirmed by Anselm’s Responsio (R7/S2–6) where he distinguishes between aliquatenus intelligere aliquid quo (…) and nullatenus intelligere deum. There he writes:32 (7.2) For is it reasonable that someone should deny what he understands because it is said to be that which he denies, since he does not understand it.

An enim rationabile est, ut idcirco neget aliquis quod intelligit, quia esse dicitur id, quod ideo negat quia non intelligit?

(7.3) Or, if what is understood to some extent is denied at any time and is the same as that which is in no way under-

Aut si aliquando negatur, quod aliquatenus intelligitur, et idem est illi quod nullatenus intelligitur: nonne

32

The English translation is from Logan, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion, p. 79. The Latin text is from aoo, i.136:25–137:5. The text clearly speaks for itself. Any further comment on it would seem redundant.

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stood, is not what is in doubt more easily proved concerning that which is partly understood, than what is not understood.

facilius probatur quod dubium est de illo quod in aliquo, quam de eo quod in nullo est intellectu?

(7.4) Therefore it cannot be credible that someone denies (something) than which a greater cannot be thought, which he understands in some way, when he hears it, because he denies God, whose meaning he does not think in any way.

Quare nec credibile potest esse idcirco quemlibet negare “quo maius cogitari nequit” quod auditum aliquatenus intelligit: quia negat deum, cuius sensum nullo modo cogitat.

(7.5) Or, if the former is denied, because it is not completely understood, is it not the case, that that which is understood in some way is more easily proved than that which in no way is understood?

Aut si et illud, quia non omnino intelligitur negatur: nonne tamen facilius id quod aliquo modo, quam id quod nullo modo intelligitur probatur?

(7.6) Therefore, I did not unreasonably put forward (something) than which a greater cannot be thought against the fool to prove that God exists, since whilst there was no way in which he understood the latter, he did understand the former in some way.

Non ergo irrationabiliter contra insipientem ad propandum deum esse attuli “quo maius cogitari non possit”, cum illud nullo modo, istud aliquo modo intelligeret.

Another supportive item comes from outside and stems from Leśniewski’s ontology which allows—as we saw above—for two-part ontological definitions and therefore has a closer relation to the Aristotelian tradition in which Boethius as well as Anselm stand. As a last highly probable speculation one may conjecture that he wants to avoid an additional point of conflict with his mentor, Lanfranc. Remember that Lanfranc was not amused firstly about the logically stringent form of M and secondly about the lack of reference to patristic authorities.33

33

I want to express my gratitude to Ian Logan who provided this additional information.

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Summa

Summarizing arguments in a holistic conspectus I plead for the following conclusion. There exists an argument-based tendency for reading P2/S2 in a fides quae manner as a definition or at least—in a speech-act sense—as an adduction. In this line Karl Barth seems to speak of an articulus fidei. The reasons why Anselm avoided this nomenclature are twofold. Firstly, for Anselm himself as well as for Boethius the aliquid-formula alone can be regarded as a definition as Henry argued. Secondly, after the harsh criticism by his teacher and mentor Lanfranc, Anselm probably wanted to avoid a further point of conflict and therefore did not use definitoric terminology. This is my conclusion. It is far from claiming to have an exclusively true reading of Anselm’s texts. It only shows that arguments for the positive answer can be given and/or be made stronger. In addition, it claims that such a reading is not altogether beyond reason.

Bibliography Primary Sources Boethius, Commentaria in Topica Ciceronis in pl 64, 1039–1174. Boethius, Commentaria In Porphyrium in pl 64, 71–158. Boethius, De Differentiis Topicis in pl 64, 1173–1216. S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961); reprinted in two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968).

Secondary Sources Barnes, Jonathan, The Ontological Argument (London: Macmillan, 1972). Bencivenga, Ermanno, ‘Free Logics’ in Dov M. Gabbay and Franz Guenthner, eds., Handbook of Philosophical Logic, Volume iii: Alternatives in Classical Logic (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986), pp. 373–426. Campbell, Richard, From Belief to Understanding: A Study of Anselm’s Proslogion Argument on the Existence of God (Canberra: The Australian National University, 1976). Ernst, Stephan and Thomas Franz, eds., Sola ratione: Anselm von Canterbury (1033–1109) und die rationale Rekonstruktion des Glaubens (Würzburg: Echter 2009). Heinzmann, Richard, Philosophie des Mittelalters (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1992). Henry, Desmond Paul, Medieval Logic and Metaphysics: A Modern Introduction (London: Hutchinson, 1972). Henry, Desmond Paul, Commentary on De Grammatico: The Historical-Logical Dimensions of a Dialogue of St. Anselm’s (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1974).

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Henry, Desmond Paul, That Most Subtle Question (Quaestio Subtilissima) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984). Hinst, Peter, ‘A Rigorous Set Theoretical Foundation of the Structuralist Approach’ in Wolfgang Balzer and C. Ulises Moulines, eds., Structuralist Theory of Science: Focal Issues, New Results (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996), pp. 233–263. Hinst, Peter, ‘A Logical Analysis of the Main Argument in Chapter 2 of the Proslogion by Anselm of Canterbury’ in Friedrich Reinmuth, Geo Siegwart, and Christian Tapp, eds., Theory and practice of logical reconstruction: Anselm as a model case [= Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy 17 (2014)] (Münster: Mentis 2014), pp. 22–44. Kneale, William, and Martha Kneale, The Development of Logic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962). Lejewski, Czesław, ‘On Leśniewski’s Ontology’, Ratio i (1958), pp. 150–176. Reprinted in Jan T.J. Srzednicki and Vincent Frederick Rickey, eds., Leśniewski’s Systems: Ontology and Mereology (Dordrecht: Springer, 1984), pp. 123–148. Lejewski, Czesław, and William Haas, ‘Syntax and Semantics of Ordinary Language’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 49 (1975), pp. 127–169. Leśniewski, Stanisław, ‘Über Definitionen in der sogenannten Theorie der Deduktion’, Sprawozdania z Posiedzeń Towarzystwa Naukowego Warszawskiego, 24 (1931), pp. 289–309. Logan, Ian, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion: the history of Anselm’s argument and its significance today (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009/London: Routledge, 2016). Mackie, John Leslie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). Meixner, Uwe, ‘Der ontologische Gottesbeweis in der Perspektive der Analytischen Philosophie’, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Philosophie, 67 (1992), pp. 246–262. Millican, Peter, ‘The One Fatal Flaw in Anselm’s Argument’, Mind, 113 (2004), pp. 437– 476. Morscher, Edgar, ‘Was sind und was sollen Gottesbeweise? Bemerkungen zu Anselms Gottesbeweis(en)’ in Friedo Ricken, ed., Klassische Gottesbeweise in der Sicht der gegenwärtigen Logik und Wissenschaftstheorie, 2. durchgesehene und erweiterte Auflage (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1998), pp. 60–84. Oppenheimer, Paul E., and Edward N. Zalta, ‘On the Logic of the Ontological Argument’, Philosophical Perspectives, 5 (1991), pp. 509–529. Scherb, Jürgen Ludwig, Anselms philosophische Theologie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2000). Scherb, Jürgen Ludwig, ‘Existiert Gott nicht einmal im Verstand? Eine alte Debatte in einem neuen Licht’ in Stephan Ernst and Thomas Franz, eds., Sola ratione: Anselm von Canterbury (1033–1109) und die rationale Rekonstruktion des Glaubens (Würzburg: Echter 2009), pp. 87–110. Siegwart, Geo, ‘Begriffsbildung’ in Hans Jörg Sandkühler, ed., Enzyklopädie Philosophie i (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1999), pp. 130–140.

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Suppes, Patrick, Introduction to Logic (Princeton, NJ/London: Van Nostrand, 1957). Tapp, Christian and Geo Siegwart, ‘Did Anselm Define God? Against the Definitionist Misinterpretation of Anselm’s Famous Description of God’, Philosophia, 50 (2022), pp. 2125–2160.

chapter 3

Divine Order—Created Order The Inapplicability of Aristotle’s Categories to God in Anselm’s Monologion and Proslogion John Demetracopoulos

Unlike the pseudo-Dionysian theonymical tradition, which has been intensely studied (mainly because of its philosophical implications regarding the crucial metaphysical problem of the transcendentalia and because of the massiveness of the relevant sources), the Augustinian tradition of testing the applicability of Aristotle’s Categories to the divine being has been rather neglected. This is partly due to the fact that the ten Aristotelian Categories are not fashionable anymore. Regardless, from the historical point of view, this period of the Western medieval theonymical tradition deserves serious attention. This chapter is meant to be a contribution in this direction, placing emphasis on Anselm, the last and most important link in the chain of the relevant thinkers, which includes Augustine, Claudianus Mamertus and Boethius.1

1

Anselm’s Forerunners: From Augustine through Boethius

1.1 Augustine of Hippo Augustine, in De Trinitate, Bks. v–vii (see also Confessiones iv.16.28) addressed Plotinus’ question of the applicability of the Aristotelian Categories to the intelligible reality (Enneads vi.1–2). Augustine argues that situs, habere, ubi, quando, and pati are applicable to God only metaphorically.2 Quality (e.g., ‘bonus’, ‘jus-

1 Much of what is argued here derives from my unpublished doctoral dissertation (John A. Demetracopoulos, Aristotle’s Categories and the ‘Nomina Divina’ in Anselm of Canterbury), written in Modern Greek (Αριστοτελικές κατηγορίες και ‘θεία ονόματα’ κατά τον Άνσελμο Καντουαρίας, PhD thesis, Division of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Pedagogy, and Psychology, Philosophical Faculty, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 2001; https://​ www.didaktorika.gr/eadd/handle/10442/21957). Select references to studies post-dating it and certain new findings are added. 2 See John A. Demetracopoulos, Αὐγουστῖνος καί Γρηγόριος Παλαμᾶς: τά προβλήματα τῶν ἀριστοτελικῶν κατηγοριῶν καί τῆς τριαδικῆς ψυχοθεολογίας [St. Augustine and Gregory Palamas: Aristotle’s

© John Demetracopoulos, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_005

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tus’) and quantity (e.g., ‘magnus’) cannot be regarded as being in subjecto, namely they cannot refer to something different from God’s being itself; for, this would imply that He is a compositum. Substance is to be excluded, since it implies bearing accidentia and thereby brings about, besides composition, mutability as well. Even the accidentia inseparabilia are destroyed upon the passing away of the subjectum itself. So, the Aristotelian substantia should be replaced by the Neoplatonic essentia or esse, which refers to the ‘true being’, the ‘intelligible’ one. One of the premises of this rejection is the PlotinianPorphyrean construal of Aristotle’s Categories as genera of being (γένη τοῦ ὄντος) and the correlate description of τὸ ὄν as the immutable being. Augustine was puzzled by the ontological implications of ad aliquid (πρός τι) and agere or facere (ποιεῖν). Construing these Categories as practically one or, at least, inextricably linked to each other (God’s action, i.e., facere, always refers to something being acted upon, namely an ad aliquid), he silently returns to the Stoic sub-class of ‘relatives’ called πρός τί πως ἔχοντα (e.g., ‘left’—‘right’), which have an intermediary ontological status; on the one hand, a πρός τί πως ἔχον expresses some truths about the subject it is predicated of, whereas on the other its coming-to-be and passing-away does not affect its subject at all.3 Thus God became ‘creator’ without turning into a composite being. On the metaphysical level, Augustine, arguing that certain ad aliquid can be properly predicated of God, declares the impassibility of God’s agere/facere in a manner which did not originate with him,4 but quite probably reflected Porphyry.5 Augustine’s conclusion reads: Thus we should understand God, if we can and as far as we can, to be good without Quality (sine qualitate), great without Quantity (sine quantitate), creator without need (sine indigentia creatorem), presiding without

Categories and the Psychological Images of the Holy Trinity] (Athens: Parousia, 1997), pp. 19– 47. 3 See Jean-Baptiste Gourinat, ‘Relations et relatifs: les stoïciens contre Aristote’, Quaestio, 13 (2013), pp. 17–37, at pp. 25–31. 4 As stated by Alexandre Koyré, L’idée de Dieu dans la philosophie de St. Anselme (Paris: Vrin, 1923), pp. 155 and 172–173. 5 Augustine, De Trinitate v.8.9, ll. 28–32 in cc sl 50–50A, William John Mountain and François Glorie, eds. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1968), p. 216; Porphyry, Commentary on ‘Parmenides’ xii.22– 33 in Porphyre et Victorinus, ii: Textes, Pierre Hadot, ed. (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1968), pp. 102–106. As regards Augustine’s distinction between two classes of relativa, in Plotinus’ Enneads vi.1 (30, 21–24), the Stoics are presented as attributing true existence (ὑπόστασις) to some relations (πρός τι or σχέσις), whereas to some other ones not. It is not impossible that this Plotinian treatise was among those read (in Latin translation) by Augustine.

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Position (sine situ), containing all things without being Possessed (sine habitu), wholly everywhere without Place (sine loco), everlasting without Time (sine tempore), without any change in himself making changeable things and thereby having no Passion (patientem) at all.6 Each of the first seven clusters refers to the numerically equivalent Aristotelian Category. The fact that all the clusters refer to certain Categories indicates that the ‘sine indigentia creatorem’ does not refer to the postpraedicamentum of privatio.7 Moreover, all Categories are mentioned, and their order only insignificantly differs from the order in De Trinitate v.7.8;8 according to this order, the particular cluster should refer to ad aliquid.9 Indeed, Augustine classifies ‘creator’ both as an ad aliquid and facere, which, in combination with the fact that he below refers to the latter (‘facientem’), shows that by ‘sine indigentia’, taken as a property of the creative activity of God, he meant that God is the creator of creatura yet without being subjected to the law that each member of a pair of ‘relatives’ stands in need of the other; for Augustine, that ‘creatura’ depends on God does not hold vice versa. 1.2 Augustinus explicatus: Claudianus Mamertus Claudianus Mamertus, in De statu animae (c. 468–471),10 developed Augustine’s discussion. Explicitly referring to the ‘Aristotelicae categoriae’ or ‘praedic-

6

7 8

9

10

Augustine, De Trinitate v.1.2, ll. 39–44 (Mountain and Glorie, Augustini, p. 207). Amended translation from Augustine of Hippo, The Works of Saint Augustine: The Trinity, Volume I/5, Edmund Hill, ed. (New York: New City Press, 1991), p. 190. As suggested in Pierre Aubenque, Le problème de l’être chez Aristote. Essai sur la problématique aristotélicienne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962), p. 413, n. 1. Substantia (implied by ‘Deum’); qualitas; quantitas; ad aliquid; situs; habitus; ubi (implied by ‘loco’); quando (implied by ‘tempore’); facere; pati. On the order of the Categories elsewhere in Augustine and in other Latin writings of the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries, see Alain Galonnier, ‘Nature, orientation exégétique et postérité des Dix catégories du PseudoAugustin’, hal/cnrs—Archives ouvertes, 2017, pp. 1–50, at pp. 8–9 (https://hal.archives​ ‑ouvertes.fr/hal‑01502589; last access: 15.4.2021). See R. Philippson, ‘Review of F. Bömer, Der lateinische Neuplatonismus und Neupythagorismus und Claudianus Mamertus in Sprache und Philosophie (Leipzig, 1936)’, Philologische Wochenschrift, 58 (1938), pp. 1033–1041, at p. 1039, n. 2; Demetracopoulos, Αὐγουστῖνος, p. 134, n. 82; Axel Tisserand, ‘Métaphore et translatio in divinis: la théorie de la prédication et la conversion des Catégories chez Boèce’, in Alain Galonnier, ed., Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs: Actes du colloque international de la Fondation Singer-Polignac, Paris 8–12 juin 1999 (Louvain: Peeters, 2003), pp. 435–463, at p. 443. See Michele Di Marco, La polemica sull’anima tra Fausto di Riez e Claudiano Mamerto (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1995).

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amenta’,11 he denies Quality any true theonymical value.12 Distinguishing this being from that by means of having this or that quality or not can work only for beings standing on the same level, i.e., created beings. Mamertus implies that ‘being’ cannot be predicated of God and creature univocally. God’s qualities coincide with His essence; whereas a creature possesses qualities ‘accidentaliter’ or ‘accessibiliter’, God possesses them ‘substantialiter’.13 The same holds for Quantity; as Augustine had argued, God has no mass or volume, however enormous one may try to think of Him in this sense.14 Mamertus argues at length against applying habere, in any of its six meanings expounded in chapter 15 of Aristotle’s Categories, to God. Asking about God ‘quid habet (…)’ is absurd. Likewise, ‘nec habitum ejus inquirimus’; for, it makes sense to state that a being ‘has’ x only provided it does not have y, possessed by some other being—which is not the case with God, ‘quia nihil non habet’.15 Mamertus presumably refers to positive habitus, dispositiones or other qualitates, such as goodness or power. He further seems to classify these divine properties neither as habitus nor as dispositiones; for, to Aristotle, these refer to properties that are impermanent,16 whereas God is by nature immutable and cannot lose anything. As for the remaining genera of qualitas, only the ‘natural powers’ seem perhaps to be predicable of God; Mamertus, after rejecting the applicability of ‘having qualities’ to God, says: ‘Nec [dicimus] quo modo est, quia ipse modus est’.17 This reflects Aristotle’s discussion of ‘natural powers’ in Categories, chapter 8: (…) The next kind of quality (…) will cover all terms that denote any natural capacity, any innate incapacity. Not from their being disposed or conditioned in this or that matter (διακεῖσθαί πως), but rather from having a power, which is natural, innate or inborn, or, it may be, the lack of such power to achieve this or that thing with ease (ποιῆσαί τι ῥᾳδίως) or avoid the defeat of some kind, do we say men possess such a quality.18

11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Claudianus Mamertus, De statu animae i.19, in csel 11, August Engelbrecht, ed. (Vienna: apud C. Geroldi filium, 1885), pp. 69.4, 69.15. Cf. René-Marie de la Broise, Mamerti Claudiani vita ejusque doctrina de anima hominis (Paris: Retaux-Bray, 1890), pp. 51, 80–82, 113. i.19 (csel 11, p. 69.7–8). i.3.1 (csel 11, pp. 27.5, 27.7–14, 28.10–12). i.19 (csel 11, p. 69.8–9). Cf. Augustine, De Trinitate v.1.2, ll. 40–41 (cc sl 50–50A, p. 207). i.19 (csel 11, p. 69.9–10). Aristotle, Categories 8, 8b26–9a13; 9a8–10 (habitus is more stable than dispositio). i.19 (csel 11, p. 69.10). Aristotle, Categories 8, 9a14–19 (cf. 9a20–24); Aristotle. The Organon. The Categories—On

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Mamertus’ ‘quo modo esse’ evidently corresponds to Aristotle’s διακεῖσθαί πως; both distinguish it from the energetic character of the ‘natural powers’, which enable their bearer to resist impact as well as to affect other beings. And to Aristotle’s ‘ποιῆσαί τι ῥᾳδίως’ corresponds Mamertus’ description of God as ‘modus’ of being, which most probably derives from Augustine, to whom this description means that God is He to whom all beings owe their existence, form, degree of being, the mutual relation of their parts which provides them with a concrete identity, their relation to each other and their correlate place in the hierarchy of created beings.19 Thus perceived, ‘modus’ can be seen as basically equivalent to the Aristotelian dispositio (διάθεσις), which is connected to the Category of pati; indeed, order is imposed on creature by the most active being, i.e., God. Receiving forma had explicitly been considered by Augustine a sort of mutability, forma taken in the sense of ordo and modus.20 Mamertus also argues that God cannot be conceived of as ‘contained’ (‘habitus’) by anything; quite the contrary, it is He who contains and sustains everything.21 As for the remaining meanings of habitus, Mamertus implicitly rejects them. Mamertus further argues that ubi and quando are interwoven with Quantity (since time and space are divisible), which is excluded from God. Ubi relates only to bodies.22 This serves Mamertus’ main (Neoplatonic in tenor and, most probably, Augustinian in origin23) position that the human soul, although cre-

19

20 21

22 23

Interpretation, translated by Harold P. Cooke; Prior Analytics, translated by H. Tredennick (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938), pp. 65–67. Augustine mainly develops this theme in the De libero arbitrio ii.20.54.203. See Augustine of Hippo, De libero arbitrio in cc sl 29, William McAllen Green, ed. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1970), pp. 205–321, p. 273. See also De natura boni 21–23 in The De Natura Boni of Saint Augustine: A Translation with an Introduction and Commentary, Albian Anthony Moon, ed. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1955), pp. 78–80, which Mamertus had most probably used; compare, inter alia, De statu animae i.3.2 (csel 11, pp. 27.23–28.1) to De libero arbitrio ii.17.46.177 (cc sl 29, p. 268). Augustine, De libero arbitrio ii.17.45.172–173; iii.12.35.23–25; 21.60.47–48 (cc sl 29, pp. 267, 296, 310). Claudianus Mamertus, De statu animae i.3.1; i.19 (csel 11, pp. 27.22–23, 69.10–11). Cf. Augustine’s interpretation of ‘vestimentum’ from Psalms 103:6 in De Trinitate v.8.9, ll. 25– 26 (cc sl 50–50A, p. 216); see also v.4.6, ll. 32 (cc sl 50–50A, p. 210). i.19 (csel 11, p. 69.12): ‘(…) non nisi corpus in loco est’; see also the Epilogue of his writing (p. 196.16–24). See, for example, Augustine of Hippo, De immortalitate animae xvi.25 in csel 89, Wolfgang Hörmann, ed. (Vienna: Hoelder Pichler-Tempsky, 1986), pp. 127–128; Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate vi.6.8, ll. 20–25 (Mountain and Glorie, Augustini, p. 237); Augustine of Hippo, Contra Epistolam quam vocant fundamenti in csel 25/1, Joseph Zycha, ed. (Prague, Vienna and Leipzig: F. Tempsky and G. Freytag, 1891), pp. 213–214.

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ated and closely connected with body, is not restricted by place and affects body without being in turn affected by it. If the soul stands exempt from this Category, so does God a fortiori: ‘(…) ubi localitas non est, quantitas esse non possit, quia sibi ita mutuo haec eadem nexa sunt, ut aut utrumque in aliquo esse possit aut neutrum’.24 Mamertus seems to subscribe to Aristotle’s doctrine that ubi falls under ‘continuous quantity’, which implies that Quantity stands as a genus of ubi.25 What Mamertus denies God is not ‘locus’, but ‘localitas’; what he says is not that God is not place, but that God does not exist ‘in place’, i.e., is not restricted to the limits of this or that specific part of space. However, although he does not even say that God is space or ‘place’, he leaves it open for one to say that He is omnipresent, namely that He exists in every single place. What adequately distinguishes God from creature is His peculiar relation to ‘motio’. Mamertus speaks of three kinds of ‘motio’. According to the first, that is the ‘motio stabilis’, God stands out of any local or temporal confinement and affects other beings without thereby being affected. According to the second, i.e., the ‘motio illocalis’, the soul moves within time but out of place. According to the third, i.e., the ‘motio localis’, the bodies move subjected to the laws of place and time, which is a consequence of their being composed of, and decomposed to, parts (‘partilia’) and thereby intrinsically bound to multiplicity, i.e., to fall under Quantity (‘… nec uno in loco esse quamlibet minimum [i.e., corpus] totum posse’).26 Likewise, God is not subjected to quando. God ‘sempiternitas est’, whereas time is contained in eternity: ‘Temporaneum motum stabilitas sempiternae voluntatis includit’.27 That Mamertus construes here ‘tempus’ not in the general sense of time, to which infinite time would belong, too, but in the sense of the Category of quando, i.e., of this or that particular moment of the temporal continuum, is indicated by his saying that ‘ “Tunc” temporis significatio est; “semper” non ad tempus pertinet’,28 which means that he does not consider eternity a simple quantitative extension of time to infinity, but something

24 25 26

27 28

Claudianus Mamertus, De statu animae i.19 (csel 11, p. 69.2–4). Aristotle, Categories 6, 5a6–14. Claudianus Mamertus, De statu animae i.15; i.18.1 (csel 11, pp. 59.25–60.3, 64.1–68.9). Cf. Augustine’s De vera religione x.18.6–8 in Augustine of Hippo, De vera religione in Augustinus. De vera religione—Die wahre Religion: Augustinus Opera. Werke 68, Josef Lössl, ed. (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007), p. 114: ‘Mutari autem animam posse, non quidem localiter, sed tamen temporaliter, suis affectionibus quisque cognoscit. Corpus vero et temporibus et locis esse mutabile cuivis advertere facile est’. Claudianus Mamertus, De statu animae i.19; i.18.1 (csel 11, pp. 69.12–13; 64.21–22); cf. i.3.5 (pp. 30.24–31.2). i.18.1 (csel 11, p. 65.5–6).

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radically different from the total sum of the potentially—or even actually— innumerable particular quando bits. Still, what about the relation of God, soul and bodies to quando? Unlike both bodily and spiritual creatures, which are subjected to it, God’s ‘stabilis motio’ makes Him stand completely out of it. For, unlike the activities of the human soul (which at one time is, e.g., full of joy whereas at some other feels sorrow), God’s will to create the world is eternal, and it is the actualization of this will that creates even time.29 ‘“Tunc” ergo istud (sc. the “tunc” of the creative activity of God) ad principium temporis, non ad tempus’.30 Otherwise stated, in the statement ‘Tunc [sc. Deus mundum] creare voluit’,31 ‘tunc’ qualifies the ‘creare’, not the ‘voluit’. Evidently, Mamertus simply rephrases Augustine’s celebrated doctrine that God did not create the world in time, but along with time.32 Last, Mamertus discusses agere and pati. In a rhetorical way, he rejects both: ‘(…) nec actum, quoniam quietus agit, nec passionem, quia non patitur’.33 His justification of this rejection turns it into an acceptance of the Category of agere. Closely following Augustine, he explains that calling God ‘misericors’, ‘iratus’ et sim., should it be taken at its face value, i.e., as denoting an ‘affectus’, would amount to saying that He suffers from sadness or anger because of the misery or the sins of human beings. In fact, these ‘passions’ should be properly regarded as metaphorical expressions of ‘acts’, namely of those acts which, when done by humans, cause, in spite of their being inseparable from some kind of ‘passion’, beneficial effects such as healing (cf. ‘misericors’) or rendering justice (cf. ‘iratus’).34 ‘Stans sempiternitas’, Mamertus argues, is ‘ab omni affectu vel motu temporis et loci satis aliena, praedita illo tantum motu qui “stabilis” dicitur’.35 1.3 Augustinus retractatus: Boethius Boethius’ elaboration of Augustine’s De Trinitate, Bks. v–vii in his own De Trinitate is philosophically more important than Mamertus’ elaboration, both per

29 30 31 32 33 34

35

i.18.1 (csel 11, pp. 64.16–21, 65.5–8). i.18.1 (csel 11, p. 64.21–22). I.18.1 (csel 11, p. 64.17). See, for example, Augustine, Confessiones xi.30.40 in Confessions: Tome ii: Livres ix–xiii, Pierre de Labriolle, ed. (Paris: Société d’Edition ‘Les Belles Lettres’, 1969), pp. 325–326. Claudianus Mamertus, De statu animae i.19 (csel 11, pp. 69.13–14). i.3.5 (csel 11, p. 30.20–24). Cf., for example, Augustine, Enchiridion ad Laurentium de fide et spe et caritate x.33, xxix.112 in cc sl 46, Ernest Evans, ed. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), pp. 49–144, pp. 67–68 and 109–110. Claudianus Mamertus, De statu animae i.3.5 (csel 11, pp. 30.25–31.3). Cf. i.3.1; i.3.2 (pp. 27. 18–19, 28.6–8).

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se and for understanding Anselm’s relevant doctrine, notwithstanding its being less consistent. Boethius bases his theological account of the Holy Trinity on a purely logical doctrine, expounded in chapters 4–5.36 He divides the Categories into firstclass or properly said (praedicationes secundum rem) and second-class or improperly said (accidentia secundum rem). Into the first fall substance, quality and quantity; the remaining seven do not refer to realities existing ‘in’ the thing predicated of, namely in its ‘essentia’, but to the various relations of its subject to realities external to it (‘circumstantiae rei’; ‘ex alieno adventu’).37 Ad aliquid is the most external Category and, consequently, the least deserving to be called so. To show this, Boethius appeals to certain Stoic examples of πρός τι. Surprisingly, however, he compromises the Stoic distinction between πρός τι and πρός τί πως ἔχον on behalf of the latter; e.g., he equates the degree of reality, so to speak, of the ‘father—son’ relation with the degree of reality of purely mental acts of comparison such as ‘taller than’ or ‘to the left of’. This distinction did not originate with Boethius. Traces of similarity to Ammonius’ Prolegomena to the ‘Categories’ (οἰκεία οὐσία),38 Plotinus’ Enneads vi.1, vi.3 and vi.4 and Porphyry’s partially preserved Commentary on the ‘Categories’ by the Method of Asking and Responding39 are discernible, whereas Porphyry’s only indirectly known Commentary on the ‘Categories’, to Gedalius might have been the background to it. More tangible evidence for Boethius’ reliance on some previous interpreter of Aristotle is the fact that Simplicius records an Iamblichean classification of the Categories closely resembling that

36 37

38

39

Claudio Moreschini, ed., Boethius. De consolatione Philosophiae. Opuscula theologica. Editio altera (Munich and Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2005), pp. 173–179. See Alain de Libera, La philosophie médiévale (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989; 52001), p. 71; Alain de Libera, ‘L’onto-théo-logique de Boèce: doctrine des catégories et théorie de la prédication dans le De Trinitate’ in Otto Bruun and Lorenzo Corti, eds., Les Catégories et leur histoire (Paris: Vrin, 2005), pp. 175–222, at pp. 199–202; cf. David Bradshaw, ‘The Opuscula sacra: Boethius and Theology’ in John Marenbon, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Boethius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 105– 128, p. 111; Paul Thom, The Logic of the Trinity: Augustine to Occam (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), pp. 51–52. See also John Marenbon, Boethius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 85–86; Axel Tisserand, Boèce. Traités théologiques. Présentation, traductions, chronologie, bibliographie et notes (Paris: Flammarion, 2000), pp. 54–55 and 236 n. 69. Ammonius Hermeiou, Prolegomena in Aristotelis ‘Categorias’; Ammonii In Aristotelis ‘Categorias’ commentarius, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca iv. 4, Adolfus Busse, ed. (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1895), p. 27.9–27. Porphyrii ‘Isagoge’ et In Aristotelis ‘Categorias’ commentarius, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca iv.1, Adolfus Busse, ed. (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1887), p. 142.6–12.

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of Boethius.40 Even closer than this is what Simplicius seems to adopt as an all-comprising and logically consistent tree-like classification of the Categories, which puts Quantity and Quality on the one side and places the remaining Categories as subdivisions of the hyper-Category of Relation.41 Further, an examination of certain of the concrete aspects of this distinction in Boethius’ De Trinitate points to Porphyry. For instance, as far as ad aliquid is concerned, although Boethius was not prepared to go as far as Plotinus had done, who had argued that, when using this Category, ‘we are not saying anything, but our statements are deceptive’ (ψευδόμεθα), which means that ‘relation is an empty thing’ (κενὸν ἡ σχέσις),42 Boethius’ conception of all sorts of ‘relation’ as purely mental acts is equal to reducing and thereby downgrading πρός τι to the level of πρός τί πως ἔχον. Given that this Stoic distinction is reported in Simplicius’ Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories (see above) and that one of the major sources of this work had been the above-mentioned Commentaries by Porphyry (both directly and via the Commentary of Porphyry’s disciple, Iamblichus, who, according to Simplicius, to a large extent followed Porphyry verbatim),43 Boethius probably drew this distinction upon the lost part of Porphyry’s Commentary or upon Porphyry’s entirely lost Ad Gedalium. According to Boethius, the distinction between praedicationes secundum rem and accidentia secundum rem holds for all sorts of beings, including God. Therefore, putting from the outset ubi, quando, habere, jacere, and pati aside,44 he is occupied with two groups of true predications of God. The first includes genuine praedicationes, namely those falling under substance, quality and quantity. However, as they are applied to an absolutely simple being, they cannot be considered many; they should adapt themselves to the res they are predicated of,45 and thereby be construed as coinciding with each other. For instance, God’s existence, justice and goodness refer to the same entity; they are differentiated just because this entity produces different categorial properties 40

41 42 43

44 45

See De Libera, ‘L’onto-théo-logique de Boèce’, p. 201. See Simplicius’ Commentary on the ‘Categories’ in Simplicii In Aristotelis Categorias Commentarium, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca viii, Karl Kalbfleisch, ed. (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1907), p. 68.16–21. Kalbfleisch, Simplicii, pp. 67.27–68.13. Plotinus, Enneads vi.1.6.22–7.2 in Arthur Hilary Armstrong, trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 29–31. See, e.g., P. Kotzia-Panteli, Ο “σκοπός” των “Κατηγοριῶν” του Αριστοτέλη. Συμβολή στην ιστορία των αριστοτελικών σπουδών ώς τον 6ο αιώνα (The ‘Purpose’ of Aristotle’s Categories. A Contribution to the History of the Study of Aristotle through the Sixth Century: Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 1992), p. 100. Boethius, De Trinitate iv.224–268 in Moreschini, Boethius, pp. 175–177. ‘Haec (…) talia sunt, qualia subjecta permiserint’ (Boethius, De Trinitate iv.177–178 in Moreschini, Boethius, p. 173).

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in the realm of the created world. So, God is a substance ‘ultra substantiam’.46 So far, Boethius closely follows Augustine’s De Trinitate, Bk. v. The second group comprises the divine facere/agere and ad aliquid. These praedicationes, though being true, do not make God a composite being, since they do not refer to His ‘essentia’, but just denote the various aspects of his relation to the world, which relation causes effects not upon him but upon creation.47

2

The Theonymical Value of Aristotle’s Categories in Anselm

2.1 Anselm and the Aristotelian Categories per se Anselm was one of the first medieval thinkers to study the Categories seriously and to construe it (along with Porphyry’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s De Interpretatione) as an auctoritas.48 Besides using some concepts from it even in certain of his epistles as tools for word play,49 and besides the dg, which is the most visible instance, P6 is based on literally accepting a passage from Categories 7 (7b38–39) as expressing an undeniable philosophical truth, brings it into confrontation with a particular Christian doctrine of God and tries to resolve the apparent antinomy.50 Furthermore, in M1, Anselm takes for granted (‘… certum sit …’) that there are various grades of positive qualities (‘… quaecumque dicuntur aliquid ita, ut ad invicem magis vel minus vel equaliter dicantur …’), such as ‘iustitia’ (‘… quaecumque iusta dicuntur ad invicem sive pariter sive magis vel minus …’),51 implicitly referring to Categories 8, 10b26–11a5.52 Anselm’s ref-

46 47 48

49

50

51 52

Boethius, De Trinitate iv.183–207 and iv.212–215 in Moreschini, Boethius, pp. 173–174 and 175. Boethius, De Trinitate iv.249–251 and 262–266 in Moreschini, Boethius, pp. 176 and 176– 177. See certain instances pinpointed by John Marenbon: ‘Anselm and the Early Medieval Aristotle’ in John Marenbon, ed., Aristotle in Britain in the Early Middle Ages. Proceedings of the International Conference at Cambridge, 8–11 April 1994 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), pp. 1–19. Richard William Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 60–62. See Aristotle, Categories 10, 11b17–19; on the provenance of the Latin phrases, see Boethius’ translation in Aristoteles Latinus, i.1–5, Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, ed. (Bruges/Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1961), pp. 30–31, and In Aristotelis ‘Categorias’ iv; pl 64, 264. See John A. Demetracopoulos, ‘Aristotle’s Categories in the Greek and Latin Medieval Exegetical Tradition. The Case of the Argument for the Non-Simultaneity of Relatives’, Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Âge grec et latin, 66 (1996), pp. 117–134, at pp. 119–120 and 131–133. aoo, i.14.9–16. Cf., e.g., cdhii.1 (aoo, ii.96.5–6). Boethius’ translation; Aristoteles Latinus, i 1–5, pp. 28–29.

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erence to ‘equaliter’, which does not occur in Aristotle’s discussion of qualitas, shows that he had read Boethius’ Commentary, too, which does refer to ‘equale’ (and ‘inequale’) as a proprium of quality. Anselm subscribes even to Boethius’ realist in tenor remark that, according to Aristotle, qualities as such do not admit of ‘more’ and ‘less’, but are, if considered per se, always the same things; as a matter of fact, it is only the degree of participation in them by the various beings (‘eorum participantes’) that varies, thus admitting of what Aristotle calls ‘magis minusve’.53 What is the nature of the Categories? Did Aristotle intend to classify voces, intellectus, or res? Anselm regarded them as means for describing the various aspects of reality, not just for classifying words or concepts. In dg17, directly based on Boethius’ Commentaries,54 he states that ‘omne quod est aliquid horum [sc. categoriarum] est’55 and subscribes to Boethius’ position by saying: ‘quoniam voces non significant nisi res: dicendo quid sit quod voces significant, necesse fuit dicere quid sint res’.56 Likewise, in the concluding part of M27, Anselm states, as if it were a commonplace, that ‘non noscitur dignior essentia quam spiritus aut corpus’.57 Evidently, what he hints at is the top of the arbor Porphyrii, namely ‘substantia’, which is divided into ‘corporea’ and ‘incorporea’, each of them subdivided into smaller sets and so on.58 Still, his direct source is Augustine’s demonstration of the existence of a single highest ‘bonum’, which is the source both of the bodily and the spiritual good things (‘Omnis quippe natura aut spiritus aut corpus est’),59 the latter being higher than the former (Anselm: ‘ex his spiritus dignior est quam corpus’).60 If so, then Anselm’s statement that spirit and body are worthier than any other ‘essentia’ clearly means that Substance, regardless of being corporeal or spiritual, is ontologically higher than any other Category; this further implies that by ‘essentia’ Anselm referred to all of the ten sorts of existent beings.

53 54

55 56 57 58 59 60

Boethius, In ‘Categorias’ Aristotelis iii (pl 64, 257A–C). Boethius, In ‘Categorias’ Aristotelis i (pl 64, 162B2–5); In ‘Isagogen’ Porphyrii commenta— editio prima i.5 (cf. Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations i, 165a8–12); In ‘Isagogen’ Porphyrii commenta—editio secunda i.4; In ‘Categorias’ Aristotelis i (pl 64, 160A1–3; B9–12; 161A7– 15; 162D1–4; 169A15–16; B10–11; 13–14;0180C10–15). See F.S. Schmitt’s apparatus fontium. aoo, i.162.20–21. My emphasis. Cf. dg9 (aoo, i.154.7–9). aoo, i.162.23–26. Cf. Marenbon, ‘Anselm and the Early Medieval Aristotle’, pp. 5–6. aoo, i.45.15–16. See Boethius, In ‘Isagogen’ Porphyrii commenta i (pl 63, 41–42). Augustine, De natura boni i.1, 1–18 (Moon, The De Natura Boni, p. 66). aoo, i.45.15–16.

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In dcd9, ‘iniustitia’ is regarded as a ‘privatio’, which is by definition considered as lacking ‘essence’ (‘quae nullam habet essentiam’).61 Granted that, in Aristotle’s description of privatio (στέρησις), ‘substance’ is not the object but the subject, i.e., a ‘substance’ does not lack its own self but this or that ‘habit’ or ‘quality’,62 Anselm’s statement does not mean that iniustitia is not a substance, but that it does not exist either as a quality or as an agere or as any other Category. In the same vein, Anselm, considering the origins of moral evil, says: Indeed, as from the supreme good only good comes, and every good is from the supreme good [which Anselm had proved in the Monologion], so from the supreme being [essentia] only being [essentia] comes, and all being [essentia] comes from the highest being [essentia]. Since the supreme good is the supreme being [essentia], it follows that every good is being [essentia] and every being [essentia] is good.63 Therefore, he concludes, evil, which is non-being, does not derive from God. In dcv, too, essentia is used in this sense in a discussion of the ontological status of moral evil; ‘iniustitia’, Anselm explains, ‘non (…) ipsa ulla essentia sit’; ‘nullam habet essentiam’.64 Likewise, in dci.7, Anselm, in order to discern which words denote something existent (‘esse aliquid’) and which do not (‘nihil’), uses as a tool the answer to the question whether the thing denoted admits of classification under any of the Categories or not. He was particularly concerned with the ontological status of ‘iniustitia’, which, in accordance to a well-known Neoplatonic (and Stoic in its ultimate origins) doctrine, he considers ‘non-being’ (‘omni carere existentia’): ‘Non est (…) iniustitia qualitas aut actio aut aliqua essentia, sed tantum absentia debitae iustitiae’.65 Out of the Categories, he mentions two, under which one may think ‘iniustitia’ can fall under, i.e., quality, if taken ad intra as a property of one’s soul, and action, if taken ad extra as equivalent to doing unjust acts. As for ‘essentia’, contrary to appearances, it does not refer to the first Category; Boethius’ rendering of οὐσία was not essentia but substantia.66 Its meaning is revealed by what Anselm subsequently says:

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aoo, i.247.2. Aristotle, Categories 10, 13a2–13b35. dcd1 (aoo, i.234.29–235.3). Editors’ translation. dcv5 (aoo, ii.146.15–20). aoo, iii.258.8–10. See the long chapter ‘De substantia’ in In Aristotelis ‘Categorias’ i (pl 64, 181D3–202A11).

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Of course, every quality, every action and everything that to some extent has essentia [quidquid aliquam habet essentiam] is from God, from whom all justice and no injustice [comes]. God, therefore, causes to happen everything that is done justly or unjustly by the will, that is, good and evil deeds. In the case of good deeds he causes them to be and to be good; in the case of evil deeds he does indeed cause them to be, but he does not cause them to be evil. Because, for any thing to be just or good is [for it] to be something [aliquid esse], but in no instance does being unjust or evil [constitute] being something [esse aliquid]. Indeed, if to be good or just is to have justice, which is something [quod est aliquid], to be evil or unjust is not to have the justice which ought to be had, and is not something [aliquid]. For justice is something [aliquid] and injustice nothing (…).67 Clearly, Anselm puts on the one hand anything that stands as some sort of being and on the other anything that, because of bearing a name apparently falling into some genus of being, looks like a real thing yet in fact it is not.68 So, all the words and phrases italicised in the above quotations are equivalent; they refer to anything that ‘is’, namely, on account of the two offered examples (i.e., qualitas and actio), to anything that possesses ‘esse’ and belongs to this or that concrete genus of being (‘esse aliquid’). Using essentia in this sense occurs in certain places from Boethius’ logical works.69 It is also in tune with Boethius’ ascription of proper essentia only to the praedicationes secundum rem, namely to the first three Categories (see above). An underlying assumption in these discussions is that the Categories refer to various kinds (and, perhaps, degrees) of being—which means that their nature is not merely linguistic or mental. If so, then it does make sense to see if they can be used as means to describe God. In the last resort, as the Categories are supposed to be the definitive set of concepts which reflects the fundamental types of being, one can only try to approach the divine reality by means of this framework.

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dci.7 (aoo, ii.258.12–21). Editor’s translation. dcd11. See, for example, Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii Commentarii in librum Aristotelis Περὶ ἑρμηνείας. Pars prior versionem continuam et primam editionem continens, Carolus Meiser, ed. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1877), i:9, p. 109.25–28; Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii Commentarii in librum Aristotelis Περὶ ἑρμηνείας. Pars posterior secundam editionem et indices continens, Carolus Meiser, ed. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1880), v:12, pp. 387.20–388.22.

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2.2 Aristotle’s Categories and God 2.2.1 Status quaestionis Although the Monologion has been much-read and translated, it has only scarcely and inadequately been realized that M1–28 (particularly from M15 onwards) constitutes a treatise, so to speak, of the applicability of Aristotle’s Categories to God. To Luigi Bandini, M20 shows that ubi and quando are applicable only to creation.70 To Ernesto Bianchi,71 M16 argues that no qualitas and quantitas can be predicated of God, because (as he says by inappropriately cutting off the number of the praedicabilia) they are accidentia. To Jasper Hopkins,72 Anselm subscribed to Augustine’s doctrine of the inapplicability of situs, habitus, tempus and locus, taken in their literal meaning, to God as well as to Augustine’s doctrine that God’s substantia and qualitates coincide (see above). Italo Sciuto explicitly states that Anselm discusses the applicability of Aristotle’s Categories to God. He argues that Anselm, like Boethius, followed closely Augustine’s De Trinitate, Bk. v,73 that the logical framework of his treatment derives both from Augustine and Boethius (whom, however, two he inaccurately construes as having said the same thing), and that this framework includes ‘three levels: substantial, accidental, and relative; but, in the case of God, only the first and the last can be used, conceived of in a way radically different from when ordinarily applied to the created, finite substances’ (see above). Yet, ‘substance’ and ‘relation’ are praedicamenta whereas ‘accident’ is a praedicabile; so, one can hardly understand what ‘level’ might mean here. In fact, Sciuto’s approach simply projects (the surface of) Augustine’s discussion of the issue to Boethius and Anselm. John Marenbon has devoted a couple of pages to ‘Logic in Anselm’s Theology: God and the “Categories”’, where he summarises certain points of Anselm’s discussion of how God relates to place, time, substance and relation, taken as Categories, in M.74

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Luigi Bandini, Sant’Anselmo d’Aosta. Monologion. Introduzione, traduzione e note (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1934), p. 50 n. 1. Ernesto Bianchi, Sant’Anselmo d’Aosta. Monologio (Siena: E. Cantagalli, 1931), p. 42 n. 1. Jasper Hopkins, A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1972), pp. 98, 130–131, 223 n. Italo Sciuto, Anselmo d’Aosta. Monologio e Proslogio. Gaunilone, Difesa del insipiente. Risposta di Anselmo a Gaunilone. Testo latino a fronte (Milan: Bompiani, 2002), pp. 21, 225 n. 22; Maurizio Filippo Di Silva’s ‘Somma essenza e categorie: Anselmo e Agostino’, Ética e Filosofia Politica, 21/2 (2018), pp. 157–170, simply reproduces Sciuto’s account. John Marenbon, ‘Les Catégories au debut du Moyen Âge’ in Bruun and Corti, Les Catégories, pp. 223–243, pp. 237–239; cf. John Marenbon, ‘The Latin Tradition of Logic to 1110’ in

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Charles de Rémusat’s presentation of M, although much older than the above mentioned discussions, is better. Regarding Anselm a follower of Augustine as well as, in part, of Eriugena (the latter assumption being unfounded, as we now know after the seminal studies of A. Wilmart and F.S. Schmitt) he argues that Anselm makes use of select Categories in order to grasp God, as far as is possible for humans. Anselm accepts, we are told, the ad aliquid as capable of logically describing Deus trinus; he also accepts substantia, but, as he detaches it from all the praedicabilia, he Platonises it by identifying it to the divine qualitates.75 2.2.2

The Context of Anselm’s Discussion: The Arguments for the Existence of God Anselm treats of the applicability of Aristotle’s Categories to God in the third section of the first part of M, namely in M15–28, and occasionally in the Proslogion (P). The treatment in M follows his celebrated arguments for the existence of God (M1–4)76 and the corollaries drawn from them (Deus creator and conservator mundi: M5–14).77 Relevant to the present issue are only the demonstrata of M1–14, in so far as Anselm’s (rigorously substantiated) descriptions of God obviously fall into ad aliquid (God is the best or highest being of all et sim.).78 On the other hand, Anselm argues that God is a singularity; He is the only being which does not owe its existence to anything else79—which implies that, relatively or comparatively speaking, He is the highest ‘gradus’ (as Anselm

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Dov M. Gabbay and John Woods, eds., A Handbook of the History of Logic, Volume 2: Medieval and Renaissance Logic (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2007), pp. 46–63, pp. 47–48. Charles de Rémusat, Saint Anselme de Cantorbéry: tableau de la vie monastique et de la lutte du pouvoir spirituel avec le pouvoir temporel au onzième siècle (Paris: Didier, 1853; 21868), pp. 420–421. aoo, i.13.2–18.3 (1st argument: M1, aoo, i.14.5–15.3; 2nd argument: M3–4, aoo, i.15.24–18.3; 3rd argument: M4, aoo, i.16.29–18.3). aoo, i.18.4–27.26. ‘Optimum et maximum omnium quae sunt’; ‘maximum et optimum omnium quae sunt’; ‘maximum et optimum’; ‘summum’; ‘summa/-um omnium’; ‘summum omnium quae sunt’; ‘sic est aliis superior, ut nullo sit inferior’; ‘sic est alicui vel aliquibus superior, ut nulla sit cui ordinetur inferior’; ‘sic supereminere, ut non habeat se superiorem’; ‘summa essentia’; ‘suprema essentia’; ‘summe omnium est’; ‘summe esse’; ‘summe ens’; ‘summum ens sive subsistens’; ‘summum omnium existentium’; ‘summe existens’; ‘summe existens sive summe subsistens’; ‘summe omnium existit’; ‘summa substantia’; ‘summa omnium substantia’; ‘summa natura’; ‘suprema natura’; ‘natura summa omnium quae sunt’; ‘summe bonum et summe magnum’; ‘summum bonum’; ‘summe bonum’; ‘summe bona substantia’; ‘melior omnibus’; ‘summum magnum’; ‘summe magnum’; ‘substantia maxime omnium existens’; ‘maxime omnium est’; ‘maior omnibus’; ‘creatrix substantia’; ‘creatrix essentia’; ‘natura creatrix’ or ‘creatrix natura’; ‘substantia factrix’; ‘creator spiritus’. aoo, i.15.6–7.

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puts it, drawing directly upon the Stoicism of Cicero’s De natura deorum80) in the scale of beings, but, absolutely speaking, lies above the scale. Out of the crop of the divine names produced in M1–14 (i.e., in Stage I of Anselm’s exploration; see below) and repeated through M15–28, I focus on ‘optimum et maximum’ (or ‘maximum et optimum’), which occurs five times, including the very title of the opening chapter. As one could see by that time in the hundreds of occurrences of the phrase in the ancient Latin and early medieval literature, this was one of the most celebrated epithets of Jupiter.81 It was so common that Boethius, in his Second Commentary on De Interpretatione, which figures among the sources both of M and P,82 mentions the sentence ‘Jupiter optimus maximus est’ as an example of ‘oratio’ ‘composita ex propositionibus inconjunctis multiplex’.83 Among many other classical writings, Anselm could find this epithet in Cicero’s De natura deorum, upon whose exposition of Zeno’s theology he drew his maxim (applied both in M and P) that God is whatever is better for a being to be than not to be and whose exposition of Zeno’s and Cleanthes’ demonstrations of God’s existence Anselm exploited in order to show the existence of ‘quiddam optimum et maximum’.84 It also occurs in Lactantius’ De ira Dei, explicitly related to the Stoics’ conception of God,85 who allegorised the mythical, poetic, and religious figure of Jupiter as their philosophical God, as Anselm could know from his reading of the De natura deorum.86 In so doing, Anselm, on one hand, was in keeping with his sola ratione methodology,87 which is indicated not only by the fact that he did not appeal to any Christian authority but also by the fact that, in this first phase of his intellectual enterprise in M, he established what grosso modo even pagans had proved able to show. Anselm recognizes that even pagan polytheism had reached a basically proper conception of the word ‘God’: 80

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See John A. Demetracopoulos, ‘The Stoic Background to the Universality of Anselm’s Definition of “God” in Proslogion 2: Boethius’ Second Commentary on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione ad 16a7–11’ in Alessandro Musco et al., eds., Universality of Reason. Plurality of Philosophies in the Middle Ages, Volume ii.1: Comunicazioni latine (Palermo: Officina di Studi Medievali, 2012), pp. 121–138, at pp. 124–125 and 135–137. See, e.g., Arthur Bernard Cook, Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion, Volume ii: Zeus God of the Dark Sky (Thunder and Lightning). Part ii: Appendixes and Index (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925), p. 1282, s.v. See Demetracopoulos, ‘The Stoic Background’, pp. 128–130. Meiser, Boetii: Pars posterior, ii.5, p. 109.18. M4 (aoo, i.16.31–17.10). See Cicero, De natura deorum ii.24.64: ‘(…) ipse Juppiter (…) dicitur (…) a majoribus (…) nostris “optumus maxumus” (…)’ (cf. Demetracopoulos, ‘The Stoic Background’, p. 134). See Demetracopoulos, ‘The Stoic Background’, p. 134. Cicero, De natura deorum i.15.40; ii.24.64 (‘(…) “Juppiter”, id est juvans pater’ etc.). M1: ‘(…) sola ratione persuadere (…)’ (aoo, i.13.11).

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Indeed, everyone who says that there exists one or more [sive plures] Gods, does not understand it to be anything other than a substance, which he considers to be above every nature which is not God, to be venerated because of his eminent dignity and to be entreated when faced with imminent threats.88 On the other hand, he implicitly revealed the limited character of this demonstratum; for, ‘optimus’ and ‘maximus’, even if taken as superlative, absolute properties, still say nothing positive about what God is—which issue calls, therefore, for exploration in a further stage. One of Anselm’s expressions of this divine ad aliquid is: ‘Id enim summum est, quod sic supereminet aliis, ut nec par habeat nec praestantius’.89 An examination of its sources sheds more light on how Anselm conceived of this ad aliquid. Anselm speaks as if trying to explain the true meaning of the word ‘summus’. Indeed, in Isidore’s Etymologies he could read: ‘ “Supremus”: summus, ab eo quod “superemineat”. Unde et “supreme Pater” dicimus’.90 Now, Isidore’s reference to the usage of ‘supreme Pater’—presumably also in the sense of the highest or unique God, such as Jupiter—relates both to pagan and Christian literature. For instance, this is both how Jupiter was called91 and how certain Christians addressed God the Father.92 What about ‘praestantius’? As seen above, one of Anselm’s arguments for God’s existence is but a close adaptation of a Stoic argument from Cicero’s De natura deorum. So, this ‘praestantius’ is quite probably a silent reproduction of

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M80 (aoo, i.86.19–22). Editor’s translation. M1 (aoo, i.15.9–10); see also M4: ‘(…) aliquam [sc. naturam] in eis sic supereminere, ut non habeat se superiorem’ (aoo, i.17.4–5). Isidore of Seville [Isidore of Spain], Etymologiae x.242 in Isidori Hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum libri xx. Tomus 1, libros i–x continens, Wallace Martin Lindsay, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911). See, e.g., Augustine’s quotation of Seneca’s translation of one of Cleanthes’ most celebrated verses: ‘Duc, summe pater, altique dominator poli …’ (De civitate Dei v.8.14–18; Dombart and Kalb, Sancti Aurelii, pp. 135–136). The Greek original reads: ‘Ἄγου δέ μ’, ὦ Ζεῦ …’ (Albert Tohru Watanabe, Cleanthes. Fragments: Text and Commentary, Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1988, pp. 133–134). See also Plautus, Poenulus 1122: ‘Pro supreme Jupiter!’ (Alfred Ernout, ed., Plaute. Comédies. Tome v: Mostellaria. Persa. Poenulus. Texte établi et traduit (Les Belles Lettres: Paris, 1938), p. 237). See, e.g., Prudentius, Cathemerina vi.1–7: ‘Ades, Pater supreme, quem “nemo vidit umquam” (Joh. 1:18), Patrisque sermo Christe, et Spiritus benigne, o Trinitatis hujus vis una, lumen unum, “Deus ex Deo” perennis, “Deus” ex utroque missus’ (pl 59, 831A); Latinius Pacatus Drepanius (?), Psalmus xxvii: ‘Audi precantis anxia, Pater supreme …’ (pl 6, 1084D).

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Cicero’s exposition of the Stoic conception of God in the same work: ‘Nihil est (…) praestantius Deo’; ‘Deo nihil praestantius esset’.93 Prior to Anselm, Lactantius had explicitly referred to his heathen sources, including Cicero; he had produced a whole list of philosophers who had rightly conceived of God as the unique highest being.94 Upon referring to the Stoics, he had made a remark which was in tune with Anselm’s idea that philosophical theology accords with Christianity: Whether you call it nature or aether, reason or mind, the necessity of fate or divine law or whatever, they are all the same as what is called God by us.95 Even more importantly, it was Augustine himself who had appropriated Cicero’s phraseology on, and conception of, God; in the development of the argument for God’s existence in De libero arbitrio, Bk. ii, he says: ‘Quid si aliquid invenire potuerimus quod non solum esse non dubites, sed etiam ipsa nostra ratione praestantius? Dubitabisne illud quidquid est “Deum” dicere?’96 This is stated in the De vera religione, too: ‘Deus enim non corporalibus sensibus subjacet, sed ipsi menti supereminet’,97 which means that He transcends not only the corporeal beings but also the spiritual.98

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Cicero, De natura deorum ii.30.77; iii.16.20 (Cicero, M. Tulli Ciceronis De Natura Deorum libri secundus et tertius, Arthur Stanley Pease, ed. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 747, 1007). See also ii.17.45: ‘… Deum (…) in omni natura nihil eo sit praestantius …’ (Pease, M. Tulli Ciceronis, p. 647). Lactantius, Divinae institutiones i.5.24 (L. Caelius Firmianus Lactantius. Divinarum institutionum libri septem. Fasc. 1: Libri i et ii, Eberhard Heck and Antonie Wlosok, eds. (Munich and Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2005), p. 20.4–8). Salvianus of Marseille’s De gubernatione Dei (i.1; pl 53, 29C) reproduces Lactantius’ point. The passages from Lactantius and Salvianus were noticed by Pease (M. Tulli Ciceronis, p. 647). Lactantius, Divinae institutiones i.5.15–16.6. Translation from Lactantius. Divine Institutes, Anthony Bowen and Peter Garnsey, eds. and transl. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004), p. 68. Lactantius, in turn, seems to have exploited Cicero’s De natura deorum; see the apparatus fontium of the critical edition (Heck and Wlosok, Lactantius, pp. 18–21), just as Anselm was to do. Augustine, De libero arbitrio ii.6.14.54 (Green, Sancti Aurelii, 246). Behind Augustine’s argument for the existence of God, one easily recognizes Cleanthes’ argument as reported in Cicero’s De natura deorum, which was to be exploited by Anselm, too (see Demetracopoulos, ‘The Stoic Background’, 136–137). Augustine, De vera religione 36.67, ll. 26–27, p. 192. Cf. M 70: God ‘supereminet in omnibus naturis’ (aoo, i.80.20–21); M 80: ‘(…) eius eminentem dignitatem (…)’ (aoo, i.86.21). This is very close to what Augustine had said in De diversis quaestionibus 18, too: ‘Creaturae (…) causam, id est auctorem, “Deum” dicimus. (…) Trinitatem, qua nihil praestantius, intel-

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The above Anselmian conception of ‘optimus et maximus’ brings us precisely to the declaration of Anselm’s intention to discuss the applicability of the Categories to God. Granted that no ad aliquid or facere could be conceived of without something as a substance or bearer, the question of the nature of this something emerges. Anselm had alluded to this already in the end of the first of his arguments for the existence of God: ‘(…) idipsum (…), per quod necesse est esse cuncta bona, quidquid illud sit’.99 The italicized phrase suggests that Anselm did not regard the predications of God established by his arguments as descriptions of God’s ‘esse’ in the proper sense of the term; this way of describing Him, useful though as it may have proved for demonstrating His existence, is inadequate for helping us grasp what God is ‘substantialiter’. Indeed, ‘quidquid (…) sit’ coincides with ‘quid est’, which, in the Categories, is implicitly but clearly used as equivalent to Substance, whereas in the Topics it is explicitly regarded as such, put in its place in the list of the ten Categories.100 This statement leads Anselm to lay down a thorough research programme (‘indagatio’): ‘(…) quid omnium quae de aliquo dici possunt, huic admirabili naturae queat convenire substantialiter’ (M15).101 Dicere (something) de aliquo (interchangeably with the less often used praedicare de aliquo) is how Boethius renders, both in his translations and commentaries, Aristotle’s λέγειν (something) κατά τινος from Categories and De Interpretatione, which refers to the ten ‘categories’ (i.e., literally, acts of predicating).102 This shows that, although neither in this nor in any other section of M does Anselm use the term categoriae or praedicamenta, his project103 was clearly to explore the applicability of all (‘omnium’) of Aristotle’s Categories to God.104

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ligentius et beatius invenire perfecta ratio [cf. Anselm’s ‘sola ratione’] potest’ (Mutzenbecher, Aurelii Augustini, p. 23). See Demetracopoulos, ‘The Stoic Background’, pp. 124–125. Cf. M1, title.: ‘(…) quiddam optimum et maximum (…)’ (aoo, i.9.2 and 13.3). Aristotle, Categories 1, 1a5, 1a11 and 2b32 (‘quid sit’) in Boethius’ translation (see Aristoteles Latinus i. 1–5, pp. 5.6, 5.13, 9.9); Aristotle, Topics i.9, 103b22 (‘quod est’) in Boethius’ translation (see Aristotle, Topica in Aristoteles Latinus, v.1-3, Lorenzo Minio-Paluello and Bernard Dod, eds. (Leiden: Brill 1969), p. 14.15). aoo, i.28.4–5. See also M17 (aoo, i.32.2). Anselm uses ‘naturalis essentia’, too (M15, aoo, i.28.13; see also M33 and M66, aoo, i.49.22 and i.77.21). See, for example, Meiser, Boethii: Pars prior, i.11; ii.11, pp. 18.3–4, 162.21; Meiser, Boethii: Pars posterior, v.11, pp. 365.3–5, 370.8, 371.7–10, 372.21–22. Cf. Minio-Paluello, Aristoteles Latinus, Index graeco-latinus, p. 117, s.v. λέγω. M15 in initio: ‘Iam non immerito valde moveor quam studiose possum inquirere (…). (…) [t]entandum tamen est (…)’ (aoo, i.28.3–7). In fact, Anselm, upon completing his ‘indagatio’, calls its object by means of the phrase ‘[proprietates] (…) summae naturae’ (M29, aoo, i.47.4). On the true meaning of ‘proprietas’, see below.

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2.3 The Three Stages of Exploration 2.3.1 Stage i: The ‘Relative’ Names ‘Convenire substantialiter’, from the opening period of M15 just quoted, implies that what applies to God non-‘substantialiter’ had already been discussed. This suggests that M1–14, where the divine names which fall into ad aliquid had been documented by Anselm in the course of his firmly establishing God’s existence, de facto stood also as Stage I of his project, where God’s ad extra aspects, so to speak, had been explored. This is verified by Anselm’s recapitulation, in view of his forthcoming embarkation upon Stage iii, of the research into the divine names already carried out from the beginning up to M14: ‘Illis (…) quae relative dicuntur omissis (…)’.105 So introduced, Stage iii (M15–17; M25–28) regards the Categories possibly related to God per se or ‘substantialiter’, i.e., quantitas, qualitas, and substantia or essentia. Stage ii (M18–24) had, explicitly or implicitly, extensively or briefly, to do with Categories by no means applicable to God, i.e., jacere, habere, quando and ubi. As for the reason why Anselm interrupted the development of Stage iii in order to insert, digressionis instar, Stage ii, one can plausibly assume that he wanted to conclude his ‘indagatio’ by exploring the applicability of the first and ontologically most important Category, i.e., ‘Substance’; for this is the subject of the specific part of Stage iii that comes after the completion of Stage ii, i.e., M25–28, which part constitutes the culmination of his exploration into the reality of Deus unus.106 Before examining Stages ii and iii, let me shed more light on Anselm’s view of the ontological status of the divine agere/facere and ad aliquid by focusing on his treatment of the issue of their compatibility to God’s simplicity and immutability. Anselm discusses the issue in M25, i.e., at the beginning of the second part of Stage iii, where he intends to show the absolute simplicity and immutability of God. The issue consists in this: if these two theologically acceptable Categories denote something different from the divine subjectum, then God would be composite and mutable.107 As seen above, Augustine had already addressed the problem by adopting the Stoic distinction between πρός τι and πρός τί πως ἔχον and classifying the divine ‘relative’ names to the latter, which is ontologically inferior

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M15 (aoo, i.28.24); cf. Aristotle, Categories 7, 6a36, in Boethius’ translation: ‘Ad aliquid (…) talia dicuntur (…)’ (Aristoteles Latinus i. 1–5, p. 18.4–5). For calling the ad aliquid ‘relativa’, see Boethius’ In Aristotelis ‘Categorias’ ii (pl 64, 216D–218B and elsewhere). Cf. M3 (aoo, i.16.12–15). Digressions of this sort are not unusual in M; for instance, the concluding period of M12 (aoo, i.26.31–33) announces the long discussion in M29–39 (aoo, i.47.1–57.19). aoo, i.43.3–8.

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and thereby does not entail composition. Still, this solution suffers from two defects. First, taking these divine names as merely conceptual makes what they are supposed to refer to vanish into thin air. Second, if these relative names are not connected with mutability, and if accidentia are necessarily connected with mutability, then no praedicabile remains for these relative names to fall into.108 Anselm, for his part, draws a distinction between accidentia proprie dicta and accidentia improprie dicta. The former are those of the nine Categories (setting substance apart) whose presence or absence causes this or that sort of alteration to their subject (e.g., acquiring or losing a quality).109 Anselm’s distinction is but a slightly ameliorated version of Boethius’ distinction between praedicationes secundum rem and accidentia secundum rem (see above).110 Now, with regard to ad aliquid, which is at stake (with agere silently taken as a subclass of the divine ad aliquid), Anselm suggests that some relatives belong to the accidentia proprie dicta whereas some others to the accidentia improprie dicta (see below). Through this bifurcation, he moderates Boethius’ extreme view that all the relatives are to be placed in the low level of the Stoic πρός τί πως ἔχον (see above) and wisely returns to Augustine’s more reasonable view of relatives. 2.3.2 Stage ii: jacere, habere, quando, ubi and pati Stage ii has mostly to do with the Categories listed and explicitly rejected by Augustine in the De Trinitate: ‘Situs (…) et habitus et loca et tempora non proprie sed translate ac per similitudines dicuntur in Deo’.111 To begin with the first, jacere is expelled from the divine realm by Anselm in an implicit way, namely by excluding corporeality from God just a few lines before neatly posing the question of the applicability of the Categories to God, on account of the principle that God is whatever it is better to be than not to be (‘necesse est ut sit quidquid omnino melius est quam non ipsum’).112 As is evident from

108 109 110

111 112

On Augustine’s reluctance to involve proprium in this discussion, see Demetracopoulos, Αὐγουστῖνος, pp. 31–33. aoo, i.43.8–30. This can account for what would at first sight look like ‘une certaine méfiance envers la théorie aristotélicienne des catégories’ on Anselm’s part (see Marenbon, ‘Les Catégories au debut du Moyen Âge’, p. 238); in fact, Anselm viewed the Categories through the lenses of Boethius’ De Trinitate (and Commentary on the Categories, of course). Augustine, De Trinitate v.8.9 (Mountain and Glorie, Augustini, p. 238). M15 (aoo, i.29.19–29). On the Stoic provenance of this principle, see Demetracopoulos, ‘The Stoic Background’, pp. 135–136. I intend to show elsewhere the Aristotelian contribution to Anselm’s adoption of this principle.

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Aristotle’s very short account,113 this Category is by definition bound up with bodies and has to do with the place of thing-in-relation to other things along with which it forms a structure. Lack of sufficient analysis of jacere in Aristotle’s Categories presumably accounts for Anselm’s practical marginalization of it, and Boethius’ brief account (‘De situ et positione’) simply emphasizes its relational and bodily nature, which presumably accounts for Anselm’s implicit denial of any theonymical value to it.114 Habere is not offered any treatment either. This can be accounted for in terms of the brevity of Boethius’ presentation of it (‘De habere’).115 Besides the external element that neither Boethius nor even Aristotle116 had systematically treated of habere, its inalienable connection to bodies as well as Boethius’ point that, in fact, it refers to the ‘thing had’ rather than the ‘thing having’ rendered any idea of using it as a theonymical tool pointless. Unlike the brevity of Boethius’ account of quando and ubi,117 Anselm’s examination of them is thorough. It is based on his previous arguments for the existence of God. From the conclusions drawn from these arguments he further argues that God has no temporal beginning or end.118 This leads him to the question of how God relates to quando and ubi; God is either: (i) present in every quando and ubi or (ii) above all quando and ubi. In favour of (i), God’s ‘maius esse’ (already demonstrated; see above) is produced: since God is greater than any being, He cannot lack being present when and where the beings inferior to Him are present. Even more, God’s presence is a prerequisite for the existence of them; even bare time and space, which constitute a peculiar kind of being, derive their existence from him. This cataphatic, so to speak, conclusion seems to entail, however, that God is subjacent to time and space and that He is divided into the infinite ‘particles’ of time and space. Anselm rejects this potential conclusion as indecent to God’s majesty and produces a long line of argument for (ii), which is apophatic: God can be spoken of as being ‘in’ every time and space only in the sense that He produces time and space as well as every being existent in any particle of time and space.119 113 114 115 116 117 118 119

Aristotle, Categories 4, 2a2–3. Cf. Boethius, In Aristotelis ‘Categorias’ iii (pl 64, 62B–D). See pl 64, 264A. Aristotle, Categories 4, 2a3. Boethius, In Aristotelis ‘Categorias’ iii: ‘Dicendum autem est breviter …’ (pl 64, 262D– 264A). M18–19 (aoo, i.32.5–35.4). M20–24 (aoo, i.35.5–44.2). What I am exclusively focusing on is the categorial aspect of time and space (cf. Boethius, In Aristotelis ‘Categorias’ iii, pl 64, 263A); so, I am not discussing their nature and their relation to God.

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Additional evidence from other works, especially P, DV, DCD and DC, can be offered in this direction. For instance, Anselm rejects Augustine’s reconciliation of God’s prescience with human free will in De civitate Dei,120 namely that divine ‘knowledge’ cannot be regarded as the cause of the thing known. Anselm prefers to cut the node by declaring that attributing foreknowledge to God is not a proper way of speaking of Him; in fact, since He lies above time, his knowledge of human acts is not anterior to them; properly speaking, there is no divine fore-knowledge. This brings Anselm to adopt Boethius’ famous description of God as indivisibly comprising every time and space121 and formulate his final conclusion on quando and ubi: God per se has nothing to do with these Categories; He is that ‘in’ which everything exists, and every being apart from him is spatio-temporal, namely exists in a particular set of time and space. Thus, Anselm’s examination of the applicability of quando and ubi to God results apophatically in nothing more than what was already known from his arguments for Deus creator. Last, Anselm discusses pati only once. In M15, stressing the absolute character of the grandeur of God, he argues that the actual existence of creature can add nothing to it, just as its potential non-existence cannot impair it: For if none of these things in relation to which it is called supreme or greater [sc. essentia] ever existed, it would not be understood to be supreme or greater. Yet it would not on that account be less good nor would its essential magnitude suffer [pateretur] any diminishment.122 Further, as the creature owes its existence to God, it would philosophically make no sense to worry about the possibility that it would exert any impact on him. Whereas in the sola ratione-based M such worries could not have found a place, P, in so far as it was supposed to make Christians ‘understand’ that God is what they ‘believe’ He is,123 could—and even should—host them. The issue has to do with the relation between agere and pati. As seen above, in M, Anselm had argued that God is the only self-acting power. This amounts, in an Augustinian way, to saying that God’s creative act is both an agere/facere and an ad aliquid, which implies what he was explicitly to state a year or so later in P8, i.e., that God lies above pati. To show this, Anselm chooses a case of agere/pati that 120 121 122 123

Augustine, De civitate Dei v.9 (Dombart and Kalb, Sancti Aurelii, pp. 136–140). Boethius, De consolatione Philosophiae v.6.4 (Moreschini, Boethius, p. 155.9–10). M15 (aoo, i.28.13–16). Editor’s translation. P2 (aoo, i.101.3–4).

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seems to entail some passion, namely ‘misericordia’.124 Through logically analyzing it, he explains that God’s being ‘misericors’ suggests an agere for him and some sort of pati for humans. As the three texts in the Appendix show, Anselm’s position is fully traceable back to concrete passages from Augustine and Claudianus Mamertus, except for certain scriptural passages (cf. ‘quod credimus’), integrated into his discussion after the pattern established from P5 onwards, namely setting out and resolving antinomies between biblical authority (‘misericors’ and ‘misericordia’ are often attributed to God in the Bible) and reason (‘impassibilis’ is not a biblical name for God) or between two seemingly contradictory biblical ideas. Anselm’s meticulous reception of Augustine’s and Mamertus’ passages shows full awareness of the agere—pati issue and clearly results in keeping God’s agere absolutely immune from any pati. 2.3.3 Stage iii: The ‘Substantial’ Names As said above, by stating that the results of Stage I of his exploration are inadequate because they describe just the relativa of God, and in declaring that he should explore God in a higher stage in order to grasp Him ‘substantialiter’, Anselm implicitly adopted Boethius’ distinction between praedicationes secundum rem (or essentia) and accidentia secundum rem (or circumstantiae rei). This is verified by the fact that, in Stage iii, he examines the Categories of quantitas, qualitas and substantia, which are, according to Boethius, those falling under the praedicationes secundum rem and referring to the core of every being. This entails that Anselm’s ‘substantialiter’ should not be construed as referring to the first of Aristotle’s Categories but as equivalent to Boethius’ praedicationes secundum rem or essentia; indeed, it is Anselm himself who uses the term ‘essentia’ in this context. Following the same line of argument as Augustine and Boethius as well as using Aristotle’s Categories, Anselm shows that ‘magnus’ cannot be predicated of God in its normal sense (‘magnus spatio’), since He is not a body (as already shown; see above). It should therefore be taken as meaning ‘bonus’ or ‘optimus’ (excellent, supreme) in every respect, that is absolutely powerful, wise, just, alive etc.125 This naturally brings Anselm to the discussion of the divine qualitates. First, since one of the qualities possessed by God is simplicity (which is better

124 125

God’s mercy upon humans’ misery is the first divine property mentioned in P (P1; aoo, i.100.2). M2; M15; M22 (aoo, i.15.15–23; 28.26–28 and 29.18–21; 40.2–5).

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than multiplicity, as the latter implies mutability, degeneration and corruption), these qualities should be regarded as coinciding with each other.126 In so arguing, Anselm—as the close verbal similarities show—draws directly upon Boethius’ De Trinitate.127 Furthermore, God’s simplicity requires that these qualities be construed as coinciding with their own subject (‘quid’), too.128 Yet once again, Anselm relies upon the above mentioned Boethian treatise;129 indeed, he reproduces even Boethius’ peculiar copulative use of existere to denote the identity of the substance of God with his qualities.130 This conclusion amounts to saying that even the first-rank Categories (according to Boethius’ consideration of them) are incapable of describing God. Indeed, turning quantitas into qualitas is but cancelling the former, and mingling qualitas with its very bearer leads to the destruction of both as conceived of by Aristotle. Deepening his so far serial or horizontal, so to speak, examination of the divine being in light of the important Aristotelian categoriae or praedicamenta, Anselm proceeds to a vertical investigation of the issue by using the Porphyrian (Aristotelian in origin) praedicabilia, which, too, he explicitly rejects as theonymical tools. First, since God has no accidens, He is not a ‘substantia individua’, whose salient feature is, according to Aristotle, its bearing various accidentia.131 Second, since there cannot be found any differentia capable of classifying God under a genus or species, God is not a ‘substantia universalis’ either.132 Therefore, even the strongest of Aristotle’s Categories proves incapable of describing God. From this Anselm concludes that God cannot be properly described as ‘esse’, since this term is used for the essence of the created beings, too; the improper ‘nominis communio’ should not obscure the ‘diversa significatio’.133 Here, he clearly uses the terminology of Boethius’ translation and explanation of Categories 1, 1a1–6, where equivocity is defined.134 This suggests that what he states

126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134

M17 (aoo, i.31.13–19; 32.1–4). See also P18 (aoo, i.114.14–115.1). Boethius, De Trinitate ii.92–104 and iv.203–215 in Moreschini, Boethius, pp. 170 and 174– 175; to be compared to M17, aoo, i.31.15–17, i.31.27–32.4. M16 (aoo, i.30.5–6; i.30.12–31.2). Boethius, De Trinitate iv.188–215 and 254–259 in Moreschini, Boethius, pp. 173–174 and 176. Boethius, De Trinitate iv.215 in Moreschini, Boethius, p. 175; M 16 (aoo, i.30.19–31). Aristotle, Categories 4, 2a34–35. M27 (aoo, i.45.6–8). See the discussion in Kunitz-Dick’s chapter. M26 (aoo, i.44.17–19). Boethius, In ‘Categorias’ Aristotelis i: ‘“Aequivoca” dicuntur quorum solum nomen commune est, secundum nomen vero substantiae ratio diversa. (…) Horum enim solum nomen commune est, secundum nomen vero substantiae ratio diversa. (…) In quibus significa-

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is a declaration that God and creature are ‘beings’ only equivocally. Anselm restates this in a way that stands as a reference to the inappropriateness of the Categories to describe God per se: ‘sic est summa essentia supra et extra omnem aliam naturam, ut si quando de illa dicitur aliquid verbis, quae communia sunt aliis naturis, sensus nullatenus sit communis’.135 As seen above, dicere aliquid de aliquo is Boethius’ rendering of Aristotle’s description of the mental act of praedicare (κατηγορία or λέγειν or κατηγορεῖν). The outcome of Anselm’s thorough research into the theonymical value of the Categories is that God per se cannot be grasped at all; what humans can only know about him are certain of his agere/facere and ad aliquid properties, which, since they pertain only to God (indeed, only God is the creator and governor of the world), can, in a way, identify him on account of their being his ‘proprietates’,136 i.e., his distinctive features. Unlike these ‘proprietates’, however, the ‘proprietas’ of God, that is God per se, or, simply, God, is not accessible to man.137 True, Anselm adds that one can know God ‘per aliud’;138 still, this is no more than a reverse rephrasing of the main conclusion of Stage i, i.e., simply that no finite being can account for itself, but stands in need of being accounted for ‘per aliud’, namely God.139

135 136

137

138 139

tionibus, cum unum nomen sit (…), alia tamen (…) ratio est. (…) Atque ideo quod ait: “Quorum nomen solum commune est”, “nomen” accipiendum est “omnis rerum per vocem significatio” (…) ad omnem rerum significationem (…)’ etc. (pl 64, 163C–164C). M65 (aoo, i.76.2–5). M12: ‘(…) eiusdem summae substantiae proprietates aliquas studiose investigandas existimo’ (aoo, i.26.32–33); M29: ‘Iam vero iis quae de proprietatibus huius summae naturae (…) mihi (…) occurrerunt perspectis [in chs. 13–28] (…)’ (aoo, i.47.4–5). M65: ‘(…) Non dicimus et non videmus [ICor. 13:12] per suam proprietatem. (…). (…) [N]equaquam illa putetur per essentiae suae proprietatem expressa, sed utcumque per aliud designata. Nam quaecumque nomina de illa natura dici posse videntur, non tam mihi eam ostendunt per proprietatem, quam per aliquam innuunt similitudinem. (…) Nec nomen essentiae mihi valet exprimere illud, quod per singularem altitudinem longe est supra omnia et per naturalem proprietatem valde est extra omnia’ (aoo, i.76.18– i.77.1); M66: ‘(…) nihil de hac natura possit percipi per suam proprietatem sed per aliud (…)’ (aoo, i.77.7–8). Cf. P15: ‘… Domine (…) es quiddam maius quam cogitari possit’ (aoo, i.112.14–15), which is close to what had already been said in M65: ‘Quem enim sensum in omnibus iis verbis quae cogitavi intellexi, nisi communem et usitatum? (…) [U]sitatus sensus verborum alienus est ab illa [sc. summa essentia] (…)’ (aoo, i.76.5– 7). M65; M66 (aoo, i.76.12–13; i.77.17–18; i.78.8). M1; M3; M5; M7; M13; M26; M28 (aoo, i.15.5–6; i.16.19–20; i.20.22 and i.21.29–30; i.27.9; i.44.13; i.46.16–17). Cf. dv12 (aoo, i.195.31–33): ‘(…) nihil aut vix aliquid proprie potest dici’ of God.

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Appendix—Textual Comparison—Augustine, Claudianus Mamertus and Anselm

Borrowings from Augustine are marked with numbers, whereas borrowings from Mamertus are marked with letters. Numbers and letters in hooks denote diction similarity, whereas numbers and letters in braces denote similarity quoad sensum. 3.1

Augustine, De civitate Dei ix.5 (…) Merito quaeri potest {1}, utrum ad vitae praesentis pertineat infirmitatem etiam in quibusque bonis officiis hujusce modi perpeti affectus [2], sancti vero angeli (…) miseris [3] sine miseriae compassione [4] subveniant {5} et periclitantibus eis quos diligunt, sine timore opitulentur {5}; et tamen istarum nomina passionum [6] consuetudine locutionis humanae etiam in eos usurpentur propter quandam operum similitudinem, non propter affectionum [2] infirmitatem, sicut ipse Deus {7} secundum Scripturas ‘irascitur’,140 nec tamen ulla passione {8} turbatur. Hoc enim verbum vindictae usurpavit effectus [9], non [10a] illius turbulentus affectus [10b].

3.2

Claudianus Mamertus, De statu animae i.3 Iustitiam et misericordiam [a], quia in homine accidentiae sint, adfectus [b] esse dixisti. Igitur, si in homine, quia accidentiae sint, adfectus [b] sunt, in Deo [c], quia accidentiae non sunt, adfectus [b] non sunt. Non [d1] ergo sensit [d2] conpatientis [e] adfectu [b], in quo, quia accidentia non fuit, adfectus [d] esse non potuit. (…) ‘Adfectus’ [d] nempe ab eo dicitur quod aliquid adficiat; quidquid autem autem adficitur [b], patitur. Pati vero non est nisi passibilis [f e contrario] creataeque substantiae (…). Si summa divinitas sensit [d2] conpatientis [e] adfectu [b], etiam malae passionis subjacet stimulo. (…) De adfectu [b] disseram eundemque inpassibilem [f] fore disputando convincam (…). Qui conpatitur [e], utique patitur. (…) Cum propheticis oraculis vel ‘irasci’141 vel ‘paenitere’142 memoratur, effectus [g] harum videlicet passionum considerandi sunt, non adfectus [i1/2]. (…) Intemerabilis ergo divinitas haudquaquam recte

140 141 142

See, e.g., Ex. 22:23; Num. 22:22; 25:3; 32:10–13; Deut. 6:15; 7:4; 29:26; 31:17; Ps. 17:8; 59:3; 73:1; 78:5; 79:5; 84:6; 105:40; Zach. 1:2; 1:15; Is. 12:1; 57:6; 64:4. See previous note. See i Reg. 15:35; i Chron. 21:15; Ps. 105:45; Joel 2:13; Jon. 3:10; 4:2; Jer. 10:8; 18:10.

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adfici [b] dicitur, quia effectus [g] est ab opifice, adfectus [b] in opere. (…) Inpassibilem [f] nullique adfectui [b] subjacentem summae divinitatis essentiam (…). ‘Adfectio’ [b] et ‘passio’ unum idemque significat. (…) Si non adficitur [b], non sensit [d1/2] conpatientis [e] adfectu [b].143 3.3

Anselm, P8: Quomodo {1} sit misericors [a] et impassibilis {8} [ f ] Sed et misericors144 [a] simul et impassibilis {8} [f] quomodo {1} es? Nam si es impassibilis {8} [f], non compateris145 [4] [e]; si non compateris [4] [e], non est tibi miserum cor ex compassione [4] [e] miseri [3], quod est esse misericordem [a]. At si non es misericors [a], unde miseris [3] est tanta consolatio146 {5}? Quomodo {1} ergo es et non es misericors [a], domine {7} [c], nisi quia es misericors [a] secundum nos, et non es secundum te? Es quippe secundum nostrum sensum [d2], et non [d1] es secundum tuum. Etenim cum tu respicis nos miseros147 [3], nos sentimus misericordis [a] effectum [9] [g], tu non [10a] [d1; i1] sentis [c2] affectum [10b] [d2; i2]. Et misericors [a] es igitur, quia misericors [a] salvas148 {5} et peccatoribus tuis parcis;149 et misericors [a] non es, quia nulla miseriae compassione [4] [e] afficeris [2] [b].150

143

144 145 146 147 148 149

150

Engelbrecht, Claudiani, pp. 27.2–7, 27.31–33, 28.16–18, 29.1–2, 29.12–13, 30.4–6, 30.19–20, 35.6–7, 35.21. The De statu animae is listed in an extant 12th century Catalogue of the Library of Bec; see Laura Cleaver, ‘The Monastic Library at Le Bec’ in Benjamin Pohl and Laura Gathagan, eds., A Companion to the Abbey of Le Bec in the Central Middle Ages, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 171–205, at p. 204 (Nº 136: ‘Claudianus, De anima contra epistolam ignoti auctoris’; cf. pl 150, 777D12–13 and 780B11–12). See Ex. 22:26; 34:6; Deut. 4:31; ii Chron. 30:9; Ps. 77:38; 85:15; 102:8–13; 110:4; 111:4; 114:5; 144:8; Eccles. 2:11; Joel 2:13; Jon. 4:2; Jer. 3:12; Lc. 6:36; Jac. 5:11. Hebr. 4:15; iv Macc. 5:25. Ps. 118:76 (in combination with God’s ‘misericordia’); Is. 49:13 (in combination with God’s ‘misereri’); ii Cor. 1:3–7 (in combination with both). Cf. Ps. 93:19; ii Thess. 2:16; Hebr. 6:18. Eccles. 36:1. Cf. Ps. 12:4; 24:16; 68:17; 85:16; 118:132; Tob. 3:3; 3:15. Cf. Ps. 67:21; Sap. 14:4. The phrase derives from Augustine’s Enarrationes in ‘Psalmos’ 44.8: ‘Numquid dicimus non esse misericordem Deum? Quid misericordius eo, qui parcit tantum peccatoribus …?’ (Enarrationes in Psalmos i–l in cc sl 38, Eligius Dekkers and Johannes Fraipont, eds. (Turnhout: Brepols 1956), p. 507); see also Enarrationes in ‘Psalmos’ 93.18 and 100.13 (Enarrationes in Psalmos li–c in cc sl 39, Eligius Dekkers and Johannes Fraipont, eds. (Turnhout: Brepols 1956), pp. 1319 and 1417) and/or from the Missale Romanum: ‘(…) ut peccatoribus parcas’ (pl 85, 896A). See also the same phrase in Augustine’s Sermones de Scripturis xxii, 5, 5 (pl 38, 151–152), which lays down the antinomy to be resolved in the subsequent chapters (9–11) of P. Cf. Sap. 11:26–12:2; 12:16. aoo, i.106.3–14. It has been argued that Anselm possibly reflected the Stoic doctrine of

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Bibliography Primary Sources Ammonius Hermeiou, Prolegomena in Aristotelis ‘Categorias’ in Ammonii In Aristotelis ‘Categorias’ commentarius, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca iv.4, Adolfus Busse, ed. (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1895). Aristotle, The Categories—On Interpretation, Harold P. Cooke, trans; Prior Analytics, Hugh Tredennick, trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1938). Aristotle, Topica in Aristoteles Latinus, v.1-3, Lorenzo Minio-Paluello and Bernard Dod, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 1969). Augustine of Hippo, Contra Epistolam quam vocant fundamenti in csel 25/1, Joseph Zycha, ed. (Prague, Vienna and Leipzig: F. Tempsky and G. Freytag, 1891), pp. 191– 248. Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei in cc sl 47–48, Bernhard Dombart and Alphonse Kalb, eds. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955). Augustine of Hippo, Confessions: Tome i: Livres i–viii, Pierre de Labriolle, ed. (Paris: Société d’Edition ‘Les Belles Lettres’, 1969). Augustine of Hippo, Confessions: Tome ii: Livres ix–xiii, Pierre de Labriolle, ed. (Paris: Société d’Edition ‘Les Belles Lettres’, 1969). Augustine of Hippo, De diversis quaestionibus lxxxiii in cc sl 44A, Almut Mutzenbecher, ed. (Brepols: Turnhout, 1975), pp. 1–249. Augustine of Hippo, De Genesi ad litteram in csel 28/1, Josef Zycha, ed. (Prague, Vienna and Leipzig: F. Tempsky and G. Freytag, 1894), pp. 1–435. Augustine of Hippo, De immortalitate animae in csel 89, Wolfgang Hörmann, ed. (Vienna: Hoelder Pichler-Tempsky, 1986), pp. 99–128. Augustine of Hippo, De libero arbitrio in cc sl 29, William McAllen Green, ed. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1970), pp. 205–321. Augustine of Hippo, De natura boni in The De Natura Boni of Saint Augustine: A Translation with an Introduction and Commentary, Albian Anthony Moon, ed. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1955). Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate in cc sl 50–50A, William John Mountain and François Glorie, eds. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1968).

misericordia as a vice as far as it involves suffering and loss of tranquillity, e.g., as explained in Seneca’s De clementia (John Marenbon, ‘Anselm’s Proslogion’ in John Shand, ed., Central Works of Philosophy, i: Ancient and Medieval (Chesham: Acumen, 2005), pp. 169–193, at p. 182). Although, as I show elsewhere (‘Anselm’s Reception of the Stoic Idea of Being Humane’, forthcoming in the Proceedings of the 2018 International Anselm Conference, Houston 2018), Anselm had quite probably read this Senecan treatise, the sources of the relevant chapter from Proslogion are those just quoted.

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Augustine of Hippo, The Works of Saint Augustine: The Trinity, Volume I/5, Edmund Hill, ed. (New York: New City Press, 1991). Augustine of Hippo, De vera religione in Augustinus. De vera religione—Die wahre Religion: Augustinus Opera. Werke 68, Josef Lössl, ed. (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007). Augustine of Hippo, Enarrationes in Psalmos i–l in cc sl 38, Eligius Dekkers and Johannes Fraipont, eds. (Turnhout: Brepols 1956). Augustine of Hippo, Enarrationes in Psalmos li–c in cc sl 39, Eligius Dekkers and Johannes Fraipont, eds. (Turnhout: Brepols 1956). Augustine of Hippo, Enchiridion ad Laurentium de fide et spe et caritate in cc sl 46, Ernest Evans, ed. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), pp. 49–144. Boethius, Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii Commentarii in librum Aristotelis Περὶ ἑρμηνείας. Pars prior versionem continuam et primam editionem continens, Carolus Meiser, ed. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1877). Boethius, Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii Commentarii in librum Aristotelis Περὶ ἑρμηνείας. Pars posterior secundam editionem et indices continens, Carolus Meiser, ed. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1880). Boethius, De consolatione Philosophiae. Opuscula theologica. Editio altera, Claudio Moreschini, ed. (Munich and Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2005). Cicero, M. Tulli Ciceronis De Natura Deorum libri secundus et tertius, Arthur Stanley Pease, ed. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1958). Claudianus Mamertus, De statu animae in csel 11, August Engelbrecht, ed. (Vienna: apud C. Geroldi filium, 1885), pp. 18–197. Isidore of Seville [Isidore of Spain], Etymologiae in Isidori Hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum libri xx. Tomus 1, libros i–x continens, Wallace Martin Lindsay, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911). Lactantius, Divinae institutiones in L. Caelius Firmianus Lactantius. Divinarum institutionum libri septem. Fasc. 1: Libri i et ii, Eberhard Heck and Antonie Wlosok, eds. (Munich and Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2005). Plautus, Comédies, Tome v: Mostellaria. Persa. Poenulus. Texte établi et traduit, Alfred Ernout, ed. (Les Belles Lettres: Paris, 1938). Plotinus, Enneads in Plotinus, with an English Translation, in Seven Volumes, Arthur Hilary Armstrong, ed. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1988). Porphyry, Commentary on ‘Parmenides’ in Porphyre et Victorinus, ii: Textes, Pierre Hadot, ed. (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1968). Porphyry, Porphyrii ‘Isagoge’ et In Aristotelis ‘Categorias’ commentarius, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca iv.1, Adolfus Busse, ed. (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1887). [Pseudo-Augustine], Categoriae Decem in Aristoteles Latinus, i.1–5, Lorenzo MinioPaluello, ed. (Bruges/Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1961), pp. 133–175. Simplicius, Simplicii In Aristotelis Categorias Commentarium, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca viii, Karl Kalbfleisch, ed. (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1907).

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Watanabe, Albert Tohru, Cleanthes. Fragments: Text and Commentary, Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1988. Available online: https://www​ .proquest.com/docview/303562044/fulltextPDF/.

Secondary Sources Aubenque, Pierre, Le problème de l’être chez Aristote. Essai sur la problématique aristotélicienne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962). Bandini, Luigi, Sant’Anselmo d’Aosta. Monologion. Introduzione, traduzione e note (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1934). Bianchi, Ernesto, Sant’Anselmo d’Aosta. Monologio (Siena: E. Cantagalli, 1931). Bradshaw, David, ‘The Opuscula sacra: Boethius and Theology’ in John Marenbon, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Boethius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 105–128. Cleaver, Laura, ‘The Monastic Library at Bec’ in Benjamin Pohl and Laura L. Gathagan, eds., A Companion to the Abbey of Le Bec in the Central Middle Ages (11th–13th Centuries) (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 171–205. Cook, Arthur Bernard, Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion, Volume ii: Zeus God of the Dark Sky (Thunder and Lightning). Part ii: Appendixes and Index (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925). de la Broise, René-Marie, Mamerti Claudiani vita ejusque doctrina de anima hominis (Paris: Retaux-Bray, 1890). de Libera, Alain, La philosophie médiévale (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989; 52001). de Libera, Alain, ‘L’onto-théo-logique de Boèce: doctrine des catégories et théorie de la prédication dans le De Trinitate’ in Otto Bruun and Lorenzo Corti, eds., Les Catégories et leur histoire (Paris: Vrin, 2005), pp. 175–222. Demetracopoulos, John A., ‘Aristotle’s Categories in the Greek and Latin Medieval Exegetical Tradition. The Case of the Argument for the Non-Simultaneity of Relatives’, Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Âge grec et latin, 66 (1996), pp. 117–134. Demetracopoulos, John A., Αὐγουστῖνος καί Γρηγόριος Παλαμᾶς: τά προβλήματα τῶν ἀριστοτελικῶν κατηγοριῶν καί τῆς τριαδικῆς ψυχοθεολογίας (St. Augustine and Gregory Palamas: Aristotle’s Categories and the Psychological Images of the Holy Trinity) (Athens: Parousia, 1997). Demetracopoulos, John A., Αριστοτελικές κατηγορίες και ‘θεία ονόματα’ κατά τον Άνσελμο Καντουαρίας (Aristotle’s Categories and the ‘Nomina Divina’ in Anselm of Canterbury), PhD thesis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 2001. Available online: https://www.didaktorika.gr/eadd/handle/10442/21957. Demetracopoulos, John A., ‘The Stoic Background to the Universality of Anselm’s Definition of “God” in Proslogion 2: Boethius’ Second Commentary on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione ad 16a7–11’ in Alessandro Musco et al., eds., Universality of Reason.

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Plurality of Philosophies in the Middle Ages, Volume ii.1: Comunicazioni latine (Palermo: Officina di Studi Medievali, 2012), pp. 121–138. de Rémusat, Charles, Saint Anselme de Cantorbéry: tableau de la vie monastique et de la lutte du pouvoir spirituel avec le pouvoir temporel au onzième siècle (Paris: Didier, 1853; 21868). Di Marco, Michele, La polemica sull’anima tra Fausto di Riez e Claudiano Mamerto (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1995). Di Silva, Maurizio Filippo, ‘Somma essenza e categorie: Anselmo e Agostino’, Ética e Filosofia Politica, 21/2 (2018), pp. 157–170. Galonnier, Alain, ‘Nature, orientation exégétique et postérité des Dix catégories du Pseudo Augustin’, hal/cnrs—Archives ouvertes (2017), pp. 1–50. Gourinat, Jean-Baptiste, ‘Relations et relatifs: les stoïciens contre Aristote’, Quaestio, 13 (2013), pp. 17–37. Hopkins, Jasper, A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972). Kotzia-Panteli, P., Ο “σκοπός” των “Κατηγοριῶν” του Αριστοτέλη. Συμβολή στην ιστορία των αριστοτελικών σπουδών ώς τον 6ο αιώνα (The ‘Purpose’ of Aristotle’s Categories. A Contribution to the History of the Study of Aristotle through the Sixth Century: Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 1992). Koyré, Alexandre, L’idée de Dieu dans la philosophie de St. Anselme (Paris: Vrin, 1923). Marenbon, John, ‘Anselm and the Early Medieval Aristotle’ in John Marenbon, ed., Aristotle in Britain in the Early Middle Ages. Proceedings of the International Conference at Cambridge, 8–11 April 1994 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), pp. 1–19. Marenbon, John, Boethius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Marenbon, John, ‘Anselm’s Proslogion’ in John Shand, ed., Central Works of Philosophy, i: Ancient and Medieval (Chesham: Acumen, 2005), pp. 169–193. Marenbon, John, ‘Les Catégories au debut du Moyen Âge’ in Otto Bruun and Lorenzo Corti, eds., Les Catégories et leur histoire (Paris: Vrin, 2005), pp. 223–243. Marenbon, John, ‘The Latin Tradition of Logic to 1110’ in Dov M. Gabbay and John Woods, eds., A Handbook of the History of Logic, Volume 2: Medieval and Renaissance Logic (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2007), pp. 46–63. Philippson, R., ‘Review of F. Bömer, Der lateinische Neuplatonismus und Neupythagorismus und Claudianus Mamertus in Sprache und Philosophie (Leipzig, 1936)’, Philologische Wochenschrift, 58 (1938), pp. 1033–1041. Sciuto, Italo, Anselmo d’Aosta. Monologio e Proslogio. Gaunilone, Difesa del insipiente. Risposta di Anselmo a Gaunilone. Testo latino a fronte (Milan: Bompiani, 2002). Southern, Richard William, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Thom, Paul, The Logic of the Trinity: Augustine to Occam (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012).

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Tisserand, Axel, Boèce: Traités théologiques. Présentation, traductions, chronologie, bibliographie et notes (Paris: Flammarion, 2000). Tisserand, Axel, ‘Métaphore et translatio in divinis: la théorie de la prédication et la conversion des Catégories chez Boèce’, in Alain Galonnier, ed., Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs: Actes du colloque international de la Fondation Singer-Polignac, Paris 8– 12 Juin 1999 (Louvain: Peeters, 2003), pp. 435–463.

chapter 4

The Teaching of the Trivium at Bec and Its Bearing on Anselm’s Programme of Fides Quaerens Intellectum Jacob Archambault

1

The Current State of Anselm Scholarship and the Usual Understanding of Fides and Intellectus

In Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word, Eileen Sweeney describes the current state of Anselm scholarship thus: There are real divisions in the interpretation of Anselm. (…) Philosophers and systematic theologians carry off parts of his corpus, while those interested in spirituality take others. (…) One of the most vexed questions in Anselm scholarship is its disciplinary location. Though the question of whether Anselm’s work is philosophy or theology is ultimately anachronistic, the extreme positions that have been taken on this question reveal something about how incompatible the elements of Anselm’s corpus seem to modern sensibilities.1

1 Eileen C. Sweeney, Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), pp. 4–5. At pp. 5–6, Sweeney cites Gilson and Barth as examples of ‘philosophizing’ and ‘spiritualizing’ interpretations of Anselm’s work. See K. Barth, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Anselm’s Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of his Theological Scheme, Ian Robertson, trans. (London: scm Press, 1960), pp. 55– 59; Étienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York: Scribner, 1951), p. 26. While Sweeney should be commended for drawing attention to this division, I do not think her work successfully transcends it. Sweeney sees Anselm’s thought as a coincidentia oppositorum of logic and rhetoric, reason and desire. ‘Anselm’s project in the Proslogion is one that Anselm himself views as both necessary and paradoxical’ (Eileen C. Sweeney, ‘Anselm’s ‘Proslogion’: The Desire for the Word’, The Saint Anselm Journal, 1 (2003), pp. 17–31, p. 17). But such a reading merely entrenches the dichotomies and assumptions brought to the table by the above mentioned rival groups; the attempt to balance these opposing elements without questioning their internal content effects a mere reconfiguration of concepts, instead of leading to an improved understanding of those concepts.

© Jacob Archambault, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_006

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According to the operative conception behind the aforementioned divide, to study religion, theology, or spirituality is to take faith as the object of one’s inquiry; while philosophy is that academic discipline most characterized by its connection with reason—and if reason and understanding, ratio and intellectus, are not identical, then the former at least provides the paradigmatic case of the latter. Fides, or ‘faith’, is understood in two ways: primarily, as a subjective state, that of believing a matter not objectively verified; secondarily, as the matter assented to. In the first way, the study of faith is part of the study of human subjectivity, and thus subordinated to psychology. In the second, to study faiths is to study the structures of propositional content assented to by those having faith in the first sense. If one structure is privileged as correct, then one is doing theology; if one remains agnostic about the correctness of any one religious system and instead studies properties of these structures for their own sake, then one is engaging in comparative religion. A divide between subjective and objective senses similarly governs the meanings of intellectus, typically translated as ‘understanding’. This term can refer to: 1) the faculty of knowing; 2) the state of knowledge attained by the proper exercise of that faculty; or 3) the knowledge attained by that exercise. The faculty of understanding is often taken to be identical to the faculty of reason, while the state of understanding occurs when one can give sufficient reasons (i.e., known true propositions taken as premises) for what is understood. As in the previous case, the faculty retains priority over both the state and the object attained, and is usually identified with the human mind. Understanding understanding is, then, the province of psychology. Correlatively, understanding in the second sense is taken to be a psychological state; understanding in the third sense is dubbed ‘mental content’, and is studied, most often in philosophy of mind, under that heading.2 The relation between these states is taken as follows. Faith qua act of belief is an act of the will, marked by the subjective indeterminacy of the truth value of propositional contents taken as its object. The state of faith is, compared with that of understanding, incomplete. And the content of religious belief relates to that of understanding according to one of two models: on the first, stemming from Aquinas, truths of faith are above reason; on the second, stemming from Latin Averroism,3 truths of faith may contradict reason. In the first, faith acts as 2 To paint the situation a bit more accurately, what is studied is theories of mental content, thereby effecting a redoubling of the primacy of the subject putting forth these theories. 3 At least, this is how the story is told. For reasons to think the story is not quite as simple as its retelling, see Gyula Klima, ‘Ancilla Theologiae vs. Domina Philosophorum: Thomas Aqui-

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a supervaluation function filling in truth values undecidable by the machinery of reason alone. In the second, the data given to faith and reason conflict, and one must choose between the two. Fides quaerens intellectum, then, is most often taken to mean ‘subjective, willed believing-without-evidence seeking definitive proof that what it believes unknowingly is in fact the case’. If one takes the content of reason and faith to conflict, then ‘without’ can be strengthened to ‘against’. This sense is not terribly flattering. This does not mean it is an incorrect reading of the phenomena, but we should hesitate to think this was what Anselm endorsed when he gave fides quaerens intellectum as the working title to his Proslogion (P). This chapter aims not so much to refute standard interpretations as to deepen them: the meanings we assign primarily to fides and intellectus are, on Anselm’s analysis, derivative. If reading Anselm differently on this point proves fruitful, it may also provide a way into seeing the matters themselves differently.

2

The Trivium at Bec in the Early 12th Century

The following entry is found toward the end of a library list from Bec abbey that Becker dates to the twelfth century: 157. In alio Martianus Capella de nuptiis Mercurii et philologie lib. ii et de vii artibus editis ab eo lib. vii et commentum Remigii super eumdem ix lib. Priscianus de viii partibus et de constructionibus ii. Utraque rethorica ii. Dialectice iii. Utrumque commentum super Porphirium. Primum super catheg. Primum, secundum super periermeneias. Commentum super topica Ciceronis.4 Both the wording and content suggest these works, given as follows, were bound in a single volume. The first is the de nuptiis Mercurii et philologiae, here listed as two separate entries—the first two books by the title of the whole and the remaining seven by their content, ‘on the seven liberal arts’,5 accompanied

nas, Latin Averroism, and the Autonomy of Philosophy’ in J. Aertsen and A. Speer, eds., What is Philosophy in the Middle Ages? Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1998), pp. 393–402. 4 Gustav Becker, Catalogi Bibliothecarum Antiqui (Bonn: Max Cohen et filium, 1885), p. 266. 5 This division of the work has some justification, since it is only the first two books of the de nuptiis that tell the myth of the marriage of the god Mercury to philology. Each of the remaining books introduces a personification of one of the liberal arts, expounding their content,

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by a commentary of Remigius of Auxerre on the entire work. The work attributed to Priscian listed as de viii partibus et de constructionibus ii is the Institutiones Grammaticae.6 One of the rhetorics listed may also be his. The other may be the fourth book of Boethius’ De Differentiis Topicis.7 The ‘dialectic in three books’ is likely the first three books of the De Differentiis Topicis.8 The remaining works of the list are also by Boethius: his commentaries on Porphyry’s Isagoge, Aristotle’s Categories and On Interpretation, and Cicero’s Topics. It is likely that some of these texts were present in Bec in the eleventh century, and possible that this particular manuscript was. Broadly, there is Lanfranc’s reputation among his contemporaries as one ‘raised up as a guide and a light to lead the minds of the Latins to the study of the trivium and quad-

in the following order: Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric, Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Harmony, i.e., music. 6 The eight parts of speech are 1) nouns, 2) pronouns, 3) verbs, 4) adverbs, 5) participles, 6) conjunctions, 7) prepositions, and 8) interjections. Cf. Martianus Capella, lib. iii, par. 279– 288. In Priscian, each of these parts (with the exception of the interjection) is introduced by the formulaic phrase ‘n est pars orationis …’, followed by a further specification: nouns in book two, verbs in book eight, participles in book eleven, pronouns in book twelve, prepositions in book fourteen, adverbs in book fifteen, conjunctions in book sixteen; the final two books of the work, books seventeen and eighteen, shift from treating parts of speech to treating constructions. 7 This assumes that the reading ‘utraque rhetorica ii’ is taken in the composite sense, i.e., ‘both rhetorics, two [books] (total)’, rather than ‘both rhetorics, two books (each)’. If the latter reading is preferred, then a third possibility would be Cicero’s De inventione, which was in two books and also known as Rhetorica libri. I thank Ian Logan for this last point. 8 In the Middle Ages, the first three books of the De Differentiis Topicis were occasionally regarded as topically distinct from the fourth: the first three books were on dialectic, while the final book was on rhetorical theory (see Michael C. Leff, ‘Boethius and the History of Medieval Rhetoric’, Central States Speech Journal, 25 (1974), pp. 135–141). This distinction in how the material was viewed provided the impetus for treating the first three books as a single work, and occasionally for excluding the fourth from a codex (e.g., Orleans, Bib. Mun. 265; Tours, Bib. Mun. 678) or for circulating the fourth separately (e.g., Paris, Bib. Nat. Lat. 16709). See G. Lacombe, et al., eds., Aristoteles Latinus: Codices: Pars Prior (Rome: La Libreria dello Stato, 1939). Furthermore, no extant commentary on the De Differentiis Topicis from the 12th century or earlier comments on book iv of the text (Niels J. Green-Pedersen, The Tradition of the Topics in the Middle Ages: Commentaries on Aristotle’s and Boethius’ ‘Topics’ (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 1984, Appendix B)). Our scribe’s loose tendency to name books by their contents rather than their titles—as he does for Priscian and Martianus Capella—combined with the wide circulation of the De Differentiis Topicis during Anselm’s time and the absence of any other dialectic in three books with which the entry could be identified, thus makes it probable the work referenced at Bec under the simple title de dialectica is the aforementioned one of Boethius. But cf. Suzanne J. Nelis, ‘What Lanfranc Taught, What Anselm Learned’, Haskins Society Journal, 2 (1990), pp. 75–82, p. 78, which identifies the text mentioned here with Boethius’ De syllogismo hypothetico.

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rivium, which had fallen into neglect and profound obscurity’.9 Further, Anselm shows familiarity with at least some of the works on the list. He mentions Aristotle’s Categories in the De Grammatico (dg),10 and examples and vocabulary used in the same work suggest familiarity with both Priscian’s Institutiones and Boethius’ Logica Vetus commentaries.11 That he would be familiar with the others would hardly be surprising. Where the codex is on the list gives us another clue. The codex listed immediately before ours contains the Quaestiones Naturales of Seneca the Elder. This work is likely the proximate source for the phrase id quo nihil maius cogitari potest, ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’, so central to P.12 If both the manuscripts described in Becker’s 12th century Bec library list above and that containing Seneca’s work following it were indeed present at Bec in Anselm’s time, and if the order of the catalogue entries were in part representative of the physical placement of the books therein, one might imagine Anselm perusing this section of the library, devoted in large part to works of philosophy and more systematic theology, putting away his trivium codex, and fortuitously picking up the codex next to it that would provide P with its key phrase.13

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10 11 12

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Richard William Southern, Saint Anselm and His Biographer: A Study of Monastic Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), p. 14. The quotation is from antipope Clement iii. See Richard William Southern, ‘Lanfranc of Bec and Berengar of Tours’ in R.W. Hunt et al, eds., Studies in medieval history presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948), pp. 27–48, p. 30. The works in the volume listed are standard for studying the trivium through much of the Middle Ages. See Paul Abelson, The Seven Liberal Arts: A Study in Mediaeval Culture (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University Press, 1906), pp. 74–75. Abelson, however, repeats the medieval misattribution of Victorinus’ De definitione to Boethius. dg16 and 17. Desmond Paul Henry, Commentary on De Grammatico: The Historical-Logical Dimensions of a Dialogue of St. Anselm’s (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1974), pp. 92, 100. Seneca’s passage reads as follows: ‘Quid est Deus? Quod vides totum et quod non vides totum. Sic demum magnitudo sua illi redditur, qua nihil maius excogitari potest’. Quoted in Southern, Biographer, p. 59, n. 3. Marcia L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, Volume 1 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990), dates the rediscovery of the Quaestiones Naturales to the ‘12th century revival of scientific thought’ (p. 18). But this is strictly speaking incorrect, and should instead be taken to refer to the ‘long twelfth century’. (See Alison I. Beach and Isabelle Cochelin, eds., The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020) pp. 647–920.) Hine’s dating of Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Voss. Lat. 0.55, to the beginning of the 12th century (H.M. Hine, ‘The Manuscript Tradition of Seneca’s Natural Questions: Some Manuscripts Related to Z’, Prometheus, 5 (1979), pp. 63–72, p. 63), for instance, has since been revised to the

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Intellectus in the Boethian Works of the Logica Vetus

The prominence of the subject-object dichotomy for our understanding of the faith/understanding relation hinders approaching P in its proper context. Its main features are 1) that the world of objects is conceived of after the fashion of a domain of objects in model theory, typically the minimal set of things necessary for some sufficiently canonical activity usually given by the hard sciences; and 2) that anything outside of this basic ‘furniture of the world’ is thought of as added to it by the activity of subjects. Broadly, everything that is must be either a mere entity, the paradigmatic cases of which tend to be artefacts, or a thinking thing, or something pertaining to the activity of such a being. Particularly, meanings must either be platonic objects or mental constructions of some sort. In contrast, earlier medieval logic generally takes meanings to be neither objects nor impositions of subjects, but something had by entities.14 Because of this, we may by an appropriate transference ascribe that meaning to a term referring to the entity. Boethius makes the point as follows: And so whenever one thing partakes of another, this participation also extends to the name just as to the thing. For instance, a certain man, because he partakes of justice, draws near [to justice] really, and hence draws his name near as well: he is called just.15

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second half of the 11th (https://primarysources.brillonline.com/browse/vossiani‑latini/​ vlq‑055‑vita‑liudgeri‑cartularium‑werthinense/manuscript;vossianivlq05501vlq055sourc e), and Seneca’s work circulated in excerpts from at least the later 9th century (H.M. Hine, ‘The Manuscript Tradition of Seneca’s Natural Questions: Addenda’, The Classical Quarterly, 42, no. 2 (1992), pp. 558–562). While the resemblance of Anselm’s phrase to that of Seneca makes direct influence plausible, it is also not strictly necessary for the argument pursued here. Direct influence also need not entail Anselm was conscious of this influence: he could have found the phrase in Seneca, forgotten about it, and then had it return to him weeks or months later. In this way, the assumption of the argument’s origin is compatible with that given by Eadmer at va i, xix. See Henry, Commentary, p. 88: ‘Hence it here appears that for Boethius one could speak of things being asserted in a certain fashion (e.g., denominatively, paronymously). Hence the whole sentence with which we are now concerned is perfectly coherent with the Boethian pattern, and the modern compulsion to insert quotation marks around ‘grammatico’/‘literate’ thereby removed’. bc 167D–168A, alt.: Atque ideo quotiescunque aliqua res alia participat, ipsa participatio sicut rem, ita quoque nomen adipiscitur, ut quidam homo, quia iustitia participat et rem quoque inde trahit et nomen, dicitur enim iustus.

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The same point can be made not only with respect to a thing and its name, but also with respect to a thing and its concept. In dg, the teacher admonishes the student at one point saying: When it is asserted that every man can be understood to be man without literacy, and no literate can be understood to be literate without literacy, doesn’t this mean that being a man does not require literacy, and being a literate requires literacy?16 The above passages manifest two aspects of early medieval thinking more generally. First, the medieval analysis, unlike our own, bridges the gap between talk of the meaning of terms and the talk of meaning one finds, for example, in questions about the meaning of life.17 Second, it denies thought the character of spontaneity. So, for instance, if Anselm can be truly described as fidelis/faithful, then (i) our ability to call him such is a consequence of his being such, and (ii) he is faithful by having faith, conceived as the principle of his faithfulness. Similarly, if Anselm understands something, he understands by understanding, i.e., whatever underlying principle it is that grants understanding to a subject. Such attitudes are ‘subjective’ merely in the sense in that they are intentions of a subject subordinated to an intended ideal: it does not mean they are empty intentions, nor that the intention becomes subordinated to the intending by its being enacted.18

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18

The pl text has ‘participatione’, but ‘participatio’ is required to preserve Boethius’ intended parallel in the accusative: ‘sicut rem, ita quoque nomen’; reading ‘nomen’ as the subject deprives the transitive deponent ‘adipiscitur’ of an accusative. dg5 = Henry, Commentary, 1974, p. 53 (alt.): Qui dicit: omnis homo potest intelligi homo sine grammatica; et nullus grammaticus potest intelligi grammaticus sine grammatica, nonne hoc significat quia esse hominis non indiget grammatica, et esse grammatici indiget grammatica? (aoo, i.149.19–22.) Hence, in no way can Anselm’s project be construed, à la Wittgenstein, as giving a linguistic analysis of the meaning of the term ‘God’. Cf. Giles Gasper, Anselm of Canterbury and his Theological Inheritance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 107–143. This attitude towards names remains standard even for Aquinas. cf. Jacob Archambault, ‘Aquinas, the A Priori/A Posteriori Distinction, and the Kantian Dependency Thesis’, Religious Studies, 50 (2014), pp. 175–192, pp. 185–190. Boethius makes the point forcefully in the case of the relation between arguing and argument at bdt 1174C: Non vero idem est argumentum et argumentatio: nam vis sententiae ratioque ea quae clauditur oratione cum aliquid probatur ambiguum, argumentum vocatur; ipsa vero argumenti elocutio, argumentatio dicitur. Quo fit ut argumentum quidem virtus, et mens argumentationis sit atque sententia; argumentatio vero, argumenti per orationem explicatio.

