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MCGUIRE, P. Love, Friendship and Sex in The Eleventh Century The Experience of Anselm
MCGUIRE, P. Love, Friendship and Sex in The Eleventh Century The Experience of Anselm
To cite this article: Brian Patrick McGuire (1974) Love, friendship and sex in the eleventh century: The experience of Anselm,
Studia Theologica - Nordic Journal of Theology, 28:1, 111-152, DOI: 10.1080/00393387408599946
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Studia Theologien 28 (1974) pp. 111-152
1
These have been collected in Kenelm Foster's The Life of Saint Thomas
Aquinas: Biographical Documents (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1959).
2
Even such an excellent introduction to Aquina's thought as F . C. Copleston's
Aquinas (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965), makes almost no reference to
the man's historical and personal background.
112 Brian Patrick McGuire
doing so, we can gain a unique understanding of the way men felt and
lived in the eleventh century.
In this paper I shall limit myself to Anselm's quest for friendship and
love, and bis attitudes towards sex. Although these subjects cover only
a part of the matters that filled Anselm's everyday life at Bee, they are
among the areas of life which Anselm was most interested in discussing
and reflecting upon. As far as his attitudes towards friendship are con-
cerned, I can only build on the firm structure provided by R. W. Southern
of Oxford in his book, Saint Anselm and his Biographer. Without the
work of Southern, the language of the letters of friendship would be a
mystery to us. But it is necessary to go beyond Southern, to investigate
in greater detail the relationships Anselm had with his favourite monks,
and to try to determine what exactly Anselm sought from these friend-
ships. We will have to look at Anselm in a way that at times might seem
rather cold and even merciless. Some of our conclusions will not be
flattering to a man whom the Roman Catholic Church has come to
consider a saint. But the increased awareness of the self and the sub-
conscious forces within us that has come through the work of Freud and
his successors makes it both possible and fruitful for the historian to
look at medieval people in their often half-articulated yearnings, frustra-
tions, and fears.
Nevertheless, I make no claim that what follows is any attempt at
analyzing Anselm's psyche in any remotely scientific way. Indeed, the
grammar and vocabulary of the Latin language as Anselm used it are
3
Ed. and trans, by R. W. Southern as The Life of St. Anselm, (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1972). References are to book and chapter.
4 Ed. by F . S. Schmitt in S. Anselmi... Opera Omnia, vol. IIΙ and IV, (Edin-
burgh: Thomas Nelson, 1946, 1949). The letters will be referred to by the numbers
Schmitt has given them, together with volume and page.
5 Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1966.
The experience of Anselm 113
much more important here than any psychological theory. We shall simply
take what Anselm says about himself in the letters and what he tells
Eadmer as statements reflecting realities in Anselm's life. The conclusions
we will make from these revelations^ however tentative they may be,
will hopefully give us a new understanding of Anselm and the society
in which he lived and which he helped to change radically.
reconcile us to the enormous fact that our parents have to a great degree
determined the manner of our existence. For Anselm the battle between
independence and dependence seemed to be over by the time he was 23,
for at that age he abandoned his home and wandered out into the world,
never to come back to Aosta. But the battle had only taken a new turn,
for in all of Anselm's love relationships and in his constant problem
of authority and obedience, we can see the influence of his early life.
Eadmer gives only a few chapters to Anselm's youth and early man-
hood in Aosta, 6 but it is enough for us to understand something about
Anselm's relationship to his parents. He loved his mother dearly, re-
spected her, perhaps even adored her. He hated his father, passionately,
intensely, and in the end, irreconcilably. However trite it may sound,
the Oedipus complex lies just below the surface of Eadmer's narration.
The biographer tells us that after the death of Ermenberga, Anselm's
mother, the young man felt so violent against his father that he was
afraid something terrible might happen.7 Officially Eadmer is writing in
the vein of hagiography, and so it is amazing that he gives us so many
concrete facts and indicates so much, instead of supplying the usual clichés
about the obedient and faithful son.
Gundulf, the father, had come north from Lombardy to live in his
wife's native town, Aosta. According to Southern, the family probably
existed in a state of downgraded nobility.8 Eadmer makes it clear that
this state of matters was getting continually worse. Gundulf was an ir-
responsible spendthrift. Ermenberga tried to be a good housekeeper,
6
The Life of St. Anselm: I, i-iv.
7
Eadmer only implies the possibility of violence, but it is there: I, iv, p. 7:
"When he saw that this was becoming more than he could bear, he feared that
worse might come of it."
8
Anselm and his Biographer, pp. 7-9.
114 Brian Patrick McGuire
but her effort was in vain. The opposition is clear between a father who
is an intruder and a wrecker, and a long-suffering and loving mother.
The first crisis of authority in Anselm's life, according to Eadmer,
came when he decided to become a monk.9 Not yet even fifteen years
old, he had the determination to go to a local abbot and ask him for
permission to join his monastery. The abbot refused, for he claimed
Anselm's father had no knowledge of the son's intention. Eadmer does
not say that the father would have refused permission if Anselm had
asked him, or whether or not Anselm did ask, but for the young man
recourse to his father was clearly unthinkable. There was only one way
open to him: to fall gravely ill, and in such a state ask to become a monk.
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9
Life of Anselm, I, iii.
10
Life, I, i.
11
Life, I, iv.
12
Life of Anselm, I, iv: " . . . she died and then the ship of his heart had as it
were lost its anchor and drifted almost entirely among the waves of the world.