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If we are faithful to this general pattern, we will conclude that for Anselm, the sense of understanding given in ‘x understands’ will be unpacked as ‘x has understanding’, just as Anselm unpacks ‘x is white’ as ‘x has whiteness’, and ‘x is grammatical’ as ‘x knows grammar’.19 More generally, a paronymous term—and, correspondingly, the being of what it names—will yield its substantive corollary in its definition upon analysis, and in this sense is reducible to it.20 A passage from Boethius’ longer commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge proves illuminating on this point. Where Porphyry states his intention to bypass questions concerning the ontological status of genus and species,21 Boethius comments:

19 20

21

An argument is not the same thing as argumentation: for both the ground of a judgment and the reason contained in a speech when something uncertain is proven are called ‘arguments’; while the actual speaking of the argument is called an ‘argumentation’. By this, it happens that an argument is in a way the power and principle as well as the meaning of an argumentation; while an argumentation is the explication of an argument through speech. Cf. btc 1053 bc, where Boethius provides four different parsings of the difference between argumentatio and argumentum beginning with the version provided above. Across all divisions, however, the meaning of the former term is that more broadly associated with the expression of the argument, the latter with its content. These examples are used by Anselm in dg14. Here, knowing is regarded as a way of having, the appropriate one for things like grammar. So the primary sense of intellectum in fides quaerens intellectum cannot, pace Bencivenga, be identified with the state of satisfaction achieved by the subject who understands (though normally, nothing prevents this from being present as well—as, for instance, in va i, xix), but rather is what the intellect has when it is in this state. See Ermanno Bencivenga, Logic and Other Nonsense: The Case of Anselm and His God (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 33. bcp 82ab: Mox de generibus et speciebus illud quidem, sive subsistant, sive in solis nudis intellectibus posita sint, sive subsistentia corporalia sint an incorporalia, et utrum separata a sensibilibus an in sensibilibus posita: et circa haec consistentia dicere recusabo. I translate Porphyry’s passage as follows: Now concerning genera and species: I will not say 1) whether they subsist [in the realm of nature] or 2) are placed in separated ideas, unobscured [i.e. by admixture with matter]; or 1a) if subsisting, whether corporeal or incorporeal; or 2a) if separate, whether set [forth] in sensibilia or from them; and [I will not speak] about how such things belong together. Note that when translated thus, the notion that universals exist only in the mind of a human subject is not even mentioned as an option. The main options laid out in the first clause are that genera and species are 1) natural/physical or 2) supernatural/metaphysical, i.e., existing apart from the realm of earthly things.

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The first of these [questions] is of this sort: Whatever the mind understands it either receives by a meaning (intellectu) constituted in the nature of things and explicates to itself by a reason, in the case of that which is; or it portrays to itself in an empty imagining, in the case of what is not. Therefore, we ask, concerning the meaning (intellectus) of genus and others like it, whether we so understand species and genus as those things that are, and from which we grasp a true meaning (intellectum), or whether we are deceiving ourselves, when we form for ourselves things that are not with hollowed out imaginings.22 In the above passage, Boethius is attempting to sustain two contrasts: the first, between what is and what is not; the second, between intellectus and imaginatio. Implicit alongside these two contrasts are several others: those between the inner and the outer, the true and the merely apparent, and the full and the empty. Each first member of the above dichotomies is parallel with every other, as is each second member. So intellectus in the above passage must correspond to what is, as opposed to what is not, and to what is fully true as opposed to what is empty and apparent. The contrast between the faculties of intellect and imagination partially fulfils this role, but only because of what those faculties themselves are oriented towards. Imagination takes its bearings from the changing realm of sensible things: hence what it imagines need not be when it imagines it; in some cases, it need not be at all. Hence, it is possible for an imagination to be empty, hollow, unfulfilled. Understanding, by contrast, is oriented toward an essential, stable core in material natures. Hence, to highlight the primacy of this dichotomy, upon which that between the faculties depends, I have translated intellectus in the above passage as ‘meaning’.23

22

23

bcp 64, 82 bc: Quarum prima [harum quaestionum] est huiusmodi: Omne quod intelligit animus, aut id quod est in rerum natura constitutum intellectu concipit et sibimet ratione describit, aut id quod non est vacua sibi imaginatione depingit. Ergo intellectus generis et caeterorum cuiusmodi sit quaeritur, utrumne ita intelligamus species et genera ut ea quae sunt et ex quibus verum capimus intellectum, an nosmetipsos eludimus cum ea quae non sunt nobis cassa imaginatione formamus. This translation is not entirely novel, even in Anselm scholarship. See Toivo Holopainen, ‘Anselm’s Argumentum and the Early Medieval Theory of Argument’, Vivarium, 45 (2007), pp. 1–29, p. 18, where the translation is consistently used for a text of Abelard, and p. 21, where Holopainen uses the English ‘meaning’ to translate all of sententia, sensus, and intellectus in a passage from dg4 whose reasoning arguably requires the three terms be taken as synonyms.

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The same sense comes through in Boethius’ first commentary on the Peri Hermeneias. Commenting on the passage at the beginning of the work explaining the relations between writing, speech, concepts, and things, he writes: There are three things from which every debate and disputation is composed: the matters at hand (res), the meanings (intellectus), and the spoken words (voces). The matters (res) are what we grasp by measure of mind and distinguish by understanding (intellectu). The meanings (intellectus) are that by which we come to know the matters themselves. Spoken words are that by which we signify what we grasp in understanding.24 Translated thus, this passage can be disengaged from the metaphysics of representational realism25 within which it is typically ensconced. The scope of res used here is broader than that typically ascribed to ‘object’: it refers to anything that can be talked about as the subject of an inquiry. These subjects grant a sense (intellectus1) to minds (intellectus2) which achieve a state of understanding (intellectus3) in grasping the sense. These meanings do not mediate between the mind and world of objects: rather, the matters themselves are meaning ful; and, since meaning is, qua meaning, granted to minds, these matters are meaningful for understanding subjects. Hence, though we do speak of ‘what we have in mind’ (id quod intellectu capimus), such a designation is opaque if it fails to note that what we grasp is the meaning of the matter at hand, and that what we do in speaking is constitute this meaning (constituere intellectum) for another.26 Two objections arise at this point: first, that the above merely replaces ‘thought’ or ‘concept’ with ‘meaning’; second, that we would not expect the jux-

24

25

26

bdil 297B: Tria sunt ex quibus omnis collocutio disputatioque perficitur: res, intellectus, voces. Res sunt quas animi ratione percipimus, intellectuque discernimus. Intellectus vero quibus res ipsas addiscimus. Voces quibus id quod intellectu capimus, significamus. Representational realism is typically regarded as a position in the philosophy of mind. What I call the metaphysics of representational realism, though, is the understanding of being presupposed in that position, the dominant traits of which are 1) the treatment of the distinction between mind and world, the mental and the physical as a distinction between two distinct spheres of reality (or, if ‘reality’ has already been co-opted to refer to one half of the dichotomy, the reader may choose another term ad placitum), and 2) the corresponding search for a medium by which this chasm is to be traversed, typically found in the idea. See bdig 71.3–74.31, where the phrase is used throughout. Anselm uses it at dg14.

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taposition of intellectus with significatio, itself commonly translated as meaning, if the above interpretation were correct. Take, for instance, the following passage from Boethius’ second commentary on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione: quocirca cum omnis animae passio rei quaedam videatur esse proprietas, porro autem designativae voces intellectuum principaliter, rerum dehinc a quibus intellectus profecti sunt significatione nitantur, quidquid est in vocibus significativum, id animae passiones designat.27 Smith translates the text as follows: And so, since [1] every affection in the soul seems to be the specific character of a thing and, furthermore, [2a] spoken sounds signify primarily thoughts but [2b] rely after this on the signification of the things from which thoughts arise, [3] any spoken sound which is significant indicates an affection of the soul.28 There are difficulties with the text translated thus: the intent of the phrase ‘specific character’ is opaque; it’s unclear in what sense spoken sounds rely on the signification of things, and there is not a clear, formally valid path from claims 1 and either part of 2 to claim 3. The following translation resolves these difficulties: Since every impression of the soul seems to be some attribute of a thing, utterances, then, principally designating meanings from this in turn bear on the designation of things by which meanings advance (whatever is meaningful (significativum) in utterances, the same designates impressions of the soul). The Smith translation follows the sense laid out in Migne’s Patrologia edition of Boethius’ text, which inserts a cum immediately after porro autem, treating the second claim as a premise. Omitting this, as Meiser’s edition does, allows for what was assumed to be the second premise and conclusion to be inverted, immediately leading to a valid argument:

27 28

bdig 34.21–26. Boethius, On Aristotle On Interpretation 1–3, Andrew Smith, trans. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010), p. 33. Enumeration mine.

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1. Every impression of the soul is an attribute of some thing 2. Whatever is meaningful in utterances designates an impression of the soul C. Whatever is meaningful in utterances designates an attribute of some thing. Boethius’ argument identifies what spoken sounds designate with rerum proprietates—features of things, broadly construed. But with this established, the text as written reveals another identification: that of impression or passio in claim 1 with intellectus in the text’s initial conclusion, what was premise 2a on Smith’s rendering (designativae voces intellectuum principaliter).29 The term passio designates the object of understanding as something that impresses or affects it, while intellectus designates the same as the immediate object of understanding. In short, the passage identifies intellectus not with an activity of the mind or a product of that activity, but with something impressed on the intellect, what is at the same time not a medium by which features of things are understood, but the immediate and proper object of understanding itself, identical with those same features. Investing ‘thought’ or ‘concept’ with the desired sense, while possible, requires repudiating the above contraindicated senses embedded in the understanding of these terms today. From here, Smith’s reading that spoken words ‘rely on the signification of the things from which thoughts arise’ relates signification and thought to things, but leaves their relation to each other unclear; one would be forgiven for taking both as mediating instruments by which spoken terms refer to things. But Boethius here uses significativum and designativae to denote not what is immediately meant by an utterance—for this he instead uses intellectus or passio depending on the connotation desired—but a property of words by which they both mean and refer to those same intellectus. Instead, Boethius here answers how utterances principally designating impressions of the soul, which are identical with features of a thing, may in turn be used to refer not to those features but to their bearers, the things ‘by which meanings advance’—a task Anselm will take up more specifically and at length in dg’s discussion of paronyms.

29

See also bdig 35.15–16: ‘quare quoniam passiones animae quas intellectus vocavit’.

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Fides in Boethius’ Topical Works

Of the works in the above-mentioned codex, those most important for determining Anselm’s use of fides are Boethius’ In Ciceronis Topica and De Differentiis Topicis. We turn to these now.30 The most important place where fides shows up in Cicero’s topics is in the definition of a topic itself. Cicero defines locus, the Latin translation of the Greek τόπος, thus: ‘Therefore we may define “topic” as the seat of an argument, and “argument” as the ratio that grants fides to a doubtful matter’.31 Boethius comments on the passage as follows: There are many things that grant fides, but since they are not rationes, neither can they be argumenta: for instance, sight grants fides to things seen, but because sight is not a ratio, neither can it be an argumentum. He assumes one difference, that which grants fides, since every argumentum grants fides. If, then, we were to join the genus to the difference, and call this an argumentum (…) would the complete nature of an argumentum be made clear? Hardly (…) for an argumentum is what establishes something (quod rem arguit)—that is, what proves it—and nothing can be proven unless it is doubtful. (…) Adding, then, another difference, that is, to a doubtful matter, the definition of argumentum is made complete, consisting of a genus and two differences: the genus, ratio; the first difference, granting fides; the other, to a doubtful matter.32 Here, we must not construe ratio as ‘reasoning’, but as what is reasoned about, since the term is constitutive of the meaning of argumentum.33 Further, as 30 31 32

33

In what follows, I leave several key terms untranslated to encourage the reader to think through these terms from their use rather than from received interpretations. ‘Itaque licet definire locum esse argumenti sedem, argumentum autem rationem quae rei dubiae faciat fidem’ Topica Chapter 8, lines 27–28. btc 1048 bc: Multa enim sunt quae faciunt fidem, sed quia rationes non sunt, ne argumenta quidem esse possunt, ut visus facit fidem his quae videntur, sed quia ratio non est visus, ne argumentum quidem esse potest. Differentiam vero unam sumpsit, eam quae faciat fidem, omne enim argumentum facit fidem. Si igitur iunxerimus genus ac differentiam, et id esse argumentum dicamus (…) num tota argumenti natura monstrata sit? Minime (…) argumentum namque est quod rem arguit, id est probat, nihil vero probari, nisi dubium, potest (…) Addita igitur alia differentia quae est rei dubiae, facta est integra definitio argumenti, ex genere et duabus differentiis constans, genere quidem, ratione: una vero differentia, quod faciat fidem; altera vero, quod rei dubiae est. See bdt 1174C, given in a prior footnote.

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Holopainen has shown,34 the term argumentum need not refer to the complete set of premises constituting a valid deduction along with their conclusion, but may refer solely to the middle term of such a deduction. If this is so, the meaning of argumentum need not be extensionally differentiated from that of ratio, but may be so intensionally: a ratio is an argumentum when it plays the role of a middle term in a certain kind of deduction. We may, then, construe ratio as ‘idea’ or ‘concept’, provided we understand it as the essence of a thing qua received by the intellect, and not as a representational medium for understanding the world spontaneously drawn up by the intellect.35 To construe argumentum as ‘argument’, or even ‘middle term of an argument’, in the above passage would be too broad: only a middle term successfully establishing its conclusion can be an argumentum. An argumentum must be the subject or predicate of a true sentence, the major term36 taking up the sentential position not filled by the argumentum, serving to deduce the conclusion relating the minor term to the major term.37 Furthermore, it must be more immediately credible that the argumentum relates to the minor term than that the major term is predicable of the minor. Thus, redundant or circular proofs, such as:

34 35

36

37

See Holopainen, ‘Anselm’s Argumentum’. Cf. Gyula Klima, ‘The Medieval Problem of Universals’ in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022 Edition), url = ⟨ http://plato.stanford.edu/​ archives/spr2022/entries/universals‑medieval/⟩, sec. 7: ‘So, a common nature or essence according to its absolute consideration abstracts from all existence, both in the singulars and in the mind. Yet, and this is the important point, it is the same nature that informs both the singulars that have this nature and the minds conceiving of them in terms of this nature’. In Aristotelian syllogistic, the major term of a syllogism is the term that also serves as the predicate in the conclusion, while the minor term is the term that serves as the subject of the conclusion. However, the argumentum need not hold in this way of the minor term: the sentence joining these two need only be probabilis, i.e. worthy of esteem, something believed by the multitude or by the wise. Note that a topical argument does not primarily seek to establish the credibility of the sentence concluded to by the syllogism, but the credibility of the predicate of the conclusion’s holding of the subject. Though in any sensible logic, an assertible predication of a subject should entail the assertibility of the statement wherein the predicate is predicated of that subject, it seems that the earlier medieval analysis took dyadic predicates like ‘true of’ and ‘credible of’, taking a subject and predicate as arguments, to be in some sense prior to the monadic ‘true’ or ‘credible’, taking (the name of) a sentence as argument. Cf. Bianca Bosman, ‘The Roots of the Notion of Containment in Theories of Consequence’, Vivarium, 56 (2018), pp. 63–72.

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B is A A is B A is A will not have a middle term that is an argumentum; nor will a deduction attempting to establish a conclusion equally or less doubtful than its major premise. Thirdly, the conclusion must, à la contemporary relevant logic, genuinely follow from the premises. In the above passage, we are told: 1) fides can be brought about by an argumentum, but 2) also by other means (e.g. sight); 3) every argumentum effects fides; 4) fides can be provided for doubtful things 5) as well as things not in doubt.38 Furthermore, we can deduce that 6) fides is not antithetical to ratio, since some rationes—namely, argumenta—grant it; 7) fides is granted by something fitting the object granted it—just as visus grants fides to visible things, so rationes grant fides to intelligible things; and 8) fides is not granted to the sceptical inquirer, but to the thing inquired about. This last point is of vital importance: for Anselm and the Boethian tradition leading up to him, the granting of fides essentially concerns the matters themselves, not subjective mental states. Faith as a state of belief must follow from this either derivatively, from grasping the object at hand as it is really presented; or alternately, the faith of a believing subject may be construed as a special case of this objectlevel participation. From the enumeration of the above criteria, one might construe the fides granted to a doubtful matter, from which a predicate’s holding or not holding of some subject follows, as analogous to the role played in contemporary logic by the assertibility conditions of a sentence: an argumentum is an idea making a matter previously in doubt assertible. But since the granting of fides is nothing linguistic, what we have granted here is rather a condition for assertibility. A good translation of fides, then, in this context, would be something like reliability, or even—bringing out the ontological tenor a bit more—groundedness. Putting this together, we can rephrase Cicero’s definition thus: a topic is the seat of an argumentum, and an argumentum, an idea serving as a medium grounding a doubtful matter.

38

The latter case follows from the need for the second differentia on pain of redundancy.

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Fides Quaerens Intellectum

We are now in a position to see how this account clarifies the meaning of the title Anselm originally gave to P. In the prologue to the text, Anselm says his brother monks asked him for an ‘example of meditating on a ratio fidei’.39 This could consist, he says, in a multitude of arguments, as did the Monologion (M), or it could consist in one argument. Anselm asks: whether perhaps one argument (unum argumentum) could be found, which 1) would require nothing other than itself alone to be proven; and 2) would be sufficient to establish: a) that God truly is; and b) that he is the highest good needing no other; and c) is whom all need that they may be and be well; and d) whatever else we believe concerning the divine substance.40 He goes on to call this same argumentum a ‘cogitatio I zealously embraced’.41 Like M, P is an example of meditating on a ratio fidei—in this case, the notion that than which nothing greater can be thought. The dialectical aspect of the text is thus not in tension with it having a ‘meditative’ or ‘theological’ sense, since the very process of determining what can be deduced in that context is given via a rumination on, and unpacking of, the meaning of the middle term. Anselm is searching after some one thing, a ratio fidei, called a cogitatio in relation to his possessing it, to serve as an argumentum. The ratio is ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’, taken up as an argumentum, i.e., a middle term in a series of syllogisms running as follows: Major Premise: That than which nothing greater can be thought exists in reality, is the highest good, etc. Minor Premise: God is that than which nothing greater can be thought Conclusion: God exists in reality, etc.

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41

PProemium (aoo, i.93.2–3). PProemium (aoo, i.93.5–3).: ‘Coepi mecum quaerere si forte posset inveniri unum argumentum, quod nullo alio ad se probandum, quam se solo indigeret; et solum ad astruendum quia Deus vere est, et quia est summum bonum nullo alio indigens, et quo omnia indigent ut sint et ut bene sint, et quaecunque de divina credimus substantia, sufficeret’. PProemium (aoo, i.93.18–19).

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Each of the above arguments is an example of the Themistian topic from a description (a descriptione), itself grouped among the topics from substance (a substantia).42 Here, ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’ is what later medievals would call a nominal definition, and what philosophers today call a definite description: it captures the content of the idea of God in an exact manner, but since it does so by way of certain contingent features (i.e. being thinkable, being greater than other thinkables),43 it cannot qualify as an example of the topic from a definition (a diffinitione). The topic is an intrinsic topic, one where the major term’s relation to the minor is elicited directly from the argumentum, usually in a straightforwardly syllogistic manner. Intrinsic topics contrast with extrinsic topics,44 where the argumentum bears a synthetic relation—proportionality, contrariety, etc.—to the other terms of the argument; and middle topics, which as the name suggests, are in some sense between intrinsic and extrinsic. The order in which Anselm presents the divine attributes in P is gradual, designed to facilitate the spiritual progress of the reader. After establishing God’s existence, Anselm claims God is ‘whatever it is better to be than not to be’.45 But this general claim is complicated immediately in P6–8, which ascribe sensibility, omnipotence, and impassibility to God; and again, in P9–11, which highlight the conflict between justice and mercy in God. In these chapters, the protagonist’s process of discovering what predicates befit God is also a rarification of his concepts of ordinary goods, where aspects of the ordinary concept in play are also denied of God. This process reaches a peak in P12, where the whole manner in which anything is predicated of God is distinguished from the predication of properties of ordinary objects on account of God’s simplicity; and again in P15, where even the middle term ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’ is qualified by the claim that God is greater than can be thought. After this, the succeeding chapters become decidedly more apophatic in character. To support his major premises, Anselm uses reductio proofs. All of these are cases of the middle topic from division (ex divisione), which is similar to, but not quite the same as, disjunctive syllogism.46 The topic from division begins with a partitioning of opposing predicates with respect to a subject. From here, it can proceed either directly or indirectly. Anselm proceeds indirectly: 42 43 44 45 46

See bdt 1187B–1187D. This need not imply the existence of real distinct accidents inhering in God. But this point has to wait until P12, and so is not yet present at the beginning of Anselm’s treatise. On extrinsic topics, see bdt 1190B–1192B. P5 (aoo, i.104.16). See bdt 1192C–1193D.

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That than which nothing greater can be thought is F or G Assume it is F … It is not F Therefore, it is G.47 The proof is indirect because it assumes the horn of the dilemma it ultimately rejects. The topic is midway between intrinsic and extrinsic because though one of the predicates follows directly from the idea ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’, this is only made evident by comparing the two predicates to each other as lesser to greater. Though P forms a unity relying on a single argumentum, it does not provide one argument in the modern sense, but several, identical in all but the major term. Since this is so, the Pro insipiente (pi) is no longer merely a criticism of the argument of P2–3: it is a criticism of the entire work, since if it prevents linking the predicate ‘exists’ to that than which nothing greater can be thought, it will a fortiori prevent any of the other things Anselm attempts to establish of God from being established.48 In each argument in P, the middle term is taken up as something whose holding of the minor term is immediately credible or reliable: it ‘requires nothing besides itself alone to be established’. This is why Anselm never attempts to justify the minor premise either in P or the Responsio (R).49 Thus, when in pi 4 Gaunilo allows his fool to deny that that than which nothing greater can be thought is God—thereby also reconstruing Anselm’s original first-figure proof as a third-figure one—Anselm bars this line of attack. ‘I use your faith and conscience for a most sure proof of how false this is’.50 This reading further reveals something about Anselm’s use of the term ‘fool’ (insipiens) as an appellative for the atheist. The minor premise of a topical argu47

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50

This format is especially prominent in Scotus’ reformulation of the proof. See John Duns Scotus, A Treatise on God as First Principle, Allan B. Wolter, trans. (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1966). This may help explain Anselm’s sometimes acerbic tone in the Responsio: he rightly read the praise at the end of pi as tongue-in-cheek. Cf. Aquinas’ criticism of the argument at Summa Theologiae, ia, q. 2, art. 1. There, Aquinas attacks the evidential status of the minor premise, and thereby the fittingness of taking it up into the context of a dialectical disputation: ‘It is possible that who hears the name ‘God’ does not understand it to signify something than which a greater cannot be thought, since some would believe God is a body’. R1 (aoo, i.130.15–16): ‘Quod quam falsum sit, fide et conscientia tua pro firmissimo utor argumento’.

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ment must be probabilis, or reliable.51 Boethius tells us ‘the reliable is what seems to be either to all, or to many, or to the wise; and among these [last] either to all, or many, or to those most renowned or distinguished; or to the specialist concerning his own province’.52 God’s being something than which a greater cannot be thought fits this in several ways. First, it would have been widely assented to in Anselm’s time, and hence ‘what seems to be either to all or to many’. Second, it would have been attributable to ‘those most renowned or distinguished among the wise’, since the claim is found in Seneca the Elder, who, not always clearly distinguished in the Middle Ages from his nephew, was an authority in philosophy on par with Plato and Aristotle. Thirdly, and perhaps most interestingly, the pair wise/fool is mapped onto that between the Catholic and the non-believer, and so the claim is in this sense something known to many among the wise. This sense thus underlines the opening lines of R: ‘Since the fool himself, against whom I spoke in my little work, does not reprove me in these words, but rather one who is not a fool, and a Catholic on behalf of the fool, it suffices for me to reply to the Catholic’.53 Here, the fool is explicitly excluded from the second round of debate as incapable of perceiving what should be plain to the Catholic responding on his behalf.54 Given the importance Anselm ascribes to the notion ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’ as the unum argumentum binding P together, it should not be surprising that Gaunilo’s first and principal objection to Anselm’s argument attacks precisely the fittingness of taking up this ratio as an argumentum:

51

52

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On the meaning of probabilis in Boethius’ theory of the topics, see bdt 1180C–1182C. The sense is not that of something being probable in the mathematical sense, which only arose with the work of Pascal and others many centuries later. Rather, the root of the term is the Latin probo, to prove or test—hence the sense of something’s having been tested, and consequently trustworthy or reliable, albeit not necessarily infallibly so. bdt 1180cd: ‘Probabile vero est quod videtur vel omnibus, vel pluribus, vel sapientibus, et his vel omnibus, vel pluribus, vel maxime notis atque praecipuis; vel quod unicuique artifici secundum propriam facultatem’. RProemium (aoo, i.130.5). This strategy for excluding the fool from the disputation is retained as the environment for the proof shifts from monastic to scholastic. Witness Bonaventure: ‘the intellect has in itself (…) sufficient light to repel this doubt and to extricate itself from its folly. Whence the foolish mind voluntarily rather than by constraint considers the matter in a deficient manner, so that the defect is on the part of the intellect itself and not because of any deficiency on the part of the thing known’. Translation of Bonaventure, Quaestiones Disputatae de Mysterio Trinitatis in Opera Omnia, tom. v. Quaracchi, 1891, p. 50, from John. F. Wippel and Allan B. Wolter, eds., Medieval Philosophy: from St. Augustine to Nicholas of Cusa (New York: The Free Press, 1969), p. 310.

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Perhaps one can respond that this is now said to be in my understanding from nothing else besides that I understand what is said. Am I not likewise said to have certain false things, and even things existing in no way in themselves in mind when I would understand someone saying them, whatever he would say?55 Here, the mode of cogitation for a false concept—i.e., one failing to be instantiated in a subject—or one ‘existing in no way in itself’—i.e., an intrinsically incoherent one—is different from that of one known to belong to a subject. But if the concept ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’ does not fit into one of these categories, then the mode of cogitation proper to it with respect to God must be that of being understood, which is different still from the previous modes. But understanding only befits a thing established by proof. Hence, if God is understood in this way, then ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’ does not serve as an argumentum, since it does not secure a matter in doubt, but rather something already established. Put more plainly, even if this concept of God is coherent, an argument relying on it to establish God’s existence will be sound only if it is not probative, i.e., provided it proves nothing new. This is why Gaunilo says the reasoner following this argument will not move from having God in mind as id quo maius cogitari non potest at a preceding time to understanding him to exist at a later time.56 But where Gaunilo insists the mode of being of the cogitatum ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’ must be given beforehand, thereby blocking the temporal process of moving from the premises to the conclusion of the argument, Anselm insists on the partiality of his description to safeguard this movement. We have already seen Anselm himself later qualifies his famous description of God in P15. We can now also see that the incompleteness of the concept is vital to ensuring its accessibility to the reader meditating along with the text. But if you say that what is not understood completely is not understood and is not in the intellect, say that one who cannot look into the purest

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pi 1–2 (aoo, i.125.13–17): ‘Respondere forsan potest, quod hoc iam esse dicitur in intellectu meo, non ob aliud, nisi quia id quod dicitur intelligo. Nonne et quaecunque falsa, ac nullo prorsus modo in seipsis existentia, in intellectu habere similiter dici possem cum ea, dicente aliquot, quaecumque ille diceret, ego intelligerem?’ pi 2 (aoo, i.126.1–3): ‘Sed si hoc est: primo quidem non hic erit aliud, idemque tempore praecedens, habere rem in intellectu; et aliud, idemque tempore sequens, intelligere rem esse’.

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light of the sun does not see the light of day, which is nothing besides the light of the sun.57 For Anselm, the meditator certainly has this concept ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’ in mind, even though neither the attributes nor the mode of being of what it signifies thereby need be immediately clear. Just as the light of the sun is visible, albeit not directly, so too God, than whom a greater cannot be thought, is intelligible, even if a complete understanding of the divinity escapes us.

6

Conclusion

Anselm, then, tells us that he is searching for one notion, in contrast to the many of M, from which the many things believed of God could be derived. Thus, when Anselm prays ‘Therefore, Lord, who grants intellectus to fides, grant that I may understand that you are, as we believe, and that you are what we believe’,58 he is certainly seeking that his faith be deepened by understanding; but his asking for this is simultaneously, and even primarily, his asking God to unravel the core sense (intellectus) of something making secure ( faciens fidem), i.e. the notion ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’. For this reason, P as a whole is a meditation on the substance of something worthy of belief (ratio fidei). The notion ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’ itself serves as a medium leading to a fuller notion of God, thereby securing the divine attributes understood through this ratio. It is a consequence of this that the work also exhibits the noetic satisfaction of one holding to this faith—faith seeking understanding in the sense commonly understood. Anselm is searching for a single notion or description that can lead to its ground; he is searching for a title or name of God that can bring him closer to seeing God as he truly is. This role is filled by the notion id quo maius cogitari non potest.59

57

58 59

R1 (aoo, i.132.5–7): ‘Quod si dicis non intelligi et non esse in intellectu, quod non penitus intelligitur; dic quia qui non potest intueri purissimam lucem solis, non videt lucem diei, quae non est nisi lux solis’. P2 (aoo, i.1013-4): ‘Ergo, Domine, qui das fidei intellectum, da mihi, ut (…) intelligam quia es, sicut credimus, et hoc es, quod credimus’. Thanks to Ian Logan for comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

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Bibliography Primary Sources Boethius, Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii Commentarii in librum Aristotelis Περὶ ἑρμηνείας. Pars posterior secundam editionem et indices continens, Carolus Meiser, ed. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1880). [bdig] Boethius, Commentaria In Porphyrium a se translatum in pl 64, 71–158. [bcp] Boethius, De Differentiis Topicis in pl 64, 1173–1216. [bdt] Boethius, In Categorias Aristotelis libri quatuor in pl 64, 159–294. [bc] Boethius, In Librum Aristotelis De Interpretatione Libri Duo. Editio Prima, Seu Minora Commentaria in pl 64, 293–392. [bdil] Boethius, In Topica Ciceronis Commentariorum Libri Sex in pl 64, 1039–1174. [btc] Boethius, On Aristotle On Interpretation 1–3, Andrew Smith, trans. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010). Bonaventure, Quaestiones Disputatae de Mysterio Trinitatis in Opera Omnia, tom. v. (Quaracchi, 1891), pp. 45–115. Cicero, Topica, Tobias Reinhardt, ed. and trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Eadmer of Canterbury, Vita Sancti Anselmi, Richard William Southern, ed., The Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). Lacombe, G., et al., eds., Aristoteles Latinus: Codices: Pars Prior (Rome: La Libreria dello Stato, 1939). Priscian of Caesarea, Opera, August Krehl, ed. (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1819–1820). S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961); reprinted in two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968). Scotus, John Duns, A Treatise on God as First Principle, Allan B. Wolter, trans. (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1966). Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars (Ottawa: Studii Generalis op, 1941).

Secondary Sources Abelson, Paul, The Seven Liberal Arts: A Study in Mediaeval Culture (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University Press, 1906). Archambault, Jacob, ‘Aquinas, the A Priori/A Posteriori Distinction, and the Kantian Dependency Thesis’, Religious Studies, 50 (2014), pp. 175–192. Barth, Karl, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Anselm’s Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of his Theological Scheme, Ian Robertson, trans. (London: scm Press, 1960). Beach, Alison I., and Isabelle Cochelin, eds., The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Becker, Gustav, Catalogi Bibliothecarum Antiqui (Bonn: Max Cohen et filium, 1885).

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Bencivenga, Ermanno, Logic and Other Nonsense: The Case of Anselm and His God (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). Bosman, Bianca, ‘The Roots of the Notion of Containment in Theories of Consequence’, Vivarium, 56 (2018), pp. 63–72. Colish, Marcia L., The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, Volume 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1990). Gasper, Giles E.M., Anselm of Canterbury and his Theological Inheritance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). Gilson, Étienne, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York: Scribner, 1951). Green-Pedersen, Niels J., The Tradition of the Topics in the Middle Ages: Commentaries on Aristotle’s and Boethius’ ‘Topics’ (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 1984). Henry, Desmond Paul, Commentary on De Grammatico: The Historical-Logical Dimensions of a Dialogue of St. Anselm’s (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1974). Hine, Harry Morrison, ‘The Manuscript Tradition of Seneca’s Natural Questions: Some Manuscripts Related to Z’, Prometheus, 5 (1979), pp. 63–72. Hine, Harry Morrison, ‘The Manuscript Tradition of Seneca’s Natural Questions: Addenda’, The Classical Quarterly, 42 (1992), pp. 558–562. Holopainen, Toivo, ‘Anselm’s Argumentum and the Early Medieval Theory of Argument’, Vivarium, 45 (2007), pp. 1–29. Klima, Gyula, ‘Ancilla Theologiae vs. Domina Philosophorum: Thomas Aquinas, Latin Averroism, and the Autonomy of Philosophy’ in J. Aertsen and A. Speer, eds., What is Philosophy in the Middle Ages? Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1998), pp. 393–402. Klima, Gyula, ‘The Medieval Problem of Universals’ in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022 Edition), URL = ⟨ http://plato.stanford​ .edu/archives/spr2022/entries/universals‑medieval/ ⟩. Leff, Michael C., ‘Boethius and the History of Medieval Rhetoric’, Central States Speech Journal, 25 (1974), pp. 135–141. Nelis, Suzanne J., ‘What Lanfranc Taught, What Anselm Learned’, Haskins Society Journal, 2 (1990), pp. 75–82. Southern, Richard William, ‘Lanfranc of Bec and Berengar of Tours’ in Richard William Hunt et al, eds., Studies in medieval history presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948), pp. 27–48. Southern, Richard William, Saint Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963). Sweeney, Eileen C., ‘Anselm’s ‘Proslogion’: The Desire for the Word’, The Saint Anselm Journal, 1 (2003), pp. 17–31. Sweeney, Eileen C., Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012). Wippel, John. F., and Allan B. Wolter, eds., Medieval Philosophy: from St. Augustine to Nicholas of Cusa (New York: The Free Press, 1969).

chapter 5

Anselm’s Faith as Orientation, Criterion and Promotion of Philosophical Inquiry Roberto Di Ceglie

1

Introduction

In this chapter, I focus on the theological origins of the argument for the existence of God that Anselm developed in chapters 2–4 of the Proslogion (P). By ‘theological origins’ I mean that the unum argumentum (henceforth ua1) was put forward in support of the truth (or at least of the internal consistency) of the Christian faith, whether the argument was intended to convince unbelievers or not. My aim is to demonstrate that the theological origins under consideration, instead of preventing the ua from being an authentically philosophical enterprise, as is often believed, lay the best possible conditions to develop such an enterprise.2 To this end, I first explore various interpretations of the ua offered by scholars of Anselm. Some of them think that the ua is mainly a theological argument whereas others say that it is mainly philosophical. I then argue that faith is orientation and criterion for philosophy, which implies that the ua is to be understood by making reference to its theological inspiration. I will conclude that, contrary to common assumptions, the belief, which is held by faith, that faith is orientation and criterion of philosophy promoted the latter to be as autonomous as possible from any external authority—faith included. Obviously enough, this means that the ua can be seen as an eminently philosophical argument. Before proceeding, let me make a couple of clarifications. First, the fact that I focus on the ua does not mean that the outcome of my argument does not apply to Anselm’s natural theology taken as a whole. Since there is continuity between the Monologion (M) and P (see below), my investigation pertains to both the ua and to the arguments for the existence of God that Anselm

1 I will employ this expression in place of that, which is more widely used, of ‘ontological argument’. Unlike the latter, the former is used by Anselm; furthermore, it avoids the risk of projecting on his thought views formulated in modern age. See below. 2 By ‘philosophical’, as opposed to ‘theological’, I mean any intellectual activity that goes ‘where reason leads’. For more on this, see below.

© Roberto Di Ceglie, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_007

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developed in M. However, my main focus is on the ua since the ua emphasizes the relationship between faith and reason, which allows me to develop my thesis that faith is orientation, criterion and promotion of philosophy. Second, I employ ‘reason’ bearing in mind the different meaning Anselm gives to ‘reason’ (ratio) and ‘understanding’ (intellectus). For Anselm, the former gives rise to chains of arguments aimed at achieving ‘necessary reasons’, and by no means appeals to the authority of Scripture. It is the sola ratio by which Anselm develops the arguments of M. The latter, instead, makes reference to the Scripture, by which means it gives rise to the ua (God is ‘something than which nothing greater can be thought’), and is employed with the aim of achieving intimacy with God and others. It is the intellectus by which Anselm develops the unum argumentum in P. With this distinction in mind, I will show that the philosophical activity Anselm develops is, on the one hand, ‘understanding’ because of its theological inspiration and, on the other hand, ‘reason’, because of its autonomy from any external authority—faith included.

2

Interpretations of the ua

Scholars of Anselm have often taken the ua as either a theological or a philosophical enterprise. It is in this context that, starting especially with the socalled ‘Anselm-Renaissance’ of the 20th and 21st centuries, many attempts to assess the ua have been put forward.3 Let us look first at the attempts to see the ua as a theological argument (aimed at supporting the contents of faith), and not a philosophical one (aimed at proving that God exists to both believers and unbelievers). K. Barth is the most famous representative of this view. For him, Anselm based the ua on an article of faith, i.e., the revealed name of God, rather than a generic human concept: The knowledge which the proof seeks to expound and impart is the knowledge that is peculiar to faith, knowledge of what is believed from what is

3 A detailed but not verbose presentation is offered by G. Ortlund, Anselm’s Pursuit of Joy: A Commentary on the Proslogion (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press 2020), pp. 56ff. The author offers a convincing interpretation of the existing literature on the Proslogion, arguing that the overwhelming weight of such a literature has still been disproportionately focused on chapters 2–4. He offers a survey of works published on the Proslogion since 1950 and shows that they ‘uncovered more works on chapters 2–4 than the rest of the book roughly by a ratio of roughly 25 to 1’ (p. 5).

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believed. It is—and this is why it has to be sought in prayer—a knowledge that must be bestowed on man.4 In the footsteps of Barth, many other scholars have looked at the ua, and more generally at P, as a theological work. A. Stolz offered an influential interpretation of the whole of P as a work of mystical theology. For him, the term ‘faith seeking understanding’ stands for an attempt to ‘attain a vision of God through an understanding of what the faith says about God’. Accordingly, he goes so far as to claim that ‘nothing is more absurd than to see a philosopher in the author of the Proslogion’.5 In truth, the expression employed by Anselm—faith seeking understanding—would seem to indicate that his reflection is located within a predominantly theological context. This would be confirmed by the fact that, at the beginning of P, Anselm employs three times the word ‘credimus’, which, unlike its English translation (‘we believe’), is traditionally used in the case of faith, as opposed to ‘scimus’ or ‘cognoscimus’ (‘we know’).6 However, Anselm’s formula does not seem to unequivocally trace back to the Bible. Edward Wierenga points out that ‘the Biblical authors do not attribute to God the properties generally thought to be required to be the greatest possible being’.7 An unequivocal resemblance emerges instead from various

4 K. Barth, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Anselm’s Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of his Theological Scheme, Ian Robertson, trans. (London: scm Press, 1960), p. 102. Based on this theological view of the ua, Barth rejects the widespread view according to which the ua is an ‘ontological’ argument. He therefore contends that Anselm’s argument ‘is in a different book altogether from the well-known teaching of Descartes and Leibniz’, which is why it is not ‘affected by what Kant put forward against these doctrines’ (p. 171). More recently, J.L. Marion has re-proposed this view, emphasizing the distance between Anselm and the Kantian definition of the ‘ontological argument’. (See Jean-Luc Marion, ‘Is the Ontological Argument Ontological? The Argument According to Anselm and Its Metaphysical Interpretation According to Kant’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 30 (1992), pp. 201–218, p. 203). 5 A. Stolz, ‘Anselm’s Theology in the Proslogion’ in John Hick and Arthur C. McGill, eds., The Many-Faced Argument. Recent Studies on the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God (London–Melbourne: MacMillan, 1968), pp. 185f. and 188. 6 This is the whole passage with which P2 starts: ‘Therefore, O Lord, You who give understanding to faith, grant me to understand—to the degree You know to be advantageous—that You exist, as we believe, and that You are what we believe [You to be]. Indeed, we believe You to be something than which nothing greater can be thought (aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit)’ (aoo, i.101.3–5). 7 Edward Wierenga, ‘Augustinian Perfect Being Theology and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 69 (2011), pp. 139–151, p. 146.

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texts by Augustine,8 Boethius,9 and Seneca, who in his Naturales Quaestiones answers the question ‘quid est deus?’ by making use of practically the same words employed by Anselm: ‘magnitudo (…) qua nihil maius cogitari potest’.10 Furthermore, Anselm employs in some texts the word ‘credimus’ while referring to what we can rationally maintain about the divine substance.11 Various reasons, in conclusion, seem to refute Barth’s reading. It is not surprising that he has difficulties justifying how Anselm addresses equally both believers and non-believers.12 It is in fact undeniable that Anselm’s argument is of interest not only to believers but also to unbelievers. It is actually his whole work that, as E. Sweeney says, in Western thought, appears to be the prototype for the model of pure, neutral rationality. The audacity of Anselm’s willingness to submit not just the existence of God but the Incarnation, Virgin birth, and filioque controversy to the

8 9 10

11

12

Among the various texts that may be cited, see Augustine, De doctrina christiana, i, 7, and Confessiones, vii, 4, 6. See Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae, bk. 3, pr. 9. Seneca, Naturales quaestiones, i, preface, 13. R. Southern notes that a copy of this work was in the library of the monastery of Bec in the twelfth century. Consequently, he suggests that this copy might have been there in Anselm’s time also (see Richard William Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 129). In his Responsio (R), for example, Anselm writes that ‘we believe (credimus) about the Divine Substance whatever can in every respect be thought of as better [for something] to be than not to be’ (R10; aoo, i.139.3–4). ‘It can and must be asked, on the basis of his [Anselm’s] presupposition: is he not deceiving himself when he thinks that his ‘proofs’ could ever be understood by the unbelievers, by those who quaerunt, quia non credunt, and when he thinks that not only is theological discussion possible with them, but that it should succeed—the question of revelation and of faith always left open—in convincing them of the reasonableness of the Credo? What kind of unbelievers could he have had in mind who allow themselves to be transported in this way nolens volens into the realm of theology?’ (Barth, Fides Quaerens Intellectum, p. 69). To do justice to Barth’s reading, his proposal should probably be located in his more general reflection. Ortlund opportunely cites Barth’s preface to the second edition of his work on Anselm: ‘My interest in Anselm was never a side-issue for me (…) In this book on Anselm I am working with a vital key, if not the key, to an understanding of that whole process of thought that has impressed me more and more in my Church Dogmatics as the only one proper to theology’. Ortlund concludes that ‘perhaps because of the significance of Anselm in Barth’s own theological development, Barth’s study on Anselm is at times more illuminating for explicating Barth’s thought in dialogue with Anselm than for explicating Anselm himself’. (Gavin Ortlund, Ascending Toward the Beatific Vision: Heaven as the Climax of Anselm’s Proslogion, PhD Dissertation, Fuller Theological Seminary 2016, p. 26).

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bar of reason, seeking necessary and indubitable conclusions is unparalleled.13 In antithesis to Stolz’s view mentioned above, Sweeney goes so far as to say that Anselm is ‘the medieval author who comes closest to the definition of philosopher in modern terms’.14 This view somewhat resembles the one famously maintained by Étienne Gilson, according to whom Anselm wanted to prove all of the truths of faith on rational grounds, which reveals that ‘Anselm’s confidence in reason’s power of interpretation is unlimited’.15 At the same time, however, Gilson considered P—as well as the remainder of Anselm’s work—as a fideistic work, since ‘this inquiry, as purely rational as it may be, forbids itself any object other than that of faith and agrees with it entirely’.16 Gilson’s interpretation seemed influenced by the distinction between philosophy and theology that Aquinas would define more than a century after Anselm, more precisely, the distinction between those truths of faith such as God’s existence, which can also be demonstrated, and the ones that can only be accepted by faith.17 Seen from this perspective, Anselm turns out to be a rationalist, because he does not consider the distinction at stake, and tries to provide proofs in support of every revealed truth. At the same time, he is also a fideist, because he argues within the boundaries of the revealed truths and only with the aim of agreeing with them.18 M.J. Charlesworth seems to summarize this double interpretation when he claims that 13 14

15 16

17 18

Eileen. C. Sweeney, Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), p. 2. Sweeney, Desire for the Word, p. 2. Not surprisingly, scholars such as Alvin Plantinga, Charles Hartshorne, and Norman Malcolm, to mention only those who have probably offered the most influential philosophical readings of the ua, have focused on it from a merely rational viewpoint. Étienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 129. Étienne Gilson, ‘Sens et nature de l’argument de Saint Anselme’, Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age, 9 (1934), p. 49, cit. in Gregory B. Sadler, ‘Saint Anselm’s Fides Quaerens Intellectum as a Model for Christian Philosophy’, The Saint Anselm Journal, 4 (2006), pp. 32–58, p. 53. This is argued by Sadler, ‘Saint Anselm’s Fides Quaerens Intellectum’, p. 55, and accepted by Sweeney, Desire for the Word, p. 5. In this connection, Hans Urs von Balthasar maintains that ‘the question whether Anselm is a philosopher or a theologian is (…) quite superfluous and fundamentally misconceived: the anti-pagan polemic of the Fathers is no longer relevant nor is the separation of disciplines which began in the period of high scholasticism yet acute’ (Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Styles (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1984), p. 213).

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if we stress the one side of his thought we can easily make Anselm into a rationalist for whom not only the ‘preambles’ or presuppositions of faith are rationally demonstrable, but also the mysteries of faith themselves. On the other hand, if we stress the other side of Anselm’s thought we can easily make him into a quasi-fideist, maintaining that nothing can be known about God save on the basis of faith.19 This, so Charlesworth maintains, is due to the fact that there are ‘two sides of Anselm’s thought’, which Charlesworth ascribes to M1, and P1, respectively. According to him, the former emphasizes the importance of the ‘sola ratio’, whereas the latter is focused on the ‘fides quaerens intellectum’, and this— so he says—is an unresolved contradiction in Anselm’s thought.20 If Charlesworth’s argument is correct, this inconsistency, which I may call the ‘problem of Anselm’, to use Sweeney’s words,21 fully explains why Anselm’s interpreters have adopted antithetical views of his epistemology. As a consequence, M may be seen as a solitary work of reason (sola ratione), whereas P may be considered a conversation with oneself, God, and the reader. The former would not rely on any authority, whereas the latter would look like a prayer and would include biblical references.22 However, the idea that there is inconsistency between the two works in question is not convincing, as Sweeney shows in three steps. First, Anselm himself sees the two works as similar to each other. Second, though the figure of the ‘fool’ employed in P, who says that God does not exist, is rooted in the Scriptures, ‘the role Anselm constructs for the fool is virtually identical to the figure of someone ignorant or disbelieving created in the Monologion’. Third, P’s objective is ‘to prove that God exists, even, just as in the Monologion, to one unwilling to believe it’.23 After all, Anselm wrote P only because M appeared to him—not without some irritation—as ‘composed of a chain of many arguments’.24 In the case of both works, therefore, Anselm’s aim was to explore what

19 20 21 22

23 24

Maxwell John Charlesworth, ‘Introduction’, in St. Anselm’s Proslogion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1979), pp. 36f. Charlesworth, ‘Introduction’, p. 34. See Sweeney, Desire for the Word, p. 1. In this connection, Stolz emphasized the prayerful genre and tone of the Proslogion: ‘The peculiar literary form of the Proslogion suggests this point. Anselm theologizes in prayer’ (Stolz, ‘Anselm’s Theology’, p. 184). Sweeney, Desire for the Word, pp. 113f. ‘Multorum concatenatione contextum argumentorum’ (PProemium; aoo, i.93.5). This led Anselm to formulate the unum argumentum, which, since it is constituted by very few

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he calls ‘ratio fidei’, which S. Visser and T. Williams plausibly see as ‘the intrinsically rational character of Christian doctrines in virtue of which they form a coherent and rationally defensible system’.25 One more reason for dismissing the idea that there is inconsistency between the two works in question is that the above-mentioned ‘problem of Anselm’ can also emerge if we consider only P. This is testified by the fact that believers have used this work for devotional purposes and at the same time—joined in this by unbelievers—have used it to investigate whether and how God’s existence can be proven.26 P alone, therefore, invites reflection on how to reconcile the role of faith, which the act of understanding presupposes, with that of understanding, which Anselm must have employed in support of faith and at the same time— provided that he formulates the unum argumentum for both believers and unbelievers—autonomously from faith. As David Hogg says, ‘belief is the indispensable prerequisite for knowing God. This, it may be argued, is circular reasoning indeed! But, for Augustine and Anselm, how could it be otherwise? If we want to prove the existence of that than which nothing greater can be conceived, we could only do so in so far as that being gave us insight’.27 Hogg offers a reflection, which I believe may lead to possible solutions. While considering numerous criticisms against Anselm’s thought, he asks himself ‘to what degree those making such claims have tried to enter Anselm’s context and ask their questions in the light of an agenda that stretches over a lifetime’.28 He refers to ‘an experience of the divine’, which ‘is what Anselm seeks so eagerly in the Monologion and so diligently in the Proslogion’.29 In this connection, although he focuses only on P, Ortlund claims that The divine formula by which Anselm proves God’s existence (Proslogion 2–4) is that same formula by which he ascends all the way up through his doctrine of God as the summum bonum of the human soul (Proslogion

25 26 27 28 29

words, has ensured the success of the Proslogion over the centuries. (See David S. Hogg, Anselm of Canterbury: The Beauty of Theology (Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate, 2004), p. 89). Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams, Anselm (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 14. See Ortlund, Anselm’s Pursuit of Joy, p. 1. Hogg, Anselm of Canterbury, p. 95. Various authors such as W. Rowe and R. Southern have argued that the ua is ‘question-begging’. See above, footnote 4. Hogg, Anselm of Canterbury, p. 1. Hogg, Anselm of Canterbury, p. 6.

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5–23) and then into his anticipation of the heavenly beatific vision (Proslogion 24–26).30 In other words, the ua reveals a strict connection between the rational investigation, which may also involve unbelievers, and the promotion of a spiritual experience in accordance with faith. For Lydia Schumacher, the ua ‘is designed to help those with faith in God find God in all things’, and consequently ‘reconcile faith in God with reason by allowing faith to shape their outlook on whatever they happen to be thinking about’.31 I agree that for Anselm, showing the intrinsically rational character of the Christian doctrine is first and foremost designed to help believers know and live in a way that is consistent with their faith. This, however, does not solve the circular problem that I have mentioned above while referring to Hogg. The fact that a believer intends to reconcile faith with reason by finding God in all things does not do justice to the philosophical character of Anselm’s natural theology, which Anselm himself claims is designed to convince unbelievers.32 As Katherin Rogers says, Anselm employs ‘one and the same argument’ to achieve two aims: ‘convert the unbeliever, and help the Christian attain intellectus’.33

3

Faith as Orientation for Philosophy

It is now time to show that a reconciliation between faith and the philosophical inquiry in Anselm’s natural theology can be achieved through a careful consideration of the meaning he ascribes to faith. I have already mentioned

30 31 32

33

Ortlund, Anselm’s Pursuit of Joy, p. 230. Lydia Schumacher, ‘The lost legacy of Anselm’s argument. Re-thinking the purpose of proofs for the existence of God’, Modern Theology, 27 (2011), pp. 87–101, pp. 96 and 94. For Williams, ‘although the theistic proofs are borne of an active love of God seeking a deeper knowledge of the beloved, the proofs themselves are intended to be convincing even to unbelievers’ (Thomas Williams, ‘Saint Anselm’ in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), url = ⟨ https://plato.stanford​ .edu/archives/spr2016/entries/anselm/⟩.). Katherin A. Rogers, ‘Can Christianity be proven? St. Anselm of Canterbury on Faith and Reason’, Anselm Studies, 2 (1988), pp. 459–479, p. 465. Let me mention another reading of the ua, according to which the ua is addressed ‘to Jewish polemicists who had argued that the Christian conception of God as an instantiated unity was irrational’. (Nancy Kendrick, ‘The non-Christian influence on Anselm’s Proslogion argument’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 69 (2011), pp. 73–89, p. 73 ‘Abstract’).

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Hogg, who stated that the context in which Anselm lived and worked should be explored more attentively. More precisely, in his words ‘the literary context in which Anselm was writing was so thoroughly infused with a particular model of reality and a way of interpreting sensible data in the light of revealed truth that we cannot afford to neglect it’.34 While stressing the significance of faith in that context, Ian Logan claims that ‘Anselm was most definitely a member of a community of ideas, and when he could not understand what Catholic belief teaches about God he bowed his head in reverence, unlike those he called the “heretics of dialectic”.’35 Obviously enough, faith heavily shaped Anselm’s life and reflection, which is why it seems appropriate to wonder what meaning faith had for him. This may help to see how exactly, in his thought, it relates to philosophy. Furthermore, focusing on the meaning of faith seems especially necessary if we consider that the readings of Anselm mentioned in the last section seem to have implicitly adopted a specific meaning of faith, which is the propositional content of divine revelation and the corresponding propositional belief. Faith, however, means not only that which one believes, which is traditionally referred to as fides quae; it also means the way in which one believes, which has traditionally been called fides qua. This distinction traces back to Augustine, and the same can be said of the tripartition on the basis of which faith means ‘believing in a God’ (credere Deum), ‘believing God’ (credere Deo), and ‘believing in God’ (credere in Deum). The first of these three dimensions of faith takes God as an object of knowledge (credere Deum), thus defining the intellectual character of faith as an act of the intellect with its noetic contents ( fides quae, which—as is known—must be distinguished from fides qua, the act of faith that is meant by the two other aspects). The second aspect (credere Deo) allows us to see that the act of faith depends on God, in the sense that there is no faith without divine revelation. The third aspect (credere in Deum) allows us to see that the object in question is also the ultimate goal—it is the good that should be looked for and not a mere truth or a person like any other. To put it another way, the first two aspects concern the propositional content of faith (the material object: credere Deum) and the way in which it is proposed to the believer (the formal object: credere Deo). The third aspect determines the proper task of the will, which, since it aims at the highest good, leads the intellect to give assent to the revealed truth.

34 35

Hogg, Anselm of Canterbury, p. 2. Ian Logan, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion: The History of Anselm’s Argument and its Significance Today (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009; London: Routledge, 2016), p. 3.

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Faith, therefore, cannot be taken only as mere propositional content and corresponding belief. It is also adhesion of the human will to God, which is due to the love for him that God himself grants to believers. Anselm refers to the adhesion in question as ‘living faith’ (viva fides), whereas the mere belief related to propositional content is ‘dead faith’ (mortua fides): Living faith can quite suitably be said to believe in what ought to be believed in, whereas dead faith [can be said] merely to believe what ought to be believed.36 If faith is also taken as adhesion to God and not only as propositional content, then two significant consequences follow. First, Anselm’s natural theology can be caused and accompanied by faith and at the same time seen as a philosophical enterprise—as such it can be directed to unbelievers as well. In fact, unlike the propositional content of divine revelation, the act of the will that aims at achieving communion with God cannot replace the philosophical investigation. Of course, this does not mean that the propositional content of faith is no longer valid. Rather, unlike faith as adhesion to God, it does not take part in the development of rational arguments. In this connection, Logan says that ‘for Anselm, authority is not the source of argument and argumentation, it is extrinsic to dialectic’.37 Second, if Anselm’s philosophical theology is accompanied by faith, then it is obviously a theological work. After all, it does not seem possible to say that faith, which for a believer like Anselm is expected to be a crucial experience that shapes his whole life, does not contribute to his intellectual experience. Anselm claims that, unlike the intellectual content of faith, the ‘living faith’ promotes commitment and action: Therefore, with whatever degree of certainty so important a matter is believed, [this] faith will be useless and as something dead unless it is made alive and strong by love. Indeed, this faith, which its corresponding love accompanies, is not at all idle—provided the opportunity to use [it] arises. Rather, [this faith] exercises itself in a great number of works— something which it could not do in the absence of love. [These claims] can be proved by the solitary fact that what loves Supreme Justice can neither despise anything just nor admit of anything unjust.38 36 37 38

‘Satis itaque convenienter dici potest viva fides credere in id in quod credi debet, mortua vero fides credere tantum id quod credi debet’ (M78; aoo, i.85.7–9). Logan, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion, p. 21. ‘Quapropter, quantacumque certitudine credatur tanta res: inutilis erit fides et quasi mor-

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This view seems to be confirmed by various authors. For Sweeney, by faith does not mean the presupposition of all or even some of the basic principles of Christian faith articulated in the creed (…) [H]e presupposes faith in the sense that faith entails an intense desire to know about the subjects he explores by reason.39 Ortlund argues that Anselm’s attempt to reason sola ratione makes appeal to fides qua and not to fides quae: In a medieval context where florilegia were among the most common theological documents—and the citation of theological authorities (like Augustine and Scripture) was considered standard theological argumentation—sola ratione meant reason apart from theological authority, not reason apart from faith. What it excluded was not the approach of fides qua (the faith by which we believe) but an appeal to fides quae (the faith which is believed).40 Faith taken as adhesion to God due to love for God should always accompany the believer in whatever she does—including the various phases of intellectual activity. From this viewpoint, Anselm, as Williams points out, ‘is not hoping to replace faith with understanding. Faith for Anselm is more a volitional state than an epistemic state: it is love for God and a drive to act as God wills’.41 The adhesion of the will to God and its related commitment to live in accordance with the divine revelation causes the intention to confirm rationally what one already believes by faith.42 This intention is what I call orientation of

39

40 41 42

tuum aliquid, nisi dilectione valeat et vivat. Etenim nullatenus fidem illam quam competens comitatur dilectio, si se opportunitas conferat operandi, otiosam esse sed magna se quadam operum exercere frequentia, quod sine dilectione facere non posset, vel hoc solo probari potest, quia quod summam iustitiam diligit, nihil iustum contemnere, nihil valet iniustum admittere’ (M78; aoo, i.199.16–22). Sweeney, Desire for the Word, p. 122. Sweeney adds: ‘“believing in (credere in)” the supreme being, Anselm explains, includes both the notion of striving for and believing certain things. “Believing in” captures this sense of movement toward God better than “directing belief to (credere ad) God”, Anselm argues. The latter is too static and indirect while the former gives a sense of motion and also the intimacy envisioned as the goal, which is to go in to God rather than simply believe things about God from a distance’ (p. 145). Ortlund, Anselm’s Pursuit of Joy, pp. 14f. Williams, ‘Saint Anselm’. At the beginning of Cur Deus Homo (cdh), Anselm describes the aim of his intellectual

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Anselm’s rational enterprise. It constitutes the point of departure of Anselm’s reflection, which he cultivates by relying on God’s help: Teach me to seek You, and reveal Yourself to me as I seek; for unless You teach [me] I cannot seek You, and unless You reveal Yourself I cannot find You. Let me seek You in desiring You; let me desire You in seeking You. Let me find [You] in loving [You]; let me love [You] in finding [You].43 Also, this commitment to God makes one train one’s emotions and promote one’s spiritual and intellectual growth. Marilyn McCord Adams maintains that the intellectual powers with which we have been endowed to pursue our telos have been damaged. In any event, she says, ‘they need to be developed through extensive education’. She notes that, in Anselm’s time, ‘the monastery is a school of the Lord’s service, enlisting recruits under the banner of obedience, training the will up to virtues’. From this follows that the monks train their emotions, as shown in Anselm’s Prayers and Meditations, and improve the techniques of intellectual inquiry, as testified by Anselm’s quartet of dialogues—De Grammatico, De Veritate, De Libertate Arbitrii, and De Casu Diaboli.44 Needless to say, this commitment to God does not automatically follow from the intellectual adhesion to the Christian belief. Anselm addresses first and foremost himself, in the sense that the ua ‘is no theoretical exercise for Anselm; it is intensely personal’.45 In the next section, I intend to show that, taken as adhesion of the will to God and his revelation, faith is not only orientation to Anselm’s rational research. It is also criterion for his intellectual activity. This means that faith does not stop playing a role once the philosophical investigation has attained its end. This would happen if faith were taken as propositional belief—from this viewpoint, in fact, faith should be replaced with philosophy. Faith as adhesion of the will,

43

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activity as follows: ‘To nourish those who, having hearts already cleansed by faith, delight in the rational basis of our faith—a rational basis for which we ought to hunger once [we have] the certainty of faith’ (cdh Commendation of this work to Pope Urban ii; aoo, ii.39.4–6). ‘Doce me quaerere te, et ostende te quaerenti; quia nec quaerere te possum nisi tu doceas, nec invenire nisi te ostendas. Quaeram te desiderando, desiderem quaerendo. Inveniam amando, amem inveniendo’ (P1; aoo, i.100.8–11). Marilyn McCord Adams, ‘Anselm on faith and reason’ in Brian Davies and Brian Leftow, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Anselm (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 32–60, p. 35. Richard Campbell, Rethinking Anselm’s Arguments: A Vindication of His Proof of the Existence of God (Leiden: Brill, 2018), p. 405.

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instead, orients the rational enterprise and, once philosophical understanding has been achieved, it continues to operate as a criterion for the successful outcomes of this understanding. Before proceeding, however, an objection deserves consideration. I have argued so far that Anselm’s natural theology is conducted under the influence of faith taken as adhesion of the will to divine revelation, and autonomously from faith taken as propositional belief. Natural theology, therefore, has a theological origin and implies a philosophical strategy, which is also aimed at convincing unbelievers. One may object, however, that this seems to be true only in regard to M. P, instead, may be seen as including a Christian concept of God, as it has frequently been said. In this view, my argument that the strategy Anselm employs is a philosophical one should be rejected. I can provide some answers. First, the philosophical strategy of P is due to the fact that the argumentation conducted by Anselm does not include contents of faith. In other words, the revealed truths, believed by faith, are not employed to justify any statement that takes part in the line of reasoning that Anselm develops. In this connection, as Logan says, faith for Anselm is extrinsic to argumentation (see above). Second, not everyone believes that a philosophical strategy only starts from universally accepted beliefs. For McCord Adams, it is true that philosophers aim at proving religious theses by using sound arguments from premises acceptable by all. However, they also see ‘whether adherence to such theses can be rationally justified’.46 In other words, so the author seems to maintain, a philosophical strategy does not necessarily need to be grounded only on premises universally accepted. Brian Davies and Brian Leftow argue that, for Anselm, what mattered was thinking well about matters of importance. So, even when he is discussing items of Christian doctrine (as opposed to what are clearly ‘philosophical topics’), he aims to draw on the best he can provide in the way of right thinking. In other words, Anselm’s theology is very much that of a philosopher (taking ‘philosopher’ to mean ‘someone concerned to argue for conclusions in a cogent way’).47 True, the concept of philosophy that has been established in modern age fosters the impression that the philosopher should only follow ‘where reason leads’. As Davies says, philosophers ‘encourage us to suppose that they have

46 47

Adams, ‘Anselm on faith and reason’, p. 32. Davies & Leftow, ‘Introduction’ in Davies & Leftow, Companion, pp. 1–4, p. 2.

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no serious beliefs to start with, especially religious ones’.48 This traces back to Descartes’ famous choice to start from a neutral view, i.e., to start any discussion anew from the beginning as if nothing were written before. On closer inspection, however, such a choice appears by no means to be neutral.49 In other words, just denying the existence of prejudices, if not appropriately demonstrated, is contradictory. Hans-Georg Gadamer has famously made this point by arguing that this would mean to be ‘prejudiced against prejudice’.50

4

Faith as Criterion of Philosophy

It is now time to show that, once faith is taken as adhesion of the will to divine revelation, it acts as a criterion of philosophy. This is implicit in what I have said in the previous section regarding the idea that faith is orientation of philosophy. For Anselm, communion with God directs the intellectual research, as demonstrated by the fact that God is expected to answer the prayer of believers by showing them where and how to seek to find him.51 Thus the faithful are persuaded that reason, if it works in accordance with its nature, i.e. God’s plan, will not lead them to deny what they already believe by faith. In Anselm’s time, as Gillian Evans points out, the ultimate objective of searching by reason alone was not ‘to find in reasoning an alternative to the study of the Scripture; it was to bring the enquirer to the realization that when he had done his reasoning he would find that he arrived where faith would also take him’.52 Anselm wanted to develop ‘necessary reasons’, but these reasons were not intended ‘to be independent of, but consistent with, authority’.53

48 49

50 51 52 53

Davies, ‘Anselm and the ontological argument’ in Davies & Leftow, Companion, pp. 157– 178, p. 157. On the contrary, it is due to an impressive host of arguments. See René Descartes, Discourse on Method in Discourse on Method and Meditations, E.S. Haldane & G.R.T. Ross, trans. (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2003), Part i, p. 5. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd edition, Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, eds. and trans. (London-New York: Continuum, 1989), p. 273. ‘Lord my God, teach my heart where and how to seek You, where and how to find You’ (P1; aoo, i.98.1–2). G.R. Evans, ‘Anselm’s life, works, and immediate influence’ in Davies & Leftow, Companion, pp. 5–31, p. 11. Logan, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion, p. 22. This author appropriately insists on the crucial role that the idea that human reason is imago Dei plays in Anselm’s reflection.

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Therefore, Anselm starts from the conviction that the necessary reasons he is looking for must be consistent with authority. Needless to say, this seems to imply that, in case of contradiction between that which is already believed by faith and the ‘necessary reasons’ in question, these reasons should be subjected to revision. In other words, the belief held by authority should work as a criterion for the outcomes of the rational activity. Someone may object that the rational arguments contradict or confirm the propositional content of faith, not the adhesion of the will to God. How, therefore, to maintain my thesis that the faith from which believers start their inquiry is the adhesion of the will and not, as now seems to emerge, the propositional content of divine revelation? To address this objection, it should be pointed out that the adhesion of the will would not be possible in the absence of intellectual contents. Those who love God and intend to put into practice his teaching obviously possess beliefs about him and his revelation. My thesis, therefore, is that the propositional content of divine revelation does not play any role in the rational investigation, not that it is absent. By contrast, the adhesion to God, the love for him, and the wish to confirm by reason what is already believed by faith always accompanies the intellectual research, of which it is orientation and criterion. Logan seems to confirm this view, especially the idea that faith is criterion for philosophy. In matters of faith, so Logan says, Anselm believes that authority provides ‘the rule against which results of the dialectic examination of the relation of subjects and predicates should be measured’. In other words, ‘confirmation is required from a greater authority before the outcome of his rational proof is to be accepted’.54 Logan refers to M1, where Anselm writes: if in this [investigation] I say something that a greater authority does not teach, I want it to be accepted in such way that even if it is a necessary consequence of reasons which will seem [good] to me, it is not thereby said to be absolutely necessary, but is said only to be able to appear necessary for the time being.55 Anselm, therefore, refers to a quasi or interim necessity, which remains ‘provisional until support is provided by a greater authority’.56 As Visser and Williams point out while citing Anselm’s De Concordia (dc), 54 55

56

Logan, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion, pp. 21f. ‘Si quid dixero quod maior non monstret auctoritas: sic volo accipi ut, quamvis ex rationibus quae mihi videbuntur, quasi necessarium concludatur, non ob hoc tamen omnino necessarium, sed tantum sic interim videri posse dicatur’ (M1; aoo.i.14.1–4). Logan, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion, p. 22.

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Anselm believes that ‘Holy Scripture contains the authority of every conclusion of reason’ and ‘gives aid to no falsehood’; consequently, he is confident that if his rational arguments go astray in some way, Scripture will provide the materials to correct them.57 A passage contained in Cur Deus Homo (cdh) may seem to contradict the thesis that Anselm sees faith as criterion for philosophy.58 Referring to someone who wants to deny that salvation occurs through Christ, Anselm asks himself: What answer ought to be given to someone who affirms of what must occur that it cannot occur—his reason being simply that he does not know how it occurs?59 On closer inspection, however, this passage does not seem to parallel the one contained in M, which regards the relationship between what the believer is expected to firmly believe and the outcomes of his or her rational investigation. In the passage that Logan cites from cdh, Anselm plausibly reproaches the person who ascribes impossibility to something deduced by means of necessary reasons (‘astruit esse impossibile quod necesse est esse’), namely, man’s salvation can occur through Christ. She claims with certainty that this cannot be true, though it is supported by necessary reasons. And this is obviously implausible, also because her attitude is due to the fact that she does not understand (‘nescit quomodo sit’) the necessary reasons in question, not to mention the fact that her thesis, with which she opposes such reasons, is that she ‘wants to claim’ (‘asserere velit’) that the salvation at stake cannot occur. This is different from the situation that I have considered so far. The believer whose rational conclusions contradict her religious stance considers them provisional, not impossible. Furthermore, she may fully understand the conclusions in question. In fact, she considers them provisional because they contradict her religious stance, and not because she does not understand them. Finally, her behaviour is due to her reliance on the authority of the Scripture, and not on her own will. From an epistemological point of view, especially in Anselm’s time, the former is a plausible reason, whereas the latter is not. I can therefore conclude that Anselm considers faith as a sort of orientation for philosophy, in the sense that the philosophical activity is expected to con57 58 59

Visser and Williams, Anselm, p. 17. The two passages they cite are from dciii.6. It is Logan who takes into account this passage in Reading Anselm’s Proslogion, p. 22. ‘Quid respondendum est illi, qui idcirco astruit esse impossibile quod necesse est esse, quia nescit, quomodo sit?’ (cdhi.25; aoo, ii.95.18–19).

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firm what the faithful already believe. From this follows that the outcomes of such activity, however necessary they may seem to be, are plausibly expected to be looked upon as provisional until their adherence to faith is confirmed. In addition to the historical context, let me note that this view belongs to the Christian tradition, as shown by Aquinas. Aquinas openly claims that any arguments contrasting with the truth of Christian revelation must be rejected, even if they seem—at least at first sight—to be rationally convincing. Unlike Anselm, he also argues that once such arguments have been rejected—because of their opposition to faith—reason must start anew from the beginning and from its own principles.60 Also, Aquinas shows a noteworthy trust in the power of reason to attain the truth. For him reason—in spite of the mistakes it might have made—is supposed to recommence its work. Worthy of notice is the fact that the trust in question does not seem to be due strictly to reason. It would seem to be based, instead, on two principles, which Aquinas openly formulates at the beginning of his Summa theologiae.61 According to one of them, ‘faith rests upon infallible truth’, which is obviously a truth of faith. According to the other, it is impossible to demonstrate what negates the truths of faith—this is proposed by Aquinas neither as a demonstration nor as an intuition. Thus, the trust in reason as it emerges from Aquinas’ work, is due to faith, which in this way constitutes a sort of promotion of research in all possible directions. This accounts for the conviction that faith seems to create the best possible conditions for intellectual activity.62 In this regard, Anselm may be seen as a thinker who has paved the way to such a view, as I intend to argue in the next section.

5

Faith as Promotion of Philosophy

For Anselm, as McCord Adams notes, all creatures are imperfect likeness of God, so that His glory can be (whether explicitly or implicitly) esteemed in all his works. Likewise, all creatures

60 61 62

See Aquinas, Super Boethium De Trinitate, q. 2, a. 3. See Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 1, a. 8. This is what I argue in Roberto Di Ceglie, ‘Faith, reason, and charity in Thomas Aquinas’s Thought’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 79 (2016), pp. 133–146. pp. 141 ff. See also Roberto Di Ceglie, Aquinas on Faith, Reason, and Charity (New York: Routledge, 2022), Chapter 7.

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are Gods’ handiwork, a studied appreciation of them, a (witting and unwitting) swelling of their Maker’s praise.63 If all creatures of God reveal his glory, this can (especially) be said of human beings, including their intellectual activity. This may explain why, as Sweeney notes, Anselm’s ‘faith in reason and in the power of words and arguments is seemingly boundless’.64 Furthermore, if this trust in reason, as I have said in the last section apropos of Aquinas, is grounded in faith, Anselm by no means perceives it as hubristic. Visser and Williams make it clear that Anselm’s unusually high estimate of the power of human reason ultimately derives not from his confidence in human beings, but from his confidence in God—from his conviction that God, who is supreme wisdom and exercises supreme reason in everything he does, has made human beings rational by nature.65 Being rational by nature, however, is not enough. As a Christian, Anselm believes that human nature, which is affected by sin, needs to be restored, which is only possible by having faith in God: O Lord, I acknowledge and give thanks that You created in me Your image so that I may remember, contemplate, and love You. But [this image] has been so effaced by the abrasion of transgressions, so hidden from sight by the dark billows of sins, that unless You renew and refashion it, it cannot do what it was created to do.66 Communion with God, therefore, puts us in the condition to employ our intellectual faculties to the best of our abilities. Anselm starts P by asking God to raise and straighten him, otherwise he can only look downwards: ‘O Lord, bent over [as I am] I can look only downwards; straighten me so that I can look upwards’.67 At the end of the work, instead, he invites his soul, which has com63 64 65 66

67

Adams, ‘Anselm on faith and reason’, p. 38. Sweeney, Desire for the Word, p. 1. Visser and Williams, Anselm, p. 17. ‘Fateor, domine, et gratias ago, quia creasti in me hanc imaginem tuam, ut tui memor te cogitem, te amem. Sed sic est abolita attritione vitiorum, sic est offuscata fumo peccatorum, ut non possit facere ad quod facta est, nisi tu renoves et reformes eam’ (P1; aoo, i.100.12–15). ‘Domine, incurvatus non possum nisi deorsum aspicere, erige me ut possim sursum intendere’ (P1; aoo, i.100.4–5).

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pleted the knowing process, to look upwards: ‘Now, my soul, arouse and elevate your whole understanding; ponder as best you can what kind of good this is and how great it is’.68 Anselm also describes how communion with God facilitates and promotes rational activity. He focuses on three aspects of faith that provide the best possible condition to avoid mistakes: humility, obedience, and spiritual discipline.69 Humility makes the faithful aware of their limits and prevents them from obstinately sticking to their views.70 Obedience helps them to adhere to the teaching of the Church and prevents them from moving away from it. Spiritual discipline leads them to ignore such goods as success and money. Instead, it leads them to search for the good in itself, which in turn causes them to reject any immediate interest that could spoil the search for truth—such as excessive confidence in one’s capabilities, disrespect for the opinions of others, rushing to conclusions, and so on. Thus, faith seems to put the believer in the best possible condition to conduct the intellectual activity. If this activity is due to the rational character of humans, which God has given to them, and is conducted in accordance with its own nature, i.e., God’s plan, then the powers of its arguments are boundless, as highlighted by Sweeney in the passage I cited above. This seems to be shown by Anselm’s persistent commitment to finding the ua: I often and eagerly directed my thinking to this [goal]. At times what I was in quest of seemed to me to be apprehensible; at times it completely eluded the acute gaze of my mind. At last, despairing, I wanted to desist, as though from pursuit of a thing which was not possible to be found. But just when I wanted completely to exclude from myself this thinking—lest by occupying my mind in vain, it would keep [me] from other [projects] in which I could make headway—just then it began more and more to force itself insistently upon me, unwilling and resisting [as I was].71

68 69 70

71

‘Excita nunc, anima mea, et erige totum intellectum tuum, et cogita quantum potes, quale et quantum sit illud bonum’ (P24; P1; aoo, i.117.25–26). Here I partly follow Visser and Williams, Anselm, pp. 20 f. This does not contradict the firm belief that the faithful are expected to hold even when contrary and ‘necessary reasons’, which I mentioned above, emerge. The views I refer here are the ones that, because of sin, we sometimes tend to mistake for God’s word, and that communion with God should help us avoid. Obedience, too, contributes to avoid this mistake. ‘Ad quod cum saepe studioseque cogitationem converterem, atque aliquando mihi videretur iam posse capi quod quaerebam, aliquando mentis aciem omnino fugeret: tandem desperans volui cessare velut ab inquisitione rei quam inveniri esset impossibile. Sed cum illam cogitationem, ne mentem meam frustra occupando ab allis in quibus proficere pos-

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Anselm employed his intellectual faculties in a new direction, though he did not think of himself as an innovator. The same can be said with regard to M. Lanfranc, to whom Anselm had submitted this work for approval, was not happy with the fact that in M the author did not appeal to the authority of the Scriptures. We may see Lanfranc’s view as revealing the idea that faith taken as propositional content must accompany any research. By contrast, Anselm replied that he did not need to make use of quotations from the Scriptures to be in line with the Christian doctrine.72 If faith is taken as adhesion of the will to God and his revelation, and not propositional belief, the presence of faith is not explicitly seen in the intellectual activity conducted by believers. Faith, therefore, leads Anselm to open new paths for research. Precisely because of his adherence to faith, ‘he is aware of the dangers of dialectic, but does not see these as inherent in dialectic’.73 Consequently, he does not fear to appear to resemble the pagan philosophers’ way of reasoning. As I have already said, the words employed to formulate the ua are the same used by Seneca in a work that Anselm possibly had access to. Also of great interest is the resemblance between, on the one hand, the way Anselm refutes the fool and, on the other, the way Aristotle had famously refuted, in Metaphysics iv, those who wanted to reject the principle of non-contradiction. Anselm says that the fool can only utter that which s/he cannot think.74 Both authors, therefore, reduce the counterpart to silence.75 As I have already said, in Anselm’s time this was a new approach to philosophical theology. Anselm made considerable efforts to open this new path for research, which led to misunderstandings—such as Lanfranc’s—as well as

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sem impediret, penitus a me vellem excludere: tunc magis ac magis nolenti et defendenti se coepit cum importunitate quadam ingerere’ (PProemium; aoo, i.93.10–16). As Visser and Williams say, ‘we do not have the text of Lanfranc’s assessment, but we do know that he took a dim view of Anselm’s avoidance of Scriptural authority. (…) Anselm’s reply to Lanfranc is very telling. He assured his former superior that the Monologion contained nothing that could not be found in Scripture or in Augustine. But he made no changes to the Monologion itself, and he never submitted another work for Lanfranc’s approval. He was unwavering in his conviction that it is legitimate for the Christian to explore the reason of faith without reliance on authority’. (Visser and Williams, Anselm, p. 17). Logan, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion, p. 20. ‘Indeed, no one who understands that which God is can think that God does not exist, even though he says these words’ (P4; aoo, i.103.20–104.1). In this connection, A.D. Smith points out that ‘Anselm did take himself to have provided a cogent proof of God’s existence’ (Arthur David Smith, Anselm’s Other Argument (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 11).

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violent attacks.76 However, Anselm’s ‘boundless’ faith in reason led him to make these efforts. He believed that our rational faculties, if employed in accordance with their nature, cannot contradict what—as believer—he mostly cared about, i.e., his religious faith. Consequently, he must have felt encouraged to employ reason in any possible direction. Needless to say, this is the best possible condition in which to conduct rational investigations. If one firmly believes—no matter whether he or she is right or not—that intellectual activity can only confirm what one loves and mostly cares about, then one is ready to develop one’s arguments wherever reason leads. Ironically enough, this has traditionally been considered the most typical characteristic of the philosophical activity. I can therefore conclude that the theological origins of his intellectual inquiry led Anselm to act as a real philosopher. As Sweeney points out, the goal of his research ‘is complete intimacy with God and others’, and at the same time ‘complete certainty and indubitability in his conclusions’.77

6

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have argued that incompatibility between faith and reason in Anselm’s natural theology—with consequent attempts by his interpreters to see one of them as prevailing over the other—emerges only to the extent that faith is taken as the propositional content of divine revelation and the corresponding propositional belief. Indeed, if proofs are sufficient for one to know, faith disappears. On the contrary, if proofs are not sufficient, faith is present whereas philosophical understanding is not. Instead, if faith is taken as the adhesion of will to God, which God himself grants to believers, then faith can coexist with philosophical activity, and act as orientation, criterion, and promotion of philosophical theology. Not only does this help to explain the meaning of Anselm’s expression ‘faith seeks understanding’ (it would not make sense to say that the propositional belief in the divine revelation seeks evidence in its own support. Once this evidence is found, in fact, such a belief will be replaced by knowledge.) It also shows

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I refer to Eadmer’s account that someone at Bec destroyed early drafts of the Proslogion (see Eadmer, Vita Anselmi, 1.19). Giles E.M. Gasper sees these events as caused by various reasons such as political opposition, intellectual divergence, and personal envy. See his ‘Envy, Jealousy and the Boundaries of Orthodoxy: Anselm of Canterbury and the Genesis of the Proslogion’, Viator, 41 (2010), pp. 45–68. Sweeney, Desire for the Word, p. 8.

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that, since the faithful believe that God himself granted them the adhesion in question, they should feel sure that rational outcomes cannot end up contradicting what as believers they mostly care about, i.e., divine revelation. As a consequence, they also feel encouraged to employ their reason in any possible direction. This is what Anselm does in both M, where he does not appeal to the authority of Scripture, and P, where he endeavours to find a new argument in support of God’s existence. In this way, it can be explained that, against what is often believed, it is precisely the theological origins of Anselm’s proofs for God’s existence that—especially in P—led Anselm to create the best possible condition to develop a rigorous and original philosophical inquiry.

Bibliography Primary Sources Anselm of Canterbury, Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Anselm of Canterbury, Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson, eds. (Minneapolis: The Arthur J. Banning Press, 2000). S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961); reprinted in two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968). Thomas Aquinas, Super Boethium De Trinitate, in Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici (de Aquino) Opera Omnia Iussu Leonis xiii Edita, t. L (Roma–Paris: Commissio Leonina-Éd. du Cerf, 1992). Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, in Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici (de Aquino) Opera Omnia Iussu Leonis xiii Edita, t. iv (Romae: Ex Typographia Polyglotta, 1888).

Secondary Sources Adams, Marilyn McCord, ‘Anselm on faith and reason’ in Davies and Leftow, Cambridge Companion to Anselm, pp. 32–60. Barth, Karl, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Anselm’s Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of his Theological Scheme, Ian Robertson, trans. (London: scm Press, 1960). Campbell, Richard, Rethinking Anselm’s Arguments: A Vindication of his Proof of the Existence of God (Leiden: Brill, 2018). Charlesworth, Maxwell John, St. Anselm’s Proslogion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979). Davies, Brian, and Brian Leftow, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Anselm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

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Davies, Brian, and Brian Leftow, ‘Introduction’, in Davies and Leftow, Cambridge Companion to Anselm, pp. 1–4. Davies, Brian, ‘Anselm and the ontological argument’, in Davies and Leftow, Cambridge Companion to Anselm, pp. 157–178. Descartes, René, Discourse on Method in Discourse on Method and Meditations, E.S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross, trans. (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2003). Di Ceglie, Roberto, ‘Faith, reason, and charity in Thomas Aquinas’s Thought’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 79 (2016), pp. 133–146 Di Ceglie, Roberto, Aquinas on Faith, Reason, and Charity (New York: Routledge, 2022). Evans, Gillian R., ‘Anselm’s life, works, and immediate influence’ in Davies and Leftow, Cambridge Companion to Anselm, pp. 5–31. Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method, 2nd edition, Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, eds. and trans. (London-New York: Continuum, 1989). Gasper, Giles E.M., ‘Envy, jealousy, and the boundaries of orthodoxy: Anselm of Canterbury and the genesis of the Proslogion’, Viator, 41.2 (2010), pp. 45–68. Gilson, Étienne, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (tr. New York: Random House, 1995). Hogg, David S., Anselm of Canterbury: The Beauty of Theology (Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate, 2004). Kendrick, Nancy, ‘The non-Christian influence on Anselm’s Proslogion argument’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 69 (2011), pp. 73–89. Logan, Ian, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion: the history of Anselm’s argument and its significance today (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009/London: Routledge, 2016). Marion, Jean-Luc, ‘Is the Ontological Argument Ontological? The Argument According to Anselm and Its Metaphysical Interpretation According to Kant’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 30 (1992), pp. 201–218. Ortlund, Gavin, Ascending Toward the Beatific Vision: Heaven as the Climax of Anselm’s Proslogion, PhD dissertation, Fuller Theological Seminary 2016. Available online: https://www.proquest.com/docview/1803609686. Ortlund, Gavin, Anselm’s Pursuit of Joy: A Commentary on the Proslogion (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020). Rogers, Katherin A., ‘Can Christianity be proven? St. Anselm of Canterbury on Faith and Reason’, Anselm Studies, 2 (1988), pp. 459–479. Sadler, Gregory B., ‘Saint Anselm’s Fides Quaerens Intellectum as a Model for Christian Philosophy’, The Saint Anselm Journal, 4 (2006), pp. 32–58. Schumacher, Lydia, ‘The lost legacy of Anselm’s argument. Re-thinking the purpose of proofs for the existence of God’, Modern Theology, 27 (2011), pp. 87–101. Smith, Arthur David, Anselm’s Other Argument (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2014).

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Southern, Richard William, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Stolz, Anselm, ‘Anselm’s Theology in the Proslogion’ in John Hick and Arthur C. McGill, eds., The Many-Faced Argument. Recent Studies on the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God (London–Melbourne: MacMillan, 1968). Sweeney, Eileen C., Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012). Visser, Sandra, and Thomas Williams, Anselm (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). von Balthasar, Hans Urs, The Glory of the Lord: Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Styles (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1984). Wierenga, Edward, ‘Augustinian Perfect Being Theology and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 69 (2011), pp. 139– 151. Williams, Thomas, ‘Saint Anselm’ in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), url = ⟨https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/​ spr2016/entries/anselm/⟩.

chapter 6

An Anselmian Cosmological Proof of the Existence of God Richard Campbell

It is very odd that Anselm is famous—or infamous—for having proposed a version of the ontological argument for the existence of God. Why is that odd? Because the argument for which he is famous is an argument he never presented. That argument is alleged to be in chapter 2 of his Proslogion (P),1 but one only needs to read the text to see that Anselm does not conclude there that God exists. Not only is the prevailing interpretation a caricature, but the alleged argument is also manifestly invalid.

1

Anselm’s Three-Stage Argument for the Existence of God

Anselm begins P2 by beseeching God to grant that: I may understand, at least to the extent that You think it suitable, that You are [or: exist] as we believe, and that You are what we believe.2 He then specifies a belief he is seeking to understand: [B] And indeed we believe You to be something than which nothing greater could be thought.3 His prayer is interrupted by his remembering that the Psalms mention a fool who denies that a god exists. Since that denial poses a radical challenge to his very existence as a monk, he must confront it. But it makes no sense for Anselm

1 Henceforth I will refer to the ‘chapters’ of the Proslogion as P2, P3, etc. Direct quotations from Anselm’s texts are in italics, and translations are my own, unless otherwise stated. 2 aoo, i.101.3–4: ‘ut quantum scis expedire intelligam, quia es sicut credimus, et hoc es quod credimus’. 3 aoo, i.101.4–5: ‘Et quidem credimus te esse aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit’.

© Richard Campbell, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_008

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to ask God, ‘Do You exist?’ So he asks himself a different question: ‘Does such a nature, therefore, not in any way exist?’ Thereby, Anselm is adopting an indirect strategy to prove that God exists: – Firstly, to establish that something with such a nature is in reality; – Secondly, to establish that that same thing has some property which he has reason to believe is a distinguishing property of God; – Thirdly, to establish that God, and only God, has that property. If he can accomplish those three tasks, it will follow validly that God exists. That is why his proof consists of three stages. I have maintained for nearly fifty years that the argument in P2 is only the first stage of a three-stage argument. The second stage, in the first half of P3, establishes that this same thing so truly exists that it could not be thought not to exist. Then, in the third stage, in the second half of P3, he identifies this thing as the God whom he is addressing. That identity entails that God exists in that same manner.

2

Anselm’s Stage One Argument in P2

Before launching into the cosmological reformulation of Anselm’s proof, I present a reconstruction of Anselm’s argument in P2 in order to show how different it is from how it is so persistently misinterpreted, and so that it can be compared with the cosmological proof which infers the same conclusion. To answer the question he has asked himself Anselm transforms it into: ‘Is such a nature not in any way in reality?’ He does so because he has inherited from Augustine—and ultimately from Plato—a conception of existing which admits of degrees; some things exist more truly than other things. However, the question, ‘Does such a nature, therefore, not in any way exist?’4 admits only one of two possible answers: ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. To make it clear that the fool’s challenge concerns existence in that binary sense he reformulates his question in terms of ‘being in reality’. The task of P2 is to establish that something-than-which-agreater-cannot-be-thought is in reality—nothing more. 2.1 Establishing Common Ground with the Fool But first he has to establish a point of agreement with his opponent, the fool, because he has learnt from reading Boethius that one of the rules for ‘finding arguments’—that is, finding a reason which could serve to produce belief regarding a thing in doubt—is to find a proposition with which one’s opponent

4 aoo, i.101.5–6: ‘An ergo non est aliqua talis natura (…)?’

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would have to agree.5 For the argumentation will only be effective if it begins from common ground. To do that, Anselm sketches an imaginary scenario in which the fool has stepped out of the Psalms and is not only alive, but also he has come to the village of Bec, in Normandy, where he overhears Anselm praying aloud in the monastery’s chapel. Not only that; Anselm also imagines that the Fool understands Latin, for he writes in P2: Sed certe ipse idem insipiens, cum audit hoc ipsum quod dico: aliquid quo maius nihil cogitari potest, intelligit quod audit; et quod intelliget in intellectu eius est, etiam si non intelligat illud esse.6 [But surely this same fool, when he hears the very thing which I am speaking of—something than which nothing greater can be thought—understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding, even if he does not understand that it exists.] It is interesting that Anselm has changed ‘nothing greater could be thought’ into ‘nothing greater can be thought’. He has probably done so to make that phrase easier for the fool to understand, and to make it clear that the first premise of his proof is not [B], nor the belief expressed in [B], but the fact that: (i) i, Anselm, have spoken of something than which nothing greater can be thought. (i) does not assert anything other than that Anselm has spoken of that thing. That he has done so is a simple and unproblematic fact which anyone can verify by reading the text. The traditional and standard interpretation of Anselm’s proof, however, takes the belief in [B] to be Anselm’s first premise. Most often, it is said to be a definition of God. But that belief cannot possibly be the premise from which Anselm purports to prove that God exists because: (a) What Anselm asserts in [B] is a belief. He has said nothing so far which establishes that that belief is even true, let alone true by definition. (b) The context makes it clear that Anselm utters [B] because he wants to understand whether it is true. It is nonsense to suggest that he asserts as a premise a belief he is yet to understand. 5 See Eleonore Stump, Boethius’s In Ciceronis Topica (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 29. 6 aoo, i.101.7–9.

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(c) Four sentences earlier, Anselm has disavowed any pretension to penetrate God’s loftiness, so his belief could not be a definition. (d) It is not possible that an indefinite description could ever serve as a definition of anything. On the other hand, when it is recognized that (i) is his first premise, it is possible to reconstruct a valid argument which entails the conclusion of Stage One. The second premise in this argument is also factual: (ii) When the fool hears something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-bethought spoken of, he understands what he hears. He then asserts that: (iii) Whatever is understood is in the understanding.7 When Gaunilo challenged that principle, Anselm responded in the Responsio (R) that it ‘follows logically’ (R2). After a digression to establish that a thing can be in the understanding whether or not it exists, Anselm reiterates what he had written in P2: Thus, even the fool is bound to concede that something-than-which-nothinggreater-can be-thought is in the understanding, because he understands this when he hears it, and whatever is understood is in the understanding.8 2.2 Deducing Anselm’s Stage One Conclusion I surmise that Anselm intuitively knew that there is only one way any conclusion can validly be deduced from a proposition with an indefinite description as its subject. He must assume a proposition which has as its subject an arbitrarily chosen particular thing to serve as an example of that indefinite description, but is otherwise the same. Interpreting Anselm as implementing that procedure is not anachronistic; when Gerhard Gentzen presented his formalized system of inferences in 1934, he called it ‘natural deduction’ because he was formalizing rules which people were intuitively using. Many commentators assume that Anselm was basing the argument in the second half of Stage One on the proposition which even the fool cannot coherently deny: 7 aoo, i.101.15. 8 aoo, i.101.13–15: ‘Convincitur ergo etiam insipiens esse vel in intellectu aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari potest, quia hoc cum audit intelligit, et quidquid intelligitur in intellectu est’.

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(iv) Something-than-which-nothing-greater-can be-thought is in the understanding. I did myself in From Belief to Understanding.9 However, the fool need not be thinking of any particular thing which could be so described. So, if Anselm were basing the argument in the second half of P2 on that proposition, his argument would be invalid.10 I surmise that that is the reason why Anselm proceeds with a description which is different from, but equivalent to, the description in (iv). For the next sentence he writes is: [C] And certainly that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought cannot be solely in the understanding.11 It is evident that he introduces that singular expression because he wants to deduce his conclusion from: (v) Something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be thought is in the understanding. It is implicit that he has inferred (v) in a way parallel to his inferring (iv). By deliberately altering his description from ‘nothing greater can be thought’ to ‘a greater cannot be thought’ Anselm avoids that invalidity. In announcing [C] he has assumed that: (vi) That-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is in the understanding. Many commentators wrongly interpret this singular term as a Russellian definite description. Edgar Morscher is one who makes that assumption arguing that consequently the contradiction which Anselm infers is invalid.12 But when that phrase is construed as a singular referring expression the inference in question is clearly valid. Thus, Morscher has inadvertently demonstrated that Anselm’s phrase could not be a Russellian definite description. 9 10 11 12

Richard Campbell, From Belief to Understanding: A Study of Anselm’s Proslogion Argument on the Existence of God (Canberra: The Australian National University, 1976). This invalidity was pointed out by Peter Geach in his review of From Belief to Understanding in Philosophy, 52 (1977), pp. 234–236. aoo, i.101.15–16: ‘Et certe id quo maius cogitari nequit, non potest esse in solo intellectu’. Edgar Morscher, ‘Anselm’s Argument—Once Again’, Logique et Analyse, 40 (1997), pp. 175– 188.

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Anselm begins his justification of the claim in [C] by asserting: [D] For if [it] is solely in the understanding, [it] can be thought to be also in reality, which is greater.13 The missing subject is obviously that-than-which-nothing-greater-can bethought. The implication in [D] is a straightforward and valid inference; it is not dependent upon some universal proposition lurking unstated in the background. For Anselm maintains that ‘What is impossible cannot be understood’, because what is impossible cannot be in reality. I call that his ‘Intelligibility Principle’. Since that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is understood, the contrapositive of that principle entails that: (vii) It is possible that that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is in reality. He then infers from (vii) that: (viii) It can be thought that that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is in reality. This is one of many inferences in Anselm’s texts where he invokes the following innovative rule: From ‘It is possible that p’ it is valid to infer ‘It is possible to think that p’, i.e., ‘It can be thought that p’. I call that his ‘Conceivability Rule’. It validates a related rule of inference which he also often invokes, which I call his ‘Distributing Conceivability Rule’: From ‘If p, then q’ it is valid to infer ‘If it can be thought that p, then it can be thought that q’. There has been much controversy about the comment: ‘which is greater’. But Anselm’s point is really quite simple. Anselm himself explains in R how any

13

aoo, i.101.16–17: ‘Si enim vel in solo intellectu est, potest cogitari esse et in re, quod maius est’.

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rational mind can come to infer the concept of ‘something than which a greater cannot be thought’ by ascending in thought from the fact that we regard some goods as better than others (R8). He then asks: Indeed, who (…)—even if he should not believe that what he thinks of is in reality—cannot think that, if something which has a beginning and an end is good, there is a much better good, which, although it begins, nevertheless does not cease (…).14 Thinking of something which has neither a beginning nor an end would be thinking of something which is even better. The final upward step is made by Anselm asserting that: (…) and whether or not something of this kind is in reality, that which in no way is in need, nor is thought to be changed or to be moved, is very much better than it?15 It is implicit in two of those upward steps that it is better to exist than not. So, all that is needed to justify Anselm’s comment, ‘which is greater’, is: (ix) Ceteris paribus, to exist is good. Generally, all peoples, in all cultures, believe that it is good to be in reality. That is evident in the joy they express at the birth of a baby; the grief they express when a loved one dies; the universal condemnation of murder as a crime; the desire to preserve wilderness; the reaction of horror at wanton destruction; and many, many other everyday judgements. Even animals instinctively fight or flee to preserve their own lives. So, if the thought that this thing is in reality were true, it would be better than if it is not. The R8 passage also implies that to be ‘exceedingly good’ is to be ‘great’. So, this thing would be greater if it were in reality than if it were not. For if this thing is in the understanding but not in reality, then it might still be

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aoo, i.137.18–21: ‘Quis enim verbi gratia vel hoc cogitare non potest, etiam si non credat in re esse quod cogitat, scilicet si bonum est aliquid quod initium et finem habet, multo melius esse bonum, quod licet incipiat non tamen desinit (…)’. Translation from Ian Logan, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion: the history of Anselm’s argument and its significance today (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009/London: Routledge, 2016), p. 81. aoo, i.137.23–25: ‘(…) et sive sit in re aliquid huiusmodi sive non sit, valde tamen eo melius esse id quod nullo modo indiget vel cogitur mutari vel moveri?’

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thought to be great, but it would actually just be a fiction. So, it would not be great at all.16 That is how he deduces that: (x) If that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought were in reality it would be greater than if it is not in reality. Applying Anselm’s Distributing Conceivability Rule to (x) yields: (xi) If it can be thought that that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-bethought were in reality it can be thought to be greater than if it is not in reality. It then follows from the implication in [D] and (xi) that: (E) Therefore, if that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is solely in the understanding, then that thing itself than which a greater cannot be thought is [something] than which a greater can be thought. Since the consequent in (E) is not possible, Anselm infers that: (xii) It is not possible that that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is solely in the understanding. He then invokes the assumption (vi) to infer that: (xiii) That-than-which-nothing-greater-can be-thought is both in the understanding and in reality. So that he can discharge the assumption (vi) he generalizes the subject of (xiii) to reaffirm the resulting proposition as: [F] There exists, beyond doubt, something-than-which-a-greater-cannotbe-thought, both in the understanding and in reality.

16

In Rethinking Anselm’s Arguments: A Vindication of his Proof of the Existence of God (Leiden: Brill, 2018), I invoked an explanatory definition of ‘greater than’ modified from a similar definition proposed by Günter Eder and Esther Ramharter, ‘Formal reconstructions of St. Anselm’s ontological argument’, Synthese, 192 (2015), pp. 2795–2825. I simplified that definition in A Cosmological Reformulation of Anselm’s Proof That God Exists (Leiden: Brill 2021). But I have since recognized that no such definition is required.

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Anselm has validly deduced that conclusion. However, it is standardly maintained that what Anselm concludes is ‘God exists’. No such conclusion could validly be deduced from the argument in P2. One way it is alleged to follow is to infer it from the belief in [B] and the conclusion [F]. That inference has the following form: x is something F; Something F is G; Therefore, x is G.17 Any argument of that form is fallacious, unless x is the only thing which is F. But there is nothing in P2 which determines how many such beings are in reality. That invalidity shows that the argument attributed to Anselm is a fallacious travesty.

3

Introducing an Anselmian Cosmological Argument

While Anselm’s argument in P2 is both valid and plausible, I recognize that even when it is construed properly—as the first stage of a three-stage argument— it remains exposed to the objection that it purports to prove that something exists from its being in the understanding. The only factual evidence it cites is the fact that Anselm has uttered the sentence (B). Because the critics focus only on P2, and have not recognized that Anselm’s proof consists of three stages, they do not see how Anselm established that his argumentation applies only to the unique case of something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought. They ignore the fact that Anselm himself presented three valid arguments in R1 which demonstrate that, in this special case, their objection is demonstrably false. In Rethinking Anselm’s Arguments, I described Anselm’s proof as a cosmological argument, because the subject of its crucial Stage Three premise ‘Whatever is other than You’ refers to—or its reference encompasses—the universe and everything in it. That set me wondering whether the conclusions of Stages

17

In Campbell, Cosmological Reformulation, p. 22, the author gives the following example to bring out the invalid form of this inference, in which true premises can produce a false conclusion: Donald Trump is someone who was elected President of the USA; someone who was elected President of the USA has an African father; therefore, Donald Trump is someone who has an African father.

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One and Two could also be deduced from a cosmological premise. For if they could, the most persistent objections to his proof become irrelevant.

4

An Alternative Cosmological Stage One Argument

Pondering the significance of that Stage Three premise, I recognized that, setting the existence of God aside, that premise also entails Anselm’s Stage One conclusion. That recognition prompted me to explore the recent developments in cosmology. Much in modern cosmology is still controversial. Debates continue about how our current universe evolved from an early state of a small, extraordinarily dense, and extraordinarily hot state about some 13.77 billion years ago, and whether that state of the universe was preceded by a contracting universe or whether it had an absolute beginning at that time. It is beyond the competence of physics to determine the answer to that second question since modern cosmology incorporates Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity which implies that there could not have been a time when the universe did not exist. 4.1 The Premises of This Alternative Cosmological Stage One Argument However, there is no dispute over the fact that every observable thing which exists in the universe did not exist at some previous time. All the significant predictions of the General Theory of Relativity have now been confirmed by astronomical and astrophysical observations. In that early state of the universe there could not have been any atoms, let alone any molecules or any of the macroscopic objects we are now able to observe. Despite the limitations imposed by General Relativity, what can be inferred with confidence from our current cosmological knowledge is that: [Prem1] Every observable thing which exists in the universe at some time did not exist at some previous time. That premise has been confirmed on the basis of factual evidence as strong as any finding of modern science. It is possible to deduce the conclusions of all three stages of Anselm’s proof from that premise using his description, ‘something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought’, his Conceivability rules of inference, and his argumentative strategies. We saw in §2.2 that Anselm’s explanation of how any rational mind can think of something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought takes off from recognizing that ‘If something which has a beginning and an end is good, there

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is a much better good, which, although it begins, nevertheless does not cease’. So the description introduced in P2, is generated from the same facts about the universe as does the proof I am about to present. Because [Prem1] is a fact, there is nothing problematic about comparing anything which exists at some time with itself at those times when it does not exist. That comparison can be made without contradiction, for it is a conceptual truth that: (1) Anything both exists and does not exist if, and only if, it exists at some time, and does not exist at some other time. It is undeniable that we can refer to and describe things which no longer exist at the time of speaking because we have relevant knowledge of what they were. Consider something—indeed, anything—which exists in the universe at some time. For example, I can still think and speak of my father even though he is no longer alive. The point is quite general. What we are able to refer to and describe is the very same thing as that which did exist at some time, but does not exist now. Both the words ‘good’ and ‘great’ are used to express evaluations which are based on the properties or relations of the thing being assessed. And since existing is a relation which is external to the concept of what a thing is, we can compare how good anything in the universe would be with itself under two contradictory circumstances: when it exists, and when it does not exist. We saw in §2.3(ix) that the following premise could be extracted from that ascent in thought: [Prem2] Other things being equal, to exist is good. I argued in §2 that virtually all peoples, in all cultures, endorse that evaluation. It follows from [Prem1] and [Prem2] that: (2) Whatever exists at some times, but does not exist at some other times, is better at those times when it exists than at those times when it does not exist. This comparison is different from the one upon which Anselm commented in P2. Rather than comparing a thing which is in reality, as can be thought, with how it is if it is solely in the understanding, as he did, the comparison above has been derived from comparing the two actual situations: existing at some time with not existing at some other time.

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That comparison has been deduced without describing anything as being ‘in the understanding’. Nor is there an issue about referring to things which do not exist, since even when things do not exist for a period of time, what we are referring to is determined by what they are when they did exist. The comparison in (2) provides what is needed to infer the conclusion of this cosmological Stage One argument. 4.2 Deducing a Cosmological Stage One Conclusion Just as the task of Stage One of Anselm’s original proof is to answer the question, ‘Does such a nature, therefore, not in any way exist?’, answering that same question, but in a different way, is also the task of this cosmological alternative to Anselm’s Stage One argument. Since the point of Anselm’s Stage One is to establish that something-thanwhich-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is not a fiction, but is in reality, it is appropriate to substitute the binary predicate ‘is in reality’ in lieu of ‘exists’ in (2). Doing so, and instantiating the resulting universal proposition yields: (3) If that-than-which a-greater-cannot-be-thought is in reality at some times, but not in reality at some other times, then it would be better at those times when it is in reality than at those times when it is not in reality. Since to be ‘exceedingly good’ is to be ‘great’ and that-than-which a-greatercannot-be-thought is thought to be exceedingly good, (3) would be expressed more appropriately by substituting ‘greater than’ in lieu of ‘better’. With that substitution (3) becomes: (4) If that-than-which a-greater-cannot-be-thought is in reality at some times, but not in reality at some other times, then it would be greater at those times when it is in reality than at those times when it is not in reality. Applying Anselm’s Distributing Conceivability Rule to (4) yields: (5) If it can be thought that that-than-which a-greater-cannot-be-thought is in reality at some times, but not at some other times, then it can be thought to be greater at those times when it is in reality than at those times when it is not in reality. Now, the truth of the antecedent of (5) can be inferred from the ascent in thought described in R8. For the following premise can be extracted from that passage:

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[Prem3] Anyone with a rational mind is able to think of something-thanwhich-a-greater-cannot-be-thought, whether or not something of this kind is in reality. I invoked Anselm’s Intelligibility Principle in §2.2. When it is combined with the distinction he draws in P4 between two different ways in which a thing can be thought, it is clear that he also maintains what I call his ‘Inconceivability Principle’: (6) What is impossible cannot be thought in the way in which a thing is thought when the thing itself is understood. Whatever is impossible—including logical impossibilities like contradictions—cannot be in reality. That principle is equivalent to its contrapositive: (7) It is possible that whatever can be thought, in the way in which a thing is thought when the thing itself is understood, is in reality. So, it follows from [Prem3] and (7) that: (8) It can be thought, in the way in which a thing is thought when the thing itself is understood, that something-than-which-a-greater-cannotbe-thought is in reality, at least at some times. That is a fact because it follows from [Prem3], which is a fact. Since the subject of that fact, ‘something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-bethought’, is an indefinite description, it is indeterminate. Consequently, it is not possible to deduce any conclusion from that fact directly. As was explained in § 2, the way around that problem is to assume that: (9) It can be thought, in the way in which a thing is thought when the thing itself is understood, that that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is in reality, at least at some times. Because that proposition is an assumption, it will have to be eliminated before the argument is complete. In the second part of P2 Anselm supposes that this thing is in the understanding but not in reality. However, if something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is one of all those things which exist in the universe for some limited time, that would be just as devasting to the belief Anselm has expressed

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in (B). For his belief would imply that the God to whom he is praying has come into existence at some time, and will cease to exist. Such a being would be on a par with everything else in the universe, and therefore would not be God. However, it has already been assumed on line (9) that ‘It can be thought that that-than-which a-greater-cannot-be-thought is in reality at least at some times’. Since the first condition in (5) has already been met, it follows from (5) and (9) that: (10) If it can be thought that that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-bethought is not in reality at some times, then it can be thought to be greater at some times than at some other times. But if there are any times at which that-than-which a-greater-cannot-bethought can be thought not to be as great as it is at other times, then it is not true that the thing so described is that than which a greater cannot be thought. So, it follows that: (11) If there are times when that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is not in reality, then that thing itself which is described as that-thanwhich-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is not that than which a greater cannot be thought. Since the consequent of (11) is not possible, neither is its antecedent. That is: (12) It is not possible that there are times when that-than-which-a-greatercannot-be-thought is not in reality. Since ‘It is not possible that not p’ is equivalent to ‘It is necessary that p’, when the subject of (12) is generalized, (12) entails: (13) It is necessary that something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-bethought is always in reality. That conclusion has been deduced from the assumption (vi), which introduced that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought. However, that conclusion does not mention that singular term nor is there any other premise upon which (12) depends. So, instead of (12) being dependent upon the assumption (vi), it may be reaffirmed as entailed by (5), that ‘It can be thought, in that same way, that something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is in reality, at least at

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some times’. (4) was inferred from (2) which is dependent upon [Prem1] and [Prem2] and the premise [Prem3]. Thus, it has been proven from those three premises that: [Conc1] It is necessary that something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-bethought is always in reality. [Conc1] is the conclusion of this cosmological reformulation of Anselm’s Stage One. It makes no mention of anything being ‘in the understanding’, so no longer can Anselm’s Stage One conclusion be rejected simply on the grounds that it purports to infer a reality from a thought. With the addition of the word ‘always’, [Conc1] is identical to a stronger version of Anselm’s original Stage One conclusion which is entailed by his argument, but does not appear in P2. [Conc1] is, in fact, an improvement on [F] because it justifies the first claim in Anselm’s assertion in R1 that ‘Something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is always and everywhere as a totality’. 4.3 Deducing a Stronger Cosmological Stage One Conclusion Some significant corollaries follow directly from this argument. Firstly, since [Conc1] has now been proven, it follows from [Prem1] and [Conc1] that: [Conc2] It is not possible that something-than-which-a-greater-cannotbe-thought is one of the observable things which exist in the universe. Secondly, it follows from the premise [Prem1] that the constitution of every one of those things which exist in the universe for some limited time is such that they are both able to exist and able not to exist. So, it follows from that implication of [Prem1] and [Conc1] that: [Conc3] It is necessary that something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-bethought is unable not to exist. That is, [Conc3*] It is necessary that something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-bethought exists through its own intrinsic necessity. So, an even stronger conclusion than [Conc1] has now been deduced. This stronger conclusion [Conc3*] explains why in § 4.2 above it was possible to deduce [Conc1] as a necessary truth. [Conc1] is a necessary truth because this

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thing exists with such intrinsic power that it is not possible that it could have been dependent upon something else to bring it into existence, nor could anything else cause it to cease existing.

5

A Cosmological Stage Two Argument

Although Anselm has validly deduced [F] in §2.2, and the conclusions [Conc1], [Conc2], and [Conc3] have been validly deduced in § 4.2–3, it cannot be immediately concluded from any of them that God exists. A second stage is needed to establish that this thing has some property which Anselm has reason to believe is a distinguishing property of God. Anselm himself makes that obvious by beginning P3 announcing his next conclusion: Which [quod] so truly exists that it could not be thought not to exist [nec cogitari possit non esse].18 The relative pronoun ‘quod’ must refer to the subject of the previous sentence: [F]. 5.1 The Premise of This Cosmological Stage Two Argument Anselm introduces the next sentence with the word ‘Nam’. That introduces the reason from which the conclusion he has just announced will follow. The sentence is: Nam potest cogitari esse aliquid quod non possit cogitari non esse, quod maius est quam quod non cogitari potest.19 I have always insisted that the complex verb ‘potest cogitari’ [can be thought] must be understood as implicitly predicated of the same subject as the previous sentence, ‘quod’, which refers to the subject of [F]. For on any other construal of the main clause of that Latin sentence the conclusion which Anselm has just announced, and which he reaffirms in the middle of P3, cannot validly be deduced. Accordingly, this sentence must be translated as:

18 19

aoo, i.102.6: ‘Quod utique sic vere est, ut nec cogitari possit non esse’. P3 (aoo, i.102.6–8).

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[G] For it [i.e., the subject of [F]: something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought] can be thought to be something which could not be thought not to exist.20 Ever since the 1960s, when Norman Malcolm and Charles Hartshorne purported to find an independent ‘ontological argument’ in P3, there has been much debate about the relation of this argument in P3 to the argument in P2. Gregory Schufreider and David Smith have both argued strongly that the argument in P3 must presuppose the argument in P2. However, the relation is much tighter than presupposition. For it is demonstrable that [G] is entailed by [Conc3*]. As explained in §2.2, because the subject of [Conc3*] is an indefinite description, in order to deduce any conclusion from it, we must assume that what [Conc3*] says is true of something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is true of an individual exemplar of it: (14) It is necessary that that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought exists through its own intrinsic necessity. That assumption is equivalent to: (15) It is necessary that that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is something whose non-existence is impossible. Now, in §4.2 Anselm’s Inconceivability Principle was invoked. It is relevant here also. To recall, it says: (6) Whatever is impossible [i.e., what cannot be] cannot be thought in the way in which a thing is thought when the thing itself is understood. It follows from (6) and (15) that, in the way in which a thing is thought when the thing itself is understood:

20

Arthur McGill’s is the only English translation of the Proslogion which construes [G] in a way which validly entails Anselm’s conclusion. He translates it as, ‘It can be conceived to be something such that we cannot conceive of it as not existing’. (John Hick & Arthur McGill, eds., The Many-Faced Argument: Recent Studies on the Ontological Argument (London: Macmillan, 1967), p. 6). That is almost correct, but he has imported the pronoun ‘we’ into the text, and like all the other translators, fails to translate the verb ‘possit’ in the subjunctive mood.

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(16) It is necessary that that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is something which cannot be thought not to exist. Since ‘It is necessary that … cannot …’ is equivalent to ‘… could not be thought that …’, the necessary truth (16) is equivalent to: (17) That-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is something which could not be thought not to exist. Since it is universally recognized that it is valid to infer from ‘p’ that ‘It is possible that p’, and Anselm’s Conceivability Rule says that it is valid to infer from ‘It is possible that p’ that ‘It can be thought that p’, it follows from (17) that: (18) It can be thought that that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is something which could not be thought not to exist. Generalizing the subject of (18) yields: (19) Something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought can be thought to be something which could not be thought not to exist. That consequence has been deduced from the assumption (14) which introduced the singular term, ‘that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought’. (19) does not mention that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought, nor is any other premise involved in the deduction of (19). Therefore, (19) may be reaffirmed as entailed by the cosmological Stage One conclusion [Conc3*]—‘It is necessary that something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought exists through its own intrinsic necessity’—with which we began. Thus, it has been demonstrated that [Conc3*] entails the premise of Stage Two: [G] Something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought can be thought to be something which could not be thought not to exist. That [G] has been validly deduced from [Conc3*] has justified the translation of Anselm’s Latin sentence as [G] and therefore understanding the premise of Stage Two to be [G]. What this deduction also shows is that [G] is, in fact, not a new premise at all; it is a corollary of the conclusion of Stage One.

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5.2 Deducing the Cosmological Stage Two Conclusion With that issue settled, we now come to the heart of the argument of Stage Two, proving the conclusion which Anselm announced. It is possible to deduce the conclusion of Stage Two by connecting three sub-arguments. The first subargument harks back to the argument in Stage One of this cosmological proof. It was deduced in §4.1 that: (2) Whatever exists at some times, but does not exist at some other times, is better at those times when it exists than at those times when it does not exist. Even though the assumption that ‘It is necessary that that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought exists through its own intrinsic necessity’ implies that it is not possible that this thing does not exist, it is legitimate to consider what is called a ‘counter-factual’. Since the truth of that comparison is determined simply by the contrast between existing and not existing, deleting the reference to times, it is also true that: (20) Whatever exists is better than it would be if it were not to exist. Because, for Anselm, to be ‘exceedingly good’ is to be ‘great’, that counterfactual would be expressed more appropriately by substituting ‘greater’ for ‘better’ in it. That is, it may be inferred from (20) that: (21) Because that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought exists, it is greater than it would be if it were not to exist. This way of expressing the comparison of that-than-which-a-greater-cannotbe-thought as between its existing and its counterfactual non-existence provides just what is required to deduce this significant conclusion. So we are now ready to deduce the conclusion of Stage Two, which goes beyond what has been established in Stage One. For this new conclusion is the linchpin of this proof of the existence of God. The second sub-argument begins by inferring a necessary truth from Anselm’s Conceivability Rule to link to the comparison just deduced. In R5 Anselm has written: ‘What does not exist is able not to exist, and what is able not to exist can be thought not to exist’. I extracted his Conceivability Rule from that principle. Applying that principle to that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought yields:

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(22) If that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought does not exist, then it can be thought not to exist. It is a logical truth that ‘If p, then q’ is equivalent to its contrapositive, ‘If not-q, then not-p’. So this implication is equivalent to: (23) If that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought cannot be thought not to exist, it exists. Since (21) has already been deduced it follows from (21) and (23) that: (24) If that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought cannot be thought not to exist, then it is greater than it would be if it were not to exist. (24) has two ‘if’-clauses and one ‘then’-clause. Anselm’s Distributing Conceivability rule permits it to be inferred that each of those three clauses can be thought. Applying this rule to (24) yields: (25) If it can be thought that that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-bethought cannot be thought not to exist, then it can be thought that it is greater than it would be if it can be thought that it does not exist. It now becomes clear why Anselm chose to express his Stage Two premise as [G]. For [G] was inferred above from: (18) It can be thought that that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is something which could not be thought not to exist. It follows from (18) and (25) that: (26) If that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought can be thought not to exist, that thing itself than which a greater cannot be thought is not that than which greater cannot be thought. As can be seen in the text of this passage of P3, that is exactly what Anselm wrote. Since the consequent of that implication is impossible, it follows that: (27) It is not possible that that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought can be thought not to exist.

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Since, as we have already seen, ‘It is not possible that … can …’ is equivalent to ‘… could not …’, (27) is equivalent to: (28) That-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought could not be thought not to exist. That proposition has been validly deduced from the assumption (14): ‘It is necessary that that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought exists through its own intrinsic necessity’. So, once the subject of (28) has been generalized, it may be reaffirmed as entailed by [Conc3*] because there is no other premise in this argument. That is, it has been proven that [Conc3*] entails: (29) Something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought could not be thought not to exist. I call that the ‘interim conclusion’ of Stage Two. But that is not the conclusion Anselm announced in the first sentence of P3, nor the conclusion with which he concludes Stage Two. For his conclusion interpolates the words ‘so truly exists that’ into the middle of (29). A brief third sub-argument is required to deduce his actual conclusion. When one proposition is validly deduced from another, it is valid to express that logical dependence as an implication. But in this case, [Conc3*] is a necessary truth which has already been proven in Stage One. So rather than expressing that entailment in terms of an ‘if’-‘then’ implication, it is more appropriate to express it as: (30) Because it is necessarily true that something-than-which-a-greatercannot-be-thought exists through its own intrinsic necessity, it could not be thought not to exist. That says both that [Conc3*] is true, and that its truth entails that this thing could not be thought not to exist. Anselm expresses this conclusion equivalently as: [Conc4] Something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought so truly exists that it could not be thought not to exist.21

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P3 (aoo, i.103.1–2: ‘Sic ergo vere est aliquid quo maius cogitari non potest, ut nec cogitari possit non esse’.)

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That is the conclusion of Stage Two. Remarkably, that conclusion is entailed by the same three premises which were all that was required to prove [Conc3*] in § 4.3.

6

A Cosmological Stage Three Argument

Proving [Conc4] is enough to dispel his uncertainty, for the argumentative strategy of his proof has been based on his belief that it is a distinguishing property of God that He could not be thought not to exist. So, what he has just proven to be true of something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought could be true only of the God to whom he had previously been praying. So, resuming his prayer, he immediately declares two conclusions: And this is You, Lord our God. Therefore, Lord my God, You so truly exist that You could not be thought not to exist.22 Commenting ‘And rightly so’, he offers two reasons in justification of those conclusions in P3: [Rs1] If some mind could think of something better than You, a creature would be ascending above the Creator, and passing judgement on the Creator, which is completely absurd.23 [Rs2] And indeed, whatever else exists aside from You alone can be thought not to exist.24 That comprises his Stage Three. 6.1 The Implications of Anselm’s First Reason The absurdity he finds in the implication in [Rs1] implies that: (31) It is not possible that some mind can think of something better than You.

22 23 24

aoo, i.103.3–4: ‘Et hoc es tu, domine deus noster. Sic ergo vere es, domine deus meus, ut nec cogitari possis non esse’. aoo, i.103.4–6: ‘Si enim aliqua mens posset cogitare aliquid melius te, ascenderet creatura super creatorem, et iudicaret de creatore; quod valde est absurdum’. aoo, i.103.6–7: ‘Et quidem quidquid est aliud praeter te solum, potest cogitari non esse’.

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I used to interpret [Rs1] as a brief theological argument designed to establish his first conclusion. Given that in R8 Anselm infers what is greater from what is better, it seemed that he was inferring that: (32) If it is not possible that some mind can think of something better than You, then you are something than which a greater cannot be thought. But I now doubt that inferring that implication is why Anselm wrote [Rs1]. Although it is not fitting for a creature to pass judgement on the Creator, it is not impossible. Also, if Anselm’s intention in writing [Rs1] was to justify his first conclusion, that would have been redundant, because that same conclusion can be deduced from [Rs2]. So, I now interpret [Rs1] differently. Since [Rs1] presupposes that ‘You are the Creator of all other things’, a second implication is implicit in this text: (33) If You are the Creator of all other things, then it is not possible that some mind can think of something better than You. Since that says, in effect, that ‘It is necessary that any mind cannot think of anything which is better than You, the Creator of all other things’, it implies that: (34) It can be thought that You are the Creator of all other things. I submit that (34) is true independently of [Rs1]. Now, it follows from (32) and (33) that: (35) If You are the Creator of all other things, then you are something than which a greater cannot be thought. However, inferring (35) has obliterated the fact that [Rs1] is about what some mind could think. So it would be more appropriate to invoke Anselm’s Distributing Conceivability rule to infer: (36) If it can be thought that You are the Creator of all other things, then it can be thought that You are something than which a greater cannot be thought. That is a logical truth, because all it states is that (36) has been derived validly. It neither asserts nor presupposes that God exists. So, I surmise that Anselm presented [Rs1] in order to establish (34) and (36). Of course, that is quite

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speculative, but any interpretation of these two reasons cannot be other than speculative, and those two propositions will prove to be significant. 6.2 Anselm’s Second Reason Turning now to [Rs2], I showed both in From Belief to Understanding and in Rethinking Anselm’s Arguments that a premise can be extracted from that sentence which, together with the conclusion of Stage Two, entails both the conclusions quoted above. I had found that the word ‘alone’ [solum] plays no role in the deduction of those conclusions. All his premise needs to assert is: (Q) Whatever is other than You can be thought not to exist. Since the subject of (Q) is ‘Whatever is other than You’, I used to interpret (Q) as the premise of a metaphysical argument. That interpretation seemed legitimate because, interpreted as a non-theological premise, (Q) suffices to prove his two conclusions independently of whatever is inferred from [Rs1]. Moreover, in R1 Anselm articulates a number of non-theological criteria which identify what can be thought not to exist. He then summarizes those criteria in R4 to justify ‘All things can be thought not to exist, apart from that which is supreme’. It is disconcerting that he made no attempt in P to justify this premise, but I took him to be rectifying that omission in R. Both Jasper Hopkins and David Smith have objected to my claim that (Q) is the premise which enables Anselm to prove that God exists, because they allege that (Q) implies that God alone cannot be thought not to exist, and therefore is question-begging.25 But that is not correct. The contrapositive of (Q) is: (37) If anything cannot be thought not to exist, it is none other than You. (37) is equivalent to (Q). It neither asserts nor presupposes that anything cannot be thought not to exist. However, since [Conc4] has been proven in Stage Two, it follows from [Conc4] and (37) that: (38) Something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is none other than You.

25

Jasper Hopkins, A New Interpretative Translation of Anselm’s Monologion and Proslogion (Minneapolis: A.J. Banning Press, 1986), p. 11, and Arthur David Smith, Anselm’s Other Argument (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 14.

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And from [Conc4] and (38) it follows that: (39) You alone so truly exist that You could not be thought not to exist. In considering the objection that [Rs2] is neither obvious nor justified, and therefore that (Q) cannot operate as a premise in P3, I asked myself why Anselm asserted [Rs2] as a premise without attempting to justify it. It suddenly occurred to me that it is obvious to Anselm that whatever is other than God can be thought not to exist! Why? Because he would have been very familiar with the Nicene Creed; indeed, it is probable that every time Anselm attended Mass that creed would be recited.26 Its first clause says: We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. That clause entails [Rs2]. For whatever has been made would not exist unless it has been made; nothing which is made exists by any intrinsic necessity. But whatever does not exist by any intrinsic necessity is able not to exist, and therefore, applying Anselm’s Conceivability rule, can be thought not to exist. So, it follows from that clause in the Nicene Creed that: (40) Whatever is other than God the Father Almighty can be thought not to exist. Anselm expresses that consequence as his premise (40), by substituting the pronoun ‘You’ for ‘God the Father Almighty’. Having recognized that entailment, I have retracted the exegesis of Stage Three in Rethinking Anselm’s Arguments. Anselm’s Stage Three contains only one argument: a theological argument with cosmological implications. This insight solves one problem only to generate an even more serious one. Since his crucial premise is entailed by this official statement of Christian belief, if Anselm’s conclusions were dependent upon either (40) or (Q), they would be vulnerable to the accusation of question-begging. But Anselm clearly thinks that his conclusions are true, for at the end of P3 he comments:

26

The Nicene Creed became part of the Mass in the early 6th Century when Patriarch Timothy of Constantinople started the practice to combat heresy. Its popularity spread throughout the Byzantine Empire, then to Spain, France, and northern Europe. See https://www.catholicnewsherald.com/faith/101‑news/faith/364‑the‑nicene‑creed‑and‑its ‑origins (Accessed 8 October 2021).

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Why then has the Fool said in his heart, ‘There is not a god’, when it is so obvious to a rational mind that You exist maximally of all?27 It seems that Anselm takes himself to have proven that God exists maximally of all so effectively that that conclusion would be obvious to any rational mind— not only to those who already believe in God, but also to those who do not. That rhetorical question cannot be read in any other way. Moreover, Anselm finalizes his proof in P4 by uttering the following prayer of thanksgiving: I give thanks to You, good Lord, I give thanks to You, because what I first believed by your gift, I now understand by Your illumination in such a way that even if I should not want to believe it, I would not be able not to understand that You exist.28 There are other passages which also imply that Anselm takes himself to have proven that God truly exists. So, Anselm must have found a way of validly deducing those conclusions from his beliefs—but not dependent upon those beliefs. This puzzle poses the following question: How can Anselm plausibly claim to have proven his conclusions when both his reasons presuppose that God exists and is the Creator of all other things? That is the question which must be answered if the first two stages are to culminate in proving that God truly exists. 6.3 Deducing the Existence of a Supreme Being I now present an argument which deduces (Q) as a necessary truth without presupposing either that God exists or is the Creator. The first step is to prove that it is not possible that more than one thing can be something-than-whicha-greater-cannot-be-thought. The second step is to show that whatever is other than this thing can be thought not to exist. That is an analogue of (Q). Finally it will be shown that God is identical to this thing. (Q) can then be invoked as a justified premise which enables Anselm’s conclusions to be validly deduced as both personal beliefs and proven truths. This argument begins with:

27 28

aoo, i.103.9–11: ‘Cur itaque dixit insipiens in corde suo: non est deus, cum tam in promptu sit rationali menti te maxime omnium esse?’ aoo, i.104.5–7: ‘Gratias tibi, bone domine, gratias tibi, quia quod prius credidi te donante, iam sic intelligo te illuminante, ut si te esse nolim credere, non possim non intelligere’. Translation from Logan, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion, p. 35.

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[Conc4] Something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought so truly exists that it could not be thought not to exist. Since that conclusion has been proven in §5.2 on cosmological grounds, any further conclusions deduced from it will also be proven on cosmological grounds. With a view to settling the issue of whether only one existing thing could be something than which a greater cannot be thought, let us note that the following is a conceptual truth: (41) If only one existing thing is something than which a greater cannot be thought, then it would exist supremely. Applying Anselm’s Distributing Conceivability Rule to (41), it follows that: (42) If it can be thought that only one existing thing is something than which a greater cannot be thought, then it can be thought that it exists supremely. Because it is still an open question how many such things exist, it remains possible that only one existing thing is something than which a greater cannot be thought. It follows from that possibility, by Anselm’s Conceivability Rule, that: (43) It can be thought that only one existing thing is something than which a greater cannot be thought. So it follows from (42) and (43) that: (44) It can be thought that something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-bethought exists supremely. Because those implications have rendered the existence of something-thanwhich-a-greater-cannot-be-thought hypothetical, (44) needs to be conjoined with [Conc4] in order to ensure that something-than-which-a-greater-cannotbe-thought does indeed exist. That is, (45) Something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought so truly exists that it could not be thought not to exist, and it can be thought that it exists supremely. It follows from (45) that:

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(46) It can be thought that something exists supremely. Now, if anything exists supremely, then it exists most greatly of all. For the word ‘supreme’ implies uniqueness. To exist supremely is to be the only thing which exists more greatly than anything else, including the whole universe. In the political domain, no ‘supreme ruler’ shares that exalted position with anyone else. And in the legal domain, the Supreme Court is the final court of appeal from all other courts. Only what is uniquely great could exist supremely. That suffices to establish that it is a necessary truth that: (47) It is not possible that more than one thing exists supremely. So, if something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought were not this very thing, it could be thought that something else exists supremely, but it is not something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought. But it is not possible to think that something is greater than something than which a greater cannot be thought. It therefore follows that: (48) It is necessary that something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-bethought exists supremely. It follows (47) and (48) that: (49) It is necessary that only one existing thing is something than which a greater cannot be thought. From now on, instead of referring to ‘Something-than-which-a-greater-cannotbe-thought’, this thing can now be described by a definite description: ‘Thatthan-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought’. 6.4 Deducing an Analogue of the Crucial Premise of Stage Three The next issue to be settled is whether anything else cannot be thought not to exist. It follows from (49) and the conclusion of Stage Two, [Conc4], that: (50) It is not possible that that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought can be thought not to exist. It is a logical truth that (50) is equivalent to: (51) It is necessary that anything which cannot be thought not to exist is that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought.

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That universal proposition is equivalent to: (52) It is necessary that whatever is other than that-than-which-a-greatercannot-be-thought can be thought not to exist. So, an analogue of (Q) has now been proven on cosmological—not theological—grounds. (52) is stronger than (Q), which is entailed by the belief that God is the Creator of all other things, because (52) is a necessary truth. 6.5 Justifying the Crucial Premise of Stage Three Only one more step is required to justify (Q). For if it can be shown in a noncircular way that than that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought is identical to the God whom Anselm has been addressing, (Q) would be fully justified. To that end, continuing with Anselm’s use of ‘You’ to address God, let us suppose the opposite, that: (53) You are not that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought. Because (49) is a necessary truth, it follows from (49) and (53) that: (54) It is not possible that You are that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-bethought. Anselm’s Inconceivability Principle was invoked in § 4.2 and again in § 5.1. It is appropriate to invoke it again here: (6) Whatever is impossible [i.e., what cannot be] cannot be thought in the way in which a thing is thought when the thing itself is understood. Applying this principle to (54), it follows that: (55) It cannot be thought, in the way in which a thing is thought when the thing itself is understood, that You are something-than-which-a-greatercannot-be-thought. However, it has been shown above on line (34) that [Rs1] implies that: [Prem4] It can be thought that You are the Creator of all other things.

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I am re-labelling (34) as the premise [Prem4] because there is no other premise in this argument which mentions God. It was also shown above that [Rs1] also implies that: (36) If it can be thought that You are the Creator of all other things, then it can be thought that You are something than which a greater cannot be thought. I am invoking [Prem4] as a premise independent of [Rs1]. It was shown in § 6.1 that (36) is a necessary truth because all it asserts is the validity of that inference. It therefore follows from [Prem4] and (36) that: (56) It can be thought that You are something than which a greater cannot be thought. Because neither [Prem4] nor (36) asserts or presupposes that God is the Creator of all other things—nor even that God exists—they may be invoked here without being dependent on any theological beliefs. It follows from them that: (57) It can be thought that You are that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-bethought. (57) directly contradicts (54), which was inferred from the supposition (53). Since it is not possible that the identity in question both can and cannot be thought, it follows that: (58) It is not possible that You are not that-than-which-a-greater-cannotbe-thought. Substituting ‘You’ for ‘that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought’ in (53), as (58) permits, it has been proven on cosmological grounds, without any qualifications, that: (59) It is necessary that whatever is other than You can be thought not to exist. (Q) has been proven to be a necessary truth.

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6.6 Deducing that God Exists Most Greatly of All (59) is equivalent to its contrapositive: (60) It is necessary that if anything cannot be thought not to exist, it is none other than You. It follows from [Conc4], the conclusion of Stage Two, and (61), that: [Conc5] It is necessary that You alone are something than which a greater cannot be thought. And from that identity-statement and [Conc4] it follows immediately that: [Conc6] It is necessary that You alone so truly exist that You could not be thought not to exist. It follows from that conclusion and the fact that (Q) has now been proven as a necessary and unqualified truth, that: [Conc7] It is necessary that You alone have being most truly of all, and for that reason most greatly of all, because whatever is other [than You] does not exist so truly, and on that account has less being. It has now been demonstrated, across three interlinked stages of argumentation, that the God in whom Anselm and all Christians believe exists most greatly of all. qed.

Editors’ Note The sad death of our colleague and contributor, Professor Richard Campbell, occurred during the editing of this chapter, which was complete, but required some typographical, numbering and formatting changes. The editors decided to make the necessary changes in the firm belief that the published version of Richard’s chapter would have met with his approval.

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Bibliography Primary Sources Boethius’s In Ciceronis Topica, Eleonore Stump, trans. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).

Secondary Sources Campbell, Richard, From Belief to Understanding: A Study of Anselm’s Proslogion Argument on the Existence of God (Canberra: The Australian National University, 1976). Campbell, Richard, Rethinking Anselm’s Arguments: A Vindication of his Proof of the Existence of God (Leiden: Brill, 2018). Campbell, Richard, A Cosmological Reformulation of Anselm’s Proof That God Exists (Leiden: Brill, 2021). Eder, Günther and Ramharter, Esther, ‘Formal reconstructions of St. Anselm’s ontological argument’, Synthese, 192 (2015), pp. 2795–2825. Geach, Peter, ‘Review of Richard Campbell, From Belief to Understanding’, Philosophy, 52 (1977), pp. 234–236. Hick, John and Arthur McGill, eds., The Many-Faced Argument: Recent Studies on the Ontological Argument (London: Macmillan, 1967). Hopkins, Jasper, A New Interpretative Translation of Anselm’s Monologion and Proslogion (Minneapolis: The Arthur J. Banning Press, 1986). Logan, Ian, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion: the history of Anselm’s argument and its significance today (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009/London: Routledge, 2016). Morscher, Edgar, ‘Anselm’s Argument—Once Again’, Logique et Analyse, 40 (1997), pp. 175–188.

chapter 7

Denying the Divine Anselm and Atheism Ian Logan

1

Introduction

In this chapter I want to capture a snapshot of Anselm’s response to atheism through the lens of arguably the most famous atheist of the medieval period, the ‘fool’ of the Proslogion (P), who says in his heart, ‘There is no God’.1 I will do so not by expounding the argument of P, but by seeking to understand Anselm’s view of the nature of the fool’s unbelief and the long-term ramifications of such a view.2 To do this, I will, firstly, attempt to clarify what Anselm understood by atheism. Secondly, I will look at possible sources for his knowledge of atheism in the classical philosophy available to him. Thirdly, I will review the doxastic status of the fool of Psalms 13 and 52 in the exegetical tradition and identify Anselm’s place in that tradition. Fourthly, I will seek to situate Anselm’s response to the fool in the context of, and in contrast to, the contemporary critique of the liberal arts as exemplified in the writings of Peter Damian and Lanfranc of Bec. I will conclude with some brief remarks on the nature and implications of that response and on Anselm’s place in the history of atheism.

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Atheism: Doxastic and Non-doxastic

For the purposes of this chapter, I take the term ‘atheism’ in a specifically doxastic sense to mean, ‘the active non-acceptance, rejection and/or denial of the existence of any and all divinity’.3 Atheism in this sense is doxastic,

1 The insipiens, the fool, of Psalms 13 & 52, is the initial foil of Anselm’s argument for the God of Catholic belief in the Proslogion. He is taken from the Psalms in the Vulgate version: ‘Dixit insipiens in corde suo, Non est Deus’. (Psalms 13:1 & 52:1). 2 Such an account can be found in Ian Logan, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion: the history of Anselm’s argument and its significance today (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009/London: Routledge, 2016). 3 For other definitions, see Stephen Bullivant, ‘Defining “Atheism” ’ in Stephen Bullivant and

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involving an explicit belief that God or gods do not exist, and an associated implication, implicitly or explicitly asserted, that they are some kind of human construct. I will argue that, for Anselm, the fool of P is a doxastic atheist in this sense. Not that we find an explicit account of atheism in Anselm’s writings. Like his contemporaries, Anselm does not employ a specific term for atheism, but refers generically to ‘unbelievers’ (‘infideles’), a fuzzy term, incorporating many kinds of heterodoxy including atheism, whether doxastic or not.4 For Anselm, atheism need not be doxastic. In M76, he indicates that a failure to strive for the supreme being appears to involve unbelief in the supreme being, even on the part of believers—the implication being that it is possible to combine a doxastic theism with a practical atheism. In this he follows Augustine, who points out in one of his sermons, that there is more to belief and unbelief than the standard accounts of atheism allow for. He writes: [I]t makes a great difference whether one believes Christ or whether one believes in Christ. For the demons also believe that he is the Christ, and yet they do not believe in the Christ. For he believes in Christ who hopes in Christ and loves Christ. In fact, if he has faith without hope and without love, he may believe that he is the Christ, but he does not believe in the Christ.5 It is easy enough to identify explicit atheists, but Augustine points here to another category, the practical atheist, who believes, but does not believe in, who is not a doxastic atheist, but is to be found amongst ostensible believers. It is worth noting that my ‘definition’ of atheism excludes the account offered by Justin Martyr: ‘Thus are we called atheists. We do proclaim ourselves atheists as regards those whom you call gods’.6 From the perspective of ancient polytheism, too, the rejection of any one of the numerous gods might be classed as a form of atheism, as might the introduction of a new god, usurping one or more of the old gods. (See the response to Socrates’ daemon in ancient Athens.7) From the perspective of believers in a one-and-only-true God, the

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Michael Ruse, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Atheism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 11–21. See cdh, passim. Augustine of Hippo, Sermones ad populum, cxliv, ii, 2 in pl 38, 788. My translation. First Apology, 6. See Saint Justin Martyr: The first apology, The second apology, Dialogue with Trypho, Exhortation to the Greeks, Discourse to the Greeks, The monarchy; or the rule of God, Thomas Falls, ed. (New York: Christian Heritage, 1948), pp. 38 f. The accusation against Socrates is that ‘Socrates is guilty of corrupting the young and of not

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believers in other gods may also appear as atheists. And once one has a set of beliefs about the nature of this God, then someone who rejects an attribute of this nature may appear as an atheist; and further, once one rejects one of the beliefs that follow from this attribute, one may appear to be an atheist. Thus, for example, denial of the immortality of the soul can be viewed as a rejection of God’s omnipotence, since it implies that God cannot create immortal souls. But if the one-and-only-true God is omnipotent, then in indirectly denying this attribute, one also denies that the one-and-only-true God is the one-and-onlytrue God. On this account, there is a broad understanding of atheism, covering various forms of unbelief and heresy, that extends beyond the definition I have given above. It is only gradually and intermittently that the narrower doxastic account of atheism emerges in the medieval world. Doxastic atheism is not seen as a significant quantitative threat to the religious and political culture, and it is concealed or practical unbelievers amongst the population, rather than explicitly doxastic atheists, who are the focus of political and ecclesiastical concern.8 That Christians need not necessarily equate unbelief in their God with atheism is suggested by St. Paul’s reaction to the presence of the altar to an unknown God in Athens, whom he identifies with the Christian God according to the Acts of the Apostles: Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown god”. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you’.9

believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other new spiritual things’ (Plato, Apology, 24b, in Plato, Complete Works, John M. Cooper, ed., George Grube, trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), pp. 17–37). 8 On the wider question of the presence of doxastic atheism in the medieval Latin West, see Ian Logan, ‘Christian Europe’ in Stephen Bullivant and Michael Ruse, eds., The Cambridge History of Atheism, Volume 1, Part ii: Atheisms in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 139–158. 9 Acts 17:22–23 (New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition). In fact, Paul goes on to quote approvingly from the poet Aratus who says of Zeus, ‘For we are also his offspring’. See Aratus, Phaenomena, revised edition, Gilbert Mair, trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1955), pp. 207 ll. 1–5: ‘From Zeus let us begin; him do we mortals never leave unnamed; full of Zeus are all the streets and all the market-places of men; full is the sea and the havens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring’.

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In De Doctrina Christiana, Augustine echoes this thought, precisely where he hints at Anselm’s P formula: Now although he alone is thought of as the god of gods, he is also thought of by those who imagine, invoke, and worship other gods, whether in heaven or on earth, in so far as their thinking strives to attain to something, than which there is nothing better or more exalted [ut aliquid, quo nihil sit melius atque sublimius, illa cogitatio conetur attingere].10 Of course, even if Anselm’s fool is a doxastic atheist, the question remains whether he is a ‘factual’ or ‘logical’ atheist, i.e., someone who, denying God’s existence, accepts or otherwise the logical coherence of the concept of God. I shall not address this question in this chapter.11 Whatever the status of the fool’s doxastic atheism, Anselm is unlikely to have had direct personal knowledge of such atheists, as far as we can tell. One possible source of such a personal knowledge on Anselm’s part is closed to us—we do not know what accounts of doubt and unbelief he came across in the confessional. Like his contemporaries Gilbert Crispin and Ralph of Battle, Anselm was aware of the existence of doubters and unbelievers.12 However, there is no evidence that P argument was a response to a personal encounter with atheists. Rather it represents a reflection on questions raised by his reading of Psalms 13 and 52, such as: how someone can be said to think the non-existence of God, when God’s non-existence is unthinkable; and what the implications are of the fact that the psalmist identifies denial of God with foolishness.13

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Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Teaching, Roger Green, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 11 (Book i, vii, 7, 15). Translation amended. He goes on to say, ‘it is impossible to find anyone who believes that God is a thing than which there exists something better’ (Book i, vii, 7, 16). But see Maxwell John Charlesworth, St. Anselm’s Proslogion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), p. 57, who suggests that Anselm is arguing against the factual, rather than logical, atheist. See Gilbert’s dialogue, Disputatio Christiani cum Gentili in The Works of Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster, Anna Sapir Abulafia and Gillian R. Evans, eds. (London: British Academy/Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 61–87; and Ralph’s dialogue, De Nesciente et Sciente in Ralph von Battle, Dialoge Zur Philosophischen Theologie: Lateinisch Deutsch, Bernd Goebel, Samu Niskanen, and Sigbjørn Sønnesyn, eds. and trans. (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2015), pp. 242–491. But note that for Ralph ‘nesciens’ may signify a not-knower, rather than a denier. See Anselm dcd16 (aoo, i.261.25), where the student says to the master at one point: ‘Credentem me fecisti scire quod nesciens credebam’. (‘You have caused me, a believer, to know what I, not-knowing, believed’.) My translation. See Logan, Reading, p. 199.

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Anselm and Classical Atheism

Although there are only a few identifiable references from non-Christian sources in Anselm’s writings, there are sufficient to indicate some awareness of the pre-Christian world—though how directly it is impossible to say.14 Such material might have been derived from florilegia or schoolbooks. Anselm had little or no Greek, and little of the legacy of ancient Greek philosophy was available in Latin translation in Anselm’s time.15 Some Latin accounts of Greek thought were available, for instance in some of Cicero’s works, including De Natura Deorum, the Tusculan Disputations, and the Academica Priora (Lucullus).16 Thus, Anselm may have been aware of the passage in Cicero’s De Natura Deorum, i:1, in which he mentions, but does not give an account of, Protagoras’ agnosticism and the atheism of Diagorus of Melos and Theodorus of Cyrene. There does not appear to have been any interest in atomism in Anselm’s milieu, nor in the agnosticism of Protagoras, nor in the rejection of popular notions of

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See Logan, Reading, pp. 8–13. In spite of his fashionable use of Greek neologisms as the titles of two of his books. Cf. Walter Berschin and Jerold Frakes, Greek Letters and the Latin Middle Ages: From Jerome to Nicholas of Cusa (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 988), p. 33. Little Greek philosophy was available apart from the Aristotle’s Categories and On interpretation (translated by Boethius) and parts of Plato’s Timaeus (translated by Cicero and Calcidius). Euclid’s Geometry was also available. Birger Munk Olsen, L’étude des auteurs classiques latins aux xie et xiie siècles, 4 volumes (in 6) (Paris: Éditions Du c.n.r.s., 1982–2014), records eight manuscripts containing De natura deorum copied between the ninth and eleventh centuries. See Vol. 1, pp. 180 f. [B152], 195f. [C200], 199f. [B210], 200f. [B211], 210 [C241], 241 [B338], 296 [B513], 300 f. [B528]. See also the discussion concerning the Corpus Leidense in Vol. 4:1, pp. 305 f. For further discussion of the possibility that Anselm was acquainted with Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods, see John A. Demetracopoulos, ‘The Stoic Background to the Universality of Anselm’s Definition of “God” in Proslogion 2: Boethius’ Second Commentary on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione ad 16a7–11’ in Alessandro Musco et al., eds., Universality of Reason. Plurality of Philosophies in the Middle Ages, Volume ii.1 Comunicazioni latine (Palermo: Officina di Studi Medievali, 2012), pp. 121–138, esp. 134–137. On the Tusculan Disputations, see Leighton Reynolds, ed., Texts and transmission: a survey of the Latin classics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 135: ‘Predominantly a school text bearing on Platonic cosmology (…). Though known in Bamberg, the Tusculans primarily circulated through the Loire houses. The role of this area in the dissemination of the text can be clearly seen in the library catalogues and surviving manuscripts of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, by which time the Tusculan Disputations were well established and assured of survival’. For manuscripts containing the Academica Priora copied between the ninth and eleventh centuries, see Munk Olsen, L’étude, Vol. 1, pp. 180f. [B152], 181 [B153], 199f. [B210], 200 f. [B211], 241f. [B338], 311 [B563].

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the gods in Prodicus.17 In the De Natura Deorum, Cicero describes Diogenes the Cynic as saying that ‘the prosperity and good fortune of the wicked (…) disprove the might and power of the gods entirely’.18 Again, in the same work, Cicero presents the arguments of Carneades, the head of the Academy, that ‘no living thing is eternal’, and that ‘God then is neither rational nor possessed of any of the virtues: but such a god is inconceivable’.19 Given the loss of Plato’s dialogues from the medieval world, Anselm would not have known of the detailed discussions of atheism and its cures in Plato’s Laws. It is also possible that Anselm was aware of Lucretius’ exposition of epicurean materialism in De Rerum Natura.20 Anselm could also have come across criticism of epicurean philosophy in the works of Lactantius, Jerome and Ambrose, as well as in Cicero and Augustine. Additionally, some knowledge of platonism, atomism, scepticism, stoicism, epicureanism, euhemerism, etc., would have been available from Augustine. An obvious candidate for a classical influence on Anselm’s philosophical thought is the passage in Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones, where Seneca uses the phrase, ‘qua nihil maius cogitari potest’, to describe the magnitude of the world, even though there is no direct evidence that Bec possessed a manuscript con-

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Protagoras, On the Gods, is alleged to have argued that we cannot know whether the gods exist or not and so is to be regarded as an agnostic rather than atheist. See David Sedley, ‘From the Pre-Socratics to the Hellenistic Age’ in Bullivant and Ruse, Handbook of Atheism, pp. 139–151, esp. p. 141. On Prodicus, see Cicero, De Natura Deorum; Academica, revised edition, Harris Rackham, trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1951), pp. 112– 115 (i, xlii, 118–119). Note that in the many references to Prodicus in Plato’s dialogues, there is no suggestion of atheism. Cicero, Natura, p. 375 (iii, xxxvi, 88–89). Cicero, Natura, p. 316 (iii, xiii, 34): ‘nullum igitur animal aeternum est’. (Amended translation); Cicero, Natura, p. 323 (iii, xv, 39). See Reynolds, Texts, p. 220: ‘It would seem that Lucretius emerged towards the end of the eighth century (…) in the Carolingian court’. Quotations occur in two florilegia and in a letter written from St Gall. There was a copy at Murbach in the ninth century. ‘Then, despite this promising start, Lucretius went underground for the rest of the Middle Ages, an eclipse which may be partly explained by the passionately anti-religious nature of his message’. That said, the abbey of Lobbes obtained a copy in the early 12th century and he is listed in a 12th century catalogue from Corbie. William of Malmesbury shows no sign of being acquainted with this work, which, given William’s wide reading, reinforces the idea that Lucretius is more or less unknown at this time. See Rodney M. Thomson, ‘The reading of William of Malmesbury’, Revue bénédictine, 85 (1975), pp. 362–402. However, the works of Lactantius contain 25 direct quotes from Lucretius—see Luciano Landolfi, ‘Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus), De rerum natura’ in Brill’s New Pauly Supplements i—Volume 5: The Reception of Classical Literature, English ed. Matthijs H. Wibier (2012).

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taining this work in Anselm’s time.21 But Anselm does appear to be responding to the stoic identification of the world with God, making it clear in M that the summa magnitudo is not physical.22 Although we cannot be sure what works of Cicero Anselm was acquainted with, if only through Augustine, Cicero would constitute a source for his knowledge of atheistic ideas amongst the ancient philosophers.23 In De Civitate Dei, i, v, 9, Augustine twice identifies Cicero as presenting a position in the person of C. Aurelius Cotta with the implication that ‘there is no divine nature at all’. On the second occasion he writes: As for Cicero, we object to him even more than the Stoics do when he denies that the order of all causes is fixed and clearly known in the foreknowledge of God. Cicero must either deny that God exists—and this, in fact, is what he attempts to do in the name of Cotta in his work On the Nature of the Gods—or else, if he admits God’s existence while denying His foreknowledge, what he says amounts to nothing more than what “the

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There are three references to the Naturales Quaestiones in the two twelfth century catalogues from Bec contained in Avranches Ms 159, two in the list of books donated by Bishop Philip Harcourt (Gustav Becker, Catalogi Bibliothecarum Antiqui (Bonn: Max Cohen et filium, 1885), p. 202, items 104 and 110) and one in the other catalogue (Becker, Catalogi, p. 266, item 156). One of these copies may have predated the gift of Philip Harcourt in the mid-twelfth century. (See Giles E.M. Gasper, Anselm of Canterbury and his Theological Inheritance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), p. 93, for a discussion of the relation of the two catalogues.) We do not possess any catalogues from Anselm’s time, and the later catalogues are incomplete. As Marcia Colish points out, there are extant fifty or more manuscripts containing the Naturales Quaestiones, but none of them predates the twelfth century. (Marcia L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, Volume 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1990), p. 18.) However, this text was known in some form in the early medieval period, for it appears among some extracts from Seneca in a late ninth century manuscript (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 18961, part ii (foll. 25–46v)), which was originally from western France (Brittany or the lower Loire valley), suggesting the possibility that Anselm may have come across this text in a florilegium. It should be noted that the Munich manuscript contains what is probably a copyist’s error: ‘quia [rather than qua] nihil maius cogitari potest’. (See Harry Morrison Hine, ‘The Manuscript Tradition of Seneca’s Natural Questions: Addenda’, The Classical Quarterly, 42 (1992), pp. 558–562, p. 559). Anselm writes in M2 that his use of ‘magnus’ is not intended spatially as referring to some physical object, and, on that basis, Anselm is happy to use the terms ‘magnitudo’ (M15) and ‘summa magnitudo’ (M16) in relation to the supreme nature. For what Cicero might have been available, see Rodney M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2003), p. 207, and John O. Ward, ‘What the Middle Ages Missed of Cicero, and Why’ in William Altman, ed., Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Cicero (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 307–326.

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fool hath said in his heart: There is no God.” The fact is that one who does not foreknow the whole of the future is most certainly not God.24 Here we see one potential source for Anselm’s knowledge of atheism. After all, in P2, Anselm states that we believe (credimus) God to be something than which nothing greater can be thought, asking whether there is such a nature, ‘since the fool has said in his heart, “There is no God”?’ He then sets out to enlighten the fool. But who precisely is this fool who plays such a central, if brief, role in Anselm’s argument? The fool can be viewed in different ways: (i) as the doxastic believer and practical atheist; (ii) as the covert, doxastic atheist, who may appear to be a believer; (iii) as the doxastic atheist, who openly expresses his atheism. As others have pointed out, the audience for whom P was written was one of doxastic Christians and not unbelievers or atheists. Karl Barth says: ‘Certainly not one of Anselm’s writings appeals to us as being addressed directly to those outside that is as “apologetic” in the modern sense’.25 Yet, it is the doxastic unbeliever/atheist, who plays a central, if brief, role in P, similar perhaps to that of Aristotle’s ‘plant’ in Metaphysics Gamma.26 It may be the case that there are doxastic Christians who are practical atheists, but they do not appear to be Anselm’s target. As Anselm points out in E136, Catholics should be able to provide arguments to unbelievers that demonstrate the rationality of what they believe, arguments which are for use against unbelievers and not Catholics. In addition, he makes it clear to the anonymous author of the Pro Insipiente (pi) that the way he responds to him differs from how he would respond to an atheist, precisely because pi is the work of a self-proclaimed Catholic and not a ‘fool’.27

4

The Exegesis of the Fool of Psalms 13 and 52

The ‘identification’ of the doxastic status of the fool in Psalms 13 and 52 has a long exegetical history in Christian thought, in which different types are revealed:

24 25 26 27

Augustine of Hippo, The City of God: Books i–vii, Demetrius Zema and Gerald Walsh, trans. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), pp. 261 f. Karl Barth, Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Anselm’s Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of his Theological Scheme, trans. Ian Robertson (London: scm Press, 1960), pp. 62 f. 1006a15. See R1 & R10. In doing so, he appears to be criticizing the title of the work.

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The fool denies God’s power or some other attribute and, implicitly, God Himself. 2. He is the morally culpable believer, who behaves as if there is no God— the practical atheist. 3. He represents the Jewish people and others who reject the divinity of Christ. 4. He represents the Gentiles who believe in false gods. 5. He is the doxastic atheist, whether covert or not—but this last type plays a surprisingly small role in the exegetical history.28 It is worth pointing out here that ‘There is no God’ is not the only possible translation of the Vulgate, ‘Non est Deus’. It can also be translated as ‘He is no God’ or ‘He is not God’. This nuance is lost in modern, non-Latin translations. But early medieval Latin Christians were far more likely to encounter those who denied Christ’s divinity, e.g., Jews or Muslims, than those who denied God’s existence, and were thus more likely to interpret the text as a rejection of the divinity of Christ than of divinity per se, even allowing for the fact that the two denials could co-exist. In his Exposition on the Psalms, Augustine presents distinct interpretations of Psalms 13 and 52. He employs the term imprudens rather than insipiens in both, though, elsewhere, he refers to the insipiens when commenting on the passages in question.29 For Augustine, the imprudens of Psalm 13 is like those ‘profane and abominable philosophers, who hold perverse and false opinions about’ God, but dare not deny His existence out loud—a covert doxastic atheist.30 But, in his comment on Psalm 52, Augustine treats such a doxastic atheist as a rarity, and suggests a more commonly encountered type—‘ill-living people’ who ‘believe in God, to the extent that they suppose what they do is acceptable to God’.31 In doing so they deny God:

28

29 30 31

In his analysis of the patristic and medieval exegesis of Psalm 13, Gilbert Dahan identifies several strands of interpretation of the fool: (i) the historical individual, e.g., the Assyrian king or Rabshakeh, who denies God of Israel’s power; (ii) the morally culpable; (iii) the Jewish people; and (iv) the Gentiles. According to Dahan, Anselm does not follow these relativizing accounts, but gives an absolutist interpretation of the fool’s denial of God. See Gilbert Dahan, ‘En marge du Proslogion de Saint Anselme: l’exégèse patristique et médiévale du Psaume 13’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge, 57 (1990), pp. 11–29, p. 12. See De Libero Arbitrio, 2, 2, 5, 13 & 2, 18, 47, 180; De Civitate Dei, i, v, 9; De Praedestinatione Sanctorum, 24; Contra Iulianum Opus Imperfectum, iii, 9. Augustine of Hippo, The Works of Saint Augustine: Exposition of the Psalms 1–32, Volume iii/15, Maria Boulding, ed. (New York: New York City Press, 2000), p. 175. Doxastic atheists he declares are ‘rarum hominum genus’. Augustine of Hippo, The Works

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For if he is God, he is just; and if he is just, injustice displeases him, iniquity displeases him. And so if you think iniquity pleasing to him, you are denying God; for if he is a God to whom iniquity is offensive, but he does not seem to you to be a God offended by iniquity, and there is no other God but the God who is offended by iniquity, it follows that when you say, “God looks favorably on my iniquities,” you are saying nothing else but, God does not exist.32 In De Libero Arbitrio, Augustine introduces the fool again. He asks his interlocutor, Evodius, how he would respond if the Psalmist’s fool were to say to him ‘There is no God’, and that he wanted to know whether Evodius’ belief was true. Augustine asks: You would not turn your back on him, would you? Would you not think he should somehow be convinced [persuadendum] of what you hold resolutely, especially if he eagerly wanted to know it rather than to persist in quarrelling with you?33 Here Augustine identifies the fool as a doxastic atheist to be taken seriously if he is well-intentioned. For Cassiodorus, Psalm 13 refers to the Jewish people’s rejection of Christ’s divinity, ‘Non est Deus’ meaning ‘He is not God’, as it does for Pseudo-Jerome and Arnobius the Younger.34 For Cassiodorus, Psalm 52 has a more general application to ‘all unbelieving people’ (‘ad omnes incredulos populos’).35 He introduces a categorical syllogism into his exposition: The foolish have been corrupted and are abominable in their desires. All who have been corrupted and made abominable in their desires say in their hearts, There is no God. Therefore the foolish say in their hearts, There is no God.36

32 33

34 35 36

of Saint Augustine: Exposition of the Psalms 51–72, Volume iii/17, Maria Boulding, ed. (New York: New York City Press, 2001), p. 32. Augustine, Exposition of the Psalms 51–72, pp. 32–33. Augustine of Hippo, On the Free Choice of the Will, On Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings, Peter King, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 33 (2, 2, 5, 13). Cassiodorus, Expositio in Psalmum xiii in pl 70, 103D–104A; Pseudo-Jerome, Breviarium in Psalmos, Ps 13 in pl 26, 850B–C; Arnobius, Commentarii in Psalmos in pl 53, 340A–D. Cassiodorus, Expositio in Psalmum lii in pl 70, 377B–381B. Cassiodorus, Expositio, pl 70, 378A: ‘Insipientes corrupti sunt, et abominabiles facti sunt

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This first part of the psalm is directed against the foolish, i.e., those who reject the rules that bind Catholics (‘nec catholicis regulis acquiescit’). It is the use of the middle term ‘corrupti’ that identifies them as unbelievers or heretics, for it is corruption not to have right belief in God (‘nam Deo recte non credidisse corruptio est’). Cassiodorus is explicit that this text does not apply to those within the Church, i.e., to faithful Catholics, but to those outside religion (‘extra religionem positi’), who persist in detestable obduracy (‘in detestabili obstinatione perdurant’) and are blinded by nefarious opinions (‘nefariis persuasionibus excaecantur’). Here the fool is not necessarily a doxastic atheist, but an opponent of the Church whether doxastically or practically. In his Exposition of the Christian Faith, Ambrose recognises different interpretations of the fool as referring to Jews, Gentiles or the devil, seeing the Arians’ rejection of Christ’s divinity as even more foolish: Thus let the followers of Arius and Photinus speak. ‘I deny Thy Godhead’. To whom the Lord will make answer: ‘The fool hath said in his heart: There/He is no God’.37 Elsewhere in his commentary on Psalm 48, Ambrose identifies the insipiens of Psalm 13 with the person of evil intent, as distinct from the person who simply thinks stupidly (the stultus): The stupid man is he who knows nothing and thinks stupid thoughts; the fool, he who knows with wicked intent. The fool has said that there is no God. He is culpably wicked because, though he knows what is just, he commits iniquity in the evil of his own heart. He is also dishonest. Again, not because he does not know what honesty is, but because he would wish to destroy honesty.38 In his commentary on Job 27:2, Gregory the Great identifies the fool as someone whose unbelief arises out of adversity, or who believes that God is unknowable

37

38

in voluntatibus suis. Omnes qui corrupti sunt et abominabiles facti sunt in voluntatibus suis, dicunt in corde suo: Non est Deus. Insipientes igitur dicunt in corde suo: Non est Deus’. My translation. Ambrose of Milan, Exposition of the Christian Faith in Some of The Principal Works of St Ambrose, Henry De Romestin, trans., Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Volume 10 (Oxford: Parker and Company, 1896), p. 239 (Book ii, 13, 117). Translation amended. Íde Ní Riain, Commentary of Saint Ambrose on Twelve Psalms (Dublin: Halcyon, 2000), p. 293. Translation amended.

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or indifferent to human affairs.39 And similarly in his commentary on Job 21:15, prefiguring Ralph of Battle’s ‘nesciens’ (see below), he sees the fool as someone lost in the immediacy of the material: For the mind of man being miserably discharged without, is so dissipated in things corporeal, as neither to return to itself within, nor to be able to think of Him, Who is invisible. Thus carnal men setting at nought spiritual commands, because they do not see God with bodily sight, one time or another come to this pass, that they even imagine Him not to be. Hence it is written, The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.40 This tradition continues into Anselm’s time and beyond, and we see Rupert of Deutz in his Commentary on Job identifying the rejector of Job 21 with the Psalmist’s fool.41 On the other hand, in the ninth century, for Sedulius Scottus, the fool of both Psalms 13 and 52 refers to the Jews, because they deny God, not in words, but in deeds.42 Bruno of Carinthia (or Würzburg), in the eleventh century, collates the opinions of Cassiodorus, Pseudo-Jerome and Augustine. Here too the fool is equated with those who reject Christ’s divinity, such as the Jewish people; but also with the Gentiles whose minds are corrupted and build gods of wood, and with morally culpable doxastic believers, who think their evil actions are pleasing to God.43 On the other hand, Otloh of St Emmeram sees in his own doubting a foolishness of the soul or mind (insipientia animi), which he equates with that of the fool of the Psalms.44 Here, ‘far from suggesting an inflow of reason into the mind of the believer, doubt is figured primarily as a state of profound unreason, even as a descent into madness’.45 39

40 41

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43 44 45

Moralia in Job, Part 4, Book xviii, Chapter 2. Translation from Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job, Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, James Bliss, trans. (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1844), Vol. 2, p. 318. On Job 21:15. Moralia in Job, Part 3, Book 15, Chapter 46, Vol. 2, pp. 205 f. Rupert of Deutz, Super Job Commentarius in pl 168, 1053c–d: ‘ “Quis est,” inquiunt, “Omnipotens, ut serviamus illi?” subaudi nullus. “Dixit enim insipiens in corde suo: non est Deus”.’ Sedulius Scottus, Collectanea in omnes B. Pauli espitolas. In epistolam ad Romanos, ch. 3, in pl 103, 41A–B: ‘Quaeritur sane quomodo Judaei dixerint non esse Deum, ut in fronte ipsius psalmi legitur: Dixit insipiens in corde suo, Non est Deus, non utique verbo, sed opere: nam quem confitentur se nosse, factis autem negant’. See Bruno of Carinthia [Bruno of Würzburg], Expositio Psalmorum in pl 142, 81C [Psalmus xiii], and pl 142, 210D [Psalmus lii]. Otloh of St Emmeram, Libellus de suis tentationibus in pl 146, 41B–D. See also his Liber de cursu spirituali in pl 146, 226B–D. Hannah Williams, ‘Composing the mind: doubt and divine inspiration in Otloh of St

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In the eleventh century, the fool is also identified with ecclesial and theological opponents. In his Letter to Hermann, Bishop of Metz (1076), defending the excommunication of Henry iv, Pope Gregory vii likens the behaviour of Henry to that of the fool: He too feared not to incur the penalty of excommunication by dealing with followers who had been excommunicated for the heresy of Simony nor to draw others into excommunication through their dealings with him. How can we think of such things but in the words of the Psalmist: “The fool hath said in his heart there is no God,” or again: “They are all gone astray in their wills”.46 In a similar vein, Durandus of Troarn likens Berengar to the fool in his denial of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist.47 In his De Altaris Sacramento, Gilbert Crispin also equates denial of the real presence to the denial of God’s existence, since this is to deny that the God who created out of nothing could change something that already exists.48 Among Anselm’s other contemporaries, Bruno, founder of the Carthusians, identifies the fool of Psalm 13 with the Jews and the fool of Psalm 52 with both Jews and Gentiles, in each case because they reject Christ’s divinity.49 Bruno Astensis (or of Segni) takes a similar line in seeing the fool of Psalm 13 as the Jews who reject the divinity of the Christ foretold by the scriptures. Furthermore, Psalm 52 can be understood as referring to the Gentiles who do not know God, but more particularly to the Jews who seeing Christ in human form believed him to be only human and not divine.50 However, in his commentary on Psalm 48, the latter Bruno identifies the fool of Psalm 13 with unbelieving men (infideles homines).51 By the mid-twelfth century, we find an interpretation in the exegesis of Psalm 52 by Pseudo-Bede, which recalls Augustine’s criticism of Cicero.52 The fool refers to those who do not believe in

46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Emmeram’s Book of Temptations’, European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire, 16 (2009), pp. 855–873, p. 858. Gregory vii, The Correspondence of Pope Gregory vii: Selected Letters from the Registrum, Ephraim Emerton, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 102 f. Durandus of Troarn, De Corpore et Sanguine Domini in pl 149, 1394c–d. See Gilbert Crispin, De Altaris Sacramento in Abulafia and Evans, Works, p. 129 (§ 34). Bruno the Carthusian, Expositio in Psalmos in pl 152, 684A [Psalm xiii] & 874B [Psalm lii]. See Bruno Astensis [Bruno of Segni], Expositio in Psalmos in pl 164, 735D–0736A [Psalm xiii] & 887B–C [Psalm lii]. Bruno Astensis, Expositio in Psalmos in pl 164, 870B–C [Psalm xlviii]. Pseudo-Bede, De psalmorum libro exegesis in pl 93, 760A.

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God’s future providence.53 Others too say that there is no God, but do so secretly in their hearts, since God’s existence is universally accepted. Like Augustine he suggests that those, who think their sinfulness is pleasing to God, destroy God by destroying His justice. Peter Damian makes frequent use of the Psalmist’s fool in his writings, employing different exegetical tropes. He identifies the fool with particular individuals, with fallen angels, and with those who are morally culpable. Thus, writing on behalf of and in the name of Pope Leo ix, he says of those involved in the plunder of the property of deceased bishops: Surely, if the despoiler of the Church believed that the Son of God is truly the immortal bishop, (…) he would not dare to commit such a wicked and sacrilegious crime before his very eyes. But truly in him is fulfilled what was said by the psalmist: ‘The fool says in his heart, “There is no God” ’.54 In Peter’s critique of clerical wealth addressed to Pope Alexander ii, citing Proverbs 26:8 (‘It is like binding a stone in a sling to give honour to a fool’ [nrsvace]), he comments on the use of the word ‘stone’: And what do we mean by stone, if not the obdurate, stolid and insensible mind of him who, while not believing with certain faith that God exists, places all that he hopes for in some earthly possessions? Of him the prophet says, ‘The impious fool said in his heart, “There is no God”.’ But such a fool is honored when someone dedicated not to God but to money is promoted to high ecclesiastical office.55 He equates the fool with the fallen angels, whose response to the destruction of the gates of hell, and to the angels’ acclamation, ‘Lift up your gates, O princes’, is to cry, ‘Who is this King of Glory?’56 In his Letter 119 (De Divina Omnipotentia),

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Note what Augustine says in De Civitate Dei, i, v, 9: ‘for it is plain nonsense for a man to admit that God exists and then to deny that He can know the future’ (Augustine, City of God, p. 256). Letter 35 in Peter Damian, Letters 31–60, Owen Blum, trans. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1990), pp. 61–63, p. 62. Letter 98 in Peter Damian, Letters 91–120, Owen Blum, trans. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), pp. 87–102, p. 99. Peter Damian, Sermo xl: In Assumptione Beatissimae Mariae Virginis in pl 144, 718C: ‘“Attollite portas principes vestras”; illi, qui superbiae lapsu irremediabili corruerunt, ignoratione dedignativa retorquent: “Quis est iste rex gloriae?” ’

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Peter suggests that it is the threat of chastisement that prevents the wicked from saying ‘that God does not exist, or that he has no concern for human affairs’.57 And another use can be found in Letter 120 to Henry iv: Let him who dares to provoke the prince of heaven to battle, experience royal majesty when it is aroused, and fear the earthly prince. And since “the fool says in his heart: there is no God,” let him come to learn of the devotion to the Christian faith that resides in the king’s heart as he valiantly fights on the side of the army of God.58 This brief survey of the exegesis of Psalms 13 and 52 suggests that Anselm’s fool, the doxastic atheist, is closer to the Cotta of Augustine’s Cicero than to the mainstream exegetical tradition. In order to understand the significance of the role Anselm gives to the Psalmist’s fool as the doxastic atheist in P, it will prove helpful to consider the less positive views taken by Anselm’s older and influential contemporaries, Peter Damian and Lanfranc, on the place of the liberal arts in discussing the divine.

5

The Liberal Arts: Peter Damian and Lanfranc

In Letter 117 (De Sancta Simplicitate), written [post 1064] at the time that Anselm was teaching the liberal arts in Bec, Peter claims that secular learning is unfit for monastic life. He is not interested in addressing the doxastic unbeliever via a shared philosophical wisdom, and, in his Letter 28 (Dominus Vobiscum), he compares the wise ignorance (sapiens imperitia) of faith with the stupid wisdom (stulta sapientia) of the philosophers and dialecticians.59 Secular learning involves not study, but stupidity: Confess, my son, that you are frequently assailed and endure the darkness of disturbing thoughts, because, while having a teachable mind and a facility for learning, you sought first of all to approach the light of truth before learning the blind wisdom of the philosophers, and you fled to the

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Damian, Letters 91–120, pp. 344–386, p. 377. Damian, Letters 91–120, pp. 387–396, p. 394. In Letter 28, Peter Damian produces a list of exponents of the liberal arts, whom he renounces, including Plato, Pythagoras, Nicomachus, Euclid, Cicero and Demosthenes, and their followers. Peter Damian, Letters 1–30, Owen Blum, trans. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), pp. 255–289.

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desert, following in the footsteps of the fishermen, before busying yourself in—I will not say the study but—the stupidity of the liberal arts.60 He identifies the devil as the ‘cunning teacher’ (artifex doctor), responsible for man’s unrestrained desire for knowledge (cupiditas scientiae).61 The first, dramatic effect of this was his pluralizing of the word ‘God’ through declination, infecting the human race with polytheism, and bringing grammar and theology into conflict.62 In Letter 119, he is clear that there is a place for the liberal arts, but only in the role of a maidservant: Clearly, conclusions drawn from the arguments of dialecticians and rhetoricians should not be thoughtlessly addressed to the mysteries of divine power; dialecticians and rhetoricians should refrain from persistently applying to the sacred laws the rules devised for their progress in using the tools of the syllogism or fine style or oratory, and from setting their inevitable conclusions against the power of God. However, if the techniques of the human arts be used in the study of revelation, they must not arrogantly usurp the rights of the mistress, but should humbly assume a certain ancillary role, as a maidservant to her lady, so as not to be led astray in assuming the lead, nor to lose the enlightenment of deepest virtue, nor to abandon the right road to truth by attending only to the superficial meaning of words.63 Peter’s view is that God does not need human grammar to draw men to himself. He did not send out philosophers and orators, but simple fishermen. The grace of the Holy Spirit more than makes up for a lack of secular learning.64 We do not need the wisdom of reprobates and pagans, but divine Wisdom: ‘For who, indeed, ever lights a lamp to see the sun?’65 On Peter Damian’s account viewed from the perspective of a monastic community, it is the exponent of the liberal arts who may constitute the fool. After all, the Psalmist says, ‘Omnes declinaver60 61 62 63 64

65

Damian, Letters 91–120, pp. 318–331, pp. 318f. Translation amended. Damian, Letters 91–120, p. 319. See Jean Gonsette, Pierrre Damien et la culture profane (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1956), pp. 28–30. Damian, Letters 91–120, p. 356. Peter gives examples of a number of clerics whose inane wisdom does not stop them living like fools. In Letter 117, he quotes Ecclesiasticus 19:21: ‘Better is a man of little wisdom and of less understanding, but who fears God, than he who has great understanding and violates the law of the Most High’ (Damian, Letters 91–120, p. 327). Letter 117 in Damian, Letters 91–120, p. 328.

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unt’.66 It is clear that Peter and Anselm place different emphases on the role of dialectic, even allowing for the former’s exaggerated rhetorical style. In spite of their shared deference towards the authority of Scripture, there could be no place for Peter for the kind of dialectical arguments that Anselm employs in M and P. Another critical, if more nuanced, view can also be found in Anselm’s community in the person of Lanfranc. Lanfranc was already a skilled exponent of the liberal arts when he entered the monastic life at Bec, but had already begun to turn his attention from dialectic to the study of scripture by the time of Anselm’s arrival at Bec.67 In a gloss on 1Corinthians 2:6 (‘the princes of this world’), Lanfranc refers to Cicero’s Topics and to his calling Aristotle the prince of philosophers.68 However, he does so in a context of commenting on a passage, in which Paul suggests that wisdom of the philosophers is superseded by the wisdom of God. Yet, for Lanfranc, Paul himself is a more than competent exponent of the liberal arts, and Lanfranc treats him as such in the analysis of his texts. In his commentary on Colossians, 2:4, Lanfranc writes: ‘that is, with the loftiness of his words and syllogisms and other kinds of disputation; [Paul] does not condemn the art of disputing, but the perverse use of disputation’.69 But Lanfranc goes on to mention how philosophers deny that a man can be born of a virgin.70 Here he appears to be referring to the kind of treatment

66 67

68

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Psalms 13:3 & 52:4. See the letter of Pope Nicholas ii to Lanfranc (1059–1061): ‘We send you our beloved sons to cherish and instruct in dialectic and rhetoric (…) But if (as we have heard) you are taken up with the study of the Bible [divina pagina], even so we enjoin you to teach them’. Quoted in Margaret Gibson, Lanfranc of Bec (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 39; see pl 143, 1349D. See also Margaret Gibson, ‘Lanfranc’s Notes on Patristic Texts’, Journal of Theological Studies, 22 (1971), pp. 435–450, p. 435: ‘In 1059 Lanfranc was turning away from the artes to the divina pagina’. However, as Lanfranc turned his attention to the Psalms and the Pauline Epistles, the ‘artes were not superseded’, but ‘were more necessary than ever’ (Gibson, Lanfranc, p. 39). Lanfranc of Canterbury, In Omnes Pauli Epistolas Commentarii Cum Glossula Interjecta in pl 150, 161. For further evidence of Lanfranc’s knowledge of Cicero, see Margaret Gibson, ‘Lanfranc’s Commentary on the Pauline Epistles’, Journal of Theological Studies, 22 (1971), pp. 86–112, p. 104 n. 4. Lanfranc, Commentarii, pl 150, 323B: ‘id est, in altitudine verborum, et syllogismorum, et aliorum generum disputantium; non artem disputandi vituperat, sed perversum disputantium usum’. My translation. Lanfranc, Commentarii, pl 150, 323B: ‘Tradiderunt philosophi (…) hominem non potuisse nasci ex virgine’. But as Henry Chadwick points out, ‘Boethius is also aware that inferences valid under the rules of pure logic can be quite false when asserted of the real world’. (Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 112.)

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found in Cicero and Boethius, who both employ the following argument: ‘If she has borne a child, she has lain with a man’ [‘Si peperit, cum viro concubuit’].71 Again, in his commentary on Titus 1:1, Lanfranc identifies Paul’s reference to ‘acknowledgement of the truth’ (agnitionem veritatis) with the revealed Christian doctrines of Christ’s incarnation, virgin birth and death and resurrection, each of which he identifies elsewhere as opposed by the norms of philosophy and dialectic.72 This is the wisdom of God that is stupidity to the wise. The fact that authoritative texts of the liberal arts make use of examples, involving positions incompatible with the central beliefs of Catholics, was taken by Lanfranc as an indication of the weakness of philosophy in addressing matters of faith, particularly of revealed doctrine. In his gloss on 1 Corinthians 1:17, Lanfranc points out how the conclusion of the syllogism, ‘God is immortal; but Christ is God; therefore Christ is immortal’, appears to involve Christ in a contradiction, for, ‘If he is immortal, he could not have died’.73 His own conclusion is that Christ’s divinity ‘is not to be proven by a syllogism, but can rather be undermined by such a method’.74 In practice, however, he is willing to identify and expound dialectical arguments in his sources, as long as it is in a way that cannot possibly lead to misapplication. The liberal arts can never be normative for matters of faith, and thus can never be given free reign.75 In fact, Lanfranc consistently employs dialectical analysis in his commentaries on Paul’s letters,

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73 74 75

Boethius’s De topicis differentiis, Eleonore Stump, trans. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978), p. 68; and Boethius’s In Ciceronis Topica, Eleonore Stump, trans. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 129. See also Cicero, De Inventione, i. Prior to his writings on the topics, Boethius accepted the doctrine of the virgin birth, see, for example, Boethius, De Fide Catholica in The Theological Tractates; The Consolation of Philosophy, Hugh Fraser Stewart et al., trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 67: ‘Virgin then she conceived, by the Holy Spirit, the incarnate Son of God, virgin she bore him, virgin she continued after his birth’. Peter Damian, Letter 119 (De Divina Omnipotentia), uses the example of the virgin birth to support his view of the limitations of dialectic (Damian, Letters 91–120, pp. 375f.). Manegold of Lautenbach, Contra Wolfelmum Coloniensem, xiv, also notes this problem. Lanfranc, Commentarii, pl 150, 367A–368A: ‘2. lanfr. Agnitionem veritatis. Veritas secundum pietatem, id est, Christianam religionem, est Creatorem creaturam factum, hominem de Virgine natum, mortuum resurrexisse, nosse’. Lanfranc, Commentarii, pl 150, 157B: ‘Deus immortalis, Christus autem Deus; Christus igitur immortalis’; ‘Si autem immortalis; mori non potuit’. My translations. Lanfranc, Commentarii, pl 150, 157C: ‘Non syllogistice probando, quia sic potius posset improbari’. My translation. See Toivo Holopainen, Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century (Leiden: Brill, 1996), p. 47. In fact, Lanfranc consistently employs dialectical analysis in his commentaries on Paul’s letters, and even in De Corpore. See, for example, his criticism of Berengar’s use of topics: Lanfranc of Canterbury, De Corpore et Sanguine Domini in pl 150, 417B–C.

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and even in De Corpore et Sanguine Domini, where he seeks to avoid the explicit use of dialectic, but nevertheless continues to argue dialectically, concealing this where he can by the use of equipollent propositions: Even if the subject-matter is such that it can be more clearly explained by dialectic, so far as possible I conceal this art by equipollency of propositions, lest I seem to put more trust in art than in truth and the authority of the holy Fathers.76 In his early proofs, Anselm is responding indirectly to Peter Damian, Lanfranc and perhaps others in his own community, who would place stricter limits on the exercise of the liberal arts in theological matters. Anselm stresses that his is a humble, not proud, desire to understand.77 But it is intended to produce, by the use of necessary reasons, arguments effective against unbelief, including doxastic atheism.78 This use is justified by Augustine’s words to Evodius in De Libero Arbitrio (see above). The case for the defence of Anselm’s fool is provided in pi, a short rejoinder to P. That the author of this work would have revealed himself as such, within the context of the medieval monastery or school, seems very unlikely. Going back to classical times there was a strong sentiment against producing such works, as exemplified in the remark of Balbus at the end of Cicero’s De Natura Deorum, Book ii: ‘For the habit of arguing against the gods, whether it be done from conviction or in pretence, is a wicked and an impious practice’.79 Anselm reacts more positively to pi in his Responsio, than he does to Roscelin in his De Incarnatione Verbi (div1), and in his letter to Bishop Fulk of Beauvais

76

77

78 79

Lanfranc, De Corpore, 7, pl 150, 417A. Translation from Gibson, Lanfranc, p. 88. What Lanfranc means by ‘equipollency of propositions’ is a matter of debate. It is possible that by this phrase he means no more than that he employs only those propositions required to convey his meaning, without the formal, syllogistic structures required to show their necessity. For his use of dialectical analysis, see also, for example, his criticism of Berengar’s use of topics, Lanfranc, De Corpore, pl 150, 417B–C. Throughout the Proslogion, Anselm asserts his desire to understand (intelligere), and at the end of the excitatio of chapter 1 he writes: ‘Lord, I do not attempt to penetrate Your height, for in no way do I compare my understanding to it; but I desire to understand to some extent Your truth, which my heart believes and loves. And indeed I do not seek to understand, so that I may believe, but I believe, so that I may understand. For I also believe this: that unless I believe, I shall not understand’. Translation from Logan, Reading, p. 32. Cf. Marcia L. Colish, The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge, revised edition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 81–91. Cicero, Natura, p. 285 (ii, lxvii, 168). Translation amended.

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(E136), where he suggests that anyone who does not believe will not be able to understand.80 He declares Roscelin anathema, adding that it is ‘most foolish’ (insipientissimum) to debate matters already most solidly determined with someone has no understanding of them.81 Whilst it is possible to fruitfully debate with unbelievers, giving reasons for the faith, it is not possible for those who do not have faith to understand, for understanding requires love.82 But as he indicates in R7, the unbeliever, who does not understand God and therefore denies Him, can still understand to some extent (aliquatenus) what ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’ means. As Anselm puts it in E136, unbelievers can be ‘shown by reason how irrationally they scorn us’.83 He concludes R7 by saying: Therefore, I did not unreasonably put forward “than which a greater could not be thought” against the fool to prove that God exists, since, whilst there was no way in which he understood the latter, he did understand the former in some way.84 Anselm does not reject rational debate with unbelievers, for he holds that the ‘faith has to be defended by reason against the impious’ and not against Christians.85

6

Conclusion

The lack of interest in doxastic atheism and its ‘confusion’, in particular, with the rejection of Christ’s divinity may derive from or be assisted by the ambiguity in the sentence ‘Non est Deus’. It is only with time that the question of unbelief as a general doxastic rejection of God, as opposed to practical atheism or the rejection of Christ’s divinity, comes to the fore in the early medieval exegetical tradition, and Anselm appears to have a role in that development.86 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

In R, Anselm describes his respondent is ‘no fool, but a catholic’ (R1), who is arguing through good will and not through malice (R10). See Logan, Reading, pp. 67, 84. E136, Anselm of Canterbury, The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, Walter Fröhlich, trans., Volume 1 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990), p. 315. Colish, Mirror, p. 88. E136 (Fröhlich, Letters, Volume 1, p. 315). Logan, Reading, p. 80. E136 (Fröhlich, Letters, Volume 1, p. 315). By the 12th century interpreters such as Radulphus Ardens are more prone to seeing the fool as an explicitly doxastic atheist. Thus, in his Homilia xxiv: Dominica Quarta Post Epi-

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Anselm thinks that when atheists deny God, they do not possess the same understanding of the notion of God as believers. However, they can be shown that their denial of the divine is irrational, because they can have some understanding of the meaning of ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’, in so far as, in Augustine’s terms, their thinking strives to attain to it [illa cogitatio conetur attingere].87 Anselm’s treatment of atheism marks both (i) a return to the late Latin period, recalling as he does in P the thinking of Augustine in De Libero Arbitrio and De Doctrina Christiana, and (ii) an anticipation of later developments, which in part arise from the interpretation of his argument (possibly a misinterpretation) as support for the claim that God’s existence is self-evident.88 It marks the beginning of the end of a tradition that includes Lanfranc, who writes in his De Corpore et Sanguine Domini: [A]s God is my witness, and my conscience, I would rather not propose nor respond to proposed dialectical questions and their solutions, when treating of divine matters.89 Of course, Lanfranc, like Peter Damian, is more than capable of dialectical reasoning. They possess a disinclination to argue dialectically concerning sacred matters, an attitude Anselm does not share. In this, though not a scholastic in the later medieval sense, Anselm anticipates the scholastics. But he also anticipates their demise, because unlike them he rarely deploys authorities as part of his philosophical and theological arsenal. He allows a role to reason that avoids such appeals to authority. Authority is the external measure, but not the internal driving force of his arguments. In that sense, Anselm anticipates the modern. Unintentionally, he also raises the question of the existence of God as it has not been raised before, opening himself up to the criticism that by arguing about God’s existence dialectically, he introduces doubt into the matter. For, after all, according to Boethius, dialectic concerns matters that are in doubt.90

87 88 89

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phanium, Radulphus identifies the fool of the Psalms as the doxastic atheist, as distinct from the polytheist and the heretics who deny his unity and invariability. See pl 155, 1755B. Augustine, On Christian Teaching, p. 11 (i, vii, 7, 17). See Dahan, ‘En marge’, p. 25. Lanfranc of Canterbury, On the Body and Blood of the Lord, Mark Vaillancourt, trans. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), pp. 43 f. Lanfranc, De Corpore, pl 150, 417A: ‘Sed testis mihi Deus est, et conscientia mea, quia in tractatu divinarum litterarum, nec proponere, nec ad propositas respondere cuperem dialecticas quaestiones vel earum solutiones’. ‘An argument is a reason that produces belief regarding something that was in doubt’. (In

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All this is foreseen by Cicero’s Cotta, who gives a very different meaning to the term ‘unum argumentum’: You did not really feel confident that the doctrine of the divine existence was as self-evident as you could wish, and for that reason you attempted to prove it with a number of arguments [multis argumentis]. For my part a single argument would have sufficed [Mihi enim unum sat erat], namely that it has been handed down to us by our forefathers. But you despise authority, and fight your battles with the weapon of reason (…). You adduce all these arguments to prove that the gods exist, and by arguing you render doubtful a matter which in my opinion admits of no doubt at all.91 In a sense the history of atheism in the medieval world is the pre-history of certain ideas that will lay the foundations for an atheistic world view. In this, the weakening of the hegemony of tradition and authority in philosophy and theology has an important role to play, and, consequently and ironically, so does Anselm.

Bibliography Primary Sources Ambrose of Milan, Exposition of the Christian Faith in Some of The Principal Works of St. Ambrose, Henry De Romestin, trans., Select Library of Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Volume 10 (Oxford: Parker and Company, 1896). Anselm of Canterbury, The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, Walter Fröhlich, trans., Volume 1 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990). Aratus, Phaenomena, revised edition, Gilbert Mair, trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1955). Arnobius the Younger, Commentarii in Psalmos in pl 53, 327C–570A. Augustine of Hippo, The City of God: Books i–vii, Demetrius Zema and Gerald Walsh, trans. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008).

91

Ciceronis Topica, p. 29. pl 64, 1048B: ‘Argumentum autem ratio est quae rei dubiae faciat fidem’.) Cicero, Natura, p. 295 (iii, iii, 9–10). Translation amended. For Anselm, the ‘unum argumentum’ refers to the self-sufficient dialectical argument for God. See the Preface to the Proslogion.

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Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Teaching, Roger Green, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Augustine of Hippo, On the Free Choice of the Will, On Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings, Peter King, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Augustine of Hippo, The Works of Saint Augustine: Exposition of the Psalms 1–32, Volume iii/15, Maria Boulding, ed. (New York: New York City Press, 2000). Augustine of Hippo, The Works of Saint Augustine: Exposition of the Psalms 51–72, Volume iii/17, Maria Boulding, ed. (New York: New York City Press, 2001). Augustine of Hippo, Sermones ad populum in pl 38, 23–994. Boethius, De Fide Catholica in Boethius, The Theological Tractates; The Consolation of Philosophy, Hugh Fraser Stewart et al., trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 52–71. Boethius’s De topicis differentiis, Eleonore Stump, trans. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978). Boethius’s In Ciceronis Topica, Eleonore Stump, trans. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988). Bruno Astensis [Bruno of Segni], Expositio in Psalmos in pl 164, 695B–1228C. Bruno of Carinthia [Bruno of Würzburg], Expositio Psalmorum in pl 142, 49A–530C. Bruno the Carthusian, Expositio in Psalmos in pl 152, 637B–1420C. Cassiodorus, Expositio in Psalmum xiii in pl 70, 103C–108B. Cassiodorus, Expositio in Psalmum lii in pl 70, 377B–381B. Cicero, De Natura Deorum; Academica, revised edition, Harris Rackham, trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1951). Durandus of Troarn, De Corpore et Sanguine Domini in pl 149, 1375–1424B. Gilbert Crispin, De Altaris Sacramento in The Works of Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster, Anna Sapir Abulafia and Gillian R. Evans, eds. (London: British Academy/Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 124–142. Gilbert Crispin, Disputatio Christiani cum Gentili in The Works of Gilbert Crispin, pp. 61– 87. Gregory vii, The Correspondence of Pope Gregory vii: Selected Letters from the Registrum, Ephraim Emerton, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job, Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, James Bliss, trans. (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1844). Justin Martyr, Saint, The first apology, The second apology, Dialogue with Trypho, Exhortation to the Greeks, Discourse to the Greeks, The monarchy; or the rule of God, Thomas Falls, ed. (New York: Christian Heritage, 1948). Lanfranc of Canterbury, De Corpore et Sanguine Domini in pl 150, 407A–442D. Lanfranc of Canterbury, In Omnes Pauli Epistolas Commentarii Cum Glossula Interjecta in pl 150, 101A–406A. Lanfranc of Canterbury, On the Body and Blood of the Lord, Mark Vaillancourt, trans. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009).

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Otloh of St Emmeram, Libellus de suis tentationibus in pl 146, 27–58C. Otloh of St Emmeram, Liber de cursu spirituali in pl 146, 139D–242C. Peter Damian, Sermo xl: In Assumptione Beatissimae Mariae Virginis in pl 144, 717A– 722C. Peter Damian, Letters 1–30, Owen Blum, trans. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989). Peter Damian, Letters 31–60, Owen Blum, trans. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1990). Peter Damian, Letters 91–120, Owen Blum, trans. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998). Plato, Apology in Plato, Complete Works, John M. Cooper, ed., George Grube, trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), pp. 17–37. Pseudo-Bede, De psalmorum libro exegesis in pl 93, 477B–1098C. Pseudo-Jerome, Breviarium in Psalmos in pl 26, 821C–1278. Radulphus Ardens, Homilia xxiv: Dominica Quarta Post Epiphanium in pl 155, 1753C– 1756B. Ralph of Battle, De Nesciente et Sciente in Ralph von Battle, Dialoge Zur Philosophischen Theologie: Lateinisch Deutsch, Bernd Goebel, Samu Niskanen, and Sigbjørn Sønnesyn, eds. and trans. (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2015), pp. 242–491. Rupert of Deutz, Super Job Commentarius in pl 168, 961–1196C. Sedulius Scottus, Collectanea in omnes B. Pauli epistolas. In epistolam ad Romanos in pl 103, 9B–128C.

Secondary Sources Abulafia, Anna Sapir and Gillian R. Evans, eds., The Works of Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster (London: British Academy/Oxford University Press, 1986). Barth, Karl, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Anselm’s Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of his Theological Scheme, Ian Robertson, trans. (London: scm Press, 1960). Becker, Gustav, Catalogi Bibliothecarum Antiqui (Bonn: Max Cohen et filium, 1885). Berschin, Walter and Jerold Frakes, Greek Letters and the Latin Middle Ages: From Jerome to Nicholas of Cusa (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988). Bullivant, Stephen, ‘Defining “Atheism”’ in Stephen Bullivant and Michael Ruse, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Atheism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 11–21. Bullivant, Stephen, and Michael Ruse, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Atheism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Chadwick, Henry, Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). Charlesworth, Maxwell John, St. Anselm’s Proslogion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979).

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Colish, Marcia L., The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge, revised edition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983). Colish, Marcia L., The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, Volume 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1990). Dahan, Gilbert, ‘En marge du Proslogion de Saint Anselme: l’exégèse patristique et médiévale du Psaume 13’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge, 57 (1990), pp. 11–29. Demetracopoulos, John A., ‘The Stoic Background to the Universality of Anselm’s Definition of “God” in Proslogion 2: Boethius’ Second Commentary on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione ad 16a7–11’ in Alessandro Musco et al., eds., Universality of Reason. Plurality of Philosophies in the Middle Ages, Volume ii.1: Comunicazioni latine (Palermo: Officina di Studi Medievali, 2012), pp. 121–138. Gasper, Giles E.M., Anselm of Canterbury and his Theological Inheritance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). Gibson, Margaret, ‘Lanfranc’s Commentary on the Pauline Epistles’, Journal of Theological Studies, 22 (1971), pp. 86–112. Gibson, Margaret, ‘Lanfranc’s Notes on Patristic Texts’, Journal of Theological Studies, 22 (1971), pp. 435–450. Gibson, Margaret, Lanfranc of Bec (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978). Gonsette, Jean, Pierre Damien et la culture profane (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1956). Hine, Harry Morrison, ‘The Manuscript Tradition of Seneca’s Natural Questions: Addenda’, The Classical Quarterly, 42 (1992), pp. 558–562. Holopainen, Toivo, Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century (Leiden: Brill, 1996). Landolfi, Luciano, ‘Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus), De rerum natura’ in Brill’s New Pauly Supplements i—Volume 5: The Reception of Classical Literature, English ed. Matthijs H. Wibier (2012). Logan, Ian, ‘Christian Europe’ in Stephen Bullivant and Michael Ruse, eds., The Cambridge History of Atheism, Volume 1, Part ii: Atheisms in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 139–158. Logan, Ian, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion: the history of Anselm’s argument and its significance today (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009/London: Routledge, 2016). Munk Olsen, Birger, L’étude des auteurs classiques latins aux xie et xiie siècles, 4 volumes (in 6) (Paris: Éditions Du c.n.r.s., 1982–2014). Ní Riain, Íde, Commentary of Saint Ambrose on Twelve Psalms (Dublin: Halcyon, 2000). Reynolds, Leighton, ed., Texts and transmission: a survey of the Latin classics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). Sedley, David, ‘From the Pre-Socratics to the Hellenistic Age’ in Bullivant and Ruse, The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, pp. 139–151.

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Thomson, Rodney M., ‘The reading of William of Malmesbury’, Revue bénédictine, 85 (1975), pp. 362–402. Thomson, Rodney M., William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2003). Ward, John O., ‘What the Middle Ages Missed of Cicero, and Why’ in William Altman, ed., Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Cicero (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 307–326. Williams, Hannah, ‘Composing the mind: doubt and divine inspiration in Otloh of St Emmeram’s Book of Temptations’, European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire, 16 (2009), pp. 855–873.

chapter 8

The Role of Spiritual Senses in the Argument of the Proslogion Michael Vendsel

While the importance of spiritual senses for patristic figures like Origen or scholastic figures like Bonaventure is widely acknowledged, far less attention has been given to their place in Anselm. In what follows, however, I argue that they play a pivotal role in the Proslogion (P) and its argument for the existence of God. To demonstrate this, part 1 summarizes how the concept of spiritual senses took shape in the time leading up to Augustine, part 2 looks at the role they play in his Confessions, part 3 argues that Anselm assigns them the same role in P, and part 4 looks at how that analysis should condition our interpretation of his argument for the existence of God.

1

The Spiritual Senses: An Overview

In order to summarize the development of the concept of spiritual senses in the time leading up to Augustine it will be helpful to begin by discussing what the term ‘spiritual senses’ refers to. In the opening paragraph of their book on the subject Paul Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley describe them as ‘certain features of human cognition that make perception-like contact with God possible’.1 Later they give a more expansive description: For the purposes of this volume, ‘spiritual senses’ (…) is an umbrella term covering a variety of overlapping, yet distinct, expressions in which ‘sense’ in general or a particular sensory modality (vision, audition, olfaction, touch, or taste) is typically qualified by reference to spirit (…), heart (…), soul (…), mind or intellect (…), inner [man] (…), or faith (…). [S]ome authors also refer to this perceptual capacity as a ‘divine sense’ (…) or a ‘sense of divinity’ (…).2 1 Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley, eds., The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 1. 2 Gavrilyuk and Coakley, Spiritual Senses, pp. 2–3.

© Michael Vendsel, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_010

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Following the lead of these two passages I take ‘spiritual senses’ to mean powers or faculties of the soul that enable it to experience God in a manner that is somehow analogous to seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, or touching a corporeal object. But having said that, why think that such modes of cognition exist? The idea that the soul might possess such faculties has roots as far back as Plato and Aristotle. In Republic vi Plato attempts to give Glaucon some sense of the Good by appealing to the relationship between vision and the sun: You know that, when we turn our eyes to things whose colors are no longer in the light of day but in the gloom of night, the eyes are dimmed and seem nearly blind, as if clear vision were no longer in them. Of course. Yet whenever one turns them on things illuminated by the sun, they see clearly, and vision appears in those very same eyes? Indeed. Well, understand the soul in the same way: When it focuses on something illuminated by truth and what is, it understands, knows, and apparently possesses understanding, but when it focuses on what is mixed with obscurity, on what comes to be and passes away, it opines and is dimmed, changes its opinions this way and that, and seems bereft of understanding. It does seem that way. So that what gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower is the form of the good.3 Plato is suggesting here that the Good is to the mind what the sun is to the eyes—that just as the light of the sun enables the eyes to see visible objects, so the Good enables the mind to know intelligible objects. For Plato, then, the mind’s power of understanding is akin to the power of sight—it is a sort of intellectual vision. Aristotle makes a similar observation in De Anima 3.4: If thinking is like perceiving, it must be either a process in which the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a process different

3 Plato, Republic vi, 508c–d in Plato, Complete Works, John M. Cooper, ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), p. 1129.

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from but analogous to that (…). Mind must be related to what is thinkable as sense is to what is sensible.4 He suggests here that cognition is structurally parallel to perception—that the dynamic at work in an act of knowing is comparable to the dynamic at work in an act of sensation. And significantly, he believes that this parallelism holds for all forms of sense perception, not just sight. In De Anima he claims that all sense experience has the same core structure: it involves an inner change brought about by an external agent, a potency within the perceiver that is brought to act through something outside that is already in act the relevant way. As he puts it: what has the power of sensation is potentially like what the perceived object is actually; that is, while at the beginning of the process of its being acted upon the two interacting factors are dissimilar, at the end the one acted upon is assimilated to the other and is identical in quality with it.5 This model holds for vision as well as for sound, smell, taste, and touch. And something parallel to it is also at work in cognition: just as that which has the power of sensation is assimilated to the perceivable object, so that which has the power of knowing is assimilated to the intelligible object. Broadly speaking, then, cognition is a kind of mental sensation.6 Having said that, however, it is important to note that Plato and Aristotle only ever speak of there being something like mental vision. Neither of them explicitly refers to the mind engaging in its own form of hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching. But while such language may be lacking in Plato and Aristotle, the Christian Scriptures are saturated with it, and especially in those places where they describe the soul’s experience of God. For example, Job boasts that he will look upon God from his flesh (Job 19:26) while Jesus promises that the

4 Aristotle, De Anima 3.4, 429a10–20. Translation by Richard McKeon in Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941), p. 589. 5 Aristotle, De Anima 2.5, 418a4–10, trans. McKeon, pp. 566–567. 6 It is important to acknowledge, of course, that Aristotle disagrees with Plato when it comes to the metaphysics of knowing. On his analysis the intelligible objects are within material particulars rather than being separate entities illumined by the form of the Good. And rather than being present in the mind at birth and subsequently recollected they are abstracted by the agent intellect after the mind acquires a phantasm through sense experience. But in spite of those differences, Aristotle agrees with Plato that thinking is parallel to perception, and he extends that parallelism so as to include all five of the senses.

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pure in heart will see God (Matthew 5:8). The voice of the Lord is constantly being heard by the prophets (Isaiah 1:10) and Israel is told that it will hear God rejoice with singing (Zephaniah 3:17). The Psalmist admonishes us to taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8) and he speaks of panting and thirsting for God like a deer does for water (Psalm 42:1–2). John claims to have touched with his hands what was from the beginning (1John 1:1), and Paul speaks of the aroma of Christ (2Corinthians 14–15).7 Across the Old and New Testaments, then, there is a continual use of every kind of sensory language to describe the soul’s experience of God. Of course, none of these passages pause to reflect on the metaphysics of the cognition they are describing—they simply allude to it and move on. For some early interpreters that meant that these are nothing more than cases of metaphor, similar to when we claim to ‘see what someone is saying’ or ‘smell trouble’. Others, however, took this language more literally. Jesus claims that God is spirit and that those who worship him must do so in the spirit (John 4:24). When Scripture speaks of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching God, therefore, it has to be speaking of something that happens in the soul. On this reasoning, then, the biblical language must be referring to spiritual faculties distinct from the physical senses yet analogous to them and oriented to the divine. An early example of this latter approach is Philo of Alexandria. Gavrilyuk and Coakley note that he ‘referred to the faculty responsible for the vision of God as “the eyes of the soul” (…), “the eyes of the mind” (…) and the “eyes

7 Gavrilyuk and Coakley point out that another major text alongside these is the Song of Solomon, ‘which from the time of Hippolytus and Origen elicited meditations on the soul’s spiritual union with Christ. While the biblical passages mentioned in the previous paragraph tended to draw spiritual sight into the focus of the exegete’s attention, the richly sensuous imagery of the Song—longings, kisses, embraces, scents, and so on—prompted a further elaboration of tactile, gustatory, and olfactory imagery’. (Gavrilyuk and Coakley, Spiritual Senses, p. 11.) Also, alongside these positive descriptions of the soul’s encounter with God there are claims that those who turn away from God experience a kind of sensory dullness. In Psalm 115:4–8, for example, the Psalmist describes idol worshippers: ‘their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them’. (English Standard Version) According to this passage the hallmark of an idol is that it possesses impotent sensory organs and the fate of an idol worshipper is to have senses that are correspondingly dull. Idol worshippers are not bereft of ordinary sense experience, of course, so the senses referred to here must be of another, non-physical sort.

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of understanding” (…)’.8 The most noteworthy example among early Christian interpreters, however, is Origen. In a widely cited passage in Contra Celsum he argues that there is a spiritual sense corresponding to each corporeal sense: There is, as the scripture calls it, a certain generic divine sense (…) which only the man who is blessed finds on this earth (…). There are many forms of this sense: a sight (…) which can see things superior to corporeal beings, the cherubim or seraphim being obvious instances, and a hearing (…) which can receive impressions of sounds that have no objective existence in the air, and a taste (…) which feeds on living bread that has come down from heaven and gives life to the world (…). So also there is a senses of smell (…) which smells spiritual things, as Paul speaks of “a sweet savor of Christ unto God” (…) and a sense of touch (…) in accordance with which John says that he has handled with his hands “of the Word of life” (…).9 And since these senses are attuned to things that are not corporeal—objects superior to corporeal beings and sounds that have no existence in the air— Origen rejects the idea that they could be mere bodily senses: We know that the holy Scriptures make mention of eyes, of ears, and of hands, which have nothing but the name in common with the bodily organs; and what is more wonderful, they speak of a diviner sense (…), which is very different from the senses as commonly spoken of. For when the prophet says, ‘Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law’ (Ps. 119:18), or, ‘the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes’ (Ps. 19:8), or, ‘Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death’ (Ps. 13:3) no one is so foolish as to suppose that the eyes of the body behold the wonders of the divine law, or that the law of the Lord gives light to the bodily eyes, or that the sleep of death falls on the eyes of the body. When our Savior says, ‘He that hath ears to hear, let him hear’ (Matt. 13:9), anyone will understand that the ears spoken of are of a diviner kind (…). When it is said that the word of the Lord was ‘in the hand’ of Jeremiah or of some other prophet (…) no one is so foolish as not to see that the word ‘hands’ is taken figuratively (…), as when John says ‘Our hands have handled the Word of life’ (1 John 1:1). And if you wish further to learn from the sacred writings that there is a diviner sense (…)

8 9

Gavrilyuk and Coakley, Spiritual Senses, p. 7. Origen, Contra Celsum, i.48 (as cited in Gavrilyuk and Coakley, Spiritual Senses, p. 23).

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than the senses of the body, you have only to hear what Solomon says, ‘Thou shalt find a divine sense’ (Prov. 2:5 (…)).10 For Origen, then, there are five distinct spiritual senses that are parallel with but irreducible to the corporeal senses. That is what Scripture is referring to when it uses sensory language to speak of our knowledge of God. And although Scripture does not probe the inner working of these faculties, Origen believes it is possible to use Greek categories to offer a model of how they might function (at least in the case of spiritual sight). In a commentary on the Psalms he explains the operation of the eyes of the soul by means of Plato’s analogy of the Sun: Just as with physical light which enables those with healthy eyes to see both the light itself and other sensible objects, so too does God come with a certain power to the mind of each one. As long as those to whom he comes are not all closed off and their ability to see clearly not impeded by their passions, God makes himself known and leads those illuminated by him to knowledge of other spiritual things.11 Echoing the Republic, Origen notes here that just as physical light enables healthy eyes to perceive both visible objects and the light itself, so there is an intellectual light that enables well-ordered minds to perceive intelligible things and the intellectual light itself. In Origen’s hands, however, this Platonic picture has been Christianized— the intellectual light is God Himself and the intelligible things are spiritual things. Just as light enables the eye to see visible objects and the sun, then, so God enables the eye of the soul to see spiritual objects as well as Himself. But not only does Origen acknowledge these senses and explain them using Platonic categories, he also gives them a central place in his soteriological scheme. In his discussion of the Passover Lamb in Exodus 12, for example, he writes: For since there are five senses in the human being, unless Christ comes to each of them, He cannot be sacrificed and, after being roasted, be eaten. For it is when he made clay with his spittle and anointed our eyes (John 9:6–7) and made us see clearly (Mark 8:25), when he opened the ears (cf.

10 11

Origen, Contra Celsum, vii.34 (as cited in Gavrilyuk and Coakley, Spiritual Senses, pp. 29– 30). Origen, In Psalm, 4.7 (as cited in Gavrilyuk and Coakley, Spiritual Senses, p. 32).

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Mark 7:33–35) of our heart so that having ears we can hear (cf. Mt 11:15, 13:19), when we smell his good odor (2Cor 1:15, Eph 5:2), recognizing that his name is a perfume poured out (Song 1:3) and if, having tasted, we see how good the Lord is (Ps 34 [33]:8, i Pet 2:3), and if we touch him with the touch of which John speaks: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life (i Jn 1:1), then it is that we will be able to sacrifice the lamb and eat it and thus come out of Egypt.12 Here the Passover Lamb is Christ and salvation lies in eating Him and coming out of Egypt. It is the spiritual senses that accomplish those two things—unless Christ ‘comes to each of them’ he cannot be sacrificed and eaten. But those senses have been damaged by sin, so before they can respond to Christ He has to purge and renovate them. The eyes must be anointed and made to see clearly just as the ears of our heart must be opened. Only then can we smell His perfume, taste His goodness, touch Him in the way John claims to have done, and then eat the sacrifice and depart from Egypt. For Origen, therefore, the spiritual senses are not simply a matter of epistemology—they are the sole means by which the soul lays hold of salvation. By the time we get to Origen, then, we find: 1) a precedent in Plato and Aristotle for thinking about cognition on the model of sensation; 2) a Biblical precedent for speaking of the soul’s encounter with God in sensory terms; 3) an interpretation of that Biblical language to mean that there are faculties of the soul akin to the senses but directed toward the divine; 4) a use of Greek (or at least Platonic) categories to explain the functioning of those faculties, and 5) a central position for those faculties within the Christian soteriological scheme. That is the state in which the concept of these senses comes to Augustine, and it is the view we find on display in the Confessions.

2

The Spiritual Senses in Augustine

Augustine explores the topic of spiritual senses early in Confessions 10. He begins by expressing his love for God: My love for you, Lord, is not an uncertain feeling but a matter of conscious certainty. With your word you pierced my heart and I loved you.

12

Origen, Peri Pascha, 18 (as cited in Gavrilyuk and Coakley, Spiritual Senses, pp. 11–12).

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But heaven and earth and everything in them on all sides tell me to love you.13 Having expressed this love, however, he wonders about the nature of the God toward which it is directed. He denies that this God is physical: It is not physical beauty nor temporal glory nor the brightness of light dear to earthly eyes, nor the sweet melodies of all kinds of songs, nor the gentle odour of flowers and ointments and perfumes, nor manna nor honey nor limbs welcoming the embrace of the flesh; it is not these I love when I love my God.14 Yet he says that what he loves in loving God is analogous to physical things: [T]here is a light I love, and a food, and a kind of embrace when I love my God—a light, voice, odour, food, embrace of my inner man, where my soul is floodlit by light which space cannot contain, where there is sound that time cannot seize, where there is a perfume which no breeze disperses, where there is a taste for food no amount of eating can lessen, and where there is a bond of union that no satiety can part. That is what I love when I love my God.15 Like Origen, then, Augustine holds that when the soul enters into an experience of God it encounters a kind of incorporeal light, sound, smell, taste, and touch. The remainder of book 10 is an attempt to probe this dynamic more closely. It divides into three stages: the first attempts to clarify the manner in which God is present to the soul’s senses; the second looks at the way that sin has compromised those senses and dulled their ability to experience the divine; and the third considers how the senses are liberated by the work of Christ as Mediator. As stage one unfolds Augustine engages in a kind of negative theology. He starts by reiterating that God is not something physical, and to show this he moves systematically through nature asking each kind of thing whether it is God:

13 14 15

Augustine, Confessions, 10.8. Translation by Henry Chadwick in Saint Augustine: Confessions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 183. Augustine, Confessions, 10.8 (Chadwick, p. 183). Augustine, Confessions, 10.8 (Chadwick, p. 183).

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I asked the earth and it said ‘It is not I’. I asked all that is in it; they made the same confession (Job 28:12f.). I asked the sea, the deeps, the living creatures that creep, and they responded: ‘We are not your God, look beyond us’. I asked the breezes which blow and the entire air with its inhabitants said: ‘Anaximenes was mistaken; I am not God’. I asked heaven, sun, moon and stars; they said: ‘Nor are we the God whom you seek’. And I said to all these things in my external environment: ‘Tell me of my God who you are not, tell me something about him’, and with a great voice they cried out: ‘He made us’ (Ps. 99:3).16 Having failed to locate God in His external environment he turns to himself. He notes that he has both a body and a soul and that the soul is higher than the body: What is inward is superior. All physical evidence is reported to the mind which presides and judges of the response of heaven and earth and all things in them (…). The inner man knows this—I, I the mind through the sense perception of my body.17 If God is present to Him, then, it must be through the soul. But what does his soul consist of? To begin with, it holds the principle of life and conveys that life to the body. But that cannot be where God is located, because such power is equally at work in plants and animals, neither of which have the ability to know God: I will rise above the force by which I am bonded to the body and fill its frame with vitality. It is not by that force that I find my God. For then he would be found by ‘the horse and mule which have no understanding’ (Ps. 31:9), since it is the same force by which their bodies also have life.18 Next he turns to the power of sensation: There exists another power, not only that by which I give life to my body but also that by which I enable its senses to perceive. The Lord made this for me, commanding the eye not to hear, the ear not to see, but providing

16 17 18

Augustine, Confessions, 10.9 (Chadwick, p. 183). Augustine, Confessions, 10.9 (Chadwick, p. 184). Augustine, Confessions, 10.11 (Chadwick, p. 185).

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the eye to see and the ear to hear, and each of the other senses in turn to be in its proper place and carry out its proper function.19 But this cannot be where God is located either—this power is in animals, yet God is not present to animals in the way that he is to the rational soul. That leads Augustine to ‘the fields and vast palaces of memory’.20 Among the things that he finds there are residual images from sense perception, intellectual skills acquired by the liberal arts, past emotions and affections, and even the very acts of remembering and forgetting. Yet for all this, God is not accessible through the memory either. Like sensation, memory is found in the beasts, yet the beasts are without a knowledge of God: Beasts and birds also have a memory. Otherwise they could not rediscover their dens and nests, and much else that they are habitually accustomed to. Habit could have no influence on them in any respect except by memory. So I will also ascend beyond memory to touch him who ‘set me apart from quadrupeds and made me wiser than the birds of heaven’ (Job 35:11).21 But having excluded God from the memory, Augustine seems to have made it so that God cannot be known at all. And furthermore, he offers two reasons to think that God must be in the memory. The first has to do with the fact that he is seeking God. All seeking implies some minimal level of acquaintance with the thing sought, which he illustrates by appealing to the parable of the lost coin and Plato’s paradox of the learner: The woman who lost her drachma searched for it with a lamp (Luke 15:8). She would not have found it unless she had remembered it. When she found it, how could she know that it was the one she lost, if she had failed to remember it? I recall myself to have searched for and found many lost items (…). Unless I had it in my memory, whatever it was, even if an offer was being made to me, I would not have found it because I would not have recognized it (…). We do not say we have found the thing which was lost unless we recognize it, and we cannot recognize it if we do not remember it. The object was lost to the eyes, but held in the memory.22 19 20 21 22

Augustine, Confessions, 10.11 (Chadwick, p. 185). Augustine, Confessions, 10.12 (Chadwick, p. 185). Augustine, Confessions, 10.26 (Chadwick, pp. 194–195). Augustine, Confessions, 10.27 (Chadwick, p. 195).

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The act of seeking God, then, implies that He must be present in the memory in some way, however dimly. Secondly, there is the fact that everyone wants to be happy. Augustine notes that ‘when I seek for you, my God, my quest is for the happy life’.23 Yet everyone desires the happy life, and to desire something implies minimal knowledge of the thing desired. Accordingly, it follows that everyone must have some minimal knowledge of God: The happy life is joy based on the truth. This joy is grounded in you, O God, who are the truth, ‘my illumination, the salvation of my face, my God’ (Ps. 26:1; 42:12). This happy life everyone desires; joy in the truth everyone wants. (…) How then did they know about this happy life unless in the same way they knew about the truth? (…) And they would have no love for it unless there were some knowledge of it in their memory.24 We are faced, then, with a puzzle—it seems that God must be both outside the memory and within it. The solution to this comes as Augustine considers the precise way that God is within the memory. Having concluded that God is in fact there, he asks which part of it God dwells in: Where in it do you make your home? What resting-place have you made for yourself? What kind of sanctuary have you built for yourself? You conferred this honor on my memory that you should dwell in it. But the question I have to consider is, In what part of it do you dwell?25 He surveys the various things that lie in his memory—physical things, emotions, even the mind itself—and denies that any of them are God: In recalling you I rose above those parts of the memory which animals also share, because I did not find you among the images of physical objects. I came to the parts of my memory where I stored the emotions of my mind, and I did not find you there. I entered into the very seat of my mind, which is located in my memory, since the mind also remembers itself. But you were not there because, just as you are not a bodily image nor the emotional feeling of a living person (…) so also you are not the mind itself. (…) All these things are liable to change, but 23 24 25

Augustine, Confessions, 10.29 (Chadwick, p. 196). Augustine, Confessions, 10.33 (Chadwick, p. 199). Augustine, Confessions, 10.36 (Chadwick, p. 200).

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you remain immutable above all things, and yet have deigned to dwell in my memory (…).26 His search comes to an end at the beginning of 10.37 when he realizes that God is transcendent: ‘Where (…) did I find you so that I could learn of you if not in the fact that you transcend me?’27 The idea here is that God exists in the memory as that which is beyond the memory—that we can in fact think of God, but only as that which exceeds all other thoughts, that to which nothing in the memory could be equal or superior.28 With that realization Augustine regards his search as having has come to an end—after being drawn away by sensible things his soul has finally been turned back to God: Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new; late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you (…). You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.29 But the soul’s journey does not end there. Even if his spiritual senses have been awakened and attuned to God, the pleasures of the physical senses are still there, calling to him and attempting to ensnare the soul all over again: When I shall have adhered (Ps. 72:28) to you with the whole of myself (…), my entire life will be full of you (…). But for the present, because I am not full of you, I am a burden to myself. There is a struggle between joys over which I should be weeping and regrets at matters over which I ought to be rejoicing, and which side has the victory I do not know. There is a struggle between my regrets at my evil past and my memories of good joys, and which side has the victory I do not know.30

26 27 28 29 30

Augustine, Confessions, 10.36. (Chadwick, pp. 200–201). Augustine, Confessions, 10.37 (Chadwick, p. 201). My emphasis. As I will point out later, this seems to anticipate Anselm’s idea that God is that than which nothing greater can be thought. Augustine, Confessions, 10.38 (Chadwick, p. 201). Augustine, Confessions, 10.39 (Chadwick, p. 202).

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Giving in to this temptation can have a dulling effect on the senses—one may start to search for a God whose beauty is of a piece with created beauty (idolatry) or one may cease to search for God altogether (atheism). In order for the newly awakened senses to work properly, then, it is necessary to purge the soul of its excessive love of created things. That brings us to the second stage of Book 10 where Augustine confesses the various lusts that compete with his love for God. Following the apostle John, he organizes these lusts into those of the flesh, those of the eyes, and those of ambition.31 He goes on to consider them one by one and to interpret them in keeping with a Platonic division of the soul into appetite, reason, and spirit. The lusts of the flesh are rooted in the appetites; they are the excessive love of sensory pleasures. He begins, therefore, by confessing what struggles he has with excessive sexual desires (touch), gluttony and drunkenness (taste), perfumes (smell), the pleasures of music (hearing), and physical beauty, both of nature and the arts (seeing). From there he proceeds to the lusts of the eye. He takes these to be an unrestrained curiosity in the rational part of the soul, ‘a vain inquisitiveness dignified with the title of knowledge and science’.32 As examples of this he points to strange sights at the theater, the desire to understand the secret powers of nature, the fascination with magical arts, and the request for signs and wonders from God. He also thinks this lust comes into play in smaller, less conspicuous ways, as when one is distracted from the thought of God or other serious matters by the sight of dogs chasing rabbits or of lizards and spiders catching flies. Last of all he confesses the lust that involves ambition and pride. He attributes this lust to the desire by the spirited part of the soul to be feared and loved, and he claims that it is the most dominant of the three: 31 32

1John 2:16 speaks of ‘the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life’. (English Standard Version). Augustine thinks this sort of lust is referred to as the lust of the eyes because knowledge is so often spoken of as a sort of sight. He writes, ‘Seeing is the property of our eyes. But we also (…) apply the power of vision to knowledge generally. We do not say “Hear how that flashes” or “Smell how bright that is” or “Taste how that shines” or “Touch how that gleams”. Of all these things we say “see”’. (Augustine, Confessions, 10.54 (Chadwick, p. 211).) Also, there is a further allusion to Plato in his explanation of this lust. In the Republic Plato differentiates between spirit and appetite by telling the story of Leontius, who passed by a corpse on the road from the Piraeus and had both a desire to look and a desire to look away. He finally gave in to the desire to look and, when he did, became angry and cursed his eyes. Similarly, Augustine thinks the lust of the eyes is on display in morbid fascination with corpses. He asks, ‘What pleasure is to be found in looking at a mangled corpse, an experience with evokes revulsion? Yet wherever one is lying, people crowd around to be made sad and to turn pale’. (Augustine, Confessions, 10.55 (Chadwick, p. 211).)

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The temptation is to wish to be feared or loved by people for no reason other than the joy derived from such power, which is no joy at all. It is a wretched life, and vanity is repulsive. This is the main cause why I fail to love and fear you in purity (…). When we are avid to amass such approval, we are caught off our guard. We cease to find our joy in your truth and place it in the deceitfulness of men.33 Having catalogued these lusts, then, Augustine goes on to say that he is incapable of overcoming them. In response to the question, ‘Who could be found to reconcile me to you?’,34 he writes, ‘Many have tried to return to you, and have not had the strength in themselves to achieve it’.35 Thus begins the final (and briefest) stage of Book 10, the discussion of Christ as Mediator. Augustine begins by saying that mediating between God and the sinner requires having something in common with both: a mediator between God and the human race ought to have something in common with God and something in common with humanity. If the Mediator were in both aspects like humanity, he would be far distant from God. If he were in both aspects like God, he would be far distant from humanity, and so would be no mediator.36 Christ fulfills these requirements by His incarnation—He has mortal flesh in common with humanity and righteousness in common with God. In Christ, therefore, the righteousness of God comes to dwell in a corporeal body and may be shared with sinners who are joined to Him. In being joined to the incarnate Christ, then, it is possible to eliminate lusts and restore the soul to proper order. Once that is accomplished the senses of the soul are fully renewed and can be released into the enjoyment of God forever after. With this overview in place, then, we can identify five features of the spiritual senses as they are presented in Confessions 10: 1) they are a capacity of the soul to take pleasure in the divine much as the corporeal senses take pleasure in physical things; 2) they are stimulated as one turns inward and reckons with the transcendence of God; 3) they can be dulled by sin, and especially by the various forms of lust; 4) those lusts can only be conquered by divine grace; and 5) that divine grace comes in the form of Christ as Mediator. 33 34 35 36

Augustine, Confessions, 10.59 (Chadwick, pp. 213–214). Augustine, Confessions, 10.67 (Chadwick, p. 218). Augustine, Confessions, 10.67 (Chadwick, p. 218). Augustine, Confessions, 10.67 (Chadwick, p. 219).

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These features bear a clear affinity with Origen’s analysis. Augustine acknowledges five distinct forms of spiritual sensation, each of which is analogous with a physical sense without being reducible to that sense. Furthermore, he gives them a central soteriological place—they are what enable the soul to experience God and the restoration of them is one of the primary effects of Christ’s work as Mediator. And along the way Augustine explains them using Platonic categories—both the theory of recollection and the tripartite analysis of the soul. Confessions 10, then, is best read as a continuation of an early patristic analysis of the senses. And as we will see in part 3, that tradition is taken up and continued by P.

3

The Spiritual Senses in the Proslogion

In order to analyze Anselm’s discussion of the spiritual senses it will be helpful to situate that discussion within P as a whole. The text divides into two parts, the first running from P1 through P13 and the second from P14 through P26. P1 begins with Anselm calling on his soul to contemplate God and requesting grace due to his finitude and sinfulness. From P2 through P4, then, he considers God’s existence. He begins by saying that he believes God to be that than which nothing greater can be thought, and based on that he argues that God exists and cannot be thought not to exist. He pauses to explain how it is possible for the Fool to deny God’s existence, then he argues that if God is that than which nothing greater can be thought He must also be whatever it is better to be than not to be. On that basis Anselm extrapolates a list of divine attributes, and he spends the remainder of chapters 6 to 14 analyzing each attribute in turn.37 Part 2 begins in P14 as Anselm summarizes his findings: You were seeking God and you have found that he is the highest of all beings, than which nothing better can be thought; that he is life itself, light, wisdom, goodness, eternal happiness and happy eternity; and that he exists always and everywhere.38

37

38

These attributes are not somehow distinct from God or added on Him. Anselm will go on to argue that they are each identical with God’s essence and thus with one another—that God is what He is, as He said to Moses. Anselm, P14 (aoo, i.111.8–11). Translation by Thomas Williams in Anselm: Basic Writings (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2007), p. 89.

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With that summary in place he asks ‘have you found what you were seeking, O my soul?’39 He argues that the answer must be yes: his arguments are sound and they indicate that something fitting the above description exists. It is surely God who fits that description, so he must have found God. Yet Anselm is not satisfied; he asks ‘if you have found him, why do you not perceive what you have found?’40 He initially attributes this lack of perception to the fact that God dwells in unapproachable light that overwhelms his soul’s senses: you are hidden from my soul in your light and happiness, and so it still lives in its darkness and misery. It looks around, but it does not see your beauty. It listens, but it does not hear your harmony. It smells, but it does not perceive your fragrance. It tastes, but it does not know your savor. It touches, but it does not sense your softness.41 But that is not the full explanation. While God may dwell in unapproachable light, He has put His beauty, harmony, fragrance, savor, and softness within the created order in such a way that the soul’s senses can access them—as Anselm puts it: you have these qualities in you, O Lord God, in your own ineffable way; and you have given them in their own perceptible way to the things you created.42 But while this gracious act of condescension has put God’s attributes within reach, ‘the senses of my soul have been stiffened, dulled, and obstructed by the longstanding weakness of sin’.43 God remains hidden, then, not only because of the unapproachable light in which He dwells but also (and primarily) because of the spiritual blindness caused by sin. This leads Anselm to start over again in P18. After a paragraph echoing the language of chapter 1 he pleads for healing and decides to begin his investigation afresh:

39 40 41 42 43

Anselm, P14 (aoo, i.111.8; Williams, p. 89). Anselm, P14 (aoo, i.111.13–15; Williams, p. 89). Anselm, P17 (aoo, i.113.8–12; Williams, p. 91). Anselm, P17 (aoo, i.113.12–14; Williams, p. 91). Anselm, P17 (aoo, i.113.14–15; Williams, p. 91).

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Lift me up from myself to you. Cleanse, heal, sharpen, enlighten the eye of my soul so that I may look upon you. Let my soul gather its strength, and let it once more strive with all its understanding to reach you, O Lord.44 In the chapters that follow he argues that God is without parts and identical with all His attributes; that He is beyond time, space, and other eternal things; that He exists in a unique and unqualified sense; and that He is triune. From there Anselm addresses his soul again and asks it to consider the goodness of what it has found: Bestir yourself, O my soul! Lift up your whole understanding, and consider as best you can what sort of good this is, and how great it is. For if particular goods are delightful, consider intently how delightful is that good which contains the joyfulness of all goods—and not such joyfulness as we have experienced in created things, but as different from that as the Creator differs from the creature.45 He concludes by reflecting on the delights that await those who enter into the enjoyment of this being and he connects those delights with the rewards that are promised to the faithful in Scripture. From this overview, then, two things are clear. First, the spiritual senses play as pivotal a role in P as they do in Confessions 10. As we saw above, Anselm begins seeking God immediately after the invocation in P1. He continues that search through P14, and at that point he pauses to ask if he has found what he is looking for. When he realizes that the answer is no, he begins his search again, and that second search lasts for the remainder of the text. The negative answer to the question of whether he has found what he is looking for, then, is the transition between the two parts. What leads him to that negative answer, however, is the lack of a spiritual perception of God. It follows, therefore, that the soul’s perception of God by means of the spiritual senses is the summit of the entirety of P. It is the overarching goal toward which everything is directed, so much so that if it is lacking then the search must recommence. Put differently, the spiritual senses are the deep background assumption of the text—Anselm presupposes a reader in whom they have been activated and he writes in order to stimulate them by meditation on the nature of God.

44 45

Anselm, P18 (aoo, i.114.10–12; Williams, p. 91). Anselm, P24 (aoo, i.117.25–118.3; Williams, p. 94).

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Secondly, while P does not devote a great deal of time to a discussion of the senses themselves, in the space where it does address them it affirms the same five things we saw in Confessions 10. First, Anselm sees them as capacities to take pleasure in the divine much as the corporeal senses take pleasure in physical things. This is clear in P17 when he speaks of the soul’s ability to look, listen, smell, taste, and touch, corresponding to which are God’s beauty, harmony, fragrance, savor, and softness. He says that God has those qualities in an ineffable way that differs from the way they are found in perceptible things. When the soul perceives them in God, then, it is engaged in a sort of perception that is unlike corporeal sensation yet analogous to it. Second, Anselm says that the senses are stimulated as one turns inward and reckons with the transcendence of God. This is clear from the fact that he only expects to perceive God after entering the chamber of the mind and meditating on the thought of Him as that than which nothing greater can be thought. As that than which nothing greater can be thought God is also greater than can be thought, a point that Anselm makes explicit in P15: Therefore, Lord, you are not merely that than which a greater cannot be thought; you are something greater than can be thought. For since it is possible to think that such a being exists, then if you are not that being, it is possible to think something greater than you. But that is impossible.46 In saying that God is greater than can be thought, however, Anselm is essentially saying that God transcends the mind. Thus, the spiritual senses are ultimately stimulated by entering into the chamber of the mind and meditating on the transcendence of God.47 Third and fourth, Anselm says that the senses 46 47

Anselm, P15 (aoo, i.112.14–17; Williams, p. 90). Unlike Confessions 10, the Proslogion does not go through a lengthy negation of created things on the way to affirming the transcendence of God. However, Anselm alludes to such a procedure in the reply to Gaunilo, and he seems to agree with Augustine it is a prerequisite for being able to understand the idea of God as that than which nothing greater can be thought. This comes as he is responding to Gaunilo’s objection that the idea of that than which nothing greater can be thought is too vague to be serviceable. He asks: ‘who (…) is unable to think (…) that if something that has a beginning and an end is good, then something that has a beginning but never ceases to exist is much better? And that just as the latter is better (…) so something that has neither beginning nor end is better still, even if it is always moving from the past through the present into the future? And that something that in no way needs or is compelled to change or move is far better even that that …? Can anything greater than this be thought? Or rather, is not this an example of forming an idea of that than which a greater cannot be thought on the basis of those things than which a greater can be thought?’ (R8 (aoo, i.137.18–27; Williams, p. 112).)