The experience of Anselm 115
his son. Anselm learned quickly that regardless of his behaviour, his
father would reproach him for it. The humbler Anselm showed himself
in his father's presence, the harsher the man was with him. Eadmer
indicates in this description that the father simply could not tolerate
the son's personality. We must remember, however, that we are in Ead-
mer's narration hearing the voice of Anselm as it spoke to Eadmer
during the 1090's at Canterbury and in exile. Behind Eadmer's narrative,
we find Anselm looking back from a distance of almost forty years, and
for him the most important fact is that he escaped this, empty and terri-
fying life. There is no way of knowing how Gundulf felt, and it may
well be that what Eadmer calls Anselm's humility may actually have
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13
Anselm and his Biographer, p. 11.
14
We need only to think of the way Anselm as archbishop always turned to
the pope for moral certainty in matters of dispute between the English church and
king. The pope seldom gave Anselm the easy clear answer that he so much wanted
and needed. See Eadmer's Historia Novorum, trans, by Geoffrey Bosanquet (Lon-
don: The Cresset Press, 1964), passim, especially pp. 161-64.
15
Life of Anselm, I, v.
116 Brian Patrick McGuire
ings through Burgundy and France Ansehn must have experienced a great
deal. But the conclusion is consistent with the experience of youth: the
search for a father who will have the qualities of consistent strength,
affection, and warmth that Anselm so missed in Aosta.
The second result of the break with the past is closely bound up with
the first. In looking for a father figure, Anselm himself became a father
to innumerable monks and nobles. He listens to the secrets of their
heart, gives them advice, advises them to give up the vanities of the
world, and declares his unbounded love for them. The fatherless, home-
less young man establishes himself as a centre of paternal affection and
builds around him a group of followers that stimulates him both emo-
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18
See, for example, Letters 35, 44, 117, 121, 134 in Schmitt, m .
17
Life for Anselm, I: v, vi.
The experience of Anselm 117
Why all these obsessive activities? Are we dealing here with the con-
ventional activities that holy men of the Church were supposed to
engage in? 2 1 Apparently not, for there is a touch of originality in Ead-
mer's description of Anselm. In the midst of his weeping for the sins
of others and his nights without sleep, Anselm seems to have been
finding his way through a great emotional crisis. This upheaval is hinted
at in one of Anselm's meditations, the "Deploratio virginitatis male
amissae", which Southern thinks is the earliest of Anselm's writings be-
cause of its theological immaturity and stylistic excesses.22 Anselm was
in his thirties, but the language can justly be called adolescent, as if the
young man has to go through one final dark night of the soul before he
can be sure of himself and his vocation.
In the Meditation the sinner addresses his soul, which was once a
virgin, married to Christ, but now stained by sin. The rhetorical language
and juxtaposition of like-sounding words may sound artificial to us,
but Anselm uses these devices to illustrate his disgust with himself and
bitterness at his own sin:
18
Anselm's experience has a deeply familiar ring to i t We think of the change
from the protest, anti-authority generation of the late 1960's and the new upsurge
of traditionalistic Christianity among the same young people after 1970. The
latter is strongly oriented on authority figures.
19
Life of Anselm, I, vii.
20
Ibid., I, viii.
21
See Sulpicius Severus on St. Martin of Tours, "Spending his nights in prayers
and vigils, he compelled his worn-out limbs to obey his spirit" This central hagio-
graphy of the Early Middle Ages was one of the models that affected innumerable
medieval saints lives. The Western Fathers, trans, and ed. by I. R. Hoare (New
York, Harper Torchbooks, 1965), p. 58.
22
Anselm and his Biographer, p. 46. Text of the "Meditatio" in Schmitt, IIΙ,
pp. 80-83.
118 Brian Patrick McGuire
The language of filth and stink is more than literary embroidery here,
even if to us the idea of fornication by the soul is immeasurably distant.
The question immediately springs to mind: what is Anselm talking
about? Has he fornicated in the physical sense in which we use the
word? Or is he talking about some other sexual sin like masturbation,
which certainly must have plagued many monks who tried to maintain
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the Church's code? Or is Anselm troubled with what his culture would
have called "impure thoughts", sexual images that often grow stronger
the more they are resisted by the conscious mind. Or finally, is Anselm
just an overscrupulous saint-in-the-making who wants to tell us he is
a great sinner in order to establish his holiness? If this final possibility
is the case, then the meditation is just a youthful attempt at mastering
a difficult rhetorical style.
We can eliminate the last possibility, for there is too much strength
and conviction in the language, too many direct indications of personal
experience of sin, for us to discount what the meditation is actually
saying: that Anselm is a man who has sinned grievously and has offended
God. The language makes frequent use of strong sexual imagery: the
soul has entered into the pit of fornication; it has rejected God and
embraced the devil; it has made itself into a prostitute:
What have you done, ο mindless mind, mindless filth, filthy iniquity,
what have you done? In heaven you have abandoned your chaste
lover, and in hell you have pursued your hateful corrupter, and in
this pit you have prepared not a marriage bed but your whore's
couch. 24
Anselm talks about the soul being dragged down into a whirlpool of ex-
cess, where it enjoys wallowing in the delights of baseness. It is almost
impossible in modern English to render the strength of these words,
for we have lost the sense of sexual impurity that Anselm draws forth.
Only when he goes over to describing the sufferings of hell waiting
for the perverse soul does he touch on something that we, with our
23
Schmitt Ι I I , p. 80.
2 4
Schmitt, III, p. 81.
The experience of Anselm 119
the scene by the redeeming Christ, no flood of God's love for man.
The ending is unsatisfactory from a theological point of view because
man is left alone and still helpless, suspended between heaven and hell,
and the decision to reconcile him with God has not yet been taken.