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can be dulled by sin and may only be restored by divine grace. This comes out in chapters P17 and P18 where he says that his senses are ‘stiffened, dulled, and obstructed by the longstanding weakness of sin’48 and prays ‘cleanse, heal, sharpen, enlighten the eye of my soul so that I may look upon you’.49 And finally, Anselm holds that this divine grace comes to the soul through Christ as Mediator. This is far more subtle than the other points as there is no explicit mention of Christ in P and no discussion of the incarnation. But a case can be made that it is still there implicitly. Anselm is writing for his fellow monks, after all. He presupposes that they have faith and acknowledges that they need grace, and he undoubtedly holds that believing monks who receive grace do so through Christ. While he does not take up the topic explicitly, then, he surely accepts that the spiritual sensation toward which he is striving is made possible by the background work of Christ as Mediator.

4

Encountering God through the Spiritual Senses

Therefore, based on these considerations it is safe to conclude that the concept of the spiritual senses is central to P and that Anselm’s understanding of them is parallel to Augustine’s. To close, therefore, I want to suggest that an appreciation of this fact might serve to deflect some of the traditional criticisms of P’s argument for the existence of God. It is impossible to consider all such criticisms, so I will limit my attention to just one. Early into the Summa Theologiae Thomas Aquinas offers a summary of Anselm’s argument: [I]f I understand what the name “God” signifies, then it follows immediately that God exists. For by the name is signified “that than which a greater cannot be signified.” Now something is greater when it exists both in reality and in the intellect rather than only in the intellect. Therefore,

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Anselm, P17 (aoo, i.113.14–15; trans. Williams, p. 91). This point also comes out at the end of chapter 1 where Anselm says that God put an image of Himself within the soul to enable it to know and love Him, but ‘this image is so eroded by my vices, so clouded by the smoke of my sins, that it cannot do what it was created to do unless you renew and refashion it’. (P1 (aoo, i.100.12–15; Williams, p. 81).) Yet while Anselm clearly acknowledges the corrupting effects of sin, he does not follow Augustine in analyzing this sin into three distinct forms of lust, nor does he offer any detailed analysis of sin in the Proslogion. Anselm, P18 (aoo, i.114.10–12; Williams, p. 91).

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since when I understand this name “God” he immediately exists in the intellect, it follows that God must also exist in reality.50 In reply, he writes: Even if it is granted that everyone understands the name “God” to signify what the objection says—namely “that than which a greater cannot be thought”—nevertheless it does not follow from this that one understands that what is signified by the name exists in the natural order, but rather only in the apprehension of the intellect. Nor can it be argued that it exists in reality unless it were granted that there exists in reality something than which a greater cannot be thought, which would not be granted by those who deny that God exists.51 The idea here is that the argument never moves us beyond the realm of thought. Even if everything it claims were acknowledged—if God was agreed to be that than which nothing greater can be thought and it was accepted that what exists actually and mentally is greater than what exists only mentally—that would only mean that actual existence is included in our thought of God. The existence included in that thought would not be instantiated unless the thought itself were instantiated, and whether or not it is so instantiated is the very thing in question. At best, then, the argument establishes a theoretical connection between God and existence without actually asserting that existence.52 There are several traditional replies to this objection, not the least of which is that it posits an overly sharp distinction between thought and reality. For the present, however, I want to suggest an auxiliary response. If the analysis I

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Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae i Q2 A1 arg.2. Translation by Brian J. Shanley in Jeffrey Hause and Robert Pasnau, eds, Aquinas: Basic Works (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2014), p. 50. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae i Q2 A1 ad.2 (Hause and Pasnau, Aquinas, p. 51). It is worth nothing that Thomas’ criticisms may not be directed at Anselm in particular. Thomas never mentions Anselm by name and his criticism of the argument comes in the context of the question whether the existence of God is self-evident, a claim Anselm never makes. But whatever the case may be, Thomas’ objection has been raised against Anselm by subsequent philosophers, so it is not inappropriate to take his objection as an example of a traditional criticism. The point here is not unlike the one Kant raised in the first Critique: the idea of a triangle necessarily includes 180 degrees, but those degrees will not occur in the world unless the triangle is actually posited. Similarly, the idea of God may include existence, but that existence will not occur unless God actually exists.

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have offered above is correct, Anselm is attempting to dwell with the thought of God so as to perceive Him by means of the spiritual senses. His reasoning may initially remain enclosed within thought, then, but it does so because he thinks that it is only through such inward reasoning that the spiritual senses can encounter God’s beauty, harmony, fragrance, savor, and softness. Unless one accounts for this aspect of the argument—either demonstrating that spiritual senses do not exist or showing that they cannot be engaged in this fashion— then it begs the question to criticize the argument by claiming that it never breaks outside the circle of thought. Put differently, the presence of the spiritual senses in P means that Anselm is not attempting to arrive at God independently of experience. Rather, he is inviting the reader into a second kind of experience, one initiated by an inward turn and premised on spiritual rather than corporeal senses. To fully assess the validity of his argument, then, it is ultimately necessary to assess the validity of this second kind of experience. Put differently, to fully assess the validity of his argument it is necessary to reckon with the concept of spiritual senses themselves.

Bibliography Primary Sources Anselm of Canterbury, Anselm: Basic Writings, Thomas Williams, ed. and trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2007). Aristotle, The Basic Works of Aristotle, Richard McKeon, ed. (New York: Random House, 1941). Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Henry Chadwick, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). Plato, Republic in Plato, Complete Works, John M. Cooper, ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997). S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961); reprinted in two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968). Thomas Aquinas, Basic Works, Jeffrey Hause and Robert Pasnau, eds. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2014).

Secondary Sources Gavrilyuk, Paul L., and Sarah Coakley, eds., The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

part 2 The Three Early Dialogues, De Grammatico and De Concordia

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chapter 9

Free Will and Grace Method and Model in Anselm’s De Concordia Marcia L. Colish

Anselm’s final work, De Concordia (dc) (written in 1107), revisits and expands on issues which he had considered earlier in his career. In dci and ii his treatment of providence and predestination recalls his appeal to Boethius on necessity and possibility, while free will and grace, the theme of dciii and of this chapter, evokes his analysis of rectitude and free will in De Veritate (dv), De Libertate Arbitrii (dla), and De Casu Diaboli (dcd). As is well known, Anselm remarks at the start of dv that the subject matter in this trio of works derives from Holy Scripture. As is also well known, despite Anselm’s many biblical allusions here and elsewhere, he does not typically anchor his positions with proof-texts. His standard technique, even when he claims to argue from reason alone, is to weave seamlessly into his own analysis what he takes from unnamed sources.1 Yet, in a striking departure from his usual practice, in dciii Anselm 1 Anselm of Canterbury, dv praefatio, aoo (repr. Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968), i.173. In this chapter the 2-volume reprint edition will be cited. On the frequency of biblical allusions as indexed in Schmitt’s edition see Réginald Grégoire, ‘L’Utilisation de l’Écriture Sainte chez Anselme de Cantorbéry’, Revue d’ascetique et de mystique, 39 (1963), pp. 273–293 at 274 (although the author’s focus is on M and cdh); Robert Pouchet, La rectitude chez saint Anselme: Un itinéraire augustinien de l’âme à Dieu (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1964), passim and especially pp. 29–34, 57–58, 171, 244, with an index of biblical allusions at pp. 277– 279; on Anselm’s usual method of argument in works on free will see, for instance, Reginaldo Thorel, ‘Anselmo tra grazia e libero arbitrio’, Rivista di ascetica e mistica, 55 (1986), pp. 167– 175 at 168–169; Donato Ogliari, ‘St. Anselm’s ‘De libertate arbitrii’ Revisited’, Divus Thomas, 92 (1989), pp. 259–272; Marilyn McCord Adams, ‘St. Anselm on Evil: De casu diaboli’, Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 3 (1992), pp. 423–451; Jeannine Quillet, ‘Volonté et liberté dans le De libertate arbitrii’ in David E. Luscombe and Gillian R. Evans, eds., Anselm: Aosta, Bec, and Canterbury, Papers in Commemoration of the Nine-Hundredth Anniversary of Anselm’s Enthronement as Archbishop, 25 September 1093 (Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 2006), pp. 247–255. For more general descriptions of his methodology see Richard William Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 69–73, 172; Giles E.M. Gasper, Anselm of Canterbury and His Theological Inheritance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 2, 88; Thomas Williams, ‘Anselm’s Quiet Radicalism’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 24 (2016), pp. 3–22; Gavin Ortlund, Anselm’s Pursuit of Joy: A Commentary on the Proslogion (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America

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cites an array of biblical texts supporting both free will and grace, and yokes his solution to them. Very few scholars have noted this methodological anomaly and none has accounted for it.2 This chapter argues that the theme Anselm addresses in dciii and his misgivings with its treatment by the late Augustine inspired him to look to John Cassian’s Collation 13 as a model. Cassian wrote to rebut the false charge of Pelagianism made against him by misguided followers of Augustine. Replete with biblical proof-texts, Collation 13 aims to show that Augustine’s use of St. Paul reads the part for the whole. A comparison of Cassian’s Collation 13 and Anselm’s dciii will suggest how Anselm appropriated Cassian’s strategy of argument, as well as the independence of his own position vis-à-vis Augustine and Cassian alike. In his own day Augustine’s most extreme anti-Pelagian views on original sin, its corrupting effects, its transmission from parents to children, the irresistibility of grace, and predestination were eccentric, neither widely known

Press, 2020), pp. 15–29, 34–40, 43–44, 89, 224. Contextualizing this approach in that of medieval monastic authors more broadly is Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, Catherine Misrahi, trans. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1961, repr. New York: Omega Books, 1962), pp. 189–231. Anselm’s arguments sola ratione and remoto Christo have attracted a vast bibliography; for a concise recent treatment see Burcht Pranger, ‘Anselm, Calvin, and the Absent Bible’ in Alasdair MacDonald et al., eds., Christian Humanism: Essays in Honour of Arjo Vanderjagt (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 457–468 at 462–468. 2 Scholars noting this departure in dciii without explaining it include Jasper Hopkins, A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972), p. 6; Thomas A. Losoncy, ‘Will in St. Anselm: An Examination of His Biblical and Augustinian Origins’ in Raymonde Foreville, ed., Les mutations socio-culturelles au tournant des xie–xiie siècles, Spicilegium Beccense, 2: Actes du colloque international du cnrs, Le Bec-Hellouin, 11– 16 juillet 1982 (Paris: cnrs, 1984), pp. 701–708 at 705–708; Adams, ‘St. Anselm on Evil’, pp. 423, 448; Thomas Franz, ‘Die Freiheit des Menschen und die Gnade Gottes: Zur Verhältnisbestimmung von Anthropologie und Theologie in “De Concordia”’, in Stephan Ernst and Thomas Franz, eds., Sola ratione: Anselm von Canterbury (1033–1109) und die rationale Rekonstruktion des Glaubes (Würzburg: Echter, 2011), pp. 229–248 at 230, 241; Stephan Ernst, Anselm von Canterbury (Münster: Aschendorff, 2011), p. 94; Eileen C. Sweeney, Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), pp. 346, 352–354; Michel Corbin, La grâce de la liberté: Augustin et Anselme (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2012), pp. 89–120, 295–308; Sally N. Vaughn, ‘Anselm of Le Bec and Canterbury: Teacher by Word and Example, Following the Footsteps of His Ancestors’ in Benjamin Pohl and Laura L. Gathagan, eds., A Companion to the Abbey of Le Bec in the Central Middle Ages (11th–13th Centuries) (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 57–93, who hypothesizes, at 92, that dciii is an autobiographical reflection. Cf. Eduardo Briancesco, ‘Le dernier Anselme: Essai sur la structure du De concordia’ in Joseph Schnaubelt et al., eds., Anselm Studies 2: Proceedings of the Fifth International Saint Anselm Conference (White Plains, NY: Kraus International, 1985), pp. 559–596, who considers only Anselm’s use of biblical language in this work.

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nor accepted by the church at large. His followers in early fifth-century Gaul misrepresented these views as the orthodox consensus, misunderstood Cassian’s position, and misjudged him a heretic.3 In fact, if either position diverged from tradition at that time it was Augustine’s, not Cassian’s. The so-called semiPelagian controversy that ensued dragged on for a century. The attempt to resolve it at the Council of Orange of 529 proved ineffective; in the sequel Cassian’s position continued to be what most Christians held.4 While the focus from then until now has been on Cassian’s Collation 13, he has much to say on grace and free will throughout his Collations, a collection of 3 Eugene TeSelle, ‘Background: Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy’; Roland Teske, ‘1 Timothy 2:4 and the Beginning of the Massalian Controversy’; Alexander Y. Hwang, ‘Pauci perfectae amatoris: The Augustinians at Marseilles’; and Matthew J. Pereira, ‘Augustine, Pelagius, and the Southern Gallic Tradition: Faustus of Riez’ all in Alexander Y. Hwang, Brian J. Matz, and Augustine Casiday, eds., Grace for Grace: The Debates after Augustine (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), pp. 1–13, 14–34, 35–50, and 180–207 respectively; for Augustine’s effort to rebrand himself as a defender of orthodoxy against Pelagianism see Brent Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christianity and Sectarian Hate in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 311–315; for Augustinian positions on these topics queried at this time as departures from tradition see Elizabeth A. Clark ‘Vitiated Seeds and Holy Vessels: Augustine’s Manichean Past’ in Elizabeth A. Clark, ed., Ascetic Piety and Women’s Faith: Essays on Late Roman Christianity (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1987), pp. 291–349; Rebecca Harden Weaver, Divine Grace and Human Agency: A Study of the SemiPelagian Controversy (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996), pp. ix, 4–35, 38–39, 49– 69, 116–239; James Wetzel, ‘Snares of Truth: Augustine on Free Will and Predestination’ in Robert Dodaro and George Lawless, eds., Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 124–141; Gerald Bonner, Freedom and Necessity: St. Augustine’s Teaching on Divine Power and Human Freedom (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), pp. 3–4, 6, 9, 11, 17, 25–26, 73, 81–82; Conrad Leyser, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), pp. 3, 7– 8, 18–61; Leyser, ‘Augustine in the Latin West, 430–ca. 900’ in Mark Vessey, ed., A Companion to St. Augustine (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 450–464 at 454–455, who points out that, after 529, Augustine was not cited as an authority until the ninth century. For the history of the semi-Pelagian label see Irena Backus and Aza Goudriaan, ‘Semipelagianism: The Origins of the Term and Its Passage into the History of Heresy’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 65 (2014), pp. 25–46. 4 For the ineffectiveness of the position taken by the Council of Orange see, in addition to works cited in n. 3 above, Karla Pollmann and David Lambert, ‘After Augustine: A Survey of the Reception from 430 to 2000’, Millennium: Jahrbuch zu Kultur und Geschichte der ersten Jahrtausends n. Chr., 1 (2004), pp. 165–183 at 173–183; Augustine M. Casiday, Tradition and Theology in St. John Cassian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 6–12; Sweeney, Anselm of Canterbury, p. 352. Cf. the view that the debate on Cassian was inconclusive but that the Council of Orange settled it, making Augustine’s position authoritative, proposed by David Lambert, ‘The Making of Authority: Patterns of Augustine’s Reception’ in Karla Pollmann and Willemien Otten, eds., The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), i, pp. 15–22 at 15–17.

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twenty-four dialogues between junior and senior monks organized into twelve sets of two.5 Each set pairs a moral problem with its remedy. Cassian expects his monks to be able to take their own medicine. He gives frequent examples of biblical worthies and Desert Fathers who have done so, whether by free will, asceticism, or some combination of divine grace and human effort. Cassian’s citations of St. Paul and other biblical authors offer a diverse array of teachings on these matters, keyed to the particular problems he addresses. Even when Cassian counsels his monks on erotic dreams and nocturnal emissions he does not treat them as helpless. True, these vexing experiences occur unbidden, while we sleep. But when we are awake we can reject them. We cannot be forced to assent to them or to dwell on them. The same goes for resistance to diabolical temptation, on which he has much to say, including the assaults of individual demons with their own malevolent specialties. For God did not revoke human free will after the Fall.6 As Boniface Ramsey observes, Cassian’s

5 Modern scholars who focus on Collation 13 include Owen Chadwick, John Cassian: A Study in Primitive Monasticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), pp. 109–138; Chadwick, John Cassian, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 110–136; Columba Stewart, Cassian the Monk (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 77–88; Leyser, Authority and Asceticism, pp. 34, 35, 48–49; Wetzel, ‘Snares of Truth’, pp. 126–128; Bonner, Freedom and Necessity, pp. 85, 106–107; Casiday, Tradition and Theology, pp. 16–160, 259–263. For earlier bibliography that follows this line see Boniface Ramsey, intro. to his trans. of John Cassian, The Conferences, Ancient Christian Writers 57 (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), p. 403. Scholars who contextualize Collation 13 in Cassian’s work more generally include Weaver, Divine Grace and Human Agency, pp. 38–39, 71–116, 235–236, 238, who discusses the dating of the text at 93–97; Boniface Ramsey, ‘John Cassian and Augustine’ in Alexander Y. Hwang, Brian J. Matz, and Augustine Casiday, eds., Grace for Grace: The Debates after Augustine (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), pp. 114–130. The two-part structure of the Collations is noted by Adalbert de Vogüé, ‘Understanding Cassian: A Survey of the Conferences’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 19 (1984), pp. 101–121 at 108; Ramsey intro. to his trans. of Cassian, pp. 12–13. 6 John Cassian, Collationes xxiiii in csel 13, Michael Petschenig, ed. (Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004). For resistance to temptation via free will see Coll. vii.8.3, pp. 189–190; for resistance via asceticism see Coll. ii.2.5-ii.7.2, xx.1.5, pp. 44– 47, p. 555; for the union of grace and human effort see Coll. v.15.2–4, viii.19.1–3, pp. 139– 140, pp. 267–268. On chastity see Coll. xxiii, pp. 638–660; noted by Weaver, Divine Grace and Human Agency, pp. 99–100, 114; Casiday, Tradition and Theology, pp. 101–103; Ramsey, ‘John Cassian and Augustine’, p. 130. For Cassian on demonic temptation see David Brakke, Demons in the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 160, 243. In addition to loci Brakke flags in Cassian see Coll. i.20 2-i.22.2, ii.2.5-ii.2.7, ii.9.1, iii.20.1, v.6.1–v.7.1, vii.8.1–3, vii.12.1-vii.13.2, vii.15.1vii.21.1–4, vii.32.1–4, viii.8.1-viii.11.2, viii.19.1–3, xiii.6.5, xx.1.5, xxiii.6.4, xxiii.12.2, pp. 30– 34, 44–48, 92–93, 124–128, 189–190, 191–193, 194–199, 210–212, 223–227, 235–236, 368, 555, 650, 657.

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applications of biblical injunctions and examples are multiform and practical, not abstract and formulaic.7 Cassian distills this general approach in Collation 13. Its two interlocutors multiply biblical citations, which constitute their entire arguments, quoting St. Paul more extensively than any other author. Opening with James 1:17: ‘Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights’, the pro-grace speaker follows with a barrage of Pauline texts, not excluding the Augustinian battle-cry of 1Cor. 4:7: ‘What have you that you did not receive?’ Paul’s quotation of Christ’s words in 2 Cor. 12:9: ‘My grace is sufficient for you’ is the pro-grace speaker’s own money shot. The pro-free will speaker opens with Paul’s affirmation, in Rom. 2:14–15, that the Gentiles have virtues by natural law that coincide with God’s law. Further, the Apostle recognizes in 1Tim. 2:4 that God wants all to be saved, and enjoins us in Phil. 2:12: ‘Work out your salvation in fear and trembling’. And Paul reminds us in Rom. 2:6: ‘God will render to every man according to his works’. Some two dozen other verses reinforce these points. So: How to deal with these conflicting texts? Cassian offers a distinctive solution. We should not try to reconcile them. Rather, each of them must be accepted as valid, as is. These diverse biblical data reflect the fact that diverse realities actually operate in individual lives. St. Paul, above all, recognizes this fact; and biblical and post-biblical worthies illustrate it in practice. Cassian’s strategy in Collation 13 thus suggests that it is both myopic and arrogant to reduce this diverse phenomenon to any one of its possibilities. Not only does such a move expose a shaky grasp of Holy Scripture, it also imposes limits on God’s interactions with humankind. Cassian’s interlocutors frame their conclusion as a report based on wide-ranging evidence: ‘God provides for the salvation of the human race in numberless different manners and in inscrutable ways. He inspires some, who wish it and thirst for it, to a greater ardor, while some others, who do not even wish it, he compels against their will. Sometimes he helps to accomplish the things that he sees we desire for our own good, and at other times he inspires the beginning of that desire and bestows both the commencement of a good work and perseverance in it’.8 Cassian’s paradigm

7 Ramsey, intro. to his trans. of Cassian, Conferences, p. 22. 8 Cassian, Coll. xiii.17.1, pp. 392–393: ‘Per haec igitur exempla quae de evangelicis protulimus monumentis evidentissime poterimus advertere diversis atque innumeris modis et inscrutabilibus viis deum salutem humani generis procurare et quorundum quidem volentium ac sitentium cursum ad maiorem incitare flagrantiam, quosdam vero etiam nolentes invitosque conpellere, et nunc quidem ut inpleantur ea quae utiliter a nobis desiderata perspexerit adiuvare, nunc vero etiam ipsius sancti desiderii inspirare principia et vel initium boni operis vel

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case of someone saved unbeknownst to him and against his will, ‘unwilling and opposed’, is St. Paul on the road to Damascus.9 This conversion experience, and the tension between flesh and spirit referenced by Paul in Rom. 7:15, were valid, for Paul. But, as his full corpus reflects, Paul did not treat his own personal experience as normative for other people. Another case that speaks to one person’s experience but not to all is that of St. Peter, who ‘out of fear was forced to deny the Lord three times’.10 Each of these disciples conveys a wider message as well. Peter’s immediate repentance signals his knowledge that he did wrong. Succumbing to temptation under extreme provocation is not the same thing as giving inner assent to it. Paul’s writings rebuke Augustine’s monocular and tendentious use of the Apostle. And, variegated as the findings reported in Collation 13 may be, they all show that God’s multiform grace does not annul or enslave our free will.11 While free will as Cassian envisions it survived the eclipse of the semiPelagian debate, this topic itself lay fallow for the next half-millennium. Despite some attention to it in pre-Conquest England, Anselm is rightly credited with reviving it and giving it an original and influential treatment.12 In his earlier works, framed as master-disciple dialogues, he defines rectitude as the commitment to truth and goodness for their own sake: the will is more free when it chooses rectitude than when it does not, and the will is its own efficient cause when it rejects rectitude, as in the devil’s unconditioned fall. Anselm expects readers of dciii to remember these arguments and cites dla and dv

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perseverantiam condonare’, trans. Ramsey, p. 488. That, for Cassian, God saves some people against their will is also noted by Casiday, Tradition and Theology, p. 101. Here and elsewhere in this chapter biblical quotations will cite the English of the rsv. Cassian, Coll. xiii.5.2, p. 389: ‘invitum ac repugnantem adtrahat Paulum’, trans. Ramsey, p. 386. Cassian, Coll. xx.13.5, p. 633: ‘Quid, illo tempore, numquid ruinam manifeste negandum est pertulisse, quo inmanente persecutorum metu ter dominum negare conpulsus est?’ My translation. Cassian, Coll. xiii.18.4–5, pp. 395–396. Jörn Müller, Willensschwäche im Antike und Mittelalter: Eine Problemgeschichte von Sokrates bis Duns Scotus (Leuven: Peeters, 2009), pp. 391–413, although this otherwise important study is limited to dla and dcd. For the treatment of free will and grace by Latin writers in Anglo-Saxon England see Celia Chazelle, The Codex Amiatinus and Its ‘Sister’ Bibles (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 122–131, 133–134, 248–249 and Aaron J. Kleist, Striving for Grace: Views of Free Will in Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), pp. xi–xii, 121–165. The one text discussed by Kleist that invokes Cassian’s Collation xiii specifically is Wulfstan of York’s De adiutorio Dei et libero arbitrio (late tenth century), of which he provides an edition and translation at 268–271; preserved in a unique manuscript, Copenhagen Konelige Bibliothek, Gamle Konelige Sammlung 1595, fols. 59r– 60v, this work indicates that Wulfstan did not appreciate Cassian’s strategy of argument.

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expressly.13 He reiterates the view that ‘the will that maintains its received uprightness is not destroyed by any necessity’, whatever hardships it faces.14 But he addresses a different question in dciii: How do we recover the rectitude we have lost? As Anselm sees it, the retention, rejection, and reacquisition of rectitude are not mirror-images of each other. They do not have the same psychodynamics. His disinclination to follow the late Augustine on this issue leads Anselm to adopt, and to adapt, Cassian’s proof-text model in propounding his own alternative. Anselm certainly had the relevant texts of Cassian and Augustine at hand. By the early twelfth century Augustine had become an authority with a capital A. For Benedictines this had always been the case with Cassian, cited by name and work as recommended reading in the Rule of St. Benedict and received as a Church Father in the early Middle Ages. Both the Collations and a pertinent group of Augustine’s works were available in Anglo-Saxon libraries, at Bec and nearby Norman abbeys, and at Canterbury.15 None the less, the

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Anselm, dciii.4, iii.12 (aoo, ii.267, 284). Anselm, dciii.4 (aoo, ii.267): ‘Quomodo quidem libertas voluntatis tenentis acceptam rectitudinem nulla necessitate ut illam deserat expugnetur, sed difficultate impugnetur, nec eidem difficultati invita sed volens cedat: in tractatu De libertate arbitrii puto me ostendisse’. Here and elsewhere trans. Thomas Birmingham in Brian Davies and Gillian R. Evans, eds., Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 463. The Rule of St. Benedict, ed. and trans. Bruce L. Venarde, xlii.3, xlii.5, lxxiii.7, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 6 (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 128–129, 144–145. On Benedict’s recommendation of Cassian see Adalbert de Vogüé, ‘Les mentions des oeuvres de Cassien chez saint Benedict et ses contemporains’, Studia Monastica, 20 (1978), pp. 275–285; on Cassian’s early medieval reception see Albrecht Diem, Das monastische Experiment: Die Rolle der Keuschheit bei der Entstehung des westlichen Klosterwesens (Münster: lt Verlag, 2007), pp. 12–29, 112–113 nn. 413–415. Cf. Marianne Djuth, ‘Anselm’s Augustinianism and the initium bonae voluntatis’ in B. Carlos Bazán, Eduardo Andújar, and Léonard G. Sbrocchi, eds., Les philosophes morales et politiques au moyen âge, Actes du ixe congrès international de philosophie médiévale, 2 vols., Ottawa, 17–22 août, 1992 (New York: legas, 1995), ii, pp. 844–860, who argues at 845–846 that Anselm’s base line was the Council of Orange of 529. For manuscripts of Cassian and Augustine in libraries accessible to Anselm see Michael Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 32, 33, 55–56, 119, 127, 159, 205, 238, 240, 257, with data on eleventhand early twelfth-century copies now in London, Canterbury, Oxford, and Salisbury at 295. Canterbury also held a Collations manuscript dating to the tenth century, described in Bruce C. Barker-Benfield, St. Augustine’s Abbey Canterbury, 3 vols., Corpus of British Library Catalogues 13 (London: British Library in Association with the British Academy, 2008), ii, pp. 772–775; see also Gasper, Anselm of Canterbury, pp. 3–4, 51–72, 110, 202, 207 and, most recently, Laura Cleaver, ‘The Monastic Library of Bec’ in Benjamin Pohl and Laura L. Gathagan, eds., A Companion to the Abbey of Le Bec in the Central Middle Ages (11th–13th

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Cassian/Anselm connection has escaped most scholars. For Owen Chadwick and Benedicta Ward, Anselm evokes Cassian only in his prayers and meditations.16 Sigbjørn Sønnesyn has seen his Collation 14 as informing Anselm’s distinction between modes of truth in dv.17 Marianne Djuth alone has flagged Collation 13 as a possible source for dciii. But she equates Anselm’s conclusions with Cassian’s, and does not explore the argumentative strategy of either author.18 To be sure, there are stylistic differences between them. Anselm presents a treatise, not a dialogue. He offers no biblical or post-biblical exempla. He prefers homely analogies and theoretical asides. Where Cassian’s multiform and unqualified biblical citations are his argument, as such, with St. Paul assigned the heavy lifting, Anselm’s citations are fewer, more restricted, and handled differently. After his first batch of quotations, he pauses. He sets forth his own understanding of the human condition and our role in the recovery of rectitude. He then returns to the interpretation, and qualification, of his chosen biblical texts in the light of that understanding. He includes passages from St. Paul but does not privilege him over Christ’s statements as reported in the gospels, and the psalmists and prophets who tell those seeking to recover lost rectitude what to do, to pray for, and to expect. Anselm acknowledges that we all have lost rectitude owing to original sin and also, an issue more central to dciii, owing to our freely willed postbaptismal departures from it. Anselm’s tactic for dealing with the late Augustine’s position is not to dispute it as such. Instead, he presents and defends what he himself thinks. We should take seriously the power of baptism, he urges. For believers, Anselm states, ‘just as baptism banishes the original sin of injustice to which they are born, so too it pardons any guilt attached to their incapacity and all the corruption they incurred because of their first parent which dis-

16

17

18

Centuries) (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 171–205, with specific reference to Cassian’s Collations at 200 and to the interchange of books between Bec and Canterbury at 181–189. Cf. the claim that Augustine’s anti-Pelagian works ‘were little known in Anselm’s time’, of Peter Iver Kaufman, ‘A Confirmation of Augustine’s Soteriology: Human Will’s Collaboration with Divine Grace according to Anselm of Canterbury’, Medievalia, 4 (1978), pp. 147–160 at 149–150. Owen Chadwick, intro. to John Cassian, Conferences, trans. Colm Luibhed (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), p. 35; The Prayers and Meditations of Saint Anselm with the ‘Proslogion’, Benedicta Ward, trans. (London: Penguin Books, 1973), pp. 51–53. Sigbjørn Sønnesyn, ‘Experiencing Truth and Attaining Knowledge: Anselm’s Philosophical Theology’, unpublished paper, presented at Anselm of Canterbury: Order, Nature, and the Divine conference, Durham University, 9 July 2019. Djuth, ‘Anselm’s Augustinianism’ 845–846.

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honours God’, an assessment of the consequences of the Fall far milder than Augustine’s.19 Regarding believers’ post-baptismal sins, he asserts, ‘no offense is charged against them except one they voluntarily commit’.20 We alone make that choice and we alone are responsible for its consequences.21 But our will as a cause does not function alone in recovering the rectitude we lose thereby, or in acquiring the merits that are the reward of rectitude well used. Grace must be added. We need both prevenient grace in regaining rectitude and continuing grace in retaining and augmenting it.22 For Anselm this condition applies to everyone in just the same way, albeit God may dispense his grace to each of us in different degrees.23 Further, in another covert critique of the late Augustine, Anselm avers that while it is not given with respect to our antecedent merits, grace is not irresistible. It is a divine invitation which we are fully free to refuse.24 Having laid out these principles Anselm now applies them to the interpretation of his chosen biblical texts, which, as he observes, must be ‘carefully weighed’.25 In contrast with Cassian, whose citations document the wide range of salvific realities, Anselm focuses on those that posit a single stark alternative: either grace alone, or free will alone.26 In support of grace alone he cites John 15:5: ‘Apart from me you can do nothing’ and John 6:44: ‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him’. Anselm follows with Paul’s ‘What have you that you did not receive?’ in 1Cor. 4:7 and his assertion in Rom. 9:16 that our salvation ‘depends not on man’s will or exercise but on God’s mercy’. On the side of free will alone Anselm cites passages affirming that we can and must exercise our free will in regaining rectitude. This condition is presupposed by the injunction in Ps. 34:14: ‘Depart from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it’, as well as by Christ’s assurance in Matt. 11:28: ‘Come to me all you who labor, and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest’. At the same time, in thinking about our own voluntary contribution, we must accept Paul’s assessment

19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26

Anselm, dciii.8 (aoo, ii.274), trans. Birmingham, p. 463. Anselm, dciii.8 (aoo, ii.274–275): ‘nec ullum illis imputatur delictum post baptismum, nisi quod sua voluntate fecerint’, trans. Birmingham, p. 463. Anselm, dciii.7 (aoo, ii.273–274). Anselm, dciii.2, iii.4 (aoo, ii.264–265, 268–269). Anselm, dciii.8 (aoo, ii.276). Anselm, dciii.3, iii.4, iii.6, iii.8, iii.14 (aoo, ii.266, 268–269, 270, 272, 285–287). Noted by Sweeney, Anselm of Canterbury, pp. 354–357. Anselm, dciii.5 (aoo, ii.269): ‘Si bene considerentur quae dicta sunt, aperte cognoscitur quia cum aliquid dicit sacra scriptura pro gratia, non amovet omnino liberum arbitrium; neque cum loquitur pro libero arbitrio, excludit gratiam’, trans. Birmingham, p. 457. Anselm, dciii.1, iii.6 (aoo, ii.263–264, 270).

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of it in 1Cor. 3:7–9. We are, indeed, God’s fellow-workers and we will receive the wages we earn. But while we labor, it is God who gives the increase. Anselm reads, and relativizes, all the passages just cited, and others not mentioned in this chapter, with this understanding in mind. He argues that biblical texts on grace and free will that look to be binary opposites should not be seen as mutually exclusive. They would not be warranted as God’s true message unless what Holy Scripture really teaches us is that ‘free choice in many instances coexists with grace and co-operates with it’.27 Unlike Cassian, Anselm does not undertake this scripturally-assisted analysis in the context of polemic. His primary goal is not to torpedo Augustine’s weaponizing of St. Paul, or to show that the ascetic monasticism inherited from the Desert Fathers accords with ecclesiastical tradition. Rather, Anselm’s goal in dciii is ethical and pastoral. He seeks to educate, to reprove and correct two contrasting vices and to instill the corresponding virtues. On one side there are the arrogant, who take all the credit for their moral achievements. They need to acquire the virtue of humility. On the other side are the despondent or the lazy. Demoralized by their failure to make moral progress, they excuse themselves as helpless to do so. They need to acquire the virtue of hope. Granted, the Christian life can be difficult. But difficulty is not impossibility. In regaining the lost rectitude which these failings reflect, both groups need to recognize what our will can and must do, and also what it cannot do by itself.28 This message is designed to instruct Christians in general, and not just the monks under Anselm’s care, for he writes dc as Archbishop of Canterbury, with a wide ministerial agenda.

27

28

Anselm, dciii.1 (aoo, ii.264): ‘In hac itaque quaestione haec erit nostra intentio, ut liberum arbitrium simul esse cum gratia et cum ea operari in multis monstremus (…)’, trans. Birmingham, p. 453. Sweeney, Anselm of Canterbury, pp. 453–467 gives the best recent account, noting at 365 Anselm’s ‘delicate balance’ between grace and free will. Scholars she does not cite who agree with this conclusion include Franz Bauemker, Die Lehre des. hl. Anselmus von Canterbury und des Honorius Augustodunensis vom Willen und von der Gnade (Münster: Aschendorff, 1911), pp. 9–68 (albeit reframing it in scholastic terms); Sofia Vanni Rovighi, ‘Libertà e libero arbitrio in S. Anselmo d’Aosta’ in Fernand Bossier et al., eds., Images of Man in Ancient and Medieval Thought: Studia Gerardo Verbeke ab amicis et collegis dicatu (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1976), pp. 271–285; Losoncy, ‘Will in St. Anselm’, pp. 702–704; Thorel, ‘S. Anselme’, pp. 167–175; Ernst, Anselm von Canterbury, pp. 95–96; Corbin, La grâce de la liberté, pp. 285–305; Vaughn, ‘Anselm of Bec’, p. 92. Cf. Hopkins, Companion, pp. 139–163; Kaufman, ‘A Confirmation of Augustine’s Soteriology’, pp. 150–160; Djuth, ‘Anselm’s Augustinianism’, pp. 847, 855–856; and Franz, ‘Die Freiheit de Menschen’, pp. 242, 247, who see Anselm as more supportive of the antiPelagian Augustine. Anselm, dciii.1, iii.6–7, iii.10 (aoo, ii.264, 270–274, 278).

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With Cassian, Anselm affirms that the operations of our free will are considerably more extensive and robust than what Augustine grants to fallen humanity. Both Cassian and Anselm cite a range of biblical proof-texts to support this claim. The stakes involved in the recovery of lost rectitude, a topic corollary to but not discussed in his early works on free will, help to explain why Anselm found in Cassian’s Collation 13 a useful model for dciii. At the same time, his concrete advice departs from Cassian’s. Their respective treatments of Rom. 7:15 pinpoint their differences. While, as noted, Cassian sees the tension between flesh and spirit reported by Paul as true, for Paul, but as not exhaustive of his teachings on the inner life, Anselm reads Paul as affirming that we are led to sin not by our natural endowments, inclinations, and aptitudes but by our voluntary use of them.29 While those for whom Anselm offers a coursecorrection have different moral starting points, he applies the same conditions for the recovery of rectitude to them, and to everyone else. For Cassian, a onesize-fits-all approach to ethics and soteriology fails to square with the full range of biblical evidence. Anselm disagrees, and supports his disagreement by reinterpreting the biblical evidence he selects. Anselm does not treat his chosen proof-texts as self-explanatory; they need to be understood in terms of the interaction of grace and free will he proposes. Where Cassian is descriptive, Anselm is prescriptive. Anselm rejects Cassian’s notion that we can be forced to sin or be saved against our will. Cassian does not refer to baptism, while Anselm gives considerable scope to its curative effects on our post-baptismal exercise of free choice. Sharing many of Cassian’s departures from the late Augustine, and taking a methodological leaf from Cassian’s book, Anselm’s dciii thus places his own stamp on the collaboration of free will with grace in recovering the rectitude that he holds essential for our upright behavior in this life and for blessedness in the next.

Bibliography Primary Sources Anselm of Canterbury, The Major Works, Brian Davis and Gillian R. Evans, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Anselm of Canterbury, The Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm, Benedicta Ward, trans. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973).

29

Anselm, dciii.7, iii.12–13 (aoo, ii.274, 284–287).

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Benedict, The Rule of St. Benedict, Bruce L. Venarde, ed. and trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2011). John Cassian, Conferences, Colm Luibhed, trans. (New York: Paulist Press 1985). John Cassian, The Conferences, Boniface Ramsey, trans. (New York: Paulist Press, 1997). John Cassian, Collationes xxiiii in csel 13, Michael Petschenig, ed. (Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004). S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961); reprinted in two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968).

Secondary Sources Adams, Marilyn McCord, ‘St. Anselm on Evil: De casu diaboli’, Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 3 (1992), pp. 423–451. Backus, Irena and Aza Goudriaan, ‘Semipelagianism: The Origins of the Term and Its Passage into the History of Heresy’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 65 (2014), pp. 25–46. Barker-Benfield, Bruce C., St. Augustine’s Abbey Canterbury, 3 vols., Corpus of British Library Catalogues 13 (London: British Library in Association with the British Academy, 2008). Bauemker, Franz, Die Lehre des hl. Anselms von Canterbury und des Honorius Augustodunensis vom Willen und von der Gnade (Münster: Aschendorff, 1911). Bonner, Gerald, Freedom and Necessity: St. Augustine’s Teaching on Divine Power and Human Freedom (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007). Brakke, David, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2006). Briancesco, Eduardo, ‘Le dernier Anselme: Essai sur la structure du De concordia’ in Joseph Schnaubelt et al. eds., Anselm Studies 2: Proceedings of the Fifth International Saint Anselm Conference (White Plains, NY: Kraus International, 1985), pp. 559–596. Casiday, Augustine M., Tradition and Theology in St. John Cassian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Chadwick, Owen, John Cassian: A Study in Primitive Monasticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950, 2nd rev. ed. 1968). Chazelle, Celia, The Codex Amiatinus and its ‘Sister’ Bibles (Leiden: Brill, 2019). Clark, Elizabeth A., ‘Vitiated Seeds and Holy Vessels: Augustine’s Manichean Past’ in Elizabeth A. Clark, ed., Ascetic Piety and Women’s Faith: Essays on Late Roman Christianity (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press 1978), pp. 291–349. Cleaver, Laura, ‘The Monastic Library at Bec’ in Benjamin Pohl and Laura L. Gathagan, eds., A Companion to the Abbey of Le Bec in the Central Middle Ages (11th–13th Centuries) (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 171–205.

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Corbin, Michel, La grâce de la liberté (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2012). Diem, Albrecht, Das monastische Experiment: Die Rolle der Keuschheit bei der Entstehung des westlichen Klosterwesens (Münster: lt Verlag, 2007). Djuth, Marianne, ‘Anselm’s Augustinianism and the initium bonae voluntatis’ in B. Carlos Bazán, Eduardo Andújar, and Léonard G. Sbrocchi, eds., Les philosophes morales et politiques au moyen âge, Actes du ixe congrès international de philosophie médiévale, Ottawa, 17–22 août 1992, 2 vols. (New York: legas, 1995), ii, pp. 844–860. Ernst, Stephan, Anselm von Canterbury (Münster: Aschendorff, 2011). Franz, Thomas, ‘Die Freiheit des Menschen und die Gnade Gottes: Zur Verhältnisbestimmung von Anthropologie und Theologie in “De concordia”’ in Stephan Ernst and Thomas Franz, eds., Sola ratione: Anselm von Canterbury (1033–1109) und die rationale Rekonstruktion des Glaubes (Würzburg: Echter, 2011), pp. 229–248. Gasper, Giles E.M., Anselm of Canterbury and his Theological Inheritance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). Grégoire, Réginald, ‘L’Utilisation de l’Écriture Sainte chez Anselm de Cantorbéry’, Revue d’ascetique et de mystique, 39 (1963), pp. 273–293. Hopkins, Jasper, A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972). Hwang, Alexander Y., ‘Pauci perfectae amatoris: The Augustinians at Marseilles’ in Alexander Y. Hwang, Brian J. Matz, and Augustine Casiday, eds., Grace after Grace: The Debates after Augustine (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), pp. 35–50. Kaufman, Peter Iver, ‘A Confirmation of Augustine’s Soteriology: Human Will’s Collaboration with Divine Grace according to Anselm of Canterbury’, Medievalia, 4 (1978), pp. 147–160. Kleist, Aaron J., Striving for Grace: Views of Free Will in Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). Lambert, David, ‘The Making of Authority: Patterns of Augustine’s Reception’ in Karla Pollmann and Willemien Otten, eds., The Oxford Guide to the Reception of Augustine, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), i, pp. 15–22. Lapidge, Michael, The Anglo-Saxon Library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Leclercq, Jean, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catherine Misrahi (New York: Fordham University Press, 1961, repr. New York: Omega Books, 1962). Leyser, Conrad, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). Leyser, Conrad, ‘Augustine and the Latin West, 430–ca. 900’ in Mark Vessey, ed., A Companion to St. Augustine (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 450–464. Losoncy, Thomas A., ‘Will in St. Anselm: An Examination of His Biblical and Augustinian Origins’ in Raymonde Foreville, ed., Les mutations socio-culturelles au tournant

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des xie–xiie siècles, Spicilegium Beccense 2: Actes du colloque international du cnrs, LeBec-Hellouin, 11–16 juillet 1982 (Paris: cnrs, 1984), pp. 701–708. Müller, Jörn, Willensschwäche im Mittelalter: Ein Problemgeschichte von Sokrates bis Duns Scotus (Leuven: Peeters, 2009). Ogliari, Donato, ‘St Anselm’s “De Libertate Arbitrii” Revisited’, Divus Thomas, 92.3 (1989), pp. 259–272. Ortlund, Gavin, Anselm’s Pursuit of Joy: A Commentary on the Proslogion (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020). Pereira, Matthew J., ‘Augustine, Pelagius, and the Southern Gallic Tradition: Faustus of Riez’ in Alexander Y. Hwang, Brian J. Matz, and Augustine Casiday, eds., Grace after Grace: The Debates after Augustine (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), pp. 180–207. Pollmann, Karla and David Lambert, ‘After Augustine: A Survey of the Reception from 430 to 2000’, Millennium: Jahrbuch zu Kultur und Geschichte der ersten Jahrtausends n. Chr., 1 (2004), pp. 165–183. Pouchet, Robert, La rectitude chez saint Anselme: Un itinéraire augustinien de l’âme (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1964). Pranger, Burcht, ‘Anselm, Calvin, and the Absent Bible’ in Alasdair MacDonald et al., eds., Christian Humanism: Essays in Honour of Arjo Vanderjagt (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 457–468. Quillet, Jeannine, ‘Volonté et liberté dans le De libertate arbitrii’ in David. E. Luscombe and Gillian R. Evans, eds., Anselm: Aosta, Bec, and Canterbury, Papers in Commemoration of the Nine-Hundredth Anniversary of Anselm’s Enthronement as Archbishop, 25 September 1093 (Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 2006), pp. 247– 255. Ramsey, Boniface, ‘John Cassian and Augustine’ in Alexander Y. Hwang, Brian J. Matz, and Augustine Casiday, eds., Grace after Grace: The Debates after Augustine (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), pp. 114–130. Shaw, Brent, Sacred Violence: African Christianity and Sectarian Hate in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Sønnesyn, Sigbjørn, ‘Experiencing Truth and Attaining Knowledge in Anselm’s Philosophical Theology’, unpublished paper, presented at Anselm of Canterbury: Order, Nature, and the Divine conference, Durham University, 9 July 2019. Southern, Richard William, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Stewart, Columba, Cassian the Monk (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Sweeney, Eileen C., Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012). TeSelle, Eugene, ‘Background: Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy’ in Alexander Y. Hwang, Brian J. Matz, and Augustine Casiday, eds., Grace after Grace: The Debates

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after Augustine (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), pp. 1– 13. Teske, Roland, ‘1Timothy 2:4 and the Beginning of the Massalian Controversy’ in Alexander Y. Hwang, Brian J. Matz, and Augustine Casiday, eds., Grace after Grace: The Debates after Augustine (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), pp. 14–34. Thorel, Reginaldo, ‘S. Anselmo tra grazia e libero arbitrio’, Rivista di ascetica e mistica, 55 (1986) pp. 167–175. Vanni Rovighi, Sofia, ‘Libertà e libero arbitrio in S. Anselmo d’Aosta’ in Fernand Bossier et al., eds., Images of Man in Ancient and Medieval Thought: Studia Gerardo Verbeke ab amicis et collegis dicatu (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1976), pp. 271–285. Vaughn, Sally N., ‘Anselm of Le Bec and Canterbury: Teacher by Word and Example, Following the Footsteps of His Ancestors’ in Benjamin Pohl and Laura L. Gathagan, eds., A Companion to the Abbey of Le Bec in the Central Middle Ages (11th–13th Centuries) (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 57–93. Vogüé, Adalbert de, ‘Les mentions des oeuvres de Cassien chez saint Benedict et ses contemporains’, Studia Monastica, 20 (1978), pp. 275–285. Vogüé, Adalbert de, ‘Understanding Cassian: A Survey of the Conferences’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 19 (1984) pp. 101–121. Weaver, Rebecca Harden, Divine Grace and Human Agency: A Study of the Semi-Pelagian Controversy (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996). Wetzel, James, ‘Snares of Truth: Augustine on Free Will and Predestination’ in Robert Dodaro and George Lawless, eds., Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 124–141. Williams, Thomas, ‘Anselm’s Quiet Radicalism’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 24 (2016), pp. 3–22.

chapter 10

What Justice Owes to Knowledge A Study in Anselm’s Ethics Christian Brouwer

Our bodies are gardens, To which our wills are gardeners shakespeare, Othello Act i, scene 3 (305–306)

∵ When we try to accomplish thoughtful actions, we are engaged either in a deliberation about them or in an analysis after undertaking them. In doing so we mobilise knowledge and reasoning in ways that can be complex: Which is the knowledge mobilised? Which are the faculties involved and how are they related? Which methods of reasoning do we use? Anselm defends certain positions in relation to these questions that are worth clarifying. In the present study, I would like to analyse one of them, namely the relations between knowledge and justice. As I shall try to show, this issue is at the heart of Anselm’s ethics and forms its foundation. I see it as a kind of preliminary issue. In particular, I would like to determine what are Anselm’s answers to the following questions: Which knowledge is necessary to act justly? and: Which knowledge is it necessary not to have to act justly? It is not a coincidence that this issue emerges in the De Veritate (dv), where Anselm is knotting together truth and justice. After having devoted two of his major works to the knowing of God and the world, the Monologion (M) and the Proslogion (P), Anselm is now moving towards ethical issues, namely truth, justice, freedom and sin. In this study we will limit ourselves to looking at the relations between knowledge and justice, which can be considered a study in moral knowledge.1 1 The term is used by Daniel T. Rakus, ‘Alter Augustinus and the Question of Moral Knowledge: Answering Philosophically as an Anselmian’, Revue des études augustiniennes et patristiques, 43.2 (1997), p. 313, but his focus is rather speculative in his attempting to show that there is an innate moral knowledge in Anselm; I am trying to be more exegetical than speculative.

© Christian Brouwer, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_012

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Justice is the key notion in Anselm’s ethics, and so it is essential to rely on its definition and on the conditions required for an act to be just. This is all the more important because systematic developments are not so frequent in Anselm’s work. So, we must try to put together scattered elements to draw the picture of our topic. First, we shall analyse Anselm’s definition of justice and its implications concerning the knowledge required to attain it. Then we shall ask about the finality of rational knowledge to detail relations between rationality and justice. And third, finally, we shall analyse the sin of the devil, the first of all sins, to determine what he did know before sinning and what he did not.

1

What Is Justice? Where Is It?

My starting point is dv12 where Anselm defines justice. We shall also refer to dv4 & 5, where Anselm discusses the truth of will and the kinds of action. In dv, Anselm seeks one single concept for everything which is said to be true. As far as justice is concerned, the question is whether the concept of truth also encompasses justice. And it seems it does, because justice, like truth, is rightness (rectitudo).2 So justice is regarded like a species of truth, with further determinations. Indeed, as is well known, Anselm formulates the definition of justice as follows: ‘Justice is rectitude of the will preserved for its own sake’.3 I am concerned here with the role of knowledge in relation to this definition. First distinctions are made by determining justice as rightness of acts and by distinguishing between unspontaneous, natural acts and acts which have their source in the agent (sponte).4 For example, it cannot be said that a stone is just, even if it possesses rightness: it is doing what it ought to do when it falls back after you have thrown it up in the air; however this is a natural rightness. The stone does not have any power to do things by itself, or to do things otherwise. Its act is accomplished by exterior forces. Therefore, natural acts are necessary ones.5

2 dv12 (aoo, i.191.27–192.5). 3 dv12 (aoo, i.194.26): ‘Iustitia igitur est rectitudo voluntatis propter se servata’. 4 dv12 (aoo, i.192.19): ‘homo sponte, lapis naturaliter et non sponte facit’. Before talking about will, Anselm speaks of imputability of the act to the agent, which is expressed by the term ‘sponte’. 5 This point has been stated in dv5 (aoo, i.182.6–9): ‘Unde animadverti potest rectitudinem seu veritatem actionis aliam esse necessariam, aliam non necessariam. Ex necessitate namque ignis facit rectitudinem et veritatem, cum calefacit; et non ex necessitate facit homo rectitudinem et veritatem, cum bene facit’.

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In order to be just, something is thus said to do by itself what it ought to. This is immediately interpreted in terms of will. One is not just if one does not will what one ought to. Does that mean that the horse who wills to graze is just? He is doing what he ought to. In his hierarchy of beings, Anselm starts from inanimate beings (stones), through animate non-rational beings (horses), to animate rational beings (human beings). In their intermediate position, animate nonrational beings have in themselves the source of their action. They are acting by themselves (sponte). To take it literally, they are willing what they ought to.6 In other words animals possess some kind of will. However, they are deprived of rationality which would allow them to will the rightness of their acts. Indeed, to find justice, we need further distinctions. The following criterion is praise. In order for an act to be praised it is necessary that it has its source in the agent, that the agent wants to do it. However, in addition the agent must want its act to be just.7 And this is only possible to rational beings. In other words, the agent needs to want rightness (rectitude), not only the right thing. In the example given in dv5, in a rational act like giving alms, one must not only give alms but one must also want the rightness of giving alms, and not give alms for another reason, for instance by habit. It could be said that justice is more will of rightness than rightness of will. However, in order to achieve will of rightness, we must be able to recognise rightness where it is, to perceive it. Here we are coming to a first answer to the question asked in this study: to act justly it is necessary to want rightness and, to want it, it is necessary to perceive it, to know it, to recognise it.8 This is a capacity of the rational mind. The agent must be able to recognise an abstract notion such as rightness, and not only concrete things. Knowing concrete things is not sufficient to will the right thing. One must recognise the rightness of that act of the will, in order to will the rightness of that act. Otherwise the will is not to be praised: ‘It is clear that this justice is not in a nature that does not recognise rightness’.9 Anselm however does not say anything here about the ways in which this recognition operates in human beings. So, we must look elsewhere for the ways in which Anselm could suggest how to know something like rightness. First, in M, Anselm acknowledges the capa-

6 dv12 (aoo, i.192.22–23): ‘Dicemus ergo iustum esse equum cum vult pascere, quia volens facit quod debet?’ 7 dv12 (aoo, i.192.31–32): ‘Quidquid enim non vult rectitudinem, etiam si eam tenet, non meretur laudari quia tenet rectitudinem’. 8 dv12 (aoo, i.192.32–33): ‘Velle autem illam (rectitudinem) non valet qui nescit eam’. 9 dv12 (aoo, i.192.31–32): ‘Constat quia illa iustitia non est in illa natura quae rectitudinem non agnoscit’.

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city of human beings to know things themselves. This is accomplished either by imagination, for corporeal things, or by intellection, which allows them to grasp also non-corporeal things, or the non-corporeal concept of a corporeal thing.10 The example given is the human being: to know its universal essence is to know intimately what it is in order to be able to deliver a definition of it. For the intellect, to grasp the reason of some thing is to penetrate it so as to be able to explain it (which is impossible with the triune God).11 That is why intellection is necessary to definition; by thinking the universal essences of things, intellection generates their definitions.12 These operations of the intellect open up the possibility of a universal mental language, saying what things are. This is the common language to all human beings whatever their particular spoken language. On the level of human thought it is the way of knowing things. But it is also analogous to the divine way of saying things. All things are in God’s mind as forms, or similitudes, or models.13 As Creator, he says things so that they begin to exist in the world. The human being is not a creator, although, in an imperfect way, he possesses a mental language analogous to the language of the Creator.14 He possesses it because he is himself an image or a similitude of his Creator. Not only can he know his Creator, although indirectly (per aliud) through the image or mirror he is, but he can also see other things in an analogous way to Him.15 As we see, for Anselm, to know such a thing as the rightness of the will is far from impossible, even if his account on how it happens is not detailed. From analysing the distinction between acts, Anselm ends up situating justice in the will. Will alone, indeed, merits praise. However, it must be considered whether justice could not be placed elsewhere, and this is what Anselm

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M10 (aoo, i.25.3): ‘[loquimur] res ipsas vel corporum imaginatione vel rationis intellectu’. See my contribution: Christian Brouwer, ‘Imagination des corps et intellection de la raison chez Anselme de Canterbury’ in Maria Candida Pacheco and José Francisco Meirinhos, eds., Intellect et imagination dans la philosophie médiévale: actes du xie Congrès international de philosophie médiévale de la Société internationale pour l’étude de la philosophie médiévale, s.i.e.p.m., Porto, du 26 au 31 août 2002, vol. 2 (Rencontres de philosophie médiévale 11, Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 857–865, where I show that the intellection of the ratio (concept) of things is the way to know things themselves and the source of their definitions. M65 (aoo, i.75–77). M10 (aoo, i.25.7–9): ‘eum ipsum hominem mens aut per corporis imaginem aut per rationem intuetur. (…) per rationem vero, ut cum eius universalem essentiam, quae est “animal rationale mortale”, cogitat’. M9 (aoo, i.24). M34 (aoo, i.53–54). M67 (aoo, i.77–78).

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does, albeit briefly. Two other instances could be the location of justice: knowledge (scientia) and acts (opus). These are rapidly dismissed as locations for justice, because they do not provide for praise for the agent. However, knowledge would not be such a bad candidate for the ‘place’ of justice. In the philosophical tradition, some tendencies of Socratic-Platonic thought did go in this direction, with the famous position: ‘no one does wrong willingly’.16 The context is very different, but the question is similar: is virtue a knowledge and can it be taught? Roughly put, if we accept the principle that everyone desires the good, the main point is to identify what is good. And so virtue would be that knowledge which allows us to identify the good. And because it is a knowledge, it can be taught.17 But Anselm does not follow this way of defining the virtue of justice. On this point at least it may be argued he is no Platonist. So, there are two places left: will and action. But action is also rapidly rejected. Yet there would be some arguments in favour of action. In dv5, Anselm founded on Scripture the truth of action: ‘who does wrong hates the light’, ‘who does the truth comes to the light’ (John 3:20–21). As in other places, Anselm identifies truth with rightness. As far as human beings are concerned, these are rational (and not necessary) actions or even passions. In any of these actions, a human being is doing the truth when he does what he ought to. Furthermore, Anselm cites ‘suffering persecution because of justice’ (patitur persecutionem propter iustitiam) as an example of true action.18 We find an explanation of this in the fragments called De potestate, where it is said that one who suffers is doing suffering. ‘To do’ ( facere) is a generic term, not only for what is commonly called action but also for such ‘actions’ as sitting and suffering.19 However, for

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Meno 78a. Meno 87c–e, Protagoras 352bd; Republic, book 4; see (among many scholars) Sylvain Delcomminette, Le Philèbe de Platon: introduction à l’agathologie platonicienne. Philosophia antiqua, 100 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), pp. 1–19; and Terence Irwin, Plato’s ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 92–94, 141–146 and 229–234; in Plato the discussion is not about knowledge and the will, but between knowledge and belief, or non-rational faculties of the soul. Matthew 5:10. De potestate et impotentia iv, 1 (Ms. Lambeth 59, f. 171 va); Anselm of Canterbury, La conception virginale et le péché originel. La procession du saint Esprit. Lettres sur les sacrements de l’Église. Du pouvoir et de l’impuissance, Michel Corbin, Alain Galonnier, Paul Gilbert, et al, eds., L’oeuvre d’Anselme de Cantorbéry, 4 (Paris: Cerf, 1990), pp. 390–391. On the attribution of these fragments to Anselm, see Alain Galonnier in the introduction to his translation in that volume (pp. 365–379), and Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ‘Ein neues unvollendetes Werk des hl. Anselm von Canterbury: “De potestate …” ’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, 33 (1936), pp. 1–43.

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Anselm, action is not the primary place for justice, because, even if an action is doing what it ought to, it may not be just, if it does not meet the requirements of praise. The first level, but not sufficient, for an action to be praised, is that the agent wants to do this action, in other words that this action is not fortuitously what it ought to be. Praise, however, which is the criterion of justice, is only to be found in the will. For Anselm then, the only just acts are acts of the will. So, after eliminating knowledge and action as the places of justice, only will is left. In dv4, Anselm had already found the will as a special location for truth. As for the other locations of truth, a will is true when it wills what it ought to. But in John (8:44) it is said that the devil did not stand in the truth, meaning that he sinned. Clearly, truth was given here an ethical content. For Anselm the only instance by which one can remain in truth or else abandon it is the will.20 So the truth of the will must be treated apart from truth of action, opening the way to his definition of justice.21 In locating justice and injustice in the will, Anselm is following Augustine, promoting a notion of will which is the origin of the actions of rational creatures. There is no other efficient cause to the actions of humans except their will. It is a faculty which is not directed by anything but itself.22 But what is will for Anselm? We are fortunate enough to possess one development about will in his last work, the De Concordia.23 Like rationality, will is an instrument of the soul. They have the same status and are carefully distinguished.24 Will is not a simple notion. The term voluntas (will) may be analysed equivocally. It is either an instrument, or an ‘affection’ of the instrument, or the use of the instrument.25 By ‘affection’, Anselm means an attitude of the will towards one desirable thing, such as health or sleep, which it does not will permanently. Sleep is a good thing for a human being, but we do not always need to sleep. It is worth noting that to will justice is a kind of affection of the will.

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dv4 (aoo, i.180.22): ‘Non enim erat in veritate neque deseruit veritatem nisi in voluntate’. dv5 (aoo, i, 182.27): ‘separatim quid in voluntate veritas esset considerare volui’. Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei, 12.6.14–17 in cc sl, 48, Bernhard Dombart and Alphonse Kalb, eds. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955): ‘huius porro malae uoluntatis causa efficiens si quaeratur, nihil inuenitur. quid est enim quod facit uoluntatem malam, cum ipsa faciat opus malum? Ac per hoc mala uoluntas efficiens est operis mali, malae autem uoluntatis efficiens nihil est’. dciii.11 (aoo, ii.278–284). dciii.11 (aoo, ii.279.4): ‘Est namque ratio in anima, qua sicut suo instrumento utitur ad ratiocinandum, et voluntas, qua utitur ad volendum’. dciii.11 (aoo, ii.279.13–14): ‘Voluntas utique dici videtur aequivoce tripliciter. Aliud est enim instrumentum volendi, aliud affectio instrumenti, aliud usus eiusdem instrumenti’.

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We do not will all the time something just, but we generally will to be just.26 To will this or that just thing is to use the will. Returning to dv, we are not at the end of the definitional process. There is a final requirement to praiseworthiness. It must exclude all reasons to act other than rightness. Will is praiseworthy only if the reason for the will to act is the rightness itself. So, rightness is playing a double role in the definition of justice: it is at the same time the object of will and the reason for the will to act. That is what is expressed in the formulation of the definition of justice: ‘rightness of the will preserved for its own sake [i.e. for the sake of rightness]’. In the same way, rationality is also the condition of freedom. Indeed, Anselm maintains that we still possess the power of preserving the rightness of the will for its own sake (which is his definition of freedom) even if we do not possess this rightness itself. The only conditions for possessing this power are to have rationality (ratio) and will (voluntas).27 This conception of the will and action may be analysed in terms of intention: any moral value of an action is determined by the will that precedes and causes it. The action in itself has no moral value if the will that commands it is not analysed. This point would require a whole study. Here I shall just make a suggestion about the characterisation of Anselm’s ethics. Do we have basically a deontological theory of ethics in Anselm, as it has been argued?28 I am not sure that the distinction of deontological against teleological ethics is relevant to the characterisation of Anselm’s ethics. In his analysis of rightness, the virtue of doing what one ought to (quod debet), Anselm develops a double level of content of this concept. Not only is a thing right when it does what it ought to, which is its duty, but also when it does the thing for which it has been created, which is its debt towards its Creator.29 So the concept of rightness contains notions of both debt and duty. To fulfil the debt is a kind

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dciii.11 (aoo, ii.279.25–26): ‘In iusto quoque homine similiter est affectum idem instrumentum ad volendum iustitiam—etiam cum dormit—, ut cum eam cogitat, statim illam velit’. dla4 (aoo, i.213–214). In this chapter we are not engaged in a discussion on freedom. Jeffrey E. Brower, ‘Anselm on Ethics’ in Brian Davies and Brian Leftow, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Anselm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 222–252. dv2 (aoo, i.179.3–4): ‘dupliciter facit quod debet; quoniam significat et quod accepit significare, et ad quod facta est’. See Bernd Goebel, Rectitudo: Wahrheit und Freiheit bei Anselm von Canterbury: eine philosophische Untersuchung seines Denkansatzes. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Neue Folge, 56 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2001), pp. 232–233; Eileen C. Sweeney, Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), pp. 183–184; Rakus, ‘Alter Augustinus’, pp. 316–317.

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of returning to the Creator, progressing to the very finality of the creature. So, it seems to me that deontology and teleology are intimately linked in Anselm’s thought. It may be said that a thing is doing its duty for teleological reasons. And so it can be suggested that Anselm’s ethical positions would be deontological for teleological reasons.

2

The Finality of Rationality: Discerning Justice

So even if rational knowledge is not the location of justice, it is the necessary condition for justice. In order to be praised an act of the will must be oriented towards the right thing. The role of rationality is to determine which is the right thing to want, and to recognise the rightness of it. But, reciprocally, justice is giving something essential to rationality, its very ‘raison d’être’, the reason why there are rational beings, or ‘rational mortal animals’. In M68, Anselm defines rationality as the capacity for discernment: For a rational nature, to be rational is nothing else than to be able to discern just from not-just, true from not-true, good from not-good, better from worse.30 This chapter takes place in the part of M where Anselm examines the relations between rational creatures and the supreme essence. In an Augustinian way, he considers the trinitarian imprint of the divine in the rational creature, that is to say: memory, intelligence, love.31 The end of the rational creature is to love the supreme essence which is also the supreme good. In order to do that, it must be capable of the aforementioned discernment where the just appears in the first place. Anselm’s statement is very strong—rational beings would not have any reason to exist if they were not able to make judgements concerning goodness and justice:

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M68 (aoo, i.78.21–22): ‘Denique rationali naturae non est aliud esse rationalem, quam posse discernere iustum a iusto, verum a non vero, bonum a non bono, magis bonum a minus bono’. M68 (aoo, i.78.17–19); Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate 14.8.11 in William John Mountain and François Glorie, eds., cc sl, 50A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1968): ‘Ecce ergo mens meminit sui, intelligit se, diligit se, hoc si cernimus, cernimus trinitatem; nondum quidem Deum, sed iam imaginem Dei’. As Anselm explicitly put it, all the Monologion is indebted to the De Trinitate of Augustine; M Prologus (aoo, i.7.10–14).

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It seems clear enough that all rational being exists for this purpose that, as it judges by the rationality of discernment something either better or worse or not good, it loves or rejects it more or less.32 All the activity of the rational mind, which is indebted for its existence to its Creator, is oriented to love of the supreme essence.33 Its work is then to repay the debt thus incurred by progressing towards him. The means, by which the mind loves that which is worthy of love, is to judge of the just, true, good and their contraries, and also to recognise the hierarchy of the greater and lesser, so as to love according to right order. This is the fundamental position of Anselm on this topic. In M49 we read also: ‘memory and intelligence of a thing are completely useless, if the thing itself is not loved or rejected in the measure required by reason’.34 So intelligence has its sole end in the love (or rejection) of the thing known. But it also has a role in determining the degree of love that is to be devoted to the thing (prout ratio exigit), and by doing this intelligence perceives the ongoing order according to which a thing must be loved or rejected to the appropriate degree. In the trinity ‘memory, intelligence and love’, memory and intelligence are working because of love. Love is their end. If the rational nature had not been created to discern between the just and the not-just, it would have been created in vain. But God does not create anything in vain. So, the rational nature is capable of judging about justice, good and evil. That is what is affirmed in cdhii.1. Here again the goal is to love and to choose the supreme good and reject what is bad: Otherwise God would have given in vain this power of discernment, because it would discern in vain, if following discernment, it did not love [the good] and avoid [the bad].35 But the perspective is somewhat different. Anselm is opening here the question of the happiness (beatitudo) of human beings. They were created for happiness, for enjoying God himself. We are here provided tentative proof that human

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M68 (aoo, i.78.25–79.1): ‘Hinc itaque satis patenter videtur omne rationale ad hoc existere, ut sicut ratione discretionis aliquid magis vel minus bonum sive non bonum iudicat, ita magis vel minus id amet aut respuat’. M68 (aoo, i.78.16–17): ‘(rationalis creatura) creanti se debet hoc ipsum quod est’. M49 (aoo, i.64.21–23): ‘penitus inutilis est memoria et intelligentia cuiuslibet rei, nisi prout ratio exigit res ipsa ametur aut reprobetur’. cdhii.1 (aoo, ii.97.11–13): ‘Aliter namque frustra illi deus dedisset potestatem ipsam discernendi, quia in vanum discerneret, si secundum discretionem non amaret et vitaret’.

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salvation is necessary. However, rational beings must love their Creator for no reason other than that He is the supreme good. In other words, they are not allowed to love him in expectation of any reward. If this is true, there is a sharp distinction between justice and happiness, and consequently a double end of rationality. Justice seems to be an end in itself, not contributing to happiness. We shall come back to that difficult question in the part devoted to the knowledge of the devil. So, if it wants to be just, the rational being is destined to discern goodness and rightness. This is the condition for loving the supreme good. Whilst this much is clear, Anselm is not very explicit about the content and method of the discernment. On this topic, we are reduced to gathering scattered indications about which ways are at our disposal to know what is right. First, we must remove all the obstacles which hinder our clear vision of things. Once again, reason is the instrument by which this is to be done. Speaking of ‘heretics of dialectic’, Anselm says: In their souls, reason, which must be prince and judge of all the things which are in human being, is so entangled in corporeal imaginations that it cannot disentangle itself from them, nor can it distinguish from them (the things) that which alone and pure it ought to contemplate.36 The corporeal, sensible, images can be obstacles if we do not transcend them, if we continue to adhere to them. In themselves corporeal images are not wrong, but are rather the means by which things may be contemplated: ‘the mind contemplates the human being itself either by its image of the body or by its reason’.37 But if we produce images of our own (imaginatio) rather than glimpse images (imagines) of real things and do not account for this in our reason, we err greatly from what we ought to think. Second, Sacred Scripture is the guide to willing correctly (recte), it ‘invites free choice (liberum arbitrium) to will and act rightly’.38 In Scripture we must go beyond the word, even if it is word of God (verbum Dei):

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div1 (aoo, ii.10.1–3): ‘In eorum quippe animabus ratio, quae et princeps et iudex debet omnium esse quae sunt in homine, sic est in imaginationiblus corporalibus obvoluta, ut ex eis se non possit evolvere, nec ab ipsis ea quae ipsa sola et pura contemplari debet, valeat discernere’. M10 (aoo, i.25.6–7): ‘eum ipsum hominem mens aut per corporis imaginem, aut per rationem intuetur’. dciii.6 (aoo, ii.270.11–12): ‘videtur scriptura liberum arbitrium ad recte volendum et operandum invitare’.

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The word of God is the seed of this cultivation, or rather not the word but the meaning that is perceived through the word. Indeed, sound without meaning does not constitute anything in the heart. Not only the meaning of the word, but all meaning and understanding of rightness, which the human mind conceives by hearing, by reading, by reason, or by any other mean, is the seed of willing rightly.39 To will with rightness is to be just, if we follow all the conditions expressed in dv12. By perceiving the meaning of Scripture, rational beings find the rightness of things. This requires the work of reason, and an interpretation beyond the literal meaning of words. Once rightness is found, it is possible to know how to will correctly. The passage from understanding the rightness to acting correctly does not appear straightforward, for understanding rightness is only a seed for willing rightly. Anselm leaves open ways other than Scripture to understand rightness, by hearing, reading or reasoning, but again he does not detail them. We may think of predication for instance. Third, in many cases, the circumstances of the act have to be known. If certain circumstances are ignored the will cannot be just: If someone wills what he ought to without knowing it, as when he wants to close the door against somebody who, without his knowing it, wants to kill someone else in the house, whether or not he has some rightness of the will, he does not have the rightness we are looking for.40 The absence of knowledge of its circumstances hinders the praiseworthiness, and hence justice, of an action. On the contrary, we may assume that if the agent had known that the person who wanted to enter the house intended to kill somebody, its act of the will would have been just. Knowledge of the circumstance is here a condition of praiseworthiness. However, it is clear from this example that action alone cannot be said to be just or bad without examin-

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dciii.6 (aoo, ii.270.23–27): ‘Est autem semen huius agriculturae verbum dei, immo non verbum, sed sensus qui percipitur per verbum. Vox namque sine sensu nihil constituit in corde. Nec solum sensus verbi, sed omnis sensus vel intellectus rectitudinis, quem mens humana sive per auditum, sive per lectionem, sive per rationem, sive quolibet alio modo concipit, semen est recte volendi’. See 1Corinthians 3:9: ‘Dei enim sumus adiutores: Dei agricultura estis, Dei aedificatio estis’. dv12 (aoo, i.193.19–22): ‘Si quis nesciens vult quod debet, ut cum vult claudere ostium contra illum qui ipso nesciente vult in domo alium occidere: sive habeat iste sive non habeat aliquam voluntatis rectitudinem, non habet illam quam quaerimus’.

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ing knowledge and will. The same action can be right or wrong, depending on what the agent knows and wills.

3

What the Devil Knew before the Fall

As we have seen above, Anselm seems to construe two ends for rationality and will.41 These two objects of will are justice and what is called commodum (advantage). There is no other object except these two. Commodum is for Anselm a kind of favourable condition in which happiness (beatitudo) consists.42 We may consider that we have two different ways for the will, one leading to justice and the other to happiness. However, this may seem strange. What would be justice from which all kind of happiness would be excluded? And what would be happiness without any justice? Actually, the separation between justice and happiness is not so sharp, and there is no symmetry between them. There are two main differences between will of justice and will of commodum. First the will of justice is that of rational beings alone, whereas the will of commodum is common to all sensible beings.43 Second, rational beings may lose justice. It can happen that they do not persevere in keeping justice. When they abandon justice, they become unjust. On the other hand, the will of the commodum is part of the very nature of all sensible beings. It cannot be lost. Every sensible being wants its own advantage and to attain some sort of well-being. Far from being sharply separated, will of justice and will of commodum are closely intertwined.44 On the one hand, the will of justice moderates the will of commodum and happiness. Otherwise, the latter would not have any limit and would disturb the general order. That is what happened with the fall of the

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For the presentation of the justice/happiness question, I am largely indebted to Engelbert Recktenwald, Die ethische Struktur des Denkens von Anselm von Canterbury. Philosophie und Realistische Philosophie, 8 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1998), pp. 27–36. I am more perplexed by its treatment in Kristell Trego, L’essence de la liberté: la refondation de l’éthique dans l’oeuvre de Saint Anselme de Cantorbéry. Études de philosophie médiévale, 95 (Paris: Vrin, 2010), pp. 25–38. dcd4 (aoo, i.241.13–14): ‘Nihil autem velle poterat nisi iustitiam aut commodum. Ex commodis enim constat beatitudo, quam vult omnis rationalis natura’. See also dciii.11 (aoo, ii.281.8–9). dcd12 (aoo, i.255.9–11): ‘Commodum vero non solum omnis rationalis natura, sed etiam omne quod sentire potest vult, et vitat incommodum’. dcd14 (aoo, i.258.21–22): ‘Quatenus addita iustitia sic temperet voluntatem beatitudinis, ut et resecet voluntatis excessum et excedendi non amputat potestatem’.

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devil. On the other hand, the will of the commodum is natural and provides to rational beings the possibility of the choice of what is just. If rational beings only had the will of justice, their actions would be absolutely determined and consequently would be neither just nor unjust.45 What went wrong with the devil? He was one of the most powerful and beautiful creatures of God. He received intellect, reason, will and justice and the power to keep it. He did not seem to lack anything. Because he could not want anything but justice and commodum, he wanted some commodum he was not allowed to want at that time.46 In willing what he ought not to will, he abandoned justice and fell into sin. This is the origin of evil in the world. But Anselm treats the fall of the devil more as an abstract situation than as an historical event. It is the occasion to analyse sin only in the will of a rational being, without any consideration of passions or other sensible circumstances. And in the course of this analysis, he asks what the devil had known before the fall, before the first sin. The issue is here what was the injustice of the devil, the archetype of all injustices. Let us see what the devil knew, and what he did not know, according to Anselm’s analysis. What he knew: First, he knew he had to keep rightness of the will, that he had to stand in the truth. Indeed, if he had not known he would have been neither just nor unjust. Justice and injustice come to rational beings because they are conscious of them.47 But he did not know that he would be punished, as we shall see below. Second, he knew that he could change his mind and act differently.48 In other words, he knew that his acts were not determined from outside, that his action would be commanded by its own will and nothing else. His act would be a future contingent. What he did not know: First, before he abandoned rectitude he could not know that he would do so. Precisely because his act was a contingent one, it could not have been known with certainty before it was accomplished.49 An action that could fail to be accomplished could not have been firmly known.

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dcd14 (aoo, i.258.18–30). dcd4 (aoo, i.240–242). dcd22 (aoo, i.269.19–20): ‘Denique quoniam ita rationalis erat, ut nulla re prohiberetur uti ratione, non ignorabat quid deberet aut non deberet velle’. Cf. John 8:44. dcd21 (aoo, i.269.3–6): ‘Non nego illum scivisse quia posset mutare voluntatem quam tenebat, sed dico illum non potuisse putare quia aliquando omni alia cessante causa sponte mutaret voluntatem, quam perseveranter tenere volebat’. dcd21 (aoo, i.269.3–6); dcd21 (aoo, i.266.16–19): ‘Cum quaeris utrum ille angelus qui non stetit in veritate, praescierit se casurum, discernendum est de qua scientia dicas. Nam si de illa scientia quaeritur quae non est, nisi cum certa ratione aliquid intelligitur, omnino respondeo non posse sciri quod potest non esse’.

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Second, if, before abandoning justice, he knew that he would fall, either he wanted to fall or he did not want it. If he wanted to fall, he would have sinned already in wanting that. If he did not want to fall, he would have kept justice. But he did not. So he did not know that he would fall.50 Third, did the devil know the punishment he would receive after the sin? Here the answer is more complicated. He knew that he should be punished but he did not know that he would be punished. Because he knew he should not abandon justice he must have known that there would be some consequence to his act. However, he could not know what that consequence would be.51 If he had known the consequences of his act, he would not have undertaken it. But then he would not have been just, because he would have kept the rightness of the will by fear of the punishment and not for justice itself.52 He would not have fulfilled the requirement of praiseworthiness in order to be just. As we can see, what is crucial for Anselm is to preserve his conception of justice. Justice is justice only if it is pursued for its own sake, excluding all other considerations, be they fear of punishment or the reward for keeping justice. This was not observed by the devil. He has chosen some advantage outside justice. He was seeking some reward and lost justice by this very act. He may have thought that he would have more commodum and be happier with that advantage. But he was wrong. So, in order to will justly and to exclude any other aim of the will, it is necessary to not know or to be ignorant of some things. First, we must be ignorant of what will be in the future if it is a contingent act of the will. Second, we must be ignorant of the consequences of our acts. Clearly, Anselm is not a consequentialist in ethics. In particular, we must not know whether we will be rewarded for our actions, because otherwise we would act for the reward and consequently would not be just. This is so because the devil must have been in position of willing rightness for its own sake, without any interference from the knowledge of the consequences of it. On the one hand, he could have feared of the punishment to come, on the other, he could not want something that he knew would bring him misfortune instead of happiness. 50 51

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dcd21 (aoo, i.268.12–13): ‘Ergo si nolendo praesciebat se casurum, tanto erat miserior quanto debebat esse felicior; quod non convenit’. dcd23 (aoo, i.270.4–6): ‘Quia rationalis erat, potuit intelligere quia iuste si peccaret puniretur; sed quoniam iudicia dei abyssus multa et investigabiles viae eius, nequivit comprehendere an deus faceret quod iuste facere posset’. dcd24 (aoo, i.271.9–14): ‘M. Sed quoniam peccatum non cavisset solo amore iustitiae, ipso opere monstravit. D. Non est dubium. M. Si vero timore cavisset, non esset iustus. D. Palam est nullo modo eum debuisse scire inditam sibi poenam suum secuturam peccatum’.

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We see well here why Anselm has excluded knowledge from the possible locations of justice. Indeed, although the devil knew he ought not to will anything other than what he ought to, he did so, and hence was unjust and fell. So, the knowledge of rightness does not protect from being unjust. Knowledge is a condition to justice and not a protection against injustice. Only the will can choose between justice and injustice. Indeed, the will is the only location of decision, and as Anselm says in dla5, nothing is able to constrain it. If somebody has the choice between lying and dying, he is not constrained to lie, it is only more difficult to choose not to lie (much more difficult we could say!).53

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Conclusion

To conclude, I would like to recap four results from our exploration into the foundations of Anselm’s ethics. First, Anselm places justice in the will, and not in rational knowledge or in actions. By rejecting a location for justice in knowledge, he is departing from a Platonising point of view. Indeed, he does not accept that given that everyone desires the good, the simple knowledge of it would be enough to be right. On the other hand, neither does he accept that justice is properly to be found be in actions. In order to judge if an action is just, we must first analyse the acts of the will that precede and determine it. Second, rational knowledge has nevertheless a crucial role in justice. To be just, we must not only will the right thing but also will the rightness of that thing. And to will the rightness of the thing, it is necessary to know it and to recognise it. That is what knowledge brings to justice: recognition of the rightness of the object of the will. Without that contribution, the will would never be just. Third, the very finality of rationality lies in discerning justice. Because their raison d’être is to love the supreme good, rational beings would not exist if they were not able to make judgements concerning goodness and justice. Among the means for discerning justice are the removal of false imaginations, the correct interpretation of Scripture and knowledge of the circumstances of any acts. Finally, the knowledge of rational creatures is limited. Some realities about the supreme good they love, especially its trinity, remain hidden to them. It is the same with the consequences of their acts, especially at certain moments of

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time. This ignorance is necessary to act justly. Indeed, to act justly is to preserve justice for its own sake, excluding all other motivations, namely punishment or reward. If we knew the consequences of our actions, we would choose to do them or not according to future punishment or reward, and, so, we would not be just anymore. Thus, if knowledge is crucial to being just, some ignorance is also necessary.

Bibliography Primary Sources Anselm of Canterbury, La conception virginale et le péché originel. La procession du Saint Esprit. Lettres sur les sacrements de l’Église. Du pouvoir et de l’impuissance, Michel Corbin, Alain Galonnier, Paul Gilbert, et al., eds., L’oeuvre d’Anselme de Cantorbéry, 4 (Paris: Cerf, 1990). Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei in cc sl 47–48, Bernhard Dombart and Alphonse Kalb, eds. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955). Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate in cc sl 50–50A, William John Mountain and François Glorie, eds. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1968).

Secondary Sources Brouwer, Christian, ‘Imagination des corps et intellection de la raison chez Anselme de Canterbury’ in Maria Candida Pacheco and José Francisco Meirinhos, eds., Intellect et imagination dans la philosophie médiévale: actes du xie Congrès international de philosophie médiévale de la Société internationale pour l’étude de la philosophie médiévale, s.i.e.p.m., Porto, du 26 au 31 août 2002, vol. 2 (Rencontres de philosophie médiévale 11, Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 857–865. Brower, Jeffrey E., ‘Anselm on Ethics’ in Davies and Leftow, Cambridge Companion to Anselm, pp. 222–252. Delcomminette, Sylvain, Le Philèbe de Platon: introduction à l’agathologie platonicienne. Philosophia antiqua, 100 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006). Goebel, Bernd, Rectitudo: Wahrheit und Freiheit bei Anselm von Canterbury: eine philosophische Untersuchung seines Denkansatzes. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Neue Folge, 56 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2001). Irwin, Terence, Plato’s ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Rakus, Daniel T., ‘Alter Augustinus and the Question of Moral Knowledge: Answering Philosophically as an Anselmian’, Revue des études augustiniennes et patristiques, 43.2 (1997), pp. 313–337. Recktenwald, Engelbert, Die ethische Struktur des Denkens von Anselm von Canterbury, Philosophie und Realistische Philosophie, 8 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1998).

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Schmitt, Franciscus Salesius, ‘Ein neues unvollendetes Werk des hl. Anselm von Canterbury: “De potestate …”’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, 33 (1936), pp. 1–43. Sweeney, Eileen C., Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012). Trego, Kristell, L’essence de la liberté: la refondation de l’éthique dans l’oeuvre de Saint Anselme de Cantorbéry. Études de philosophie médiévale, 95 (Paris: Vrin, 2010).

chapter 11

Anselm on Truth as Free Montague Brown

Anselm is famous for touting the powers of reason to know the truth about even the most mysterious matters, including the Trinity and the Incarnation. In the prologue to Monologion (M) and the Preface to Cur Deus Homo (cdh), he announces his plan to consider matters related to the divine and to divinehuman relations as if he had no knowledge of Scripture and revealed truth. He speaks as if knowledge of the Trinity and the Incarnation are available to us on the grounds of natural reason alone, which can tell us why it is necessary that the one God be three persons, and why it is necessary that God became man. De Lubac sees this move as a temptation to reduce the revealed truth to necessary reasons.1 However, as Anselm develops his understanding of truth, it becomes clear that his understanding of rational necessity is not, to his mind, at all at odds with the free creation of the world, the freedom of our intelligence and choice, and therefore the freedom of truth. As Donald Keefe puts it: ‘The theological task is then to rehistoricize it [truth or metaphysics]: inescapably, the task of Catholic metaphysics is as Anselm of Bec described it, fides quaerens intellectum’.2 This chapter has four parts. The first presents Anselm’s claims for necessary reasons for the existence of God, the Trinity, and the Incarnation. These occur explicitly in the introductory materials to Anselm’s M and cdh. The second part examines the texts in which Anselm defines truth as rectitude, and how this moves the central focus from reason as primarily theoretical to reason as practical or moral, which only exists as free. The third section considers some texts

1 Donald J. Keefe notes: ‘Henri de Lubac, Corpus mysticum: L’Eucharistie et L’Église au moyen âge, Étude Historique, 2e édition, revue et augmentée; ser. Theologie 3 (Paris: Aubier, Éditions Montaigne, 1949) at 448ff., discovers in the quaerens intellectum of St. Anselm an early medieval illustration of the temptation to which the systematic theology of the next century was increasingly subject, that of an analytic reduction of the free truth of the revelation to increasingly abstract “necessary reasons”; clearly, succumbing to this temptation did not begin with the dialecticians of the 11th and 12th centuries’. Donald J. Keefe, S.J., ‘ “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1.14)’, Studia Missionalia, 51 (2002), p. 34, n. 13. 2 Donald J. Keefe, S.J., ‘Creation as Existential Contingency’, The Saint Anselm Journal, 1.1 (2003), p. 60.

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from his later works, especially De Concordia (dc), in which he makes clear the absolute precedence of grace—the free gifts of creation and salvation—to all our endeavors, and how this underlines his notion of free truth, in contrast to the idea of necessary reasons. The final part points to passages from his earlier works that support this understanding of truth, indicating the ultimate consistency of Anselm’s thought.

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Necessary Reasons

Anselm introduces M with the claim that everything in the work is argued as if he knew nothing about revealed truth. This, he claims, is by order of his fellow monks, who want to know why the faith is to be accepted. ‘Absolutely nothing in it would be established by the authority of Scripture; rather, whatever the conclusions of each individual investigation might assert, the necessity of reason would concisely prove, and the clarity of truth would manifestly show that it is the case’.3 Indeed, in this work, Anselm uses the word ‘God’ only in the first Chapter and the last. In other places he uses the terms ‘supreme essence’ when speaking of the conclusion of his proofs for the existence of a first being and what can be known of that being’s characteristics. In the Preface to cdh, Anselm makes essentially the same claim in explaining the two-part structure of the work. The first presents the objections of unbelievers who reject the Christian faith because they think it is contrary to reason, and the answers given by believers. It goes so far as to prove by necessary reasons—leaving Christ out of the picture, as if nothing concerning him had ever taken place—that it is impossible for any human being to be saved apart from Christ.4 The second part will also ‘proceed as though nothing were known of Christ’.5 These are pretty bold claims for the scope of reason apart from revelation. As for M, in which the Trinity is the main topic for most of the work (cc. 29– 80), he has recourse to saying in the Prologue that there is nothing he has said

3 M Prologue (aoo, i.7.7–11). Translated by Thomas Williams in Anselm: Basic Writings, Thomas Williams ed. and trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2007), Prologue, p. 1. 4 cdh Preface, (aoo, ii.42.9–13). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, Preface, p. 238. 5 cdh Preface (aoo, ii.42.14). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 238.

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which Augustine did not already say in his De Trinitate. Thus, if one is critical of his approach, one should also be critical of Augustine’s. Since one should not be critical of Augustine as a Father of the Church, one should not be critical of Anselm. In the text from cdh, we see a good reason for taking this approach: part of the evangelization process involves using reason to overcome the objections of those who do not accept revelation. Anselm summarizes the outlines of this method in Book i, chapter 10, where he lays down two fundamental rules. We will not accept anything unsuitable, however slight, concerning God, and we will not throw out any argument, however modest, that is not defeated by some weightier argument. For just as an impossibility follows from anything unsuitable in God, however slight, so too necessity accompanies every argument, however modest, that is not defeated by a weightier argument.6 In some way, this last claim is merely articulating what is at stake in trying to understand anything. There can be no progress if we throw out our reasons for no reason. And there is progress when what we thought was true is proven untrue by new, weightier evidence. According to the first rule, leaving out of consideration our knowledge of revealed truth, we are left with what we know about God from natural reason—the proofs from M and Proslogion (P). Our arguments should not contradict what we have proved about the existence and nature of God, which is mostly negative theology, what is implied by ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’. Anselm, at the conclusion of his Preface to cdh, argues that ‘it was necessary that the purpose for which human beings were made should in fact be achieved, but only through the agency of the God-man, and that it was necessary that everything we believe about Christ should take place’.7 Although some of Anselm’s claims could be justified by distinguishing between logical necessity and metaphysical necessity, this one seems to cross the line, for it claims that God’s purpose must be fulfilled. Of course, Anselm’s argument is much more complicated, as we shall see in the following section.

6 cdhi.10 (aoo, ii.67.2–6). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 260. 7 cdh Preface, (aoo, ii.42.16–43.3). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 239.

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Truth as Rectitude

In his trio of dialogues, De Veritate (dv), De Libertate Arbitrii (dla), and De Casu Diaboli (dcd), Anselm introduces the notion of truth as rectitude.8 Knowing what he means by truth as rectitude is critical for understanding what Anselm means by necessity. Although Anselm does sometimes assert that terms referring to creatures and God (such as ‘being’ and, in the present case, ‘freedom’) are univocal, it is clear that he is setting up an analogical understanding of truth, with rectitude in its primary sense as the key to understanding the other applications of the term, and with God as the prime analogate for the analogy—that which gives meaning to the other analogates.9 It is interesting to note that, contrary to what he says about M and cdh, here in the preface to these three treatises, Anselm claims that they are about understanding Scripture: ‘At various times I wrote three treatises pertaining to the study of Holy Scripture’.10 This is obviously pertinent to dcd, for the devil and the fall are not found outside of revelation; but it seems that Anselm might have chosen to speak of truth and freedom of choice apart from Scripture and revelation. The fact that he does not sheds light on his understanding of truth as free; for the good news is precisely that which freely goes beyond anything we could imagine or think.11 In dv, the student opens the dialogue with a declaration and a question. The declaration is a matter of faith: ‘we believe that God is truth, and we say that truth is in many other things’.12 The question is a seeking after understanding: ‘I would like to know whether, whatever truth is said to be, we must acknowledge that God is that truth’.13 The student goes on to ask Anselm to clarify what he said about truth in M. Anselm denies that he ever gave a definition of truth

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These dialogues were written before Cur Deus Homo and hence factor into what Anselm is trying to prove in that work. dla1 (aoo, i.208.3–5). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 147: ‘Even though human free choice differs from that of God and the good angels the definition of the word “freedom” should still be the same for both’. On this understanding of analogy, see Aristotle, Metaphysics, Hippocrates Apostle, trans. (Grinnell, Iowa: Peripatetic Press, 1979), 4.21003a34–1003b19, pp. 54–55; and Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 5 vols., Fathers of the English Dominican Province, trans. (Allen, Texas: Christian Classics, 1981), 1.13.5– 6. dv Preface (aoo, i.173.2–3) Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 115. As Paul puts it in 1Cor. 2:9 (nrsv), ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him’. dv1 (aoo, i.176.4–5), Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 119. dv1 (aoo, i.176.5–6). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 119.

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there, but that he would be willing to pursue it with the student.14 They go on to discuss how truth can be of many things: of signification, opinion, will, natural and non-natural action, senses, and the being of things. Ultimately, truth is defined as rectitude (rectitudo). Such a definition seems quite easily applicable to the will, for we ought to act rightly. It is more obscurely and analogically related to the other categories Anselm discusses. Anselm begins by examining truth in a statement. Here his account starts off sounding very much like Aristotle and close to the idea of truth as necessity that is at least hinted at in his declarations at the beginning of M and cdh. To the inquiry by the teacher (Anselm) about what truth is, the student replies: ‘All I know is that when a statement signifies that what-is is, then there is truth in it, and it is true’.15 Anselm immediately asks about the purpose of affirmation (truth in propositions). The purpose of an affirmation is to signify what it ought to. From this, Anselm develops the notion of truth as rectitude, which becomes the standard for truth on all levels. But to invoke the idea of purpose—of what ought to be—is to invoke the idea of will, for there is no purpose independent of will of some kind. This reference to purpose and will leads to the affirmation of an ultimate foundation for will—the affirmation that all truth is of God and that God’s truth (being the truth of a free creation) is a free truth, not under any metaphysical necessity nor therefore under any logical necessity derived from the way creation appears to us. This understanding of truth as rectitude becomes clearer in Anselm’s account of truth of opinion or thought, and truth of the will. Again, the account hinges on purpose: ‘For the power of thinking that something is or is not was given to us in order that we might think that what-is is, and that what-is-not is not’.16 There is truth in thought when reason thinks as it should. On truth in the will, Anselm affirms it clearly from Scripture: ‘Truth Itself says that there is also truth in the will when he says that the devil “did not remain steadfast in truth” (John 8:44). For it was only in his will that he was in the truth and then abandoned the truth’.17 Anselm invokes this understanding of the purpose of thought or reason at the beginning of Book ii of cdh. ‘For it [rational nature]

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There are texts in the Monologion that speak to this idea of free truth. We shall discuss them in the last section. dv2 (aoo, i.178.6–7). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 120. See Aristotle, Metaphysics, 4.7.1011b25, p. 70. dv3 (aoo, i.180.12–14). Trans Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 123. dv4 (aoo, i.180.21–23). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 123. Notice the affirmation of Anselm’s point of analogy: Truth Itself (Jesus, the prime analogate) makes clear that there is truth in the will.

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is rational in order that it might distinguish between the just and the unjust, between the good and the bad, and between the greater good and the lesser good. Otherwise it would have been made rational in vain’.18 Ultimately, this idea of truth as rectitude, as being and doing as one ought, implies a highest truth—rectitude itself—which is the cause of the truth in all other things. But this highest rectitude is not under an obligation to be or do as it ought. ‘Note that while all the rectitudes discussed earlier are rectitudes because the things in which they exist either are or do what they ought, the supreme truth is not a rectitude because it ought to be or do anything. For all things are under obligation to it, but it is under no obligation to anything’.19 And again, ‘this rectitude is the cause of all other truths and rectitudes, and nothing is the cause of it’.20 That is, it is truth as free. Thus, we come to the notion of truth in its ultimate form, which is found by analogy in all things. Truth as rectitude, in its ultimate complete form, is confirmed by Anselm’s identification of truth with justice. Anselm defines truth as ‘rectitude perceptible only by the mind’ (rectitudo mente sola perceptibilis).21 Thus, truth is said to be in statements, in material things, and in the senses insofar as it is found to be analogous to rectitude in the mind. But this rectitude in the mind is ultimately intelligible only insofar as it is informed by justice; that is, truth in its highest form is equivalent to justice. ‘Since we are speaking of rectitude that is perceptible only to the mind, truth and rectitude and justice are all inter-defined, so that someone who knows one (…) cannot fail to know the others’.22 Thus, truth and rectitude, when found in their higher forms (in rational beings) are distinguished ultimately by justice, the fulfillment of the moral ought (except, of course, in the highest truth/rectitude/justice, where there is no obligation to act—no necessity, metaphysical or moral). Saying that truth as rectitude is justice in the case of a stone is inappropriate, but in the case of a human being or angel, it is the case. Justice is, then, ‘rectitude of will that is preserved for its own sake’ (rectitudo propter se servatur).23 Although Anselm notes that this definition works, in a fashion, even for the first Truth, ultimately, all our definitions fall short for the simple reason that the standard for truth (and rectitude, and justice) is not our understanding of truth, but the first Truth—God. When speaking of the justice of our preserving

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cdhii.1 (aoo, i.97.5–8). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 290. dv10 (aoo, i.190.1–4). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 133. dv10 (aoo, i.190.6–7). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 133. dv11 (aoo, i.192.19–20). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 135. dv12 (aoo, i.192.7–10). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 136. dv12 (aoo, i.196.9–10). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 140.

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rectitude for its own sake, Anselm makes the point that the receiving of the justice is prior metaphysically although not necessarily in time. ‘Indeed (…) the receiving of this rectitude is prior in nature to having or willing it (since neither having nor willing it is the cause of receiving it, but receiving is the cause of willing and having it)’.24 It is interesting that Anselm suggests the analogy of things existing in time to help clarify the priority of the First Truth to all other truths. Just as all things are understood to be in time and not time, understood from how it exists in each thing, so all things, insofar as they are true, are in the first Truth. As truth must be before it is actuated, so God’s truth must be in all things before they can be true, can be as they ought to be. ‘Truth is said improperly to be of this or that thing, since truth does not have its being in or from or through the things in which it is said to be. But when things themselves are in accordance with truth, which is always present to those things that are as they ought to be, we speak of the truth of this or that thing’.25 Ultimately, we do not understand the truth that is God because of the truth of things; on the contrary, we understand the truth of things through the truth that is God.26 ‘The supreme truth as it subsists in itself is not the truth of some particular thing, but when something is in accordance with it, then it is called the truth or rectitude of that thing’.27 We now turn to Anselm’s account of this precedence of God to creatures, which implies the free creation and hence free truth.

3

Free Truth

Saint Paul articulates the notion of free truth that later informs the thought of Augustine and Anselm. In his letter to the Romans, he says that the existence of God can be known by the things that are made, and therefore people are without excuse in not devoting themselves to God. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and

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dv12 (aoo, i.195.18–20). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, pp. 139–140. dv13 (aoo, i.199.17–20). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 144. When Augustine tries to understand time in Confessions 11, he cannot do so until he recognizes that our understanding of time itself is a participation in the eternity of God, simultaneously knowing the past, present, and future (Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, John K. Ryan, trans. (New York: Doubleday, 1960), 11.28). dv13 (aoo, i.199.27–29). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 144.

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seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.28 Our failure to know the truth is not a matter of failing to say of what is that it is and of what is not that it is not; rather, it is the refusal to honor what we know is true, to know as we ought to know. That is, it is a matter of freely turning away from our Creator.29 We choose not to honor him as God, and we choose to exchange the glory of God for images. Neither choice for or against God is possible unless we know God, in the sense of knowing that God is, and is our creator. This is obvious: among the things of the world one knows to be made is oneself. This knowledge is given us by God in our creation, and thus is always available to us. We obviously fail to know God in the fuller sense, suggested by Paul, of being in moral and spiritual unity with him. As Anselm says at the beginning of Book ii of cdh, the point of having reason (of knowing anything) is to deliberate between the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, and to choose the just and the good, which is ultimately God. This second kind of knowledge—the personal knowing of the other who is the source of our being, of our knowing, and of our choosing—is freely offered by God, again in our creation and therefore at all times.30 Without

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Romans 1:19–23. This argument is made previously in the Old Testament in Wisdom 13:1– 10. Anselm says that it does not belong to the essence of freedom that an agent be able to choose evil, for then God and the good angels would not be free (dla1). However, for us in this life, freedom does involve our ability to choose evil, and unless we acknowledge this, we cannot get back our true freedom, since we will continue to block out grace. This insight is everywhere in Augustine, especially in the Confessions, and it is a key theme in the first chapter of the Proslogion. Anselm is right that ultimate freedom is not to be explained according as it is present in us, but as it is present in God. But if we would follow through on this analogy (with God as prime analogate), we must accept the God of revelation as the primary instance of freedom (the prime analogate in the analogy of truth); for our idea of God’s relation to the world (our philosophical insight into our dependence on God) is one of necessity. Only because God is free is the free creation possible, and only because creation is free are we free to participate (to accept) the free gift of redemption— the restoration of the fullness of human freedom. See Augustine on the trahi a Deo, being drawn by God. Augustine mentions it in his work on the gospel of John (Augustine of Hippo, Tractates on John, 26, in The Fathers of the Church, A New Translation, Volume 79, John W. Rettig, trans. (Washington, DC: Cath-

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it, without acknowledging and embracing our covenantal dependence on God for every good, we cannot know as we should nor will as we should.31 ‘Without me you can do nothing’ (John 5:15), as Anselm puts it in dc.32 And again, ‘No one comes to me unless my Father draws him’ (John 6:44). And from Paul, ‘What do you have that you have not received’ (1Cor. 4:7). And again from Paul, ‘It is not of the one who wills or of the one who runs, but of God who has mercy’ (Romans 9:16). In short, unless our hearts are right—‘The fool has said in his heart there is no God’ (Psalm 14:1)—we will not understand the truth. The truth is not ultimately an abstraction: to know the truth is to be in the truth, which is ultimately to be in a person, to be in Christ. Thus, in the analogy of truth, which implies an analogy of freedom as well, it is God who is prime analogate. Only by understanding the freedom of God in creating and redeeming us can we understand human freedom. Just as it is not necessary for God to will what he wills, so too it is not necessary in many instances for human beings to will what they will. (…) For since what God wills cannot not be, it follows that when God wills that a human will not be compelled or constrained by any necessity to

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olic University of America Press, 1988), pp. 259–276); and Thomas uses the phrase in his commentary on John (Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, James A. Weisheipl, trans. (Albany, NY.: Magi Books, 1980), v, 6, 8–9). Keefe calls this substantial grace given in creation. ‘This substantial grace presents a universally experienced, standing temptation toward conversio [by God], away from the spontaneous aversio [to God] inherent in fallenness as such. At the same time the same fallen and historical consciousness experiences its own dynamic fragmentation, whose drive toward nonbeing presents a continual temptation to affirm and corroborate that fragmentation and that finality. Hence there is in each of us the experience of ‘two loves’, set out in Augustine’s Confessions as a universal and inescapable dichotomy in fallen consciousness, whether it be in a state of aversio or conversion’. Donald J. Keefe, S.J., ‘Essay on the Relation of Faith to Reason’, The Saint Anselm Journal, 12.1 (2016), p. 88. Donald Keefe argues that knowing God is a choice, referring to Romans 1:19–20, ‘wherein Paul is obviously speaking of the universal situation of historical humanity: that of our responsible or moral freedom to affirm the truth of God’s reality. This situation of intellectual freedom and consequent moral responsibility for the truth, which in sum is our historicity, is axiomatic in Romans, for Paul draws moral conclusions from the a priori supposition of a universally-given capacity in man to know God. Man knows God, in effect, by choosing to know God. Clearly, this knowledge is free; its refusal is sinful and has destructive consequences in human history, personal and communal. A mere failure of proper inference, as from the world to its creator, is not in issue, for this would be not sin, but only a mistake: doubtless it is a stupid one, but still it would be only a mistake, not the damnable refusal to see which Paul affirms it to be’. (Keefe, ‘Essay’, pp. 91–92). dciii.5 (aoo, ii.263.8–9). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 374.

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will or not to will that its effect follow the will, it is necessary that the will is free and that what it wills is the case.33 But this understanding comes only through faith, through acknowledging our entire dependence on God and God’s mercy—in short, it depends on God’s grace. For our only direct access to the full freedom of God’s will is revelation. Philosophy is inadequate to establish the free creation. At best, it concludes to the non-necessity of God’s act, in the sense that no other being causes God to create. However, if it is God’s nature as good to overflow (as Neo-Platonism would have it for the One), then the procession of all things from God or the One is natural, and in this sense necessary.34 This theme of the precedence of grace to all things is the major theme of dc. This is not to say that we do nothing, for salvation is a covenantal project, the work of God and us. On the contrary, it is to insist that we do do something: we cooperate morally in time and history with the grace offered us by God, knowledge of whom, which is a covenantal unity, is the fulfillment of truth.35 ‘If one gives careful consideration to what I have said, it becomes quite clear that when Holy Scripture says something in favor of grace, it is not completely setting aside free choice; nor, when it speaks in favor of free choice, is it excluding grace—as if grace alone or free choice alone were sufficient for human salvation. And, in fact, we should understand these divine words as meaning that neither grace alone nor free choice alone accomplishes human salvation (…)’.36 Anselm goes on to say: ‘Indeed, when the Lord says, “Without me you can do nothing”, he does not mean “Your free choice is powerless” but “Your free choice can accomplish nothing without my grace”’.37 It is clear that for Anselm knowing rightly depends on willing rightly, which depends on the grace of God, which is freely poured out for us. Rectitude of will on which truth depends is itself a gift from God. ‘Faith—one’s believing what one hears—comes about when, through grace, rectitude of will is added to the

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dci.3 (aoo, ii.251.3–10). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, pp. 364–365. Again, this analogy seems clear despite what Anselm says about the univocity of freedom (dla1). Or perhaps Anselm is right here to the degree that ultimately it is the freedom of God which defines our freedom. ‘The world, we must reflect, is a product of Necessity, not of deliberate purpose: it is due to a higher Kind engendering in its own likeness by a natural process’. Plotinus, Ennead iii.2 in The Enneads, Stephen MacKenna, trans. (London: Penguin, 1991), p. 138. Cf. John 3:21, where Jesus speaks of doing what is true: ‘[T]hose who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God’. dciii.5 (aoo, ii.269.2–5). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 379. dciii.5 (aoo, ii.269.9–10). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 379.

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conception’.38 All the stages of the good news, without which we do not live in truth, are graced: the belief in the good news; the understanding of the good news; the hearing of the good news; the preaching of the good news; and the sending of the preachers. ‘Now there are no preachers unless they are sent, and their being sent is a matter of grace. So the preaching itself is a grace, since what proceeds from grace is itself a grace. And the hearing is a grace, and the understanding that comes from hearing is a grace, and rectitude of will is a grace’.39 All this being so, the grace is only effective if freely accepted and willed. ‘But the sending, the preaching, the hearing, the understanding: these are all nothing unless the will wills what the mind understands. And the will cannot do this unless it has received rectitude; for it wills rightly when it wills what it ought to’.40 This certainly is a long way from the professions in M and cdh that the arguments would be made without reference to Scripture or Christ. These arguments in dc are clearly founded on the revealed truth about God and our relations with God. However, there is good reason to think that this understanding of truth as historical and free is at least implicit in Anselm’s earlier texts. Thus, we now turn to capturing this theme as it exists in Anselm’s earlier works, even in those which most explicitly set out to find the truth apart from revelation.

4

Necessity, Grace and Truth as Free

Let us begin, then, with M. The first thing to be noticed is that in a document of 80 chapters, well over half (chapters 29 and following) are about the Trinity. Although the personal names, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do not get used until somewhat later, from the beginning of the discussion Anselm speaks of the Word, an obvious reference to John 1. When he begins to use the personal names Son and Father in M42, it is quite clear that he is invoking Scripture, for although Neo-Platonism speaks of three hypostases (the One, the Intellect, and the Soul), there are no personal descriptions of these transcendent immaterial realities, nor is there any sense that they act freely (apart from the negatively articulated non-necessity of the One). The introduction of these personal names underlines the freedom that is inherent in the Judeo-Christian God. For only persons act with free intelligence. The introduction of the spirit

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dciii.6 (aoo, ii.271.8–9). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 381. dciii.6 (aoo, ii.271.10–13). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 381. dciii.6 (aoo, ii.271.13–16). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 381.

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as love in Chapters 49 and 50 further underlines the freedom of the community that is the Trinity, a freedom not found in any pagan understanding of the first principle, which acts according to the necessity of its nature.41 The foundational nature of the gift of freedom to human beings is confirmed in Chapter 78 in Anselm’s distinction between believing what ought to be believed and believing in what ought to be believed, believing in the persons that are the Trinity. ‘So, just as a faith that through love is active is recognized as living, a faith that through disdain is idle is proved to be dead. And so it can quite appropriately be said that a living faith believes in what it ought to believe in, whereas a dead faith merely believes what it ought to believe’.42 This reflects the gist of Paul’s account of disbelief in Romans 1: that is, one is without excuse for choosing not to believe in God, as compared with the mere knowing that God exists as the creator of all things, including me. We approach the truth that is God only by being in God, by being in love. ‘For a faith that is accompanied and attended by love will by no means be idle when it has the opportunity to act; instead, it will exert itself to act quite frequently, which it could not do without love’.43 This is the covenantal relation Anselm speaks of in dc, without which there is no salvation: it is the exertion of the human being to find salvation, made possible by the free gift of divine love. Even the foundational proof for God’s existence found in the first few chapters of M, although appearing to be grounded in the logic of the way things in the world are, really has foundations in how things ought to be, in rectitude, in the free truth. For it is grounded in the recognition of degrees of goodness in the world, and as Anselm has shown us in dv, there is no accounting for the goodness (even what we might call metaphysical goodness) without reference to moral goodness, which is always accompanied by freedom. The proof in P, as Anselm shows in his Responsio (R), has its roots in the insights which ground the M proofs.44 The objection is articulated in the Scriptural passage: ‘The fool has said in his heart, there is no God’ (Psalm 14:1). This denial is not just of the logical entailment of what our understanding of the 41 42 43 44

Anselm does not use the explicit term ‘Trinity’ until Chapter 79. M78 (aoo, i.85.5–9). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 71. M78 (aoo, i.84.17–21). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 71. In response to the objection that no notion can be formed of ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’, Anselm replies: ‘But that is clearly wrong. For since every lesser good, insofar as it is good, is similar to a greater good, it is clear to every reasonable mind that by raising our thoughts from lesser goods to greater goods, we can certainly form an idea of that than which a greater cannot be thought on the basis of those things than which a greater can be thought’. R8 (aoo, i.137.14–18). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 112.

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world implies—that is, the existence of ‘something than which no greater can be thought’. To deny something in the heart is to choose to reject it: it is to know something is true, yet refuse allegiance to the truth, specifically the truth that there is an ultimate good without which there is nothing great, good, or existing. It is not so much, in the end, a theoretical contradiction to deny that God exists as it is a practical or moral contradiction. It is not hard to recognize that various kinds of good in the world participate in some ultimate good as a matter of definition. But to will (which is to pursue as good) that there should not be an ultimate good is to be in practical contradiction, to choose what one knows in unworthy of choice. That is, one cannot will that ultimate good not exist except as an act of sinning, of turning away from the light, from the good that beckons us. But to will is to exercise freedom which is exercised coherently only in a free creation, which is revealed to us by Scripture. Perhaps, this is implied in how Anselm introduces the argument: ‘Now we believe that you are something than which no greater can be thought’.45 Either way, the fullness of the insight into good, which fullness must include moral good, brings us to the free activity of free creatures in a free creation. The proof is certainly bracketed by the existential pleas or prayers (freely made or not pleas or prayers at all) of Chapter 1 and Chapter 4.46 Of course, for Anselm as for Augustine, illumination is itself grace, the ongoing gift of God’s love. It is not a one-time achievement, as Anselm indicates clearly in the following chapters. In Chapter 14, he returns to the questions voiced in Chapter 1. In the process, he confirms the insight that illumination is by grace. ‘Therefore if it [the soul] has seen the light or the truth, it has seen you. If it has not seen you, it has not seen the light or the truth’.47 More telling of the fragility of our life in God is how Anselm describes his state in Chapter 18: Once again, “behold confusion!” Behold, once again mourning and sorrow stand in the way of one seeking joy and happiness. (…) Lift me up from myself to you. Cleanse, heal, sharpen, “enlighten the eye” of my soul so that I may look upon you. Let my soul gather its strength, and let it once more strive with all its understanding to reach you, O Lord.48

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P2 (aoo, i.101.5). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 81. P4, (aoo, i.104.5). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 83: ‘Thanks be to you, my good Lord thanks be to you. For what I once believed through your grace, I now understand through your illumination, so that even if I did not want to believe that you exist, I could not fail to understand that you exist’. P14 (aoo, i.111.18–20). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 89. P18 (aoo, i.114.10–13). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 91.

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Here, we find the theme underlined so emphatically in dc—the covenantal activity of God’s free gift and free human striving. As for cdh, one finds the talk about necessity qualified by the notion of truth as rectitude (as developed in the earlier trio of treatises dv, dla, and dcd) and by the model of truth as fittingness, the free truth of the aesthetic order, of beauty. Book Two opens with the declaration that human rationality is ordered to goodness, to rectitude. ‘It [rational nature] is rational in order that it might distinguish between the just and the unjust, between the good and the bad, and between the greater good and the lesser good’.49 If not, it would be rational in vain, that is, to no purpose. Certainly, rationality can distinguish logical validity from fallacy and truth from falsehood, but this would be without purpose unless ordered to ultimate happiness, which lies in knowing and enjoying God. Beyond this, Anselm argues that, if rational nature were not at some time to enjoy God, it was made rational in vain. Since nothing God makes is in vain (to no purpose), rational nature will enjoy God. This last claim is clearly an act of faith, for although one can argue philosophically that human rationality is oriented toward the fullness of truth and goodness, ultimate truth and goodness (which are infinite) remain always out of reach. Beyond this, such contemplative union with God, if it happens, can only happen freely, and it is all too obvious that we do not always freely choose the true and the good.50 However, the point can be understood in light of what Anselm says in DC: God always offers us the grace to be saved, regardless of our past sins or even current rejection of God. Thus, rational nature is not in vain, even in the face of sin. As for the necessity referenced in the beginning chapters of Book i, this is not a strictly logical necessity, but an aesthetic necessity, a fittingness. This is not to deny that Anselm exercises logical necessity in deducing conclusions from principles of the faith. He certainly does so in all his works. It is just to point out that these principles are not themselves necessary, such that, together with their implications, they form a strictly necessary deductive system. Rather, the good news presents an articulation of the human condition as always being called into an order of beauty revealed by faith.51 Although not invoking precisely the same notion of freedom as the moral rectitude discussed above,

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cdhii.1 (aoo, ii.96.5–7). Trans. Williams, Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 290. I have discussed this issue in my article ‘Anselm’s Argument for the Necessity of the Incarnation’, Proceedings of the Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference, 16/17 (1992–1993), pp. 39–52. See my article ‘Beauty and Wisdom in Anselm’, The Saint Anselm Journal, 8.1 (Spring 2011), pp. 1–12.

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aesthetic rectitude is also characterized by freedom. If we consider works of art, they are not inevitable conclusions of instinct nor of logical necessity. There might never be another poem, or another painting, or another sculpture. Artistic creation is free. And how much more does this apply to the good creation. There is no necessity in God’s grace, whether the grace given in creation or the grace offered by the good news of our redemption. What remains true of Anselm’s ‘necessity’ is that all is grace, and grace is always freely given, and only freely accepted. Philosophical reason can remove some impediments to grace through clarifying aspects of human nature and of the world in which we live; however, it does not extend to what ‘eye has not seen’—the affirmation that all we have is given us, and all we have is given us for our good.

Conclusion Although Anselm claims that the fundamental truths of the faith—the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Redemption—are necessary, he does not mean that truth is the necessary articulation of a closed metaphysical system. For the Christian believer in the Creator, this denial of truth as necessity makes a lot of sense. Because it is a free creation, all aspects of that creation, including true affirmations, are freely given: things do not have to be the way they are. The necessary truths of the faith are rather moral and aesthetic and so always involve freedom. If one would be authentically ordered to what is good and beautiful, then it is necessary that one freely choose to do what is good and to appreciate what is beautiful. Since the truths of revelation offer us instances of goodness and beauty that transcend all we can conceive or even hope for, these truths call for our free assent. Additional confirmation that truth is freely given and not necessitated is available to Anselm (and to us) as he ponders his own freedom, through which true acts of choice—in particular, the pursuit of wisdom and understanding—bring into being truths that are not mere necessary deductions from prior truths. Add to this his fundamental awareness of himself as a sinner and his need for grace (a self-awareness available to all of us), and he has reason to affirm that all his true conclusions, good choices, and aesthetic joys are free co-operations with the freely given grace of God. In this sense, all truths are free.

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Bibliography Primary Sources Anselm of Canterbury, Anselm: Basic Writings, Thomas Williams, ed. and trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2007). Aristotle, Metaphysics, Hippocrates Apostle, trans. (Grinnell, Iowa: Peripatetic Press, 1979). Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, John K. Ryan, trans. (New York: Doubleday, 1960). Augustine of Hippo, Tractates on John in The Fathers of the Church, A New Translation, Volume 79, John W. Rettig, trans. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988). Plotinus, The Enneads, Stephen MacKenna, trans. (London: Penguin, 1991). S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961); reprinted in two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968). Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, James A. Weisheipl, trans. (Albany, NY.: Magi Books, 1980). Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 5 vols., Fathers of the English Dominican Province, trans. (Allen, Texas: Christian Classics, 1981).

Secondary Sources Brown, Montague, ‘Anselm’s Argument for the Necessity of the Incarnation’, Proceedings of the Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference, 16/17 (1992–1993), pp. 39– 52. Brown, Montague, ‘Beauty and Wisdom in Anselm’, The Saint Anselm Journal, 8.1 (Spring 2011), pp. 1–12. Keefe, Donald J., S.J., ‘Creation as Existential Contingency’, The Saint Anselm Journal, 1.1 (2003), pp. 32–64. Keefe, Donald J., S.J., ‘Essay on the Relation of Faith to Reason’, The Saint Anselm Journal, 12.1 (2016), pp. 81–127. Keefe, Donald J., S.J., ‘“The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1.14)’, Studia Missionalia, 51 (2002), pp. 23–52.

chapter 12

Similis Deo or Cum Deo Esse? On Happiness and the Convergence of Proto-Kantian and Aristotelian (as well as Augustinian) Motives in Anselm’s Analysis of Moral Choice Christian Göbel

1

Introduction: Rogers’ Reading of Anselm

Anselm rejects—primarily for theological reasons—Augustine’s view of freedom as the ability to sin or not to sin and proposes his distinctive formula instead in De Libertate Arbitrii (dla) 3: freedom is ‘the ability to preserve rectitude of the will for the sake of rectitude itself’ (‘potestas servandi rectitudinem voluntatis propter ipsam rectitudinem’,1 hereafter psr2). Yet, in order to exercise this freedom, rational creatures need alternate possibilities, and Anselm argues that they are therefore endowed with two desires: a desire for happiness and a desire for justice (De Casu Diaboli (dcd) 12–14, De Concordia (dc) iii.11–13). Rogers has, quite controversially, suggested that Anselm thinks of a ‘hierarchical’ relationship between the two, rather than seeing them as conflicting same-order desires. Morality does not consist in choosing justice (i.e., moral goodness) instead of happiness but in ‘aligning’ the (lower/first-order) desire for happiness with the (higher/second-order) desire for justice.2 I find Rogers’ suggestion plausible, although I have proposed a modified Anselmian model of moral choice3 taking into account that, against the backdrop of Christian theology, we have to distinguish between two forms—one immanent, one transcendent—of fulfilling the desire for happiness: being like God (similis Deo esse) and being with God (cum Deo esse).4 But Rogers also holds

1 aoo, i.212.20. 2 K. Rogers, Anselm on Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Freedom and SelfCreation: Anselmian Libertarianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 3 C. Göbel, ‘Frankfurt and Beyond. Hierarchical Readings of Anselm’s Analysis of Moral Choice, With a New Test Case for his Concept of Freedom’, The Saint Anselm Journal, 14 (2018), pp. 33– 91. That paper offers a detailed analysis of relevant passages in Anselm’s and Rogers’ works. 4 While Anselm uses the expression ‘similis Deo (esse)’, the phrase ‘cum Deo esse’—used for the purpose of juxtaposition—is not found in his writings (it is here quoted from pseudoBernard’s Meditationes piissimae 4), but the idea is.

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that Anselm’s hierarchical account of the will is an expression of virtue ethics and thus superior to Kant’s understanding of moral choice which, in her view, is dualistic and ‘pits duty against natural inclination’; she argues that Anselm should be seen as an ‘Aristotelian’ thinker rather than as a ‘proto-Kantian’.5 This I find problematic. More precisely, the fact that Rogers ‘pits’ Kant against Aristotle is questionable. Maybe Anselm can still be called a ‘proto-Kantian’ (and Aristotelian) after all. This chapter expands on my earlier response to Rogers and suggests a different reading of Kant highlighting some common ground with Aristotle and the—often overlooked—Augustinian background Kant shares with Anselm.6 Kant, too, argues for a necessary connection between virtue and happiness and emphasizes a transcendent dimension of happiness through which humans find fulfillment of their desire to ‘be with God’. The chapter thus looks at a specific configuration of the theme of this volume: the ‘natural order’ and its anthropological and moral implications.7 Highlighting similarities between Kant, Anselm, Augustine and Aristotle may also be relevant in the context of contemporary attempts to integrate rights-, ends- and duty-based approaches to ethical theory. Does not virtue ethics have this exact power of integration? It is concerned with respect for dignity and rights, driven by a duty which results from the Christian humanist concept of the human being; and its purpose is the advancement of the common good. It is at least true that ‘virtue ethics does not constitute a third option in ethics in addition to consequentialism and deontology; if we understand ethical theories as accounts of right and wrong action, virtue ethics turns out to be a form of

5 Rogers, Anselm, pp. 10, 72. 6 I draw on the work of eminent German scholar Norbert Fischer, who has published widely on Augustine and Kant. The claim is not that Kant was explicitly influenced by Augustine or Augustinian thinkers but that they share similar views.—I use the following (German) abbreviations for Kant’s works: KpV = Critique of Practical Reason, gms = Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, mst = Metaphysics of Morals: Doctrine of Virtue, rgv = Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, ApH = Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, KrV = Critique of Pure Reason, ku = Critique of Judgement. Page numbers refer to first editions (A) unless otherwise noted. Other works are quoted from the Akademieausgabe (= Ak). English translations are mine or from the Cambridge Edition, except for rgv, for which I use T.K. Abbott’s translation (London 1873) with some modifications. 7 My goal is modest: I will not review traditional ‘Kantian’ Anselm interpretations but limit myself to pointing out some common themes in Kant and Anselm that challenge Rogers’ ‘anti-Kantianism’. Similarly, I cannot review the extensive scholarship on Aristotle and Kant but will simply offer some thoughts in light of the contrast that informs Rogers’ reading of Anselm.

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deontology (that is, non-consequentialism)’.8 Besides, Kant’s deontology shares key aspects with virtue ethics, most prominently in its anthropological foundation and focus on concepts such as virtue, dignity, and happiness.

2

Happiness as Self-Fulfillment: Anselm’s ‘Aristotelian Virtue Ethics Anthropology’

(i) Critics of Rogers have argued that her ‘Aristotelian approach’ to Anselm needs qualification. And there are, of course, significant differences between the two, most importantly the fact that ‘Anselm is not an Aristotelian with respect to character formation’; habituation does not seem to have a role in his account of good and bad.9 Indeed, Anselm picks, in dcd, Satan’s fall as his paradigmatic example of free choice, i.e. a ‘single primal’ choice, and Rogers’ analysis of ‘character-formation’ traces act-responsibility back to one decisive moment that determines a person’s character ‘forever’.10 On the other hand, there are parallels between Anselm and Kant that, I believe, Rogers would not deny, in particular those basic convictions that Kant also shares with Aristotle: both propose non-consequentialist accounts of moral choice. Good will is pivotal. The same is true for Anselm. He is concerned with ‘willing something and willing it for a certain reason’.11 The creature is ‘not able to be happy unless he wills to be and wills it justly’.12 Right intent or good will— a ‘qualified voluntarism’—is one of those motives that both Anselm and Kant also share with Augustine, who argues that ‘the bona voluntas, which a will— and only a will—can produce through itself, surpasses all goods that are not within our power’.13 There is a lot more on Anselm and Aristotle (and Kant), but we can focus here on Rogers’ key argument.

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R. Crisp, ‘A Third Method of Ethics?’ Lecture Manuscript, 2010, 2. S. Visser, ‘Freedom and Self-Creation: Anselmian Libertarianism’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 25 (2017), pp. 411–413, p. 412. Rogers, Freedom, p. 123; cf. dciii.4. Note that the ‘tracing thesis’ itself is in line with Aristotle’s emphasis on indirect responsibility for one’s actions (Nicomachean Ethics = ne iii 5); and Kant has a similar understanding of responsibility for one’s character (see below). B. Goebel, ‘K. Rogers, Freedom and Self-Creation’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 99 (2017), pp. 124–128, p. 127. dcd14 (aoo, i.258.20–21: ‘nec potest nec debet esse beatus nisi velit et nisi iuste velit’.) Norbert Fischer, ‘Kant, Immanuel’ in K. Pollmann, ed., The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine. Vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 1256. Fischer refers to De libero arbitrio [= lib.arb.] 1,12.16; cf. gms 1.—‘Right intent’ refers to the pursuit of moral goodness, not to the mere ‘aim’ which does not give ‘an action’ moral worth (gms 13).

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(ii) Rogers’ claim that Anselm can be seen as an Aristotelian thinker is mainly justified due to the anthropological foundation of his ethics: morality is about ‘flourishing’ as a human being.14 This implies a teleological account of human nature, for self-fulfillment (i.e., perfection, excellence or ‘virtue’) is not naturally given, or only given as a potential, and has to be achieved (cf. dci.6), thus providing happiness. Aristotle states that ‘happiness is the highest’ of those goods ‘that everything seeks’ (ne i 1.4), and Anselm holds that happiness ‘is inseparable from the human being’ (dciii.12); it is a universal principle by which ‘the will moves itself to other desires (…). No one wills something, unless he first has a natural desire to avoid what is not beneficial or have what is beneficial’.15 Note that, in describing the desire for happiness, Anselm uses the words beatitudo and commoditas interchangeably. So, while it may not be immediately clear that the two are coextensive, Anselm thinks of desires that are ‘beneficial, useful, or conducive to happiness’.16 Rogers insists that commoditas is better translated with ‘benefit’ than ‘advantage’ to avoid what she sees as the ‘Kantian’ connotation of immoral selfishness.17 It is in this context that she claims that Kantian readings of Anselm fail to see the non-exclusive relationship between justice and happiness/benefit. Yet, Anselm, too, certainly thinks of different forms of happiness. He is a virtue ethicist in the sense that he defines his ethics of the good life anthropologically and teleologically (aiming at excellence), informed, just like Aristotle, by an understanding of the purpose or ‘proper function’ (ne i 7) of the human being, i.e. reason. Anselm’s distinctive definition of freedom as psr2 aims at conformity between acting and being; he ‘argues that as a property of a rational will freedom cannot be thought of abstractly but must be considered in relation to the view of man and purpose of the being who is said to possess it’.18 Anselm’s species-appropriate account of fulfillment is tied to the idea of rectitudo. It is often translated as (and does indeed denote) ‘moral uprightness’, but the more general meaning is simply ‘rightness’ or fulfillment of one’s natural purpose. Animals achieve it by instinct and find happiness in the form of

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Rogers, Freedom, pp. 73, 118. dcd12 (aoo, i.254.24–25: ‘nisi qui prius habet naturalem voluntatem vitandi incommodum aut habendi commodum’.) Stan R. Tyvoll, ‘Anselm’s Definition of Free Will: A Hierarchical Interpretation’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 80 (2006), pp. 155–171, p. 157; cf. dcd4. K. Rogers, ‘Anselm on Eudaemonism and the Hierarchical Structure of Human Choice’, Religious Studies, 41 (2005), pp. 249–268, p. 254; cf. Rogers, Anselm, p. 72. S. Kane, ‘Anselm’s Definition of Freedom’, Religious Studies, 9 (1973) pp. 297–306, p. 300.

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pleasure (e.g., grazing: dv12). But humans are ‘rational creatures’ (M68).19 The emphasis that Anselm, like so many other thinkers, places on this fact has relevance for his metaphysics of morals: the theo-teleology of being translates into a theo-teleology of acting when the rational agent does ‘what God wills him to will’ (dla8); and this is not only something God (or the natural order of things) demands, but he has made it such that humans naturally desire justice and understand this demand by means of what is most distinctive of their nature. Reason is the very faculty that allows them to order their desires properly (dci.6 and 3.13). Anselm is concerned with ‘happiness with justice’ or ‘justly sought happiness’ (dcd12, cf. dcd4.7), and we are reminded of Augustine’s contrast between ordinate and ‘inordinate desires’ or ‘lust’, the root cause of evil (lib.arb. 1,3). In short, Anselm does, of course, understand human happiness as a result of self-fulfillment ‘as a rational and moral being’.20 The universal desire for happiness may determine all our choices (dcd12), but the desire for justice has to ‘curtail excesses’ (dcd14). Rogers’ hierarchical model underlines the universality and positive value of the happiness principle, but the latter remains subordinate to ‘morality’ (cf. dciii.13: ‘it became evil, that is unjust, because it was not subordinated to justice’21). The desire for happiness has to be aligned with the desire for justice, not the other way round.

3

Kant and Anselm on Happiness, Human Nature, Autonomy

(i) It turns out that Kant has similar views on happiness. The common caricature of Kant as a rigorous advocate of an ‘ascetic and joyless duty ethic’ is false.22 He explicitly dismisses the ‘purism of the Cynics’ (ApH 252) and holds: ‘to be happy is necessarily the wish of every finite rational being, and this, therefore, is inevitably a determining principle of its faculty of desire’ (KpV 45). Kant thus defends, just like Anselm and Aristotle, the universality of a happiness principle. It is true that Kant uses the word happiness (Glückseligkeit) in a number of different senses, and this has led to claims of inconsistency and conflict-

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Besides, as a Christian thinker, Anselm sees the human nature as God-given (‘theoanthropology’). Rogers, Freedom, p. 118. aoo, ii.287.2–3: ‘aliquid mala, id est iniusta facta est, quia non est subdita iustitiae’. Norbert Fischer, ‘Zum Sinn von Kants Grundfrage: Was ist der Mensch?’, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, 70 (2016), pp. 493–526, p. 506.

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ing interpretations with some scholars claiming that ‘his deontological ethic rejects happiness’, while others hold that his ‘ethic is, in fact, consequential and above all concerned with happiness’.23 I do not need to go into too much detail here; it will suffice to point out a few obvious things. For instance, one could hold that Kant acknowledges the significance of the happiness principle but relegates it to the realm of inclinations alone, which is separate from reason and duty, thus not bearing on morality. But he explicitly states that he wants to think ‘virtue and happiness together’ (KpV 199). Happiness is an end of moral choice: not only do we have a ‘powerful and inward inclination to happiness’, but ‘there still remains a law, namely to promote one’s happiness not from inclination but from duty’. Such ‘conduct has (…) authentic moral worth’ (gms 11 f.). Moreover, the ‘happiness of others’ is one of the two ‘ends which are also duties’ (mst 5). Besides, even the lowest form of happiness—pertinent to the inclinations, i.e. personal benefit and pleasure—is not per se immoral.24 Kant’s account of moral choice is grounded in what we could also call a ‘hierarchical’ anthropology. He does, of course, agree that humans are rational beings (ApH iii.315) and that they derive their dignity from this very fact (more precisely, from the fact that reason provides access to the moral law: KpV 52.56.154.271.288, mst 15.68, gms ix.4 et al.). Kant, too, derives a species-appropriate notion of happiness or ‘true contentment’ (gms 5) from this definition of human nature. Yet, he also acknowledges that another ‘spring of human acting’ is ‘sensibility’ (Sinnlichkeit), which is a ‘predisposition to the good that humans possess insofar as they are animals’.25 He calls its principle ‘self-love’ (a happiness principle), but this is not in itself evil. The ‘propensity’ to evil is not a ‘natural property’ precisely because it ‘can be imputed to the man, and consequently must consist in maxims of the elective will’ (rgv 24f.). Sensibility and self-love are natural, therefore not immoral but simply amoral. Kant does, however, insist that it is false to assume that the happiness principle can make humans virtuous (KpV 206), and he points out that the inclinations can lead to evil when they conflict with the moral law and when they are not controlled by reason, that is, if a person ‘reverses the moral order of the springs’ of human acting. Evil does not result from ‘the distinction of the springs that he adopts into his maxim’ but from a false ‘subordination’ which makes ‘self-love and its inclinations the condition of obedience to the moral

23 24 25

Victoria S. Wike, Kant on Happiness in Ethics (Albany: suny Press, 1994), back cover. Although one may ask if ephemeral pleasures meet Kant’s definition of happiness in mst 16: ‘satisfaction with one’s state, so long as one is assured of its lasting’. P. Formosa, ‘Kant on the Radical Evil of Human Nature’, The Philosophical Forum, 38 (2007), pp. 221–245, p. 223.

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law’ (rgv 30f.).26 This is the whole point of morality: evil results from the fact that self-love is not ‘aligned’ with reason and the moral law. Humans thus become unfree ‘objects’ (mst 68). Augustine says the same: inclinations are natural and therefore not in themselves immoral, but the will that subjects itself to the inclinations is unfree and evil (lib.arb. 3,2). (ii) As an integrative principle of the will Anselm’s desire for happiness is a determining feature of rectitudo (animals have rectitude)—but not of morality; it falls under what we might call today ‘motivation theory’. It is only the desire for justice that allows us to make morally significant choices and gain praise or blame. And this is Kant’s view too. He acknowledges that self-love is a legitimate determining factor of the will, although in itself amoral. Anselm’s claim that humans always seek happiness/benefit has a similar scope, and he clearly sees that ‘mere benefit’ can imply the kind of selfishness Kantian readings deem immoral. Since ‘willing justice’ is always good, Anselm has to emphasize that the desire for happiness/benefit ‘is not always evil, only a vicious will that consents to vicious appetites (…) and lusts against the spirit’.27 Rogers is right in pointing out that, in principle, Anselm’s desires for happiness and justice are not opposed to one another. But some desires for specific actions are.28 If the acting person does—to use Kantian terminology—her ‘duty’ and aligns her desire for happiness with the desire for justice, acting from ‘reason alone’, she’ll understand that some actions ought not to be done. Kant’s goal in KpV is to show that ‘reason is practical of itself alone’ (163, cf. 30), i.e., that it can motivate the will ‘without any admixture of any empirical determining ground’ (without interference from the realm of sensibility: rgv 48). Kant thus proves the inner freedom of human beings: they are selflegislative when reason, the highest of their ‘natural predispositions’ (gms 4), becomes practical by following the moral law and produces the ‘highest good’: a ‘will good in itself’ (gms 7). Kant suggests that this happens when we apprehend, a priori, a purely rational moral law that in itself determines the will. This is the Categorical Imperative (hereafter ci), a test of universalization for subjective maxims (‘Act in such a way that the maxim of your will can always at the same time serve as a principle of universal legislation’: KpV 54, cf. gms 52).

26 27 28

In gms 23, Kant speaks of happiness as a ‘counterweight against all commands of duty’, here using the term to describe ‘satisfaction’ of one’s ‘needs and inclinations’. dciii.12 (aoo, ii.285.4–5: ‘non semper mala, sed quando consentit carni concupiscenti adversus spiritum’.) On the relationship between the two fundamental desires and desires for specific actions, see Göbel, ‘Frankfurt’, pp. 38–44.

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This is reconcilable with Rogers’ hierarchical account of moral choice since for Anselm, too, it is practical reason that enables us to order our desires properly (dci.6). Anselm uses hierarchical language precisely because it allows him to capture more clearly (a) the value judgment underlying the qualification of the way in which one acts on one’s desire for happiness and thus (b) the relationship between the two desires. In limiting the excesses of the desire for happiness, the desire for justice expresses the human being’s fundamental orientation towards the moral law which gives him ‘dignity’ (dcd16) and freedom (for an evil will has become ‘a servant of its own’ disordered affections: dciii.13) Rogers emphasizes that Anselm thinks of rational creatures as endowed with the two desires precisely because they are thus capable of free choices between alternatives; she calls this ‘parsimonious agent-causation’ and ‘self-creation’.29 Humans can thus ‘imitate’, in a form appropriate for creatures, the aseity of God, in whose ‘image’ the mind was created (M67f.; cf. dla14, dcd12). And Kant says: ‘it is the autonomy of our will that ennobles our dignity tremendously’ (Ak 29, 629), and: ‘the moral law within me (…) fill(s) the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe’ (KpV 288). Kant even alludes to the idea of reason as an ‘image of God’ and to human imitation of divine powers through moral autonomy: he calls God the Urbild (‘original image’, often translated as ‘model’ or ‘type’) of a perfectly good (‘holy’) will (KpV 58). At the heart of their moral analyses, Anselm and Kant (as well as Aristotle) focus on a form of justice (i.e., moral goodness) that is freely chosen for its own sake. The pursuit of justice for its own sake determines the ‘good will’. This is autonomy. Anselm and Kant agree that freedom ‘is only real as a capacity for the moral good’.30 This thought leads Anselm to his psr2 formula: freedom is the ability to preserve justice, i.e., ‘rectitude of will preserved for its own sake’ (dv12, dla3). And Kant argues that virtue cannot be chosen ‘for the sake’ of personal benefits like health, reputation, profit or peace of mind (rgv 50, gms 9, KpV 151). For the same reason, he famously rejects, like Augustine (lib.arb. 1,3), the Golden Rule as a principle sufficient to determine morality (gms 68). This is another common feature in Kant, Anselm and Augustine (cf. lib.arb. 1,6): they ‘reject heteronomous moral justifications and introduce a formal moral principle on the basis of autonomous rational understanding’.31

29 30 31

Rogers, Freedom, pp. 73, 81ff. Hansjürgen Verweyen, Anselm von Canterbury: Freiheitsschriften (Freiburg: Herder, 1994), p. 39. Fischer, ‘Kant’, p. 1256.

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But none of this excludes that humans also seek happiness in all they do; both Anselm and Kant simply insist that the morality of a choice is not determined by the desire for happiness.32 Of sole interest here are those cases that constitute proper moral choices, i.e., ‘happiness-excesses’ that need to be curtailed since, even on the hierarchical account of moral choice, there still are conflicting alternatives of acting. Morality is determined by responsibility, freedom, purity of choice alone, or by the willingness to control the desire for happiness with the desire for justice.

4

Kant on Virtue and Practice

(i) The few quotes presented so far clearly show the emphasis that Kant, like Aristotle, Augustine, Anselm and all virtue ethicists, places on concepts such as dignity and happiness through self-fulfillment. The notion of virtue itself, as moral excellence (evident in virtuous character traits), is, of course, key in Kant’s ethics as well. In mst, he elaborates on the ‘humanity formulation’ of the ci (‘treat humans as ends’, cf. gms 66f.) and deduces from it duties towards others and towards oneself. One of the two ‘ends which are also duties’ is ‘moral self-perfection’ (mst 5). But does Kant think of virtue as something that is acquired through the kind of practice which Aristotle calls habituation? Kant expresses well-known skepticism towards certain aspects of virtue ethics, in particular towards the idea that it can be taught by example, for examples of virtuous action tell the observer nothing about the underlying—possibly selfish—motives of the acting person (rgv 50). Moreover: ‘however virtuous anyone may be, all the good he can ever do is only duty; and to do his duty is no more than to do what is in the common moral order, and therefore does not deserve to be admired’. Not unlike Augustine and Anselm, who believe in a natural order, Kant believes in a natural moral law, and ‘obedience to it’ is nothing ‘extraordinary and meritorious’ but expected of rational beings (rgv 52 f.). Kant also seems to reject the gradual nature of virtue through habituation: he doubts whether one can ‘by some long practice (in observing the law)’ pass ‘from the propensity to vice, by gradual reform of his conduct and strengthening of his maxims, into an opposite propensity’ (rgv 49f.).

32

Kant states that a ‘will good in itself’ is the ‘highest good and the condition for all the rest, even for every demand for happiness’, but he acknowledges that the latter remains a ‘second aim’. The good will is not ‘the single and entire good’ (gms 7, cf. KpV 198 ff.).

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But Kant’s criticism is mostly directed at two things: he warns against confusing ‘legal goodness’ with ‘moral goodness’ (which Kant also calls ‘God pleasing’). ‘Legality’ may be the ‘empirical character [of] virtue’, but actions that appear to be in accordance with the moral law do not reveal the true motives of the acting person and, therefore, ‘his intelligible character’ (rgv 50). Kant furthermore rejects a form of virtue ethics which builds on mere practice and ignores that moral goodness can only develop if the agent undergoes a complete change of mind first. He calls into question, in the above quote on ‘long practice’, a notion of virtue which ‘does not require any change of heart, but only a change of morals’ (rgv 49). Kant does not at all deny gradual self-improvement towards moral excellence. His ethics has too often been misunderstood as a mere formalism applicable to situational ethics or decision theory. Instead, his moral philosophy aims at a key feature of all virtue ethics: character formation.33 Although Visser may be right in pointing out that the Aristotelian form of ‘habituation’ does not feature prominently in Anselm’s account of moral goodness and virtue,34 character formation itself is key in Rogers’ libertarian virtue ethics account of Anselm’s analysis of moral choice. But she largely ignores that character formation through practice is central in both Aristotle’s and Kant’s ethics. It should first be noted that Kant’s notion of character does not primarily refer to a state of perfection in the moral virtues; it does not consist in mere control of the passions.35 Character, for Kant, is a ‘mode of thinking’ (Denkungsart: rgv 55). It is an intellectual endeavor, a perfection of the mind which then

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35

One of the reasons that this has often been overlooked is the fact that many later Kantians and Kant scholars have indeed focuses on deontological formalism. See above n. 8.—Note, though, that Anselm does, of course, emphasize the importance of practice in moral and soteriological contexts; the practice of ‘living a good life’, ‘persistent effort’ and ‘holding on to one’s virtues’ are key parts of his spiritual instruction and exhortations to monastic discipline (cf., e.g., E2, E51, E167). G. Felicitas Munzel, Kant’s Conception of Moral Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999) emphasizes this difference between Kant and Aristotle (which is obscured by the fact that, in gms, Kant seems to ‘identify character with will’: p. 6), but she seems to think of temperance as the corresponding Aristotelian virtue (‘control of the inclinations’: p. 9). Yet, even for Aristotle, mere control of the passions through reason is continence (neither virtue nor vice), while virtue (temperance) implies agreement between passion and thought: ‘the temperate person is the sort to find nothing pleasant against reason, but the continent is the sort to find such things pleasant but not to be let by them’ (ne vii 9, cf. vii 1). The virtuous person therefore enjoys being virtuous (ne i 8). It remains true, though, that Kant often uses the term ‘virtue’ in a slightly different sense (see below). Munzel underlines, in any case, the role of character and practice in Kant’s ethics and highlights its anthropological foundation.

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allows the agent to show moral virtue. The ‘hallmark of moral character’ is virtue that consists in ‘self-control, not of the inclinations, but of the human process of thinking; specifically, of choice making or the subjective practical use of reason in human moral life’.36 Munzel highlights the multidimensionality and systematic importance of Kant’s concept of character: ‘Character is a moral task definitive of our vocation as members of humanity. Morally speaking, character is the steadfast commitment to virtue that is realized through a resolute conduct of thought that is morally good in its form and that, in its exercise, entails both causal and reflective elements. Anthropologically speaking, it is the formative task of the specific rational being we are, that is, of the rational human being in relation to living nature (…) Ontologically speaking, it is the achievement of the unity of the natural and moral orders in the individual, a unity that results in the concrete actualization of the moral law in the world’.37 Indirectly, however, the control of selfish desires remains key, and so does the notion of practice. We may want to distinguish between intellectual and moral practice: someone who has developed—through intellectual practice— character in the sense of proper conduct of thought or ‘moral excellence of intellect’ (moralische Denkungsart) will then be able to control his inclinations as well; he has undergone that ‘change of heart’ Kant demands of the morally good person and which then allows him to ‘practice’ virtue (rgv 50). Although Kant’s notion of character may focus on rational determination of the will, his conviction that moral goodness requires harmony between the empirical and intelligible character of virtue (through proper Gesinnung, i.e. comportment of mind, volition and ‘right reasons’; cf. gms 13, ne ii 4.6) is fully compatible with the virtue ethics account of human excellence. (ii) Kant acknowledges the existence of ‘radical evil’ in human nature but also ‘the original capacity for good’; being good is possible not through the ‘acquisition of a lost spring towards good’ but through ‘restoration of its purity’ (rgv 48). This is the ‘change of heart’ or ‘revolution in one’s comportment of the mind’ (rgv 50) and ‘transformation in one’s conduct of thought’ which, for Kant, is the ‘foundation of a character’ and consists in the use of reason and adherence to the moral law (rgv 51f.).38 Character is thus the prerequisite for moral practice, but Kant still describes a process of self-improvement which includes both intellectual and moral practice (i.e., truly virtuous choices). The 36 37 38

Munzel, Character, p. 14. Munzel, Character, p. 2. This implies some form of teleology as well: practical reason, with its orientation towards the moral law, needs to be activated.

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goal is a ‘moral culture (moralische Bildung)’ (rgv 52). KpV pursues the same objective: it discusses how the ‘soul is to be morally cultivated’39 and how ‘objective practical reason can be made subjectively practical’ (KpV 269). Kant here defines mature character as ‘practical resolute Denkungsart in accordance with invariable maxims’ (KpV 271).40 Its ‘cultivation [is] active perfection’ (mst 67). In rgv, he says: ‘The original good is holiness of maxims in following one’s duty, by which the man who adopts this purity into his maxims, although he is not himself as yet on that account holy (for there is still a long interval between maxim and act), nevertheless is on the way to approximate to holiness by an endless progress’ (rgv 49). In short, the change of heart or mind is key, but practice and therefore gradual progress towards virtue remain essential in Kant’s philosophy as well. He, too, agrees with Aristotle (ne ii 1) that virtue is not given but has to be attained. Kant rejects ‘Aristotle’s principle which locates virtue in the mean between two vices’ because it is qualitatively different from vice (mst 43 f.).41 But both agree that virtue has to do with ‘strength in self-restraint and self-conquest through moral comportment of the mind’ and that it proves morality in times of ‘struggle’ (KpV 151).42 The goal of all moral endeavors is a ‘kingdom of virtue’ 39 40

41 42

Munzel, Character, p. 8; cf. KpV 152. This brings to mind a related term: Kant famously demands ‘enlightenment’ in the sense of ‘man’s emergence from immaturity (Unmündigkeit)’ (Was ist Aufklärung? = Ak 8, 35). It is true that the German word mündig (etymologically derived from ‘mouth’) often has the meaning of ‘reaching an age at which one is legally recognized as independent, as having a voice’ (K. Deligiorgi, ‘Enlightenment’ in G. Banham et al., eds., The Bloomsbury Companion to Kant (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 198–200, p. 199). But ‘mature’ is still a good translation since Kant is not simply referring to the coming of age. Release from ‘self-incurred immaturity’ is the goal, or the ability to think for oneself. And this does have elements of an ‘organic process’: not in the sense of acquiring and perfecting a lacking capacity (the capacity to think), but in the sense of overcoming, through practice and education, a disposition of the mind that ‘defers to the guidance of others’ in the use of this capacity. For the same reason there cannot be degrees of virtue, i.e. of following certain maxims. The first quote is from a lecture not included in Ak: Paul Menzer, ed., Eine Vorlesung Kants über Ethik (Berlin: Heise, 1924), p. 91.—The above-mentioned difference between Aristotle’s and Kant’s use of ‘virtue’ consists in the fact that, for Aristotle, the virtuous (temperate) person (as opposed to the person who is merely continent) does not experience an inner conflict between passion and rational choice, while Kant sees virtue as ‘struggle’: ‘it is the continent person whom Kant calls virtuous and to whom Kant ascribes moral worth’ (J. Klagge, ‘Virtue: Aristotle or Kant?’ Paper at Eastern apa, Atlanta 1989, https://www.phil​ .vt.edu/JKlagge/VIRTUE.pdf, 1; cf. gms 11). More precisely, Kant distinguishes between the virtue of humans, which is ‘moral strength of the will in fulfillment of one’s duty’, and the duty of ‘holy beings’, who have ‘no hindering impulses’ and therefore ‘execute the law willingly’ (mst 46). But both Aristotle and Kant emphasize the role of practice in achieving moral comportment of the mind (which is our sole focus here); besides, they ‘are not trying

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(rgv 122) or, most famously, the ‘kingdom of ends’ in which all humans practice virtue in the sense that they apply the ci and treat humans not as means but always as ends (gms 74). Kant does, accordingly, place particular emphasis on education; his lectures on anthropology and pedagogy reflect on ways to assist adolescents in the development of virtue since ‘man is the only being that has to be educated’ (Ak 9, 441). Kant investigates in these lectures ‘what the human being as a free-acting being makes of himself, or can and should make of himself’ (ApH iv). Education is, in fact, the central task for philosophers: ‘the formation of human beings is the only thing necessary’.43 The overarching goal is man’s development towards actualization of his ‘potential’ and ‘perfection of one’s nature’ (mst 67). Kant speaks—fully in line with Aristotle and Rogers’ reading of Anselm—of a ‘self-creation of character’ by which the being ‘endowed with the capacity of reason can make out of himself a being’ that uses reason, thinks for himself and acts morally through free choice (ApH 315). It is man’s duty to ‘cultivate his faculties (natural predispositions)’ and ‘to diminish his ignorance by instruction and to correct his errors’ and thus ‘be worthy of the humanity that dwells within him’ (mst 15, cf. ApH 321). Education assists in making humans autonomous and free.44

43 44

to answer the same questions in giving their respective accounts of virtue’, so they may not really be in any significant ‘conflict with one another’: while ‘Aristotle is concerned with the kind of character it would be most desirable or fulfilling to have’, Kant’s question is: ‘What kind of character is most deserving of moral esteem?’ (Klagge, ‘Virtue’, 2). This is indeed pivotal in key passages of Kant’s moral analysis (although, Aristotle, too, emphasizes that ‘virtue wins praise’: ne ii 6), but it is not in itself the final goal of the human existence according to Kant (more below). Munzel, Character, p. 17 quotes from a letter of Kant, but the reference (Ak 10, 221) is incorrect. It is true that the primary goal of Kant’s ethics is a ‘metaphysics of morals’ and ‘purely rational moral philosophy’ which is ‘cleansed of everything empirical’; he therefore claims to proceed without ‘knowledge about the human being (anthropology)’, but this is because he is convinced that moral laws ‘carry absolute necessity, hence the ground of obligation here is to be sought not in the nature of the human being but a priori solely in concepts of pure reason’. Furthermore, moral laws transcend the human realm; the duty to follow them is ‘valid not merely for human beings’ but for all rational beings (gms vii–ix, 66; the latter is again an idea Kant shares with Anselm, who rarely speaks of human beings but of rational beings, although Anselm distinguishes more specifically between rational creatures and God). Yet, (1) Kant’s ethics still has an ‘anthropological’ foundation in the sense in which I use the word here: it proceeds on the assumption that the human nature is rational (gms 64). ‘Moral philosophy gives man as a rational being laws a priori’ (gms ix). nb: This given condition and the obligatory character of the moral law—which is not an empirical condition but still a ‘factum of reason’ (KpV 56, gms 81)—do not preclude

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(iii) The ci has a special role in Kant’s conception of character formation; it is a manifestation of the moral law which urges humans to develop practical wisdom.45 Although a formal rule of reason, the ci is neither abstract nor completely void of normative content nor merely part of an ill-suited approach to situational ethics. It is a law, but it also needs to be ‘practiced’ and can therefore be seen as a ‘tool’ in Kant’s deontology which is inspired by the vision of a better world, a vision which the moral agent brings to bear on a concrete situation where it serves as the standard for the ‘test of universalization’. This vision, i.e. Kant’s moral idealism, culminates in the idea of the ‘kingdom of ends’, an ethical commonwealth which is characterized by ‘world citizenship’ and ‘world peace’ and to which Kant refers ‘in Augustinian terms as ‘church invisible’’.46 The ci can be seen as an exercise in practical rationality, or even a ‘spiritual exercise’ similar to those practiced in the ancient schools: these are ‘thought exercises’ but do not preclude ‘imagination and sensibility’; they shape one’s ‘conduct of life’ and ‘correspond to a transformation of our vision of the world; by means of them, the individual raises himself up to the life of the objective Spirit; that is to say, he re-places himself within the perspective of the Whole’.47

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free causality of the will, but make it possible; our nature is ‘determined’, not our choices (we are ‘determined to be free’); at the same time, Kant’s notion of autonomy and of the rational nature as a (moral) ‘end in itself’ (gms 66) is compatible with the existence of a divine lawgiver precisely because it is conceived of as a ‘factum’ and has nothing to do with selfishness (Fischer, ‘Grundfrage’, p. 515).—Besides (2), Kant states that philosophical reflection on the principles of morality leads to ‘practical anthropology’ (gms vii) which studies the ‘conditions under which the formation of character is best realized’ (Munzel, Character, p. 17) and thus translates the theoretical study of what ‘pure reason can achieve’ in moral matters into practicability and ‘makes it effective in concreto’ (gms vii.ix).— Moreover (3), Kant also acknowledges that those ‘laws a priori [still] require a power of judgment sharpened through experience’ (gms ix). Virtue requires experience (mst 45). Kant seems to deny the moral relevance of prudence (which has further fuelled criticism by virtue ethicists), but this is, to an extent, a matter of words. Kant uses Klugheit in a way similar to the modern (un-Aristotelian) use of the English word ‘prudence’ and defines it as careful or clever calculation and ‘skillfulness in choosing means that serve one’s selfinterest’ or ‘happiness’ (gms 41ff.: merchant example). Although Klugheit has also been used in German translations of Aristotle’s chief virtue of phronesis, the latter is better translated with Weisheit, a term which denotes the practical application of knowledge (Wissen). There may, furthermore, be differences between Aristotle’s phronesis and Kant’s understanding of moral judgment. But the basic idea of an intellectual virtue which has practical impact and manifests self-government through reason is, in substance, the same. It is the idea of ‘practical reason’. Howard L. Williams, Kant’s Political Philosophy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), p. 265; cf. rgv 134. Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), p. 82.

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As a practical exercise in ‘transformation of one’s conduct of thought’ and ‘change of heart’ (rgv 49f.), the ci helps to build character and ‘cultivate the powers of moral discernment and judgment’.48 Even aesthetic ‘feelings of the sublime’ play a role in Kant’s conception of character: considering the etymological roots of sapor and sapientia (ApH 184ff.) he develops ‘what one might call a ‘taste for the moral law’’.49 Although ‘the moral law [is] within me’, it is also a transcendent reality (and as sublime as the ‘starry heavens above me’: KpV 288). Augustine says something similar of God: ‘you are more intimately present to me than my innermost being’ (Confessions 3,11). The ci is an intellectual exercise everybody is encouraged to practice: this ‘habituation’ does not produce the capacity of being moral (which comes with being rational) but it fosters the ability to actually make moral judgments. The final goal of this practice is a world where morally relevant situations that are caused by evil or weakness and constitute worst-case scenarios (like ‘Kant’s Axe’) do not happen because everyone has become a moral subject. The ci is certainly meant to be applied in morally relevant situations (although to maxims rather than actions: mst 19) and can tell us what to do here and now, but it also answers the more important question: ‘What should we all do to create a world of moral excellence, a world we want to live in as rational, human beings?’ Universality is the standard for each moral judgment, but universal practice of moral judgments is the goal of moral education and character formation. The ci can serve as a tool to this end.50 As important as virtue is as a moral goal, it is not yet ‘holiness’ (rgv 49, KpV 151), not the final end or completion of human existence (and neither is duty). Virtue is simply an attitude towards duty, namely respect for duty for its own sake (KpV 151). So, what is that final end? Kant makes the most significant use of the word ‘happiness’ when he connects it with virtue: virtue, he says, is ‘worthiness of happiness’ (gms 2, KpV 198, KrV B 836f., ApH 324). This is related to the two ‘ends which are also duties’ (mst 5): the happiness of others and selfperfection through virtue. This is the central part of the virtue ethics notion of happiness as self-fulfillment. But there is more to it. When Kant says that ‘virtue and happiness together constitute the highest good’ (KpV 199), he takes the moral reflection to a theological level. This brings us back to Anselm.

48 49 50

Munzel, Character, p. 18. Munzel, Character, p. 18. Interestingly, the father of modern spiritual exercises, Ignatius of Loyola, suggests a rule similar to the ci and clearly sees it as a practical tool of self-improvement (Exercitia Spiritualia, no. 339).

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Forms of Happiness: Being like God and Being with God

(i) The fact that humans have reason is only one aspect of their ‘proper function’ according to Anselm. Man’s purpose is twofold and thus transcends the Aristotelian account of human nature; anthropology and ethics have a theological dimension. Humans are also created to ‘know and love God’, whose ‘mirror and image’ the human mind is (M67ff.). They are asked to ‘imitate God’ (M68) and thus gain the ‘blessedness’, ‘happiness’, ‘salvation’, or ‘happy immortality’ they were made for (cdh Pr, cdhi.10.19, cdhii.1.10; dci.6, dciii.13). The notion of meritorious morality is key in Anselm’s eschatological as well as moral writings. He shares with Augustine a theo-teleological anthropology and builds on the Augustinian idea that humans have a metaphysical nature (or desire), which is both intellectual—they want to ‘know God’—and affective—they ‘love God’ and desire to be with him (M67ff.). Augustine emphasizes that this nature, which is oriented towards God, comes from God who ‘has made us and drawn us to himself’, so that we may strive to seek, love, and understand him and, one day, dwell with him, for in his presence the restlessness that permeates the human condition will come to an end: ‘our heart is restless until it rests in you’ (Confessions 1,1). Anselm strives to understand God, an endeavor which he explicitly sees, in P1, as a form of existential fulfillment of the double purpose of rational beings, but he also acknowledges, in P26, that full understanding is not of this world. The same goes for our moral endeavors. In the discussion of the beatitudes in De similitudinibus 47, he is quoted as stating—citing Is 64:4 and 1 Cor 2:9—that those who ‘serve God in this life’ will be with him in the afterlife and enjoy ‘what no one has ever seen’ (cf. M70). Both Augustine and Anselm address the Biblical tension between the exhortation to imitate God and the realization that finite beings cannot find completion in this life.51 I am hesitant to assert, as Rogers does, that Anselm’s moral landscape is influenced by Aristotelian eudaemonism and would rather call it Biblical or Augustinian beatitudinism. The latter implies the former, but the Christian notion of completion implies presence with God in the afterlife, and the Latin term better captures this additional, transcendent dimension of Christian an-

51

This tension is resolved in the central paradox of Christian theology, i.e., the contrast between highest moral demands on the one hand and the promise of God’s unconditional love and forgiveness on the other hand; cf. C. Göbel, Philosophie und Ökumene: Überlegungen zur Logik des Christentums im Ausgang von Anselm von Canterbury (Munich: Utz, 2015), pp. 176ff.

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thropology and ethics. According to Anselm, such happiness is granted by God as a ‘reward’ (cf. simil. 47, M70) for doing ‘what God wills the will to do’ (dla8). Freedom, therefore, ‘is doing what one ought to do for the sake of salvation’.52 (ii) If rational beings are made in the image of God, it might seem that final fulfillment, or the highest degree of their powers, is achieved if and when they succeed in being like God. This would also provide them with supreme happiness. And this is what Anselm says in dcd13, where he considers the (unsatisfying) hypothesis that the fallen angel could have received only one of the two desires, namely the desire for happiness/benefit, and holds that ‘the higher he realizes happiness can be, the more he wills to be happy (…) therefore, he wills to be like God (vult esse similis deo)’.53 But this cannot truly be the case. The angel must have had the desire for justice as well to ‘curtail the excesses’ of his desire for happiness (dcd14), by which he wishes for things improperly or for benefits not meant for him, i.e. not ‘fitting for him’ (dcd4). But proper imitation of God is not identity with God. Being endowed with the two desires allows rational creatures to prove their psr2 and be, in some sense, almost god-like (dcd25), i.e. free in their choices (they can make ‘a se choices’54). It seems, however, that the kind of self-control that consists in the proper ordering of one’s desires is not just a matter of curtailing the lower desire for happiness/benefit; rather, self-restriction leads to a higher happiness, the desire for which may therefore motivate the alignment of benefit with justice in the first place. This desire does not find its highest form in being like God (dcd13) but in being with God. Perhaps we can call this desire for a higher form of happiness—Anselm’s use of beatitudo notwithstanding—the ‘desire for beatitude’. While Anselm is certainly aware of this desire, of its relation to morality, and of its unsatisfiability through self-determination, he does not seem to reflect on it sufficiently in his analysis of the happiness principle. Meritorious blessedness, for him, remains a function of the desire for justice. I have therefore suggested a modified version of Rogers’ hierarchical model of Anselm’s account of moral choice which includes this third desire for beatitude, one that cannot simply be identified with the desire for happiness/benefit that is subordinate to justice

52 53 54

David E. Luscombe, Review of The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2006) https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the‑cambridge‑companion‑to‑anselm. aoo, i.257.8–10: ‘Vult ergo esse beatus quanto altius hoc esse posse cognoscit. (…) Ergo vult esse similis deo’. Rogers, Freedom, pp. 81ff.

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because its goal—likeness with God in a se choices—is different from communion with God.55 Here, I will limit myself to pointing out (1) that Kant, too, holds that humans cannot find completion in this life; and (2) that even the idea of a postmortal ‘being-with-God’ which fulfills the human being’s deepest desire for happiness or beatitude can be found in Kant—who does, in fact, give it quite a prominent place in his analysis of morality or, better, at the turning point from moral philosophy to religion. Anselm may actually be more proto-Kantian than Aristotelian in this regard.56

6

Kant and the Metaphysical Desire for Happiness

(i) Fischer has compared Kant’s view of ‘metaphysics as a natural disposition’ (KrV B 21) to Augustine’s cor inquietum.57 Kant says: ‘Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason’ (KrV B vii). The ‘Augustinian spirit’ is even more obvious in ku b 389 (‘reason is not such that it rests somewhere and is satisfied with possessions and enjoyment’) and in a quote from a lecture: ‘the mind is always restless’ (Ak 27, 1402). Just like Augustine and Anselm, Kant knows that the happiness of understanding fully is not attainable in this life (cf. ApH 175). His ‘critical philosophy’ has a theo-logical scope, namely, to ‘do away with knowledge in order to make space for faith’ (KrV B xxx). The metaphysical disposition inspires all philosophical endeavors, but it also has a practical side. Kant suggests a teleology of the human being which focuses on morality but does not preclude religion. He deliberately chooses the term ‘holiness’ for moral excellence because the endlessness of the gradual process towards holiness (rgv 49) has to be taken quite literally. Holiness is ‘a practical idea, which must necessarily serve as a model to which finite rational beings can only approximate indefinitely’ (KpV 58), ‘for holiness can only be found in a progress in infinitum towards that perfect accordance’ (KpV 220).

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Göbel, ‘Frankfurt’, pp. 55–66. Although Aristotle’s notion of happiness has a theological dimension as well since happiness is the ‘activity of the gods which is superior to everything in blessedness’ (ne x 8). Norbert Fischer, ‘Augustinische Motive in der Philosophie Immanuel Kants’ in Norbert Fischer, ed., Augustinus: Spuren und Spiegelungen seines Denkens, Vol. 2, (Hamburg: Meiner, 2009), pp. 89–110, pp. 93ff.

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Kant’s ‘holiness’ is first a moral concept: the ideal of perfect goodness of the will, which is also the condition that allows ‘virtue to meet happiness’ (cf. KpV 199). This is in several regards close to what has been said about Aristotle and Anselm: (1) Willingness is joined by ‘cheerfulness in fulfilling one’s duties’ (mst 46, 176). (2) Morality means self-fulfillment as a rational being and can therefore make the moral agent happy. Kant adds that, properly speaking, this is not an expression of the human desire for happiness but of the ‘duty (which is also an end) to perfect oneself’, for only those can feel happy ‘in the mere consciousness of their rectitude’ who have already perfected themselves morally (mst 16f.). Yet, Kant does not deny that the moral person feels this kind of happiness.58 This is in line with Anselm’s (and Rogers’) insistence on the need to align the desire for happiness with the desire for justice: creatures can only be truly ‘happy (…) justly’ (dcd14). But Kant’s notion of holiness then transcends the moral realm since the highest degree of moral excellence—a holy will or ‘virtue’ that is more than continence59—is impossible to achieve for finite beings. More precisely, neither perfection as a rational and moral being nor complete happiness can be had under the conditions of finitude. Yet, approximation ‘towards that perfect accordance’ remains the chief task. And those who strive for it will receive their reward from God (who also serves as the model of holiness). Holiness does not merely consist in the process and effort of infinite striving for goodness. While KpV 58 describes approximation to holiness as a moral goal, KpV 220 expresses hope that the soul may actually exist ‘in infinitum’ (i.e., be immortal) and may thus get a chance to progress further ‘towards that perfect accordance’. It is sometimes claimed that Kant reduces religion to morality, but quite the opposite is the case: ‘through the concept of the highest good as the object and final end of pure practical reason, the moral law leads to religion’ (KpV 233). We find in Kant a notion of transcendent beatitude. Although he believes God’s existence cannot be proven theoretically (KrV B 612 ff.), he holds it is ‘morally necessary to assume God’s existence’ (KpV 226). It is a ‘postulate of pure practical reason’ (KpV 223) precisely because it guarantees—together with the

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Morality is not caused by the desire to feel happy, the good person is not just good because she knows it makes her happy. Kant even acknowledges the existence of a ‘moral sentiment’ (which he calls a ‘moral perfection’); he just insists that it cannot ‘precede or dispense with reason’s judgment’ (mst 16). Remember that, for Kant, ‘virtue’ ranks below a holy will (KpV 58). He reserves the word for the struggle to control oneself which is the best thing finite beings can (and should) achieve. This is different in Aristotle—although he, too, recognizes that few humans will be perfectly virtuous and therefore discusses continence as the next best thing in ne vii.

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other postulate of an immortal soul—that happiness is distributed proportionally to virtue: those who deserve happiness will eventually get it (KpV 224). Fischer even suggests that Kant assumes—very much like Augustine—the role of a ‘pastor’, i.e., someone who is truly concerned with the human soul, its desires and fears, and who cares about his students and offers them ‘spiritual’ guidance.60 The same is certainly true for Anselm, whose writings often address concerns expressed by those in his care (i.e., fellow monks: M Pr, P Pr). (ii) Although happiness cannot justify moral choices per se, Kant does not abandon the happiness principle as a determining motive of human acting. But he distinguishes between the will’s goals and its freedom because good intentions do not always lead to good ends; the latter are contingent on factors other than rational self-determination. Proportionality between morality and happiness can therefore not be essential in determining goodness of the will; consciousness of freedom implies the negation of all empirical conditions of the will (cf. KrV B 837). The happiness principle is contingent, for the empirical features of happiness—defined here as the ‘condition of a rational being in the world with whom everything goes according to his wish and will’ (KpV 224)— are never guaranteed. Aristotle, too, concedes this point—considering the unfortunate example of Priam (ne i 9)—and thus qualifies his definition of happiness: self-fulfillment as a rational and moral being may be crucial (i 7), but happiness that deserves its name also depends on external goods (i 8). Virtue is its own reward, but to call this ‘happiness’ one has to be a ‘Stoic’. For Kant, the idea that virtue deserves happiness leads to the God-postulate precisely because of the contingency human existence is subjected to. Without God, even the ‘righteous, no matter how worthy of happiness they may be, nature, which pays no attention to that, will still subject them to all the evils of deprivation, disease, and untimely death, just like all the other animals on the earth’ (ku b 428). With God, final fulfillment and happiness remain contingent—but they are not the arbitrary result of chance; they are dependent on the gracious God. Kant does not merely postulate God’s existence, but he postulates ‘a necessary connection between morality and proportionate happiness’ (KpV 224). Kant in fact states that only through hope in God as a moral judge does morality become a ‘spring’ of acting (KrV B 841). And Christians act morally in the hope that, ‘if we act as well as it is in our power to do, then what is not in our power will come in to our aid from another source’ (KpV 230n).

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Norbert Fischer, ‘Kant as Pastor’ in Robert R. Clewis, ed., Reading Kant’s Lectures (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2015), pp. 392–407.

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One could dismiss hope as unreliable and insist that the final reward of thisworldly morality is never guaranteed and that it may still depend on an unpredictable act of God’s grace, or a universalist could hold that salvation is guaranteed regardless of one’s moral performance on earth (I have used Anselm’s psr2 to argue that universalism is reconcilable with a notion of ‘judgment day freedom’61). But such positions would only reconfirm Kant’s (and Anselm’s) insistence on the necessity to freely choose the good for its own sake, i.e., as a moral good. The fact that there is contingency in the connection between virtue and happiness guarantees the possibility of truly free choices. One final thought in light of the fact that Kant demands ‘holiness of the will’ but acknowledges that it can never be attained, only ‘approximated’ (KpV 58): this leads us back to a key point both Augustine and Anselm emphasize: awareness of man’s finitude. The ‘highest good: virtue with happiness’ is not only not attainable in this world because happiness is contingent—but also because humans are not capable of holiness (KpV 220). Yet, holiness remains the ‘chief condition of the highest good’ (KpV 219f.). Could this not also imply that God himself may meet the condition on man’s behalf, either through his irresistible grace or by enabling man to freely choose goodness of the will on ‘judgment day’, in the presence of Christ? It does, in any case, indicate Kant’s openness to a theological notion of justification and thus more common ground with Anselm.62

Bibliography Primary Sources Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Terence Irwin, ed., 2nd edition (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999). Augustine of Hippo, S. Aurelii Augustini Opera Omnia. Editio latina. Available online: https://www.augustinus.it/latino/index.htm [Accessed 23 August 2023]. Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works, George E. Ganss, ed. (New York: Paulist Press, 1991). Kant, Immanuel, Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Reimer/Walter de Gruyter, 1900–2009), 29 volumes, Akademieausgabe. S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed.,

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Göbel, ‘Frankfurt’, pp. 66–90. On Kant’s and Augustine’s difficult notion of grace, see Norbert Fischer, ed., Die Gnadenlehre als ‘salto mortale’ der Vernunft? (Freiburg: Alber, 2012).

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vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961); reprinted in two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968).

Secondary Sources Crisp, Roger, ‘A Third Method of Ethics?’, Lecture, Assumption College, Worcester, 12 April 2010. Deligiorgi, Katerina, ‘Enlightenment’ in G. Banham et al., eds., The Bloomsbury Companion to Kant (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 198–200. Fischer, Norbert, ‘Augustinische Motive in der Philosophie Immanuel Kants’ in Norbert Fischer, ed., Augustinus: Spuren und Spiegelungen seines Denkens. Vol. 2. (Hamburg: Meiner, 2009), pp. 89–110. Fischer, Norbert, ed., Die Gnadenlehre als “salto mortale” der Vernunft? (Freiburg: Alber, 2012). Fischer, Norbert, ‘Kant, Immanuel’ in K. Pollmann, ed., The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, Vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 1255– 1257. Fischer, Norbert, ‘Kant as Pastor’, in Robert R. Clewis, ed., Reading Kant’s Lectures (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2015), pp. 392–407. Fischer, Norbert, ‘Zum Sinn von Kants Grundfrage: Was ist der Mensch?’, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, 70 (2016), pp. 493–526. Formosa, Paul, ‘Kant on the Radical Evil of Human Nature’, The Philosophical Forum, 38 (2007), pp. 221–245. Göbel, Christian, Philosophie und Ökumene. Überlegungen zur Logik des Christentums im Ausgang von Anselm von Canterbury (Munich: Utz, 2015). Göbel, Christian, ‘Frankfurt and Beyond: Hierarchical Readings of Anselm’s Analysis of Moral Choice, With a New Test Case for his Concept of Freedom’, The Saint Anselm Journal, 14 (2018), pp. 33–91. Goebel, Bernd, ‘K. Rogers, Freedom and Self-Creation’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 99 (2017), pp. 124–128. Hadot, Pierre, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). Kane, G. Stanley, ‘Anselm’s Definition of Freedom’, Religious Studies, 9 (1973), pp. 297– 306. Klagge, James C., ‘Virtue: Aristotle or Kant?’ Paper delivered at Eastern apa, Atlanta, December, 1989. Available online: https://www.phil.vt.edu/JKlagge/VIRTUE.pdf. Luscombe, David E., Review of The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2006). Available online: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the‑cambridge​ ‑companion‑to‑anselm/. Menzer, Paul, ed., Eine Vorlesung Kants über Ethik (Berlin: Heise, 1924). Munzel, G. Felicitas, Kant’s Conception of Moral Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

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Rogers, Katherin A., ‘Anselm on Eudaemonism and the Hierarchical Structure of Human Choice’, Religious Studies, 41 (2005), pp. 249–268. Rogers, Katherin A., Anselm on Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Rogers, Katherin A., Freedom and Self-Creation: Anselmian Libertarianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Tyvoll, Stan R., ‘Anselm’s Definition of Free Will: A Hierarchical Interpretation’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 80 (2006), pp. 155–171. Verweyen, Hansjürgen, Anselm von Canterbury: Freiheitsschriften (Freiburg: Herder, 1994). Visser, Sandra, ‘Freedom and Self-Creation: Anselmian Libertarianism’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 25 (2017), pp. 411–413. Wike, Victoria S., Kant on Happiness in Ethics (Albany, suny Press, 1994). Williams, Howard L., Kant’s Political Philosophy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983).

chapter 13

Nec Plus Nec Minus The Ethics of Language in Anselm’s Works and Letters Riccardo Fedriga and Roberto Limonta

The interplay of terms and words in Anselmian theology is at the core of his philosophical and theological thinking, providing a comprehensive and interconnected framework that spans linguistic analysis, theological principles, and ethical values.1 Starting from this premise, we will now delve into a brief analysis of the term paupertas. This term occupies a central position in a theoretical construct that seamlessly links logical-linguistic expressions, such as cogitatio vocum and cogitatio rerum, significatio per se and per aliud, with theological and philosophical principles like Verbum, intima locutio, and veritas. Additionally, the term ‘paupertas’ is intertwined with monastic values relevant to the ethical, social, and political context, such as taciturnitas and rectitudo. This textual plot encompasses various works, starting from De Veritate (dv) 11 and involving De Grammatico (dg), Monologion (M) chapter 10, the Lambeth Fragments,2 and, notably, a significant portion of the epistolary.3 Language is the meeting point of Anselm’s topics.4 His conception of language is articulated in a number of distinctions that are founded and rely

1 About the relevance of this interconnection in the last century of Anselm studies, see the essays of Part Five (Twentieth-Century Perspectives) in Giles E.M. Gasper and Ian Logan, eds., Saint Anselm of Canterbury and His Legacy (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012), pp. 279–444. See also Riccardo Fedriga and Roberto Limonta, ‘Penuria nominum and language rectitudo. Linguistic economy in Saint Anselm of Canterbury’ in Isabelle Jonveaux, Thomas Quartier, Bernard Sawicki and Paolo Trianni, eds., Monasticism and Economy: Rediscovering an Approach to Work and Poverty, Studia Anselmiana 179/Analecta Monastica 20 (Roma: Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, 2019), pp. 211–222. 2 Lambeth Fragments in Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ‘Ein neues unvollendetes Werk des hl. Anselm von Canterbury’, Beiträge Zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, 33.3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1936). 3 All the English translations of Anselm’s works come from Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson, eds., Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Anselm of Canterbury (Minneapolis: The Arthur Banning Press, 2000). 4 Among the many studies about this Anselmian topic, see particularly Marcia L. Colish, The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968, 19832); Marcia L. Colish, ‘St. Anselm’s Philosophy of Language Reconsidered’,

© Riccardo Fedriga and Roberto Limonta, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_015

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primarily on an original tie between human words (voces) and divine word (Verbum). Human words compose propositional complexa where terms, syntactic structures and semantic references are functional with respect to usus loquendi. Voces are also signs of the communicative nature of the customary or ordinary language, that is semantically flexible, incapable of signifying in a stable and unequivocal way and of fixing the reference of voces to the level of res: for instance, think of the term nihil, object of Anselm’s analysis in M8 about the ambiguity of utterances like facta sunt ex nihilo, which seems to imply a definition of nothingness as a causal principle or a substance.5 This primary distinction reveals the existence of two different kinds of signification, defined πby Anselm per se and per aliud. The distinction is formulated in the most complete way within dg,6 where the case of denominatives or paronyms is taken into consideration. In the dialogue, Master and Disciple are discussing the pivotal question if the paronyms have to be intended as signs designating a substance (the homo grammaticus) or a quality (grammatica as a science that exists regardless of the reference to an individual substance).7 To disambiguate the term, Anselm leads the dialogue to a crucial point that concerns Aristotle’s position: ‘Answer the following question for me—asks the Master—When you speak to me of (an) expert-in-grammar, of what shall I understand you to be speaking? Of this name or of the things which this name signifies?’8 The Disciple answers that he is not speaking about the term but about the things (res) signified by the term itself, and under this respect grammaticus means both man and grammar. At the beginning of the second book of

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Anselm Studies: An Occasional Journal, 1 (1983), pp. 113–123; Marilyn McCord Adams, ‘Saint Anselm’s theory of truth’, Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 2 (1990), pp. 353–372; Peter King, ‘Anselm’s Philosophy of Language’ in Brian Davies and Brian Leftow, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Anselm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 84–110; Tetsuro Shimizu and Charles Burnett, eds., The Word in Medieval Logic, Theology and Psychology. Acts of the xiiith International Colloquium of the Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale. Kyoto, 27 September–1 October 2005 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009). M8 (aoo, i.22.1–32). dg1 (aoo, i.157.1–8). dg1 (aoo, i.145.4–6). The translation of the Aristotelian term παρώνυμα into the latin denominativum comes from Severinus Boethius: ‘denominativa vero dicuntur quaecumque ab aliquo, solo differentia casu, secundum nomen habent appellationem, ut a grammatica grammaticus et a fortitudine fortis’. Aristotle, Categoriae vel Praedicamenta, ia13–15 in Aristoteles Latinus, i.1–5, Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, ed. (Bruges/Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1961), p. 5. dg9 (aoo, i.154.7–8): ‘M. Responde mihi: cum loqueris mihi de grammatico, unde intelligam te loqui: de hoc nomine, an de rebus quas significat?’

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Categories, Aristotle states that the knowledge of grammar can be intended “in” a substance only if it constitutes a quality of that substance.9 But, constructing the syllogism to answer the question, the Disciple misunderstands this passage and concludes, with a paralogism, that no grammarian is a man.10 Having established that man is a substance, the Master says that grammaticus is signifier of grammar (significatio per se) and appellative of man (significatio per aliud). So, he concludes the syllogism like this: ‘It is not the case that the name “expert-ingrammar” signifies as a single thing man and expertise-in-grammar; rather, of and by itself it signifies expertise-in-grammar, and on the basis of something else it signifies man’.11 With the distinction between significatio and appellatio, Anselm seems here to re-define appellatio as a property with a “pragmatical” nature—linked to the context and related to the usus loquendi—that denies any natural or absolute relation between signa and res. Reference does not constitute a semantic property of terms, because denotation appears to be a quality of the terms for the needs of social communication.12 Anselm’s solution to the problem of denominative terms is that they indicate both the quality signified by the term and the individual subject possessing it: the term grammaticus means (significat) the science of grammar and indicates (appellat) the man that possesses it, that is the grammarian. From a pragmatical point of view, however, the uses of language overthrow the relationship between signification per se and per aliud: in the daily practice of speech, grammaticus’s primary quality is that of appellatio, denoting an individual res that possesses grammar, while just secondarily it will mean the quality of having grammatical knowledge. This complexity is strictly related to usus loquendi and Anselm is well aware of it: in the Lambeth Fragments, for instance, he seeks to disambiguate, relating to daily language, verbs like posse or esse, and indeterminate terms like aliquid, for which only an analysis of the social and lin-

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Aristotle, Categoriae vel Praedicamenta, ii, ia 24–25 in Aristoteles Latinus, i.1–5, p. 6. dg9 (aoo, i.154.1–5): ‘D. Aristoteles ostendit grammaticum eorum esse quae sunt in subiecto. Et nullus homo est in subiecto. Quare nullus grammaticus homo. M. Noluit Aristoteles hoc consequi ex suis dictis. Nam idem Aristoteles dicit et quendam hominem, et hominem et animal grammaticum’. dg12 (aoo, i.157.1–8): ‘M. Grammaticus vero non significat hominem et grammaticam ut unum, sed grammaticam per se et hominem per aliud significat. Et hoc nomen quamvis sit appellativum hominis, non tamen proprie dicitur eius significativum; et licet sit significativum grammaticae, non tamen est eius appeliativum. Appellativum autem nomen cuiuslibet rei nunc dico, quo res ipsa usu loquendi appellatur. Nullo enim usu loquendi dicitur: grammatica est grammaticus, aut: grammaticus est grammatica; sed: homo est grammaticus, et grammaticus homo’. Cf. King, ‘Anselm’s Philosophy of Language’, pp. 93–96.

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guistical context can establish meaning and reference.13 According to Anselm, in socially common praxis the linguistic expression swings between use and abuse of the word. It is often a multum loqui, i.e. a communication that covers, with redundancy, the inability of the terms to firmly grasp their own reference. Paradoxically, the multum loqui becomes a sign of a penuria nominum, a semantic lack, a linguistic poverty constitutive of the voces employed in daily linguistic praxis. However, alongside the pragmatic use of words, emerges what Anselm defines, with an Augustinian term, verbum cordis: an interior language, capable of avoiding the linguistic dispersion and establishing a ‘direct’ relationship between terms, significance and reference.14 The verbum cordis does not talk of things, as if verbum and res were distant: it rather formulates terms that are purely indicative (and not representative) of the things that they exhibit, simply by pointing at them. The rule of this language is the simplicitas and paupertas of its semantic references: this kind of term is a perfect similitudo of the thing because it perfectly adheres to them, without any kind of mediation. If unity and simplicity mark the world’s divine order, in agreement with the Gospel’s dictates the human word that wants to assimilate it will be unique, simple and poor. The keyword is here the term rectitudo. To Anselm, it means many things at the same time: we will focus on the cognitive and linguistic meaning of the term. Rectitudo constitutes the modality of the cognitive act when it correctly refers to things, allowing a true knowledge: the linguistic term is an intentional act through which the intellect goes directly, and so rightly (recte), towards its own reference. When the ‘distance’ between a term and its object is equal to zero, the verbum coincides with the res and is thus eminently true because eminently simple. Therefore, linguistic rectitude allows a cogitatio rerum, in opposition to the simple cogitatio vocum. Consequently, we move from penuria nominum to a paupertas (i.e. simplicity) of semantic references, which is the result of a rectitudo of the cognitive act and, at the same time, a guarantee 13 14

Lambeth Fragments, pp. 22–43. M10 (aoo, i.24.29–25.4): ‘Frequenti namque usu cognoscitur, quia rem unam tripliciter loqui possumus. Aut enim res loquimur signis sensibilibus, id est quas sensibus corporeis sentiri possunt sensibiliter utendo; aut eadem signa, quae foris sensibilia sunt, intra nos insensibiliter cogitando; aut nec sensibiliter nec insensibiliter his signis utendo, sed res ipsas vel corporum imaginatione vel rationis intellectu pro rerum ipsarum diversitate intus in nostra mente dicendo’. Here Anselm distinguishes between three kinds of human word: sensible signs (like the term ‘man’ socially used to indicate a person), the inner thought of those signs (the term ‘man’ repeated within the intellect) and the word that says ‘by inwardly and mentally speaking of the objects themselves’.

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of its truth. According to the model of the divine Verbum, human language will proceed by subtraction rather than by addition: free of the dispersive plurality of linguistic references, it is more true as it becomes poorer. In dv11, truth is defined as a ‘rightness perceptible only to the mind’.15 Anselm observes that this is the most adequate wording because ‘this definition of “truth” contains neither more nor less than is appropriate’,16 that is a perfect definition of the definition. We observe here a shift from the linguistic to the ethical level: simplicitas is what links the logical correctness and the monastic paupertas. This is a topic already present in the monastic tradition and particularly in the Benedictine Rule. In chapter vii, the three steps of humility related to paupertas are followed by those dedicated to parsimony and relevance in the use of words, which should be limited to ‘pauca verba et rationabilia’.17 At the same time, taciturnitas is a mental place where statements are true given the fact that the intellect can grasp the things simply by pointing out them.18 Therefore, silence is intended as a modality of the action of the intellect when it is able to think in veritate: a kind of perfect language where the words do not lie on a different (logical and linguistic) plane with respect to the ontological one, because they are rather deictic entities that exist as pure direction indicators to grasp things. The definition intended as what contains neither more nor less than is appropriate reveals the Anselmian concept of language. It leans on a moral foundation but this does not mean a subordination of the philosophical truths to the theological precepts or a verification of the logical arguments from the ethical values. We can more properly define it as an ethics of language, that works as an inner rule of the words to evaluate the correctness of the statements and their efficacy. It is a direct reference theory founded on the circular relation between veritas, rectitudo, simplicitas and paupertas. Veritas is when the relation between sign, reference and meaning proceeds rightly (recte), without mediations, and this is possible only if the intellectual act that

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dv11 (aoo, i.191.19–20): ‘M. Possumus igitur, nisi fallor, definire quia veritas est rectitudo mente sola perceptibilis’. dv11 (aoo, i.191.21–22): ‘(…) nec plus nec minus continet ista definitio veritatis quam expediat’. See Regula Sancti Benedicti, in pl 66, 296–297 (‘Os suum a malo vel pravo eloquio custodire, multum loqui non amare, verba vana aut risui apta non loqui, risum multum aut excussum non amare’) and pl 66, 355–356 (‘Ergo, quamvis de bonis et sanctis et aedificationum eloquiis, perfectis discipulis propter taciturnitatis gravitatem rara loquendi concedatur licentia, quia scriptum est: “in multiloquio non effugies peccatum” et alibi “mors et vita in manibus linguae”.’). Cf. Regula in pl 66, 355–356.

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grasps the thing is simple. The simplicitas, for its part, is an analogical relation between linguistic pertinence (based on an univocal and unequivocal link between word and thing), logical correctness (where the Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction determines the statement’s truth by choosing just one and only one element in the dichotomy true/false) and monastic paupertas. What are the possible sources of dv11? First of all, in an indirect way (the book will be re-discovered in the twelfth century), Aristotle’s Topics, through mediation of Boethius’ De topicis differentiis and In Ciceronis topica.19 But Aristotle defines a flexible notion of definition, as a method of classification that has to be adapted to the different context in which it works:20 so, he provides a wide range of case studies, that is an approach very far from the simplicity of the Anselmian concept of definition. Another source could be Isidore of Seville. In his Etymologies, he resumes the Topics with a brief summary of Marius Victorinus’ commentary on Aristotle’s work.21 But even then Isidore provides an articulated classification in fifteen types, and a similar approach can be found in Cicero’s Topica. Instead, Anselm’s definition proceeds by subtraction. In its final form, the definition does not coincide with the sum of all the results produced by the argumentation, but it takes the form of a direct and simple inferential act, strictly oriented by the formula ‘nec plus nec minus’. Therefore, paupertas amounts to simplicity in the act of reference. It defines the modus operandi of the intellect: ‘if [my opponent] has an uncluttered intellect, undarkened by a multiplicity of images, he understands that thingssimple excel things-composite (insofar as simplicity and composition are concerned)’.22 In Anselmian theology, poverty works as a logical rule that operates on both a mental and a social level. But this doctrine does not constitute a purely theoretical model. Indeed, the linguistic paupertas acts as a rule for regulating the uses of the word within a monastic community like that of Bec. In the prologues to the M and the Proslogion, Anselm himself remembers the decisive role played by his brothers and by their prayers in his putting in writing his meditations on behalf of faith. The semantics of the terms does not concern

19 20 21

22

Aristotle, Topica in Aristoteles Latinus, v.1-3, Lorenzo Minio-Paluello and Bernard Dod, eds. (Leiden: Brill 1969). Cf. Aristotle, Topica, i.6.102b27–103a5. Cf. Isidore of Seville [Isidore of Spain], Etymologiae in Isidori Hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum libri xx. Tomus 1, libros i–x continens, Wallace Martin Lindsay, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), ii.29. div4 (aoo, ii.17.14–17): ‘si simplicem habet intellectum et non multiplicitate phantasmatum obrutum, intelligit simplicia praestare compositis, quantum ad simplicitatem attinet et compositionem’.

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only pure concepts: it also regards states of affairs, relationships and “procedures”, written in a simple and logically coherent way, to talk about the divine essence, as Bec’s fratres are reported as asking of Anselm in M Prologue: ‘nothing at all in the meditation would be argued on Scriptural authority, but that in unembellished style and by unsophisticated arguments and with uncomplicated disputation rational necessity would tersely prove to be the case, and truth’s clarity would openly manifest to be the case, whatever the conclusion resulting from the distinct inquiries would declare’.23 Anselm’s philosophy is born and defined in the context of reading and writing practices, constituted in their turn by an oscillation between social, religious and cultural issues in the context of a conversational community.24 The latter has to be intended as a community context where themes, terms or concepts define an area of theological convergence. It makes possible, through a common language made of texts and shared cultural practices, that conversatio that for Gilson is the condition and the rule itself of the monastic life.25 This is exactly what emerges from Anselm’s rich epistolary.26 Anselm does not “talk” only of paupertas. He practices it as a rule in his writings, as a sign and evidence of the monastic values in the linguistic context. Indeed, the verbum cordis, regulated by paupertas and rectitudo of language, is the model of all the linguistic practices in the monastic life and the fundamental law in communication among monks. It is a social and shared demonstration of an inner rule of life, to the point that the social communicative practices can be assimilated to a spiritual exercise. Anselm’s epistolary shows a strong phenomenology of community linguistic praxis, so that it is possible to determine the attributes—first of all, pauper-

23

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MPrologus (aoo, i.7.8–11): ‘quidquid per singulas investigationes finis assereret, id ita esse plano stilo et vulgaribus argumentis simplicique disputatione et rationis necessitas breviter cogeret e veritatis claritas patenter ostenderet’. Cf. Hester G. Gelber, It Could Have Been Otherwise: Contingency and Necessity in Dominican Theology at Oxford, 1300–1350 (Leiden: Brill, 2004). In Gelber’s analysis, the formula ‘conversational community’ refers to the ockhamist community in the first half of the fourteenth century. Étienne Gilson, Héloïse et Abelard (Paris: Vrin, 1938). About the manuscript tradition of Anselm’s correspondence, see Richard William Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), in particular the Appendix that contains the outlines for an early history of Saint Anselm’s letters; Samu Niskanen, The Letter Collections of Anselm of Canterbury, Instrumenta patristica et mediaevalia 61 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011); Samu Niskanen, ‘The Evolution of Anselm’s Letters Collections until ca. 1130’ in Gasper and Logan, Saint Anselm of Canterbury and His Legacy, pp. 40–60.

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tas—of the language which adheres to the model of verbum cordis and, through it, assimilates to the divine Verbum.27 Firstly, the Verbum is defined as rejection of verbosity, often associated to the formal and institutional communication. Some passages of his correspondence with Lanfranc of Pavia provide an example: ‘towards the knowledgeable man one must be silent or speak briefly’,28 because the speech capable of carrying scientia is the one that has the animus as addressee and the cor as subject;29 and that is why it avoids the danger of the ‘verbosity caused by idleness’.30 Secondly, in this kind of language the statement has fundamentally a spiritual and inner nature—and not necessarily a communicative efficacy—as a priority. By answering to the monk Gondulf, who insists on having more frequent letters from him, Anselm writes in E16: ‘You ask and ask me that my letters fly and fly again, continuously, to reach you over the sea, but “enter in your heart” and consider the real feelings of your love for me, so you will know the real love of your friend’.31 And, in the same way, in E41 to the same monk: ‘Why should I describe on paper my affection for you, when its true image is safely guarded within the casket of your heart? (…) Thus your desire, which I know very well, invites me to write you something, to overcome the distance that physically separates us; but as we are no strangers to one another and, furthermore, we are fully present to one another in spirit, I will limit myself to wish you that God may grant you what he knows to be pleasing to Him and useful to you’.32 The passage provides an example of a conversational community—

27

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Significantly, there are several references (explicit or implicit) to the topics of Anselmian philosophy of language—such as the linguistic simplicity, the moral and logical rectitude of the paupertas verborum or the conflict between the multiloquium, proper to the ordinary use of the language, and the purity of the inner words—in the letters to his brothers monks, in the first part of epistolary, and a fewer number in the letters of the Archbishopric period, principally devoted to political questions and where the language is consequently oriented more to practical and ordinary uses. E23 (aoo, iii.130.3): ‘scienti aut tacendum aut breviter est dicendum’. E39 (aoo, iii.149.5–6): ‘Si tam facile dictare et scribere quam loqui possent, numquam illi, cui tam saepe loquitur cor meum, epistolarum copia mearum deesset’. E77 (aoo, iii.199.5–6): ‘otiositatis verbositatem’. E16 (aoo, iii.121.3–7): ‘Instat et instat mihi (…) ut ad se trans mare volitent et volitent saepius litterae meae (…). “Intra in cubiculum” cordis tui et considera affectum veri amoris tui, et cognosces amorem veri amici tui’. See also E59 to Gondulf (aoo, iii.173.4–12): ‘Omnes quotquot veniunt a domno Gondulfo, referunt quod litteras meas desiderat domnus Gondolfus. (…) Idcirco igitur tantopere scripta mea postulas, ut quod in intima mente formatum pariter gerimus, in carta scriptum videas, videndo legas, legendo congaudeas’. E41 (aoo, iii.152.9–153.15): ‘Cur autem tibi dilectionem meam describam in carta, cum eius veram imaginem assidue serves in cordis tui arca? (…) Invitat igitur me nota mihi tua

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involving, as we pointed out, the Bec monastery but also, in a broader sense, the whole network of Benedictine communities—resting on a close (assidue) and stable exchange of letters. Moreover, it defines the modes of a communication which, when translated in the terms of verbum cordis, appears to be rooted in words that say what is needed because they say “only” what is to be said (as in the case of the term “definition” in dv11). The exchange is therefore just the outer manifestation (‘darting sparks’ in Anselm’s words) of a deeper (and direct) conversation between hearts.33 The uniqueness of the reference guarantees the right link of terms to the ontological level and, at the same time, the truth of the statements and their effectiveness in the praxis of language. The word only says what it is, nothing more; and this makes the simplicitas/paupertas of the speech a crucial logical assumption. Given the cor/animus as the ground of linguistic speech, Anselm takes it that the nature of the authentic word is silent. About this topic we can found different passages in the epistolary; for example, in a letter sent to Gondulf: ‘Why are you so distressed, and why do you complain so much about not seeing my letters, and why do you lovingly ask to receive more of them, when my conscience is always with you? Certainly, if you stay silent, I understand that I am in your heart; so when I keep quiet, “You know that I love you”’.34 Anselm translates the silence into semantically defined statements, almost transliterating the gestures into terms and propositions: the statement ‘tu scis quia amo te’ corresponds (in a mediated and consequently limited way) to the simple act of silence, while to Gondulf’s silence is attributed the meaning of the statement ‘diligis me’. The voces, in opposition to the parsimony of divine and inner word,

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voluntas, ut propter corporalem nostram absentiam aliquid tibi scribam; sed quia nobis noti sumus per animarum praesentiam, nescio quid tibi dicam, nisi deus tibi faciat quod ipse scit sibi placere et tibi expedire’. E69 (aoo, iii.189.7): ‘scintillis (…) emicantibus’. The idea of a fundamental gap between the inner language (formulated by the “heart”, cor or animus in Latin) and the uttered words often recurs in Anselm’s correspondence. For example, in the letter 178 to Bec’s Abbot and his monastic community: ‘When confronted with such an intimate spiritual union, souls reach such a high degree of mutual knowledge that no tongue or pen could ever manage to express’ (E178 [aoo, iv.61.11–12]: ‘Ubi enim tanta cordis est et animarum unitas, plus ipsae sibi invicem sunt notae conscientiae, quam lingua aut stilus possit exprimere’); or in E325 to Matilda, countess of Tuscany: ‘Lips and pen are unable to express what my heart feels’ (E325 [aoo, v.256.17–18]: ‘os et stilus ad proferendum quod cor sentit non sufficit’). E4 (aoo, iii.104.16–19): ‘Praeterea cur (…) tanto maerore quereris quod numquam litteras meas videas, et tanto amore quaeris ut eas saepe accipias, cum meam conscientiam tecum semper habeas? Te quippe silente ego novi quia diligis me; et me tacente tu scis quia amo te’.

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feed verbal incontinence with their redundancy and their misunderstandings: ‘For my mouth there is no need to speak at length, about the integrity of our old friendship, with a man whom I know to be, with mutual love, another heart of mine’.35 The taciturnitas is eloquent in itself and says the essential, not by reason of some mystical virtue but, on the contrary, through a direct, sure and unequivocal identification of the res after they have been purified from the ambiguities of the common practices of language. This linguistic parsimony plays, at the same time, a pivotal role for Benedictine and—in a broader sense—Christian society: at the end of E137 to the monk Lanfranc, Anselm writes that ‘the monk shall not wait for an uttered order of his Abbot’s mouth, if he knows his will and his advice’.36 Writing to his brothers of the Bec as archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm confirms the existence of two ways in the use of the words: Each written or uttered word, which you individually or collectively send to me, your most beloved and cherished friend, with the liveliest affection of your heart, and which no tongue or pen might ever express, is clearly impressed within my heart. But in my heart I read and read again many other words—if only they were similarly impressed and written in your hearts!—created by my love and my thinking of you, I think and think about them in front of God.37 Using the plain terms typical of the epistolary style, Anselm introduces in this passage the distinction between the three varietates loquendi explained in M10 (‘we can speak of a single object in three ways. For we speak of objects either by perceptibly employing perceptible signs (i.e., [signs] which can be perceived by the bodily senses) or by imperceptibly thinking to ourselves these same signs, which are perceptible outside us, or neither by perceptibly nor by imperceptibly employing these signs, but by inwardly and mentally speaking of the

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E28 (aoo, iii.135.3–4): ‘Non est opus ut multa de incolumitate pristinae amicitiae loquatur os meum illi, quem in mutua dilectione scio esse alterum cor meum’. E137 (aoo, iii.283.53–54): ‘Non enim debet monachus exspectare oris imperium, si novit voluntatem abbatis sui aut consilium’. E148 (aoo, iv.3.4–6): ‘Quaecumque scripta vel dicta communiter vel singuli de affectu cordis vestri mittitis dilectissimo et desideratissimo vestro, et quae nec lingua potest exprimere nec calamus: omnia expresse et aperte scripta sunt in corde meo. Insuper et multa alia ex affectu et intellectu meo, quae utinam similiter scripta et expressa essent in corde vestro! Ibi, scilicet in intimis meis, ibi ea lego et relego, volvo et revolvo saepe coram deo’.

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objects themselves’).38 In the letter to the monks of the Bec abbey, the argument is composed of three statements: the first ends with in corde meo, the second with in corde vestro and the third with coram deo, in a climax of Neoplatonic flavour: Anselm, the monastic community, God. The inner nature of the verbum cordis does not mean that it is and remains a community word. This kind of word is not a merely pragmatic system of signs for the communicative needs of the monastic world, but it is more properly what establishes the community itself, where the cor/animus of the individual monk is in dialogue, under divine protection, with that of the other monks. Thanks to God’s oversight, the language removes any unessential semantic relationship and becomes pure res: the syntactic parsimony brings about the semantic fullness. All these attributes imply the paupertas in shape of terminological and syntactic simplicitas. It returns in many points of the epistolary with minimal variations, as we have seen, after having been theoretically fixed in M, in dg and in dv. But the role of paupertas in the context of this philosophy of language, with the close cohesion between theoretical reflexions and linguistic exercises, also allows us to define a framework in which some fundamental questions of Anselm’s thought can be rethought. We can only mention it here, as an open conclusion and a fruitful prospect for research. For example, Anselm’s realism—if we can define his position in these terms—is certainly driven by the search for the linguistic terms in their wholeness, in a struggle against the confines of ordinary linguistic practices;39 but it is equally true that it has also a social value as a search for the terms and signs required for communication in the monastic community. In a sort of circular pattern, the coherence of the linguistic plan makes it possible to determine, with increasing clarity, the terms and the truths of the theological statements, within the ethical values of a community based on the practice of the monachica conversatio. 38

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M10 (aoo, i.24.30–25.4): ‘rem unam tripliciter loqui possumus. Aut enim res loquimur signis sensibilibus, id est quas sensibus corporeis sentiri possunt sensibiliter utendo; aut eadem signa, quae foris sensibilia sunt, intra nos insensibiliter cogitando; aut nec sensibiliter nec insensibiliter his signis utendo, sed res ipsas vel corporum imaginatione vel rationis intellectu pro rerum ipsarum diversitate intus in nostra mente dicendo’. About the debated question of paronyms in Anselmian philosophy, see Desmond Paul Henry, The ‘De grammatico’ of St. Anselm: The Theory of Paronymy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964); Desmond Paul Henry, The Logic of St. Anselm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967); Marilyn McCord Adams, ‘Re-reading De grammatico, or, Anselm’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Categories’, Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 11 (2000), pp. 83–112; John Marenbon, ‘Some Semantic Problems in Anselm’s De Grammatico’ in Michael W. Herren, Christopher James McDonagh and Ross Gilbert Arthur, eds., Latin Culture in the Eleventh Century (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 73–86; King, ‘Anselm’s Philosophy of language’, pp. 84–110.

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Bibliography Primary Sources Aristotle, Topica in Aristoteles Latinus, v.1-3, Lorenzo Minio-Paluello and Bernard Dod, eds. (Leiden: Brill 1969). Aristoteles Latinus, i, Categoriae, ed. Minio-Paluello (Bruges/Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1961). Benedict, Regula Sancti Benedicti, pl 66, 215–932. Hopkins, Jasper, and Herbert Richardson, eds., Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Anselm of Canterbury (Minneapolis: The Arthur J. Banning Press, 2000). Isidore of Seville [Isidore of Spain], Etymologiae in Isidori Hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum libri xx. Tomus 1, libros i–x continens, Wallace Martin Lindsay, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911). Lambeth Fragments in Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ‘Ein neues unvollendetes Werk des hl. Anselm von Canterbury’, Beiträge Zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, 33.3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1936).

Secondary Sources Adams, Marilyn McCord, ‘Saint Anselm’s theory of truth’, Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 2 (1990), pp. 353–372. Adams, Marilyn McCord, ‘Re-reading De grammatico, or, Anselm’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Categories’, Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 11 (2000), pp. 83–112. Colish, Marcia L., ‘St. Anselm’s Philosophy of Language Reconsidered’, Anselm Studies. An Occasional Journal, 1 (1983), pp. 113–123. Colish, Marcia L., The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968, 19832). Fedriga, Riccardo and Roberto Limonta, ‘Penuria nominum and language rectitudo. Linguistic economy in Saint Anselm of Canterbury’ in Isabelle Jonveaux, Thomas Quartier, Bernard Sawicki and Paolo Trianni, eds., Monasticism and Economy: Rediscovering an Approach to Work and Poverty, Studia Anselmiana 179/Analecta Monastica 20 (Roma: Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, 2019), pp. 211–222. Gasper, Giles E.M., and Ian Logan, eds., Saint Anselm of Canterbury and His Legacy (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012). Gelber, Hester G., It Could Have Been Otherwise: Contingency and Necessity in Dominican Theology at Oxford, 1300–1350 (Leiden: Brill, 2004). Gilson, Étienne, Héloïse et Abelard (Paris: Vrin, 1938). Henry, Desmond Paul, The ‘De grammatico’ of St. Anselm: The Theory of Paronymy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964). Henry, Desmond Paul, The Logic of St. Anselm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967).

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King, Peter, ‘Anselm’s Philosophy of Language’ in Brian Davies and Brian Leftow, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Anselm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 84–110. Marenbon, John, ‘Some Semantic Problems in Anselm’s De Grammatico’ in Michael W. Herren, Christopher James McDonagh and Ross Gilbert Arthur, eds., Latin Culture in the Eleventh Century (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 73–86. Niskanen, Samu, The Letters Collections of Anselm of Canterbury, Instrumenta patristica et mediaevalia 61 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). Niskanen, Samu, ‘The Evolution of Anselm’s Letters Collections until ca. 1130’, in Giles E.M. Gasper and Ian Logan, eds., Saint Anselm of Canterbury and His Legacy (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012), pp. 40–60. Shimizu, Tetsuro, and Charles Burnett, eds., The Word in Medieval Logic, Theology and Psychology. Acts of the xiiith International Colloquium of the Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale. Kyoto, 27 September–1 October 2005 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009). Southern, Richard William, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

chapter 14

On Truth, Sight and Zoology Reading Alexander Neckam’s De naturis rerum through the Anselmian Lens of Truth Timothy Farrant

1

Introduction: The Puzzle of the Horse And when I talk about a ray, I bring back to memory a certain effect of the moon’s ray, which, when it entered through a contracted aperture of a wall, and arrived upon the sore of a horse [caballi] lying on its back, brought death upon the horse [equifero] standing in the stable. However, if truly the same horse [idem equus] had been standing under the open sky, and the moon’s ray had reached its sore, no danger would have come upon it. For the ray is poured out and its strength vanishes when it is dispersed freely through empty space. But when it enters through a contracted aperture, the collective strength is restrained in one [beam]; a ray is most injurious if it enters, by some impetus, an aperture. Does it not now come to your mind, reader, that hidden detractions are sometimes more harmful than those set forward in public? The poison of hidden detractions spreads slowly and it is the more harmful because an audacious assertion, when it is clandestine, does not fear to be accused of falsehood. Published abuse is repelled, and mendacious iniquity is confounded.1

1 Alexander Neckam, De naturis rerum libri duo with the poem of the same author De laudibus diuinae sapientae, Thomas Wright, ed. (London: Longman Green, 1863), [hereafter dnr] ii.cliii, p. 238: ‘Et dum de radio loquor, reduco ad memoriam quandam radii lunaris efficaciam, qui dum per angustum foramen parietis intrans, pervenit ad ulcus caballi redorsati, mortem equifero adducit stanti in stabulo. Si vero idem equus sub divo staret, et radius lunaris ad ulcus ipsius perveniret, nullum incurreret periculum. Diffunditur enim radius et evanescit vis humiditatis, dum libere per inane discurrit. Sed dum per angustum subintrat foramen, vires collectas in unum retinet; maximeque novicus est radius si quodam impetu foramen intrat. Nonne iam tibi in mentem venit, lector, quoniam nonnunquam occultae detractiones magis nocivae sunt quam in publicum prolatae? Serpit virus latitantium detractationum, et eo magis nocivae sunt, quod temeraria assertio, dum clandestina est, argui falsitatis non metuit. Repelluntur convitia publicata, et confunditur iniquitas sibi mentiens’. (My translation).

© Timothy Farrant, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_016

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In Alexander Neckam’s De naturis rerum, there exists a section titled De visu which properly translates as, ‘On Vision’ or ‘On the Act of Seeing’.2 Commencing with a discussion on celestial illusion, the section goes on to discuss various ideas about geometry, sight (in both humans and animals from an extramissionary theoretical position), and concludes with a discussion on moonrays and their possible effect on horses. Produced by Lindberg in the 1970s, who relied upon Wright’s nineteenth-century Latin edition, a partial translation of De visu exists in printed form.3 However, in producing his translation of Neckam’s exposition on seeing, the discussion of moon-rays and horses is entirely absent.4 It would appear that Lindberg’s rationale for this omission is connected to his interest in the history of optics. Nonetheless, given that much of the imagery Neckam uses throughout De visu is found in the works of both Augustine and Anselm, this particular hermeneutic of Neckam’s exposition on seeing is rather short-sighted. The aim of this chapter, therefore, is to 1) situate Neckam outside of a scientific tradition through a comparative exploration of his figurative expositions in relation to Augustine and Anselm; and 2) investigate Neckam’s De visu (and De naturis rerum) in light of the broader Victorine exegetical tradition of which it was part. This will illuminate the modern reader to Neckam’s choice of imagery, and simultaneously demonstrate that Neckam’s horse is integral, rather than anomalous, to his overall aims. In short, this chapter will argue that Neckam’s De visu enables a deeper sense of seeing— where secondary intentions prevail over primary/historical readings, and the use of optical imagery actually has very little to do with physical sight.

2

Alexander Neckam and the De naturis rerum

Alexander Neckam was born in 1157 in St Albans and was nursed from the same breast as Richard Lionheart.5 Receiving his early education at St Albans, it is thought that Neckam furthered his education in the schools of Paris (near the

2 In Wright’s edition, the section appears as chapter 153 with the title ‘De visu’. 3 Alexander Neckam, ‘Concerning the Natures of Things’, David Lindberg and Greta Lindberg, trans., in Edward Grant, ed., A Source Book in Medieval Science (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 380–382. 4 Lindberg, ‘Natures of Things’, p. 382n. Lindberg states: ‘In the brief remaining portion of this chapter Neckam discusses the effects of a lunar ray on a horse’s sore’. 5 Richard William Hunt, The Schools and the Cloister: The Life and Writings of Alexander Nequam (1157–1217), ed. and revised Margaret Gibson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 1.

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Petit-Pont), c. 1175–1182, before returning to England.6 Teaching for a time at Dunstable, Neckam went on to Oxford c. 1190 where he excelled in teaching grammar and theology.7 It was most likely from Oxford that Neckam made the move to the Augustinian Abbey at Cirencester in 1197 where he became a Canon. Remaining at Cirencester, Neckam was elected as abbot in 1213, in which capacity he travelled to Rome in 1215 to attend the Fourth Lateran Council.8 Shortly after his return to England, it is thought Neckam travelled to Kempsey, Worcestershire, where he fell ill and died.9 Until recently, it was thought that Neckam was buried in Worcester Cathedral, but a recent correspondence of the Cathedral’s archaeologist has suggested the effigy long thought to be Neckam may in fact be John Fordham.10 Toward the latter part of his career, Neckam completed the work for which he is best known: the De naturis rerum, or to offer its full title, De naturis rerum et in Ecclesiasten.11 It is book two of this work that contains Neckam’s De visu, and according to Hunt’s estimations, the entire work was likely composed shortly after his arrival at Cirencester as an Augustinian Canon in 1197.12 It was during this period of his career that Neckam composed his biblical commentaries on Proverbs and the Song of Songs.13 It was also during this early Cirencester period that Neckam likely produced his Meditatio de Magdalena, another biblical commentary in the style of meditatio.14 Given this context, it is important to note that the De naturis rerum was produced whilst Neckam dedicated his time and thought to exegetical writings. Neckam begins book one of his text, in which he also begins his moral expositions, with a commentary on the biblical creation narrative found in Genesis and John.15 Furthermore, books one and two are entirely framed around the hexameral creation of the world and its inhabitants, and the subsequent Fall of humans as found in the

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Hunt, Schools, p. 4; Christopher McDonough, ed., Suppletio Defectuum: Alexander Neckam on plants, birds, and animals (Sismel: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 1999), p. xiv. Hunt, Schools, p. 7; McDonough, Neckam, p. xiv. McDonough, Neckam, p. xv. McDonough, Neckam, p. xv. Andrew Dunning, ‘Alexander Neckam’s Manuscripts and the Augustinian Canons of Oxford and Cirencester’, PhD Thesis, Centre for Medieval Studies: University of Toronto, (2016), p. 2, n. 5. Hunt, Schools, p. 125. Hunt, Schools, p. 125. Alexander Neckam, Meditatio de Magdalena, edited in Thomas Bestul, ‘The Meditation on Mary Magdalene of Alexander Nequam’, The Journal of Medieval Latin, 9 (1999), pp. 1–3. Neckam, Meditatio de Magdalena, pp. 1–4. Neckam, dnr, i.i, pp. 3–11.

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bible.16 In this sense, the De naturis rerum naturally reads as an effort in exegesis, especially since its first part (the first two books) formed a long introduction to an exposition on biblical Wisdom literature (its last three books).17 Despite the chronology and broader content of the De naturis rerum, historiographical appraisals continue to situate this work within the scientific and encyclopaedic traditions. The most extreme example of this is, perhaps, Lindberg’s interpretation of De visu as primarily a medieval effort in optics.18 Omitting the passage on Neckam’s horse in his English translation, and selectively translating only a part of De speculo, Lindberg decisively pronounces: ‘This chapter contains nothing further of optical interest’.19 To some extent, Lindberg’s image of Neckam the ‘scientist’ is reflective of medieval historiography since Wright produced his nineteenth-century edition and commentary.20 The impact of Wright’s initial characterisation of Neckam, and its perpetuity in medieval historiography since Hunt, has seen Neckam portrayed as a ‘dual personality’ caught between the traditions of natural science and biblical commentary.21 Even recent appraisals of Neckam regard his dualistic tendencies as presenting an interpretative difficulty.22 This chapter intends to explore

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For a clear overview of the contents of the first books of the De naturis rerum, see, George Wedge, ‘Alexander Neckam’s De naturis rerum: A Study Together with Representative Passages in Translation’, PhD Thesis University of Southern California, (1967), pp. 115–117. Neckam, Meditatio de Magdalena, p. 1. Grant, Medieval Science, pp. xv–xvi. Lindberg, ‘Natures of Things’, p. 383n. Neckam, dnr, Preface, pp. xiv–xv where here, Wright states: ‘This book in itself was intended to be a manual of the scientific knowledge of the time’. Wright, ‘Preface’, p. xiv. This originates in Wright who states: ‘The plan of this treatise, in the condition in which it was published by the author, is not very easily understood, for it consists of two very distinct parts, the first of two books forming a sort of manual of natural science, as it was then taught, and the other three being simply a commentary on the book of Ecclesiasticus, which has no direct connexion with that which precedes. We can only explain this by supposing that, according to Neckam’s original design, they were two distinct works’. The perpetuity of this characterisation of Neckam is somewhat seen in Hunt, and further witnessed in Southern, Wedge, McEvoy, and Zahora. See: Hunt, Schools, pp. 67–83; Richard William Southern, ‘From Schools to University’ in Jeremy Catto, ed., The History of the University of Oxford: Volume i, The Early Oxford Schools (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 24; Wedge, ‘Alexander Neckam’s De naturis rerum’, pp. 115–120; James McEvoy, Robert Grosseteste (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 8–11; Tomas Zahora, Nature, Virtue, and the Boundaries of Encyclopaedic Knowledge: The Tropological Universe of Alexander Neckam (1157–1217) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 28–30. Zahora, Nature, p. 30. For context, it is worth quoting Zahora in full: ‘The concentration on Neckam’s encyclopaedic works brings with it an interesting interpretative problem. On one hand, his mention of Aristotle’s new logic and libri naturales, together with his use

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Neckam’s visual imagery more deeply in order to produce a more coherent reading of De visu.

3

The Truth of a Stick in Water: Neckam and Anselmian Truth

A striking feature of Neckam’s De visu is that it contains the imagery of a stick in water, something also present within Anselm’s De Veritate (dv). It is possible Neckam drew this from Anselm. Neckam was familiar with Anselm’s contributions to medieval exegesis, especially in relation to meditatio—a term which Anselm gave ‘currency’.23 Further, in his Speculum Speculationum, Neckam draws upon the authoritative position of Anselm on the question of Free Will.24 However, in suggesting Anselm’s possible influence on Neckam, it is vitally important to acknowledge that the imagery of a stick in water was unique to neither author. As Giles Gasper demonstrated in a paper delivered at Durham University, Anselm’s own influence was Augustine.25 Although Anselm’s influence on Neckam is possible, therefore, it is probable the stick in water was drawn directly from Augustine.26

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of natural-scientific treatises of Arabic influence, locates him at the forefront of the new learning associated with the universities. On the other hand, though, as Neckam himself repeatedly admits, his oeuvre is mostly tropological and concerned with the improvement of moral qualities rather than with philosophical investigation. Moreover, the De naturis rerum is followed by a Commentary on Ecclesiastes, a pageant of vanities that is anything but ‘scientific’ by any definition of the word. True, his Latin style and tendency to moralize earned Neckam a place among twelfth-century humanists, but the appellation ‘moralist’ and its modern connotation has not been helpful in increasing interest in his works. As a result, Neckam’s portrait in historiography has features of a dual personality (the best sign, perhaps, of a truly transitional figure): a forward-looking natural philosopher and a less-than-rigorous, conservative moralist’. Hunt, Schools, p. 107; Christopher McDonough, ‘The Laus beatissime virginis and the Canon of Alexander Neckam’, Medieval Studies, 66 (2004), p. 110; Neckam, Meditatio de Magdalena, p. 4. Hunt, ‘Schools’, pp. 114–115. In 2019, Gasper delivered a paper tracing Anselm’s stick in water in the works of Augustine. Giles Gasper, ‘Anselm, Nature, and Natural Imagery’, a paper presented at the 2019 International Association for Anselm Studies Conference, held at Durham University (unpublished). Neckam’s exposition on a stick in water cannot be conclusively tied directly to Anselm. However, a most compelling parallel between the two authors is found in the way Neckam discusses sight in relation to owls, bats, and eagles in his De visu, which appears to be an expanded commentary on Anselm’s discussion of the same points in his Epistola de incarnatione verbi. See Neckam, dnr, ii.cliii, pp. 236–237, and Anselm, div1 (aoo, ii.7–8).

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Regardless of precision, Neckam’s use of the visual imagery of the stick in water is (at the very least) an example of Augustine’s indirect influence. Most importantly, the comparative use of visual imagery in Neckam (and Anselm), therefore, situates Neckam’s work within an exegetical tradition; one developed by Augustine and continued by both Anselm and Neckam. To pursue this, it is worth presenting both Neckam’s and Anselm’s passages of a stick in water sideby-side: Neckam’s De visu

Anselm’s De Veritate

Likewise, a straight rod appears bent in water, which is customarily attributed to reflection of the rays from the surface of the water (…) waters represent tribulations and the straight rod good works. Thus, the work of the just, who are vexed by tribulations, are often regarded as bent, although they are [actually] straight.27

So too when a stick, part of which is under water and part not, is thought to be crooked, or when we think that sight finds our faces in a mirror, and when many other things seem otherwise to us, sight and the other senses report what is, for it is no fault of the senses that report what they can, as they can receive it, but it should be imputed to the judgement of the soul which does not discern well what the senses can do or what they ought to do.28

Anselm and Neckam both use the visual imagery of a stick in water to mobilise their respective arguments. Neckam does so in relation to developing an exposition on what he calls the ‘Act of Seeing’; Anselm does so in relation to his theory on the Truth of the senses.29 Yet, despite these basic differences,

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Lindberg, ‘Natures of Things’, c. 153, p. 381; Neckam, dnr, ii.cliii. p. 235. For consistency, and unless otherwise stated, I shall hereon use Lindberg’s translation of De visu (dnr) and Wright’s edition: ‘Item, virga recta in aqua videtur curva. Quod ascribi solet reverberationi radiorum a superficie aquae. Per aquas significantur tribulationes; per virgam rectam, opera bona. Saepe igitur opera iustorum, qui tribulationibus vexantur, curva esse putantur, etsi recta sint’. Anselm of Canterbury, On Truth in The Major Works, Brian Davies and Gillian R. Evans, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), c. 6, p. 159; dv6 (aoo, i.184.26–30): ‘Similiter cum fustis integer, cuius pars est intra aquam et pars extra, putatur fractus; aut cum putamus quod visus noster vultus nostro inveniat in speculo; et cum multa alia nobis aliter videntur visus et alii sensus nuntiare quam sint: non culpa sensuum est qui renuntiant quod possunt, quoniam ita posse acceperunt, sed iudicio animae imputandum est, quod non bene discernit quid illi possint aut quid debeant’. Anselm’s chapter title is ‘De sensuum veritate’.

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both authors are constructing a comparable argument: that what is seen (in the broader sensory process) does not always correlate with what, in reality, is. Whilst a stick placed in water appears bent or crooked to the observer, the property of bentness or crookedness is not a true reflection of the stick in reality. To both authors, Truth is not what the physical senses report it to be. A discovery of Truth, therefore, requires a deeper reading of things. Despite his optical imagery, Neckam is not interested in physical sight. That Neckam draws upon a series of optical phenomena is clear enough. De visu commences with a discussion on celestial illusion, and includes the visual imagery of a dog pursuing meat in water, and the illusion of a stick and coin in water.30 But within these examples, the optical process intrigues Neckam far less than the deeper moral value they all share. To expound, when writing about celestial illusion, Neckam notes how the sun appears larger at sunrise than at noon. Since it is illogical that the sun is actually larger at a certain hour in the day, Neckam concludes that celestial illusion is caused by the observer viewing sunrise through the medium of nocturnal moisture close to the earth’s horizon.31 In this, Neckam borrows the argument of Al-farghani who also attributed celestial illusion to water vapour.32 Since it is now accepted that celestial illusion is an optical phenomenon connected to the position of the sun in relation to the horizon (rather than the medium through which it is viewed), the modern reader may easily dismiss Neckam’s conclusion.33 However, such dismissiveness would fail to grasp De visu’s coherence in relation to Neckam’s subsequent use of visual imagery. In similar fashion to celestial illusion, Neckam’s use of other types of visual illusion all build toward the same conclusions. For example, Neckam concludes

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Neckam, dnr, ii.cliii, pp. 234–238. Neckam, dnr, ii.cliii, p. 234: ‘In fact, the sun’s body is perceived larger through the morning relics of nocturnal moisture than when it shines at midday’; ‘Solare namque corpus ex reliquiis humoris nocturni de mane videtur maius quam fulget in meridie’. (My translation.) Hunt, Schools, p. 76; Helen Ross, ‘The Sun/Moon Illusion in a Medieval Irish Astronomical Tract’, Vision, 3.39 (August, 2019). There are several possible sources for Neckam’s argument for celestial illusion, including Ptolemy and Al-farghani. However, given that Neckam quotes Al-farghani in book one of the De naturis rerum in relation to the circular nature of the sun, this seems his most likely source. Ross gives an historical overview of the early proponents of the theory of the sun’s ‘magnification through atmospheric vapours’. Helen Ross and Cornelis Plug, ‘The Celestial Illusions’ in their co-authored book The Mystery of the Moon Illusion: Exploring Size Perception (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 1–10. Here the authors state: ‘We hope that this book will help to correct such [medieval] historical inaccuracies’.

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that a dog swimming in water whilst carrying meat, is deceived by the way the water produces a larger image or shadow of the meat it is carrying; and a glassbowl of water in which a coin is placed produces a magnified image of the coin to an observer who is farther away.34 Like Neckam’s argument for celestial illusion and the stick in water, these examples suggest that the medium of water (and glass) deceives the physical senses of both humans and animals, and presents an image of things contrary to reality. It is not, then, important to ascertain the veracity of what Neckam visually paints. Rather, what matters to Neckam, is that each argument conveys a deeper moral reading of ‘waters’ as a visual medium. In each instance, waters (whether water vapour or the waters in which a stick, meat, or coin is placed) become a moral signifier. This is found in the corresponding moralisations Neckam provides, where waters signify tribulation: (…) martyrs placed in tribulations were greater than in time of peace (…) the works of the just, who are vexed by tribulations, are often regarded as bent, although they are [actually] straight (…) And as too much prosperity blinds the mind, so tribulation restores keener sight to the mind.35 Neckam’s point here is subtle, but integral to his broader thought and methodology. Far from moralising natural phenomena haphazardly, Neckam conveys the idea that what a thing signifies is far greater than what the physical senses initially report; that the vision of the mind’s eye uncloaks the true reality of things. Put another way, a reality exists beneath the surface of an initial visual encounter.36 Disinterested in compiling an encyclopaedia of all known optical knowledge, or in the advancement of scientific thought, Neckam uses visual imagery to indicate a deeper reality of things; one that is achieved through a keener sight of the mind.37 Neckam’s use of visual imagery in De visu is enhanced through a comparative reading of Anselm’s dv. Anselm’s main argument when discussing a stick in water is that the senses report as they ought: ‘sight and the other senses report

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Neckam, dnr, ii.cliii, pp. 234–238. Neckam, dnr, ii.cliii, pp. 234–235: ‘Martyres in tribulationibus positi maiores erant quam tempore pacis (…) Saepe igitur opera iustorum, qui tribulationibus vexantur, curva esse putantur, etsi recta sint (…) Sicut autem prosperitatis luxus superfluus mentem excaecat, ita tribulatio visum mentis reddit acutiorem’. Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964), p. 1. Neckam, dnr, ii.cliii, pp. 234–235.

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what is, for it is no fault of the senses that report what they can, as they can receive it’.38 This means that the perceived illusion of the bent or crooked stick results from the physical senses observing as they ought to observe, and reporting as they ought to report to the higher part of the soul. It should be noted here that Anselm’s thought is informed by Christian Neoplatonism.39 He conceives of a tripartite soul that is situated within a reality comprised of both the corporeal and the incorporeal.40 Within the soul, reason (or judgment) is superior, and presides over the other two parts. Therefore, when the lower part of the soul reports as it ought, the physical senses cannot be said to be in error. Viewing a straight stick as bent or crooked, therefore, must necessarily be an error of reason. As Anselm argues: ‘[error] should be imputed to the judgement of the soul which does not discern well what the senses can do or what they ought to do’.41 To pursue Anselm’s thought, the visual imagery of the stick in water correlates with his theory of divine Truth. In part, this concerns the relationship between 1) making truthful, or correct, statements, and 2) things in reality. For this reason, much of Anselm’s thought in dv centres on discerning whether or not a thing signifies what it ought. This case is made clearly enough with regard to statements. According to Anselm, a statement is only truthful when it signifies ‘Truth’ as it ought to, or in other words that it: 1) correlates with Truth in reality, and 2) is shown to have been made correctly. To Anselm this correlates with the idea that when the senses report what they ought, in response to things in reality, any error in the process must necessarily be one of judgment. It is important to view Anselm’s writings on the Truth of the senses as an effort in exegesis. In the preface of dv, Anselm himself states that this work was one of three concerned with the study of ‘Sacred Scripture’, and that whilst

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Anselm, On Truth, c. 6, p. 159; dv6 (aoo, i.184.27–29): ‘(…) visus et alii sensus nuntiare quam sint: no culpa sensum est qui renuntiant quod possunt, quoniam ita posse acceperunt’. The tripartite, or three-fold, conception of the soul was promulgated by Plotinus, and had an influence on Augustine and the subsequent thought of medieval authors in the West. See: Richard Wallis, Neoplatonism (London: Duckworth & Company, 1972), pp. 73–77; Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson, Plotinus on Sense Perception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 23–30; Willemien Otten, ‘Christianity’s Content: (Neo)Platonism in the Middle Ages, Its Theoretical and Theological Appeal’, Numen, 63 (2016), pp. 245–270. It is not that Anselm is Neoplatonic, but that Neoplatonism emphasises the incorporeal aspect of reality; a reality comprised of both the material and immaterial. Anselm, On Truth, c. 6, p. 159; dv6 (aoo, i.184.29–30): ‘sed iudicio animae imputandum est, quod non bene discernit quid illi possint aut quid debeant’.

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De Grammatico was written in a similar style, the latter work pertains to a different sort of inquiry. Put differently, despite the style and logic of dv, Anselm categorises it among his works concerned with the interpretation of scripture. As such, dv was heavily influenced by Augustine’s dialogue with Evodius in De libero arbitrio, and in the thirteenth and final chapter of dv, Anselm’s logical dialogue seeks to prove that one ‘Truth’ exists eternally and immutably from all things, and is present within all true things.42 Put succinctly: ‘Quod una sit veritas in omnibus veris’.43 Therefore, Anselm’s dv built towards his primary interest in discerning the Truth that exists beyond that which can be seen or written. Like the ontological argument of the Proslogion, Anselm aimed for reason to recognise a Truth beyond itself and the bodily senses.44 In this sense, it is the duty of reason to perceive something that can be seen only with the mind’s eye, rather than with physical sight; an essential aspect of discerning Truth contained within all things.45

4

Considering Augustine

The above comparison begins to place Neckam’s De visu outside of a scientific tradition. Like Anselm’s dv, Neckam’s De visu was part of a longer commentary on scripture where visual imagery was used to a moral end. To properly establish Neckam’s De visu as an effort in exegesis, however, it is necessary to examine Neckam’s moralised visual imagery, and indeed his conception of all learning, in relation to medieval exegetical practice. For Neckam, the purpose of all learning was connected to discerning divine Truth as an essential aspect of scriptural interpretation. In part, this is seen in his arrangement of material throughout his De naturis rerum, where the first two books are 1) framed around an hexameral conceptualisation of things (which are all created by God), and 2) form a long introduction to a comment-

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The influence of Augustine (especially his De libero arbitrio) on Anselm has been noted by Ogliari, who examines Anselm’s work of a similar name, De Libertate Arbitrii. See: Donato Ogliari, ‘St Anselm’s “De Libertate Arbitrii” Revisited’, Divus Thomas, 92.3 (1989), pp. 259– 272. dv13 (aoo, i.196.27). This phrase translates ‘That one Truth exists in all true things’. P2 (aoo, i.101–102). In other words, the a priori nature of the ontological argument proves God’s existence from logical deduction, rather than from sense observation. The crucial element of the argument is that God does not exist in the mind alone, but as a reality outside of the mind. Augustine of Hippo, De libero arbitrio in cc sl, 29, William McAllen Green, ed. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1970), pp. 205–321, ii.vi (linea 42).