It is a tricky business to use this meditation for purposes of biography,
for the personal statement is veiled with the symbolism of the soul, its
marriage with Christ, and its prostitution with the devil. And yet even
if we cannot determine the exact type of sin Anselm is lamenting, we
can say with some certitude that the "Meditatio virginitatis male amissa"
is concerned with sin of a sexual kind of which Anselm has immediate
knowledge, probably from his own experience. He is trying to find
his way in the monastic life and to reconcile the desires of his body and
mind not only with the demands of the monastic rule, but also with his
own scrupulous conscience. By writing about and thus concretizing the
horrible nature of his temptation and sin, and the even more terrible
punishment for it, he hopes to purge himself of the sin. The meditation
indicates that the temptations are far from over, and this feeling increases
the fear of eternal damnation.
During the rest of his career, Anselm wrote on only one other occasion
with such hellfire in his pen. The temptation or cause or habit, whatever
it was, was overcome, and Anselm stepped back from open revelations
of personal sin. His neurotic obsession with sexual sin seemed to be over.
Except when, as Archbishop of Canterbury, he wrote to a young noble
woman, Gunhilda, who had fled the cloister with a man. 27 In trying to
25
Ibid., p. 82.
26
Schmitt, ΙΠ, p. 83.
27
For the letters to Gunhilda, see Schmitt, IV: 168, 169. See Southern, Anselm
and his Biographer, for a reconstruction of the Gunhilda episode: pp. 185-93.
120 Brian Patrick McGuire
28
Life of Anselm, I, xxi.
29
Ibid., I, xxi.
30
The Latin phrase is "tam obscenam revolutionem?, which Southern translates
as "so loathsome turmoil". I think this formulation does not quite capture the
sexual connotation of the words.
The experience of Anselm 121
sexual activity. He can only conclude that they are deceived and cannot
see what they are really doing.
Next to the polluted sewer of human life are the walls of the monastic
cloister, made of purest silver shining in the sunlight. There is a garden
with silvery grass, "soft and delightful beyond belief".31 Ordinary people
cannot even conceive of the delights that lie within the cloister wall: in
the grasp of the river of life, they can see nothing except the passionate
intensity of their own unquenchable desires. Anselm not only says
that the place is pleasant; it is also filled with "jocunditas", good humour
or joyfulness.
Words of peace, calm, and joy are all used to describe the monastic
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life and contrast sharply with the expressions of turbulence, filth, and
unimpeded erotic frenzy that characterize the river of life. Anselm could
not visualize any place for sexuality in the monastic life, and in thinking
this way he certainly was faithful to the spirit of Benedict and his suc-
cessors. But when sex is ruled out, the result is often that it becomes
a stronger force than ever. The "Meditatio" indicates this for Anselm
in the 1060's. But Anselm seems to have sufficiently mastered these
urges to have a completely non-physical love affair with a young monk
named Osbern during the late 1060's or beginning of the 1070's.
3. Osbern
It is difficult to write about this affair without appearing to pass judg-
ment on it, either by indicating that Anselm was a misguided soul who
did not know what he was out for, or by defending this type of love
as legitimate and even desirable. As an historian I am not interested
in taking sides. Instead I shall try to show how the special personality
of Anselm, an exile looking for love, together with the atmosphere of
Bee, where the strict following of the monastic rule still left room for
friendships among monks, produced one of the most significant love
relationships in the medieval period about which we know anything at
all. All the evidence indicates that this relationship transformed Anselm.
After Osbern's death, he never again loved any one monk in the same
way.
Eadmer might never have told us about Osbern if it had not been
for the fact that after Anselm was made prior, he had to deal with a
number of brethren at Bee who were jealous of the way he had been
given office so quickly. Anselm began to try to attract these monks to
him, and his strategy usually worked. As a special example of this
31
Life of Anselm, p. 36 (I, xxi).
122 Brian Patrick McGuire
winning-over process, Eadmer mentions Osbern, a young novice who
especially resented Anselm's authority. 3 2 Osbern thus enters the bio-
graphy not because of Anselm's love for him but because E a d m e r wants
to show us how Anselm could win over a recalcitrant monk.
Osbern is a young adolescent, "adolescentulus", something more than
a "puer", but by n o means an adult. H e probably was in his early teens.
W e are not told anything about his physical appearance (I can recall no
single passage in E a d m e r in which he tells us how an individual looks),
but E a d m e r does inform us that he was clever, good with his hands,
and on the look out for any opportunities to bother Anselm.
Anselm's reaction to this young fellow is fascinating. H e wants to re-
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for the boy was so great that he was unable to hold himself back from
using every possible method to make Osbern into an exemplary monk.
There is something of the loving but stern father here, but we also find
the demanding friend and lover who cannot stand seeing his younger
companion failing to meet the standard they both try to live by. Anselm's
very lack of restraint and moderation in this one case thus indicates that
Osbern was a unique experience for him, the one great love of his life.
Despite the frequent taunts of the other monks and the perhaps oc-
casionally exaggerated demands of Anselm, Osbern only grew to love
Anselm more and so the prior burned more strongly with his love for
Osbem. Eadmer makes sure we know that this was a holy love: " . . . in-
spired by the holy fire of charity, he loved his son more than you could
believe possible." But then Osbern grew ill and died after a short time.
Eadmer says that in narrating this episode, Anselm wept.37 There is no
other place in the Life of Anselm at which Eadmer describes how An-
selm reacted emotionally in the course of telling Eadmer about his
past life, and so the occasion(s) on which this story was told must have
made a deep impression on Eadmer.
During Osbern's sickness Anselm's care for him knew no bounds. It is
as if the older man could finally show his son-disciple-lover exactly how
much he felt for him without holding himself back because of the
feelings of the other monks. Anselm was at his bed night and day,
35
Life of Anselm, I, x: p. 17.
36
Sec Anselm's advice to an abbot concerning the treatment of ill-behaved
novices: Life I, xxii, pp. 37-40.