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ary on Wisdom literature.46 Yet this exegetical method is also expressed more explicitly in Neckam’s methodology, seen both within and without the text of the De naturis rerum. For instance, earlier in the text Neckam puts forward the idea that all created things can be used to comprehend the Wisdom and Goodness of God: The wisdom of God is told by a thing’s colour, beauty, as well as its outward shape, and the disposition and number of its parts. The goodness of the highest creator is told by the preservation of a thing in existence and its utility. For there is no thing, not even a common plant, that is not useful in many ways.47 This passage features in Neckam’s prologue to book two, where his many expositions on sight and animals are contained.48 The notion that a thing’s colour, beauty, shape, and number can be used to apprehend divine Wisdom, is strongly Augustinian. Augustine’s theology of number, weight, and measure resonated with Neckam’s contemporaries, and features in John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon.49 Moreover, seeing things as signifiers is the basis of Augustine’s guide to scriptural interpretation found in his De doctrina christiana.50 It is this work that contains Augustine’s semiotics where he proposes that useful things signify divine things, and can be used both to apprehend and love Wisdom itself.51 46 47

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Neckam, Meditatio de Magdalena, p. 1. Neckam, dnr, ii.prologus, pp. 125–126: ‘Sapientiam autem Dei enarrant color rei, et pulchritude, et forma, cum figura et dispositione partium et numero. Benignitatem autem artificis summi loquuntur conservation rei in esse et utilitas eiusdem. Non est enim vel herba communis quae multas no habeat in se utilitates’. The above English translation is from Zahora, Nature, p. 130. Neckam, dnr, ii.prologus, p. 125. John of Salisbury, Metalogicon in cc cm 98, John Barrie Hall and Katherine S.B. KeatsRohan, eds. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), ii.xvii (linea 69); John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, ii.xvii, pp. 114–115. In Metalogicon book two, John of Salisbury credits Augustine for his theology of number, weight, and measure, and argues that Augustine’s realist position becomes useful for philosophers. A deeper comparison between John and Augustine is aided by the following studies: Lewis Ayres, ‘Measure, Number, and Weight’ in Allan Fitzgerald, ed., Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopaedia (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 550–552; William James Roche, ‘Measure, Number, and Weight in St Augustine’, The New Scholasticism, 15 (1941), pp. 350–376; Carol Harrison, ‘Measure, Number and Weight in Saint Augustine’s Aesthetics’, Augustinianum, Annus xxviii, Fasciculus 3 (December, 1988), pp. 591–602. Augustine, De doctrina christiana, Roger Green, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), ii.12–55. (Hereafter ddc). Augustine, ddc, i.12–55.

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Methodologically, the basis for Neckam’s continual moralisations of visual imagery, where all things are used to reveal something of the Wisdom and Goodness of God, is discovered in Augustine (in whom his visual imagery also originates). In Augustine, the explicit function of learning is connected to the way things may be used to illuminate Truth contained in scripture, and to apprehend divine Wisdom itself. The case for this is made clearly enough in relation to the arts, where Augustine posits that learning the alphabet necessarily precedes learning to read; and learning the art of speaking, writing, and argument (rhetoric, grammar, and logic) becomes a useful aid in the interpretation of scripture.52 Since the message of all scripture is found in the twin command of charity, all worthwhile secular learning becomes part of a broader scheme whereby one gradually ascends to Wisdom through learning and love.53 This is encapsulated through Augustine’s seven stages of reading found in book two of his De doctrina christiana, where fear and holiness lead to knowledge; knowledge leads to love of God and neighbour; fortitude and compassion enable the inner eye to be purified; and the purification of the inner eye precedes an ascension to divine Wisdom itself.54 Augustine’s scheme of doctrina, that is ‘teaching and learning’, also incorporates a knowledge and use of things in the natural world, an ignorance of which makes for imprecise scriptural interpretation. Again, this is discovered in book two of his De doctrina christiana, where Augustine offers examples of scriptural exposition concerning stones, sticks, plants, and animals.55 Since Augustine refers to this twice in the same book, it is necessary to provide both references together: Ignorance of things makes figurative expressions unclear when we are ignorant of the qualities of animals or stones or plants or other things mentioned in scripture for the sake of some analogy (…) In this category [historia] are various studies of topography and zoology, and of trees, plants, stones, and other such things. I dealt with this category earlier and explained that such knowledge is valuable in solving puzzles in scripture.56

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Augustine, ddc, praefatio.2–11; ii.56–131. Augustine, ddc, i.15–17. Augustine, ddc, ii.62–67. Augustine, ddc, i.12–14. Here Augustine refers to Moses’ stick in scripture in this same context. Augustine, ddc, ii.82–85;106–108: ‘Rerum autem ignorantia facit obscuras figuratas locutiones, cum ignoramus vel animantium vel lapidum vel herbarum naturas aliarumve

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What Augustine provides above, is an insight into both the reading and writing of expositions. In the case of scripture, the reader needs sufficient context of things mentioned (whether sheep, stones, or plants) to perceive their true meaning and use in a scriptural passage. This is especially applicable to zoological knowledge, with Augustine demonstrating his argument through an exposition of the visual imagery of the snake.57 Moreover, posited here is the notion that the language of scripture is arranged in a certain manner, and that deeper spiritual readings (especially of the historical sense) are intended by the author for the benefit of a diverse readership. Since Augustine maintains a classical view of the bible, where authorship is attributed to the Holy Spirit, both the ‘plain’ and ‘obscure’ aspects of scripture are seen as the workings of the Holy Spirit to capture the minds of readers and listeners.58 In other words, a deeper sense of historical things is an intentional feature of scripture, and is to be recognised by more advanced readers.59 Another aspect of Augustine’s guide to scriptural interpretation is the way ‘ambiguities’ present an obstacle for casual readers. Not only does Augustine state that ‘casual readers are misled by problems and ambiguities of many kinds, mistaking one thing for another’, but he constantly says ignorance hinders scriptural interpretation; whether that be of numbers, music, or zoology.60 Put succinctly, Augustine offers a scheme of doctrina centred on apprehending and loving God, one that incorporates the utility of secular learning. Essential to this mode of learning is that ignorance does not hinder the reader’s ability to comprehend an important rule: that the divine may be contained within a deeper exegetical sense of things.

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rerum quae plerumque in scripturis similitudinis alicuius gratia ponuntur (…) In quo genere sunt quaecumque de locorum situ naturisque animalium lignorum herbarum lapidum aliorumve corporum scripta sunt. De quo genere superius egimus eamque cognitionem valere ad aenigmata scripturarum solvenda docuimus’. Augustine, ddc, ii.84–85: ‘Just as a knowledge of the habits of the snake clarifies the many analogies involving this animal regularly given in scripture, so too an ignorance of the numerous animals mentioned no less frequently in an analogy is a great hinderance to understanding’; ‘Ut ergo notitia naturae serpentis illustrat multas similitudines quas de hoc animante scriptura dare consuevit, sic ignorantia nonnullorum animalium, quae non minus per similitudines commemorat, impedit plurimum intellectorem’. Augustine, ddc, ii.62–63. Here Augustine states: ‘It is a wonderful and beneficial thing that the Holy Spirit organized the holy scripture so as to satisfy hunger by means of its plainer passages and remove boredom by means of its obscurer ones’; ‘Magnifice igitur et salubriter spiritus sanctus ita scripturas sanctas modificavit, ut locis apertioribus fami occurreret, obscurioribus autem fastidia detergeret’. Augustine, ddc, ii.62–63. This occurs throughout book two of ddc.

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Augustine’s reception in Neckam is seen in a number of methodological similarities. Neckam’s conception of scriptural senses aligns with Augustine’s in that historia forms the foundation for allegoria and tropologia.61 For Augustine, the importance of the spiritual sense of scripture is conveyed in his Confessions when he meets Ambrose, and becomes acquainted with the Alexandrian school of biblical exegesis.62 In Augustine’s own words, Ambrose ‘took away the mystical veil and opened the spiritual sense of things’ contained in scripture, which is contrasted with the exegetical follies of Augustine’s former Manichaean teacher, Faustus.63 Likewise, Neckam also uses Faustus to represent the rigidly-literal approach to scripture, one which stands in contrast to seeing a deeper Truth. Using the imagery of ‘deficient eyesight’ and ‘blind heresy’ Neckam figuratively describes what the faithless (like Faustus) cannot see. This appears in his Suppletio Defectuum: The bread that strengthens the heart of mankind, reading the holy book, brings no pleasure to your palate, faithless Faustus. The heavenly book offers you no delight; enjoy the earth. In your mouth earthly knowledge has a sweet taste. Because of deficient eyesight moles have dug lairs, while blind heresy as a rule skulks in hidden recesses.64 That the holy book offers no delight to those who fail to see beyond the letter is typical of Neckam’s expositions. In the case of Faustus, this confirms an important connection between Neckam and Augustine regarding the value and utility of learning. It is not so much that secular learning was undesirable, as both Neckam and Augustine attest to its utility. Rather, the point Neckam makes here

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Hunt, Schools and the Cloister, pp. 96–97. But note that Augustine does not use the term ‘tropologia’. Denys Turner, ‘Allegory in Christian late antiquity’ in Rita Copeland, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Allegory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 71–72: ‘The broad distinction between “literal” and “spiritual” senses is there in general terms in Origen’s On First Principles in the early fourth century, in Augustine’s De doctrina christiana in the early fifth, and the distinction of the four senses in almost the exact terms in which Nicholas reports them is found in Gregory the Great in the late sixth century’. Augustine, Confessions: Vol. i & ii, Carolyn Hammond, trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2014), Vol. i, vi.iv, pp. 246–249; Augustine, Confessions, v, pp. 199–227. Augustine’s dissatisfaction with Faustus continues until he meets Ambrose in Milan. Neckam, Suppletio Defectuum in cc cm 221, Peter Hochgürtel, ed. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), i.90–91 (linea 1425): ‘Hinc est quod terra tantum recreatur in esum; Ecce grauem culpam pena secuta grauis. Panis confirmans hominis cor, lectio sacra Deliciosa minus, perfide Fausta, tibi est. Pagina celestis tibi displicet; utere terra. Disciplina tibi terrea dulce sapit; Luminibus capti fodere cubilia talpe Et latebris heresis ceca latere solet’.

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resonates with Augustine’s guide to scripture—that enjoyment and sweetness are reserved for divine things. Thus, secular things are only to be used to that end. Drawing again upon Augustinian imagery (also present in Anselm), Neckam’s De naturis rerum reinforces the need to look beyond the immediate. This is conveyed through the visual imagery of a broken mirror, which represents a diversity of deeper meanings: When a mirror is whole, there being but one observer, only one image is produced; but should the glass be broken into several pieces, there appear as many images as there are breaks. And thus in Holy Scripture, as many understandings shine forth as there are expositions. But, marvellous thing!, remove the lead placed behind the glass; immediately no image is visible to the observer. [Likewise,] remove the foundation of the faith, and immediately you will no longer see yourself clearly in Holy Scripture. The lead can be understood to represent sin; thus in the mirror of Holy Scripture you will discern yourself less clearly unless you confess yourself to be a sinner. For if we say that we have not sinned, we deceive ourselves, and the Truth is not in us.65 Of course, the exegetical nature of this passage is first discovered in Neckam’s citation of 1John; the use of mirror imagery serving to illuminate biblical verse (that when humans deceive themselves, they cannot see the Truth within themselves).66 In comparable fashion to Anselm, however, Neckam employs Augustinian visual imagery with the deeper intent of communicating divine Truth.67 The visual imagery of the broken mirror explicitly represents the hid-

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Neckam, dnr, ii.cliv, p. 239. (The translation above is Lindberg’s) ‘Dum integrum est speculum, unica uno solo inspiciente resultat imago; frangatur in plures vitrum, quot sunt ibi fractiones, tot resultabunt imagines. Sic et in Sacra Scriptura, quot sunt expositions, totidem relucent intelligentiae. Sed, mira res! subtrahe plumbum suppositum vitro, iam nulla resultabit imago inspicientis. Subtrahe et fundamentum fidei, iam teipsum in Sacra Scriptura non videbis dilucide. Potest et per plumbum intelligi peccatum. In speculo igitur Sacrae Scripturae minus limpide teipsum cernes, nisi te esse peccatorem fatearis. Si enim dixerimus quia peccatum non habemus, nos ipsos seducimus, et veritas in nobis non est’. IJohn 1.8. ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the Truth is not in us’ (rhe); ‘Si dixerimus quoniam peccatum non habemus, ipsi nos seducimus, et veritas in nobis non est’ (Vulgate). In chapter five of dv Anselm reveals his wider treatise seeks to prove the veracity of John 3—that he who does evil hates the light, but he that does good—or does things correctly as they ought—comes into the light. (dv5 (aoo, i.181 f.)). Further, in chapter two of the

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den Truths of scripture. In turn this implicitly indicates the need to discover divine Wisdom hidden within all visual imagery.

5

Considering Hugh

A recognition of Augustinian reception in Neckam’s thought and writings reflects his place within the intellectual climate of the twelfth century. That the pursuit of divine Wisdom lay within Neckam’s own expositions is fitting, since this is how Hugh of St Victor opened his Didascalicon.68 Modelling his work on Augustine’s De doctrina christiana, Hugh opened book one with the declaration: ‘Of all things to be sought, the first is that Wisdom in which the Form of the Perfect Good stands fixed’.69 And book two is opened in comparable fashion: ‘Philosophy is the love of that Wisdom which, wanting in nothing, is a living Mind and the sole primordial Idea or Pattern of things’.70 Whilst Hugh’s interest in the arts occupy the first three books (the latter three books dealing with scripture), at the heart of the entire text lay Hugh’s desire for students to love and pursue divine Wisdom, a love found in the use of learning. Comparisons between Hugh and Augustine have been made frequently in historiography, especially in relation to the De doctrina christiana and the Didascalicon.71 Therefore, the extent to which both authorities informed the

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Proslogion, which contains the ontological argument, it is clear Anselm sought to prove the foolish nature of the fool of Psalm 13. In the beginning of the argument ‘Quod vere sit deus’ (that God truly exists) Anselm quotes Psalm 13:1: ‘An ergo non est aliqua talis natura, quia “dixit insipiens in corde suo: non est deus”?’ (P2 (aoo, i.101.5)). This is revisited in chapter four where Anselm concludes (through logical deduction) that the fool has said in his heart what cannot be thought: ‘Quomodo insipiens dixit in corde, quod cogitari non potest’. (P4 (aoo, i.103.13)). For an apt overview of Hugh and his Didascalicon, see: Ian Wei, Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and the University, c. 1100–1330 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 78–81. Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon: De studio legendi, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Latin, 10, Charles Henry Buttimer, ed. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1939), i.i, p. 4; Hugh of St Victor, The Didascalicon of Hugh of St Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts, trans. Jerome Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961) ‘Omnium expetendorum prima est sapientia, in qua perfecti boni forma consistit’. It is also noteworthy that Hugh begins chapter two of book one with the phrase ‘that philosophy is the study (or pursuit) of Wisdom’; ‘Quod studium sapientie philosophia sit’. (i.ii, p. 6). Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon, ii.i, p. 23 ‘Philosophia est amor sapientie, que nullius indigens, uiuax mens et sola rerum primaeua ratio est’. Smalley, The Study of the Bible, pp. 86–97; Franklin Harkins, ‘Secundus Augustinus: Hugh

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exegetical practice of Neckam (later in the twelfth century) should be unsurprising. The pursuit of Wisdom is not only a feature of the De naturis rerum, but is also found in Neckam’s Meditatio de Magdelena where the beginning of the text opens with the first verse from the Song of Songs, and shows Penitence confessing to Wisdom.72 Like his expositions contained in the De naturis rerum, Neckam’s many moral exercises show he primarily has the spiritual welfare of the reader in mind in their theological pursuit of love and Wisdom. As McDonough observes in relation to the De naturis rerum: ‘[Neckam] generates a complex of observations that embrace the dissemination of wisdom, the efficacy of love and charity, the action of the Holy Spirit (…) Throughout, natural phenomena serve as examples to stimulate teachings about morality and to intimate deeper meaning’.73 A closer look at Hugh’s influences on Neckam, therefore, provides a heuristic tool with which to situate such moral exercises. Neckam’s expositions in De visu are illuminated by a heuristic rule in the Didascalicon where Hugh expands on the mode of reading, and the meaning of things in scripture. It is needful to comprehend this rule before Neckam can be fully situated. In book three of the Didascalicon, Hugh utilises the language of universals and particulars to instruct the student in reading. After defining reading as being primarily concerned with the finite, leading gradually to the infinite, Hugh then discusses the nature of doctrina, which ‘begins with those things which are better known and, by acquainting us with these, works its way to matters which lie hidden’.74 For clarity: Furthermore, we investigate with our reason (the proper function of which is to analyse) when, by analysis and investigation of the natures of individual things, we descend from universals to particulars. For every

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of St. Victor on Liberal Arts Study and Salvation’, Augustinian Studies, 37.2 (2006), pp. 219– 246; Eileen C. Sweeney, ‘Hugh of St. Victor: The Augustinian Tradition of Sacred and Secular Reading Revised’ in Edward D. English, ed., Reading and Wisdom: The De Doctrina Christiana of Augustine in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), pp. 61–83; Margaret Gibson, ‘The De Doctrina Christiana in the School of St. Victor’ in Reading and Wisdom, pp. 41–47; Grover Zinn, Jr., ‘The Influence of Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana upon the Writings of Hugh of St. Victor’ in Reading and Wisdom, pp. 48–60; Brian FitzGerald, ‘Medieval Theories of Education: Hugh of St Victor and John of Salisbury’, Oxford Review of Education, 35.5 (October, 2010), pp. 575–588. Neckam, Meditatio de Magdalena, p. 8. McDonough, Neckam, p. xxiv. Hugh, Didascalicon, iii.ix, p. 59: ‘doctrina autem ab his que magis nota sunt incipit, et per eorum notitiam ad scientiam eorum que latent pertingit’.

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universal is more fully defined than its particulars: when we learn, therefore, we ought to begin with universals, which are better known and determined and inclusive; and then, by descending little by little from them and by distinguishing individuals through analysis, we ought to investigate the nature of the things those universals contain.75 Hugh’s point is that secular knowledge of the finite, and hidden Truth of the infinite, are connected. When a student reads a text, they ought to carefully distinguish the letter and the sense of words, before the inner meaning is revealed.76 With the student already instructed in the rule for expounding a text (moving from letter, to sense, to inner meaning), Hugh later expounds this rule in relation to scripture: And the divine Wisdom, which the Father has uttered out of his heart, invisible in Itself, is recognised through creatures and in them. From this is most surely gathered how profound is the understanding to be sought in the Sacred Writings, in which we come through the word to a concept, through the concept to a thing, through the thing to its idea, and through its idea arrive at Truth.77 Applied to the reading of scripture, Hugh’s rule takes on greater significance. It is not the case that Hugh envisions reading the bible as an isolated exercise; rather, he posits that all learning of words, concepts, things, and ideas are an integral part of the journey to Truth. Yet this Truth is present in all things and requires a utilisation of all useful things in an ordered process of learning and

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Hugh, Didascalicon, iii.ix, p. 59: ‘preterea ratione inuestigamus, ad quam proprie pertinet diuidere, quando ab uniuersalibus ad particularia descendimus diuidendo et singulorum naturas inuestigando. omne namque uniuersale magis est determinatum suis particularibus. quando ergo discimus, ab his incipere debemus que magis sunt nota et determinata et complectentia, sic que paulatim descendendo, et per diuisionem singula distinguendo, eorum que continentur naturam inuestigare’. Hugh, Didascalicon, iii.viii, p. 58. Previously, Hugh states: ‘the order of inquiry is first the letter, then the sense, and finally the inner meaning. And when this is done, the exposition is complete’; ‘in his ordo est, ut primum littera, deinde sensus, deinde sententia inquiratur. quo facto, perfecta est expositio’. Hugh, Didascalicon, v.iii, p. 97: ‘et diuina sapientia, quam de corde suo Pater eructauit, in se inuisibilis, per creaturas et in creaturis agnoscitur. ex quo nimirum colligitur, quam profunda in sacris litteris requirenda sit intelligentia, ubi per uocem ad intellectum, per intellectum ad rem, per rem ad rationem, per rationem peruenitur ad ueritatem’.

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reading. Above all, this process of learning and reading enables a recognition of divine Wisdom uttered from the heart of the Father. The essence of Hugh’s rule for scriptural interpretation is found in secondary, rather than primary, intentions. As Hugh laments in book five (similarly to Augustine and Neckam in relation to Faustus), there are some students who do not know there is any sense beyond the letter.78 Whilst Hugh is also sceptical of those who spiritualise scripture without the foundation of history, his main point is that historia is a necessary step to the three spiritual senses of allegoria, tropologia, and anagoge.79 The primary reading should always be history before secondary readings expose the allegorical intentions of a passage. And since the three spiritual senses are all broadly allegorical in nature, some moral and others prophetic, it is worth emphasising the meaning of allegory. As a universally accepted literary mode, the allegorical presents two, or more, meanings simultaneously. To use a modern definition, central to allegory is the idea that the reader is delighted and taught through the affective use of visual imagery. This happens first through a literal/historical meaning, and second through abstract/obscure moralistic meanings that ‘depend for clarity and interpretation upon the [first] primary meaning’.80 This notion of the allegorical corresponds with both Hugh and Augustine’s conception of the letter and the spirit, with Augustine declaring that: ‘no one disputes that it is much more pleasant to learn lessons presented through imagery, and much more rewarding to discover meanings that are won only with difficulty’.81 In Augustine and Hugh, therefore, the central aim of reading expositions (and indeed in creating them) was to discover divine Wisdom in the secondary intentions of a passage, whether that be a passage about a lion, snake, stick, stone, or even a horse stricken with a moon-ray.82 Integral to this Victorine approach to learning is that visual imagery delighted the reader; not a delight in (or enjoyment of) the things it describes, but in the Truth it conceals. For this is the proper use of imagery.

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Hugh, Didascalicon, v.iii, p. 97: ‘nisi solam littere superficiem’. Smalley, The Study of the Bible, pp. 100–103. Smalley summarises Hugh well when saying: ‘His great service to exegesis was to lay more stress on the literal interpretation relatively to the spiritual’. The word ‘relatively’ (Smalley’s emphasis) is crucial. Edward Bloom, ‘The Allegorical Principle’, Journal of English Literary History, 18.3, (September, 1951), pp. 163–190. Augustine, ddc, ii.62–63. ‘Nunc tamen nemo ambigit et per similitudines libentius quaeque cognosci et cum aliqua difficultate quaesita multo gratius inveniri’. This is especially relevant to Neckam’s horse in De visu.

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Neckam and the Victorines

Neckam’s precise connection with the Victorines is difficult to establish with certainty. Given the distance from Herefordshire to St Albans, Neckam’s physical connection to the Victorines in England during Andrew of St Victor’s later years at Wigmore is possible, but not probable.83 And seeing as Neckam is thought to arrive in Paris during Walter of St Victor’s time as abbot of St Victor c. 1175, any physical connection to the school in Paris becomes less compelling.84 Nonetheless, Russell suggests that Neckam was familiar with the intellectual tradition at Hereford.85 Moreover, the scale of Andrew of St Victor’s legacy in England, particularly in relation to biblical exegesis, attests to the likelihood that Neckam was familiar with the methods of the Victorines.86 In any case, Neckam produced his exegetical works during his time as an Augustinian Canon at Cirencester from 1197 and, as Dunning has recently suggested, his methods embody the Victorine approach to reading and understanding throughout his meditations.87 That Neckam begins book two of his De naturis rerum in a remarkably comparable way to Hugh’s guidance on the discovery of meaning in scripture, a connection with the Victorines is present methodologically, if not formally. To return to the above quotation from book five of the Didascalicon, a close look at Hugh’s phrase ‘divine Wisdom, which the Father has uttered out of his heart’ bears resemblance with the imagery of Psalms 44:2, which reads: ‘my heart hath uttered a good word’.88 Initially, the similarity between Hugh and the Vulgate is seen in the idea that the heart (cor) has the ability to utter (eructare).89 If Hugh is, in fact, drawing upon biblical imagery, it is clear that he adjusts the subject

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Hunt, Schools, pp. 1–18; Smalley, The Study of the Bible, pp. 112–195 (especially pp. 173–185). Walter demonstrated scepticism to the use of dialectic in theological enquiry. See: Marcia L. Colish, ‘Christological Nihilianism in the Second Half of the Twelfth Century’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 63 (Janvier-Décembre, 1996), pp. 146– 155. Josiah Russell, ‘Hereford and Arabic Science in England about 1175–1200’, Isis, 18.1 (July, 1932), pp. 14–25; Josiah Russell, ‘Alexander Neckam in England’, The English Historical Review, 47.186 (April, 1932), pp. 260–268. Smalley, The Study of the Bible, pp. 173–185. Dunning, ‘Neckam’s Manuscripts’, pp. 10, 35. See especially the section titled ‘Meditation and the Augustinians’: pp. 43–46. The English translation here is taken from the Douay Rheims, 1899 American Edition. Whereas the Latin is from Biblica Sacra Vulgata. In each the verse appears as Psalms 44.2: ‘Eructavit cor meum verbum bonum’. Hugh’s wording is ‘et diuina sapientia, quam de corde suo Pater eructauit’ which is comparable to Psalms 44:2 which reads: ‘Eructavit cor meum verbum bonum’.

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and object of the verse, with the heart of the Father (Pater) uttering ‘divine Wisdom’ (divina Sapientia) rather than a good word (verbum bonum). Comparatively, looking to the opening of book two of Neckam’s De naturis rerum, the resemblance between Hugh and the Vulgate is strengthened. This is evident in two things. First, Neckam confirms his familiarity with the same verse of the Vulgate by quoting the latter part of the verse verbatim: ‘calamus scribae velociter scribentis’.90 Second, and more significantly, Neckam too uses the imagery of the uttering heart found in both Hugh and the Vulgate. However, as the Vulgate speaks about a heart uttering a good word, and Hugh speaks about the heart of the Father uttering divine Wisdom, Neckam combines both into one Christological reading of Old Testament verse where the ‘heart of the Father utters the good word’ which, being born of the eternal Father, is equal in likeness.91 Following on from this, Neckam writes: Yet, in fact, this Word is the pen of the scribe who writes swiftly, because the Wisdom of the Father inscribes all, in such a way that the Wisdom of God shines forth in all things.92 Neckam connects Hugh’s adaptation of the Psalm with his own reading in such a way that he, like Hugh, reveals divine Wisdom as the reason of all things. Here the imagery of God as scribe resonates with both Hugh and Neckam’s approach to text, Hugh in relation to reading, and Neckam in relation to writing. Forming the introduction to book two of his De naturis rerum, which deals extensively with the imagery of things such as sticks, stones, coins, luminaries, and animals, Neckam therefore reveals his hand: that his aim in writing was to both capture and articulate divine Wisdom and Truth through the visual imagery of things. To Neckam, then, the significance of ‘the nature of things’ is found in the deeper meaning(s) of their secondary intentions.

7

On Sight and Zoology: Revisiting Neckam’s Horse

Revisiting Neckam’s De visu sees his visual imagery used to a moralistic end. The sight of his interest is not physical, but spiritual. Communicated so clearly

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Compare Psalms 44:2 with: Neckam, dnr, ii.i, p. 125. Neckam, dnr, ii.i, p. 125: ‘Eructavit cor Patris verbum quod bonum est’. (My translation). Neckam, dnr, ii.i, pp. 125–126: ‘Est etiam verbum istud calamus scribae velociter scribentis, quia sapientia Patris omnia inscribit, ita quod in rebus sapientia Dei elucet’. (My translation).

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in relation to a brief discussion on the intersections of visual rays in the act of seeing, Neckam concludes that: ‘just as without faith in the cross the inner man does not see well, so neither is exterior vision achieved without the form of a cross’.93 Neckam’s main point here is that inner vision sees only through faith in the cross of Christ. In this, the purpose of the visual imagery of physical sight is that it contains and expresses a deeper intention. Neckam’s text is therefore much closer in methodology to Peter of Limoges’ later Moral Treatise on the Eye, than it is to optical science.94 With this considered, the horse of Neckam’s De visu becomes an integral aspect of the entire section, and well concludes his collection of moralisations on the visual imagery of sight. Neckam’s central point in this last passage is that: The poison of hidden detractions spreads slowly and it is the more harmful because an audacious assertion, when it is clandestine, does not fear to be accused of falsehood. Published abuse is repelled, and mendacious iniquity is confounded.95 Given the secondary intentions of Neckam’s passage are exposited openly, it would be absurd to call into question the veracity of his account of moon-rays and horses in the sentences that precede. For one, it was common practice for Neckam and his contemporaries to craft their own visual imagery, especially animal imagery. Gerald of Wales, for instance, crafted his own visual imagery of eagles and eaglets when composing De principis instructione and was transparent about his invention of animal imagery throughout his Topographia Hibernica.96 For another, a reading that sees historia as the basis for uncovering an array of potential secondary intentions gives Neckam’s horse greater meaning. The first horse of Neckam’s De visu resides in a dark room, where the light of the moon (concentrated through a small aperture) causes injury. Understood

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Neckam, dnr, ii.cliii, p. 238: ‘et sicut sine fide crucis non bene videt homo interior, ita nec sine figura crucis visus exterior perficitur’. (My translation). Richard Newhauser, ‘Peter of Limoges, Optics, and the Science of the Senses’, The Senses and Society, 5.1 (2010), pp. 28–44. Though Newhauser suggests that Peter of Limoges demonstrates a scientific interest in optics, his text is really a large collection of moralisations using the visual imagery of previous optical thought. Neckam, dnr, ii.cliii, p. 238: ‘Serpit virus latitantium detractationum, et eo magis nocivae sunt, quod temeraria assertio, dum clandestina est, argui falsitatis non metuit. Repelluntur convitia publicata, et confunditur iniquitas sibi mentiens’. (My translation). Laura Slater, Art and Political Thought in Medieval England c. 1150–1350 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018), pp. 1–4; Hunt, Schools and the Cloister, p. 73. In both instances, Slater and Hunt reveal how Gerald’s animal imagery was his own invention.

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historically, the imagery is zoological, in that the nature and effect of light on an animal corresponds with the previous discussion on the way different animals emit visual rays when sensing.97 However, a striking feature of this imagery is that it is optical as well as moral. Since Neckam demonstrates some familiarity with Euclid’s geometry throughout his works, it is fitting that the first scenario of the horse in a dark room employs the visual imagery of the camera obscura.98 In recreating this visual imagery, however, Neckam transforms an optical concept into a moral one, where the camera obscura describes the clandestine environment of heretical activity. The greatest irony of Lindberg’s omission is that, in his quest to find meaning in the rigidly-literal, coupled with his disinterest in the moral significance of Neckam’s secondary intentions, he does not see the deeper optical significance of Neckam’s zoological camera obscura. Like Faustus, neither does Lindberg see that Neckam composed each of his visual examples with divine Wisdom in mind, where Truth exists beyond the capabilities of physical sight.

8

Conclusion: Seeing Neckam through an Anselmian Lens

In conclusion, the historiographical conception of Neckam as a dualist, caught between the worlds of natural science and biblical commentary, ought now to be redundant. It is clear from his Cirencester period of writing, the visual imagery he employed, his explicit methodology, and his use of Augustinian and Victorine learning, that Neckam’s De visu was, in fact, an aspect of a broader effort in biblical exegesis. The comparison with Anselm in relation to Truth, and their shared use of Augustine’s visual imagery, enables one to consider Neckam as part of an exegetical tradition that utilised the tools of secular learning. This lends itself to a fuller consideration of the influence of Hugh of St Victor’s rules for scriptural interpretation in Neckam’s own expositions, and provides an exegetical basis for Neckam’s De naturis rerum, especially in book two, where secondary intentions are superior to primary/lit-

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Neckam, dnr, ii.cliii, pp. 235–237. Neckam, Sacerdos ad altare in cc cm, 227, Christopher McDonough, ed. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010)) xiii.198 ‘de geometria’. Here, Neckam demonstrates a familiarity with Euclid as well-known in the art of geometry. See also Hugh, Didascalicon, iii.ii, p. 49. Hugh also demonstrates familiarity with Euclid: ‘Geometry, they say, was first discovered in Egypt: its author among the Greeks was the great Euclid’; ‘geometriam apud Egyptum primum dicunt esse repertam, cuius auctor apud Grecos optimus Euclides fuit’.

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eral observations. Neckam’s primary concern, therefore, is found in the deeper sense of his moralisations, which sought to expose the reality of divine Wisdom. In making this argument, this chapter makes a small contribution to a number of already resistant voices to Neckam the ‘scientist’. Such voices are found in the writings of McDonough, Bestul, Dunning, and Smalley. It is most intriguing, though entirely unsurprising, that Smalley had indicated the need to situate Neckam within the Victorine tradition as early as 1960.99 In a letter to R.W. Hunt, recommending revisions to his pre-published manuscript, she stated: I only suggest preparing or adding an account of a.n.’s significance. He strikes me now (…) as marking the very end of the Victorine tradition with the whole trunk bursting open and scattering its contents over the railway station. Does any scholar of the turn of the century sum up so many divergent trends as a.n.? He’s both secular scholar and monk or rather canon (…) He seems to have been the last of the great non-specialists except for Grosseteste.100 In this, Neckam perfectly embodies the Augustinian Canon Regular who navigated a ‘middle way’ (to borrow Wei’s terminology), utilising the tools of secular learning to expose the hidden meaning of Truth and Wisdom.101 It is only fitting, therefore, that a fourteenth-century preacher’s handbook would conceive of Neckam in a manner he, himself, would have recognised. Produced anonymously c. 1300, the Franciscan Fasciculus morum presents Neckam’s De naturis rerum, especially his zoological expositions, as a commentary on vice alongside the works of Augustine, Jerome, Gregory, and Isidore.102 Here, there is no such evidence of interpretative difficulties, or seeming conflict between natural science and biblical commentary (more specifically, commentaries on vanity and vice). Rather, Neckam’s reception in the fourteenth century would view the De 99

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Andrew Dunning, ‘Beryl Smalley to R.W. Hunt on the Significance of Alexander Neckam’, Notes and Queries, 64 (March, 2017), pp. 176–178. The discovery of this letter was made by Dunning, and appears both in his doctoral thesis and in a short, but valuable, publication on Neckam’s significance in the twelfth-century. Dunning, ‘Smalley to Hunt’, p. 177. The discovery of this letter was made by Dunning, and appears both in his doctoral thesis and in a short, but valuable, publication on Neckam’s significance in the twelfth-century. Wei, Intellectual Culture, pp. 78–86. Siegfried Wenzel, ed., Fasciculus morum (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), pars vii.658–659; 678–679, ‘de luxuria’.

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naturis rerum as an extended exercise in biblical exegesis; the visual imagery of which enabled moral correction through a deeper sense of seeing.

Bibliography Primary Sources Alexander Neckam, ‘Concerning the Natures of Things’, David Lindberg and Greta Lindberg, trans., in Edward Grant, ed., A Source Book in Medieval Science (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 380–382. Alexander Neckam, De naturis rerum libri duo with the poem of the same author De laudibus diuinae sapientae, Thomas Wright, ed. (London: Longman Green, 1863). Alexander Neckam, Meditatio de Magdalena, ed. Thomas Bestul, The Journal of Medieval Latin, 9 (1999). Alexander Neckam, Sacerdos ad altare in cc cm 227, Christopher McDonough, ed. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010). Alexander Neckam, Suppletio Defectuum in cc cm 221, Peter Hochgürtel, ed. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008). Anselm of Canterbury, The Major Works, Brian Davis and Gillian R. Evans, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Augustine of Hippo, Confessions: Vol. i & ii, Carolyn Hammond, trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2014). Augustine of Hippo, De doctrina christiana, ed. Roger Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Augustine of Hippo, De libero arbitrio in cc sl, 29, William McAllen Green, ed. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1970), pp. 205–321. Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon: De studio legendi, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Latin, 10, Charles Henry Buttimer, ed. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1939) Hugh of St Victor, The Didascalicon of Hugh of St Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts, Jerome Taylor, trans. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961). John of Salisbury, Metalogicon in cc cm 98, John Barrie Hall and Katherine S.B. KeatsRohan, eds. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991). Schmitt, Franciscus Salesius, ed., S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961).

Secondary Sources Ayres, Lewis, ‘Measure, Number, and Weight’ in Allan Fitzgerald, Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopaedia (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999). Bestul, Thomas, ‘The meditation on Mary Magdalene of Alexander Nequam’, The Journal of Medieval Latin, 9 (1999), pp. 1–40.

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Bloom, Edward, ‘The Allegorical Principle’, Journal of English Literary History, 18.3 (September, 1951), pp. 163–190. Colish, Marcia L., ‘Christological Nihilianism in the Second Half of the Twelfth Century’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 63 (Janvier-Décembre, 1996), pp. 146–155. Dunning, Andrew, ‘Alexander Neckam’s Manuscripts and the Augustinian Canons of Oxford and Cirencester’, PhD Thesis, Centre for Medieval Studies: University of Toronto (2016). Dunning, Andrew, ‘Beryl Smalley to R.W. Hunt on the Significance of Alexander Neckam’, Notes and Queries, 64 (March, 2017), pp. 176–178. Emilsson, Eyjólfur Kjalar, Plotinus on Sense Perception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). English, Edward D., ed., Reading and Wisdom: The De Doctrina Christiana of Augustine in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, 1995). FitzGerald, Brian, ‘Medieval Theories of Education: Hugh of St Victor and John of Salisbury’, Oxford Review of Education, 35.5 (October, 2010), pp. 575–588. Gibson, Margaret, ‘The De Doctrina Christiana in the School of St. Victor’ in English, Reading and Wisdom, pp. 41–47. Grant, Edward, ed., A Source Book in Medieval Science (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974). Harkins, Franklin, ‘Secundus Augustinus: Hugh of St. Victor on Liberal Arts Study and Salvation’, Augustinian Studies, 37.2 (2006), pp. 219–246. Harrison, Carol, ‘Measure, Number and Weight in Saint Augustine’s Aesthetics’, Augustinianum, Annus xxviii, Fasciculus 3 (December, 1988), pp. 591–602. Hunt, Richard William, The Schools and the Cloister: The Life and Writings of Alexander Nequam (1157–1217), ed. and revised by Margaret Gibson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). Hunt, Richard William, The Schools and the Cloister: The Life and Writings of Alexander Nequam (1157–1217), ed. and revised by Margaret Gibson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). McDonough, Christopher, ed., Suppletio Defectuum: Alexander Neckam on plants, birds, and animals (Sismel: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 1999). McDonough, Christopher, ‘The Laus beatissime virginis and the Canon of Alexander Neckam’, Medieval Studies, 66 (2004), pp. 99–128. McEvoy, James, Robert Grosseteste (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Newhauser, Richard, ‘Peter of Limoges, Optics, and the Science of the Senses’, The Senses and Society, 5.1 (2010), pp. 28–44. Ogliari, Donato, ‘St Anselm’s “De Libertate Arbitrii” Revisited’, Divus Thomas, 92.3 (1989), pp. 259–272. Otten, Willemien, ‘Christianity’s Content: (Neo)Platonism in the Middle Ages, Its Theoretical and Theological Appeal’, Numen, 63 (2016), pp. 245–270.

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Roche, William James, ‘Measure, Number, and Weight in St Augustine’, The New Scholasticism, 15 (1941), pp. 350–376. Ross, Helen and Cornelis Plug, ‘The Celestial Illusions’ in their co-authored book The Mystery of the Moon Illusion: Exploring Size Perception (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 1–10. Ross, Helen, ‘The Sun/Moon Illusion in a Medieval Irish Astronomical Tract’, Vision, 3.39 (August, 2019). Russell, Josiah, ‘Alexander Neckam in England’, The English Historical Review, 47.186 (April, 1932), pp. 260–268. Russell, Josiah, ‘Hereford and Arabic Science in England about 1175–1200’, Isis, 18.1 (July, 1932), pp. 14–25. Slater, Laura, Art and Political Thought in Medieval England c. 1150–1350 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018). Smalley, Beryl, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964). Southern, Richard William, ‘From Schools to University’ in Jeremy Catto, ed., The History of the University of Oxford: Volume i, The Early Oxford Schools (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 1–36. Sweeney, Eileen C., ‘Hugh of St. Victor: The Augustinian Tradition of Sacred and Secular Reading Revised’ in English, Reading and Wisdom, pp. 61–83. Turner, Denys, ‘Allegory in Christian late antiquity’ in Rita Copeland, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Allegory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 71–82. Wallis, Richard, Neoplatonism (London: Duckworth & Company, 1972). Wedge, George, ‘Alexander Neckam’s De naturis rerum: A Study Together with Representative Passages in Translation’, University of Southern California PhD Thesis (1967). Wei, Ian, Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and the University, c. 1100– 1330 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Wenzel, Siegfried, ed., Fasciculus morum (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989). Zahora, Tomas, Nature, Virtue, and the Boundaries of Encyclopaedic Knowledge: The Tropological Universe of Alexander Neckam (1157–1217) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). Zinn Jr., Grover, ‘The Influence of Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana upon the Writings of Hugh of St. Victor’ in English, Reading and Wisdom, pp. 48–60.

part 3 Cur Deus Homo

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chapter 15

Anselm on Justice, Nature and Reason Roman Sources for Cur Deus Homo Bernard van Vreeswijk

1

Introduction

One of the mysteries of Anselm’s life is his education. Up to this moment we have no clear picture of it. However, the picture is becoming less foggy. The reason for this is not that we now have more knowledge about the content of his own education, but that we can better discern the intellectual and educational culture in which Anselm lived. Because of this, we can make some tentative conclusions about Anselm’s education and the sources of his thought. Thanks to the editions of the histories of Orderic Vitalis and William of Malmesbury, the studies of Richard Hunt, Charles Radding, Sally Vaughn and others, it is possible to give a sharper sketch of Anselm’s educational background.1 One possible insight that can be gained from this new knowledge about the culture in which Anselm lived, is the Roman background of his education and, as a result of this, of his thoughts in general. In this chapter we will explore some Roman works as sources for Cur Deus Homo (cdh), especially with respect to matters of justice, and make some remarks about how the study of these sources can clarify the meaning of this work.

1 Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, 6 vols., Marjorie Chibnall, ed. and trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969–1980); William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, vol. 1, Michael Winterbottom, ed. and trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Richard William Hunt, ‘Studies on Priscian in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries i’ in Richard William Hunt, The History of Grammar in the Middle Ages. Collected Papers, Geoffrey Leslie Bursill-Hall, ed. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1980), pp. 1–38; Charles Radding, Origins of Medieval Jurisprudence. Pavia and Bologna 850–1150 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); Charles Radding and Antonio Ciaralli, The Corpus Iuris Civilis in the Middle Ages. Manuscripts and Transmission from the Sixth Century to the Juristic Revival (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Sally N. Vaughn, ‘The Students of Bec’ in Giles E.M. Gasper and Ian Logan, eds., Saint Anselm of Canterbury and His Legacy (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2012), pp. 71–91; Sally N. Vaughn, ‘Anselm, Lanfranc, and the School of Bec: The Search for the Students of Bec’ in Marc A. Meyer, ed., The Culture of Christendom. Essays in Medieval History in Memory of Denis L.T. Bethell (London: Hambledon, 1993), pp. 155–182.

© Bernard van Vreeswijk, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_017

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Anselm’s master Lanfranc came from northern Italy in the first part of the eleventh century.2 As student and as teacher in Pavia, he would have used the important rhetorical textbooks of that time: De Inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium.3 According to Hunt, Lanfranc lectured on Rhetorica ad Herennium.4 De Inventione was written by Cicero and Rhetorica ad Herennium was supposed, however wrongly, to be written by him. Possibly, another rhetorical work of Cicero, Topics, was circulating, which we will use as a source in this chapter.5 As Radding has shown, the eleventh century was also a time of revival for the Corpus Iuris Civilis of Emperor Justinian i, although some parts of it have always been available.6 The revival took place in the juridical circles in which Lanfranc was taught and probably worked as a jurist himself.7 Parts of the corpus were used as educational material in these circles.8 There is no direct evidence that Anselm read the rhetorical books of our Romans. We know that Anselm had studied the liberal arts during his youth in Italy, but it is an open question if De Inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium 2 See for biographical information: Richard William Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Herbert E.J. Cowdrey, Lanfranc. Scholar, Monk, and Archbishop (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 3 Lanfranc left Pavia, his birth place, to study the liberal arts elsewhere. Afterwards he returned to Pavia. It is not known where he studied (Cowdrey, Lanfranc, 5–7; Ronald Witt, Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 144). Lanfranc had probably written a commentary on Rhetorica ad Herennium (Hunt, ‘Studies on Priscian’, pp. 13–14). For the manuscript tradition of both works, see Leighton Reynolds, ed., Texts and Transmission: a survey of Latin Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 98–100. See for the growing interest in these two works in general from the start of the twelfth century John O. Ward, Classical Rhetoric in the Middle Ages. The Medieval Rhetors and Their Art 400–1300, with Manuscript Survey to 1500 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), p. 59. 4 Hunt, ‘Studies on Priscian’, p. 14. 5 Although it was included among rhetorical works, Topics has a broader scope than rhetoric. It can be seen as a philosophical work as well (Reynolds, ed., Texts and Transmission, pp. 129– 130). Topics seems to have been studied to a far lesser extent. Ronald Witt does not mention it in relation to Lanfranc (Witt, Two Latin Cultures, pp. 139–150). John Ward does not refer to it in relation to northern Italy in the eleventh century (Ward, Classical Rhetoric, pp. 197–232). According to Witt, it was available in northern Italy in the tenth century (Witt, Two Latin Cultures, p. 94) and according to Ward it was used in northern France in the eleventh century (Ward, Classical Rhetoric, p. 189). That makes it probable it was circulating in northern Italy in this century as well. 6 Radding, Corpus, pp. 80–85. 7 Witt, Two Latin Cultures, pp. 142–144. 8 Radding, Corpus, p. 84.

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played a role in his teaching.9 Further, Anselm had studied in Avranches after he left Italy for France, but it is again an open question which books were used in teaching in this place.10 Furthermore, there are no signs that the previously mentioned books were available in the monastery of Bec. However, it is not difficult to conceive that Lanfranc did use the content of such handbooks for his teaching, especially because Lanfranc’s school seemed to be attractive for a secular career. That would not be the case if Lanfranc only taught religion and not also the secular arts.11 Moreover, according to William Kynan-Wilson, ‘William of Malmesbury mentions four figures as supreme examples of learning and eloquence within the Latin world, Cicero, Bede, Lanfranc, Anselm’.12 A relatively short time after Lanfranc and Anselm, Cicero was heralded as supreme example of learning, and then also as an authority figure like Lanfranc and Anselm. In his Ecclesiastical History, Orderic Vitalis writes: ‘By intellect and learning Lanfranc would have won the applause of (…) Cicero in rhetoric’.13 So, Cicero’s rhetoric was seen as a benchmark by at least two authors in the Norman area. We have to reckon with the possibility that he was seen as such by Lanfranc and Anselm as well, and that he was an important source of their intellectual development, especially with respect to rhetoric. Regarding Anselm’s acquaintance with the Corpus Iuris Civilis, we can be less certain of the evidence, but it is very plausible that the juridical notions, in any case those of the Institutes—the first part of the corpus—were part of Lanfranc’s thought and that they were transmitted to Anselm, be it perhaps only orally. So far, we have looked at the education of Anselm as a possible means by which he came to know the thoughts of our Romans (meaning, the authors of the three aforementioned books). There is another part of Anselm’s life we can

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va i.2, p. 5; i.4, p. 6. Southern, Saint Anselm, p. 12. Vaughn, ‘Anselm, Lanfranc, and the School of Bec’, pp. 169–170; Vaughn, ‘The Students of Bec’, p. 78. It is remarkable that in the abbey of St. Alban De Inventione was copied early in the twelfth century. This monastery had close connections with the abbey of Canterbury. So, the existence of a copy of De Inventione in St. Alban could be a sign that it was circulating in Canterbury and also in Bec (Richard Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c. 1066–1130) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 17, 107). According to the picture of the circulation of De Inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium as Ward depicts this, it is very probable that Lanfranc and Anselm used these books in the classroom of Bec (John O. Ward, Ciceronian Rhetoric in Treatise, Scholion and Commentary (Turnhout: Brepols 1995), pp. 134–137; Ward, Classical Rhetoric, p. 297). William Kynan-Wilson, ‘Roman Identity in William of Malmesbury’s Historical Writings’ in Rodney M. Thomson, Emily Dolmans and Emily A. Winkler, eds., Discovering William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2017), pp. 81–91. Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History ii, iv, p. 250.

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investigate, namely his travels—in particular his journey through Italy in the last decade of the eleventh century. This period of his life is marked by his writing cdh and its being the time of the continuing revival of jurisprudence and of a growing interest in the Corpus Iuris Civilis. In Monte Cassino, the headquarters of the Benedictine Order to which Anselm belonged and which was in the neighbourhood of Capua, where Anselm wrote cdh, Cicero’s Topics was copied in the eleventh century.14 Anselm probably learned much from the scholars he met and from the books he might have consulted in the abbeys he visited.15 However, direct evidence is not available. It cannot be denied that there are other moments between his education and his traveling in Italy during which he might have become acquainted with the works of our Romans.16 But the education of Lanfranc and Anselm stands out as the channel by which the work of our Romans might have become known to them, as the clearest and most explicit evidence indicates this.

3

Resemblances

It is fascinating that some important notions, such as the definition of justice, the existence of a kind of natural law, the role of natural reason with respect to law in Ciceronian and Justinianian works resemble these notions in the works of Anselm.17 We will show whether and how Anselm might have used 14 15

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Reynolds, ed., Texts and Transmissions, p. 129. See for Anselm’s interest in copying books and library building see Jenny Weston, ‘Manuscripts and Book Production at Le Bec’ in Benjamin Pohl and Laura L. Gathagan, eds., A Companion to the Abbey of Le Bec in the Central Middle Ages (11th–13th Centuries) (Leiden: Brill 2018), pp. 144–170. For Anselm abiding in monasteries see for example va, ii.25, pp. 100–101; ii.28, pp. 103–104. There is, for example, another possible line along which De Inventione and Ad Herennium became available to Anselm. At the end of the eleventh century, those works, especially De Inventione, had been much glossed in northern France and the Rhineland (Ward, Ciceronian Rhetoric, p. 136). They have followed the way from northern Italy via Germany to northern France, as Ward contends (John O. Ward, ‘Cicero’s De Inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium’ in Virginia Cox and John O. Ward, eds., The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2011), p. 27). The perception of Cicero, not being a philosopher, could have been the reason that he is not seen as a possible source for Anselm’s thoughts. See Jed Atkins, Cicero on Politics and the Limits of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 7. A second reason could be the contemporary low estimation of De Inventione and Ad Herennium. Their importance in the early Middle Ages and that they could be a source for Anselm is overlooked (Ward, Classical Rhetoric, p. 45). Another reason could be that for Cicero rhetoric was an instrument for invention and persuasion of truth, and not only a way of good

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or reworked notions of these Roman works in cdh, and how they could shed light on Anselm’s own approach. In addition, we can argue that similarities can be discerned between the way of arguing taught in the rhetorical works of our Romans and the way Anselm does so in cdh. In this chapter, we will somewhat explore these similarities as well. In doing so, we can also make a more or less strong case for Anselm’s acquaintance with these works and see how they shed light on Anselm’s thinking with respect to matters of justice.

4

The Definition of Justice

First, we look at the definition of justice in the works of our Romans. They work with the following definition of justice: giving each his due.18 In earlier research on Proslogion and De Veritate (dv), I have shown that Anselm develops other definitions than this one.19 The text of cdh shows that he knows this definition. There is one clear reminiscence of it: he uses the expression ‘rendering

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presentation of speech, as it was used from the Middle Ages onward (Ward, Classical Rhetoric, p. 71). So, it is not strange that scholars did not give attention to Cicero’s rhetoric as a source for Anselm’s view on rationality. [Cicero?], Rhetorica ad Herennium, Harry Caplan, trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1954), iii.ii.3, p. 162. See also Justinianus, Corpus Iuris Civilis: Institutes i.1.0, in Corpus Iuris Civilis i. Instituten, Tekst en vertaling, 2nd ed., Johannes E. Spruit et al., trans. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008). Bernard J.D. van Vreeswijk, ‘Interpreting Anselm’s thought about justice: dealing with loose ends’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 69 (2016), pp. 417–431. In the first parts of the Digests of the Corpus Iuris Civilis, the task of lawyers is considered to be bringing about justice by rewarding the good. Perhaps we hear an echo of this in Proslogion where Anselm defines justice as rewarding good and bad, before he searches for another, more fitting definition. In Anselm’s definition of justice in dv as preserving a right will for its own sake, we can hear an echo of the definition of justice in Digestes 1.1.10: ‘Iustitia est constans et perpetua voluntas ius suum cuique tribuens’. Note that as with respect to Cicero Anselm only partially uses the definition. It is exactly the phrase ‘suum cuique tribuens’ he is leaving aside. For Digestes see Corpus Iuris Civilis ii. Digestes i–x, Tekst en vertaling, Johannes E. Spruit et al., trans. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994). It is fascinating that Cicero in his Laws works with a view of justice as seeking justice for its own: ‘quodsi amicitia per se colenda est, societas quoque hominum et aequalitas et iustitia per se expetanda; quod ni ita est, omnino iustitia nulla est; id enim iniustissimum ipsum est, iustitia mercedem quarere’ (Cicero, De Re Publica, De Legibus, Cato Maior De Senectute, Laelius de Amicitia, Jonathan G.F. Powell, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), i.49). This likens Anselm’s definition in dv of justice as the rectitude of will, preserved for its own sake: ‘iustitia igitur est rectitudo voluntatis propter se servata’ (dv12 (aoo, i.194.26)).

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someone his due’, without indicating that this is the essence of justice.20 We can state that Anselm knew this Ciceronian definition, but that he chose not to use it. It would have been very easy to use the Ciceronian definition to prove that God’s due honour has to be returned. But the fact that Anselm is not doing this is a clear indication that the Ciceronian definition did not work for him. It is likely that this definition did not fit his theological purposes in that it put emphasis on the deeds and not on the right intention, as stated in dv12, or in that he felt it did not do justice to the Scriptures. So, we suggest, although our Roman works were sources Anselm used for a definition of justice, he did not fully agree with them. In Rhetorica ad Herennium the definition of giving each his right due is elaborated on with the phrase ‘according to someone’s dignity’.21 According to the author of this book, dignity matters when we are dealing with justice. The author does not elaborate on this, but we can suppose that he means that someone with a large public authority deserves more respect than someone without any public authority. Although Anselm uses the definition in a marginal way, the idea that dignity matters with respect to doing justice plays a very important role in cdh. Because of God’s dignity as the greatest of all, injustice done to him is the greatest conceivable injury.22 So, in the works of Anselm we see familiarity with some notions of Cicero with respect to justice, for example his definition of ‘justice as giving each his due’ and this ‘according to someone’s dignity’. So, we have to reckon with the possibility that the Ciceronian and Justinian definitions of justice were sources for Anselm’s thoughts about the meaning of justice, but only in the sense that they were the background from which he developed his own views.

5

The Existence of a Kind of Natural Law

Anselm’s project of seeking why God became human by only using reason rests on the assumption that non-Christians and Christians share the same principles of justice. Both the works of Cicero and the Codex Justinianus contend this. They uphold the view that all human people share some important notions of justice, because nature teaches us them or has implanted them

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cdhi.11 (aoo, ii.68.7–8,19–21). [Cicero?], Rhetorica ad Herennium, iii.3, p. 162: ‘Iustitia est aequitas ius uni cuique rei tribuens pro dignitate cuiusque’. cdhi.13 (aoo, ii.71.15–17): ‘Si deo nihil maius aut melius, nihil iustius quam honorem illius servat in rerum dispositione summa iustitia, quae non est aliud quam ipse deus’.

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in us.23 Some citations from Cicero’s De Inventione are especially telling. For example: ‘The law of nature is something which is implanted in us not by opinion, but by a kind of natural instinct; it includes religion, duty, gratitude, revenge, reverence, and truth’.24 Two of the things, which the law of nature teaches us, have special importance for the topic of this chapter, namely revenge and reverence. Cicero explains revenge as: ‘The act through which by defending or avenging we repel violence and insult from ourselves and from those who ought to be dear to us, and by which we punish offences’.25 Reverence he explains as: ‘The act by which we show respect to and cherish our superiors in age or wisdom or honour or any high position’.26 The topics which Cicero assigns to natural law and on which all humans agree, such as honouring people in a higher position, the need for taking revenge or inflicting punishment, play an important role in cdh. Anselm takes it for granted that we owe reverence to our Creator, the Being in the highest position of all.27 He also takes for granted that offences have to be dealt with: satisfaction or punishment is needed. Anselm does not argue in favour of this axiom. He only discusses whether God can forgo the prescribed satisfaction or punishment.28 So, Cicero could have been the source for Anselm’s idea that reverence and revenge are general human notions and, more broadly, that Christians and non-Christians share these basic principles about justice.29 In his own time, Anselm was right in his supposition that non-Christians shared these principles: Cicero was a witness. One very important principle in the argument of cdh is not mentioned in the works of our Romans, namely that God, or the gods, safeguards justice. If

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Institutes 1.2: ‘Ius naturale est, quod natura omnia animalia docuit’; Digestes 1.1.3: ‘Ius naturale est, quod natura omnia animalia docuit’. For citations of Cicero, see below. Cicero, De Inventione ii.xxii.65, in On Invention, Best Kind of Orator, Topics, Harry Mortimer Hubbell, ed. and trans. (Cambridge MA.: Harvard University Press, 1949), pp. 1–346, at p. 230: ‘ac naturae quidem ius esse, quod nobis non opinio, sed quaedam innata vis adferat, ut religionem, pietatem, gratiam, vindicationem, observantiam, veritatem’. Cicero, De Inventione ii.xxii.66, p. 230: ‘(…) vindicationem, per quam vim et contumeliam defendendo aut ulciscendo propulsamus a nobis et nostris, qui nobis cari esse debent, et per quam peccata punimur’. Cicero, De Inventione ii.xxii.66, p. 230: ‘(…) observantiam, per quam aetate aut sapientia aut honore aut aliqua dignitate antecedentes veremur et colimus’. cdhi.11 (aoo, ii.68.12); cdhi.13 (aoo, ii.71.7–8). cdhi.12 (aoo, ii.69–71). It is of course the question whether we can see the Corpus Iuris Civilis as a gentile text. Its first words are: ‘In nomine Domini nostri Jesu Christi’ (Institutes i.1.0). But we can suppose that its legal views were shared by Christians and non-Christians alike, because it was part of a long Roman tradition.

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this principle is not shared by Christians and non-Christians alike, the argument of Anselm will be void. There is one book by Cicero, De Natura Deorum, in which Cicero, or at least pagans, maintains that the gods take care of this world, including its beauty and justice.30 This book seems not to have widely circulated in the eleventh century, but it appears to have been copied in this century in the previously-mentioned abbey of Monte Cassino.31 It is an interesting hypothesis that De Natura Deorum is one of the sources for Anselm’s contention that gentiles also shared the principle that God or the gods maintains the beautiful and righteous order of the world. It is evident that Jews and Muslims, who could also have been included in Anselm’s term of ‘unbelievers’ (‘infideles’) for non-Christians, would have shared this principle.

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Cicero, De Natura Deorum; Academica, revised edition, Harris Rackham, trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1951), ii.xxxi.79, p. 198. According to John Wynne, the question if the gods care for us, even is the central question of De Natura Deorum, which Cicero as a skeptic would like to affirm (John Wynne, Cicero on the Philosophy of Religion. On the Nature of the Gods and On Divination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 60, 271, 276). Reynolds, ed., Texts and Transmission, p. 127. According to Francis Newton, as well as De Natura Deorum, Cicero’s De Legibus was also present at Monte Cassino (Francis Newton, The Scriptorium and Library at Monte Cassino, 1058–1105 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 97). For the high esteem of Rome and her laws and by implication for Cicero as jurist in Monte Cassino, see Francesco Lo Monaco, ‘Cicerone nella tradizione culturale beneventano-cassinese tra i secoli ix e xii. Linee per un’indagine’, Ciceroniana. Rivista di studi ciceroniani, nuova serie 11 (2000), Atti del xi colloquium tullianum. 26– 28 april 1999, pp. 107–110. Further research can be shed light if De Legibus was also one of the sources for Anselm’s thinking in Cur Deus Homo. Another interesting topic for further research is the possible influence of Pope Urban ii, to whom Anselm dedicated Cur Deus Homo, on (some of) Anselm’s thoughts in this book. Urban ii met Anselm during the time of writing and was educated in northern France, where copies of De Natura Deorum circulated (va, ii.30, p. 107; va, ii.33, pp. 110–111; Alfons Becker, Papst Urban ii. (1088–1099), Teil i. Herkunft und Kirchliche Laufbahn. Der Papst und die lateinische Christenheit (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1964), pp. 31–32; Reynolds, ed., Texts and Transmission, p. 125). Urban’s style of thinking is in some ways comparable with Anselm’s in Cur Deus Homo. Becker writes about the thought of Urban; ‘Überhaupt tritt bei ihm viel gründsatszlich Neues nicht hervor, es handelt sich vielmehr um eine Kontinuität mit spürbar anderer Akzentuierung, eigenem anderen Stil, mit einem starken Zug zum Rationalen, Pragmatischen, zum institutionellen und juridischen Denken’. (Alfons Becker, Papst Urban ii. (1088–1099), Teil 3. Ideen, Institutionen und Praxis eines päpstlichen regimen universale (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung 2012), pp. 4–5).

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The Role of Reason with Respect to Law

The aim of cdh to demonstrate the necessity of the incarnation by reasoning alone does not only rest on the assumption that people share some innate notions of justice. It also depends on the assumption that justice is rational, which means that by using reason you can derive what is right or not right in specific situations from the principles of justice. The assumption that justice is rational is also evident in our Roman works. In the Institutes it is said that natural reason brings about laws, implying that law and justice are rational.32 In the Digests it is said that nature teaches what is right.33 When we assume that teaching presupposes rationality in this case, the Digests also show that justice is rational. Furthermore, in De Inventione Cicero makes a fascinating remark about the use of reason. ‘Sometimes’, he writes, ‘there is a question which does not turn on a written document. Then we have a case of general reasoning and the question turns on logical proof’.34 This remark also implies that justice is rational. This last statement is remarkable in another aspect as well, because it is similar to the approach Anselm takes in cdh. The question why it was necessary that God became human and has to suffer and to die is an answer not, or not explicitly, found in a written text, in this case Scripture. So, the dispute if God has to become human and to suffer or not, which I think is the core question and which can be seen as a kind of a juridical dispute, cannot be settled on the basis of a written document. The common opinion of New Testament scholars of our days is exactly this. The New Testament does not give an exact rationale of how the sacrifice of Christ works.35 The ‘why’ of the sacrifice of Christ, why it was necessary, is a question Anselm could not answer on the basis of a written document. To solve it, Anselm had to take his refuge to reason, as Cicero

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Institutes i.2.1.: ‘Quod vero naturalis ratio inter omnes homines constituit, id apud omnes populos peraeque custoditur vocaturque ius gentium, quasi quo iure omnes gentes utuntur’. See also for the same remark Digestes 1.1.9. Digestes i.1.3: ‘Ius nature est, quod natura omnia animalia docuit’. See also Institutes 1.1.3: ‘Iuris praecepta sunt haec: honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere’. Not harming and giving everyone his due are two important aspects of the concept of satisfaction. Cicero, De Inventione i.xiii.18, p. 36: ‘Ratio est autem, cum omnis quaestio non in scriptione, sed in aliqua argumentatione consistit’. Gordon Fee, ‘Paul and the Metaphors for Salvation: Some Reflections on Pauline Soteriology’ in Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall and Gerald O’Collins, eds., The Redemption: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Christ as Redeemer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 48.

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advised. Besides the fact that Christians were not able to solve this question based on any written text, there were no common scriptures to use for the dispute with the non-Christians either. So, it is possible that Anselm appropriated the views of our Roman works on natural justice and on reason and used them in cdh.

7

How Reason Works

For Anselm and our Romans, justice is rational and by using reason you can discover what is right or not right in a specific situation. But how does reason work? Cicero could be a source for Anselm’s thoughts on reason and how reasoning works. Cicero defines an argument as a reason giving certainty (‘fidem’) to a dubious matter.36 This definition does not appear in Anselm’s works. His master Lanfranc appears to be acquainted with this definition in De Corpore et Sanguine Domini.37 But in the works of Anselm we only find echoes of this definition. For Anselm, the aim of an argument is to defend something from doubt.38 Note that he, in contrast to Cicero, does not speak of taking doubt away. He speaks about defending from doubt. We can suppose that from the viewpoint of Anselm, a believer’s certainty is the starting point. It is not reason which has to lead to faith. On the contrary, reason aids Christians in avoiding the doubting of the faith. They already firmly believe that God has become human, so, the argumentation in cdh aims to corroborate this faith and to keep it free from doubt. With respect to non-Christians, however, the original Cicero-

36

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Cicero, Topica ii.8, in On Invention, Best Kind of Orator, Topics, Harry Mortimer Hubbell, ed. and trans. (Cambridge MA.: Harvard University Press, 1949), pp. 382–460, at p. 386: ‘Itaque licet definiri locum esse argumenti sedem, argumentum autem rationem quae rei dubiae faciens fidem’. Boethius’ commentary on Cicero’s Topics could also be the source of this definition, see Toivo Holopainen, Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century (Leiden: Brill, 1996), p. 54. The thoughts of Topica could have come to Anselm by Boethius’ commentary or perhaps his own De Topica Differentiis, which was circulating widely in the eleventh century. See for the circulation of Boethius’ works: Ann Collins, Teacher in Faith and Virtue. Lanfranc of Bec’s Commentary on Saint Paul (Leiden: Brill 2007), p. 21; Reynolds, ed., Texts and Transmission, pp. 128–130. Holopainen, Dialectic and Theology, p. 54, who cites Lanfranc, De Corpore et Sanguine Domini in pl 150, 417C. cdhi.24 (aoo, ii.94.21–22): ‘Sive namque uno sive pluribus argumentis veritas inexpugnabiliter monstretur, aequaliter ab omni dubitatione defenditur’; cdhi.25 (aoo, ii.96.6– 7): ‘Non ad hoc veni ut auferas mihi fidei dubitationem, sed ut ostendas mihi certitudinis meae rationem’.

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nian definition could have led him to think that non-Christians can be led to faith by reason alone. How does the Ciceronian definition elucidate Anselm’s view on the functioning of reason? According to the definition, arguments produce belief. Arguments do something in the mind, which persuades the mind of the truth of something. What Cicero exactly means by this is not clear to me, but it does offer some clues to Anselm’s epistemology, in two ways. First, Anselm can tell us that arguments will not always work: they do not always suffice.39 The question is why. Perhaps he knows that some arguments are not good enough. They do not produce certainty in the mind. They are not forceful enough. Second, the wording of the definition shed light on the way he speaks about human intelligence. It is slow and it needs God’s help.40 It is like a badly working machine. It is as though you put fuel in a machine, but it does not produce the power it is supposed to produce because it is partly out of order, for example because the fuel pipes are dirty. Sometimes the machine gives some results, sometimes it does not, and sometimes the result is less than expected. So, you work with it, you achieve something, but not everything. This means that an argument can be good enough in itself, but because the human mind is distorted, it cannot process the argument well. For example, it might not grasp the force of the argument. To speculate somewhat: Anselm does not often speak about the illumination of the mind, and in cdh he does not mention it at all. The reason could be that human reason does not need as much illumination as it does repair. Illuminating a badly working instrument does not help; it has to be repaired. Besides, Anselm could have learned from Cicero that rhetoric as the art of persuasion aims at giving insight into the rationality of things. For Cicero, rhetoric was a way of elucidating the rationality of the world. It was not only a way to learn to speak in a fine and pleasing way. It was meant to persuade people of the rationality of a particular way of living. Rhetoric cannot exist without the study of philosophy and without wisdom. Therefore, Cicero was eager to stress that rhetoric has to be used in this way and not for misleading people.41 Because of Cicero’s view on the significance of rhetoric for rational proof, his

39 40 41

cdhi.24 (aoo, ii.94.19–20): ‘Verumtamen, si vel una de omnibus quas posui inexpugnabili veritate roboratur, sufficere debet’. cdhii.26 (aoo, ii.122.19–21). Cicero, De Inventione, i.ii.3, pp. 6–8. In this passage, Cicero makes clear that rhetoric has to be used in undeveloped societies in order to persuade people to a rational way of living. In the following paragraphs he makes clear that rhetoric has to be permanently used to defend society against malicious people using rhetoric.

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view on the functioning of reason could have been all the more important for Anselm in his project ‘sola ratione’.

8

The Way of Arguing

In this chapter I do not survey in depth the way Anselm uses Cicero’s rhetorical advice. I only make a few suggestions. First, the way Anselm proceeds in cdh is more like a pragmatical juridical plea, which uses different arguments or which discusses a case from different angles in the hope that at least one of them is sufficient, than a straight-forward analysis of a philosophical problem.42 For instance, this can be seen in the way Anselm argues for the impossibility of God’s forgiving without satisfaction.43 He mentions four very loosely connected arguments. De Inventione could have set Anselm on this path. In chapter i.vii, Cicero writes that the first part of rhetorica is the ‘invention’. By this Cicero means the discovery of the arguments which can be used to persuade people in a certain case.44 This suggests that Cicero does not mean an argumentation by way of logical deduction from first principles, but a compilation of different arguments, not necessarily connected to each other. Anselm seems to support such an argumentation by saying that it is sufficient if one of the many arguments he gives will succeed. By means of this, he implies that the arguments are not indissolubly connected. Moreover, from the four arguments Anselm mentions, the first and the last seem to be the strongest. To put the strongest first and last is an advice given in Rhetorica ad Herennium.45 We will explore Cicero’s advice on the role of definition a little further in order to see what he could have taught Anselm about definition. We mention two passages in Ad Herennium which make clear how important definitions are for the outcome of a juridical debate. The first passage is about how the description of an act determines whether it is a crime or not, considering the definition of this crime.46 The second passage shows how you can adapt the definition of 42

43 44 45 46

See for the use of rhetoric to arise faith in truth: Mary Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 41–44. She refers to Myles Fredric Burnyeat, ‘Enthymeme: Aristotle on the Rationality of Rhetoric’ in Amélie O. Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 88– 115. cdhi.12 (aoo, ii.69.8–30); cdhi.13 (aoo, ii.71.7–26). Cicero, De Inventione i.vii.9, p. 18: ‘Inventio est excogitatio rerum verarum aut veri similium quae causam probabilem reddant’. [Cicero?], Rhetorica ad Herennium iii.x.18, p. 188. [Cicero?], Rhetorica ad Herennium, i.xii.21, p. 38.

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an act to fit your purpose.47 These passages could have made Anselm aware of the importance of definition in a debate and it could have made him take the time to define what he meant by satisfaction. Therefore, it can be suggested that Anselm is doing exactly what is mentioned in the second passage. It is remarkable that the only time he defines something, he defines satisfaction. It seems that he had made a definition of the term satisfaction on his own. Not a totally new one, that is not the advice given in Rhetorica ad Herennium, but an adapted one. He defines it as the obligation resting on the offender to set right his wrong, to restore the damage he has done. In doing so, he takes it out of the context of wrath, in which it played an important role in secular society, and he uses satisfaction as a description for the work of Christ, avoiding the picture of a wrathful God. And most importantly, this way of defining satisfaction makes it a matter of rational justice. He can show by reason that forgiveness cannot go without satisfaction. So, it is possible that he created a specific definition of satisfaction to be able to make the point he wants to make in cdh.48 With this last remark, our exploration of the works of some Romans as sources for cdh comes to an end. These Roman works could be an important direct source, but our conclusions are tentative. The notions we mentioned could have come indirectly from these sources or from other Roman sources. We presently list some works by which Ciceronian notions could have indirectly come to be known to Anselm. We have to look, for example, at Augustine’s works, of which it makes sense to suppose that a large part of them was present in Bec’s library.49 Another candidate for a possible resource is Ambrose’s De Officiis, a commentary on Cicero’s De Officiis, which was circulating in any case in twelfth-century England.50 For both Ambrose and Augustine, Cicero was an important author, albeit that De Inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium were not placed in high esteem at the time.51 A last suggestion of a source with Ciceronian notions are Boethius’ works De Differentiis Topicis and Commentarius in Topicis Ciceronis. Especially the last work, as a direct or indirect source, could shed more light on what Anselm did in defining satisfaction, how he thought reason worked and what he meant by arguments, 47 48 49 50 51

[Cicero?], Rhetorica ad Herennium, ii.xii.17, pp. 86–88. The way Anselm proceeds in defining truth and justice in dv strongly resembles Cicero’s Topica ii.9, p. 388; v.27-vi.29, pp. 398–402. Giles E.M. Gasper, Anselm of Canterbury and his Theological Inheritance (Aldershot: Ashgate 2004), p. 207. Thanks to Marcia Colish who set me on the track of Ambrose as a possible source for Anselm. See the introduction of Cicero, On Obligations, Patrick Gerard Walsh, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. xxxiv–xlvii.

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especially necessary arguments.52 But researching this goes beyond the scope of the present research.

9

Conclusion

We conclude that some Roman works, namely De Inventione, Rhetorica ad Herennium, Topica and the Codex Justinianus are possibly part of the background of Anselm’s thought. In the case of defining justice, Anselm seems to purposefully depart from the Ciceronian definition. The way that the Romans speak about natural and rational justice fits into Anselm’s theology, and makes them good candidates as sources for Anselm’s thoughts on justice, nature and reason. They probably set him on the path of a kind of jurisprudence sola ratione. They clearly show that Anselm’s belief in common ground between Christian and non-Christians was justified on the basis of books written by a gentile. The nonChristians in cdh remain anonymous, but Cicero could have been one of them. Finally, Anselm’s definition of satisfaction can be partly construed by himself, encouraged to do so by Rhetorica ad Herennium, to make this concept optimally suitable to demonstrate why God became human. So, our Roman works could be helpful resources in clarifying Anselm’s answer to the question: Cur Deus Homo?

Bibliography Primary Sources Cicero, On Invention, Best Kind of Orator, Topics, Harry Mortimer Hubbell, ed. and trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1949). Cicero, De Natura Deorum; Academica, revised edition, Harris Rackham, trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1951). Cicero, On Obligations, Patrick Gerard Walsh, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Cicero, De Re Publica, De Legibus, Cato Maior De Senectute, Laelius de Amicitia, Jonathan G.F. Powell, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). [Cicero?], Rhetorica Ad Herennium, Harry Caplan, trans. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1954). 52

Holopainen, Dialectic and Theology, p. 136; Lothar Steiger, ‘Contexe syllogismos. Über die Kunst und Bedeutung der Topik bei Anselm’ in Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., Analecta Anselmiana 1 (Frankfurt: Minerva, 1969), pp. 107–143.

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Corpus Iuris Civilis i. Instituten, Tekst en vertaling, 2nd ed., Johannes E. Spruit et al., trans. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008). Corpus Iuris Civilis ii. Digesten i–x, Tekst en vertaling, Johannes E. Spruit et al., trans. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994). Eadmer of Canterbury, Vita Sancti Anselmi, Richard William Southern, ed., The Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, 6 vols., Marjorie Chibnall, ed. and trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969–1980). S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961); reprinted in two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968). William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, vol. 1, Michael Winterbottom, ed. and trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Secondary Sources Atkins, Jed, Cicero on Politics and the Limits of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Becker, Alfons, Papst Urban ii. (1088–1099), Teil i. Herkunft und Kirchliche Laufbahn. Der Papst und die lateinische Christenheit (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1964). Becker, Alfons, Papst Urban ii. (1088–1099), Teil 3. Ideen, Institutionen und Praxis eines päpstlichen regimen universale (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung 2012). Burnyeat, Myles Fredric, ‘Enthymeme: Aristotle on the Rationality of Rhetoric’ in Amélie O. Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric (Berkeley: University of California Press 1996), pp. 88–115. Carruthers, Mary, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Collins, Ann, Teacher in Faith and Virtue. Lanfranc of Bec’s Commentary on Saint Paul (Leiden: Brill 2007). Cowdrey, Herbert E.J., Lanfranc. Scholar, Monk, and Archbishop (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Fee, Gordon, ‘Paul and the Metaphors for Salvation: Some Reflections on Pauline Soteriology’, in Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall and Gerald O’Collins, eds., The Redemption: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Christ as Redeemer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 43–67. Gameson, Richard, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c. 1066–1130) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Gasper, Giles E.M., Anselm of Canterbury and his Theological Inheritance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). Holopainen, Toivo, Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century (Leiden: Brill, 1996). Hunt, Richard William, ‘Studies on Priscian in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries i’ in

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Richard William Hunt, The History of Grammar in the Middle Ages. Collected Papers, Geoffrey Leslie Bursill-Hall, ed. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1980), pp. 1–38. Kynan-Wilson, William, ‘Roman Identity in William of Malmesbury’s Historical Writings’ in Rodney M. Thomson, Emily Dolmans and Emily A. Winkler, eds., Discovering William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2017), pp. 81–91. Lo Monaco, Francesco, ‘Cicerone nella tradizione culturale beneventano-cassinese tra i secoli ix e xii. Linee per un’indagine’, Ciceroniana. Rivista di studi ciceroniani, nuova serie 11 (2000), Atti del xi colloquium tullianum. 26–28 april 1999, pp. 95–119. Newton, Francis, The Scriptorium and Library at Monte Cassino, 1058–1105 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Radding, Charles, Origins of Medieval Jurisprudence. Pavia and Bologna 850–1150 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). Radding, Charles, and Antonio Ciaralli, The Corpus Iuris Civilis in the Middle Ages. Manuscripts and Transmissions from the Sixth Century to the Juristic Revival (Leiden: Brill, 2007). Reynolds, Leighton, ed., Texts and transmission: a survey of the Latin classics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). Southern, Richard William, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Steiger, Lothar, ‘Contexe syllogismos. Über die Kunst und Bedeutung der Topik bei Anselm’ in Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., Analecta Anselmiana 1 (Frankfurt: Minerva, 1969). van Vreeswijk, Bernard J.D., ‘Interpreting Anselm’s thought about justice: dealing with loose ends’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 69 (2016), pp. 417–431. Vaughn, Sally N., ‘Anselm, Lanfranc, and the School of Bec: The Search for the Students of Bec’ in Marc A. Meyer, ed., The Culture of Christendom: Essays in Medieval History in Memory of Denis L.T. Bethell (London: Hambledon, 1993), pp. 155–182. Vaughn, Sally N., ‘The Students of Bec’ in Giles E.M. Gasper and Ian Logan, eds., Saint Anselm of Canterbury and His Legacy (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012), pp. 71–91. Ward, John O., Ciceronian Rhetoric in Treatise, Scholion and Commentary (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995). Ward, John O., ‘Cicero’s De Inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium’ in Virginia Cox and John O. Ward, eds., The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 3–75. Ward, John O., Classical Rhetoric in the Middle Ages. The Medieval Rhetors and Their Art 400–1300, with Manuscript Survey to 1500 (Leiden: Brill, 2019). Weston, Jenny, ‘Manuscripts and Book Production at Le Bec’ in Benjamin Pohl and Laura L. Gathagan, eds., A Companion to the Abbey of Le Bec in the Central Middle Ages (11th–13th Centuries) (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 144–170.

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Witt, Ronald, Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Wynne, John, Cicero on the Philosophy of Religion. On the Nature of the Gods and On Divination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

chapter 16

Cur Mundi Renovatio Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo Revisited Maria Leonor Xavier

Cur Deus Homo (cdh) is the title of a work concluded by Saint Anselm in 1098, a work that is part of his consistent investigation on the reasons for faith, initiated about twenty years before, in his first work, the Monologion (M), written in 1076. Indeed, beyond the apologetic appeal that may have circumstantially motivated his works, such as cdh,1 the search for rationality is an intrinsic and unalienable dimension of Anselm’s spirituality, insofar as, between faith and face-to-face vision, understanding is the means by which human being approximate to such a vision.2 But his first work of theological meditation still did not approach the rationality of a faith in Christ as God-made-man. Now, it is this grand topic of Anselm’s Christian confession that constitutes the originating interrogation of the work, cdh: ‘for what reason or by what necessity did God become a man and by his death, as we believe and confess, restored life to the world?’3 However, cdh was not considered favourably by 20th century Christian theologians. This was due to a doctrine espoused by this work, the doctrine of satisfaction, according to which the sacrifice of God-man at the cross took place in order to satisfy the honour of God, which had been offended by man’s fall in sin. This doctrine rejected God’s love for man as a determining cause for the divine intervention of salvation and hence became the focus of criticism 1 A question posed by non-believers with the aim of putting to ridicule the faith of believers ‘Quam quaestionem solent et infideles nobis simplicitatem Christianam quasi fatuam deridentes obicere, et fideles multi in corde versare’. cdhi.1 (aoo, ii.47–48). 2 Anselm interprets the famous passage in Is. 7, 9 as follows: ‘Et ut alia taceam quibus sacra pagina nos ad investigandam rationem invitat: ubi dicit: “nisi credideritis, non intelligetis”, aperte nos monet intentionem ad intellectum extendere, cum docet qualiter ad illum debeamus proficere. Denique quoniam inter fidem et speciem intellectum quem in hac vita capimus esse medium intelligo: quanto aliquis ad illum proficit, tanto eum propinquare speciei, ad quam omnes anhelamus, existimo’. Commendatio operis ad Urbanum Papam ii (aoo, ii.40.7–12). 3 ‘Qua scilicet ratione vel necessitate deus homo factus sit, et morte sua, sicut credimus et confitemur, mundo vitam reddiderit’. cdhi.1 (aoo, ii.48.2–4). All translations are my own unless otherwise stated.

© Maria Leonor Xavier, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_018

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of Anselm’s soteriology. Despite the esteem that great 20th century theologians, such as Hans Urs von Balthasar,4 devoted to Saint Anselm’s theological legacy, his work cdh became greatly unloved after Victor Aulen’s and Louis Bouyer’s criticisms.5 Michel Corbin, director of the French modern edition of Saint Anselm’s works, undertakes a retrospective of the controversy in his long introduction to the text of cdh.6 Anselm’s doctrine of satisfaction became especially controversial in 20th century theology after the historical experience of Nazism and the 2nd World War, which led one to think of the need to forgive in the face of irreparable harm.7 In 1998, on the occasion of the 900th anniversary of cdh, a congress gathering a group of specialists and scholars on the thought and life of Saint Anselm, not only theologians but philosophers and historians of philosophy, took place in Rome. This brought about a reconsideration, undertaken with scientific objectivity and encompassing different perspectives that succeeded to some extent in lessening the negative historical memory of the work.8 It was, therefore, a privileged occasion to acknowledge that the reach of cdh is much greater than that of its doctrine of satisfaction, insofar as this doctrine, though pertaining to the objectives of the work, is not its main solution.9 Saint Anselm is also a thinker of divine goodness: it is as summum bonum, that is, as supreme and unsurmountable good, that God arises in thought in the first path of M;10 and it is as unlimited and immutable good that God is to be thought, as something insurmountably thinkable, in the unique path of the Proslogion.11 However, the divine attributes of goodness and justice cannot con-

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In his greatest work Herrlichkeit, Vol. ii, Balthasar devotes a chapter to Anselm, frequently evoking the Cur Deus Homo: see Hans Urs von Balthasar, Herrlichkeit. Fächer der stile: Klerikale stile (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1962). See Victor Aulen, Le Triomphe du Christ (Paris: Aubier, 1970) and Louis Bouyer, Le Fils éternel (Paris: Cerf, 1974). See Michel Corbin, ‘La nouveauté de l’Incarnation’ in L’Oeuvre de S. Anselme de Cantorbéry, vol. 3 (Paris: Cerf, 1988), pp. 17–25. See Eliane Amado Lévy-Valensi et Jean Halpérin, La conscience juive face à l’histoire: le Pardon (Paris: puf, 1965), as is underscored by M.B. da Costa Freitas, “Perdão”, in O Ser e os Seres. Itinerários Filosóficos, Vol. ii (Lisboa: Verbo, 2004), pp. 216–217. Through the published proceedings: Paul Gilbert, Helmut Kohlenberger, Elmar Salmann, eds., Cur Deus Homo. Atti del Congresso Anselmiano Internazionale, Roma, 21–23 maggio 1998 (Studia Anselmiana 128) (Roma: Centro Studi S. Anselmo, 1999). I have considered the integrated meaning of that doctrine in the order of reasons of Cur Deus Homo in ‘Necessidade e Historicidade: razões de conveniência na teologia de Santo Anselmo’, in Itinerarium, Ano xxxviii, nº141 (Braga, 1991), pp. 353–367. See M1 (aoo, i.14–15). See R[8] (aoo, i.137).

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flict amongst themselves. God cannot abandon or not persevere in his essential justice,12 and the latter calls for the reparation of human flaws. If God were to forgive without reparation, his goodness, which includes his mercy, would be without justice. Since a just goodness is better than an unjust goodness, the good God cannot but be just. Goodness is not to be alienated from justice, just as the heart cannot be opposed to reason: hence, God’s will is never irrational.13 Even though this imperative of reason and justice is that which sustains the doctrine of satisfaction in Anselm’s theology in cdh,14 the divine attribute of justice is not limited to a mere and basic vengeful sense of justice.15

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Human Dignity

In turn, man’s rescue through the passion and death of a God-man on the cross seems to deny the divine attribute of omnipotence. However, Anselm strives to underscore that Christ’s obedience meant not weakness, but a strong attitude of conformity to divine justice,16 and that the sacrifice of human life does not affect his impassible dignity.17 But could God not have shunned the chalice of such a sacrifice, thereby rescuing humanity through the sacrifice of a man or an angel? Anselm’s answer is towards the beginning of cdh: no, because such a possibility would submit humanity to a man or an angel, thus offending human dignity.18 12 13 14

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Divine justice is distinguished by being inseparable from God, unlike human justice, which man can abandon: see dv 12 (aoo, i.196). ‘Voluntas namque dei numquam est irrationabilis’. cdhi.8 (aoo, ii.59.11). See cdhi.12–13 (aoo, ii.69–71). ‘Si Deo nihil maius aut melius, nihil iustius quam quae honorem illius servat in rerum dispositione summa iustitia, quae non est aliud quam ipse deus’. cdhi.13 (aoo, ii.71.15–17). I have considered the greater reach of divine justice at the level of the eschatological plan of Creation in ‘Christologie et Théodicée dans le Cur Deus homo de saint Anselme’, in P. Gilbert et al., Cur Deus Homo, pp. 503–514. See cdhi.8–10 (aoo, ii.59–67). ‘A. Non ergo coegit deus Christum mori, in quo nullum fuit peccatum; sed ipse sponte sustinuit mortem, non per oboedientiam deserendi vitam, sed propter oboedientiam servandi iustitiam, in qua tam fortiter perseveravit, ut inde mortem incurreret’. cdhi.9 (aoo, ii.62.5–8). ‘Sed dominum Christum Iesum dicimus verum deum et verum hominem, unam personam in duabus naturis et duas naturas in una persona. Quapropter cum dicimus deum aliquid humile aut infirmum pati, non hoc intelligimus secundum sublimitatem impassibilis naturae, sed secundum infirmitatem humanae substantiae quam gerebat; et sic nostrae fidei nulla ratio obviare cognoscitur’. cdhi.8 (aoo, ii.59.20–25). ‘A. An non intellegis quia, quaecumque alia persona hominem a morte aeterna redimeret, eius servus idem homo recte iudicaretur? Quod si esset, nullatenus restauratus esset in

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The human being must not submit but to God, that is, to a truly greater reality, not to an equal or a lesser God. The connection to God is the freedom of man from the slavery of man by man, or man by some lesser God. So is, also according to Augustine, the amor Dei of man, which commands the City of God and prevents man from becoming a servant of man, as is the case in the earthly city, which is dominated by man’s self-centred love.19 Only a God-man could save man, thus safeguarding his dignity: this is one of the most relevant theses of Anselm’s theology in cdh. As such, human dignity is not a lesser reason in the theology of Incarnation, for neither is it a lesser reason in the theology of creation. In a classical work on the philosophical-theological culture of the 12th century, La Théologie au Douzième Siècle, Marie-Dominique Chenu dedicates Chapter ii to an important question of that century: cur homo?20 Why man? Why did God create him? What is his role in the order of the universe? The epicentre of the controversy was the school of Laon, but its origin dates back to Gregory the Great and his biblical exegesis. By resuming the parable of the ten drachmas—‘which woman, upon having ten drachmas, if she loses one, does not light the candle, does not sweep the house and does not carefully search for it until she finds it?’ (Lk. 15, 8)—Saint Gregory identifies the nine drachmas with the nine orders of angels, and the tenth drachma, lost and re-found, with man. By combining this allegoric interpretation of the parable with a verse of the Song of Moses, ‘he set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of God’s angels’ (Deut. 32, 8), the exegete formulated the doctrine of man’s creation in order to restore the number of fallen angels in the celestial city.21 It was this doctrine, which renders man’s creation dependent on the fall of the angels and reduces man to a substitute for the angels, that became particularly controversial in the theological school of Laon, in the 12th century.

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illam dignitatem, quam habiturus erat, si non pecasset: cum ipse, qui non nisi dei servus et aequalis angelis bonis per omnia futurus erat, servus esset eius, qui deus non esset et cuius angeli servi non essent’. cdhi.5 (aoo, ii.52.19–24). See Saint Augustine, De Civitate Dei xiv, 28, vol. ii (Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1993), [1319]–[1320]. See Marie-Dominique Chenu, La Théologie au Douzième Siècle (Paris: Vrin, 31976), pp. 52– 61. ‘Decem dragmas mulier habuit, qui novem sunt ordines angelorum, sed ut compleretur electorum numerus, homo decimus est creatus (…) Superna illa civitas ex angelis et hominibus constat, ad quam tantum credimus humanum genus ascendere, quantos illic contingit electos remansisse, sicut scriptum est: Constituit terminos gentium juxta numerum angelorum Dei’. Hom. in Evang., ii, 34 (pl, 76, 1249 ss.), cited. in Chenu, La Théologie au Douzième Siècle, p. 57.

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Between Gregory the Great and this school, an important speculative development around this doctrine takes place in Saint Anselm’s work, cdh.22 Anselm questions this doctrine not to challenge Gregory the Great’s authority, but to find reasons to sustain the doctrine according to which man’s creation would restore the number of fallen angels in the celestial city. From Anselm’s analysis results a transformed version of the doctrine: by corroborating it, Anselm advocates that fallen angels can be replaced only by men in the perfect city, but it was not due to the fall of the angel that God created man, for he would have been created even if the angel had not fallen, and this because the celestial city would not be perfect without the human being. Anselm’s answer is projected in the meaning of his own work, cdh. In truth, the answer to the question—why a God-man?—is to be attained only by the answer to the question—why man?—a question which Anselm answers in the framework of the question regarding the restoration of the number of fallen angels in the celestial city. In favour of Gregory’s doctrine, Anselm states that fallen angels can only be replaced by men, because they cannot be replaced by other angels. And why? Due to a reason of ethical conformity: if fallen angels were replaced by other angels created for that very purpose, the substitute angels would attain the good of eternal bliss not by the merit of their perseverance, but by the fall of other angels, which is not morally admissible.23 The ascent of some as a result of the fall of others wounds the goodness inherent to justice. But this same lack of ethical conformity reappears if the fallen angels were replaced by men who were created exclusively for this purpose, for men too would ascend to the good of eternal bliss over the fall of others. Anselm is unequivocal in rejecting this hypothesis: A. If someone says that elected men are to rejoice as much with the perdition of angels as with their own ascent, for, undoubtedly, the latter would not take place without the former: how can they defend themselves from this perverse rejoicing?24

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Enunciated as follows: ‘A. Deum constat proposuisse, ut de humana natura quam fecit sine peccato, numerum angelorum qui cediderunt restitueret’. cdhi.16 (aoo, ii.74.12–13). Cf. cdhi.17 (aoo, ii.75). ‘A. Si quis ergo dixerit quia tantum laetabuntur electi homines de angelorum perditione, quantum gaudebunt de sua assumptione, quoniam absque dubio haec non esset, nisi illa fuisset: quomodo poterunt ab hac perversa gratulatione defendi?’ cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.78.18– 21).

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Just as there are thoughts which repulse logical reason, such as contradictions, there are thoughts which repulse ethical reason, as would be the hypothesis of the foundation of the happiness of ones upon the unhappiness of others. Anselm’s theology is not ethically uncritical, and hence, it cannot admit this hypothesis. How, then, is it possible to maintain Gregory’s exegesis of the parable of the ten drachmas? On the one hand, Anselm approaches angels and men as two sub-genera of the genus of beings of a rational nature, which is in conformity with his monastic spirituality, which conceived the angel as a model of perfection for monks.25 Common rational nature ensures a quasi-parity between angels and men. As such, angels can be replaced by men in the celestial city. On the other hand, Anselm resumes the exegesis of Deut. 32, 8, focusing on the theme of the number and postulating that God would have created rational nature in perfect number.26 Let it be noted: the number of beings of a rational nature, composed of angels and men, and not necessarily the number of angels, which may have been created in imperfect number. It is then that Anselm formulates his two exegetical hypotheses on the number of angels: either angels were created in perfect number, in such a way that in the future city there could not be more men than those necessary to replace the fallen angels; or angels were created in imperfect number, in such a way that in the future city there may be more men than substitutes for fallen angels. In the first hypothesis, the creation of man is exclusively a consequence of the fall of the angel, which, as was seen, is not ethically admissible. In the second hypothesis, the human being was created not only to replace the fallen angels, but ultimately to complete the divine work of creation.27 It is this second hypothesis that Anselm is committed to consolidating throughout the extended reflection of cdhi.18. From the perspective of our exegesis of that work, such a reflection is not a digression tangential to the

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According to a spiritual tradition that dated back to old and patristic Christianism: see Chenu, La Théologie au Douzième Siècle, pp. 59–61. ‘A. Rationalem naturam, quae dei contemplatione beata vel est vel futura est, in quodam rationabili et perfecto numero praescitam esse a deo, ita ut nec maiorem nec minorem illum esse deceat, non est dubitandum’. cdhi.16 (aoo, ii.74.20–22). ‘A. Si angeli, antequam quidam illorum caderent, erant in illo perfecto de quo diximus numero, non sunt homines facti nisi pro restauratione angelorum perditorum, et palam est quia non erunt plures illis. Si autem ille numerus non erat in illis omnibus angelis, complendum est de hominibus et quod periit et quod prius deerat, et erunt electi homines plures reprobis angelis; et sic dicemus quia non fuerunt hominess facti tantum ad restaurandum numerum imminutum, sed etiam ad perficiendum nondum perfectum’. cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.76.9–15).

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essential development of that work; quite on the contrary, it is in the argumentative choice of the second hypothesis that we find the greatest reason of being for humanity and its salvation: the ultimate perfection of the universe created by God. To the question that entitles the work—Cur Deus Homo?— Anselm’s blunt answer is: not just because man requires salvation and cannot save himself, but especially because man’s existence is missing in the ultimate perfection of creation and God cannot be satisfied but with the perfection of his work. Such is the satisfaction of God that justifies humanity and its salvation: not the satisfaction of his honour being offended by human sin, but rather the satisfaction of his art in the completion of creation. The doctrine of the eschatological perfection of creation surpasses the ill-favoured theological doctrine of satisfaction in our interpretation of cdh. Indeed, it is on the level of the metaphysics of creation that Anselm ponders on the two exegetical hypotheses on the number of angels, a perfect or an imperfect number, so as to defend the plausibility of the second hypothesis. Anselm admits two interpretations of the primordial creation of the universe in six days: either this was a successive process or a simultaneous act. On the one hand, if creation was a successive process, any of the hypotheses on the original number of angels is viable:28 they may have been created in perfect number and man created afterwards so as to restore the number of fallen angels; or angels may have been created in imperfect number so that the human beings created afterwards would surpass, in the future city, that of the substitutes for the fallen angels. The first interpretation, however, renders the creation of man dependent on the fall of the angels, which, as was seen, is ethically repulsive. In the second interpretation, that is, if the six days of creation are to be taken as a simultaneous act and angels and men had been created in perfect number, either the fall of one sub-genus or the other would be necessary, which again is ethically unacceptable, or, were they not to fall, the perfect number in the future city would be surpassed.29 Hence, from the analysis of the two conceptions of creation, either successive or simultaneous, the more plausible hypothesis is that

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‘Si homo factus est post casum malorum angelorum, sicut quidam intelligent in Genesi, non video posse me per hoc probare alterum horum determinate’. cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.76.20– 22). ‘Si autem tota creatura simul facta est, et dies illi in quibus Moyses istum mundum non simul esse factum videtur dicere, aliter sunt intelligendi, quam sicut videmus istos dies in quibus vivimus: intelligere nequeo quomodo facti sint angeli in illo integro numero. Quippe si ita esset, videtur mihi quia ex necessitate aut aliqui angeli vel homines casuri erant, aut plures essent in illa caelesti civitate, quam illa perfecti numeri convenientia exigeret’. cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.76.27–28; 77.1–5).

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of the creation of the angels in imperfect number so that there can be more human beings in the final expression of creation than substitutes for the fallen angels.30 Anselm further considers the possibility of referring the perfect number not to individuals, but to natures created. In this case, either human nature was created to complete creation or it would be superfluous to the work of creation, which Anselm dares not say even about the smallest worm.31 As such, if the perfect number concerns the number of natures created, human nature becomes an essential element in the perfection of creation: ‘Hence, it was made for its own sake, and not merely to replace the individuals of another nature’.32 This means that the concurrence of angels does not exclude man from the perfection of the divine work of creation, for diversity or, as we say nowadays, biodiversity contributes towards that perfection. Saint Augustine himself had already said, with the anti-Manichaean belief of an ex-Manichaean, that every reality is good, but all realities together are very good, just as God the Creator contemplated them at the end of the six days of creation.33

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‘Ex iis rationibus potius mihi videtur quia in angelis non fuit ille perfectus numerus, quo civitas illa superna perficietur, quoniam si homo simul cum angelis factus non est, sic possibile est esse; et si simul facti sunt—quod magis putant multi, quoniam legitur: “qui vivit in aeternum, creavit omnia simul” [Ecles. 18, 1]—videtur necesse esse’. cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.77.16–20). ‘Sed et si perfectio mundanae creaturae non tantum est intelligenda in numero individuorum quantum in numero naturarum, necesse est humanam naturam aut ad complementum eiusdem perfectionis esse factam, aut illi superabundare, quod de minimi vermiculi natura dicere non audemus’. cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.77.20; 78.1–4). ‘Quare pro se ipsa ibi facta est, et non solum pro restaurandis individuis alterius naturae. Unde palam est quia, etiam si angelus nullus perisset, homines tamen in caelesti civitate suum locum habuissent’. cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.78.4–6). ‘Et uidisti, deus, omnia quae fecisti, et “ecce bona ualde”, quia et nos uidemus ea, et ecce omnia bona ualde. in singulis generibus operum tuorum, cum dixisses, ut fierent, et facta essent, illud atque illud uidisti quia bonum est. septiens numeraui scriptum esse te uidisse, quia bonum est quod fecisti; et hoc octauum est, quia uidisti omnia quae fecisti, “et ecce” non solum bona sed etiam “ualde bona” tamquam simul omnia. nam singula tantum bona erant, simul autem omnia et bona et ualde. hoc dicunt etiam quaeque pulchra corpora, quia longe multo pulchrius est corpus, quod ex membris pulchris omnibus constat, quam ipsa membra singula, quorum ordinatissimo conuentu completur uniuersum, quamuis et illa etiam singillatim pulchra sit’. Saint Augustine, Confessiones xiii, 28, 43 (ed. K.H. Chelius), in Santo Agostinho, Confissões (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional—Casa da Moeda, 2000), p. 744.

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Universal Rejoicing

Once the relation between man and angels is settled, what is there to say of the relation between man and the other natures of the material world, since not even the smallest worm is superfluous to the perfection of divine creation? Some biblical passages herald a new Heaven and a new Earth (2 Pet. 3, 13; Apoc. 21, 1), and Saint Anselm develops an exegesis of those passages which allows him to think that the divine work of creation is not yet concluded and has not yet attained its ultimate perfection. Hence, under a new Heaven Anselm understands the establishing of the blessed city of rational natures, composed of angels and human beings; and under a new Earth he understands a renewal for the better of the ‘physical mass of the world’, for ‘He who is sitting in the throne said: I renew all things’ (Apoc. 21, 5). These are two qualitative changes in reality: the establishing of the rational and blessed city is the confirmation of perseverance in justice as a permanent and unfailing attribute in those who persevered, when their perseverance was fallible; in turn, the renewal of the physical world is, for the persisting natures, a change from the mortality of bodies to an ‘immortal immortality’, that is, to a situation in which it is not only no longer possible to die, but also no longer possible to loss that impossibility. How are the establishing of the rational and blessed city and the renewal of the corporeal world to be articulated? Anselm formulates two hypotheses to be eliminated: on the one hand, the hypothesis of anticipating the renewal of the world by beforehand aligning it with the confirmation or perfection of the persevering angels would render irrational the creation of perishable species and mortal bodies to be destroyed and transmuted in another reality immediately after the first creation;34 on the other hand, the hypothesis of delaying the confirmation of the persevering angels by aligning it with the future renewal of the world would render the confirming effects of divine justice irrationally slower than the immediate effects of man’s fall.35 Hence, the most rational hypothesis, that of Anselm, is to think that the future renewal of corporeal nature waits for the rational city to be completed and totally confirmed with an as yet absent complement of human beings.36

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‘Sed quod mundus noviter factum statim deus renovare, et eas res quae post renovationem illam non erunt, in ipso initio, antequam appareret cur factae essent destruere instituerit, omni caret ratione’. cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.81.5–8). ‘Quis enim audeat dicere plus valere iniustitiam ad alligandum in servitute hominem in prima suasione sibi consentientem, quam valeret iustitia ad confirmamdum eum in libertate sibi in eadem prima tentatione adherentem?’ cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.81.20–23). ‘A. Credimus hanc mundi molem corpoream in melius renovandam, nec hoc futurm esse,

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If the rational city did not require human beings and if one did not have to wait for them to complete the perfect number of that city, the postponement into the future of the renewal of material nature would lose all meaning and reason of being. On the salvation of humanity depend, therefore, not only the new Heaven but also the new Earth, that is, the total confirmation of the city of the blessed and the future renewal of the world. In this eschatological view, that which justifies man is the final perfection of this city and the future renewal of this world. The confirmation of humanity brings with it the renewal of the world in the final perfection of the work of creation. At times the perception that we do not live in the best of worlds is labelled as ‘gnostic’, all because the ancient Gnostics defended the idea that the world in which we live was created by a lesser God, the God of creation, in disobedience regarding the greater God, the God of salvation. However, the perception that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds is incontrovertible and is so perhaps in every historical era of human existence.37 Such a perception is reinforced in our times, with the acquisition of knowledge concerning human nature and the historical experience of humanity, and a more acute perspective of the risks and challenges facing today’s world. Now, the medieval theology of cdh, and especially Anselm’s exegesis of the new Heaven and the new Earth, implies understanding creation as a work in progress towards a final perfection, a work which bears the imperfections of the course, the vicissitudes of the process and the pains of a world which has not yet come to know nor attained its best. This best will be attained through that which Anselm conceives as a future universal rejoicing which will unite the new Earth with the new Heaven: We believe that this corporeal mass of the world will be renewed for the better and that this will not take place until the number of elect men is fulfilled and that blessed city is perfected, nor should it be postponed beyond the latter’s perfection. From this we conclude that since the beginning God intended to complete one and the other [the blessed city and the mass of the world] simultaneously: so that the lesser nature, which does not perceive God, would not attain the perfection prior to the greater one, which should rejoice in God, and, once transformed into a better nature, should in its way rejoice in the perfection of the greater one; furthermore,

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donec impleatur numerus electorum hominum et illa beata perficiatur civitas, nec post eius perfectionem differendum’. cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.79.28–30). Leibniz’s philosophy is counter-intuitive in this regard.

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every creature shall rejoice for such a glorious and admirable consummation of itself, thereby drawing eternal joy from the Creator, from itself and the others, each in its own way. That which will does spontaneously in a rational nature, so will the creature deprived of sensibility naturally show by divine disposition. In truth, we usually take common pleasure in exalting those greater than us, just as we exult the saints, and their glory, in the celebration of their feast days.38 The blissful union of the new Earth, the renewed corporeal mass of the world, with the new Heaven, the perfect rational city composed of angels and men, is thus conceived in analogy with the relation between ourselves and the saints: just as we rejoice with the celebration of the memory of the saints, whom we revere as better than us, so will lesser natures, which do not have the perception of God, be renewed so as to naturally exult with one another and with those superior to them when the rational city has attained its completeness. Such will be the ultimate state of universal rejoicing and eternal joy which will characterize the consummated perfection of the divine work of creation. We may conjecture on the antecedents and influences of Anselm’s idea of a universal rejoicing at the end of creation. Surely there are biblical references to a future messianic kingdom of peace and harmony, extending to the animal world, such as Is. 11, 6–9: ‘The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid. The calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them’. Here, at present, animals attack one another and men harm one another. This happens, according to Plotinus, because in the material world animals are born and fight to survive, and men, since they cannot attain the good to which they aspire, turn on one another; but in the intelligible world, which is inhabited by the forms of all living beings, all

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‘A. Credimus hanc mundi molem corpoream in melius renovandam, nec hoc futurum esse, donec impleatur numerus electorum hominum et illa beata perficiatur civitas, nec post eius perfectionem differendum. Unde colligi potest deum ab initio proposuisse, ut utrumque [beata civitas et moles mundi] simul perficeret: quatenus et minor quae deum non sentiret natura ante maiorem quae deo frui deberet, nequaquam perficeretur, et in maioris perfectione mutata in melius suo quodam modo quasi congratularetur; immo omnis creatura de tam gloriosa et tam admirabili sui consummatione ipsi creatori et sibi et invicem quaeque suo modo aeterne congaudendo iucundaretur. Quatenus quod voluntas in rationali natura sponte facit, hoc etiam insensibilis creatura per dei dispositionem naturaliter exhiberet. Solemus namque in maiorum nostrorum exaltatione congaudere, ut cum in nataliciis sanctorum festiva exultatione iucundamur, de gloria illorum laetantes’. cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.79.28–30; 80.1–10).

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subsist harmoniously.39 According to Plotinus, the intelligible world is an original kingdom of universal harmony. But how is Plotinus relevant to Anselm’s idea of universal rejoicing? Plotinus, a providentialist thinker, is not at all indifferent to the idea of a universal harmony. But, in truth, the reference to Plotinus allows us to understand Anselm’s idea, rather than find a similar antecedent. We learned Alexandre Koyré’s lesson, who, upon looking for the neo-Platonic sources of Saint Anselm’s thought, found nothing but Saint Augustine’s influence.40 According to Anselm, and in consonance with the biblical announcement of a messianic kingdom, universal harmony is in the future, at the end of creation, not in its origins. But, quite singularly, according to Anselm, the future universal harmony is not a parallel pacification of animal and human kingdoms, rather a sort of approximation of the material world to rational nature, so that it rejoices as the latter does in the perfection of the blessed city: it is a sort of conversion of matter into spirit. One day, material nature will rejoice as we do today with the saints. The universal rejoicing will overcome the hiatus between matter and spirit. Before any such rejoicing takes place, God will not have finished his work. Hence, the perfection of creation depends on the renewal of the world, and the latter, in turn, depends on the coming to completion of the rational city along with human nature and the as yet absent human beings. The renewal of the world still waits for human beings to complete the rational city, for, were it not because of them, one could not understand the delay in that renewal. The renewal of the world awaits the absent humans, but this is not a necessity that derives from human sin. Anselm specifies: even if Adam had not sinned, the renewal of the world would wait for all the humans who were to perfect the rational city in God’s embrace, so that they too saw their nature renewed and would attain the ‘immortal immortality of the bodies’, that is, that immortality that itself can never die.41 The renewal of the world depends on the future of humanity, not on its loss. Inspired by the work Cur Deus Homo, we posed the bold question: cur renovatio mundi? To answer it in Anselm’s guise: because of the total and ultimate perfection of the work of creation, composed of the rational city of angels and 39 40 41

See Plotinus, Ennéades iii, 2, 4 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1925), 29. See A. Koyré, L’Idée de Dieu dans la Philosophie de St. Anselme (Paris: Éditions Ernest Leroux, 1923; Paris: Vrin Reprise, 1984). ‘Quam sententiam illud adiuvare videtur quia, si Adam non peccasset, differret tamen deus illam civitatem perficere, donec corporum—ut ita dicam—immortalem immortalitatem transmutarentur. Habebant enim in paradiso quandam immortalitatem, id est potestatem non moriendi; sed non erat immortalis haec potestas, quia poterat mori, ut scilicet ipsi non possent non mori’. cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.80.10–16).

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blessed men and the corporeal world which, in its own way, will take pleasure in the perfection of that blessed city. Ultimately, it is this doctrine of universal rejoicing that justifies man and the world in Anselm’s theology of cdh. Hence, it is the same doctrine of universal rejoicing, by defining the final perfection of creation, that ultimately justifies the salvation of man—and not just the doctrine of satisfaction, which has become such a commonplace in the critique of Saint Anselm’s theology. The doctrine of satisfaction, which likens God to a ruthless collector of humanity’s debt, provides a lesser reason for the salvation of humanity; the greater reason is provided by the doctrine of universal rejoicing, which does not even depend on human sin, and likens God to an artist demanding the perfection of his work. In truth, the honour of God is more satisfied in the future perfection of his work than just in the settlement of human debt. As such, it is also fairer to understand Anselm in terms of the greater doctrine of universal rejoicing rather than the lesser one of satisfaction, in the theology of cdh. As far as we are concerned, this is to pay it due justice. By doing so, we direct our thought towards reality. We live in times of great contradiction: on the one hand, we participate in an accelerated technological development capable of improving the functioning of man, prolonging his biological life and increasing his faculties; on the other hand, we also feel that the Earth is slipping from under our feet, not just due to the ongoing climate changes but because we know that the planet we inhabit is not eternal, since it is dependent on a star and stars too are born and die. At the core of this contradiction between the wish of indefinitely prolonging our presence on Earth and the awareness of the natural perishability of the Earth, the biblical and apocalyptic vision of a future renewal of all things is indeed consoling. Anselm’s idea that the renewed corporeal mass will rejoice with the rational city in the ultimate perfection of creation may be a purely speculative thought, as well as a mere palliative treatment for the deep-seated fears of man. But the truth is that in the absence of long-reaching speculative thought, such as that dared and attained by Saint Anselm, all is deprived of much of its meaning.

Bibliography Primary Sources Augustine of Hippo [Santo Agostinho], A Cidade de Deus, vol. ii (Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1993). Augustine of Hippo [Santo Agostinho], Confissões (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional—Casa da Moeda, 2000). Plotinus, Ennéades iii (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1925).

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S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961); reprinted in two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968).

Secondary Sources Aulen, Victor, Le Triomphe du Christ (Paris: Aubier, 1970). Bouyer, Louis, Le Fils éternel (Paris: Cerf, 1974). Chenu, Marie-Dominique, La Théologie au Douzième Siècle (Paris: Vrin, 31976). Corbin, Michel, ‘La nouveauté de l’Incarnation’, in L’Oeuvre de S. Anselme de Cantorbéry, vol. 3 (Paris, Cerf, 1988), pp. 15–163. Freitas, Manuel B. Costa, O Ser e os Seres. Itinerários Filosóficos, vols. i–ii (Lisboa: Verbo, 2004). Gilbert, Paul, Helmut Kohlenberger and Elmar Salmann, eds., Cur Deus Homo. Atti del Congresso Anselmiano Internazionale, Roma, 21–23 maggio 1998 (Studia Anselmiana 128) (Roma: Centro Studi S. Anselmo, 1999). Koyré, Alexandre, L’idée de Dieu dans la philosophie de St. Anselme (Paris: Éditions Ernest Leroux, 1923; Paris: Vrin Reprise, 1984). von Balthasar, Hans Urs, Herrlichkeit. Fächer der stile: Klerikale stile (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1962). Xavier, Maria Leonor, ‘Necessidade e Historicidade: razões de conveniência na teologia de Santo Anselmo’, Itinerarium, Ano xxxviii, nº141 (Braga, 1991), pp. 353–367. Xavier, Maria Leonor, ‘Christologie et Théodicée dans le Cur Deus homo de saint Anselme’ in Paul Gilbert, Helmut Kohlenberger and Elmar Salmann, eds., Cur Deus Homo. Atti del Congresso Anselmiano Internazionale, Roma, 21–23 maggio 1998 (Studia Anselmiana 128) (Roma: Centro Studi S. Anselmo, 1999), pp. 503–514.

chapter 17

Conversatio angelorum The Monk’s Angelic Vocation and the Order of Redemption Rachel Cresswell

Anselm of Canterbury’s theory of atonement is notorious for banishing the devil from the logic of redemption. The innovative feature of Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo (cdh), in Richard Southern’s mind, was the logical elegance with which ‘the devil slipped out of the picture and left God and man face to face’.1 Yet heavenly powers, both hostile and benign, were never far from Anselm’s imagination. The cloistral air which Anselm breathed for the majority of his adult life was no less ‘thick with spirits’ than it had been for his monastic forerunner John Cassian (d. c. 435).2 Like Cassian, Anselm suspected the agency of fallen angels in occasions of sin, temptation, distraction, and even the kind of intellectual confusion that dogged his dialogue-partner Boso on his first arrival at Bec.3 As a faithful son of St Benedict, Anselm would have believed that the liturgical space he occupied in the choir and at the altar was shared with the angelic hosts. The Regula Benedicti (516) exhorts its adherents never to forget that their actions are ‘reported by angels’ to God ‘at every hour’, and that it is ‘in the presence of the angels’ that their chant rises to heaven.4 In his dialogues, moreover, deconstructing the make-up of angelic wills, positing half-created angels, and scrutinising their moral choices provided the platform for Anselm’s reflections on human wills, human transgressions, and the limits of human culpability.5 Angels, both fallen and un-fallen, populated Anselm’s vision of cosmic order. Indeed, it is Anselm’s conception of order which takes centre stage when his theology of atonement turns to the logic of angels. cdh features an extended rumination on the angelic population of the heavenly city which appears, at 1 Richard William Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (London: Arrow, 1959), p. 236. 2 John Cassian, The Conferences, Boniface Ramsey, trans. (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), viii. 12.1, p. 298. 3 va, i.34, pp. 60–61. 4 Benedict, rb 1980: the Rule of St Benedict in Latin and English with notes, Timothy Fry, trans. (Collegeville, Minn: Liturgical Press, 1981), 19.5–6, pp. 216–217. (Hereafter rb). 5 David E. Luscombe, ‘Anselm on the Angels’, Rivista di Storia della Filosofia, 48.3 (1993), pp. 537– 549; see also Gillian R. Evans, ‘Why the Fall of Satan?’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 45 (1978), pp. 130–146.