37
Life of Anselm, I, x, p. 17: "Sed cum ipse, ut flens referebat...". The im-
perfect, tense indicates that Anselm told the story on more than one occasion in
Eadmer's presence.
124 Brian Patrick McGuire
feeding him, doing everything for him. Before Osbem died, he promised
Anselm that after his death he would appear to him if he could. While
Osbern's body lay in the abbey church, Anselm in a state which must
have been halfway between sleep and exhaustion saw Osbern, who told
him that he was with God. Eadmer analyses the meaning of Osbern's
words carefully. For us the incident is only of limited concern, for
Osbern's remarks about his sins are only very general and so do not
reveal anything exceptional about his life. The fact that Anselm had
a vision of his dead beloved is in no sense extraordinary. It merely
points out that the thought of Osbern had come to possess him com-
pletely. Once again we have the single-minded Anselm, who devotes
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himself to one thought, one cause, and, in this unique case, one person.
Besides Eadmer's account, we have other witnesses to Anselm's feeling
for Osbern in the letters he wrote to his friends at Canterbury shortly
after 1070. These letters were sent as an expression of Anselm's friend-
ship for these monks, who had once been together with Anselm at Bee,
but now were helping Lanfranc reorganize the church at Canterbury.
According to the most recent editor of the letters, F. S. Schmitt, two of
these earliest letters, 4 and 5, date from between 1070 and 1073. 3 8 In
them Anselm speaks of Osbern as being recently dead. We can thus
date the relationship with Osbern as beginning sometime after 1063
(when Anselm became prior) and culminating with Osbern's death shortly
after 1070.39
If we look at the letter to Gundulf (Letter 4) we notice immediately
the contrast between Anselm's warm feelings for the recipient of his
letter and his painful love for the dead Osbern. To Gundulf he says,
"Wherever you go, my love follows with you; and wherever I stay, my
desire embraces you." But of Osbern he can assert, "Whereever Osbern
is, his soul is my soul. Let me receive for him while I live whatever from
my friends I could hope for after my death, so that they (my friends)
may be unnecessary to me when I am dead." 40 By this involved formu-
lation Anselm means that he wants his Canterbury friends to direct the
prayers they would have said for him on his death to the good of
Osbern's soul. Anselm uses all the juxtapositions of his latin style in
order to equate himself with Osbern. Superlatives are piled on each
38
Schmitt ΠΙ: ρ. 103.
39
Southern, on good evidence, thinks that Osbern's profession as a monk came
not earlier than 1070, while he probably died already in 1071. See Life of Anselm,
pp. 16-17, n. 1.
40 Schmitt III, 4: pp. 104, 105.
The experience of Anselm 125
other. It is clear from these strenuous expressions that Osbern is the one
loved beyond all others.
Our next source for Anselm's relationship to Osbem is Letter 11,
from Anselm to Gerbert, abbot of St. Wandrille in Normandy from 1063
to 1089. 4 1 Anselm thanks Gerbert for the help he has extended in the
past to a poverty-stricken widow. Now she is further burdened by the
death of her son. Gerbert is to do everything he can for this woman,
for Anselm explains that he was bound to the son by a great love, as
the son was to him. Now that the son is dead, Anselm wants to take
his place and become that woman's own son:
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Anselm says he realizes that some people may think this request rash and
excessive, but as a defence he somewhat inadequately refers to Christ's
words about caring for widows and orphans. What he is asking for goes
far beyond anything implied by the Gospel text.
It is impossible to conceive of anyone being meant in this letter other
than Osbern. Anselm expresses affection for a woman that he probably
does not even know. He is totally frank about his love for the young man.
As in the letter to Gundulf, we find Anselm's identification of himself
with Osbern, but here expressed in an even more original and im-
mediate way. Anselm's burning desire for some kind of contact with
Osbern through the mother, with all the desperation of feeling behind
it, recalls the type of friendship-love which Aristophanes talked about
in the Symposium:
Whenever the lover of boys - or any other person for that matter -
has the good fortune to encounter his own actual other half,
affection and kinship and love combined inspire in him an emotion
which is quite overwhelming, and such a pair practically refuse ever
to be separated even for a moment.43
The only difference between the love that Aristophanes describes here
and that which Anselm and Osbern must have felt for each other lies
41
Schmitt IIΙ, pp. 114-115.
42
Schmitt ΙII, p. 115.
43
Symposium, op. cit., p. 63.
] 26 Brian Patrick McGuire
44
that Bee was frequented by poor boys. The mother's widowhood and
poverty may help explain why her son was sent to Bee at an early
age, even though such an arrangement was probably not so unusual
for younger sons. Otherwise Osbern remains a question mark, an at-
tractive, exciting, loving young man who died in his youth and changed
emotionally the course of Anselm's life.45
Eadmer is the first to tell us how Anselm adjusted himself to the
fact of Osbern's death. All the other monks, says Eadmer, wanted
to succeed to Osbern's place, and so Anselm tried to become all things
to all of them:
44
As in Letter 121, to a certain Henry, whom Anselm is trying to convince to
enter Bec. Anselm says he rejoices in the Duke of Normandy's "gratia et dilec-
tione". This reference indicates that Henry knows the duke and has benefited from
his favours - an indication that he belongs to the upper class. Similar hints con-
cerning aristocratic social origins of prospective monks appear also in Letter 117
(Schmitt ΠΙ, ρ. 254).
45
We have a final ghostly reference to Osbem in Letter 87 to Odo, the notorious
bishop of Β ay eux. Anselm, now abbot, does not specify what Odo has asked him
to do, only indicating that it concerns Osbern and that he will carry it out There
is no reference at all to Anselm's love for Osbern, only profuse declarations of
obedience to Odo.
46
Life I, x: p. 20. This is actually taken from I Cor. ix. 22, but I still think it has
special application to Anselm's behaviour.
The experience of Anselm 127
this was the ideal solution, for if Anselm as Prior loved all his monks,
then they would have no reason to be jealous of each other. The problem
is that the individual human being hardly has the time, the energy, or
the psychological resources to love more than a few people at a time.
Anselm could love all his monks at once only by depriving them of
any individual attention. Time and again they would feel cheated of his
affection and even deceived by his words. We do not know how this
ambiguity of loving affected Anselm's existence at Bee, but we do know
from the way he wrote to the circle of his followers at Canterbury that
he was frequently answering complaints and recriminations for not
writing and for neglecting in general the monks he claimed to love so
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much.
Tackling this contradiction between Anselm's assertions and the emo-
tional realities behind them, R. W. Southern has emphasized the qualities
of Anselm's mind that led him to express so much love and yet actually
give so little. Anselm saw individuals as types that could easily be sub-
stituted for one another. It was the idea that mattered, not the person.47
In the stranger seeking advice about a monastic vocation, for example,
Anselm saw not an individual human being with special problems but
the idea of the monastic life being extended to as many people as
possible.
I am in agreement with this analysis, but I would add that Anselm's
love affair with Osbern and his subsequent death contributed greatly
to Anselm's tendency to generalize and concentrate on the abstract
idea. After Osbern it was emotionally safer, as well as intellectually
more attractive, to love all the monks and not any one in particular.
For one unique period in his life, Anselm had loved another human
being intensely and fully. But after Osbern's death, the roles would not
be mixed: Anselm could be brother, father, teacher, or lover, but not
all in one. And when he spoke of himself as lover, he meant more the
idea of the person as a soul to be saved for eternal bliss than the flesh
and blood reality of an individual human being.
47
Anselm and his Biographer, 67-76.
128 Brian Patrick McGuire
1093, he continued to write letters of friendship. But they are not nearly
as frequent as before, and many of the assertions seem artificial and
incomplete. Only one friendship attained the emotional level of the
earlier years, that with Gilbert Crispin, who left Bee some years after
the first group.
a. Gundulf
According to Schmitt, Gundulf began his career as a clerk at Rouen,
became à monk at Bee in the same year as Anselm, 1060, was taken
by Lanfranc to Caen in 1063 when he was made abbot there, then to
Canterbury in 1070, and ended as Bishop of Rochester (1077-1108).*8
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Gundulf and Anselm could thus only have been together for three
years at Bee, but since they were the first years, before Anselm had taken
on the duties of prior, and also because Gundulf was a late vocation to
Bee, we can assume that the two found something in common. They
had vaguely similar backgrounds, and there was time to get to know
each other.
The first letter to Gundulf from Anselm we have already considered
in connection with its closing words about Osbern. The warmth of this
first communication is by no means diminished in the next letter (7).
Anselm tells Gundulf that the very act of writing his name is an act he
does with great affection.·^ As in the previous letter, however, Anselm
points out that everything he says to Gundulf also applies to Henry.
Southern has already used this equivalence of one friend with another
to point out that the letters directed to various members of the Canter-
bury circle were meant for them all, even if individual monks are ad-
dressed.so They were a public statement of Anselm's affection for the
brethren, nothing more or less.
Already in the next letter to Gundulf (16) Anselm indicates that some-
thing is not quite right in the relationship. Gundulf apparently has writ-
ten Anselm and asked him to reaffirm his friendship for him. Anselm
answers that Gundulf should be able to be certain of that friendship
merely by looking into his own heart. I cannot love you more than I
love myself, says Anselm, "if you demand more, surely I can do no
48
See note in Schmitt III, p. 104.
49
Anselm could hardly open the letter in a more affectionate way: "Ideo tam
amicus tam arnico salutationem meam tam breviter praenotare volui, quia sic
dilectus sic dilecto affectum meum opulentius intimare non potui." Schmitt IIΙ,
pp. 1089.
50
Anselm and his Biographer, p. 70.
The experience of Anselm 129
nothing that might vaguely be called news. But now Anselm tells Gun-
dulf about the three prayers to Mary he has sent him, how they are
to be said, and how meditated upon. These instructions are obviously
meant for the Canterbury circle as a whole, even if Anselm does com-
pliment Gundulf by telling him that he had him in mind when he
composed the prayers. This letter thus represents a blending of elements
of friendship and religious instruction.
A balance between affection and practical matters seems to have been
reached in Anselm's and Gundulfs friendship. Letter 34 has a few
sentences devoted to the first, while the second half is a request that
Gundulf look after a new monk whom Lanfranc has requested Anselm
send him from Bee, Maurice. But the balance is only on the surface:
the expression of friendship is due to the fact that Gundulf has sent gifts
to Anselm, while the letter is one of five to various people at Canter-
bury, all asking for help and guidance for Maurice.53 We get the im-
pression that if it were not for the arrival of Maurice and Anselm's
concern for him, the latter would not have sent Gundulf this letter.
Our suspicion that something is not quite right in the relationship
is confirmed by the following letter (41), in which Anselm answers
Gundulfs recriminations for not writing more often. If we only had
Gundulfs letter, our task would be much easier, but Anselm's reply
5 1
Schmitt m , 16: p. 122.
52
Schmitt ΙII, 28: pp. 135-136.
5 3
In Schmitt IIΙ, Letter 32 is to Archbishop Lanfranc, 33 to Henry, a monk
at Canterbury, 34 to Gundulf, and 35 to Herluin, also a member of the Canterbury
circle. Letter 36 is to Albert, a doctor and friend of Anselm's, who is asked to look
after Maurice's illness.