© Rachel Cresswell, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_019

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first glance at least, to epitomise medieval predilections for a numerically prescriptive model of order. In chapters sixteen to eighteen of cdh’s first book, Anselm argues, following Ss Augustine and Gregory, that humanity could not be saved apart from the death of a God-Man because God intended humans to replace the fallen angels in heaven. These chapters barely feature, if at all, in most secondary retellings of cdh’s argument. On the rare occasions on which the notion of humans as angel-replacements makes an appearance, it tends to feature as an historical curiosity, a relic of the fastidious desire for cosmic symmetry now seemingly so alien to post-medieval imaginaries.6 Yet the concept of replacing fallen angels was something Anselm took seriously, and not just for the sake of numerical neatness. When cdh’s oft-neglected chapters on replacing the fallen angels are examined with Anselm’s cloistral context in mind, they re-emerge as a cornerstone of his specifically monastic soteriology. Under this aspect, they need not be imagined as part of some rigid model of theological order which subordinates human destinies to the demands of dispensing all things in measure, number, and weight, but rather as a witness to a considerably more dynamic and participatory conception of the order of redemption. Anselm’s cdh, completed on a hilltop above Capua in the summer of 1098, mobilises the concept of angel-replacements as one wing of its attempt to uncover the rational foundations for Christians’ belief in Christ’s incarnation. This long two-part dialogue, intended both to refute the claims of irrationality levelled at Christianity by its detractors and to encourage believers by displaying the rational intelligibility of their faith, purports to prove that humanity cannot be saved without a God-Man, and that Christ’s passion and death do in fact effect that salvation.7 Anselm’s now-famous model of atonement outlines the need for a God-Man to make the requisite ‘satisfaction’ for the cosmic offence of Adam’s sin. In acting against God’s will, the first book argues, Adam offended the honour of God.8 The subsequent cosmic imbalance can only be rectified if a member of Adam’s race repays to God the honour which Adam ‘stole’ with compensation for having initially withheld that honour. The debt of honour owed by the human race is greater than the value of the whole of creation, and is therefore something only God can pay. Thus, only someone both human and divine can offer a gift great enough to make satisfaction for the original offense. It is in the service of demonstrating that reconciliation with God

6 For instance, see: David Brown, ‘Anselm on atonement’ in Brian Davies and Brian Leftow, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Anselm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 285. 7 Anselm, cdh Praefatio (aoo, ii.42–43). 8 Anselm, cdhi.11 (aoo, ii.68.14–21). Translations of Anselm’s works are mine unless indicated.

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cannot take place without satisfaction that the notion of redeemed humans replacing fallen angels comes into play. Anselm’s argument enters angelic territory in the middle of cdh’s first book. In maintaining that humanity could not be reconciled without satisfaction, he states what he takes to be a well-known commonplace: Everyone knows that God proposed to fill up the number of angels who fell from the human nature which he made without sin.9 ‘So we believe’, Anselm’s dialogue-partner Boso agrees, ‘but I would like to have a reason for this belief’.10 Despite concerns that Boso is ‘misdirecting’ him, Anselm agrees to elaborate.11 There must be a total number of blessed beings which God intends to populate the heavenly city, he states.12 That perfect number cannot include the angels who fell, otherwise they would never have fallen. Neither can it simply enumerate the good angels who remained after the fall of the bad, since that would imply that God had initially created too many angels, and a portion of them had been compelled to fall so as to get rid of the surplus. The perfect number must therefore be future, and it must include both the good angels and whoever God intended to be the bad angels’ replacement.13 So what kind of beings could serve as suitable angel-replacements? The vacant spaces left by the bad angels’ fall, Anselm argues, cannot merely be filled by newly-created angels, since they would not be strictly equivalent to the angels they would be replacing. In order to be true replacements, the new angels would need to be exactly as the bad angels would have been if they had not fallen.14 Yet the new angels, created after the fall of the bad ones, would be aware that bad angels had been punished prior to their own creation. Their knowledge of the possibility of punishment would give them an incentive for remaining faithful which the original angels did not have.15 If more angels cannot refill the ranks, then, it must be up to humans to do so. Anselm then moves to consider the question already posed by Augustine and Gregory concerning the relative numbers of redeemed humans and angels.16 The number

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

cdhi.16 (aoo, ii.74.12–13). cdhi.16 (aoo, ii.74.14). cdhi.16 (aoo, ii.74.15). cdhi.16 (aoo, ii.74.20–22). cdhi.16 (aoo, ii.75.1–12). cdhi.17 (aoo, ii.75.17–20). cdhi.17 (aoo, ii.75.20–23). Augustine of Hippo, Enchiridion: On Faith, Hope and Love, Albert Cook Outler, trans.

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of redeemed humans cannot simply match the number of fallen angels, since that would mean that the humans in heaven would only be there because a space was opened up for them by an angel’s fall, and it would be inappropriate for there to be beings in heaven who had reason to rejoice at someone else’s perdition.17 After three long chapters, Anselm concludes that ‘the number of the heavenly city was not completed by the first angels, but was to be completed from among humans’, whose numbers would exceed that of the fallen angels.18 God must therefore have originally created angels in a number which fell short of the ideal number which would eventually be reached with the addition of humans.19 This means that God had always intended humans to be among the population of the heavenly city; the fall of the angels simply opened up room for more. One might be inclined to take Anselm at his word when he calls these chapters a digression. Yet Anselm thought these conclusions weighty considerations in favour of the necessity of satisfaction. After all, since God had created humans with the intention of populating the heavenly city whether or not the angels fell, and since it would be unthinkable for God’s plan to be frustrated, it is unthinkable that humans should not be redeemed. Moreover, the imperative that whoever replaces the fallen angels needs to be in the same condition the angels would have been had they not fallen is something Anselm is keen to stress. Anselm is adamant that God does not create replacement angels because those angels would not be sufficiently similar to the originals. The reason no human ought to rejoice at an angel’s fall is because the original good angels had no reason to rejoice at anyone’s perdition, and so neither should the replacements. Furthermore, the passage devoted to the discussion of angels, chapters sixteen to eighteen, takes up a considerable portion of cdh’s first book. The eighteenth chapter is the longest in the work by some considerable stretch. There is no question of authorial oversight here, for Anselm was nothing if not a fastidious editor. Even in cdh’s preface, he complains about the overhasty scribes who forced him to publish the work before it was ready, obliging him to leave unsaid many things he would have liked to say.20 If Anselm really had considered the discussion of angels dispensable, it surely would not have made

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(Grand Rapids, Mich: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1999), 9.28–29; Gregory the Great, ‘Homily 34’ in Forty Gospel Homilies, David Hurst, trans. (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990), pp. 280–300. cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.78.18–26). cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.81.27–28). cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.76–84). cdh Praefatio (aoo, ii.42.1–6).

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the final cut. The notion that elect humans need to be in some sense equivalent to the angels they were intended to replace is something Anselm was not willing to excise from his argument. So how does Anselm envisage this equivalence and what exactly is so indispensable about it? Anselm’s language in chapters sixteen to eighteen echoes one of cdh’s scriptural references: the elect ‘will be like the angels in heaven’ (Matthew 22:30, Mark 12:25, Luke 20:36). Anselm does not, however, use the sicut of Matthew and Mark, but the aequales of Luke: ‘equal to the angels’. This aequalitas which redeemed humans are promised with the angels, he suggests, is partly an equality of rank. Anselm envisages the work of satisfaction restoring humans to the same cosmic level as the good angels. A non-Adamic being cannot make satisfaction for humans because, Anselm says, [humanity] would by no means have been restored to that dignity which it would have had had it not sinned, since humanity, which ought to be the servant of no-one but God and equal to the good angels in all things would be another man’s servant, who is not God and whom the angels do not serve.21 Equality with the good angels is part of the ‘dignity’ which must be restored in order for true redemption to take place; someone who cannot re-establish that equality cannot make effective satisfaction. Moreover, the good angels’ level has actually risen following their fellows’ fall, since their perseverance merited their ‘confirmation’ in steadfastness. To match the level the good angels occupy now (that is, after their promotion), humans must therefore rise as high as the good angels, equality to whom is their due, rose after the fall of the evil ones because they themselves persevered.22 Yet it is not only an equality of rank, but a moral equality with the angels to which humans must be restored. Anselm argues that reconciliation without satisfaction for sin is not sufficient, because the one reconciled would still not be the good angels’ moral equivalent: Boso: Truly it is proper that humans should be equal to the good angels. Anselm: Have the good angels ever sinned?

21 22

cdhi.5 (aoo, ii.52.20–24). My emphasis. cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.77.13–15). My emphasis.

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B: No. A: Can you think that a person who sinned, and never made satisfaction to God for that sin, but is forgiven for such sin unpunished, is equal to the angel who never sinned?23 Reconciliation without satisfaction for sin is unfitting because a redemption which does not restore humans to moral equality with angels is no redemption at all: Therefore it is not suitable that God should elevate sinful humans without satisfaction to replace the fallen angels, since truth does not suffer them to be elevated to equality with the blessed.24 If the good angels are sinless and exalted by their perseverance, so too must redeemed humans be. Emphasising humanity’s calling to equal the angels enables Anselm to determine precisely what kind of outcome any work of redemption would need to achieve. He thereby affirms that satisfaction brings about God’s redemptive purpose insofar as it actually does, in some sense, make humans like angels. Indeed, the notion of humans replacing fallen angels also seems to have been an enduring feature of his soteriological thinking beyond cdh. Humanity’s ‘likeness to angels’ is often found embedded in the occasional ruminations on redemption found in Anselm’s broader corpus. In De Conceptu Virginali et de Originali Peccato (dcv), written in 1099, the companion-text to cdh, Anselm argues that one of the reasons human sin requires cleansing is that such cleanliness is characteristic of the angels: For all who are saved are admitted into the kingdom of heaven, and all who are damned are excluded from it. Truly, he who is admitted is raised to the likeness of the angels (provehitur ad similitudinem angelorum) in whom there never was any sin, nor will there ever be; this cannot be, so long as there is still some of sin’s blemish in him.25 Anselm’s Meditatio redemptionis humanae (1099–1100), the prayerful counterpart to cdh, expresses the same thing:

23 24 25

cdhi.19 (aoo, ii.84.14–19). cdhi.19 (aoo, ii.84.22–24). dcv28 (aoo, ii.171.21–22).

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For humanity could not be restored to that position in which it was established if it were not raised to the likeness of the angels (prohevitur ad similitudinem angelorum) in whom there is no sin.26 His final theological work, De Concordia Praescientiae et Praedestinationis et Gratiae Dei cum Libero Arbitrio (dc) (written in 1107–1108), also states that humans should equal the good angels’ justice so as to equal their happiness: For since the happiness which the just are promised will be like that of the angels of God (similitudo angelorum dei), so, just as there is no injustice in the good angels, so nobody with any injustice will join them.27 Elect humans, Anselm goes on to explain in dc, can hope for more than the happiness which Adam had in Paradise before sinning: But [they can hope for] that which [Adam] was going to have when the number of humans who were to be taken up in order to perfect the heavenly city (which is to be made up of angels and humans) was complete.28 The notion of aequales angelis was clearly an enduring motif in Anselm’s soteriological thinking. Since God had created humanity to join the angels in the heavenly city, aequalitas angelis was humans’ created destiny, and an essential element of what satisfaction must restore in order for their redemption to be accomplished. It is tempting to assign this theological calculus to the category of esoteric thought-experiment, the role so often played by angels in medieval philosophy.29 Yet Anselm takes humanity’s potential angel-equivalence seriously, so seriously that he considers the interchangeability of ‘angels’ and ‘elect humans’ as a valid strategy for scriptural interpretation. Quoting Deuteronomy 32:8, which both Anselm and Boso would have known from the liturgy as the second canticle of Moses—‘When the Most High divided the nations: when he separated the sons of Adam, he appointed the bounds of people according to the number of the children of Israel’ (rhe)—Boso queries whether this transla-

26 27 28 29

Meditatio redemptionis humanae iii (aoo, iii.86.71–72). dciii.4 (aoo, ii.268.21–23). dciii.9 (aoo, ii.276.20–23). See Isabel Iribarren and Martin Lenz, eds., Angels in Medieval Philosophical Enquiry: Their Function and Significance (Burlington, vt: Ashgate, 2008).

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tion (found in the Vulgate) conflicts with other translations (for example, the Septuagint) which substitute ‘the number of the children of Israel’ with ‘the number of the angels of God’.30 Gregory the Great, quoting from a Septuagintinspired version, had interpreted this passage to suggest that the number of elect humans would match the number of good angels.31 Anselm reasons that whichever translation you use, it is legitimate to understand both ‘children of Israel’ and ‘angels of God’ to mean ‘saintly humans’: For it is not unusual to call saintly humans “sons of Israel”, the same as “sons of Abraham”. They can also rightly be called “angels of God” because they imitate angelic life and they are promised likeness and equality to the angels in heaven, and all those who live justly are angels of God (hence confessors or martyrs are so called). For he who confesses and testifies to the truth of God is a messenger, and is [God’s] angel.32 Indeed, Anselm continues, sinners can be likened to devils by the same token: if a wicked man is called a devil, as the Lord called Judas on account of a similarity in wickedness, why is a good man not also called an angel on account of his imitation of justice?33 Sinful likeness to demons is no more hyperbolic in Anselm’s writings than saintly likeness to angels is mere pictorial embellishment. Anselm’s prayer to John the Baptist offers a colourful example of a sinner imitating (and even resembling) the devil in wickedness. The prayer’s supplicant, inspecting his own face, bewails the devil’s ‘hateful’ image which he sees ‘superimposed over the image of God’.34 Anselm’s correspondence, especially with female religious, soberly depicts the prospect of angelic or demonic imitation lurking behind every moral choice. To Seith and Edith, members of a small English monastic community under the direction of one Rodbert, Anselm urges, Take the example of your lives from the angels in heaven (…) consider and imitate in all things the life of the angels so that your way of life may

30 31 32 33 34

cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.81.31–34). Gregory the Great, ‘Homily 34’, p. 289. cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.83.3–9). cdhi.18 (aoo, ii.83.10–12). om8 (aoo, iii.27.29–30).

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always be in heaven (…) Follow whatever is in harmony with the angelic life, detest anything which is in disharmony with it.35 As Anselm wrote to Basilia, one of the women pursuing a semi-monastic life in the vicinity of Bec, the good and bad angels represent the two possible outcomes of each moral choice. One can either ascend, rising to imitate angelic goodness, or descend, sinking to ape the fallen angels’ folly: whoever strives diligently while living here to climb by good conduct and good deeds will be placed in heaven with the good angels; and whoever descends through bad conduct and bad deeds will be buried in hell with the fallen angels.36 The question of the heavenly city’s angelic population and its relevance to human redemption was by no means the dry exercise in proto-scholastic logicchopping it may appear at first glance. Anselm clearly envisaged a real spiritual likeness stemming from humans’ capacity to equal both good and bad angels through moral imitation. What, then, does this spiritual likeness look like? A hint is found in a biblical reference, almost too slight to notice in cdh, which has a very clear resonance in Anselm’s broader corpus. At the end of the dialogue Anselm demonstrates the impossibility of the devil’s reconciliation; just as the bad angels fell without anyone’s abetting, so they ought to rise without anyone’s aid: For otherwise they could not be restored to the dignity which they were going to have, because if they had not sinned, they would have stood firm in the truth by their own power.37 The phrase ‘to stand firm in the truth’ is taken from John 8:44, where Jesus discusses with the Pharisees the question of progeny from Abraham, from God, and from the devil: ‘[Satan] was a murderer from the beginning: and he stood not in the truth, because truth is not in him’ (rhe). The scriptural phrases ‘standing firm’ or ‘not standing firm in the truth’ resound throughout Anselm’s three dialogues De Veritate (dv), De Libertate Arbitrii (dla) and De Casu Diaboli (dcd), completed over a decade before cdh. In these dialogues, 35 36 37

E230 (aoo, iv.135.20–25); The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury ii, Walter Fröhlich, trans. (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990–1994), pp. 199–200. E420 (aoo, v.366.18–21), trans. Fröhlich, Letters, iii, p. 192. cdhii.21(aoo, ii.132.21–23). My emphasis.

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Anselm makes it clear that to ‘stand firm in the truth’ means holding on to the original justice given to the will by God, and failing to ‘stand firm in the truth’ means abandoning that justice. ‘Standing firm in the truth’, moreover, constitutes the primary factor distinguishing good angels from bad. Comparing the ‘angelum qui stetit et eum qui non stetit in veritate’, and discussing why the devil was not able to ‘stand firm’ while other angels were, forms the bulk of the third dialogue, dcd.38 Anselm hardly refers to the devil using any other appellation. This failure to ‘stand firm’ constituted a deficient endurance or resolve on the part of the devil. The magister and discipulus, dcd’s interlocutors, make it clear that the devil did not hold on to justice because he did not push on to finish what he began. The magister explains that just because the devil had from God the ability and the will to receive perseverance, it does not follow that he therefore received it. After all, he asks the discipulus: Have you ever started something which you had the will and the power to complete, but yet did not complete because your will changed before the end?39 ‘Often’, the discipulus admits. When asked why he did not persevere in the will to complete it, the discipulus answers ‘because I did not will it’. The point at issue, the magister demonstrates, is that the will, even if it makes a good beginning, can sometimes fail to carry on to the end: Magister: Tell me, therefore, in one word, what it means to persevere in doing something, as much as that thing requires. Discipulus: Perficere. For we call perseverance in writing something ‘perscribere’, and in leading, ‘perducere’. M. Therefore let us say similarly, even though this word is not used, that to persevere in willing is ‘pervelle’.40 If acting-through-to-the-end (per-facere) and writing-through-to-the-end (perscribere) entails a constancy of intent, so willing-through-to-the-end (per-velle) implies a will which sticks to its original intention until the action is complete.

38 39 40

dcd24 (aoo, i.271.17–18). dcd3 (aoo, i.237.32–33). dcd3 (aoo, i.238.23–28).

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M. Therefore, when you did not complete (perfecisti) what you willed and were able to complete, why did you not complete it? D. Because I did not will-through-to-the-end (pervolui).41 This, the magister concludes, was the devil’s calamity: So too, therefore, say that the devil, who received the will and ability to receive perseverance, and the will and ability to persevere, did not receive [perseverance], nor persevere, because he did not will-through-to-theend (pervoluit).42 Since he did not will-through-to-the-end (pervelle) to receive perseverance, the devil remains liable for not having the perseverance which would have helped him to ‘stand firm in the truth’. It is by this logic that the magister and discipulus can judge the devil culpable for his own fall. If failing to ‘stand firm’ sums up angelic wickedness, could ‘standing firm’ and willing-through-to-the-end constitute the spiritual characteristics which can liken humans to the good angels? A wider perspective of Anselm’s monastic context offers a possible answer. The imperative to ‘stand firm’ lay at the heart of Benedictine identity. Following an intuition of Arjo Vanderjagt’s, it is possible to argue that standing firm, holding on and persevering were essential to the monk’s promise of ‘stabilitate sua’ required by the Regula Benedicti.43 Vowing stabilitas was the final threshold a novice had to cross when he entered monastic life, encapsulating his determination to spend the remainder of his life in the specific monastery of his profession: When he is to be received, he comes before the whole community in the oratory and promises his stability, conversion of his life and obedience (stabilitate sua, conversatione morum suorum et oboedientia).44 The pledge of stabilitas included making over all one’s possessions to the monastery in the form of a written document, and it was essentially this document, placed solemnly on the altar, which marked a novice’s entrance into the com-

41 42 43

44

dcd3 (aoo, i.238.30–31). dcd3 (aoo, i.238.32–34). Arjo Vanderjagt, ‘The Devil and Virtue: Anselm of Canterbury’s Universal Order’ in István Bejczy and Richard Newhauser, eds., Virtue and Ethics in the Twelfth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 33–52. rb 58.17, trans Fry, rb 1980, p. 269.

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munity.45 So fundamental was this concept of stabilitas in cenobitic tradition that for Benedict, it was one of the primary features differentiating true monks from false ones. Benedict opens his rule (taking his cues both from Cassian and from the Regula Benedicti’s sixth-century forerunner, the Regula Magistri) with a chapter on the ‘different kinds of monks’: the cenobites, ‘those who belong to a monastery, where they serve under a rule and an abbot’; the sarabites, who choose not to live under any rule, whose ‘law is what they like to do, whatever strikes their fancy’; and, worst of all, the gyrovagues, who spend their entire lives drifting from region to region, staying as guests for three or four days in different monasteries. Always on the move, they never settle down, and are slaves to their own wills and gross appetites.46 In the Regula Magistri, the eponymous Master’s invective against the gyrovagues lasts for several pages: these mobile monks are insatiable gluttons, racing from monastery to monastery on the hunt for their next free meal.47 Breaches of stabilitas feature in much of the monastic literature Anselm would have known. In Gregory the Great’s account of the life of Benedict, dire prospects awaited those monks who succumbed to the temptation to wander. The dead body of one young monk who left the monastery to go home to his parents refused to stay in its grave until his spurned abbot imparted his forgiveness.48 Another monk, who had ‘set his fickle heart on leaving the monastery’, was confronted when he stepped outside the precinct by an enormous gaping dragon. ‘Still breathless with fright, the monk was only too glad to accompany [the other monks] back to the abbey. Once safe within its walls, he promised never to leave again’.49 Guibert of Nogent (d. 1124), a sometime student of Anselm’s and later abbot of the small Benedictine house at Nogent-sous-Coucy, reports his own juvenile desire to seek a different monastic community from the one he entered; it was only the prayers and prophetic dream of his mother, he reports, which brought him to his senses.50 45 46 47 48 49 50

rb 58.19–23, trans. Fry, rb 1980, p. 269. rb 1.10–11, trans. Fry, rb 1980, 171. The Rule of the Master, Luke Eberle, trans. (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1977), 1.106–107. Gregory, Dialogues, Odo John Zimmerman, trans. (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1959), ii.24, p. 94. Gregory, Dialogues, ii.25, p. 95. Guibert of Nogent, Monodies, Joseph McAlhany and Jay Rubenstein, trans. (London: Penguin, 2011), 1.16, pp. 49–53.

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Anselm’s own letters witness a particular concern he seems to have had with crimes against stabilitas.51 He wrote to his friend Lanzo to beware the demonic distraction of restlessness, which he considered a symptom of spiritual immaturity. Dissatisfaction with one’s location, superiors or brethren stunts spiritual progress: Certainly, as long as [the monk] is forever dreaming up elaborate plans to move, or, if he is unable to move, at least dwelling on the bad start he made, he never attempts to strive for the goal of perfection. (…) It follows, then, that just as any young tree, if frequently transplanted or often disturbed by being torn up after having recently been planted in a particular place, will never be able to take root [and] will rapidly wither and bring no fruit to perfection, similarly an unhappy monk, if he often moves from place to place at his own whim, or remaining in one place is frequently agitated by his hatred for it, never achieves stability with roots of love.52 To Hugh the Prior, who had complained of clashes with his superior, Anselm advised that patience is preferable to uprooting: As long as [the abbot] does not force you to turn from good to evil, it is not advisable for you to dare to disregard the vow of submission and stability you once professed by changing your abode, except with his consent, as long as you can envisage any reason or opportunity that would enable you somehow to live well under his authority.53 He was horrified, moreover, to learn of monks leaving their monasteries and setting off to the Holy Land. To a monk from St Martin of Séez, he wrote that the desire for pilgrimage ‘is a danger to your soul’: It is against your profession at which, before God, you promised stability in the monastery in which you took on the habit of a monk.54

51

52 53 54

See Gillian R. Evans, ‘“Minds Wandering” and “Monastic Stability” in the Early Monastic Letters of Anselm of Bec’ in Santha Bhattacharji, ed., Prayer and Thought in Monastic Tradition: essays in honour of Benedicta Ward slg (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), pp. 167–179. E37 (aoo, iii.146.32–42), trans. Fröhlich, Letters, i, pp. 134–135. E6 (aoo, iii.108.17–20), trans. Fröhlich, Letters, i, p. 86. E410 (aoo, v.355.6–7), trans. Fröhlich, Letters, iii, pp. 177–178.

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Breaching stabilitas was close to perdition as far as Anselm was concerned. ‘I adjure you’, he wrote to two escapee monks from Canterbury, ‘through that profession and the stability which you promised before God to observe in that place’, to return to it ‘if you do not want to die in excommunication and anathema’.55 Yet the sin lay not in the mere fact of being peripatetic. The reforming Benedictines of the eleventh century were remarkably energetic travellers.56 Nor, as Steven Vanderputten suspects, was it simply a question of spiritual virtuosity, which meant that some exceptional individuals could travel without breaking their oath and others could not.57 The gyrovague’s drunken wandering, as described by Cassian, represents a spiritual state. To fail in stabilitas loci indicated laxity in stabilitas mentis, the inability to resist the pull of temporal distractions which ought to be left behind: the mind is constantly shackled (…) and is ever wandering to and fro, tossed about by different things as if it were drunk. It does not (…) hold firmly and perseveringly to anything spiritual (…) for, constantly moving from one thing to another, it is as unaware of their arrivals and their beginnings as it is of their endings and their departures.58 A monk was true to his oath of stabilitas, not by never setting foot outside the monastery, but by interiorly cloistering himself from the distraction of earthly desires, refusing to allow his heart to be pulled in multiple directions. Stabilitas was crucial to Anselm because it enabled the monk to direct his energies wholly and unwaveringly to attentiveness to God. ‘Standing firm’ was therefore a monastic virtue: fixing one’s will on a single goal, streamlining one’s entire soul’s effort to cling to the good, resisting the urge to let go and reach after something else.

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E431 (aoo, v.377.12–19), trans. Fröhlich, Letters, iii, p. 208. Helena Vanommeslaeghe, ‘Wandering Abbots: Abbatial Mobility and stabilitas loci in Eleventh-Century Lotharingia and Flanders’ in Tjamke Snijders, Jay Diehl and Steven Vanderputten, eds., Medieval Liège at the crossroads of Europe: monastic society and culture, 1000–1300 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 1–27; see also Phyllis G. Jestice, Wayward Monks and the Religious Revolution of the Eleventh Century (Leiden: Brill, 1997). Steven Vanderputten, ‘The Mind as a Cell and the Body as Cloister: Abbatial Leadership and the Issue of Stability in the Early Eleventh Century’ in Gert Melville, Bernd Schneidmuller, and Stefan Weinfurter, eds., Innovationen durch Deuten und Gestalten: Klöster im Mittelalter zwischen Jenseits und Welt (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2015), pp. 105–126. Cassian, Conferences, x.8.6, pp. 377–378.

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As Anselm describes it in dcd, failing to ‘stand firm’, letting go and reaching for something else is precisely the devil’s sin. Just like Lanzo regretting his choice of monastery, the devil fell because he did not push on to finish what he began. If ‘standing firm’ was a monastic virtue, then failing to ‘stand firm’, the devil’s sin, was a monastic fault. Moreover, if likeness to the devil accompanied the will’s failure to ‘stand firm’, then likeness to the good angels obtained when ‘the heart’s attention is unwaveringly fastened upon the one and highest good’: Cassian’s description of the monk’s vocation.59 It is the faithful monk, above all, who can achieve sufficient likeness to the good angels so as to qualify as a replacement for the bad ones. Indeed, emulating angelic existence was part and parcel of Anselm’s conception of the monk’s particular calling. After all, the ‘likeness to angels’ who ‘neither marry nor are given in marriage’ which Jesus promises at the resurrection (Matt 22:30, Mark 12:25, Luke 20:35) was often taken as a shorthand for monastic celibacy, and angelic and monastic life were traditionally considered analogous. Among the similitudines published as Anselm’s ‘Memorials’, the collections of sayings compiled after his death, are several short parables which parallel monastic and angelic existence. One, chastising the competitiveness between adult converts and oblates, states that peace should exist between the two types of monk ‘just as it is among the saints and angels in heaven’: For the angels are like the oblates, the saints are like the converts. But the angels neither despise the saints, who were at some time conquered by temptation, nor do the saints despise the angels, because they have experienced nothing but the conquering of temptation.60 Another similitudo likens the relationship between abbot, monk and novice to the relationship between God, angels, and monks. The ‘congregation of monks on earth’ mirrors the ‘congregation of angels in heaven’, and the novices represent the earthly monks who wish to join their celestial ranks. Just as the novice-masters are given the job of testing the novices’ worthiness to enter the community, so the angels test the monks and recommend them to God for admittance into heavenly communion.61 The parallelism between monks

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Cassian, Conferences, ix.6.6, p. 334. Liber Anselmi Archepiscopi de Humanis Moribus per Similitudines / De similitudinibus in Richard William Southern and Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, eds., Memorials of St. Anselm (London: oup for the British Academy, 1969), 78: Contentio inter conversos et nutritos, pp. 68–69. De humanis moribus, 79: Similitudo inter monachos et angelos, p. 69.

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and angels in the similitudines even goes so far as to suggest that the communio monachorum was a doorway into entering the conversatio angelorum. One similitudo sketches out the cosmic landscape: A king has within his kingdom a great and spacious estate; in that estate is a castle, and on top of the castle, a keep. (…) Inside the castle it is so secure that if anyone flees to it, provided he does not desert it again, nothing can harm him. It is so absolutely safe in the keep that anyone who climbs up there never wants to leave.62 The kingdom is the universe, the estate is Christendom, the castle is monasticism, and the keep is the conversatio angelorum. While the enemy prince ransacks the dwellings outside the castle, those who flee inside its walls and continue fleeing until they reach the keep are assured safety: ‘In the company of angels, the joy is so very secure that anyone who climbs up there never wants to come back’.63 The way to enter this angelic company, the text infers, is via the monastery. The conversatio angelorum, moreover, seems to be wedded in Anselm’s imagination with the Edenic loftiness from which Adam fell and the blessedness to which his descendants long to return. In the first chapter of the Proslogion (P), written in 1077–1078, the seeker after the unum argumentum is also seeking Adam’s lost enjoyment of the ‘bread of angels’, now denied to those trapped in non-perception: Then “man ate the bread of angels” (Vul. Ps 77:25) for which he now hungers, now he eats the “bread of sorrow” (Vul. Ps 126:2) which then he did not know.64 In Anselm’s Prayer to Christ, the prayer’s supplicant describes the trajectory of Christ’s mission in terms of descending from and returning to the conversatio angelorum: Woe is me, who could not see the lord of angels stooping to the company of humans, so that humans might be raised to the company of angels!65

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De humanis moribus, 76: De regno et villa et castello et dungione, p. 66. De humanis moribus, 75–76: Similitudo inter deum et quemlibet regem; De regno et villa et castello et dungione, pp. 66–67. P1 (aoo, i.98.20–22). om2 (aoo, iii.7.38–40).

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Angelic food and angelic company picture the paradise Adam abandoned at his fall and the glory Christ quitted at his incarnation. Angelic likeness is also an aspect of the eschatological hope with which P concludes: If you desire (…) swiftness or strength, or the liberty of the body which nothing can oppose, “they will be like the angels of God” (Matt 22:30) because what is sown a natural body will rise a spiritual body, in power of course, not in nature.66 Anselm’s expectation that monks would not only parallel their heavenly counterparts, but could hope eventually to join them, weaves monastic life directly into his model of redemption. Anselm is not using good and bad angels as logical abacus beads for tallying up perfect heavenly symmetry. He is imagining what he takes to be an existential reality: monks could and should segue into angelic life, treading the return path towards the conversatio angelorum from which their first parent fell. The logic of replacing the fallen angels and its connection with ‘standing firm’ in stabilitas establishes the redemptive purpose of monastic observance as a key feature of Anselm’s conception of theological order. Equality with the good angels was an essential aspect of the redemption which Christ’s satisfaction would secure, and matching their steadfastness so as to join their ranks was something to which monks could realistically aspire. Replacing the fallen angels, then, was not just a matter of cosmic proportion, as if the divinelyordained framework in which salvation operated were a static and unbending legal abstraction. It depicted the poles of spiritual possibility, not just in the theoretical sphere, but in the daily round of monastic prayer and moral choices. Just as the liturgy is not identified with the liturgical ordo which maps out the shape of the liturgical performance, but rather with the worship which comes into being when that ordo is enacted, so Anselm’s order of redemption in the fullest sense is not to be confined to the logical models depicting the propriety of a proportionate cosmos. These simply lay down the spiritual coordinates for a transformation—indeed, an angelification—which it was the monk’s particular vocation to perform.

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P25 (aoo, i.118.20–22).

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Bibliography Primary Sources Anselm of Canterbury, The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, Walter Fröhlich, trans., 3 vols. (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990–1994). Anselm of Canterbury, The Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm, Benedicta Ward, trans. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973). Augustine of Hippo, Enchiridion: On Faith, Hope and Love, Albert Cook Outler, trans. (Grand Rapids, Mich: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1999). Benedict, rb 1980: the Rule of St Benedict in Latin and English with notes, Timothy Fry, trans. (Collegeville, Minn: Liturgical Press, 1981). Eadmer of Canterbury, Vita Sancti Anselmi, Richard William Southern, ed., The Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). Gregory the Great, Dialogues, Odo John Zimmerman, trans. (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1959). Gregory the Great, Forty Gospel Homilies, David Hurst, trans. (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1990). Guibert of Nogent, Monodies, Joseph McAlhany and Jay Rubenstein, trans. (London: Penguin, 2011). John Cassian, The Conferences, Boniface Ramsey, trans. (New York: Paulist Press, 1997). Liber Anselmi Archepiscopi de Humanis Moribus per Similitudines / De similitudinibus in Richard William Southern and Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, eds., Memorials of St. Anselm (London: oup for the British Academy, 1969), pp. 37–104. Southern, Richard William, and Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, eds., Memorials of St. Anselm (London: oup for the British Academy, 1969). S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961); reprinted in two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968). The Rule of the Master, Luke Eberle, trans. (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1977).

Secondary Sources Brown, David, ‘Anselm on atonement’ in Brian Davies and Brian Leftow, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Anselm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 279–302. Evans, Gillian R., ‘Why the Fall of Satan?’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médièvale, 45 (1978), pp. 130–146. Evans, Gillian R., ‘“Minds Wandering” and “Monastic Stability” in the Early Monastic Letters of Anselm of Bec’ in Santha Bhattacharji, ed., Prayer and Thought in Monastic Tradition: essays in honour of Benedicta Ward slg (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), pp. 167–179.

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Iribarren, Isabel, and Martin Lenz, eds., Angels in Medieval Philosophical Enquiry: Their Function and Significance (Burlington, vt: Ashgate, 2008). Jestice, Phyllis G., Wayward Monks and the Religious Revolution of the Eleventh Century (Leiden: Brill, 1997). Luscombe, David E., ‘Anselm on the Angels’, Rivista di Storia della Filosofia, 48:3 (1993), pp. 537–549. Southern, Richard William, The Making of the Middle Ages (London: Arrow, 1959). Vanderjagt, Arjo, ‘The Devil and Virtue: Anselm of Canterbury’s Universal Order’ in István Bejczy and Richard Newhauser, eds., Virtue and Ethics in the Twelfth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 31–50. Vanderputten, Steven, ‘The Mind as a Cell and the Body as Cloister: Abbatial Leadership and the Issue of Stability in the Early Eleventh Century’ in Gert Melville, Bernd Schneidmuller and Stefan Weinfurter, eds., Innovationen durch Deuten und Gestalten: Klöster im Mittelalter zwischen Jenseits und Welt (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2015), pp. 105–126. Vanommeslaeghe, Helena, ‘Wandering Abbots: Abbatial Mobility and stabilitas loci in Eleventh-Century Lotharingia and Flanders’ in Tjamke Snijders, Jay Diehl and Steven Vanderputten, eds., Medieval Liège at the Crossroads of Europe: Monastic Society and Culture, 1000–1300 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 1–27.

chapter 18

Did Anselm Also Compose the Cur Deus Homo with Invisible Muslim Interlocutors in Mind? Emery de Gaal

There is no gainsaying: many factors led to St. Anselm of Canterbury composing the celebrated, but oftentimes misunderstood Cur Deus Homo (cdh). This chapter intends to shed some light on the historic context of its genesis and thereby ask the question: to what Muslim critiques of Christianity may Anselm have been responding? P.G. van den Plaas in the pre-World War ii period and, later, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt considered Anselm an apologist intent on refuting arguments advanced by Jews and Muslims. This perspective has been little further investigated by Anselm research.1

1

The Historic Context

During Anselm’s lifetime three monotheistic religions were vying for intellectual plausibility: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Europe was far from homogenously Christian during the Middle Ages. Occasioned by the sudden exodus of the Geonic academies of Talmudic studies from Mesopotamia in 1038, intellectually vibrant and influential Jewish communities were flourishing in various parts of western Europe. In the French city of Troyes, located in the Champagne, lived the Jewish rabbi and Pentateuch commentator Shlomo Yitzchaki, called Rashi (1040–1105), a towering Jewish contemporary of Anselm. Could Anselm have possibly encountered him? Had Anselm even visited the centers of Jewish scholarship in Troyes, Narbonne, Paris, Lunéville or Montpellier during his lifetime?2 Certainly he must have known of their existence. Initiated by

1 P.G. van den Plaas, ‘Des hl. Anselm “Cur Deus Homo” auf dem Boden der jüdisch-christlichen Polemik des Mittelalters’, Divus Thomas, 7 (1929), pp. 446–467; and Divus Thomas, 8 (1930), pp. 18–32; René Roques, ed., Anselme de Cantorbéry, Pourquoi Dieu s’est fait homme, introduction (Paris: Cerf, 1963), pp. 70ff.; Richard William Southern, Saint Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), p. 88. 2 Julia Gauss, ‘Anselm von Canterbury. Zur Begegnung und Auseinandersetzung der Religionen’, Saeculum, 17 (1966), pp. 277–363, at p. 289; Marie-Étiennette Bély, ‘Quelques Figures

© Emery de Gaal, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_020

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King William ii Rufus (ca. 1056–1100) in 1090, there had been convened a much noted exchange between Jews and Christians in London.3 In addition, just a few years before the cdh was begun, the abbot of Westminster and favored student of Anselm, Gilbert Crispin (ca. 1055–1117) had been engaged in a much noted public disputation with Jews on the questions of the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the Christian teaching on the Blessed Trinity. There, Gilbert had advanced the arguments his former teacher and abbot, Anselm, had developed. This exchange is recorded as Disputatio Christiani cum Gentili, which had been composed around 1092/3.4 The Jewish interlocutors posed the central question to their Christian counterparts: how can an immutable creator become a mere creature? This question against the divinity of Christ also exists within Islamic discourse. However, Judaism did not pose an existential threat to Christianity. In contrast, Islam did constitute a serious challenge to Christendom. At the age of 38 years the young prior of Bec, Anselm, received devastating news. At the Battle of Manzikert on 26 August 1071 (Turkish: Malazgirt) the recently converted Sunni Seljuks under Alp Arslan (1029–1072) had served the Byzantine forces a decisive defeat, from which Eastern Christendom would never recover. In contrast, in the Mediterranean area Western Christianity was granted some degree of success in pushing back Muslim incursions. From 1061 until

de l’Alterité Religieuse aux xie–xiie Siècles: le Musulman, le Juif, l’Hérétique’, Théologie et Philosophie de Lyon iv-2 (1999), pp. 231–257; Peter Browne, Die Judenmission im Mittelalter und die Päpste, (Rome: Herder, 1942), p. 63; Norman Golb, ‘Les Juifs de Normandie à l’époque d’Anselme’, Les Mutations socio-culturelles au tournant des xie–xiie Siècle, Spicilegium Beccense ii, (Le Bec: Abbaye Notre-Dame du Bec, 1984), pp. 149–160. In general regarding Anselm’s contributions to inter-religious dialogue see: Peter Hünermann, ‘Anselms “Cur Deus Homo”. Eine Hilfe für den heutigen Dialog zwischen den abrahamitischen Religionen?’ in Paul Gilbert, Helmut Kohlenberger, Elmar Salmann, eds., Cur Deus Homo. Atti del Congresso Anselmiano Internazionale, Roma 21–23 maggio 1998, Studia Anselmiana 128 (Rome: Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmi, 1999), pp. 767–785; Matteo Zoppi, Anselmo e la grandezza di Dio. Una via Cristiana di dialogo con ebrei, musulmani e non credenti in Giulio Cipollone, ed., Monumenta Historiae, Series Patristica, 70 (Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2014), pp. 305–335; Markus Enders, ‘Die Entwicklung der christlichen Auseinandersetzung mit dem Judentum und dem Islam von Anselm von Canterbury bis Peter Abälard’ in Giles E.M. Gasper and Helmut Kohlenberger, eds., Anselm and Abelard. Investigations and Juxtapositions (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2006), pp. 223–247. 3 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, vol. 1, Roger A.B. Mynors, Rodney Thomson, and Michael Winterbottom, eds. and trans. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), iv.317, p. 562. 4 Gilbert Crispin, ‘Disputatio Christiani cum Gentili’, James C.C. Webb, ed., in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 3 (1954), pp. 54–77; cf. Bernd Goebel, Im Umkreis von Anselm. Biographisch-bibliographische Porträts von Autoren aus Le Bec und Canterbury, Fuldaer Hochschulstudien 60 (Würzburg: Echter, 2017), pp. 174–201.

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1072 Sicily was retaken, culminating in the capture of Palermo. In addition, the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula was gradually making progress. In 1085 King Alfonso vi of Leon had freed the incomparably splendid city of Toledo from Arab rule.5 From Rome, Pope Urban ii (ca. 1035–1099, pope 1088–1099) was encouraging such military campaigns, while being careful not to frame these efforts as religious wars. The educated and cosmopolitan Anselm was acutely aware of these developments. His significant monastery of Le Bec lay in a European cultural center: in western France, in Normandy. He had immediate and personal knowledge of the good fortunes with which the Christian efforts in Calabria and Sicily had been blessed. Under the protection of Bec the Norman Benedictine community of St. Evroul(t) in Normandy flourished. It had sent monks to re-populate the formerly Byzantine monastery of Sant’ Eufemia in the town of Lamezia in Calabria. This community had been re-founded by the Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard (ca. 1015–1085) in 1061/2, an acquaintance of Anselm’s.6 On the occasion of Bec’s jubilee in 1077 the abbot of Sant’ Eufemia, the Norman Robert Grandmesnil (died 1082), had paid this center of monastic erudition a visit.7 In addition, rather intense commerce, frequent pilgrimages, and military campaigns brought much information back from the Dar-es-Islam (the House of Islam). Anselm’s friend, former fellow student at Bec and later bishop of Rochester Gundolf had undertaken as a young man a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The same applies to other acquaintances of his: such as William Bona Anima, the later archbishop of Rouen, John, the abbot of the not-distant monastery of Fécamp and even Anselm’s brother-in-law Burgundius.8 Therefore, it stands to reason to assume that Anselm enjoyed a frequent flow of news from the Arab-Christian front. The bearers of such news were on the whole educated and reliable. Nevertheless, central Arab texts remained untranslated during Anselm’s life. The Qurʾan became available in Latin in 1143, only thirty-four years after Anselm’s death.9 He could have gained knowledge concerning the basic ten5 Hugh Goddard, A History of Christian-Muslim Relations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), esp. pp. 85–98. 6 Goebel, Im Umkreis von Anselm, pp. 31–67. 7 Julia Gauss, ‘Die Auseinandersetzung mit Judentum und Islam bei Anselm’ in Helmut Kohlenberger, ed., Analecta Anselmiana, 4 (Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1975), pp. 101–109, at p. 103. 8 Gauss, ‘Anselm von Canterbury. Zur Begegnung und Auseinandersetzung der Religionen’, p. 360. 9 James Kritzek, ‘Robert of Ketton’s Translation of the Qurʾan’, International Studies Quarterly, 2 (1955), pp. 310–312.

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ets held by Muslim believers almost exclusively from secondary sources and from hearsay. Thus, it would be ill-founded to hope Anselm could respond directly, on a one-to-one basis, to Muslim reservations to Christian teachings. Matters came to a head in 1095. Not only did meteorites ominously shower Europe this year, but Anselm’s friend and former prior of the Benedictine monastery of Cluny, Pope Urban ii, convened in that year a council at ClermontFerrand, in France. There, the pope called on Christendom to undertake a crusade to retake the Holy Land. Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury since 1093, was unable to participate in the council. However, his loyal monk and confidant Boso (1065/6–1136) attended this gathering as his representative.10 Julia Gauss’ assumption that Urban ii had communicated through Boso the request to Anselm to write an apology for the Christian belief in the incarnation of the second person of the Blessed Trinity sounds very plausible.11 It then stands to reason that the (hypothetical) messenger of this wish, Boso, is Anselm’s interlocutor in cdh. To Urban ii’s mind Anselm must have been predestined for such an anti-Muslim tractate, as he had already established something of a common basis for Christian-Muslim dialogue in the Monologion (M), the content of which is: God is omnipotent and had created the world ex nihilo. Anselm had thereby established the superior intelligibility of monotheism—alas never translated into Arabic. While prior of Bec, Anselm had written (1075/6) this text under the still vivid impressions of the lost Battle of Manzikert. A further impetus for cdh itself must have come from the fact that he knew well, if not was even friends with some leaders of the crusade: Robert ii, Duke of Normandy (ca. 1051–1134), Robert ii, Count of Flanders (ca. 1035–1111) and Baldwin i, king of Jerusalem (Bouillon, ca. 1060–1118).12

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Bernd Goebel, Im Umkreis von Anselm, pp. 145–154; Richard William Southern, A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 203; René Roques, ‘Les Pagani dans le Cur Deus Homo de Saint Anselme’ in Paul Wilpert, ed., Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter: ihr Ursprung und ihre Bedeutung. Vorträge des ii. Internationalen Kongresses für Mittelalterliche Philosophie 1961, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 2 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1963), pp. 192–206; cf. Karl Bertau, Schrift—Macht—Heiligkeit in den Literaturen des jüdisch-christliche-muslimischen Mittelalters, Sonja Glauch, ed. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), pp. 213–227. Gauss, ‘Anselm von Canterbury. Zur Begegnung und Auseinandersetzung der Religionen’, p. 362. E24 (aoo, iii.131); E56 (aoo, iv.170). All English translations are from Anselm of Canterbury, vol. iii, Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson, eds. and trans. (Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1976); henceforth cited as Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm.

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385

The Philosophically Sharpened Position of Islam on God’s Sublimity

The philosophical astuteness of Muslim scholars in the eleventh century was quite remarkable. Founded by Caliph al-Maʾmun, since 832 the Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) existed in Bagdad with the declared mission to translate into Arabic and disseminate the texts of ancient Greek philosophy. Its prominent position was re-enforced when, in the ninth century, members of the philosophical academy of Alexandria joined it. This academy has its roots in the Academy of Gondishapur, which continued the tradition of Plato’s venerable Academy in Athens. Plato’s foundation had been relocated to Gondishapur in present-day Iran in 529, when the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I had had it closed, in order to enforce his fideist understanding of the Christian statement and to immunize his caesaropapist claims against internal criticism.13 On the other hand, early Islam was by no means beholden to a literalist reading of the Qurʾan. For instance, the seventh Abbasid caliph al-Maʾmun (786–833) was heavily influenced by Muʾtazilite theology, which considered the Qurʾan subject to human reason’s examination. This school was thoroughly Aristotelian in outlook, holding that the Qurʾan is not the eternal, uncreated word of God, but created under the conditions of time and space. In contrast, the less influential Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780–855) and his school subscribed to a fideist position.14 For some time the Bayt al-Hikma was headed alternatingly by a Nestorian Christian or a Muslim.15 In the latter part of the tenth century learned disputations between representatives of both religions were held in Bagdad and Basra. The Bagdad logician Abu Suleiman Sistani (ca. 932–ca. 1000) had recorded 111 or 112 such exchanges.16 The principle governing such talks was informed by the Bayt al-Hikma’s realist outlook: all parties refrain from using religious texts and theological

13

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Herbert H. Schöffler, Die Akademie von Gondischapur. Aristotles auf dem Wege in den Orient, introduction by Friedrich Hiebel, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Freies Geistesleben, 1980). The influence remained, although the Greek scholars had left again the Sassanid Empire in 531. Richard C. Martin, Mark R. Woodward and Dwi Surya Atmaja, Defenders of Reason in Islam: Muʾtazilism from Medieval School to Modern Symbol (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1997). Ian R. Netton, Al-Farabi and his School (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 1–11; Joel K. Kraemer, Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 75–77, 104–107. Gauss, ‘Anselm von Canterbury. Zur Begegnung und Auseinandersetzung der Religionen’, p. 296; Ignác Goldziher, ‘Mélanges judéo-arabes’, Revue des Études Juives, 47 (1903), pp. 179– 186.

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arguments, let alone invoke religious authorities.17 Divine revelation should be rendered plausible exclusively by way of neo-Platonic metaphysics and Aristotelian logic. Often these disputations were presided by the regnant sultan, who was flanked by a Muslim and Christian minister respectively.18 It seems that it was considered unbecoming to the dignity of faith if matters religious were settled by sheer force of arms. Roughly at the same time, responding to anti-Christian arguments by Muslims, Nicetas of Byzantium (fl. under Emperor Michael iii. 842–867) in his polemic Against the (H)Agarenians, likewise employs only common terms, syllogisms and human reason to demonstrate the Christian creed.19 Could it be, that mindful of the praxis of a purely rational approach in Muslim-Christian dialogue, Anselm uses terms such as remoto Christo, sola ratione etc. in his argumentation? The use of such concepts has led to some confusion. Certainly, his position is a far cry from cocksure rationalism.20 In this regard one must bear in mind that Scholastic theology only later developed a clear demarcation between necessaria secundum rationem and mirabilia supra rationem. Muslims join Jews, such as Saadia Gaon (d. 942), in denouncing the Christian dogmas of the Blessed Trinity and of the Crucifixion of Christ as illogical. The violent death of Jesus Christ on the cross appeared to Jews and Muslims alike not only as a contradictio in eo ipso, but as downright blasphemous. The influential Muslim thinker and contemporary of Anselm Mohammed Al-Ghazali (1058–1111), an expert in syllogistics and Aristotelian logic, but a religious scholar first and foremost, considered the notion of a God ‘in a grave’ as revolting and philosophically untenable.21 Already in the introduction to the Refutation of the Divinity of Jesus Christ he judges Christian dogmas ‘weak, vacillating and strained’.22 It seems altogether impossible to reconcile the concept 17 18 19 20

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22

Gauss, ‘Anselm von Canterbury. Zur Begegnung und Auseinandersetzung der Religionen’, pp. 296f. Gauss, ‘Anselm von Canterbury. Zur Begegnung und Auseinandersetzung der Religionen’, p. 282. Nicetas of Byzantium, Refutatio Muhamedis in Patrologia Graeca, 105, Jacques-Paul Migne, ed., (Paris: Migne, 1862), cols. 0669–0842. cdhi.2 (aoo, ii.50.10–13): ‘Quod si aliquatenus quaestioni tuae satisfacere potero, certum esse debebit et sapientior me plenius hoc facere poterit. Immo sciendum est, quidquid inde homo dicere possit, altiores tantae rei adhuc latere rationes’. Rad al Jamil Ghazali, Réfutation excellente de la Divinité de Jésus Christ, Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études, Sciences Religieuses, 54, Robert Chidiac, ed. and trans. (Paris: Leroux, 1939), p. 48. Rad al Jamil Ghazali, Réfutation excellente, pp. 1f.; cf. Frank Griffel, Al-Ghazali’s philosophical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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of a Triune God and the mystery of the incarnation with human reason. While human rationality (ʿaql) cannot grasp divine truths, these eternal truths do not contradict the human mind he states axiomatically. On these points Muslims merely expand on arguments Jews and Greek philosophy had already advanced earlier. Upon such a stringently argued monotheistic canvas Christianity appears as contradictory and thus as embarrassingly superstitious.23 Without using Muslim revelation, he deployed exclusively natural reason to refute the divinity of Christ as attested in the gospels. May Anselm have reacted directly to Al-Ghazali with his call ‘Sola igitur ratione procedamus’?24 On this note he also ends his treatise: ‘Cum enim sic probes deum fieri hominem ex necessitate, ut (…) non solum Iudaeis sed etiam paganis sola ratione satisfacias’.25 In what Muslim thinkers does such a position manifest itself best? Al-Baqillani (d. 1013) disseminates the position of his teacher Abuʾl-Hasan al-Ashari (874–936) in his book Kitab al-Tamhid (Insight into Incomparability). In a letter to the inhabitants of the town of Derbend, located on the shores of the Caspian Sea, Al-Ashari had taught that as Mohammed is the definitive prophet of God, only through the Qurʾan can man understand the position and nature of Jesus and comprehend the course of world history and that of the cosmos.26 Al-Baqillani defends the Qurʾan by way of recourse to philosophical arguments alone. Whoever claims God is an abstract human concept such as hypostasis or substance ( Jawhar), reduces the sublimity of God to something quantifiable; thereby succumbing to the temptation of sinful anthropomorphism. God is incomparable in his aseity. It follows that it is inexcusable to refer to God as consisting of three prosopa (persons) or hypostases (aqanim), asserting that each is divine in itself. Such polytheistic contradiction ignores the majestic philosophical principle of the indivisibility of divine being. Consequently, one must consider the Council of Chalcedon’s (451 ad) teaching on the two natures of Jesus, human and divine, as rationally ‘illogical’.27 This ‘ruptured’ thinking is

23 24

25 26 27

Cf. Guibert de Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos in pl 156, 689. cdhi.20 (aoo, ii.88.8). More recently Arduini had illuminated the Augustinian origin of this line. Maria Lodovica Arduini, ‘“Sola ratione procedamus” (Cur Deus Homo i, 20). Tradizione e novità nel segno semantico anselmiano “Sola ratione” Le fonti, i; Sant’Agostino’, Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica, 83 (1991), pp. 90–141. cdhii.22 (aoo, ii.133.5–8). Richard Joseph McCarthy, The Theology of al-Ashʾari (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1953), p. 227, nos. 84 and 86. ‘One and the same Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son, must be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion or change, without division or separation’. dh 300–303, here at dh 302. Heinrich Denzinger and Peter Hünermann, eds., Enchiridion symbolorum

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evidenced by Christianity being split as a result of that council into Nestorians, Monophysites and Dyophysites—thus the reasoning of al-Baqillani. As the universal is incompatible with the particular, also the eternal cannot be conjoined or mixed with the temporal. Change and decline are never divine predicates.28 This critique is often repeated. The great Sunni Hanafi scholar Abu Mansur al-Maturidi (873–933) is the founder of the highly influential (i.e. for the first centuries of Islam) Maturidiyya School of Kalam, i.e. of Muslim theology. With no reference to the Qurʾan, exclusively by means of reason—sola ratione— al-Maturidi argued in his work Kitab al-Tawhid (Book on the Oneness of God) in favor of the unicity of God. Thereby he attempted—and to a degree succeeded—in refuting inner-Muslim positions favoring a more dynamic understanding of Allah a se, but also of pagan Persian dualism (Zoroastrianism), Manichaeism, Marcionism and Chalcedonian Christianity. So rich was the religious landscape of his day. Against the divinity of Christ, he argued that Christians cannot supply any evidence that Jesus was the Son of God as also Moses had affected miracles without someone in Scripture ever claiming him to be the ‘Son of God’. Also, Ezekiel had raised dead and Elijah had been taken into heaven. Ergo, none of the miracles ascribed to Jesus suffice in demonstrating his divinity. Sharpened by Greek philosophy, he underscores that Jesus’ existence—as recorded by Scripture—is as frail and contingent as that of any other human being. Further to the point, God’s utter sublimity precludes a division of his being—let alone the assumption of human frailty.29

3

Anselm’s Response to Muslim Criticism: The Cur Deus Homo—The Reasonableness of the Christian Proposition

Given this background, it comes as no surprise that students, monks and friends—and possibly even his papal friend, Pope Urban ii—had requested Anselm to present the mysteries of the Christian faith on rational bases (‘debemus rationabiliter intelligere’).30 His biographer Eadmer (1055/60–after 1127)

28 29

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definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum. Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, 43rd ed., (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2012). McCarthy, The Theology of al-Ashʾari, pp. 82–94, esp. nos. 86–91. David Thomas, ‘Abu Mansur al-Maturidi on the Divinity of Jesus Christ’, Islamochristiana, 23 (1997) pp. 43–64; cf. Ulrich Rudolph, Al-Maturidi und die sunnitische Theologie in Samarkand, Islamic philosophy, theology, and science, vol. 30 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 57– 114. cdhi.12 (aoo, ii.70.12).

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welcomed Anselm’s treatise on the incarnation as pernecessarium, i.e. as most topical.31 Likewise Urban ii welcomed cdh once it was completed.32 Anselm’s favored student Boso very much encourages Anselm to name rational grounds for the dogmas: ‘non solum Iudaeis, sed etiam paganis sola ratione satifacias’.33 The principle sola ratione is Anselm’s consistent modus operandi. As René Roques has convincingly demonstrated, in eleventh-century Latin Europe the term pagani is synonymous with ‘Muslims’.34 When visiting Muslims in the military encampment of the Norman Duke Roger in Southern Italy (1098), Eadmer uses the term paganus.35 Tellingly, already the original title of M read ‘Exemplum meditandi de ratione fidei’—‘an example of meditating about the rationality of faith’.36 In the introduction to cdh the author declares his intention to provide the reader with arguments in favor of the Christian creed.37 Thereby he echoes 1 Peter 3:15 ‘but in your hearts reverence Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence’.38 This intention of affirming the Christian faith’s intelligibility Augustine (354–430) had underscored: ‘fidei suae in quantum potest intelligentiam’.39 Thus, Anselm finds the rational concerns 31 32 33

34

35 36 37

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va, ii.10, p. 72: ‘egregium et pro illius temporis statu pernecessarium opus de incarnatione verbi composuit’. va, ii.10, p. 73. cdhii.22 (aoo, ii.133.8). Note the reference to Roscelin in div prior recensio (aoo, i.285. 21–23): ‘Dicit, sicut audio, ille qui tres personas dicitur asserere esse velut tres angelos: “Pagani defendunt legem suam, Iudaei defendunt legem suam. Ergo et nos Christiani debemus defendere fidem nostrum”.’ Roques, ‘Les Pagani dans le Cur Deus Homo’, pp. 192–206; P.G. van den Plaas had argued that this term and infidels refers only to Jews: van den Plaas, ‘Des hl. Anselm “Cur Deus Homo”’ (1929), pp. 446–467, esp. pp. 450–453; (1930), pp. 18–32; cf. Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ‘Die wissenschaftliche Methode in: “Cur Deus Homo” ’, Spicilegium Beccense 1 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1959), pp. 349–370, at pp. 354f. va, ii.33, pp. 110ff. M1 (aoo, i.13 footnote 1); see P Proemium (aoo, i.93.2). cdhi.1 (aoo, ii.47.8–11): ‘Quod petunt, non ut per rationem ad fidem accedant, sed ut earum quae credunt intellectu et contemplatione delectentur, et ut sunt, quantum posset, parati semper ad satisfactionem omni poscenti se rationem de ea quae in nobis est spe’. Nestle-Aland, Greek-English New Testament, 2nd ed. Revised Standard Version, (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1985). Augustine of Hippo, Epistola 120, 4 in pl 33, 453f. ‘Propterea monet apostolus Petrus, paratos nos esse debere ad responsionem omni poscenti nos rationem de fide et spe nostra (1 Petr. iii, 15): quoniam si a me infidelis rationem poscit fidei et spei meae, et video quod antequam credat capere non potest, hanc ipsam ei reddo in qua, si fieri potest videat quam praepostere ante fidem poscat rationem earum rerum quas capere non potest’.

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of his invisible Muslim interlocutors confirmed in both Scripture and Christian tradition. It follows that he does not consider the principle of sola ratione alien or external to Christianity. It would, however, be naïve to assume Anselm argues that one can, so to speak, conjure faith from a hat: he states ‘a rational basis for which we ought to hunger once [we have] the certainty of faith. (…) Moreover, the rational basis of truth is so extensive and so deep that it cannot be exhausted by mortals’.40 Thus he qualifies: ‘If I say something (…) in the sense that it appears to me for the time being to be thus, until God somehow reveals the matter to me more fully’.41 In cdh he invites Boso, the supposed spokesman of the pagani ‘ratione postulasti, rationem accipe’—reason you request, reason you receive.42 He reminds Boso that God created humankind endowed with reason so that he might achieve eternal salvation. As human beings cannot live with the stain of sin, they require remission of sins. He assumes that there is a common denominator for all: as all religions believe God created humankind and placed it above all other creatures so that they may thank Him, love Him and show obedience to Him.43 In the praefatio he develops the notion that humankind is called to salvation, while leaving Christ aside for a moment—‘quasi nihil sciatur de Christo’.44 3.1

The Incarnation as Inner Trinitarian Self-Revelation and Invitation to Participation in Divine Life Rationally he demonstrates that God did not simply become incarnate for the sake of a narrowly understood redemption as freeing humankind from guilt: but also to reveal His inner-trinitarian nature: charity. ‘He has demonstrated the greater degree of His love and graciousness toward us’, which enables anew ‘our praising God’s wise loving-kindness’.45 Such selfless suffering on the cross reveals ‘a certain inexpressible beauty’, Anselm argues—which a nonincarnate, not a ‘humbled’, God does not express to ‘unbelievers’.46 Then he is careful to note that divine nature is impassible as evidenced in Chalcedon’s teaching on Christ consisting of ‘two natures in one person’.47 In Bethlehem no 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

cdh Commendatio (aoo, ii.39.2–40.6). Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 41; cf. Isa 7:9. cdhi.2 (aoo, ii.50.9): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 51. cdhi.24 (aoo, ii.94.10). cdhi.20 (aoo, ii.87.22–24): ‘In oboedientia vero quid das Deo quod non debes, cui iubenti totam quod es et quod habes et quod potes debes’. cdh Praefatio (aoo, ii.42.14). cdhi.3 (aoo, ii.50.29–51.5): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 52. cdhi.4 (aoo, ii.51.14–52.11): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 53. cdhi.8 (aoo, ii.59.21–22): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 58.

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‘abasement of the divine substance’ occurred, but rather ‘human nature was exalted’. Freely the divine person Jesus Christ suffered and willingly underwent death. His magnanimity is greater than the human mind can fathom. The subcutaneous implication is that the unpredicated God of Islam is much smaller than the Christian God, as Jesus’ obedience displays divine charity. Thereby something is revealed about human fulfillment. It occurs ‘when [human] rational nature freely and without necessity keeps the will which it has received from God’.48 Salvation means not only accepting that God does something for the fallen human race, but entering into the saving obedience of Jesus Christ to His Father; becoming as docile as the Son. This human beings could not have comprehended without the incarnation and suffering of the God-man. To counter Muslim arguments perhaps, he underlines, not a ‘slaying of God’ occurs, let alone a divine delight in the shedding of innocent blood. The vita beata can occur if human beings become disciples, imitators of Jesus Christ generous self-immolation. Thus, the debt owed God is but subordination ‘to the will of God’.49 This has Boso ask whether salvation could have occurred without ‘any payment of debt’.50 And Anselm responds by using the chivalric term ‘honor’. It is certain that God cannot lose His ‘incorruptible and immutable’ honor.51 The sinner cannot justify himself. Salvation restores the human ability to choose and love ‘the Supreme Good above all other things for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else’.52 Thereby the human being is restored to his moral integrity to live relationality with God. At this point Anselm counters the Muslim view and restates the Christian position that God, who is wise and just, does not have a blameless human being undergo death.53 This is a fortiori the case as God created the human being for his own sake.54 Significantly, Anselm argues God ‘bound Himself’ to saving human beings.55 3.2 The Devil as Not Equal to God Anselm argues that the devil has no title on humankind. But both belong to God. He denies outright any dualism between God and the evil power. It is God 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

cdhi.10 (aoo, ii.65.18–19): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 65. cdhi.11 (aoo, ii.68.12): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 67. cdhi.12 (aoo, ii.69–71): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 68. cdhi.15 (aoo, ii.72.30): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 72. cdhii.1 (aoo, ii.97.14–15): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 98. cdhii.2 (aoo, ii.98): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 99. cdhii.5 (aoo, ii.99–100): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 100. Thus Boso. cdhii.5 (aoo, ii.100.19–20): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 101.

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punishing him through the devil for sins committed.56 In this context one reads Psalm 78:39: ‘He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and comes not again’ (nrsv). Later, but still in Book I he argues that man was created in order to show that he cannot be conquered by evil. But ‘he dishonored God when he was defeated by the Devil’.57 The incongruency between what human beings are called to and the state they inflicted upon themselves calls for satisfaction. What is incongruent, cannot extricate itself from such a condition. Ergo only the creator of the original state can remedy this predicament. This Anselm circumscribes with the medieval term ‘satisfaction (satisfactio)’.58 However, the condition can be rendered real only if God becomes a human being—also to make the Heavenly City complete again. This is buttressed by the Chalcedonian formula ‘fully divine and fully human’.59 For the one who is divine will not do it, because He will not be under obligation to do it; and the one who is human will not do it, because he will not be able to do it. Hence, in order that a God-man will do this, it is necessary that one and the same [individual] be fully divine and fully human, so as to make this satisfaction.60 Therefore the God-man need be a descendent of Adam and yet free from the stain of original sin. This has him affirm the ‘fittingness of the God-man’s being born from a virgin’.61 Alien to and thus against the Qurʾan he states that if sin entered the world through a virgin, redemption must be affected through a virgin as well. The unity of both is established by the one person of Jesus Christ. Thereby the dishonored becomes the source of renewed honor in the Father’s likeness, the Son. To this God was in no way compelled. Rather he freely dies as mortality neither pertains to God nor does it ‘pertain to sinless human nature’.62 God freely subjects Himself to mortality, as there is ‘neither necessity nor impossibility’ for Him. This deepens the sublimity of the Godhead as stated by Greek philosophy.63 As he observes ‘we do not signify in Him any inability

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

cdhi.7 (aoo, ii.55–59): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, pp. 56 f. cdhi.22 (aoo, ii.90.19): Hopkins and. Richardson, Anselm, p. 91. cdhii.6 (aoo, ii.101.17): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 102. cdhii.7 (aoo, ii.102.21): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 103. cdhii.7 (aoo, ii.102.14–16): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 103. cdhii.8 (aoo, ii.104.10–11): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 105. cdhii.11 (aoo, ii.109.8–9): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 111. cdhii.17 (aoo, ii.122.23): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 125.

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to keep (or any inability to will to keep) His immortal life’.64 So the question of God maintaining His exalted divine nature and yet becoming a contingent human being is not only reconciled but shown as the high road for a salvation that is also divine self-revelation: If the human nature was not able to do what was required to be done for restoring men, then the divine nature would do it; and if [what was required] did not at all befit the divine nature, then the human nature would do it. And not two different [individuals] but one and the same [individual], existing perfectly in two natures, would pay through His human nature what this nature ought to pay and would be able through His divine nature to do what was required.65 Implicitly against polytheistic Tritheism, Anselm observes that honor is a common feature of all three persons of the Trinity. Incarnation and redemption become one inner-trinitarian action.66 God does not define Himself over and against the devil. He then restates what had been observed already in Book One: Rather, God demanded of man that he overcome the Devil and that, having offended God by his sin, he make satisfaction by his justice. Indeed, God did not owe anything to the Devil except punishment; and man did not [owe the Devil anything] except to conquer him in return for having been conquered by him. But man owed God, not to the Devil, whatever was required of him.67 This historic process does not remain on a forensic plane, but becomes a personal communication of God to humankind. Indeed, what can be thought to be more merciful than for God the Father to say to a sinner, condemned to eternal torments and having no way to redeem himself: “Receive my only begotten son and render him in place of yourself,” and for the Son to say “Take me and redeem yourself”? For the Father and the Son do make these respective statements, as it were, when they call and draw us to the Christian faith.68 64 65 66 67 68

cdhii.17 (aoo, ii.124.5–7): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 126. cdhii.17 (aoo, ii.124.19–24): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 127. Cf. cdhii.18 (aoo, ii.129, 17–25): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 133. cdhii.19 (aoo, ii.131.20–24): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 135. cdhii.20 (aoo, ii.131.29–132.4): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 136.

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Here it becomes apparent that redemption in no way implies God communicating, let alone bartering with the devil. There is no ontic requirement for either God or humankind to be reconciled with the ontologically far inferior devil, who defines himself exclusively via opposition to God.69 The concept of constitutive opposition to the all-good God is alien to humankind, but essential to the devil. Therefore humankind is above the devil and closer to God. The explanation Anselm supplies for the incarnation and crucifixion builds upon biblical evidence, but in a decisive way corrects patristic soteriology. To Anselm’s mind the biblical basis for soteriology, namely original sin and the Mary-Eve, tree of paradise and the wood of the cross parallels are not very helpful in the dialogue with Muslims.70 The metaphorical-mythical explanation advanced by patristic theology has Christ liberate humankind from the clutches of the devil. This leaves Anselm unconvinced, as God could have had liberated humankind simply by solo iusso or sola voluntate.71 Both the devil and human beings must be subjected to God.72 Therefore, it is wholly unacceptable to consider even for a moment that the devil holds title over the human person. The patristic ‘Loskauftheorie’ (release theory) is untenable—as the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) restates. The purpose of human beings is the vita beata: ‘(…) nos hominem esse factum ad beatitudinem, quae in hac vita haberi’.73 This cannot be achieved by barter with the devil. It requires humankind’s restoration to celestial life only God can affect as it entails a personal closeness to God. This is the unexpected correction and advance in Christian soteriology Anselm effects.74

4

Conclusion

Only after presenting to non-Christians the ratio fidei, does Anselm hope that outsiders will discover also the intellectus fidei. The eminently apologetic intention of Anselm is evident throughout cdh. Only as a third level is the visio facialis of God imaginable. Anselm is thoroughly rational in his exposition of the Christian statement, but far from a rationalist. This vision face-to-face is

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cdhii.21 (aoo, ii.132): Hopkins and Richardson, Anselm, p. 136. cdhi.4 (aoo, ii.51.16–52.6). cdhi.7 (aoo, ii.55.13–59.5); cdhi.6 (aoo, ii.54.12–13). cdhi.6 (aoo, ii.54.3–6). cdhi.10 (aoo, ii.67.13–16). Hans Urs von Balthasar, Herrlichkeit: eine theologische Ästhetik. Band ii, Fächer der Stile (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1984), pp. 241, 341.

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granted only in heaven. It is not a chronological sequence that is presented so much as an intellectual re-tracing of what is already recognized in faith. This point he had laid out in the dedicatory letter to cdh.75 Anselm’s theory of satisfaction is completely alien to Islam. To Muslims, death is not the consequence of a kind of guilt perceived as supra-individual, but a natural phenomenon. Original sin as a collective guilt burdening all of humankind, bifurcated into peccatum originale originans and its hereditary consequence peccatum originale originatum, is wholly foreign to pious Muslims. The fact that Adam had committed a grievous sin is not at all denied. But it constitutes an individual transgression for which Adam personally had to be punished. Seventh-century Mohammed seems not cognizant of the etymological meaning of the Hebrew name Adam and its relationship to Adamah, conveying a sense of a corporate identity embracing all of humankind. For this reason, there is no Muslim appreciation for Adam having committed a sin more morally consequential than any other human being. Yet, more importantly, for devout Muslims, the sin committed by a human being can never result in an infinite insult of God. Otherwise absolute being and contingent being would be illicitly conflated. According to Surah 2:35 Allah forgives Adam. Whoever as an individual is disobedient to God ( yaʾsa in Arabic) deserves punishment. Interestingly, Anselm settles a question that had preoccupied theologians for some time: God did not create humanity as a substitute for the lacuna caused by those angels that fail to worship God. Rather the human being is ‘the only creature on earth that God willed for itself (propter semetipsum)’.76 Anselm remarks how the non-Christian monotheistic religions ridicule Christians as unsophisticated simpletons.77 But actually the opposite is the case. There exists in Islam an ever-latent unitarianism. It seems that Anselm not only responds to the rigid monotheism of Islam in general, that confines God in His absolute being, but more specifically to a school of Islam namely Muʾtazilism, that fell out of favor with the condemnation of Averroes (1126–1198) in 1198. There have been modest efforts to revive Muʾtazilism since the 19th century. The German poet Hölderlin (1770–1843) prefaced his Hyperion with the words

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cdh Commendatio (aoo, ii.39.2–40.2); cf. M Ep. Ad Lan. (aoo, i.5.15). Gaudium et Spes 24. Cf. Austin Flannery, ed., The Vatican Collection. Vatican ii, vol. 1, The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents (Northport, NY: Costello, 1998). cdhi.1 (aoo, ii.47.11–48.1): ‘Quam quaestionem solent et infideles nobis simplicitatem Christianam quasi fatuam deridentes obicere’. See cdh Praefatio (aoo, ii.42.9–11): ‘Quorum prior quidem infidelem Christianam fidem, quia rationi putant illam repugnare, respuentium (…)’.

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taken from an epitaph eulogizing the founder of the Jesuit order, St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556): ‘Non coerci maximo, conteneri tamen a minimo, divinum est’ (Not to be encompassed by the greatest, but to let oneself be encompassed by the smallest—that is divine). The Christian God oversteps the limits human philosophical cognition imposes on God. He transcends human reasoning and becomes present to the least. This could be in nuce Anselm’s response to the strict Unitarianism of some Muslim thinkers—though it had been written only in 1640. Precisely the Logos as babe in swaddling cloth in the manger expresses this God.78

Bibliography Primary Sources Anselm of Canterbury, Anselm of Canterbury, vol. iii, Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson, eds. and trans. (Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1976). Augustine of Hippo, Epistolae in pl 33, 61–1094. Eadmer of Canterbury, Vita Sancti Anselmi, Richard William Southern, ed., The Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). Flannery, Austin, ed., The Vatican Collection. Vatican ii, vol. 1, The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents (Northport, NY: Costello, 1998). Ghazali, Rad al Jamil, Réfutation excellente de la Divinité de Jésus Christ, Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études, Sciences Religieuses, 54, Robert Chidiac, ed. and trans. (Paris: Leroux, 1939). Gilbert Crispin, ‘Disputatio Christiani cum Gentili’, James C.C. Webb, ed., in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 3 (1954), pp. 54–77. Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos in pl 156, 679–837. Nestle-Aland, Greek-English New Testament, 2nd ed. Revised Standard Version (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1985). Nicetas of Byzantium, Refutatio Muhamedis in Patrologia Graeca 105, Jacques-Paul Migne, ed. (Paris: Migne, 1862), cols. 0669–0842. S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed.,

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See Hugo Rahner, ‘Die Grabinschrift des Loyola’, Stimmen der Zeit, 72.2 (1947), pp. 321– 337. He traces this inscription to Imago primi saeculi Societatis Jesu a Provincia FlandroBelgica eiusdem Societatis repraesentata (Antwerp: Morales, 1640) at pp. 280–282. The initial point of departure for Rahner can be found in Friedrich Hölderlin, Werke, vol. 3, Friedrich Beißner, ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965), pp. 346 f. This is succinctly presented by Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004), pp. 146f., incl. fn 3.

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vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961); reprinted in two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968). William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, vol. 1, Roger A.B. Mynors, Rodney M. Thomson and Michael Winterbottom, eds. and trans. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).

Secondary Sources Arduini, Maria Lodovica, ‘“Sola ratione procedamus” (Cur Deus Homo i, 20). Tradizione e novità nel segno semantico anselmiano “Sola ratione” Le fonti, i; Sant’Agostino’, Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica, 83 (1991), pp. 90–141. Bély, Marie-Étiennette, ‘Quelques Figures de l’Alterité Religieuse aux xie–xiie Siècles: le Musulman, le Juif, l’Hérétique’, Théologie et Philosophie de Lyon iv-2 (1999), pp. 231–257. Bertau, Karl, Schrift—Macht—Heiligkeit in den Literaturen des jüdisch-christliche muslimischen Mittelalters, Sonja Glauch, ed. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005). Browne, Peter, Die Judenmission im Mittelalter und die Päpste (Rome: Herder, 1942). Denzinger, Heinrich and Peter Hünermann, eds., Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum. Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, 43rd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2012). Enders, Markus, ‘Die Entwicklung der christlichen Auseinandersetzung mit dem Judentum und dem Islam von Anselm von Canterbury bis Peter Abälard’ in Giles E.M. Gasper and Helmut Kohlenberger, eds., Anselm and Abelard. Investigations and Juxtapositions (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2006), pp. 223–247. Gauss, Julia, ‘Anselm von Canterbury. Zur Begegnung und Auseinandersetzung der Religionen’, Saeculum, 17 (1966), pp. 277–363. Gauss, Julia, ‘Die Auseinandersetzung mit Judentum und Islam bei Anselm’ in Helmut Kohlenberger, ed., Analecta Anselmiana, 4 (Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1975), pp. 101–109. Goddard, Hugh, A History of Christian-Muslim Relations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000). Goebel, Bernd, Im Umkreis von Anselm. Biographisch-bibliographische Porträts von Autoren aus Le Bec und Canterbury, Fuldaer Hochschulstudien, 60 (Würzburg: Echter, 2017). Golb, Norman, ‘Les Juifs de Normandie à l’époque d’Anselme’, Les Mutations socio culturelles au tournant des xie–xiie Siècle, Spicilegium Beccense ii (Le Bec: Abbaye Notre-Dame du Bec, 1984), pp. 149–160. Goldziher, Ignác, ‘Mélanges judéo-arabes’, Revue des Études Juives, 47 (1903), pp. 179– 186. Griffel, Frank, Al-Ghazali’s philosophical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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Hölderlin, Friedrich, Werke, vol. 3, Friedrich Beißner, ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965). Hünermann, Peter, ‘Anselms “Cur Deus Homo”. Eine Hilfe für den heutigen Dialog zwischen den abrahamitischen Religionen?’ in Paul Gilbert, Helmut Kohlenberger, Elmar Salman, eds., Cur Deus Homo. Atti del Congresso Anselmiano Internazionale, Roma 21–23 maggio 1998, Studia Anselmiana 128 (Rome: Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmi, 1999), pp. 767–785. Kraemer, Joel K., Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1992). Kritzek, James, ‘Robert of Ketton’s Translation of the Qurʾan’, International Studies Quarterly, 2 (1955), pp. 310–312. Martin, Richard C., Mark R. Woodward, and Dwi Surya Atmaja, Defenders of Reason in Islam: Muʾtazilism from Medieval School to Modern Symbol (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1997). McCarthy, Richard Joseph, The Theology of al-Ashʾari (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1953). Netton, Ian R., Al-Farabi and his School (London: Routledge, 1992). Rahner, Hugo, ‘Die Grabinschrift des Loyola’, Stimmen der Zeit, 72.2 (1947), pp. 321–337. Ratzinger, Joseph, Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004). Roques, René, ed., Anselme de Cantorbéry, Pourquoi Dieu s’est fait homme, introduction (Paris: Cerf, 1963). Roques, René, ‘Les Pagani dans le Cur Deus Homo de Saint Anselme’ in Paul Wilpert, ed., Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter: ihr Ursprung und ihre Bedeutung. Vorträge des ii. Internationalen Kongresses für Mittelalterliche Philosophie 1961, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 2 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1963), pp. 192–206. Rudolph, Ulrich, Al-Maturidi und die sunnitische Theologie in Samarkand, Islamic philosophy, theology, and science, vol. 30 (Leiden: Brill, 1997). Schmitt, Franciscus Salesius, ‘Die wissenschaftliche Methode in: “Cur Deus Homo”’, Spicilegium Beccense 1 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1959), pp. 349–370. Schöffler, Herbert H., Die Akademie von Gondischapur. Aristotles auf dem Wege in den Orient, introduction by Friedrich Hiebel, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Freies Geistesleben, 1980). Southern, Richard William, Saint Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963). Southern, Richard William, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Thomas, David, ‘Abu Mansur al-Maturidi on the Divinity of Jesus Christ’, Islamochristiana, 23 (1997), pp. 43–64. van den Plaas, P.G., ‘Des hl. Anselm “Cur Deus Homo” auf dem Boden der jüdisch christlichen Polemik des Mittelalters’, Divus Thomas, 7 (1929), pp. 446–467; and Divus Thomas, 8 (1930), pp. 18–32.

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von Balthasar, Hans Urs, Herrlichkeit: eine theologische Ästhetik. Band ii, Fächer der Stile (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1984). Zoppi, Matteo, Anselmo e la grandezza di Dio. Una via Cristiana di dialogo con ebrei, musulmani e non credenti in Giulio Cipollone, ed., Monumenta Historiae, Series Patristica, 70 (Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2014), pp. 305–335.

part 4 Eadmer and Epistolae

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chapter 19

Monks and Milites Order in Anselm’s Court Analogy Alastair R.E. Forbes

1

Introduction

In the Vita Anselmi, Eadmer describes a sermon delivered by Anselm at Christ Church, Canterbury in 1097 during his preparations for his first voluntary exile from England. The sermon exhorts the monastic community to persevere in their service to God, despite Anselm’s absence, by means of an analogy to princely courts: A prince has different kinds of soldiers at his court: he has some who are active in his service in return for the lands which they hold from him; he has others who bear arms and toil on his behalf for pay; and he has others who labour with unbroken fortitude to obey his will for the sake of receiving back again an inheritance of which they bewail the loss through their parent’s fault.1 Just as in the courts of princes, Anselm continues, so too in the court of God there are three groups of soldiers (milites, sing. miles) who serve his will. There are those who serve as angels, who already possess eternal blessedness; those who serve as stipendiary milites tied to the earth, who are at great risk of failing in their duty of service and losing out on salvation; and those who serve God completely as monks in order to reach heaven, their inheritance that was lost by the fault of the father, Adam.2 As well as Eadmer’s version in the Vita Anselmi, the court analogy is repeated twice in De Similitudinibus, with attribution to Anselm, and in Alexander of

1 va, p. 94, ii.21: ‘Est etenim princeps, diversi ordinis in sua curia milites habens. Habet nempe qui pro terris quas de se tenent servitio sua invigilant. Habet qui pro stipendiis in militaribus armis sibi desudant. Habet etiam qui pro recuperanda haereditate quam in culpa parentum suorum se perdidisse deplorant, Invicta mentis virtute voluntati suae parere laborant’. 2 va, p. 95, ii.21.

© Alastair R.E. Forbes, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_021

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Canterbury’s Dicta Anselmi.3 That these appear to be independent of one another indicates that this was an analogy made by Anselm, plausibly on multiple occasions. Although the different versions are textually distinct, indicating that the analogy could be utilized in different manners to suit the purpose of the individual author, there are common threads which are likely to have been at the core of Anselm’s own delivery of the analogy. The service by soldiers as the basis of all versions of the analogy, demonstrated in Eadmer’s words by Anselm’s description of their purpose as ‘to serve God [Deo militaturi]’, is conceptually compatible with the categorisation of monks as milites Christi.4 The verb which he chooses, militare, which indicates a deliberate conceptualisation of specifically military service, is also utilized by Alexander and the author of Similitudinibus 39, although Alexander makes a grammatical distinction with those other servants of God, for whom he uses the less militaristic servire.5 The duty of lay militia (here defined as soldiery/knighthood) service under the Anglo-Norman kings was not precisely defined, and the distinct groups of milites described in the court analogy do not appear to be an attempt to portray lay militia as it was, so much as how it was conceptualised by Anselm.6 According to the court analogy, lay princes and the milites who served them were members of God’s stipendiary servants alike, as they were neither angels nor monks and shared a similar military role. Their service for coin (pro solidis)

3 Liber Anselmi Archepiscopi de Humanis Moribus per Similitudines/De similitudinibus [henceforth Similitudinibus], in Richard William Southern and Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, eds., Memorials of St. Anselm (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 37–104, pp. 52–53, c. 39, p. 70, c. 80. Alexandri monachi Cantuariensis Liber ex Dictis Beati Anselmi [henceforth Dicta], in Southern and Schmitt, Memorials, pp. 105–270, pp. 149–151, c. 10. 4 va, p. 94, ii.21. This is likely to have reflected Anselm’s own words. In his letter to the novice Lanzo, Anselm describes him as a ‘tironem Christi’ and a member of ‘Christi militiam’; Samu Niskanen, ed., The Letters of Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2019), i.29§4, pp. 86–89. At time of writing, Niskanen’s new critical edition series of Anselm’s letters is not complete. His updated numbering system is adopted where possible, with Schmitt’s edition utilised elsewhere. Schmitt edition: E37, (aoo, iii.145.21, 23). That part of this letter is reproduced by Eadmer (va, p. 32, i.20) is surely no coincidence. Anselm also refers to himself as a supplicant miles Christi in his prayer to Benedict: om15 (aoo, iii.61– 64). The conceptualisation of monks as milites Christi was an established construction by the later-eleventh century. It had a basis in Scripture (2Tim. 2:3–4, cf. also 1 Tim. 1:18) and the Rule of St Benedict (cf. The Rule of Saint Benedict, Bruce L. Venarde, ed. (Cambridge ma., Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 2, Prologue.). Katherine Allen Smith, War and the Making of Medieval Monastic Culture (Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2011) provides a useful examination of monastic military language and thought in the period c. 950–1200. 5 Dicta, pp. 150–151, c. 10; Similitudinibus, p. 52, c. 39. 6 Marjorie Chibnall, ‘Mercenaries and the familia regis under Henry i’, History, 64 (1977), pp. 22– 23.

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or a stipend (pro stipendiis) indicates that the portrayal of lay milites was influenced by the concept of the mercenary form of militia.7 That certain men such as these fell short of receiving God’s gift of eternal life because of their ties to worldly things is a core aspect of Anselm’s broader ideology. Engaging with these conceptual bases on which the court analogy rests allows valuable insight into the application of Anselm’s broader thought and experience through such analogies, as well as how and why they were reconstructed by his students. As no version of the analogy survives from Anselm himself, there is a tension between recognising his argument and that of its reproduction by Eadmer, Alexander, and the anonymous author of the Similitudinibus. The material contained within all three seems to have existed by the time of Anselm’s death, although all the texts were produced in manuscript form after 1109, suggesting that they were compiled by followers of Anselm during his lifetime before being propagated after his death.8 Dissemination was not restricted to Canterbury, for the manuscript tradition of the Similitudinibus was produced at Llanthony, and the earlier demand for the Vita Anselmi came from the continent, suggesting the wider appeal and potential for application of Anselm’s thought.9 When engaging with the reproductions of the court analogy, it is logical to engage principally with Eadmer’s version, given his clearer personal motive and wider corpus of authorial work compared to that which exists from Alexander or the anonymous Similitudinibus author.10 Eadmer’s purpose in writing the Vita Anselmi, as well as the Historia novorum, which Eadmer stated were both needed to ‘fully understand Anselm’s actions [plene tamen actus eius scire volentibus]’, was the cultivation and promotion of Anselm’s reputation.11 Benjamin Pohl’s recent reinterpretation of the production of the Historia novorum suggests that it was composed as a series of redactions and revisions over an extended period of time, consistent with a work constantly in flux as Eadmer tried to promote Anselm’s perspective in the face of contemporary criticism.12 Given Anselm’s active engagement in the production of

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va, p. 95, ii.21 and Dicta, p. 150.30–32, c. 10 refer to service pro stipendiis. Similitudinibus, p. 52.27, c. 39 and p. 70.7, c. 80 refer to service pro solidis. The latter similitude notes further worldly gain by their service ‘for coin and so they may eat well [pro solidis et ut bene pascantur]’: Similitudinibus, p. 70.7, c. 80. Southern and Schmitt, Memorials, pp. 11–12, 26; va, pp. x–xii. Southern and Schmitt, Memorials, p. 13; va, p. x. See Southern and Schmitt, Memorials, pp. 6–8, 20–21. va, p. 2, Preface. Benjamin Pohl, ‘The (Un)Making of a History Book: Revisiting the Earliest Manuscripts of Eadmer of Canterbury’s Historia novorum in Anglia’, The Library, 20.3 (September, 2019), p. 369. Southern makes a similar argument for the Vita Anselmi; va, pp. xi–xii.

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the Vita Anselmi before 1100, Eadmer’s account of that period can be trusted to accurately replicate Anselm’s conceptualisation of society, with Eadmer’s own interpretation glossed in to later revisions without Anselm’s personal input. Although the court analogy does not accurately represent the world as it was, it clearly reflects how Anselm conceptualised it, as well as how he utilized his conceptualisations in practical as well as theoretical settings. This is encapsulated in the court analogy. The concepts which it employs, the service of different types of milites in God’s world-court, are underpinned by the conceptual structures of Anselm’s sociological and soteriological argument, as well as the influence of real-world examples on which he built to make his argument more effective. Considering the influences of Anselm’s broader ideology and real-world considerations on his analogies is an important step in bridging the gap between Anselm’s understanding of how society was, and how it ought to be. The court analogy demonstrates a potential means by which Anselm reconciled the two. That humanity did not always conform to the right order of God did not mean that it should not strive to, and the court analogy encouraged such behaviour through its demonstration that there was a certain order of society whose service to God would render reward. It could be employed as a soteriological guide for monks, as members of that rewardable order, based upon the simple tenet of obedient service to God. Those who followed Anselm’s teaching could utilize the court analogy to promulgate his ideas regarding the structure of monastic life after his death. A closer inspection of Eadmer’s construction of the episode in which Anselm delivers the analogy and how he built upon Anselm’s arguments demonstrates a way in which Anselm’s concepts of rightly-ordered service could be used retrospectively to explain his actions and promulgate his ideology.

2

Criticism of milites

Given the centrality of militia to the court analogy, it is worth considering the monastic conceptualisation of milites by Anselm and his contemporaries. For clerical commentators of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it was common to link militia with the perpetration of wicked deeds. The Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, around 1130 in his laudation of the newly-formed Knights Templar, spoke of lay militia as ‘not, I say, knighthood, but wickedness [non dico militiae, sed malitiae]’, and denounced their perceived love of immodest dress.13 The Norman chronicler Orderic Vitalis spoke in a similar manner when 13

Bernard of Clairvaux, Liber ad milites Templi De laude novae militiae in Bernardi opera, iii, Jean Leclercq and Henri M. Rochais, eds. (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1963), p. 216.

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he lamented the attack on a travelling monk by the young tiro Ralph as being deeds ‘not of knighthood but of madness [non militiam sed dementiam]’.14 Anselm’s predecessor and mentor from Bec, Lanfranc, also denounced milites who acted wrongfully when he wrote to King William I of those who supported the rebellion of Earl Ralph in 1075, as ‘perjurers and brigands [perjuris et latronibus]’ and ‘those who, lacking land, serve for the sake of coin [qui (…) sine terra pro solidis seruierunt]’.15 The language employed by these commentators does not necessarily suggest that they found all worldly militia wicked, but that many of the violent, sinful acts perpetrated by its practitioners were. The penitential ordinance issued by Cardinal Bishop Ermenfrid of Sion in 1070 to the Norman milites who had fought at Hastings demonstrates that Church authorities considered the violent actions of the milites to be sinful and requiring of penance, even if they had fought for a supposedly just cause.16 Although Anselm spoke about worldly milites infrequently, the language he uses demonstrates consistency with that employed for servants of the court analogy who are not to find salvation. Despite the imperfection of the worldly milites, the court analogy establishes that they occupied a legitimate place within the court of God and ‘in certain good works which they do are active in his service’.17 However, Anselm identified a typical iniquitous nature in lay militia and those engaged in that form of service. In a letter to Adela of Flanders, he notes of the aged Engelhard that he wished to give up ‘military life, nay wicked life [militiam, immo malitiam]’—a play on words which equated lay soldiery (militia) to wickedness (malitia) as part of a promotion of monastic conversion.18 Although the iniquity of militia may have been exaggerated to pursue that aim, it remained necessary to reject the worldly lifestyle of the milites. Anselm’s note that, if Engelhard ‘should go on sinning to the end, [he would] be punished without end’, is clear in its implications.19 The consequences of unre-

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Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, 6 vols., Marjorie Chibnall, ed. and trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969–1980) [hereafter ov], p. 242, vi.6.1–4. Lanfranc of Canterbury, The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, Helen Clover and Margaret Gibson, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 124–126, Epp. 34, 35. The translation is my own. The Latin text is found in Herbert E.J. Cowdrey, ‘Bishop Ermenfrid of Sion and the Penitential Ordinance following the Battle of Hastings’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 20.2 (Oct. 1969), pp. 241–242. va, 95, ii.21: ‘et eius per quaedam bona opera quae faciunt famulatui insistentes’. Niskanen, Letters, pp. 222–223, i.77. Schmitt edition: E86 (aoo, iii.211.11–12). Niskanen, Letters, pp. 222–223, i.77: ‘ne peccans usque in finem puniatur sine fine’. Schmitt edition: E86 (aoo, iii.211.13–14).

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pentant militia are also noted in the court analogy. Of those who serve God not for his sake but only for the sake of pecuniary reward, Anselm asks, ‘Shall such men as these inherit the kingdom of Heaven? I say certainly not, unless they repent of being like this’.20 Although explicit criticism of worldly militia produced by Anselm does not exist, it is probable that he shared many of the condemnations of his contemporaries. The love of ostentatious fashions, which Bernard denounced in the De laude for their impropriety for a miles’s military duty, reflects aspects of the court of William Rufus which drew the ire of Anselm.21 He apparently preached against the long hair, effeminate garb, and indolent behaviours of the young men of the English court because of their ‘irreligiosis’ nature.22 The threat of militia violence in Normandy is also indicated by Anselm in a letter to his cousin Folcerald, in which he complains that ‘so cruel and unrestrained is the viciousness of evil men that rages in France that I dare not commit to so great a peril myself or some other monk, not even a knight’.23 Anselm evidently believed that the violence being perpetrated in Normandy would not discriminate between the armed miles or the defenceless monk. While he does not identify these ‘barbarous men’, it seems likely that they were impetuous young milites like Orderic’s tiro Ralph. Anselm’s story of the capture of a fellowmonk, along with his whole household, in the archdiocese of Rheims after his horses were stolen is closely comparable to the events of Ralph’s dementiam.24

20 21 22

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va, p. 96, ii.21: ‘Et hi tales, regni caelestis haeredes erunt? Fidenter dico nequaquam, si non poenituerint se tales fuisse’. Bernard of Clairvaux, De laude, p. 216. Eadmer of Canterbury, Eadmeri Historia Novorum in Anglia et Opuscula Duo, Martin Rule, ed. (London: Longman & Co., 1884) [hereafter hn], pp. 1–302. p. 48: English translation by Geoffrey Bosanquet, History of Recent Events in England (London: The Cresset Press, 1964). William of Malmesbury, perhaps with the benefit of Eadmer’s model, describes William Rufus’ court in similar terms: William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, vol. 1, Roger A.B. Mynors, Rodney M. Thomson and Michael Winterbottom, ed. and trans. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 560, iv.314.5. Niskanen, Letters, pp. 134–135, i.46: ‘Sed tam crudelis tamque effrenata malitiosorum hominum in Francia debachatur saevitia, ut nec me nec aliquem monachum aut quemlibet equitem audeam tanto committere periculo’. Schmitt edition: E55 (aoo, iii.169.7–10). Anselm again uses a form of the word malitia here, suggesting that it was a term he frequently employed to denounce militia. Niskanen, Letters, pp. 134–135, i.46. Schmitt edition: E55 (aoo, iii.169.10–12).

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409

Mercenaries

A concept which bears further consideration is militia for money or stipend, which in all versions of the court analogy is how the worldly servants of God are said to serve. Mercenaries serving for remuneration were commonplace in the military households of the Anglo-Norman kings, although, as Marjorie Chibnall has noted, they cannot be neatly compartmentalised as all of the same manner.25 However, whether of dubious loyalty and morals or serving to earn their stipend through dedicated service, mercenaries earned their coin from warfare and violence. Given their frequent employment by the Anglo-Norman kings, it is unsurprising that so many clerical commentators saw mercenaries as principal perpetrators of these sinful acts. William of Jumièges describes the force called together by King Svein of Denmark for an invasion of England as ‘soldiers greedy for wealth [milites lucre cupidos]’.26 King William Rufus was notorious for his profligacy towards hired milites, such that William of Malmesbury claimed that under his rule mercenaries were able to set their own rate of pay.27 Mercenary milites were seen to prosper so freely under William’s rule that when he died, Orderic Vitalis remarks, he was mourned only by the ‘mercenary soldiers, lechers, and common harlots [who] lost their wages through the death of the lascivious king’.28

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Chibnall, ‘Mercenaries and the familia regis’, pp. 15–23. John Oswald Prestwich, ‘War and Finance in the Anglo-Norman State’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4 (1954), pp. 19–43 is still a valuable exploration of the role of money in both the employment of and maintaining the loyalty of mercenary milites. One of the more infamous stipendiaries of the Anglo-Norman period was King Stephen’s mercenary captain William of Ypres, whose career with the Anglo-Norman court has been analysed by Jean-François Nieus, ‘The Early Career of William of Ypres in England: A New Charter of King Stephen’, English Historical Review, 130 (June, 2015), pp. 527–545. For the nature of warfare more generally, see Matthew Strickland, War and Chivalry: The Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy 1066–1217 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Strickland considers mercenaries throughout, but deals closely with the atrocities alleged of mercenary routiers in more detail: pp. 291–329. Elisabeth M.C. Van Houts, ed., The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni ii (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 16, v.7. The force of William of Normandy in 1066 is not described in these terms, presumably as William of Jumièges wrote to praise him as rightful king rather than bellicose invader: Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ii, p. 164, vii.14(34). William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, p. 556, iv.313.2. ov.v (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 292, x.15: ‘Stipendiarii uero milites et nebulones ac uulgaria scorta questus suos in occasu moechi principis perdiderunt (…)’ It should be noted that this was not all milites, but, Orderic suggests, particularly those who served only for the sake of the monetary reward they had just lost.

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Gasper and Gullbekk have shown that Anselm did not condemn the possession of money itself, and presumably likewise the earning of a stipend, instead casting his judgement on its use for charity or sinfulness respectively.29 That Anselm supported the proper application of money is suggested by Eadmer, who credited him first among other unnamed English nobles for advising Henry I in reforming the debased coinage and rapacious royal court of England, both states inherited from William Rufus said to have been causing ‘a grave state of distress [in gravem aerumnam]’.30 Using money for the application of violence, notably through the hiring of mercenaries, led instead to sin and hardship. Although this occurred after Anselm’s death, the complaints about Henry I’s attempts to produce additional revenue for his war in Normandy (1116–1120) through excessive taxation would have been known to Eadmer, and corroborates the perspective that the enaction of militia, even in justified conflict, harmed the rest of Christian society.31 The mercenary of the court analogy, who renounces their service to the lord when remuneration is not forthcoming, is not only suggested to perpetuate violence, but also to do so for the sake of personal gain. The idea of the sinful mercenary was also present in Anselm’s conceptual thinking. The archbishop knew that, leaving his see for exile, he opened himself up to criticism for failing to protect those supposedly under his care from hardship. Recriminations against the bishop who abandoned his see as a mercennarius may be found both in Scripture (Jn 10:11–13, Job 7:2) and in the writings of Augustine (cf. Ep. 228), with whom Anselm was familiar.32 Michael Staunton has suggested that Anselm’s speech to the monks of Christ Church before his exile, in Eadmer’s retelling, represented a deliberate contrast between the mercenary and the pilgrim and ‘must be interpreted as a comment on the archbishop’s willingness to flee in the body but not in the spirit’.33 As well as understanding the derogatory acts of stipendiary milites, Anselm knew that,

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Giles E.M. Gasper and Svein H. Gullbekk, ‘Money and its use in thought and experience of Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury (1093–1109)’, Journal of Medieval History, 38.2 (2012), pp. 155–181. hn, pp. 192–193. This is considered more fully by Giles E.M. Gasper, ‘Economy Distorted, Economy Restored: Order, Economy and Salvation in Anglo-Norman Monastic Writing’ in Elisabeth M.C. van Houts, ed., Anglo-Norman Studies xxxviii (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2016), pp. 51–65, pp. 56–58. Martin Allen, Mints and Money in Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 141. Michael Staunton, ‘Eadmer’s Vita Anselmi; a reinterpretation’, Journal of Medieval History, 23.1 (1977), pp. 1–14, pp. 9–10. Staunton, ‘Eadmer’s Vita Anselmi’, pp. 11–12.

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if he left for exile without good cause, he would have been acting as a mercenary abandoning his duty. The contrast with the pilgrim highlighted by Staunton emphasises Anselm’s alterity to the fickle mercenary. By not abandoning his spiritual service Anselm persisted instead in his role under God as a laudable monk. Although not all milites were mercenaries, and as noted Anselm understood that they were capable of good deeds, in the court analogy all laymen are conceptualised as mercenary servants of God and as so presented in a deliberately iniquitous manner. This accentuated the distinction between the wicked layman and the praiseworthy monk. The court analogy was therefore the perfect tool to combat criticism of Anselm’s own episcopal absenteeism. Eadmer argues throughout his Vita that Anselm was, at all times, a man with his heart in the cloister, not a mercenary but a monk striving to regain the lost inheritance of the sons of Adam. Given Anselm’s initial involvement in the Vita’s production, it is likely that it presented him in a way he approved.

4

Orders of Society

Clerical conceptual division between the laity and the Church was common among the various models of society produced in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.34 Anselm also envisioned his own version of an ordered society, which included the clear distinction between churchmen and laity as present in the analogy of the courts. In his letter to William, a monk of Chester, Anselm described the ideal implementation of the ordered society: Let laymen in their state of life, clerics in theirs, monks in theirs, valiantly apply themselves to making continual progress, so that those placed in a superior position should excel their inferiors in humility—for the more a man advances in this virtue the more he is raised on high—and also in the other virtues.35

34

35

The trifunctional model of bellatores, oratores, and laboratores formed the basis for many contemporary conceptualisations of society. For an overview of its continental use, see Georges Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, Arthur Goldhammer, trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). For the English perspective up to the eleventh century: Timothy E. Powell, ‘The ‘Three Orders’ of society in Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon England, 23 (1994), pp. 103–132. Powell (pp. 104–109) also provides a good summary of the scholarship concerning the genesis of the Three Orders idea. E189 (aoo, iv.75.29–32): ‘Conentur igitur laici in sui ordine, clerici in suo, monachi in suo viriliter semper proficere, ut illi qui superioris propositi sunt, eso qui inferioris sunt,

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Of these orders, the monks, those who voluntarily eschewed worldly property and gave themselves over entirely to the service of God (in theory), were those best placed to display the principal virtue of humility, and so stood to gain the greatest rewards. Anselm’s belief in the primacy of monasticism explains why the reputation he cultivated was specifically monastic, even if as abbot and archbishop he faced necessary contact with other spheres of society. The superiority of monasticism is a commonplace of Anselm’s soteriological argument, perhaps best expressed in a similitude explaining the various orders of society as a castle and its surrounding lands.36 Jews and other non-Christians live in the open country and are certain to fall to the Enemy when he attacks. The Christian laity are found in the town, despite having slight protection in their houses they are still at terrible risk. The castle walls contain the monks who will remain safe so long as they keep their heads down and are not tempted to glance at the lay town life they have abandoned. Finally, in the keep are found the angels, who are perfectly safe from all attacks in their eternal and blessed service to God. Angels, monks, and worldly men are the same three groups described as servants of God’s court (the non-Christians of the similitude do not serve God and are therefore not a part of his court). All humanity seeks the security of the inner keep, and the best way to get there is by fleeing to the castle of monasticism. Abandoning the world for the cloister and thereby achieving salvation was advice which Anselm upheld in practice. He advised the young man William to enter the cloister rather than undertake a journey to Jerusalem to help his brother in the wars there, and repeated the papal instruction that the alreadycloistered monks should not participate in the First Crusade.37 Even if the crusade was a form of Godly militia it was a different form of service for a different order of society. Monks did not require a new means of serving God successfully, and so had a duty to maintain their service as it was. Anselm did not promote crusade as a form of service, for occurring in the world it was still subject to worldly temptations, and the safer course of action remained fleeing, as far as was possible, into the cloister. Although Anselm did not promote the crusade, neither did he actively oppose it. He supported his brother-in-law Burgundius undertaking a pilgrim-

36 37

humilitate—in qua quantum homo magis proficit, tanto magis sublimator—et aliis virtutibus excellere’. Similitudinibus, pp. 73–74, c. 84. E117 (aoo, iii.252–255). By entering the cloister, Anselm states, William would be making himself ‘a soldier of such a king [facere te militem tanti regis]’ as God, rather than a soldier for the world as he was intending. E195 (aoo, iv.85–86).

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age to Jerusalem in the wake of the crusade’s success, although he noted that part of the necessary preparation was for Burgundius to ‘dispose of [his] possessions, just as you would do if you knew you were about to die’.38 Eadmer also states that Anselm was willing to discuss the crusade at length with Bohemond of Taranto’s magister militum, Ilgyrus.39 However, it is probable that Anselm was more interested in obtaining the saintly relics Ilgyrus had brought back with him, particularly some hairs of the mother of Christ, and he was used to engaging in well-mannered conversation with laymen to achieve his ends.40 Given the considerable time Anselm spent in the company of Pope Urban ii, who had called the First Crusade, while it was underway, the relative paucity of extant references he made to the crusade implies that he had no desire to promote it. Despite it representing a superior form of lay service to God, it remained tied to the world and so inferior to that rendered by monks.41

5

Separation from the World

The degree to which Anselm genuinely attempted to separate from the world has attracted much scholarly debate.42 Especially as archbishop, Anselm had

38

39 40

41

42

E264 (aoo, iv.179.16–17): ‘Disponite totam rem vestram, sicuti faceretis, si is praesenti vos moriturum (…)’. This is not incompatible with Anselm’s advice in E117, for, unlike Burgundius, William intended to go not to save his soul but to lend military aid to his brother, which would have left him firmly mired in the world. hn, pp. 179–180. hn, p. 180. Anselm apparently spoke in an amicable manner with Robert of Meulan, while remaining steadfast in opposing his attempts to assert lay authority over Bec: De Libertate Beccensis Monasterii in Three Treatises from Bec on the Nature of Monastic Life, Giles Constable, ed., Bernard S. Smith, trans. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), pp. 136–166, pp. 140ff. If he had wished to promote crusade service, Anselm would surely have echoed those chroniclers of the crusade who praised the reduction in militia violence prompted by the exodus of milites to the Holy Land. For example: Guibert of Nogent, Dei Gesta per Francos, in cc cm 127A, R. B. C. Huygens, ed. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), p. 120, ii.7. Sally Vaughn has argued that Anselm saw himself as a ‘statesman’ and deliberately engaged with the world. See: Sally N. Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan: The Innocence of the Dove and the Wisdom of the Serpent (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1987); Sally N. Vaughn, ‘St Anselm of Canterbury: the philosopher-saint as politician’, Journal of Medieval History, 1:3 (1975), pp. 279–305; Sally N. Vaughn, ‘Anselm: Saint and Statesman’, Albion, 20:2 (1988), pp. 202–220. For criticism of Vaughn’s argument, see Richard William Southern, ‘Sally Vaughn’s Anselm: An Examination of the Foundations’, Albion, 20:2 (1988), pp. 181–204. Regardless of whether Anselm was desirous or

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to engage with worldly militia: he provided milites for William Rufus’ campaign in Wales, and he claimed to be responsible for the dispatch of milites to resist a potential invasion while the king was campaigning.43 As abbot of Bec, Anselm dealt with laymen who provided the monastery with gifts and endowments such that it enjoyed a reputation for prosperity and hospitality.44 Monasteries relied on lay patrons, many of whom must have been milites or their associates. Bec itself owed its foundation and early survival to the ex-miles Herluin and the support of his kin, and it has been argued that Anselm envisioned the administration of monasteries such as Bec as having a secular-political element.45 However, the version of Anselm that survives in his own words and those of his chronicler Eadmer is clearly separated from the world and the sphere of militia. As Eadmer tells it, after Anselm’s archiepiscopal election, among the trials of worldly responsibilities Anselm could only find relief by ‘burying himself in the cloister’, and, despite its necessity, ‘secular business was something

43 44

45

resentful of his worldly responsibilities, Emma Mason’s suggestion that Anselm possessed ‘limited administrative abilities’ is not wholly convincing. See Emma Mason, William ii: Rufus, the Red King (Stroud: Tempus, 2005), p. 109. va, p. 88, ii.27; hn, pp. 77–78 [on the milites for the Welsh campaign]; E191–192 (aoo, iv.77– 81) [on defence against a potential invasion]. va, pp. 46–48, i.28. Corroborated by Orderic Vitalis: ov.ii (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 294, iv. Giles Gasper’s analysis of the patronage of Bec notes the key role that Anselm played in its acquisition, despite the under-representation of this by Eadmer: Giles E.M. Gasper, ‘Contemplating Money and Wealth in Monastic Writing c. 1060–1160’, in Giles E. M Gasper and Svein H. Gullbekk. eds., Money and the Church in Medieval Europe, 1000–1200: Practice, Morality, and Thought (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 39–76, pp. 44–48. For the foundation of Bec, see Gilbert Crispin, Vita Herluini, in The Works of Gilbert Crispin, abbot of Westminster, Anna Sapir Abulafia and Gillian R. Evans, eds. (London: oup for the British Academy, 1986), pp. 185–212. Its reliance on Herluin’s kin and militia lord is argued by Julie Potter, ‘The Benefactors of Bec and the Politics of Priories’, in Christopher HarperBill, ed., Anglo-Norman Studies xxi (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999), pp. 175–192, p. 181. The debate over the political aspect of monasticism is encapsulated in the election of William of Beaumont to succeed Anselm as abbot of Bec: see Vaughn, ‘Saint and Statesman’, pp. 215–216; and Southern, ‘Sally Vaughn’s Anselm’, pp. 188–189. Vaughn argues that William’s candidacy was a ploy to utilize his connections with the powerful lay figures around Bec, especially Robert of Meulan. Southern argues that Anselm considered William the best candidate to uphold the strictures of the Rule in a manner he would approve of. Véronique Gazeau’s contribution to this discussion has helpfully noted that electing abbots with beneficial secular relationships was not uncommon in contemporary Normandy, and administration and politics were not entirely separable from contemplation and spirituality in the role of medieval abbacy: Véronique Gazeau, ‘From Bec to Canterbury: Between Cloister and World, the Legacy of Anselm, a personne d’autorité’, in Giles E.M. Gasper and Ian Logan, eds., Saint Anselm of Canterbury and his Legacy (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2012), pp. 61–72, pp. 68–69.

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which he could not patiently abide’.46 While in Capua during his first exile, Anselm finished cdh living according to ‘the lines of his early routine before he became an abbot, which he deplored more than ever having had to give up since he became archbishop’.47 Eadmer notes a particular distance between Anselm’s life in exile and worldly militia, stating that he deliberately ensured his encampment’s separation from the ‘turmoil and commotion’ of the lay army (a description which may imply similar criticisms to those of the pomposity of William Rufus’ court).48 Although this evidence comes from Eadmer’s pen, it is consistent with Anselm’s beliefs on the superiority of monasticism and the rejection of the world. Anselm himself in his Prayer to Benedict bemoaned how he was unable to live the life of the monastic miles Christi which his tonsure and profession dictated.49 While it may have been exaggerated for effect there is no reason to believe that Anselm’s behaviour was entirely an invention of Eadmer’s. According to Anselm, the rejection of worldliness was a vital component of being granted access to everlasting life in heaven. Failure to cast off the world led to the eternal punishment which Engelhard had risked. For this reason, Anselm counselled Matilda of Tuscany to renounce the world on her deathbed, and to always keep with her a veil in case she needed to do so at short notice.50 However, unworldly monastic service to God was the pathway to redemption laid out in the court analogy, and for this one had to live as a monk, not merely die as one. It was due to the superiority of maintaining a longer monastic career that Anselm criticised Robert, the young abbot forced upon the community of Bury St Edmunds, as being ‘a monk by profession but not by his life [professione monachum non vita]’.51 This also explains why Anselm and Eadmer were insistent that despite his more worldly archiepiscopal role, Anselm’s monastic career continued. 46

47 48 49 50

51

va, p. 70, ii.8: ‘(…) modicum respirabat ab his et magnopere consolabatur, siquando se monachorum claustro inferre (…)’; va, p. 80, ii.13: ‘Secularia vero negotia aequanimiter ferre nequibat’. va, p. 107, ii.30: ‘Ad primum igitur conversationis ordinem quem antequam abbas esset habebat, quemque se in pontificatu positum maxime perdidisse deflebat (…)’ hn, pp. 97–98; va, p. 109, ii.32: ‘remoti in tentoriis a frequentia et tumultu perstrepentis exercitus’. The phrasing is the same in both texts. om15 (aoo, iii.63.37–39). E325 (aoo, v.257.26–29). Many milites renounced the world only on their deathbed. William Clito, after being wounded in battle, took monastic orders at St Bertin, where, after five days, he died (28 July 1128): ov.vi, pp. 376–378, xii.45; Ansold, lord of Maule, set aside his worldly lordship for the cloister of Maule, where he died three days later (26/7 December 1118): ov.iii, pp. 192–198, v.19. E271 (aoo, iv.186.6).

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Monasticism was so laudable because it represented in its ideal form a total subordination to serving God through complete rejection of worldly temptations. God’s ‘mercenary soldiers’ in the court analogy are deemed incapable of this, as soon as they lose their goods, ‘they straightaway face about, rush away from the love of God, abandon the good works which they were doing, grumble and accuse God of injustice’.52 The contemporary exemplar of this behaviour was William Rufus, whom Eadmer accused of rejecting the judgement of God in deference to worldly arbitration due to perceived ill-fortune, such that when he would not be swayed from this, God brought his life to a premature end.53 Proslogion 25 lays out the folly of fleeing from God for worldly things: by loving ‘the one Good in which are all goods [unum bonum, in quo sunt omnia bona]’, then all good would be manifest and perfected.54 Despite the appeal of earthly goods, Anselm’s theological argument makes clear the futility of succumbing to that temptation, for all worldly pleasures are made available in God.