130 Brian Patrick McGuire
indicates that Gundulf has been hurt by Anselm's silence.54 For us his
answer sounds hypocritical; for Gundulf it must have been a blow; but
for Anselm it was perfectly consistent with his way of looking at people
and life in terms of eternal, unshakable truths. Anselm says that he
and Gundulf are always present to each other in their souls, and so
they do not need to communicate with each other through letters.
"Why should I describe my love for you in writing when you keep its
true image carefully in the confines of your heart?" 5 5 Because we are
present to each other in our souls, " I do not know what to say to you,
except that God make you what he knows is pleasing to himself and
is good for you. Good-bye." Anselm can make such statements, which
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must have torn into Gundulf and made him feel guilty about his own
need to hear from Anselm, because he honestly believed that such an
abstract friendship based on sharing of souls was all that he or Gundulf
needed from each other.
The nature of Anselm's affection for Gundulf has not changed from
the first letters. The difference is that Gundulf s own letters have forced
Anselm to formulate more precisely the way he visualizes their friendship.
There is no cooling-off of emotion here, only the revelation that the
emotion is not what Gundulf had thought it to be.
Already in the letters to Gundulf we discover a typically Anselmian
pattern of friendship: massive statements of love at the beginning, leading
to misinterpretations and misunderstandings and false expectations;
then a series of more careful explanations, many excuses for not writing,
and clarification of the matter. The third stage - transition from emotion
to practical and didactic matters — reveals itself in the next letter (51),
which is addressed in common to Herluin, Gundulf, and Maurice. This
time Anselm does not even try to reproduce and rephrase the language of
love and affection. Despite the friendly tone of the letter, it is nothing
more than an exhortation to advance to a more perfect dedication to
the monastic life. Anselm has openly arrived at the inevitable conclusion:
if he loves Herluin, Maurice and Gundulf all in the same manner,
then there is no reason to write to them separately. But Anselm's de-
personalization of friendship may have gone too far this time, for we
54
The very fact that Anselm never includes letters from his Canterbury friends
in his collection indicates that for him it is not the exchange of emotions and
ideas that is important for him. Rather it is his own definition of the idea of
friendship through the medium of his letters that concerns him.
55
Schmitt IIΙ, 41: p. 152.
The experience of Anselm 131
And yet you insist without restraint that I do what cannot be done.
Let our awarenesses suffice for us, by which we are aware in each
other how much we love each other.56
Anselm is enlarging here on a point he already hinted at in Letter 41:
the bonds of friendship, once established, cannot be expressed adequately
in words. That does not mean the friendship diminishes. To the con-
trary, it grows and matures because each friend dwells on the image of
the other. Friendship becomes completely interiorized, and so exterior
manifestations, like letters, are only pale reflections of the true inner
presence.
We have already looked at Anselm's attitude towards friendship as
the result of his mind's platonic bent. We can also see his lack of
enthusiasm for continued contact with separated friends as a result of
a deep fear of new intimate relationships. Anselm clearly does not want
what we would call a close friendship with Gundulf. He keeps up contact
with Gundulf,57 but must have felt a great relief when he was elected
Bishop of Rochester. In such a position Gundulf would no longer have
time to make demands on Anselm's emotions.
b. Maurice
These two attributes of Anselm's mind, his penchant for generalizing
and his fear of deep relationships, are manifested much more clearly in
his hesitant, protracted series of letters with Maurice. This young monk
was sent to Canterbury a few years after Lanfranc had taken the initial
56
Schmitt IIΙ, 59: p. 174.
57 The last letter to Gundulf before he became bishop is 68, in which Anselm
thanks him for gifts. We get the feeling Gundulf can only obtain letters from
Anselm by forcing him to write thank you notes.
132 Brian Patrick McGuire
group from Bee and Caen. I have already mentioned the five letters to
various people at Canterbury asking them to look after Maurice (32-36).
We notice in the first letter Anselm writes Maurice (42) that he greets
him as "brother and son" 5 8 a salutation never given to Gundulf or Henry.
Anselm writes to him in a more fatherly way than he does the other
Canterbury monks. It looks as though Maurice came to Bec as a boy
and Ansehn has brought him up and now feels a special sorrow at his
absence.
In this first letter, Anselm is much more informative than he was in
his first communication with Gundulf. First he confesses that the recep-
tion of Maurice's letters caused him greater joy than his departure from
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Bee had caused sorrow. This must be a great deal of joy, for we can
look back to Anselm's letter to Herluin on Maurice's behalf in which
he expresses his concern at sending his son to live at Canterbury "among
barbarians".59 But now he has heard that Maurice has already become
popular at Canterbury. Ansehn is worried that this may be so because
the Canterbury circle was expressing its love for him by its kindness
towards Maurice. Now, he says, I hope they will love you because you
yourself deserve to retain that love.
Apparently Maurice has already written Anselm and has asked him
to request Archbishop Lanfranc to let him be returned to Bee as soon
as possible. This question of Maurice's return dominates the correspon-
dance between him and Anselm. Already in Anselm's first letter we
see him counselling Maurice to be patient and not expect too much:
58
Schmitt IIΙ, 42: p. 153. The full salutation is: "Fratri et filio carissimo suo
Mauritio: frater Anselmus dilectionem suae integritatem, integritatis deo protegente
perpetuitatem.
59
Schmitt IIΙ, 35: p. 143 - "Domnum Mauritium, quem esse meum dilectionem
et dilectorem non ignoras, sic tibi commendo, ut et ipse gaudeat se inter barbaros
fratrem invenisse."
60
Schmitt ΙII, 42: p. 154.
The experience of Anselm 133
excuse can be found. We hardly get the impression here that Anselm
is going to do anything rash for Maurice's sake, and the tedious and
fruitless exchange of letters that follows shows that this impression is
basically correct.