6

Rex Justus

When considering the rewards due to those who provided service, it is necessary also to look at the nature of the lord to whom service was owed, and from whom reward would be received. God in Anselm’s philosophy is the Supreme Justice, and so provides a sense ‘of sure hope [certae spei]’ that everything earned in proper service will be repaid in kind.55 Whether or not Anselm’s notions of satisfaction and God’s lordship are grounded in worldly sociological or judicial structures has provoked considerable scholarly debate. Richard Campbell’s interpretation of this debate up to the 1990s argues convincingly

52 53 54

55

va, p. 95, ii.21: ‘Mutata protinus mente volant ab amore Dei, deserunt bona quae faciebant, murmurant, injustitiae Deum accusant’. hn, p. 117. P25 (aoo, i.118–119). The specific goods offered here are: beauty (pulchritudo); swiftness, strength, or freedom of body (velocitas, aut fortitudo, aut libertas corporis); a long and sound life (longa et salubris vita); satiety (satietas); intoxication (ebrietas); melody (melodia); ‘any pleasure that is not impure’ (‘quaelibet non immunda sed munda voluptas’); wisdom (sapientia); friendship (amicitia); unison (concordia); power (potestas); honour and riches (honor et divitiae); and security (securitas). For God alone as the Supreme or Perfect Justice in Anselm’s argument, see M16 (aoo, i.30.12–31); P9 (aoo, i.106–108); cdhi.12 (aoo, ii.69.22–30). For the ‘sure hope’ of reward that the just lord offered: va, p. 95, ii.21. Although the phrase is said of milites in the princely courts, this certainty can only be assured by a lord of perfect justice, which can only be God.

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that, as that-greater-than-which-cannot-be-conceived, Anselm’s God cannot be seen as either constrained by duties and obligations, or else subject to injustice or arbitrary rule, as humanity’s princes were.56 While the terms relating to ideal lordship such as justicia or debitum would have been recognisable to his worldly contemporaries, Anselm had a particular conceptual understanding of these terms as relating to God, and Southern has argued that the models of lay society utilised by Anselm to reflect God and the divine should only be seen as the best available example of an ordered hierarchy in the world.57 The court analogy relies upon the understanding that the lord exhibits the perfect justice necessary to offer completely equitable reward for the services rendered to him. It is evident that God’s court is the only one capable of being modelled in this manner, and the princely courts exist as tangible examples to make the model more effectively comprehensible. Although God was the only lord capable of perfecting justice, it was still a virtue Anselm upheld for princely lords. Within Anselm’s surviving letters, there exist several which provide instruction from Anselm to lay lords (both royal and comital) on the nature of their office. Walter Fröhlich’s own analysis of E235 (to Baldwin i, king of Jerusalem) identifies a distinction in the ‘office and duties of a secular ruler’ between the rex justus and rex malus.58 Anselm’s God being the Supreme Justice made him the model and perfected form of the rex justus. That the proper disposal of the princely office involved the appropriate dispensing of justitia is a central theme in Anselm’s correspondence with lay lords. As he advises Robert count of Flanders: consider seriously what holy authority commands; “Love justice, you who are judges on earth” (Wis. 1:1). For the more the power of those to whom the earth is entrusted to be ruled asserts itself, the more they throw it into confusion and burden it with their violence if they deviate from justice and do not guide or help the human race.59

56

57 58

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Richard Campbell, ‘The Conceptual Roots of Anselm’s Soteriology’ in David E. Luscombe and Gillian R. Evans, eds., Anselm: Aosta, Bec and Canterbury (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), pp. 256–263, pp. 256–258. Campbell, ‘The Conceptual Roots’, pp. 258, 263. Richard William Southern, Saint Anselm, A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 224. Walter Fröhlich, ‘St Anselm’s special relationship with William the Conqueror’ in R. Allen Brown, ed., Anglo-Norman Studies x (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1988), pp. 101–110, pp. 109–110. E180 (aoo, iv.64.12–16): ‘assidue cogitet illud quod sacra iubet auctoritas: “Diligite iustitiam, qui iudicatis terram”. Quanto enim illorum, quibus terra commissa est ad regendum,

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The endemic violence Anselm saw in the world, that situation which he warned Count Robert of if lay lords ‘deviate from justice’, is reiterated in his letter to Humbert, count of Savoy, when he lamented how the Church was being ‘trampled upon by evil princes (…) to their own eternal damnation’.60 In this case, the context in which Anselm delivered the court analogy to the monks of Christ Church is also crucial, as the reigning King William Rufus’ worldcelebratory court, rejection of divine judgement, and profligacy towards mercenary milites proved him to be a rex malus who was trampling upon the church of Canterbury. Anselm’s vision of a rex justus in his correspondence highlights the necessity of maintaining the liberty of the Church. As he instructed Baldwin i, of principle importance for lay lords to the service of God is to act as ‘advocate and protector [advocato et defensori]’ of the Church.61 Those who act contrariwise ‘prove without a doubt that they are against God [procul dubio deo probantur adversari]’, and so have failed in their duty of service.62 The worldly milites of God’s court, therefore, had a duty to defend and support the Church as well as to fight for the defence of Christendom. This formed a meritorious and proper service to God, which was so often spoiled by their mercenary attitude and prioritisation of worldly goods over selfless service. If they were willing to subject themselves to the will of God rather than impose their own will, then even lay lords may find the gates of heaven open to them.63 However, Anselm feared that William Rufus would not fulfil his duty to support the Church. According to Eadmer, Anselm likened himself to an old sheep unable to properly steer the plough of governance because of the over-mighty and contrary exertion of the king as an untamed bull.64

60 61 62 63

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praeeminet potential, tanto magis, si a iustitia deviant, non regunt nec adiuvant humanum genus, sed perturbant et gravant sua violentia’. Anselm repeated the necessity of justitia in a letter to Alexander, newly crowned king of the Scots, using David as the model Christian king: E413 (aoo, v.358–359.19–23). See above. E262 (aoo, iv.177.30–32): ‘a malis principibus conculcatur (…) ad eoram aeternam damnationem tribulatur’ (my emphasis). E235 (aoo, iv.143.19–21). Lay lords as advocati of the Church are also mentioned in E262 (aoo, iv.177.31). E235 (aoo, iv.143.22–23). As Anselm promises Robert count of Flanders—E248 (aoo, iv.158.7–9); Humbert count of Savoy—E262 (aoo, iv.177.38–40); and Henry i, king of England—E294 (aoo, iv.214– 215.13–15). hn, p. 36.

monks and milites

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419

Authority and Obedience

The relative authority of kingship and Church was a theme which dominated contemporary thought in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. The reformist papacy’s insistence that the pope, not the king, had the unique authority to invest bishops thrust Anselm as archbishop into the centre of this debate in England. Eadmer’s record of Anselm’s closing remarks during his speech at the Council of Rockingham, 1095, makes his position regarding relative authority apparent. Here, Anselm expressed his desire to serve both king and pope under God, lamenting how it appeared he could not maintain his loyalties to one without relinquishing his loyalty to the other.65 As Anselm saw society, therefore, the good lay lord had to abandon any hopes of extending his authority over ecclesiastical powers, and both should work in tandem according to their respective duties of service under God. To that end, William Rufus’ angry rejoinder regarding his treatment of vacant abbacies, that they were his to do with as he pleased, suggested little hope that he was to act as rex justus.66 Despite Anselm’s firm beliefs regarding obedience to the ecclesiastical and secular as separate authorities, he did not conceptualise service as a purely bottom-up model. Aird notes the commonality of the formula ‘servant of the servants of God [servus servorum Dei]’ used by heads of monastic houses, the papacy, and Anselm himself as abbot of Bec.67 By adopting this formula Anselm proved himself to possess the principal virtue of humility, elevating himself in service to God by subjugating himself in service to man. Anselm appealed to personal servitude when he laid down his terms to King Henry I before he was willing to return from his second exile, that if Henry accepted God’s law Anselm would ‘serve God and you and all those entrusted to me according to this office laid upon me by God’.68 The basis for this was not royal but divine lordship. Anselm offered his service to Henry not as a subordinate to secular authority, but as an obedient servant carrying out his duty to God, with the condition that Henry would accept the same divine subordination. This service represented a duty which all men, as God’s rational creatures, ought to render to Him for their sins, and especially that inherited sin of the father Adam. It is no coincid-

65 66 67 68

hn, p. 56. hn, pp. 49–50. William M. Aird, ‘Saint Anselm of Canterbury and Charismatic Authority’, Religions, 5.1 (March, 2014), pp. 90–108, pp. 95–96. E319 (aoo, v.247.15–17): ‘(…) servire deo et vobis et omnibus mihi commissis secundum officium mihi a deo iniunctum (…)’.

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ence that the court analogy describes monastic service as being the fulfilment of servile duty to God.69

8

Eadmer’s Reproduction of Anselm’s Societal Conceptualisations

That Eadmer followed Anselm’s example concerning the laity’s struggle against temptation, as well as the superiority of a monastic life, is demonstrated in the Vita Anselmi through an episode concerning a miles called Cadulus.70 One night, while Cadulus was maintaining a vigil of prayer, the devil tried to tempt him away by imitating his squire, lamenting how their lodgings had been infiltrated by robbers who were making off with Cadulus’ horse and possessions. The miles did not stir from his place, judging it better to lose his material goods than to cease his prayers. Cadulus, given a choice between divine and earthly things, had chosen well in proving his steadfast obedience to God. He eventually fulfilled his renunciation of the world by entering the monastery at Marmoutier.71 The devil persisted in his harassment of Cadulus, appearing in an ursine form reminiscent of an earlier diabolic manifestation described by Eadmer in the Vita Dunstani, as Dunstan was also disturbed by a bear-devil while at prayer.72 These comparable episodes may be read as an allegorical representation of the temptations of the world and of the priority of its renunciation. While Cadulus could only ignore the devil and was unable to prevent further enticement before his monastic conversion, the ‘miles Dei’ Dunstan was able to fight back successfully enough that the devil resolved to never appear to him in body again.73 The message of these two instances, whether Eadmer intended they be read side-by-side or not, is of the superiority of the monastic lifestyle over that of militia in resisting the wiles of the devil. Although Cadulus succeeded, the persistence of the devil and the inability of the lay milites to drive him off completely, as Dunstan was able to do, would have made many laymen fall to his earthly machinations. The monastic power wielded by Dunstan links

69

70 71 72

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cdhi.11 (aoo, ii.68–69); va, p. 95, ii.21. Anselm was writing the Cur Deus Homo at the time he delivered his analogy on the courts in 1097, so it is unsurprising that the themes and arguments therein show marked similarities. va, p. 42, i.25. va, p. 43, i.25. Eadmer of Canterbury, ‘Vita Dunstani’ in Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald, Andrew J. Turner and Bernard J. Muir, eds. and trans. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), pp. 43–159, p. 94, c. 28. Vita Dunstani, pp. 94–96, c. 28.

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him with Eadmer’s presentation of Anselm, and Stephanie Caroline Britton’s recent doctoral thesis has provided further exploration of Eadmer’s Anselmian allusions in the Vita Dunstani.74 Eadmer’s version of the court analogy reflects these Anselmian conceptualisations of monastic and secular society. It presented Anselm, head authority of the English Church, as fellow-monk and hence a perfect servant of God. He was contrasted against the secular authority as a model of cupidinous and worldly militia, who, at the time Eadmer claims Anselm delivered the analogy, was King William Rufus. Throughout his career, Anselm clashed with lay lords over the freedom of the Church and the relative authority of lay and ecclesiastical powers. Anselm was remembered in the 1120s in the abbey of Bec, which enjoyed a peak in prosperity under his authority, as a defender of the church’s liberty who prevented the wrongful extension of lay authority into the monastic sphere.75 His reputation at Canterbury was more complicated. Although many of the community, such as Eadmer and Alexander, remembered Anselm well, some claimed that his absenteeism led to a failure in his duty to maintain their liberties and jurisdictions.76 Several of Anselm’s letters to and from the community of Christ Church, as well as the English church more widely, refer to evils that he was accused of abetting by his absences.77 Presumably there were others from whom no extant letters survive, who nevertheless shared these grievances. Of immediate concern before Anselm’s first exile was that an unfettered King William Rufus might attempt to assert his authority over the Church, rather than act as its advocate and defender. He had already threatened to

74

75 76

77

Stephanie Caroline Britton, ‘The manner of life of Anselm, a man beloved of God’: Saint Anselm’s legacy in historical and hagiographical writing connected to Christ Church, Canterbury and the abbey of Bec c. 1080– c. 1140, (2018) Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12691/, pp. 55–62. Eadmer cast Dunstan in Anselmian terms so that he might be an archiepiscopal model Anselm could more easily be said to emulate. De libertate Beccensis Monasterii, pp. 140–150. Anselm’s policy was attacked in the years after his death for failing to maintain Canterbury’s primacy over the see of York, as well as his lack of complete success in suppressing the assertion of royal jurisdiction over ecclesiastical matters. See: Charles C. Rozier, ‘Between history and hagiography: Eadmer of Canterbury’s vision of the Historia novorum in Anglia’, Journal of Medieval History, 45.1 (2019), pp. 1–19, pp. 14–17; Giles E.M. Gasper, ‘Envy, jealousy, and the boundaries of orthodoxy: Anselm of Canterbury and the genesis of the Proslogion’, Viator, 41.2 (2010), pp. 45–68, p. 50. For opposition to Anselm’s absence from Canterbury, see: E310 (aoo, v.233–235); E327, (aoo, v.258–259); E336 (aoo, v.272–273); E355 (aoo, v.295–297). From the English Church more generally: E330 (aoo, v.262–264); E365 (aoo, v.308–309); E366 (aoo, v.309–310).

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give some of the lands of the see of Canterbury, which ought to be held by the archbishop, over to his own milites.78 Eadmer opens the Historia novorum with a depiction of the prosperity of a kingdom under a laudable prelate and good king acting in unison, with the example of King Edgar and St Dunstan.79 The resultant narrative tells of Anselm’s constant efforts to restore this balance which had been lost under the yoke of Anglo-Norman rule. Anselm, in Eadmer’s view, was a laudable archiepiscopal administrator like Dunstan, steadfast and just in his duty to God. Eadmer’s illustration of Anselm’s political skill does not detract from his monastic depiction, as to ignore this would be to tacitly portray Anselm as the ineffective prelate that his opponents accused him of being.80 However, William Rufus was certainly no Edgar, hence the lack of beneficial co-rule was the fault of the king, not the archbishop. Although Eadmer himself never entertained the thought that Anselm was to blame for the ills that befell Canterbury, he wrote with the knowledge that, after Anselm’s exile, throughout the see of Canterbury such tribulations arose the like of which had never been seen.81 He could not make the claim that the liberty of the church of Canterbury had been undamaged during Anselm’s absence, it would have been rejected almost immediately. Eadmer could, however, remind his fellow monks of their duty to reject worldly concerns and instead concentrate on their spiritual service to God, and this was his intention in reproducing the sermon on the courts. ‘If they are unwilling to suffer any kind of privation or strictness of rule on God’s behalf’, the monks are warned, ‘what arguments, pray, can save them from being such as those others [non-monastics]?’82 The message of the analogy is made clear: those who serve God as monks will suffer troubles in the world, but if they remain steadfast in their obedience to God then they shall reclaim their divine inheritance. Eadmer had to admit to the privations suffered by Canterbury, but strove to defend Anselm’s reputation by highlighting the alterity of those who were tied to the world. Anselm, as ‘a shield for [the monks’] protection’, is presented by Eadmer as fighting on behalf of the monastic community—demonstrating

78 79 80 81 82

E176 (aoo, iv.59.38–48). hn, p. 3. Notably, both men are said to render different forms of service in administrating the kingdom. Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan, p. 12. hn, p. 89. va, p. 96, ii.21: ‘(…) nec hinc propter Deum cuiuslibet rei penuriam, et hinc regulae disciplinam pati volunt quibus obsecro rationibus juvabuntur, ne horum similes habeantur?’

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the military service (militare) expressed in the court analogy.83 The sinful laity, personified in William Rufus and his perceived aggressions toward the see of Canterbury, were being protected against, and so they and not Anselm were responsible for the suffering within the earthly plane. To further the dichotomy, Eadmer utilizes in Anselm’s description of service the first-person plural pronoun to describe Anselm and his audience collectively as ‘we monks [nos monachi]’.84 Therefore, Eadmer states, the monks had a particular duty to adhere to, and it was one shared by Anselm himself. By placing the court analogy in Anselm’s voice before his exile, Eadmer was not attempting to excuse Anselm’s actions, but rather suggesting that from the beginning he had acted rightfully. To uphold the monastic duty of service to God in the face of opposition, as Eadmer states Anselm endeavoured, is at the heart of his version of the court analogy. In the opening of his sermon, Eadmer declares Anselm’s avowed purpose to be ‘to keep you in mind of the nature of your service’.85 However, Eadmer was not painting a picture of the privations inherent in monastic duty, as mentioned above, for no purpose. He also built upon the model of God as the Supreme Justice provided by Anselm, and the certainty of reward offered to those who upheld their duty. The good monk ‘will by no means be cheated of this glory of the Lord, for his whole being is subject to the Lord’s will and is directed to obtaining this glory’.86 Here the formula is explicit: the monk whose service is complete shall certainly receive all that is offered as reward. The need to offer complete service to God is the true message of Eadmer’s version of the analogy of the courts, which he reveals at the very end of Anselm’s speech to the monks: My brethren, I beseech you, I beseech you, if here and now we part in grief, press on, so that in the future we may be joined together before God in gladness. Act like men who truly desire to become heirs of God.87

83 84 85 86 87

va, p. 93, ii.21: ‘(…) et ne in immensum vos ferirent scuto me vestrae protectionis medium objecti’. va, p. 95, ii.21. This extends the wider narrative that Anselm remained a cloistered man at heart during his archiepiscopacy. va, p. 94, ii.21: ‘Paucis tamen suggero, ut quia Deo militaturi in conseptum monasterii huius convenistis prae oculis semper habeatis quemadmodum militetis’. va, p. 96, ii.21: ‘Et sciatis quod hic ipsa gloria Domini nullo modo defrudabitur, quoniam totum quod in eo viget voluntati Domini famulatur, atque ad hanc obtinendam dirigitur’. va, pp. 96–97, ii.21: ‘Fratres mei, obsecro, obsecro vos, si hic dolentes nunc ab invicem separamur tendite ut in future ante Deum laeti ad invicem conjungamur. Estote illi, qui veraciter velitis effici haeredes Dei’.

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It is impossible to know how well Eadmer reflected Anselm’s precise words although it is likely that this was a moderated and polished version, potentially with the guidance of Anselm himself before his change of heart regarding Eadmer’s hagiographical venture. What is clear is that the message of Eadmer’s version of the court analogy is an entreaty to the Christ Church monks to keep to their task and remain separate from that ‘mercenary’ order of society in which dwelt the iniquitous King William. This then served as a defence of Anselm, against criticism of his absenteeism, as well as a reminder that monastic service in the only court that mattered, that of God, was unaffected by it. Vita Anselmi ii.21 contains in fact the second court analogy in Eadmer’s text, and the first of which provides a template for the nature of God’s lordship and helps to inform the reader’s understanding of the second. Eadmer describes during Anselm’s childhood a dream-vision of the court of God, in which Anselm resolved to accuse serfs whom he saw reaping the harvest ‘carelessly and idly [negligenter faciebant et desidiose]’ to their lord. Entering the court itself, Anselm informed God as to his purpose and was presented in turn with a loaf of ‘the whitest bread [panis (…) nitidissimus]’, presumably prepared using the crops he had seen being gathered by the serfs.88 This can be seen as God’s answer to Anselm’s accusation, that only he as Supreme or Perfect Justice could cast fair judgement, as what appeared to Anselm as lacklustre service produced a perfect result in the court of God. Here God proved his judicial superiority over man, a concept that is crucial to the message of the other court analogy. Both references to the court of God were almost certainly described to Eadmer by Anselm, however the fact that they were retained for the Vita Anselmi demonstrates their deliberate place in Eadmer’s own purpose as well.

9

Conclusions

The understanding of lay society in this period is restricted in narrative sources for the most part to a monastic lens. The utilisation of monastic conceptualisations, such as that presented by Anselm and his student Eadmer, reveals how monks saw society both as it was and how they believed it ought to be. The image which Anselm wished to cultivate delineates clear orders of society, in which monks and milites are firmly separated. The order of monasticism, of which he insisted he was a part, Anselm constantly maintained to be a super-

88

va, pp. 4–5, i.2.

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ior form of service to God than militia, primarily due to its greater separation from the world. The court analogy represents Anselm’s use of these theological and sociological conceptualisations in a practical setting to explain the nature of contemporary society, and offer reassurance that, although not everyone served God as they ought, only those who did would receive the reward they craved. By leaning on the distinction between monk and miles the court analogy provided the monastic community, to whom it was presented, with an alternative social group at whose feet their complaints about the nature of society could be laid. This was adopted by Eadmer to counter the accusations members of the Christ Church community and beyond were levelling at Anselm for his part in their contemporary difficulties. Invoking the image of lay courts made Anselm’s warnings tangible to his monastic audience, especially that of the iniquity of the mercenary milites which he saw as a pervasive threat to the contemporary Anglo-Norman world. Combined with conceptual understanding of mercenaries, the distinction offered between the service of monks and laymen would have been starkly realised. Abandoning God’s service as a mercenary was folly, as the meagre offerings of the world were nothing compared to the guarantee of perfect reward under God. Eadmer reproduced these ideas in the context of criticism of Anselm’s exile. With William Rufus attempting to assert his authority over Canterbury (and hence subverting the divinely ordained order), the court analogy represented a culmination of Anselmian theology to combat this. King William, the rex malus and miles stipendiarius of God, was easy to envision as incapable of fulfilling the ideals of lordship noted in the court analogy. Any ills suffered by the Christ Church community were logically to be laid at his feet, not God’s and, importantly, not Anselm’s. According to the archbishop and his remembrancer, Anselm had not failed in his service, for he was following the will of God, the one true authority. His fellow monks were exhorted to do the same.

Bibliography Primary Sources Alexandri monachi Cantuariensis Liber ex Dictis Beati Anselmi in Southern and Schmitt, Memorials of St. Anselm, pp. 105–270. Anselm of Canterbury, Letters of Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, Vol. 1, The Bec Letters, Samu Niskanen, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). Bernard of Clairvaux, Liber ad milites Templi De laude novae militiae in Bernardi opera, iii, Jean Leclercq and Henri M. Rochais, eds. (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1963).

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De Libertate Beccensis Monasterii in Three Treatises from Bec on the Nature of Monastic Life, Giles Constable, ed., Bernard S. Smith, trans. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), pp. 136–166. Eadmer of Canterbury, Eadmeri Historia Novorum in Anglia et Opuscula Duo, Martin Rule, ed. (London: Longman & Co., 1884), pp. 1–302. Eadmer of Canterbury, History of Recent Events in England, Geoffrey Bosanquet, trans. (London: The Cresset Press, 1964). Eadmer of Canterbury, Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald, Andrew J. Turner and Bernard J. Muir, eds. and trans. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006). Eadmer of Canterbury, ‘Vita Dunstani’ in Eadmer, Lives and Miracles, pp. 43–159. Eadmer of Canterbury, Vita Sancti Anselmi, Richard William Southern, ed., The Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). Gilbert Crispin, Vita Herluini, in The Works of Gilbert Crispin, abbot of Westminster, Anna Sapir Abulafia and Gillian R. Evans, eds. (London: oup for the British Academy, 1986), pp. 185–212. Guibert of Nogent, Dei Gesta per Francos, in cc cm 127A, R. B. C. Huygens, ed. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996). Lanfranc of Canterbury, The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, Helen Clover and Margaret Gibson, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). Liber Anselmi Archepiscopi de Humanis Moribus per Similitudines / De similitudinibus in Southern and Schmitt, eds., Memorials of St. Anselm, pp. 37–104. Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, 6 vols., Marjorie Chibnall, ed. and trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969–1980). S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961); reprinted in two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968). Southern, Richard William, and Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, eds., Memorials of St. Anselm (London: oup for the British Academy, 1969). The Rule of Saint Benedict, Bruce L. Venarde, ed. (Cambridge ma., Harvard University Press, 2011). van Houts, Elisabeth M.C., ed., The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992–1995). William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, vol. 1, Roger A.B. Mynors, Rodney M. Thomson and Michael Winterbottom, eds. and trans. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).

Secondary Sources Aird, William M., ‘Saint Anselm of Canterbury and Charismatic Authority’, Religions 5.1 (March, 2014), pp. 90–108. Allen, Martin, Mints and Money in Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

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Britton, Stephanie Caroline, ‘The manner of life of Anselm, a man beloved of God’: Saint Anselm’s legacy in historical and hagiographical writing connected to Christ Church, Canterbury and the abbey of Bec c. 1080–c. 1140 (Durham theses, Durham University, 2018). Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12691/. Campbell, Richard, ‘The Conceptual Roots of Anselm’s Soteriology’ in David E. Luscombe and Gillian R. Evans, eds., Anselm: Aosta, Bec and Canterbury (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), pp. 256–263. Chibnall, Marjorie, ‘Mercenaries and the familia regis under Henry i’, History, 64 (1977), pp. 15–23. Cowdrey, Herbert E.J., ‘Bishop Ermenfrid of Sion and the Penitential Ordinance following the Battle of Hastings’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 20.2 (Oct. 1969), pp. 225– 242. Duby, Georges, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). Fröhlich, Walter, ‘St Anselm’s special relationship with William the Conqueror’ in R. Allen Brown, ed., Anglo-Norman Studies x (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1988), pp. 101–110. Gasper, Giles E.M., ‘Envy, jealousy, and the boundaries of orthodoxy: Anselm of Canterbury and the genesis of the Proslogion’, Viator, 41.2 (2010), pp. 45–68. Gasper, Giles E.M., and Svein H. Gullbekk, ‘Money and its use in thought and experience of Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury (1093–1109)’, Journal of Medieval History, 38.2 (2012), pp. 155–181. Gasper, Giles E.M., ‘Contemplating Money and Wealth in Monastic Writing c. 1060– 1160’ in Giles E. M Gasper and Svein H. Gullbekk, eds., Money and the Church in Medieval Europe, 1000–1200: Practice, Morality, and Thought (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 39–76. Gasper, Giles E.M., ‘Economy Distorted, Economy Restored: Order, Economy and Salvation in Anglo-Norman Monastic Writing’ in Elisabeth M.C. van Houts, ed., AngloNorman Studies xxxviii (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2016), pp. 51–65. Gazeau, Véronique, ‘From Bec to Canterbury: Between Cloister and World, the Legacy of Anselm, a personne d’autorité’ in Giles E.M. Gasper and Ian Logan, eds., Saint Anselm of Canterbury and His Legacy (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012), pp. 61–72. Mason, Emma, William ii: Rufus, the Red King (Stroud: Tempus, 2005). Nieus, Jean-François, ‘The Early Career of William of Ypres in England: A New Charter of King Stephen’, English Historical Review, 130 (June, 2015), pp. 527–545. Pohl, Benjamin, ‘The (Un)Making of a History Book: Revisiting the Earliest Manuscripts of Eadmer of Canterbury’s Historia novorum in Anglia’, The Library, 20.3 (September, 2019), pp. 340–370. Potter, Julie, ‘The Benefactors of Bec and the Politics of Priories’ in Christopher Harper-

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Bill, ed., Anglo-Norman Studies xxi (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999), pp. 175– 192. Powell, Timothy E., ‘The ‘Three Orders’ of society in Anglo-Saxon England’, AngloSaxon England, 23 (1994), pp. 103–132. Prestwich, John Oswald, ‘War and Finance in the Anglo-Norman State’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4 (1954), pp. 19–43. Rozier, Charles C., ‘Between history and hagiography: Eadmer of Canterbury’s vision of the Historia novorum in Anglia’, Journal of Medieval History, 45.1 (2019), pp. 1–19. Smith, Katherine Allen, War and the Making of Medieval Monastic Culture (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2011). Southern, Richard William, ‘Sally Vaughn’s Anselm: An Examination of the Foundations’, Albion, 20:2 (1988), pp. 181–204. Southern, Richard William, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Staunton, Michael, ‘Eadmer’s Vita Anselmi; a reinterpretation’, Journal of Medieval History, 23.1 (1977), pp. 1–14. Strickland, Matthew, War and Chivalry: The Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy 1066–1217 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Vaughn, Sally N., ‘St Anselm of Canterbury: the philosopher-saint as politician’, Journal of Medieval History, 1:3 (1975), pp. 279–305. Vaughn, Sally N., Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan: The Innocence of the Dove and the Wisdom of the Serpent (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1987). Vaughn, Sally N., ‘Anselm: Saint and Statesman’, Albion, 20:2 (1988), pp. 202–220.

chapter 20

The Death of Anselm Barbara Hargreaves

Anselm died as dawn was breaking on the Wednesday before Easter, 21 April 1109.1 He was in his seventy-sixth year. Eadmer’s eye-witness account builds gently through the death narrative, telling of Anselm’s slow decline over the final years of his life, his bouts of illness and increasing level of debility.2 While on first reading Eadmer’s death narrative suggests a conventional hagiographic account of the passing of a monastic saint, closer examination shows that in some respects it was not.3 The contention here is that in several ways Eadmer’s telling of Anselm’s death varies from the usual such account and, through considering the choices Eadmer made, perhaps offers some insight into his intention and approach in crafting his Life of Anselm and in understanding the memory that he wished to promote of his monastic father and archbishop. In 1106 Anselm had become critically ill whilst at Bec and, so Eadmer wrote, was expected to die.4 However, on that occasion he recovered and the bishops and abbots who had travelled to attend Anselm’s death and burial had to return home again.5 Further episodes of sickness followed and by early 1109 Anselm’s health was declining irremediably. Although Eadmer had noted previous episodes of fever, he offered no specifics of Anselm’s medical condition during his final months. The Life states that Anselm suffered from ‘frequent and grievous sicknesses’ but no additional information is given about these, although there are repeated observations on the archbishop’s lack of appetite and a reference

1 va, ii.66, p. 143. 2 Although Eadmer makes no direct claim to having attended Anselm in his last days, his choice of language suggests it. For example: ‘Palm Sunday dawned and we were sitting beside him as usual’. He also places himself centrally in his recounting of the miracle of the balsam. va, ii.66, p. 141 and ii.67, p. 143. 3 For more on the subject of hagiography see, among others: Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? (Princetown: Princetown University Press, 2013), pp. 518–546; Helen Birkett, The Saints Lives of Jocelin of Furness (York: York Medieval Press, 2010), p. 2; Thomas J. Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints and their Biographers in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 4 va, ii.57, p. 135. 5 va, ii.58, p. 136.

© Barbara Hargreaves, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_022

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to his needing to be carried by litter.6 Eadmer does, however, emphasise the fact that Anselm remained assiduous in his religious and monastic practice and that he continued to be clear-headed and strong in spirit, making it explicit that despite his growing frailty Anselm remained faithful to his calling and vows. By Palm Sunday 1109, it was apparent to the community that Anselm would not last through the week until Easter. ‘My Lord and father’ one of the brothers said, ‘we cannot help knowing that you are going to leave the world to be at the Easter court of your Lord’.7 Anselm, who was still able to speak at that stage, remarked that he felt no pain in any part of his body but attributed his debility to lack of food saying he believed he could still recover were he able to eat anything. There was to be no recovery. By the Tuesday evening Anselm’s words were no longer comprehensible although there is an inference that he remained lucid, for at the request of Ralph, bishop of Rochester, he raised his hand to give absolution and blessing to those who lived under his episcopal authority. Death came to him the following morning. As the community were singing lauds, and as verses from Luke 22:28–30 about a place at the Lord’s table in heaven were being read, Anselm started to breathe more slowly than usual.8 Recognising that the archbishop was on the point of death, Anselm’s attendants lifted him from his bed onto sackcloth and ashes on the floor, and there, as dawn was breaking and with what Eadmer described as ‘the whole congregation of his sons’ gathered around him, Anselm died.9 The death narrative continued with a description of the post-mortem exequies and burial. This passage commences with the preparation of Anselm’s body for burial and ends with the interment, which took place on the day following his death. The sequence contains two miracles, the first concerning the abundance of balsam which became available to those anointing the body, and the second in which the stone sarcophagus prepared for Anselm’s committal, and found to be too shallow, became deep enough to accommodate his body. Eadmer included in this account practical details about the laying out of the archbishop. He wrote that following Anselm’s death his body was washed

6 va, ii.64, p. 141. ‘Frequentibus et acerbic infirmitatibus’. 7 va, ii.66, p. 142. ‘Domine pater ut nobis intelligi datur, ad paschalem Domini tui curiam relicto seculo vadis’. 8 va, ii.66, p. 143 and Luke 22:28–30. ‘And you are they who have continued with me in my temptations, and I appoint to you, as my father has appointed to me, a kingdom, so that you may eat and drink at my table’. All quotations from the Bible are from the Vulgate and DouayRheims translation. 9 va, ii.66, p. 143. ‘Adunatoque circa illum universo filiorum suorum agmine ultimum spiritum in manus Creatoris emittens, dormavit in pace’.

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‘according to custom’ then anointed and clothed in the robes of an archbishop before being carried into the chapel.10 Although Eadmer does not make it explicit, it can be supposed that Anselm’s body remained there, in vigil, until he was removed to his place of burial on the following day. Close reading of Eadmer’s account of Anselm’s death raises several questions. The first of these follows from Eadmer’s statement that Anselm’s body was, ‘washed according to custom’. What was the custom and how, and in what way, was it followed in Anselm’s case? Lanfranc, Anselm’s predecessor as archbishop of Canterbury, had included in his customary, The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, a death ritual to be followed by the monks of the monastery there.11 It is reasonable to suppose that Anselm’s death exequies were conducted within the framework of Lanfranc’s monastic death ritual and this supposition will be considered shortly.12 This first question leads in turn to a second, asking whether or not the death narratives from the Lives of other comparable saints were set similarly. This line of inquiry gives rise in turn to a final area of investigation which is to consider and compare the hagiographic expression of the respective narratives. The contention explored here, which arose from the comparative analysis of twelfth-century monastic saints’ Lives from the English tradition, is that Eadmer’s recounting of Anselm’s death is subtly different in small, but possibly significant ways from that of comparable accounts. There are two main strands of enquiry. The first asks how and where the death narratives followed the monastic death ritual as articulated by Lanfranc in his Monastic Constitutions. The second strand considers the hagiographic expression of the death itself. For the purposes of this latter comparison, the following common features from the death accounts of selected twelfth-century saints’Lives are used: the experience and attitude of the saint towards pain and suffering; their expressed longing to die, or to be received in heaven; their relationship with food and towards eating; the time of their death and the hagiographers’ utilisation of biblical reference; miraculous post-mortem body changes; miracles relating to burial.

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va, ii.67, p. 143. ‘Loto igitur ex more corpore ejus’. Lanfranc of Canterbury, The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, David Knowles and Christopher N.L. Brooke, eds. and trans. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 112–115, pp. 179–195. While only Lanfranc’s death ritual is used for reference here it is worth noting that it was similar in structure, and often detail, to other monastic death rituals available at the time. See for example those in Regularis Concordia Anglicae Nationis Monachorum Sanctimonialiumque, Thomas Symons, ed. and trans. (London: Thomas Nelson, 1953), xii, 65–68, pp. 64–68 and Frederick Paxton, The Death Ritual at Cluny in the Central Middle Ages, with the collaboration of Isabelle Cochelin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 57–173.

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The Lives used for comparison are those of Wulfstan of Worcester (d. 1095, whose Life was written by William of Malmesbury c. 1125); Waldef of Melrose (d. 1159, Life written by Jocelin of Furness c. 1198–1209); Aelred of Rievaulx (d. 1167, Life written by Walter Daniel at around the time of Aelred’s death); Gilbert of Sempringham (d. 1189 whose unknown hagiographer wrote his Life c. 1202–1203); and Hugh, bishop of Lincoln (d. 1200, whose Magna Vita by Adam of Eynsham was completed by 1212).13 Between them, these saints, or people who were presented through their Life as saints, represent monastic leaders from different religious orders, who lived across the twelfth century or in its margins, and whose Life was written either by an eye-witness or by a writer who claimed to draw from first-hand testimony. Although it is a small group it should be noted that within the scope of investigation there is only a small group from which to draw and that these saints represent the majority. It should be acknowledged that differences in death narratives noted from comparative analysis of Anselm’s Life with those of other twelfth-century saints may of course be due to the fact that Eadmer was writing nearer the start of the century. However, William of Malmesbury’s Life of Wulfstan of Worcester was written around the same period of time as Anselm’s and, as will be shown, accords more closely with other saints’Lives of the period than does Anselm’s.14 Eadmer’s Lives of historical saints—Wilfred, Oda, Oswald and Dunstan—and John of Salisbury’s later Life of Anselm have also been used on occasion.15

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William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani in Saints’ lives: lives of ss Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Indract, Michael Winterbottom and Rodney M. Thomson, eds, and trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Jocelin of Furness, ‘The Life of St. Waldef, Abbot of Melrose, by Jocelin of Furness’ in George Joseph McFadden, ‘An Edition and Translation of the Life of St. Waldef, Abbot of Melrose, by Jocelin of Furness’, (unpublished D.Phil. dissertation, Columbia University, 1952), pp. 201–357; Walter Daniel, The Life of Aelred of Rievaulx, Frederick Maurice Powicke, trans. (London: Nelson, 1950); ‘Liber Sancti Gileberti’ in The Book of St Gilbert, Raymonde Foreville, ed., and Gillian Keir, trans. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis, Decima Douie and David Hugh Farmer, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). Richard William Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 424–426, considered Eadmer’s treatment of Anselm to be a departure from traditional hagiographic style in some respects, and to presage a taste for ‘psychological elaboration’ in Lives which became widespread over the course of the twelfth century. Eadmer of Canterbury, Vita Sancti Wilfredi Auctore Edmero, Bernard J. Muir and Andrew J. Turner, eds. and trans. (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1998); and The Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan and Oswald, Bernard J. Muir and Andrew J. Turner, eds. and trans. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006); John of Salisbury, Vitam Sancti Anselmi Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis (London, Lambeth Palace, ms 159), fols. 160v–176r; John of Salisbury

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So, concerning monastic death ritual, what was customary? Lanfranc’s death ritual is detailed.16 It contains the exact requirements for both the liturgy and practicalities of the management of a dying, then dead, monk. There are three stages: the pre-mortem phase, the time immediately surrounding the death, and the post-mortem period. In terms of practicalities, the key points of the pre-mortem period were that the entire community attended the death, and that last rites, including confession, were delivered. For the period of dying and death, the expiring monk was to be placed on sackcloth and ashes if he wished, and after death was washed and clothed. Burial took place on the following day if possible, and then the community entered a period of remembrance for their late brother. Remembrance consisted of prayers and alms-giving for a brother, but for the abbot fuller remembrance rituals were required.17 Reading Anselm’s death narrative as an account set within the framework of Lanfranc’s mandated death ritual shows that there are some omissions in Eadmer’s account. Notably, he excluded the parts of Lanfranc’s death ritual that focus on the sinfulness of the dying man and his need for forgiveness. These included the pre-mortem act of confession to God and to the community and post-mortem acts of remembrance by the community. Further examination of all the selected Lives shows a significant degree of commonality in terms of their description of monastic death ritual. Their narratives, like Eadmer’s, all speak of community attendance at the death, the ritual of sackcloth and ashes, the washing and clothing of the body and its burial.18 None of them mention pre-mortem confession by the dying man or post-mortem acts of remembrance. The consistency with which these are omitted highlights one of the aims of the authors in writing the Life. The work itself was designed to be a remembrance, telling of a person and presenting a saint who, as such, was presumed to be already in heaven and so in no need of intercessory prayer. Likewise, as a saint, they had no need to either confess, or be seen to make confession, prior to their death. Of the Lives, Anselm’s is the only one that does not speak explicitly of last rites in some form, anoint-

16 17 18

‘The Life of Saint Anselm’ in John of Salisbury, Anselm and Becket: Two Canterbury Saints’ Lives, Ronald E. Pepin, trans. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2009), pp. 11–72. Lanfranc, Constitutions, 112–113, pp. 179–193. Lanfranc, Constitutions, 82, pp. 112–113. These included an enhanced amount of food being given in alms and extended prayers. The only Life not to mention sackcloth and ashes is that of Gilbert of Sempringham, although he is noted as having worn a hair shirt and perhaps this was seen to suffice. Foreville and Keir, Book of St Gilbert, 22, p. 64.

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ing for instance, although he is recorded as having attended ‘the consecration of the Lord’s Body’ in the days preceding his death.19 In terms of death ritual alone then, there is little to differentiate Anselm from the other twelfth-century monastic saints. All were, other than the omissions mentioned above, recorded as following the style of death ritual mandated by Lanfranc in his Constitutions. One of the points which comes over most strongly from the accounts, is that of the monk being lifted from his bed onto the prepared sackcloth and ashes for the moment of death itself. The fact that it is mentioned consistently in the Lives shows that for the monk and their community, the ritual was a matter of import. The timing of this action necessitated a degree of prognostic competence on the part of the watching monks. Because of this the death narratives offer glimpses into the practicalities of prognostication, the inherent difficulties in anticipating the moment at which someone will die, and the features that were looked for in order to judge that death was imminent.20 Eadmer described how the watching monks realised Anselm’s death was upon him. ‘He began to draw his breath more slowly than usual. We felt therefore that he was now on the point of death, and was lifted from his bed onto sackcloth and ashes’.21 Likewise, Walter Daniel wrote of Aelred, ‘Then, when we were aware that death was near, he was placed on a hair-cloth, strewn with ashes, as the monastic custom is’.22 Although Walter did not say how, at that time, the attending monks knew that death was imminent, he had described Aelred’s earlier condition. ‘Then I came and saw the father sweating in anguish, the pallor of his face flushed, his eyes filled with tears, the ball of his nostrils twitching, his lips bitten by his teeth’.23 Despite the probable experience and skill of the watching monks in identifying impending death, Jocelin’s account of the demise of Waldef shows how difficult it could be to estimate this with accuracy.24 He recounted how Waldef was moved from his bed to the sack-

19 20

21 22 23

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va, ii.65, p. 141. For prognostication see, among others, Frederick Paxton, ‘Signa mortifera: Death and Prognostication in Early Medieval Monastic Medicine’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 67 (1993), pp. 631–650; Faith Wallis, ‘Signs and Senses: Diagnosis and Prognosis in Early Medieval Pulse and Urine Texts’, The Social History of Medicine, 13 (2000), pp. 265–278. va, ii.66, p. 143. ‘Lentius solito spiritum trahere cepit. Sensimus igitur eum iamiam obiturum, et de lecto super cilicium et cinerem positus est’. Walter Daniel, Aelred of Rievaulx, lvii, p. 62. ‘At tunc nobis eum iam iamque obiturum sencientibus, positus est super cilicium et cinerem more monachorum’. Walter Daniel, Aelred of Rievaulx, xlix, p. 56. ‘Cum ecce venio et video patrem sudare pre angustia et faciem versam in pallorem subrafam et oculos lacrimantes et pirulam narium fluctuantem et labia constricta dentibus’. Jocelin of Furness, ‘Life of St. Waldef’, 90, p. 310.

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cloth and ashes no less than three times, only to revive on the first and second occasions and be returned to his bed. He finally breathed his last on the third occasion. The opposite happened with Wulfstan whose head drooped when he dropped off to sleep causing his brothers to think that he had died without the proper processes being observed. He woke when they began to sob and was able to reassure them of his continuing presence with them in both this life and the next.25 There was no such mistiming in Anselm’s case. Eadmer describes Anselm’s passing in the style he uses throughout the narrative. He imbues it with a sense of calm, of gentle decline, of a peaceful and orderly death. The uniformity seen in the accounts, in respect of observation of Lanfranc’s death ritual, is absent when the death narratives are considered in terms of their hagiographic articulation. Here, variation emerges between Anselm’s death and those described in the other Lives under consideration. Starting with the topic of pain, Anselm is noticeably different from the other monastic saints in his experience of suffering during his last days, for he had none. Eadmer mentions this explicitly, quoting Anselm directly. ‘I feel no pain in any part of my body’.26 Compare this with, for instance, Waldef of Melrose’s terminal condition as described by Jocelin of Furness. ‘Thus it was that He wore out his beloved Waldef with a multitude of infirmities, racked him with pain, weakened him with sickness’.27 Likewise, Walter Daniel, who identified himself as a doctor, recorded Aelred of Rievaulx’s suffering during the abbot’s final days.28 ‘Of a truth the lord abbot now suffers much, for those changes in his members are signs of great pain’.29 Wulfstan of Worcester was, at the end of his life, described by William of Malmesbury as being ‘feeble with age, broken by illness’, subject to a ‘slow and incessant fever that was driving him to his end’.30 The contrast between Anselm’s pain free death and the suffering of the other saints may, of course, be as it was seen or received by the respective hagiograph-

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William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani, iii. 21, 4, p. 143. va, ii.66, p. 142. ‘Nam nichil doloris in aliqua corporis parte sentio’. Jocelin of Furness, ‘Life of St. Waldef’, 81, pp. 155 and 301. ‘Hinc est quod dilectum suum Waltevum infirmitatis multitudine, crebris flagellis attriverat tensionibus attrectraverat, morbis debilitabat’. Walter Daniel, Lament for Aelred in Aelred of Rievaulx, p. xxvii, fn. 1. ‘Et licet mihi sim in officio medicus (…)’. Walter Daniel, Aelred of Rievaulx, lxix, p. 56. ‘Vere, dominus abbas valde dure patiatur modo; nam sunt indicia magni doloris iste varietates membrorum’. Walter acknowledged himself to be an official medical doctor. See p. xxvii, fn. 1. ‘Et licet mihi sim in officio medicus, non tamen sine acerbo dolere curo’. William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani, iii. 21. 1–2, p. 141.

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ers, but it also supports D.M. Hadley’s opinion that increasingly realistic and often gruelling death accounts are seen in descriptions of the death of a saint as the twelfth-century progressed.31 The graphic quality of twelfth-century hagiographic death narratives is, according to Hadley, in contrast to accounts from the preceding century, in which the saint displayed a passive submission in the face of death. If this is the case, then Anselm’s death narrative is, in this respect, more typical of those described in the preceding century. Since both Eadmer’s and Anselm’s lives were lived between the two centuries, it is perhaps no surprise that in his account of Anselm’s death, Eadmer drew on models from the eleventh century.32 As is apparent, Eadmer’s description of Anselm’s pain-free passing bears no resemblance to the more agonised accounts found in other Lives. In those, the hagiographers sometimes equated the pain of their subject with expiation of sin, using it as a form of pre-mortem purgation. Eadmer though chose to focus on Anselm’s lack of suffering, perhaps for reasons of verisimilitude and authenticity, or perhaps because a pain-free passing evoked better the image of Anselm he wished to portray.33 Or even, as is seen in the omission of acts of remembrance, because he felt the notion of purgation and the expiation of sin was inconsistent, or unnecessary, in the description of someone he was presenting as a saint. It can be assumed Eadmer was familiar with the understanding that illness could be seen as a way to reduce the burden of sin and so reduce post-mortem suffering, since this notion is made clear by Anselm himself in a letter he wrote to Hernost of Rochester in 1076 (E53). Anselm expressed his grief at the bishop’s serious illness, then moved to comfort him. ‘But when I consider that in this way your soul is being prepared for eternity, your progress comforts me with spiritual delight. It is known to your holiness that it is through the tribulation and the scorching of the flesh that the stain of sin is burnt away’.34 However,

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Dawn Marie Hadley, Death in Medieval England, an Archaeology (Stroud: Tempus, 2001), p. 75. Eadmer does not mention pre-mortem pain his historical Lives either, although he does make reference in Oswald’s Life to the saint performing his religious duties and observances despite his illness. Eadmer, Oda, Dunstan and Oswald, pp. 281 and 283. Southern, Portrait, p. 427, has noted what he calls Eadmer’s ‘scrupulosity of vision’ in his recording in Anselm’s Life of what he saw. Anselm of Canterbury, Letters of Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, Vol. 1, The Bec Letters, Samu Niskanen, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), i. 44, 2, pp. 129–130. ‘Sed cum considero quia per haec anima vestra ad aeternitatem nutritur, consolatur me spirituali laetitia vester profectus. Notum quippe est sanctitati vestrae quia in tribulatione carnis et per ustionem rubigo peccatorum exeritur, et per patientiam iusti vita perficitur’.

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perhaps for the reasons mentioned above, the route of pre-mortem purgation was not one that Eadmer chose to take in his description of Anselm’s pain-free death. While Anselm is markedly different from the other saints in his experience of physical pain as a feature of his death, Eadmer, in common with the other hagiographers considered here, described the saints similarly in respect of their mental condition and lucidity during the approach to death. The consistency of this feature across the Lives suggests it was a hagiographic trope, and one that is entirely comprehensible in the context of a death narrative. In order for the sanctity of the saints to be assured, and for any death-bed messages they conveyed to be both comprehensive and compelling, it was necessary that they remain lucid. Anselm was described as being weak in flesh but strong in spirit, and ‘mentally as alert as he ever had been’, while Wulfstan was narrated as increasing the powers of his soul through the decline of his body and during his final illness having his chair placed where he could see into the chapel, fixing his eyes upon the altar and keeping his ears attentive to the psalms.35 In the hours before his death, Hugh of Lincoln was recorded as sending to the dean of St Paul’s and the prior of Westminster to attend his passing and then, later, when beyond speech, raising his hand to bless the ashes on which he was shortly to die.36 The saints are consistently recorded as coherent, even when on the point of death, and often this coherence is mediated through the language of the cloister. Whether it is in blessing the ashes, listening to scripture, or acting as father to their community, the saints show they are fully present in mind and body at the time of their passing. Even when he could no longer speak, Anselm was able to raise his hand and ‘make the sign of the holy Cross’, his final act of blessing and absolution as father to his community.37 So, although in terms of his physical condition Anselm’s death is markedly different to those of other comparable saints, in his lucidity and faithfulness in the face of death, he is exactly the same. This point leads onto a further way in which Anselm’s death narrative varies from the others, and that is in his attitude to pending death. While the other saints either expressed a longing to die, or simply turned their faces away from

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va, ii.65, p. 141. ‘Qua vi per dimidium circiter annum vitam quoquomodo transigens sensim corpore deficiebat, animi virtute semper idem qui esse solebat existens. Spiritu itaque fortis, sed carne nimium fragilis’; William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani, iii. 21. 2, p. 141. ‘The failure of his body only increased the powers of his soul [labes corporis augebat vires animae]’. Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita, vol. ii, book 5, c. xvi, pp. 197–198. va, ii.66, p. 142. ‘Et signo sanctae crucis edito’.

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the world, Eadmer recorded Anselm as saying that he would like to remain longer. Quoting Anselm, Eadmer couched the archbishop’s expressed desire not to die yet in terms of his obedience to God’s will and his wish to work further on the question of the origin of the soul. When one of Anselm’s attendants said to him that his death would occur soon, Anselm replied. ‘And if indeed his will is set on this, I shall gladly obey his will. However, if he would prefer me to remain among you (…) I should welcome this with gratitude’.38 Perhaps Anselm’s view here is reflective of the fact that despite his growing debility, he remained both pain-free and lucid during his approach to death and so, being both well enough and equipped to continue his work, felt in no hurry to die. Eadmer was though careful to prefix this statement of Anselm’s with the archbishop’s stated acceptance of God’s will in the matter. It is an episode that serves to show the reader both Anselm’s obedience and his calmness in the face of death, as well as the enduring quality of his questioning mind and drive for understanding. Anselm’s demeanour in this is in striking contrast to those of the other eyewitness accounts considered here. Aelred, that most suffering of the suffering saints, cried out for release. Walter Daniel described him in his agony, hands stretched out to heaven, eyes fixed like lamps of fire upon the cross held in front of him. ‘For the love of Christ hasten (…) Release me, let go free to Him, whom I see before me. What do you linger for? What do you? What are you waiting for?’39 The disparity between Aelred’s agonised pleading for death and Anselm’s stated desire to complete his work on the soul could not be more marked. The same is true of Gilbert of Sempringham who was recorded as declaring that he could no longer endure this life, and Hugh of Lincoln who, so Adam recounted, prayed when suffering ‘terrible and excessive pain. ‘O merciful God, give me rest, give me rest at last (…) The day of my death will not be one of judgement but of mercy’.40 Of course, the fact that both Aelred and

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va, ii.66, p. 142. ‘Et quidem si voluntas ejus in hoc est voluntati ejus libens parebo. Verum si mallet inter vos saltem tam diu manere, donec quaestionem quam de origine animae mente resolve absolvere possem gratanter acciperem, eo quod nescio utrum aliquis eam me defuncto sit soluturus. Ego quippe si comedere possem spero convalescerem’. Southern observed that Gilbert Crispin subsequently attempted to resolve the problem but that it is not possible to know if his views represent those of Anselm in this case. va, ii.66, p. 142, fn. 1. Walter Daniel, Aelred of Rievaulx, lvii, p. 60. ‘Pro Christi amore festinate (…) Ad illum quem video ante me. Quid moramini? Quid agitis? Quid expectatis?’ Foreville and Keir, Book of St Gilbert, 51, p. 119, ‘Pronuntiavitque se in hac vita diutibus non posse subsistere’; Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita, vol. ii, book 5, c. xvi, pp. 192–193. ‘Cum vero durius vexeratur doloribus immensis, huiusmodi sepius verba orando repetebat, “O

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Hugh were described as experiencing great pain, while Anselm was not, perhaps influenced the accounts of their stated longing to die. However, Hugh’s heavenward focus was not just a feature of the pain he was suffering but was also an expression of faith. Adam, who as Hugh’s chaplain was with him during his final illness and death, wrote that after having received the viaticum Hugh spoke to the attending monks. ‘Now let the doctors and our sickness come to what agreement they will, neither henceforth are of any consequence to us’.41 Hugh continued: ‘I have committed myself to him whom I have received. I will hold fast and cleave to him to whom it is good to adhere (…)’.42 The sense of this is clear; Hugh, having received Christ in the form of the communion he had just taken, was stating that from now he was turning his face from the world, ignoring his failing body and its needs, and that hereafter he would look only to heaven. Gilbert of Sempringham did likewise during his last days and after receiving extreme unction ‘with fitting and proper devoutness he awaited the hour of his passing’.43 The heavenwards focus of Aelred, Gilbert and Hugh with their determined turning away from the world could not provide a more marked contrast with that of Anselm’s statement that if God’s will were such that he, Anselm, could be spared, ‘I should welcome this with gratitude’.44 While all demonstrate obedience to, and acceptance of, God’s will, Anselm is the only saint who is described as retaining a focus on, and interest in, worldly matters during his final days. It seems that, unlike the other later hagiographers, Eadmer did not choose to articulate the sanctity of Anselm through a demonstration of his expressed longing to die. The liminality that is seen in the other accounts, with the dying saints traversing the reaches between earth and heaven, physically in this world while their spirit is already traversing the way to the next, is absent in Anselm’s case. In his death narrative Anselm remains here on earth, located firmly at the centre of his Canterbury community, a present father to his surrounding sons. Interestingly, and significantly, the contrast in this area is seen not just between Anselm and other twelfth-century saints, but also with other saints’ Lives written by Eadmer himself. Eadmer described how Dunstan had a vision

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pie Deus, requiem presta nobis, tandem nobis requiem (…) Non enim iudicii set gratie et misericordia dies erit qua ego defungar”’. Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita, vol. ii, book 5, c. xvi, p. 186. ‘Iam medicis et morbis nostris, ut poterit, conveniat; de utrisque amodo erit in pectore nostro cura minor’. Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita, vol. ii, book 5, c. xvi, p. 186. ‘Ei me commisi, illum suscepi, ipsum tenebo, ipse adherebo cui adherere bonum est (…)’. Foreville and Keir, Book of St Gilbert, 51, p. 121. va, ii.66, p. 142. ‘Gratanter acciperem’.

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of his imminent demise. ‘Dunstan, who was keen to enter into the joy of his Lord (…) joyfully awaited the moment predicted by the angelic visitation’.45 He described Oswald too in similar terms. ‘And now, eager to ascend to the kingdom of God (…)’.46 It appears then that in comparison with both Eadmer’s own historical Lives and those of other twelfth-century saints, Eadmer’s description of Anselm’s attitude to his pending death is unusual. Once again, it should be considered that Eadmer may simply be describing what he witnessed in Anselm’s case. The fact is though, that what he chose to describe in Anselm’s Life is conveyed in terms that are at significant variance with the model of sanctity as expressed by the longing to die, or the longing to be in heaven, that is seen in the Lives of the other saints considered here. While, in some respects, Eadmer’s account of Anselm’s dying is at odds with other such narratives, in other ways it conforms exactly. An instance of this is seen through the timing of the moment of death. Frequently in the Life of a saint this is placed at a time of significance in the daily monastic timetable of prayer and is hemmed about with either allusion or direct quotation from the bible. The hagiographers position the passing of their subject firmly within the monastic context in respect of both the opus dei and as an expression of faith. Anselm’s death is recorded as occurring during lauds, at the breaking of the new day, with Eadmer writing that the archbishop reached the point of death as Luke 22:28–30 was being read.47 Gilbert too died during lauds, with reference being made to 1Chronicles 23:1, and Hugh died during compline, at the end of the day, and during the reading of the Nunc dimittis.48 Aelred did not die during one of the monastic offices—his passing is recorded as happening during the fourth watch—but Walter gives his final words as those of the crucified Jesus: ‘Into Thy hands I commend my spirit’.49 In situating Anselm’s death within the framework of the monastic day and encompassing it with biblical reference, Eadmer is entirely in accord with the other hagiographers. Plainly this was seen as a crucial feature in proclaiming the sanctity of the passing

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Eadmer, Oda, Dunstan and Oswald, p. 157. ‘Et iam Dunstanus, gaudium Domini sui intrare auidus, horam angelica sibi visitation praedictam corpore Christi saginatus et sanguine laetus expectabat’. Eadmer, Oda, Dunstan and Oswald, p. 281. ‘Et iam Dei regnum acsendere cupidus (…)’. va, ii.66, p. 143. Foreville and Keir, Book of St Gilbert, 52, p. 125; Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita, vol. ii, book 5, c. xvi, p. 198. The use of 1Chronicles 23:1 serves to associate Gilbert with David and to allude to the issue of succession in the Gilbertine Order. The verse reads, ‘David being old and full of days, made Solomon his son king over Israel’. Walter Daniel, Aelred of Rievaulx, lvii, pp. 61–62 and Luke 23:46. Powicke estimated the fourth watch to be about 10.30p.m., p. 62, fn. 1.

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monk and of mediating the reception of this to the receiving community. It also served to convey, through biblical reference, any messages that the hagiographer wished the receivers of the Life to hear. Given the fact that death was in some senses the apogee of the monastic experience, and one of the transitional processes that the hagiographers typically made much of, any messages that could be conveyed through the account would be of particular significance. The hagiographers did not miss this opportunity, and Eadmer’s use of Luke 22:28–30 which is quoted directly by Eadmer as, ‘Ye are they which have continued in my temptations; and I appoint you to a kingdom, as my Father has appointed me, that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom’, sends a clear message to the reader that Eadmer considered Anselm’s reception into heaven to be both instant and assured.50 Following his account of Anselm’s death, Eadmer, like the other writers, moved to describe the preparation of his subject’s body for burial. Like the death itself this was a crucial moment in a work of hagiography, an opportunity to observe and proclaim sanctity. Once the saint had died, their body became a locus for the miraculous and signs are often seen at this time. This was due to what André Vauchez has described as virtus.51 Virtus is expressed as a gift from God to his saints in acknowledgement of their merits, and in compensation for their sufferings. It was present in the saint during his lifetime and remained in his body after death, making the body of a saint not just a repository of sanctity but also a powerful agent of the miraculous and thus worthy of reverence.52 This is very evident in all of the Lives considered here, Anselm’s included, which describe miracles occurring during the post-mortem treatment of the body. Once again, however, Eadmer’s accounting of the detail of the immediate post-mortem period is at variance from those found in the other saints’ Lives. Eadmer excludes a topic that the other writers spend much time on, and that is in describing miraculous body changes. While all the other saints considered here had some miraculous bodily changes, and some had many, Anselm had

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va, ii.66, pp. 142–143. André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Originally published as: La Sainteté en Occident aux Derniers Siècles du Moyen Age (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1981), p. 425, identifies several uses and understandings of the word virtus, but surmises that it is usually used to mean force, power or the capacity to perform miracles. Saints’ bodies were treated with special respect and veneration, whether the saint’s body decayed or in rare instances, remained incorrupt. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead?, pp. 99– 101.

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none at all. The subject of post-mortem bodily changes is so common that it can be considered a hagiographic staple. Typically, the miracles first became apparent to the attending monks when the corpse was unrobed for washing after death and a pure, white, often shining body was revealed. Based on Sulpicius Severus’ account of St Martin of Tours, the image of pale purity and rosy hue was enduring.53 The notion of the incorruptible, jewel-like body is seen frequently too as the body of the late saint is described in relic-like terms.54 Consider Aelred for instance. ‘When his body was laid naked before us to be washed, we saw how the glory to come had been revealed in the father. His flesh was clearer than glass, whiter than snow’.55 Walter Daniel continued the passage by describing at some length the purity of Aelred’s body, which he recounted as being like that of a five-year-old boy, showing no loss of hair, no distortion due to his illness, no stain nor scar. Aelred is described as sweet-smelling and shining like a jewel, perfect in every part. When Wulfstan’s body was taken for washing immediately after his death, it ‘inspired amazement and reverence in those who saw it, gleaming as it already was in the hope of eternal resurrection; for it shone like a gem, and was white with a remarkable purity’.56 Further, his nose, which had according to William of Malmesbury, been described as ‘excessively prominent’ in life, retreated and paled in death. The embalming of Hugh of Lincoln showed that changes in colouration extended even to the internal organs.57 By contrast, Eadmer writes only this of Anselm: ‘His body therefore was washed according to custom’.58 No mention of the condition of his body, no references to St Martin, no jewel-like imagery. This is so unusual in a saint’s Life as to be extraordinary.59 Eadmer was certainly not averse to using

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For Martin of Tours as a model for twelfth-century monastic sainthood, see Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record and Event, 1000–1215 (Aldershot: Wildwood House, 1987), p. 168. Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity 200–1335 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 210. Walter Daniel, Aelred of Rievaulx, lvii, p. 62. ‘Cum autem corpus eius ad lavandum delatum fuisset et nudatum coram nobis, vidimus quodamodo futuram gloriam revelatum in patre, cuius caro vitro purior, nive candidior’. William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani, iii. 22. 1, p. 143. ‘Quod iam spe resurrectionis perpetuae prefulgidum stupor et venerationi visentibus fuit: ita perspicuo nitore gemmeum, ita miranda puritatem lacteum erat’. Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita, vol. ii, book 5, c. xvii, p. 219. va, ii, lxvii, p. 143. ‘Loto igitur ex more ejus’. Although reference to Martin is not seen in Eadmer’s description of Anselm’s dead body, John of Salisbury’s later Life does allude to the saint. Pepin, Anselm and Becket, p. 67. John wrote of a vision experienced by a monk a few days before Anselm’s death. In the vision the passing of the archbishop was made known to the saints in advance so they could wait

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the imagery of bodily changes to signify sanctity, for he used it in his Life of St Oda when describing a vision of a man to whom the saint appeared. ‘Blessed Oda, with milk-white face and a robe of rosy colour, appeared to a watchman of the church of the Saviour’.60 Perhaps Eadmer was concerned lest he attract criticism were he to describe Anselm in such terms, and worried that he may risk the credibility of the two miracles that he was about to describe. Walter Daniel received criticism for alleged exaggeration in his description of Aelred’s dead body, an accusation he felt obliged to rebut in his Letter to Maurice.61 In this excoriating missive Walter told his detractors that they had not expressed themselves with sufficient caution, and compared them to peasants, calling them variously dullards and ignorant men, an observation he followed up with an explanation of the use of hyperbole. Then he continued by saying that Aelred’s body had in fact shone and smelt sweetly in exactly the way in which he had described it. Walter’s hyperbole as a rhetorical device was plainly not a strategy that appealed to Eadmer in his endeavours to cast Anselm in a saintly mould. As described by Southern and mentioned previously, Eadmer’s ‘scrupulosity of vision’ as well as the possible risk of criticism and loss of credibility, were perhaps among the reasons why Eadmer chose to omit the standard description of the body of a newly dead saint from his account of Anselm.62 Despite his notable brevity concerning the condition of Anselm’s body, Eadmer gave a full account of the two immediate post-mortem miracles that he included in the Life. The miracle of the increase of balsam is found too in the Life of Aelred of Rievaulx, although the enlargement of the sarcophagus is not seen in any of the other Lives considered here.63 Concerning the abundance of balsam, it is evident from the accounts of both Anselm’s and Aelred’s deaths that, when there was a shortage of the unguent, the monks chose to use it to preserve the parts of the body that they deemed the most important. In Anselm’s case this was his face and right hand, Eadmer saying that these sites were chosen as they were ‘the instruments by which he had spoken and written many good and heavenly things’.64 A similar picture is seen in Aelred’s case

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for him in order to escort him onwards. This, John noted, accorded with the way in which Martin’s passing was foretold in heaven. Eadmer, Oda, Dunstan and Oswald, p. 33. ‘Apparuit beatus Oda aecclesiae salvatoris digno custodi, vultum lacteum habens, vestimentum vero rosei coloris’. ‘Letter to Maurice’ in Walter Daniel, Aelred of Rievaulx, pp. 76–77. Southern, Portrait, p. 427. See, Walter Daniel, Aelred of Rievaulx, lix, p. 63, for the miracle of the increase of balsam. va, ii.67, p. 144. ‘per quae multa bona atque divina dixerat et scripserat tali (…)’.

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where there was discussion about whether to use the drop of balsam available prior to its miraculous increase to embalm either his face, or his tongue, or the thumb and writing fingers of his right hand.65 The miracles of the balsam and sarcophagus in Anselm’s Life follow directly from Eadmer’s bald statement that Anselm’s body was washed according to custom, and are the first posthumous miracles described. This suggests two things. First, that Eadmer emphasised the customary nature of the washing to confirm that everything was done absolutely as normal for Anselm, and that the posthumous miracles were therefore exactly that: miraculous. The second is an observation that Eadmer’s prior silence on bodily changes serves to enhance the drama and impact of the two miracles; there is no diluting influence that might have been accrued from an extended series of miraculous happenings surrounding the death. Being the first of the miracles that Eadmer was able to report after Anselm’s death made them particularly important to him in his writing of the Life, and his endeavour to stress the customary nature of the practical management of Anselm’s death was perhaps intended to help ensure that no accusations of exaggeration or untruth could be levelled.66 Whether for dramatic effect or as a preemptive tactic, Eadmer’s narrative skill and the detail with which the miracles are described, combined with their standalone quality, serve to bring them to the fore; in Eadmer’s accounting they could be considered as the supernatural jewels in the heavenly crown of Anselm’s passing. A final point concerning Anselm’s death will be considered here, and that is the fact that Eadmer positioned Anselm’s death narrative, and in some sense the narrative arc of the entire Life, upon the premise of nutrition. This curious feature is not seen in the other works under consideration, nor does Eadmer use it in any of his historical Lives. While the topic of food, both heavenly and earthly, is usual in a saint’s Life, the manner in which Eadmer used it as a vehicle to carry the narrative appears to be a device seen only in Anselm. Through the use of food imagery, Eadmer effects a segue between dining in this world, and the promise of a heavenly table in the next, with the act of communion being used as a bridge between the two. The two chapters in which he describes the passing of Anselm are laden with food imagery, this serving as the vehicle upon which he progresses the narrative.67 Eadmer commenced by

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Walter Daniel, Aelred of Rievaulx, lix, p. 63. Southern, Portrait, p. 427, described the miracle of the increase of balsam and the enlargement of the coffin as among the very few definitely miraculous events that Eadmer himself witnessed and felt able to record with confidence. va, ii.65–66, pp. 141–143.

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telling how ‘all forms of food by which human beings are strengthened and nourished became distasteful to him [Anselm]’, before stating that the archbishop insisted on being carried to the church for the consecration of the Lord’s body.68 Eadmer’s point here appears to be that Anselm, who was unable to eat earthly food, could partake of the bread of heaven, itself an agent of healing. Eadmer then returned to the subject of earthly food, reiterating his point that Anselm was unable to eat, before moving to the moment of decease and quoting Luke 22:28–30. ‘(…) I appoint to you, as my father has appointed to me, a kingdom, so that you may eat and drink at my table’.69 Eadmer’s narrative is working here through the agency and imagery of food to describe the transition of Anselm from man to saint. It is a liminal and sequential account. In his construction of this narrative Eadmer is juxtaposing, in almost direct correlation, Anselm’s growing physical malaise with his increase in spiritual wellbeing, the account being predicated upon and expressed through the notions of earthly and heavenly food. The first stage is Anselm’s fastidium, his inability to eat, which Eadmer used to emphasise the necessity of food to life, showing that through his inedia, through his fading human requirements, Anselm was moving onward from this mortal world.70 The celebration of communion was the next stage on Anselm’s journey; he was partaking of heavenly food, his soul able to accept spiritual sustenance although his body could tolerate no human food. Finally, Anselm was seen at the moment of his transition between this world and the next, heading towards the Lord’s table and his promised place there, ready to assume his seat at the divine feast he had, through his sainted lifestyle, merited. There is no intermediate stage in Eadmer’s narrative, no purgation nor delay.71 Anselm goes directly to the Lord’s table in heaven. Additionally, Eadmer is returning to an image with which he commenced the Life, that of Anselm, when a boy, eating with God in heaven.72 At the outset of the Life, the young Anselm is described as

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va, ii.65, p. 141. ‘Omnes cibi quibus humana natura vegetatur et alitur in fastidium ei versi sunt’. va, ii.66, pp. 142–143. ‘Et ego dispone vobis sicut disposuit mihi pater meus regnum, ut edatis et bibatis super mensam meam in regno meo’. There was a perceived difference between choosing not to eat, and fastidium, the inability to eat, which included with it the possibility of a person being repelled or caused pain through eating. It has been noted that some writers considered only fastidium, the inability to eat, to be a mark of sanctity. Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (Berkley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 196. This feature is congruent with Eadmer’s treatment of Anselm’s pain and the absence of any suggestion of pre-mortem purgation. va, i.2, pp. 4–5. As a boy, Anselm had a vision in which he ascended a mountain and

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taking bread with God in heaven and at the end the aged Anselm, Anselm the saint, returns there and takes up the place he has earned for the feast at the Lord’s table. Through this Eadmer brings both the Life, and Anselm’s life, full circle. Eadmer’s narration of Anselm’s final months reads as an account of the slow and gentle waning of an aged man, the gradual attrition of physical functionality, a progression through increasing infirmity to death. While on first reading Eadmer appears to have written a fairly conventional, though perhaps for the period, an unusually intimate personal account of the passing of a saint, closer examination has shown that in several respects this is not the case.73 Comparison with both the processes of monastic death ritual and other comparable saints’Lives has shown some areas of complete accord and others of significant variance. Regarding death ritual, all the saints considered showed adherence to the same principles as those described by Lanfranc other than in confession and remembrance rites which were consistently omitted. However, when the narratives are considered in terms of hagiographic articulation, significant variance is seen in Anselm’s case. While thematically similar in some areas, for instance in mention of food and loss of appetite and in the occurrence of post-mortem miracles, the treatment of these subjects is markedly different in Anselm’s Life with some traditional themes missing altogether. Anselm experienced no pain, he wished to eat, he would have liked to live longer had he been allowed. Very unusually, no miraculous bodily changes are mentioned. It is only possible to speculate why Eadmer may have chosen to recount Anselm’s death in a way that was, in some respects, at significant variance with the usual articulation of the death of a saint. Perhaps Eadmer simply described what he saw. This would be in line with Southern’s observation as to Eadmer’s scrupulosity of vision. Death in a monastery was typically attended by the full community so there would have been many witnesses to Anselm’s passing and perhaps, as was seen later in Aelred’s case, questions asked if Eadmer’s account was seen as implausible. In the death narrative, Eadmer wrote to position Anselm as a loving father at the centre of his congregation, his last recorded action being to bless his sons. He is an exemplar, written as a faithful monk to the end, his obedience seen in his adherence to his religious observation even when in extremis; his

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entered the court of God, where he was invited in and sat at the Lord’s feet, being offered fine white bread to eat. For the new intimacy in hagiographic practice that Eadmer brought to Anselm’s Life see, Southern, Portrait, p. 422.

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acceptance of the will of God in the timing of his death; the ideal abbot. It is apparent that Eadmer chose not to describe Anselm in the model of a suffering saint. Quite the opposite, in fact, as he suffered little, if at all, either physically or psychologically. The narrative is crafted to ensure maximum dramatic impact while retaining the paternal and calm image of Anselm that Eadmer wished to convey. In this endeavour to preserve Anselm’s memory as he wished it to be received, Eadmer chose to omit some of the usual hagiographic conventions, perhaps believing that Anselm himself in the manner of his living, through his achievements and example, would naturally, and without the inclusion of traditional hagiographic tropes, be regarded as a saint by his community. This, combined with the intimacy and immediacy of his account, renders Anselm’s death narrative at variance with others of the English twelfth-century. In reading Eadmer’s tender account it can be wondered too, whether Eadmer’s depiction of Anselm wanting to live longer was actually an expression of Eadmer’s own feelings and his particular way of conveying his wish that Anselm, his father and friend, was still with him.

Bibliography Primary Sources Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis, Decima Douie and David Hugh Farmer, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). Anselm of Canterbury, Letters of Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, Vol. 1, The Bec Letters, Samu Niskanen, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). Eadmer of Canterbury, Vita Sancti Anselmi, Richard William Southern, ed., The Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). Eadmer of Canterbury, The Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan and Oswald, Bernard J. Muir and Andrew J. Turner, eds. and trans. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006). Eadmer of Canterbury, Vita Sancti Wilfredi Auctore Edmero, Bernard J. Muir and Andrew J. Turner, eds. and trans. (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1998). Jocelin of Furness, ‘The Life of St. Waldef, Abbot of Melrose, by Jocelin of Furness’ in George Joseph McFadden, ‘An Edition and Translation of the Life of St. Waldef, Abbot of Melrose, by Jocelin of Furness’ (unpublished D.Phil. dissertation, Columbia University, 1952), pp. 201–357. John of Salisbury ‘The Life of Saint Anselm’ in John of Salisbury, Anselm and Becket: Two Canterbury Saints’ Lives, Ronald E. Pepin, trans. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2009), pp. 11–72. John of Salisbury, Vitam Sancti Anselmi Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis (London, Lambeth Palace, ms 159), fols. 160v–176r.

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Lanfranc of Canterbury, The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, David Knowles and Christopher N.L. Brooke, eds. and trans. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002). ‘Liber Sancti Gileberti’ in The Book of St Gilbert, Raymonde Foreville, ed., and Gillian Keir, trans. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). Regularis Concordia Anglicae Nationis Monachorum Sanctimonialiumque, Thomas Symons, ed. and trans. (London: Thomas Nelson, 1953). Walter Daniel, The Life of Aelred of Rievaulx, Frederick Maurice Powicke, trans. (London: Nelson, 1950). William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani in Saints’ lives: lives of ss. Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Indract, Michael Winterbottom and Rodney M. Thomson, eds. and trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

Secondary Sources Bartlett, Robert, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? (Princetown: Princetown University Press, 2013). Birkett, Helen, The Saints Lives of Jocelin of Furness (York: York Medieval Press, 2010). Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (Berkley: University of California Press, 1987). Bynum, Caroline Walker, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity 200–1335 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). Hadley, Dawn Marie, Death in Medieval England, an Archaeology (Stroud: Tempus, 2001). Heffernan, Thomas J., Sacred Biography: Saints and their Biographers in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Paxton, Frederick, ‘Signa mortifera: Death and Prognostication in Early Medieval Monastic Medicine’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 67 (1993), pp. 631–650. Paxton, Frederick, The Death Ritual at Cluny in the Central Middle Ages, with the collaboration of Isabelle Cochelin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013). Southern, Richard William, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Vauchez, André, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans., Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Originally published as: La Sainteté en Occident aux Derniers Siècles du Moyen Age (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1981). Wallis, Faith, ‘Signs and Senses: Diagnosis and Prognosis in Early Medieval Pulse and Urine Texts’, The Social History of Medicine, 13 (2000), pp. 265–278. Ward, Benedicta, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record and Event, 1000–1215 (Aldershot: Wildwood House, 1987).

part 5 Addendum

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chapter 21

Anselm and John Gualbert’s Prayers for Enemies Hiroko Yamazaki

Anselm and John Gualbert were Benedictines in the 11th century. The Prayers for Enemies written by the two are similar and parallel.1 In this chapter, the content of Anselm’s Prayer for Enemies is considered by comparing it with that of John Gualbert, so that the character of Anselm’s Prayer for Enemies can be shown.

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John Gualbert and Prayers for Enemies

John Gualbert, in Italian Giovanni Gualberto, was born in Florence in about 995 and died in Passigiano in 1073. He is known as the founder of the Vallombrosans (Congregatio Vallis Umbrosae Ordinis Sancti Benedicti), a contemplative monastic congregation under the ‘Benedictine Rule’ founded in Vallombrosa near Florence around 1035. His congregation provided for conversi who were mainly involved in manual labour. As a result, the choir monks were able to concentrate on praying the ‘divine office (officium divinum)’ because they were free from manual labour. John Gualbert was canonized in 1193.2 His Prayer for Enemies is included in the Manuale Precum attributed to him. It consists of only twelve lines.3 Anselm’s Prayer for Enemies is the last one of his 19 prayers in the Schmitt edition of Anselm’s works and consists of 54 lines divided into 8 paragraphs.4 It is placed after Prayer for Friends, the 18th prayer. It is estimated that Anselm wrote

1 Benedicta Ward refers to John Gualbert’s Prayer for Enemies when she introduces Anselm’s prayers in her translation as follows: ‘(…), and in the Manual of Prayers of St John Gualbert there is an interesting parallel to Anselm’s prayers, for both friends and enemies: (…)’. Anselm of Canterbury, The Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm, Benedicta Ward, trans. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), p. 42. 2 New Catholic Encyclopedia 7 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1967). There are few secondary writings on John Gualbert. They mainly deal with the reformation of monastic life by John Gualbert and they do not refer to Prayer for Enemies. 3 For details of the manuscript and of the author of the Manuale Precum, see André Wilmart, ‘Le Manuel de Prières de Saint Jean Gualbert’, Revue Bénédictine, 48 (1936), pp. 259–299. 4 aoo, iii.73–75.

© Hiroko Yamazaki, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004716308_023

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Prayer for Enemies in around 1085, when he was 52 years old.5 This is around the time he wrote De Veritate, De Libertate Arbitrii, and De Casu Diaboli.6 A prayer entitled Prayer for Friends is not contained in John Gualbert’s Manuale Precum. Gualbert died in 1073. Therefore, chronologically Anselm might have read Gualbert’s Prayer for Enemies. But in Anselm’s works, including his Letters, there is no mention of the name of Gualbert, nor can we find his name in Eadmer’s Life of St. Anselm. This is because formerly the author of the Manuale Precum was not known. Other than the title, there is no evidence to indicate whether or not Anselm had read Gualbert’s Prayer for Enemies.

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John Gualbert’s Prayer for Enemies

John Gualbert, Prayer for Enemies (prayer 89): Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, if anyone wishes me ill or has done me harm or is my enemy, if anyone opposes me or persecutes me (…)—Lord, forgive them. I can love my friends in you and my enemies for your sake. Lord, direct my paths in your sight. Hear my prayer, Christ Jesus, who with the Father (etc.).7 In this short prayer, the main points are two. First, Gualbert asks the Lord that he be indulgent as to forgive his enemies. Second, he asks God to direct him on his paths. Here, the first point is important for us. Gualbert prayed God to forgive his enemies by asking the Lord’s indulgence. His prayer reminds us of ‘the greatest commandment of all’ in the Gospels. The first commandment is ‘(…), and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength’. The second is ‘You must love your neighbour as

5 Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ‘Prolegomena seu ratio editionis’ in S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968), volume i, pp. 1*–244*, p. 148*. 6 Schmitt, ‘Prolegomena seu ratio editionis’, p. 62*. 7 John Gualbert, Oratio pro inimicis in André Wilmart, ‘Le Manuel de Prières de Saint Jean Gualbert’, pp. 293–294: ‘Domine i. Christe fili dei uiui, si aliqui mihi mala uolunt aut fatiunt et inimici mei sunt ac mihi contrarii et persequentes sunt, domine da illis indulgentiam (…)— ut amicum possim diligere in te et inimicum propter te. Domine dirige in conspectu tuo uiam meam. Exaudi orationem meam, Christe i. qui cum patre (etc.)’. Wilmart’s paper includes the text of Gualbert’s Manuale Precum (pp. 270–297). Ward, The Prayers and Meditations, pp. 42– 43.

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yourself’.8 These two loves are combined and are two sides of the same love. If we apply ‘the greatest commandment of all’ to Gualbert’s prayer, it means that Gualbert’s enemies do evil also to God when they do evil to him. He requests God’s indulgence for them, and asks God to forgive them. And he implores that he may love friends and enemies. In this case he himself is subject both to ask for God’s indulgence to his enemies and to ask to be able to love friends and enemies.

3

Anselm’s Prayer for Enemies

The approach that Anselm takes in his prayer is different to that of Gualbert. Anselm wrote that we do not have to read the prayer from the beginning and that we need not read through it all. He advises that we should read it little at a time and meditate carefully.9 Therefore, let us read Anselm’s prayer precisely and in detail. Anselm, Prayer for Enemies This is the punishment that in the secret of my heart I want to exact for those who serve with me and those who sin with me—this is the punishment that I ask for those who serve with me and hate me—let us love you and each other as you will and as is expedient for us, so that we may make amends to the good Lord for our own and for each other’s offences; so that we may obey with one heart in love one Lord and one Master.10 Anselm appears to have written Prayer for Friends before Prayer for Enemies.11 There, he expressed friends and him together as ‘us’.12 In Prayer for Enemies 8 9

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Mark 12:29–31. Hereafter Bible citation is from The New Jerusalem Bible. om Prologus (aoo, iii.3.2–9): ‘Orationes sive meditationes (…) non sunt legendae in tumultu, sed in quiete, nec cursim et velociter, sed paulatim cum intenta et morose meditatione. Nec debet intendere lector ut quamlibet earum totam perlegat, (…). Nec necesse habet aliquam semper a principio incipere, sed ubi illi placuerit’. om19 (aoo, iii.74.30–35): ‘Haec est vindicta quam vult exigere secretum cordis mei de conservis et compeccatoribus meis. Haec est poena quam orat anima mea de conservis et inimicis meis: ut te et invicem, sicut tu vis et nobis expedit, diligamus; ut bono domino sicut pro nobis ipsis ita et pro invicem satisfaciamus, ut communi domino in commune bonum magistra caritate concorditer obsequamur’. Ward, The Prayers and Meditations, p. 218, ll. 58–69. See the final paragraph of Prayer for Enemies (aoo, iii.75.51–56), where Anselm indicates that he had already prayed for his friends. Anselm wrote in Prayer for Friends, ‘Est autem praeceptum tuum, ut diligamus invicem’.

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he developed the meaning of ‘us’ not only for friends and him but also including enemies. So ‘we’ in Prayer for Enemies means friends, enemies and himself. It is important that he, friends, and enemies love one another. Here, not only Anselm but also his enemies are considered as the subjects. Anselm and his enemies have in common the same purpose—that they love God.

4

The Character of Anselm’s Prayer for Enemies

In his Prayer for Friends, Anselm writes: So I pray you, gracious and good God, for those who love me for your sake and whom I love in you.13 That someone loves Anselm for the sake of God is related to the last Judgement in the Gospel according to St. Matthew (25:31–46): ‘In truth, I tell you, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me’ (Matt.25:45) If anyone loves me, it means that he loves God implicitly. The opposite is not always the same. If anyone loves God, sometimes he loves me implicitly and sometimes he does not love me, though both God and I should be loved. If Anselm loves God, it means that he loves not only God but also neighbours implicitly. So Anselm prays for the neighbours implicitly when he loves God. In other words, the expression ‘those who love me for the sake of God’ links me in the direction of friends towards God. The expression ‘those whom I love in you’ links them in the direction of myself through God’s love. Anselm is conscious of two directions, from others to himself and from himself to others. Each of these directions focused on God strongly. It could be said that the subject of love is insisted on more than in the expression ‘love one another’. As we have already read, John Gualbert asked God to forgive enemies in order that he could love his friends and his enemies. Do Gualbert’s and Anselm’s prayers have the same way of thinking? No. It is not the same because Anselm asked God to give enemies love for God and love for their neighbours:

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om18 (aoo, iii.71.16–17). It reminds us of the Gospel according to St. John (15:12): ‘This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you’. om18 (aoo, iii.72.37–38): ‘Oro ergo te, pie et bone deus, pro his qui me diligent propter te et quos ego diligo in te’. Ward, The Prayers and Meditations, p. 214, ll. 69–71.

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So I pray, Lord, that you will give them love for you and love for their neighbour, as far as you ordain that they should have it, lest they should sin before you against their brother.14 Why did he ask that God give enemies love for God? This is not because he thinks that he has enough love for God and enough love for neighbours, but because he thinks that he is not sufficient to pray to God for the intercession for others. Therefore, he implores the Lord’s indulgence for his soul.15 In the second paragraph from the last in Prayer for Enemies, Anselm wrote: ‘I have prayed as a weak man and a sinner’.16 In Prayer for Friends also, Anselm asks how he would be so bold as to intercede for others when he anxiously seeks intercessors on his own behalf.17

5

Conclusion

Gualbert prayed that the Lord be indulgent for the people who did evil and were hostile to him. On the other hand, Anselm prayed for the Lord’s indulgence for his soul because he has a strong consciousness that he is a sinner and thinks that he is not worthy enough to mediate for others and to ask the Lord for indulgence to others. Therefore, Anselm and Gualbert are different with respect to those for whom they ask the Lord’s indulgence through prayer. As a result, Anselm prayed the Lord to give love for God and for neighbours, first to others, not to him. Anselm’s Prayer for Friends and Prayer for Enemies connect with each other, and if we read the latter relating it to the former, we can understand Prayer for Enemies more deeply. Moreover, it is meaningful to compare and consider two Prayers for Enemies written by Benedictines because we can comprehend better the distinct character of Anselm’s Prayer for Enemies by reading Gualbert’s Prayer for Enemies.

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om19 (aoo, iii.73.22–23): ‘Oro ergo, domine, ut quantum iubes haberi dones eis tui et proximi caritatem, ne habeant coram te super fratre suo peccatum’. Ward, The Prayers and Meditations, p. 217, ll. 42–45. om19 (aoo, iii.74.42–43): ‘(…): et hoc ipsum tibi offero, ut et tu velis perfecte dimittere mihi peccata mea, et sicut potes indulgeas animae meae’. om19 (aoo, iii.74.46): ‘Oravi ut infirmus et peccator’. Ward, The Prayers and Meditations, p. 219, l. 95. om18 (aoo, iii.72.30–31): ‘Et qui anxius intercessores quaero: qua fiducia pro aliis intercedo?’

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Bibliography Primary Sources Anselm of Canterbury, The Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm, Benedicta Ward, trans. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973). Eadmer of Canterbury, Vita Sancti Anselmi, Richard William Southern, ed., The Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). John Gualbert, Oratio pro inimicis in André Wilmart, ‘Le Manuel des Prières de Saint Jean Gualbert’, Revue Bénédictine, 48 (1936), pp. 270–297. S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., vols. 1–6 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946–1961); reprinted in two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968).

Secondary Sources New Catholic Encyclopedia 7 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1967). Schmitt, Franciscus Salesius, ‘Prolegomena seu ratio editionis’ in S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., two volumes (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1968), volume i, pp. 1*–244*. Wilmart, André, ‘Le Manuel de Prières de Saint Jean Gualbert’, Revue Bénédictine, 48 (1936), pp. 259–299.

Index Abelson, Paul 92 Abu Mansur al-Maturidi 388 Abu Suleiman Sistani 385 Abulafia, Anna Sapir 170, 179 Adam of Eynsham 432, 437–440, 442 Adam, patriarch 363, 368, 377, 395, 419 Adams, Marilyn McCord 122–123, 127–128, 217–218, 288, 298 Adela of Flanders 407 Aelred of Rievaulx 432, 434–435, 438–440, 442–444 Ahmad ibn Hanbal 385 Aird, William M. 419 Al-Ashari 387–388 Al-Baqillani 387 Alexander ii, pope 180 Alexander Neckam 13, 301–308, 310–317, 319–324 Alexander of Canterbury 403–405, 421 Alexander, king of the Scots 417 Al-farghani 307 Alfonso vi of Leon, king 383 Al-Ghazali 386–387 Allen, Martin 410 al-Maʾmun, caliph 385 Alp Arslan 382 Ambrose of Milan 172, 177, 314, 343 Ammonius 62 Andrew of Saint Victor 320 Anselm of Canterbury Cur Deus Homo 1–2, 7, 10–11, 13–15, 41, 64, 121, 126, 168, 217, 240, 249– 254, 256, 259, 262, 280, 331, 334– 344, 348–360, 362–367, 369–370, 381–382, 384, 386–395, 415–416, 420 De Casu Diaboli 1, 11–12, 66–67, 77, 122, 170, 217, 222, 243–245, 252, 262, 265, 267–269, 272, 281, 283, 370–372, 376, 452 De Conceptu Virginali 1, 10, 15, 66, 367 De Concordia 1, 10, 11, 66–67, 77, 125–126, 217–218, 222, 223–227, 237–238, 241–243, 250, 257–260, 262, 265, 267–269, 271–272, 280, 368

De Grammatico 1–2, 11, 13, 23, 45, 47–48, 50, 64–65, 92, 94–97, 99, 122, 288–290, 298 De Incarnatione Verbi 1–2, 185, 241, 293, 305, 389 De Libertate Arbitrii 1, 6, 11–12, 122, 217, 222, 238, 246, 252, 256, 258, 262, 265, 269, 272, 281, 310, 370, 452 De Processione Spiritus Sancti 1–2, 10 De Veritate 1, 6, 8, 11–13, 47–48, 77, 80, 122, 217, 222, 224, 232–234, 237–238, 242, 252–255, 260, 262, 269, 272, 288, 292–293, 296, 298, 305–306, 308–310, 315, 335–336, 343, 350, 370, 452 Epistolae 1–2, 4–7, 13, 15, 174, 185–186, 274, 288, 294–298, 370, 374–375, 384, 404, 407–408, 411–415, 417–419, 421– 422, 436, 452 Lambeth Fragments. See Philosophical Fragments Monologion 1–2, 4–5, 8–10, 13, 21–32, 41, 47–48, 51, 55, 64–65, 68–71, 73–80, 103, 108, 111–112, 116–117, 120, 123, 125– 126, 130, 132, 168, 173, 183, 232, 234–235, 239–241, 249–253, 259–260, 269, 272, 280–281, 284, 288–289, 291, 293–294, 297, 298, 348–349, 384, 389 Orationes sive Meditationes 1, 2, 16, 122, 224, 293, 367–369, 377, 404, 415, 451, 453–455 Philosophical Fragments 1, 236, 288, 290–291 Proslogion 1–2, 4, 6, 8–11, 21, 28–29, 31, 39–43, 47, 49–50, 52, 55, 64, 69–70, 77, 79–82, 88, 90, 92–93, 103–108, 111–113, 115–118, 122–124, 128–132, 135–141, 143, 145, 147, 149–151, 154–156, 158–160, 167– 168, 170, 174, 181, 183, 185–187, 188, 193, 207–211, 213, 232, 251, 256, 260–261, 280, 284, 293, 310, 315, 335, 349, 377– 378, 389, 416 Responsio 50, 105–106, 108, 114, 138, 140–141, 143, 146, 149, 153, 157–158, 174, 185–186, 210, 260 Ansold, lord of Maule 415 Aquinas. See Thomas Aquinas

458 Aratus 169 Archambault, Jacob 4, 7, 9, 94 Arduini, Maria Lodovica 387 Aristotle 3, 8–10, 13, 31, 36, 43–44, 46, 48, 50, 55–56, 58–60, 62–66, 68–70, 73–74, 76, 78–80, 91–92, 98, 106, 130, 171, 174, 183, 194–195, 199, 252–253, 266–269, 272– 274, 276–278, 282–284, 289–290, 293, 298, 304, 342 Arius 177 Arnobius the Younger 176 Asiedu, Felix B.A. 30 Atkins, Jed 334 Atmaja, Dwi Surya 385 Aubenque, Pierre 57 Augustine of Hippo 5, 8–11, 13, 14, 31, 33, 41, 55–62, 64–65, 68–69, 71–72, 74–75, 77– 78, 81–82, 114, 117, 119, 121, 130, 136, 168, 170, 172–176, 178–181, 185–186, 193, 199– 207, 210–211, 218–220, 222–227, 237, 239, 251, 255–256, 261, 265–267, 269, 271–273, 279–280, 282, 284–285, 302, 305–306, 309, 310–316, 319, 323–324, 343, 351, 355, 359, 363–364, 389, 410 Aulen, Victor 349 Averroes 395 Ayres, Lewis 311 Backus, Irena 219 Bakker, Frederik 30 Baldwin i, king of Jerusalem 384, 417–418 Bandini, Luigi 68 Barker-Benfield, Bruce C. 223 Barnes, Jonathan 39–40 Barth, Karl 52, 88, 112–114, 174 Bartlett, Robert 429, 441 Basilia 370 Bauemker, Franz 226 Beach, Alison I. 92 Becker, Alfons 338 Becker, Gustav 4, 90, 92, 173 Bede 4, 333 Bejczy, István 372 Bell, John Stewart 36 Bellis, Delphine 30 Bély, Marie-Étiennette 381 Bencivenga, Ermanno 43, 95 Benedict, Saint 223, 362, 373 Berengar of Tours 92, 179, 184–185

index Bernard of Clairvaux 406, 408 Berschin, Walter 171 Bertau, Karl 384 Bhattacharji, Santha 374 Bianchi, Ernesto 68 Birkett, Helen 429 Bloom, Edward 319 Boethius 3–4, 6, 8–9, 13, 32–33, 39–41, 43, 45–52, 55, 61–68, 70, 73–80, 91–100, 106, 114, 136–137, 171, 183–184, 187, 217, 289, 293, 340, 343 Bohemond of Taranto 413 Bonaventure 106 Bonner, Gerald 219–220 Bosman, Bianca 101 Boso 7, 362, 364, 366, 368, 384, 389–391 Bouyer, Louis 349 Bradshaw, David 62 Brakke, David 220 Briancesco, Eduardo 218 Britton, Stephanie Caroline 421 Brooke, Christopher N.L. 431 Brouwer, Christian 11–12, 235 Brower, Jeffrey E. 238 Brown, David 363 Brown, Montague 12, 249 Brown, R. Allen 417 Browne, Peter 381 Bruno Astensis 179 Bruno of Carinthia 178 Bruno of Segni 179 Bruno of Würzburg 178 Bruno the Carthusian 179 Bruun, Otto 62 Bullivant, Stephen 167, 169, 172 Burgundius 383, 412–413 Burnett, Charles 288 Burnyeat, Myles Frederic 342 Bynum, Caroline Walker 442, 445 Cadulus 420 Calcidius 4, 8, 31–32, 171 Campbell, Richard 9–10, 41–43, 122, 139, 143, 165, 416–417 Carnap, Rudolf 40, 43 Carruthers, Mary 342 Casiday, Augustine M. 219–221 Cassiodorus 176–178 Chadwick, Henry 183, 200

459

index Chadwick, Owen 220, 224 Charlesworth, Maxwell John 115–116, 170 Chazelle, Celia 222 Chenu, Marie-Dominique 351, 353 Chibnall, Marjorie 331, 404, 407, 409 Ciaralli, Antonio 331 Cicero 4, 9, 33, 70–72, 91, 100, 102, 171–173, 179, 181, 183–185, 188, 293, 332–344 Cipollone, Giulio 381 Clark, Elizabeth A. 219 Claudianus Mamertus 9, 55, 57–61, 77–78, 81 Cleanthes 70–72 Cleaver, Laura 81, 223 Clover, Helen 407 Coakley, Sarah 193, 196–199 Cochelin, Isabelle 92, 431 Colish, Marcia L. 11, 92, 173, 185–186, 288, 320, 343 Collins, Ann 340 Constable, Giles 413 Cook, Arthur Bernard 70 Copeland, Rita 314 Corbin, Michel 218, 226, 236, 349 Corti, Lorenzo 62 Cowdrey, Herbert E.J. 332, 407 Cox, Virginia 334 Cresswell, Rachel 14 Crisp, Roger 267 Cross, Richard 34–35 da Costa Freitas, M.B. 349 Dahan, Gilbert 175, 186 Davies, Brian 122–124, 223, 238, 288, 306, 363 Davis, Stephen T. 339 de Gaal, Emery 14 de la Broise, René-Marie 58 de Libera, Alain 62–63 de Lubac, Henri 249 de Rémusat, Charles 69 de Vogüé, Adalbert 220, 223 Delcomminette, Sylvain 236 Deligiorgi, Katerina 276 Demetracopoulos, John A. 8–9, 55, 57, 64, 70, 72–75, 171 Descartes, René 113, 124 Di Ceglie, Roberto 4, 9, 127 Di Marco. Michele 57

Di Silva, Maurizio Filippo 68 Diagorus of Melos 171 Diehl, Jay 375 Diem, Albrecht 223 Djuth, Marianne 223–224, 226 Dod, Bernard 73, 293 Dolmans, Emily 333 Duby, Georges 411 Dunning, Andrew 303, 320, 324 Duns Scotus 8, 34–36, 105, 222 Dunstan, saint 420–422, 432, 439–440 Durandus of Troarn 179 Eadmer of Canterbury 1, 15–16, 92, 131, 388– 389, 403–406, 408, 410–411, 413–416, 418–425, 429–447, 452 Eder, Günter 142 Edgar, king of England 422 Edith 369 Einstein, Albert 36, 144 Emilsson, Eyjólfur Kjalar 309 Enders, Markus 381 Engelhard 407, 415 Eriugena, John Scottus 69 Ermenfrid of Sion, cardinal bishop 407 Ernst, Stephan 41, 44, 218, 226 Euclid 171, 181, 323 Evans, Gillian R. 124, 170, 179, 217, 223, 306, 362, 374, 417 Farrant, Timothy 13 Faustus 219, 314, 319, 323 Fedriga, Riccardo 12–13, 288 Fee, Gordon 339 Fischer, Norbert 266–267, 269, 272, 277, 282, 284–285 Fitzgerald, Allan 311 FitzGerald, Brian 316 Flannery, Austin 395 Forbes, Alastair R.E. 15 Fordham, John 303 Foreville, Raymonde 218, 432–433, 438– 440 Formosa, Paul 270 Frakes, Jerold 171 Franz, Thomas 41, 44, 218, 226 Frege, Gottlob 43–44 Fröhlich, Walter 186, 370, 374–375, 417 Fulk of Beauvais bishop, 185

460 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 124 Galen 5 Galonnier, Alain 57, 236 Gameson, Richard 333 Gasper, Giles E.M. 5, 94, 131, 173, 217, 223, 288, 294, 305, 331, 343, 381, 410, 414, 421 Gathagan, Laura L. 81, 218, 223, 334 Gaunilo of Marmoutier xvii, 39, 41, 50, 105, 107, 138, 210 Pro Insipiente xvii, 2, 50, 105–107, 174, 185 Gauss, Julia 381, 383–386 Gavrilyuk, Paul 193, 196–199 Gazeau, Véronique 414 Geach, Peter 139 Gelber, Hester G. 294 Gentzen, Gerhard 138 Gerald of Wales 322 Gerberon, Gabriel xvii Gibson, Margaret 183, 185, 302, 316, 407 Gilbert Crispin 170, 179, 382, 414, 438 Gilbert of Sempringham 432–433, 438– 439 Gilbert, Paul 236, 349–350, 381 Gilson, Étienne 35, 88, 115, 294 Göbel, Christian 12, 265, 271, 280, 282, 285 Goddard, Hugh 383 Goebel, Bernd xvii, 170, 238, 267, 382–384 Goehl, Konrad xvii Golb, Norman 381 Goldziher, Ignác 385 Gondulf, monk 295–296 Gonsette, Jean 182 Goudriaan, Aza 219 Gourinat, Jean-Baptiste 56 Grant, Edward 30, 302, 304 Green-Pedersen, Niels J. 91 Grégoire, Réginald 217 Gregory i the Great, pope 177–178, 219, 314, 324, 351–353, 363–364, 369, 373 Gregory vii, pope 179 Griffel, Frank 386 Grosseteste, Robert 324 Guanilon of Marmoutier, comte de Montigni. See Gaunilo of Marmoutier Guibert of Nogent 373, 387, 413 Gullbekk, Svein H. 410, 414 Gundolf, bishop of Rochester 383 Gunhilde 6

index Hadley, Dawn Marie 436 Hadot, Pierre 56, 278 Halpérin, Jean 349 Hargreaves, Barbara 15 Harold (ii) Godwinson, king 6 Harrison, Carol 311 Hartshorne, Charles 115, 151 Heffernan, Thomas J. 429 Heinzmann, Richard 39–40 Henry i, king of England 418–419 Henry iv, Holy Roman Emperor 181 Henry, Desmond Paul 8, 41, 44–47, 52, 92– 94, 298 Herluin, abbot of Bec 414 Hermannus Contractus of Reichenau 4 Hernost of Rochester 436 Hick, John 113, 151 Hine, Harry Morrison 92, 173 Hinst, Peter 41, 43–44 Hippocrates 5 Hoffman, Tobias 34 Hogg, David S. 116–119 Hölderlin, Friedrich 395–396 Holopainen, Toivo 96, 101, 184, 340, 344 Hopkins, Jasper 21, 43, 68, 158, 218, 226, 288, 384 Hugh of Saint Victor 316–321, 323 Hugh the Prior 374 Hugh, bishop of Lincoln 432, 437–439, 442 Humbert, count of Savoy 418 Hünermann, Peter 381, 387 Hunt, Richard William 92, 302–305, 307, 314, 320, 322, 324, 331–332 Hwang, Andrew Y. 219–220 Iamblichus 63 Ignatius of Loyola, saint 279, 396 Ilgyrus 413 Iribarren, Isabel 35, 368 Irwin, Terence 236 Isidore of Seville 71, 293, 324 Jammer, Max 30 Jerome 172, 324 Jestice, Phyllis G. 375 Jocelin of Furness 429, 432, 434–435 John Cassian 11, 218–227, 362, 373, 375–376 John Damascene 8, 33–34 John Gualbert 16, 451–455

index John of Salisbury 311, 316, 432, 442 John, abbot of Fécamp 383 Justin Martyr 168 Justinian i, emperor 332, 335, 385 Kane, G. Stanley 268 Kant, Immanuel 113, 212, 266–267, 269–279, 282–285 Kapriev, Georgi 29–30 Kaufman, Peter Iver 223, 226 Keefe, Donald J. 249, 256–257 Keir, Gillian 432–433, 438–440 Kendall, Daniel 339 Kendrick, Nancy 118 King, Peter 288, 290 Klagge, James G. 276 Kleist, Aaron J. 222 Klima, Gyula 89, 101 Kneale, Martha 39 Kneale, William 39 Knowles, David 431 Kohlenberger, Helmut 349, 381, 383 Kotzia-Panteli, P. 63 Koyré, Alexandre 4, 56, 359 Kraemer, Joel K. 385 Kritzek, James 383 Kuhn, Thomas 43 Kunitz-Dick, Alisa 4, 8, 79 Kynan-Wilson, William 333 La Croix, Richard 43 Lacombe, George 91 Lactantius 70, 72, 172 Lambert, David 219 Landolfi, Luciano 172 Lanfranc of Canterbury 16, 51–52, 91–92, 130, 167, 181, 183–187, 295, 331–334, 340, 407, 431, 433–435, 446 Lanfranc, monk of Bec 297 Lanzo, monk 374 Lapidge, Michael 223 Leclercq, Jean 217, 406 Leff, Michael C. 91 Leftow, Brian 122–124, 238, 288, 363 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 113, 357 Lejewski, Czesław 42–44, 47 Lenz, Martin 35, 368 Leo ix, pope 180 Leśniewski, Stanisław 43–44, 51

461 Lévy-Valensi, Eliane Amado 349 Leyser, Conrad 219–220 Limonta, Roberto 12–13, 288 Lindberg, David 302, 304, 306, 323 Lindberg, Greta 302 Lo Monaco, Francesco 338 Logan, Ian xvii, 4, 10, 30, 39, 41–43, 45, 47, 49–51, 91, 108, 119–120, 123–126, 130, 141, 160, 167, 169–171, 185–186, 288, 294, 331, 414 Losoncy, Thomas A. 218, 226 Lucretius 172 Luscombe, David E. 217, 281, 362, 417 MacCarron, Máirín 4 Mackie, John Leslie 42 Macrobius 4 Malcolm, Norman 115, 151 Manegold of Lautenbach 184 Marenbon, John 62, 64–65, 68, 75, 82, 298 Marion, Jean-Luc 113 Marius Victorinus 293 Martène, Edmond xvii Martianus Capella 90–91 Martin of Tours, saint 442 Martin, Richard C. 385 Mason, Emma 413 Matilda, countess of Tuscany 296, 415 Matz, Brian J. 220 Maurice, monk of Bec and Canterbury 4 Mayer, Johannes Gottfried xvii McCarthy, Richard Joseph 387 McDonough, Christopher 303, 305, 317, 323–324 McFadden, George Joseph 432 McGill, Arthur 113, 151 Meixner, Uwe 41 Menzer, Paul 276 Michael iii, emperor 386 Millican, Peter 42 Minio-Paluello, Lorenzo 31, 64, 73, 289, 293 Moreschini, Claudio 32, 62–64, 77, 79 Morison, Benjamin 31 Morscher, Edgar 42, 139 Muir, Bernard J., 420, 432 Müller, Jörn 222 Munk Olsen, Birger 171

462 Munzel, G. Felicitas 274–277, 279 Mynors, Roger A.B. 382, 408 Nelis, Suzanne J. 91 Netton, Ian R. 385 Newhauser, Richard 322, 372 Newton, Francis 338 Nicetas of Byzantium 386 Nicholas ii, pope 183 Niskanen, Samu 170, 294, 404, 408, 436 O’Collins, Gerald 339 Oda, saint 432, 443 Ogliari, Donato 217, 310 Omont, Henri 4 Oppenheimer, Paul E. 41 Orderic Vitalis 331, 333, 406–407, 409, 414 Origen 10, 193, 196–200, 207, 314 Ortlund, Gavin 112, 114, 117–118, 120–121, 217 Oswald, saint 432, 440 Otloh of Saint Emmeram 178 Otten, Willemien 219, 309 Palmerino, Carla Rita 30 Pascal, Blaise 3–4, 106 Pasnau, Robert 30, 212 Paul, saint 11, 169, 183–184, 196–197, 218, 220–222, 224–227, 252, 255–257, 260 Paxton, Frederick 431, 434 Pepin, Ronald E. 432, 442 Pereira, Matthew J. 219 Peter Damian 167, 180–182, 184–185, 187 Peter of Limoges 322 Philippson, R. 57 Photinus 177 Plantinga, Alvin 115 Plato 4, 6, 8, 10, 23, 31–32, 36, 106, 136, 168, 171–172, 181, 194–195, 198–199, 202, 205, 236, 385 Plautus 71 Plotinus 55–56, 62–63, 258, 309, 358–359 Plug, Cornelis 307 Pohl, Benjamin 81, 218, 223, 334, 405 Pollmann, Karla 219, 267 Porphyry 3, 56, 62–64, 90–91, 95 Pouchet, Robert 217 Powell, Timothy E. 411 Powicke, Frederick Maurice 432, 440 Pranger, Burcht 217

index Prestwich, John Oswald 409 Priscian 90–92, 331–332 Prodicus 172 Protagoras 171–172, 236 Prudentius 71 Pseudo-Augustine 57 Pseudo-Bede 179 Pseudo-Bernard 265 Pseudo-Cicero 335–336, 342–343 Pseudo-Jerome 176, 178 Ptolemy 307 Quillet, Jeannine 217 Quine, Willard Van Orman 43 Radding, Charles 331–332 Radulphus Ardens 186 Rahner, Hugo 396 Rakus, Daniel T. 232, 238 Ralph of Battle xvii, 170, 178 Ralph, bishop of Rochester 430 Ralph, earl 407 Ramharter, Esther 142 Ramsey, Boniface 220–222, 362 Rashi 381 Ratzinger, Joseph 396 Recktenwald, Engelbert 243 Reinmuth, Friedrich 41 Remigius 90 Reynolds, Leighton 171–172, 332, 334, 338, 340 Riain, Íde Ní 177 Richardson, Herbert 288, 384 Robert Grandmesnil 383 Robert Guiscard 383 Robert ii, count of Flanders 384 Robert ii, duke of Normandy 384 Robert of Ketton 383 Robert of Meulan 413–414, 422 Robert of Torigni 409 Robert, count of Flanders 417–418 Rochais, Henri M. 406 Roche, William James 311 Rodbert 369 Rogers, Katherin 12, 118, 265–269, 271–272, 274, 277, 280–281, 283 Roques, René 381, 384, 389 Rorty, Amélie O. 342 Roscelin of Compiègne 185–186, 389

index Ross, Helen 307 Rozier, Charles C. 421 Rudolph, Ulrich 388 Rupert of Deutz 178 Ruse, Michael 167, 169, 172 Russell, Bertrand 43 Russell, Josiah 320 Saadia Gaon 386 Sadler, Gregory B. 115 Salmann, Elmar 349, 381 Salvianus of Marseille 72 Sattler, Barbara 6 Scherb, Jürgen Ludwig 8, 42, 44–45 Schmitt, Franciscus Salesius xvii, 1, 31, 65, 69, 217, 236, 288, 344, 376, 381, 389, 404–405, 407–408, 451–452 Schnaubelt, Joseph 218 Schöffler, Herbert H. 385 Schufreider, Gregory 151 Schumacher, Lydia 118 Sciuto, Italo 68 Sedley, David 172 Sedulius Scottus 178 Seith 369 Seneca 4, 71, 82, 92, 106, 114, 130, 172–173 Shakespeare, William 232 Sharpe, Richard 1 Shaw, Brent 219 Shimizu, Tetsuro 288 Shlomo Yitzchaki. See Rashi Siegwart, Geo 39, 40–41, 43–44, 49 Simplicius 62–63 Slater, Laura 322 Smalley, Beryl 308, 316, 319–320, 324 Smith, Andrew 98–99 Smith, Arthur David 130, 151, 158 Smith, Katherine Allen 404 Snijders, Tjamke 375 Socrates 31, 33, 168, 278 Sønnesyn, Sigbjørn 170, 224 Southern, Richard William 1, 6, 64, 92, 114, 117, 217, 219, 294, 304, 332–333, 362, 376, 381, 384, 389, 404–405, 413–414, 417, 432, 436, 438, 443–444, 446 Staunton, Michael 410, 411 Steiger, Lothar 344 Stephen, king of England 409 Stewart, Columba 220

463 Stolz, Anselm 113, 115–116 Strickland, Matthew 409 Stump, Eleanore 137, 184 Suárez-Nani, Tiziana 35 Sulpicius Severus 442 Suppes, Patrick 43 Sweeney, Eileen 30, 88, 114–116, 120, 128– 129, 131, 218–219, 225–226, 238, 316 Symons, Thomas 431 Tapp, Christian xvii, 39, 40–41 TeSelle, Eugene 219 Teske, Roland 219 Theodorus of Cyrene 171 Thom, Paul 62 Thomas Aquinas 8, 34–36, 39, 89, 94, 105, 115, 127–128, 211–212, 252, 256 Thomas, David 388 Thomson, Rodney M. 172–173, 333, 382, 408, 432 Thorel, Reginaldo 217, 226 Tisserand, Axel 57, 62 Trego, Kristell 243 Trifogli, Cecilia 30 Turner, Andrew J. 420, 432 Turner, Denys 314 Tyvoll, Stan R. 268 Urban ii, pope 14, 121, 338, 383–384, 388– 389, 413 van den Plaas, P.G. 381, 389 Van Houts, Elisabeth M.C. 409–410 van Vreeswijk, Bernard 13, 335 Vanderjagt, Arjo 217, 372 Vanderputten, Steven 375 Vanni Rovighi, Sofia 226 Vanommeslaeghe, Helena 375 Vauchez, André 441 Vaughn, Sally N. 218, 226, 331, 333, 413–414, 422 Vendsel, Michael 10 Verweyen, Hansjürgen 272 Visser, Sandra 30, 117, 125–126, 128–130, 267, 274 von Balthasar, Hans Urs 115, 349, 394 Waldef of Montrose, saint 432, 434–435 Wallis, Faith 5, 434

464 Wallis, Richard 309 Walter Daniel 432, 434–435, 438, 440, 442– 444 Walter of Saint Victor 320 Ward, Benedicta 224, 374, 442, 451–452, 454–455 Ward, John O. 173, 332–334 Watanabe, Albert Tohru 71 Weaver, Rebecca Harden 219–220 Wedge, George 304 Wei, Ian 316, 324 Wenzel, Siegfried 324 Weston, Jenny 334 Wetzel, James 219–220 Wierenga, Edward 113 Wike, Victoria S. 270 Wilfred, saint 432 William Bona Anima, archbishop of Rouen 383 William Clito 415 William i, king of England 407, 417 William ii Rufus, king of England 382, 408– 410, 413–416, 418–419, 421–425 William of Beaumont, abbot of Bec 414 William of Jumièges 409 William of Malmesbury 172–173, 331, 333, 382, 408–409, 432, 435, 437, 442

index William of Ypres 409 William, monk of Chester 411 Williams, Hannah 178 Williams, Howard L. 278 Williams, Thomas 30, 117–118, 121, 125–126, 128–130, 207, 217, 250 Wilmart, André 69, 451–452 Winkler, Emily A. 333 Winterbottom, Michael 331, 382, 408, 432 Witt, Ronald 332 Woodward, Mark R. 385 Wright, Thomas 301–302, 304, 306 Wulfstan of Worcester, saint 432, 435, 437, 442 Wulfstan of York 222 Wynne, John 338 Xavier, Maria Leonor 14 Yamazaki, Hiroko 16 Zahora, Tomas 304, 311 Zalta, Edward N. 6, 41, 101, 118 Zeno 70 Zeyl, Donald 6 Zinn, Grover 316 Zoppi, Matteo 381