This important letter indicates that Maurice, besides being emotionally
close to Anselm, also shared some of his intellectual interests. Anselm
speaks of various books whose texts Maurice knows and which he wants
to have corrected. Now that Maurice is at Canterbury, Anselm hopes that
he can use the library's facilities for finding better editions of these
books and also convey his finds to Anselm. Maurice emerges here as a
disciple of Anselm who will be able to carry on his work at Canterbury.
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61
Schmitt III: 43, p. 155: "Illud propter quod tantopere me reverendae domini
et patris nostri archiepiscopi instarc sanctitati postulasti, quanto studiosius secundum
tuam voluntatem potui, in quadam mea Uli missa epistola facere tentavi."
134 Brian Patrick McGuire
warns us that this may not be so. Anselm thanks Maurice for his gift
and tells him that he has to close because the messenger who will take
the letter is in a hurry. How familiar an excuse for writing only a brief
letter. How many letters over the centuries have closed with a similar
formula: I have to close now because the post will be picked up soon.
There is no mention of the negotiations to get Maurice back to Canter-
bury. And we notice that Maurice, like Gundulf before him, has started
to try to get Anselm to write to him by sending him gifts.
The next letter to Maurice is the joint letter also to Gundulf and
Herluin, already mentioned (51). The following letter (60) returns to
the subject of Maurice's return. Anselm says that the archbishop has
given no orders at all. Maurice has indicated that he fears the abbot of
Bee, Herluin, will object to his return, but Anselm assures him that
such a fear is groundless. As for myself, he says, you can be sure that
I will be very pleased to have you back. The letter gives more instruc-
tions on the procedure for correction of the De Aphorismo. Apparently
Maurice has finished the text, and now Anselm wants him to do the
glosses instead of going on to any other work. Again he asks him to be
accurate in his corrections: " I prefer with an unknown and unusual text
to obtain a part of it fully correct instead of the whole of it corrupted
by falseness."62
All seems well. In the final paragraph Anselm begins to tell Maurice
how glad he is that his disciple has done so well among strangers and
foreigners. But at the very end of the letter he adds a warning: beware
that in promising to return and not doing so you play your friend false.
What does Anselm mean here? Does he know already that Maurice
will not come back? Until now the assumption of the letter has been
that Maurice would certainly return, even though Anselm himself has
62
Schmitt ΙII, 60: p. 175.
The experience of Anselm 135
done little or nothing to assure that event. But now Anselm indicates
his doubts, not by questioning Lanfranc's permission, but by hinting that
Maurice himself might change his mind. The only explanation for this
final warning is that Anselm wants to prepare Maurice for any even-
tuality. But here as at so many other places in Anselm's writings, we
come up against a man who is basically an enigma, a bundle of contra-
dictory desires and behaviour.
If we take this letter (60) and compare it with the one that follows
(64), we are immediately struck by the lack of logical continuity. Letter
64 deals solely with Maurice's education at Canterbury and makes no
mention of the negotiations for his return to Bee. Anselm says he has
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Anselm should love Maurice for his own sake and not on account of
himself, he should rejoice more in Maurice's success in making himself
loved than be sorrowful at the absence of his beloved.
This rhetorical antithesis (sorrow in absence compensated by joy in
love given by others to Maurice) may have a psychological truth behind
it. Just as Anselm said and wrote on a number of occasions that he
would rather love than be loved,6e he may be saying here that he would
rather that others love Maurice than that Maurice love him. This may
sound unnecessarily complicated, but it is consistent with what was
said previously about Anselm's fear of being loved by individual persons.
He would rather send Maurice away to a new emotional world and see
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if he does say yes, neither Anselm nor Bee's abbot, Herluin, will have
anything to do with the project.
Before this letter Anselm's feelings on the matter were not very clear.
Now they are. He not only refuses to go out of his way and perhaps risk
Lanfranc's displeasure. He also openly shows that for him Maurice's
presence at Bee is unimportant compared to good relations between Bee
and Canterbury.
The concentration of the main body of the letter on the fate of the
Monologion confirms this impression that Maurice's desire is not An-
selm's. He still visualizes a possibility that Maurice might come to Bee,
and so he tells him what to do with the manuscript in such a case. But
his central interest is in finding out as soon as possible Lanfranc's
reaction to his work, regardless of Maurice's future movements.
At last in the next letter to Maurice (79), the matter is decided. But
Anselm makes this clear only after an introduction whose rhetorical
antitheses have lost their sincerity. Although the more I love you, he
tells Maurice, the more I want to have you with me, nevertheless I love
you all the more when I am not able to have you with me. He restates
the idea that he loves Maurice not for his own sake but for Maurice's,
and so implies that his selfish desire to be with Maurice should not stand
in the way of the young monk's advancement in the love of men and
God. Furthermore, Anselm's love for Maurice increases because he has
made himself loved by his companions at Canterbury, who apparently
do not want him to return to Bee. 69 In other words Anselm's love in-
creases for Maurice because of the strength of love that others have
developed for him.
All this is familiar, and we almost expect another letter ending in-
consequentially. But at this point comes the exhortation: Maurice is to
advance in virtue and be patient in separation as long as Lanfranc com-
mands. He is not to grieve at what must be. Anselm would like to have
his friend with him, but more than this desire, he wants Maurice to do
what is right. And so he ends: wherever you are, do what is right, and
God will provide for you and give you what you need.
We notice immediately that Anselm approaches the long-awaited order
of Lanfranc in a most oblique way. The tone of the letter indicates
that Maurice already knows Lanfranc's decision. It may well be Maurice
who has informed Anselm of it. Why then does Anselm not restate his
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love for Maurice in warmer phrases and why does he dwell so much
on Maurice's success at Canterbury? The excess of exhortation may be
due to the fact that Anselm is no longer concerned with his separation
from Maurice, but whether or not he is going to accept the decision
in the spirit of monastic obedience. This probably was the conscious
thought guiding Anselm as he wrote. He had to reconcile him to the
inevitable. Unconsciously, Anselm seems to have felt a great relief that
the whole protracted and perhaps embarrassing affair was over, that
Maurice's fate was determined, and that he did not have to write any
more letters on the matter. He had maintained the ideal he held dearest.
He had been scrupulously obedient and had at no time challenged the
authority of Lanfranc. Indeed he had done nothing at all which could
be interpreted in any way as asking a special favour for himself. Except
towards Maurice, our evidence shows Anselm as remaining passive and
silent. And with Maurice he was much more concerned with the young
man's reputation and success at Canterbury, together with the continuation
of his education, than with any strong desire to be together with him.
The final letter from Anselm to Maurice (97) indicates that after all
the earlier frustrations, the tenderness and closeness that they must once
have shared at Bee had disappeared. Anselm is Abbot of Bee now, and
Maurice has been moved to one of Bee's daughter houses, apparently
near Paris. 70 After all the difficulties of getting Maurice moved from
70
Schmitt ΙII, 97: p. 224. There is so little connection between the old, beloved
Maurice and the Maurice who is prior of a cell of Bec in this letter that it could
be claimed that the two are different persons. But Schmitt in his list of letters at
the beginning of vol. 3 considers Maurice prior J o have been the same person as
Maurice monk. Because the collection was made by Anselm himself, there is
always the possibility that there were other letters from him to Maurice. But the
very lack of such further letters indicates that Anselm no longer considered his
relationship with Maurice significant enough to provide a model for future monks.
The experience of Anselm 139
71
As in Letter 91, in which Anselm tells Gundulf that although he is now a
bishop, he hopes they still can be friends, and then goes on to ask Gundulf s help
for some monks from Bec who are coming to England.
140 Brian Patrick McGuire
feels that his child no longer needs him. Certainly there are many aspects
of Anselm's relationship with Maurice that could be called paternal,
but for Anselm the core of the matter is that he and Maurice were
bound to each other by friendship, a friendship which Anselm and
Maurice understood in such different ways that it was unable to last.
And so we return to one of our earlier conclusions. Anselm is afraid
of loving anyone when that love imposes immediate, concrete demands
on him, when that love means a personal relationship in daily life.
After Osbern there is no room in Anselm for a replacement. To go from
here and say that Anselm is basically afraid of loving another man
because he is terrified of a sexual relationship would be to take an un-
justified leap into the unknown. There is never any question of a sexual
or physical relationship in Anselm's mind. The only problem for him
is that of the absence of his friends. He is able to reconcile himself
easily with this fact. It is the friends who are unable to do so. When,
as in Maurice's case, they refuse to accept separation, then Anselm be-
comes afraid and hold himself back.
c. Gilbert Crispin
Just when we begin to feel that we have grasped the patterns of Anselm's
behaviour, he darts away from our definitions and shows once more
that he is not only original in his thought but also in his behaviour.
The reaction to Maurice would lead us to believe that Anselm had no
more room within himself for expressing deep love and friendship.
But then we come upon a letter written to Gilbert Crispin, who had
been with him at Bee and had recently moved to Canterbury (84). Here
we find the familiar flow of emotion and grief at separation that we
know so well from the early letters to Gundulf and Maurice. Anselm as-
serts that nothing, not even Gilbert's generous gifts, can console him
for the loss he feels on separation from his dearest friend. He speaks of
The experience of Anselm 141
the anguish of his heart, his tears falling on his face and his fingers
as he writes. Not until they were separated did Anselm realize how much
he loved Gilbert, how sweet his company was, how bitter his absence
could be.
It would be ideal if we could date this letter in relation to the letter
of rejection to Maurice. Certainly they are chronologically near each
other in the Schmitt collection and probably both date from the period
just before Anselm became abbot in 1078. But we cannot be sure.
Schmitt gives the latest possible date for the letter to Gilbert as 1085,
the year the latter became Abbot of Westminster.72 Our problem in
determining a more exact date is that we cannot establish whether the
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crucial letter to Maurice and the first letter to Gilbert were written
before Anselm became Abbot of Bee in 1078. Even after Anselm became
abbot, the letters he writes often open without calling him anything
more than "frater". A number of letters that Schmitt includes in the
pre-1078 section could belong to the period after.
Whatever the date of Gilbert's departure for Canterbury (and it must
have been in the late 1070's or early 1080's), we can say that it aroused
the same emotions in Anselm as did his separation from Maurice. In
fact Anselm's reaction may have been even stronger. The language of
the first letter is so full of emotion that we are tempted to see in it an
even more intense feeling for Gilbert than for Maurice. But because
Anselm does use such hyperbolic language in so many letters, it is im-
possible to calibrate the degree of his emotions here. Apart from this
problem, we can be sure that Anselm was capable of the same emotion
of friendship at this point in his life as he had been in the early part
of the 1070's. Even more significantly, he seems to have maintained the
high emotional level of his friendship with Gilbert even after Gilbert
became Abbot of Westminster.
This continuity of feeling is not yet apparent in the letter Anselm
wrote Gilbert immediately after his election at Westminster (106). He
addresses Gilbert in affectionate terms, but there is none of the emotional
quality of the first letter. But the next letter (130) could scarcely be more
effusive in its assertions of love. Anselm claims that words are unable
to describe his feelings for Gilbert. The rhetoric is familiar, but it is
more passionate here than ever before. Anselm repeats the idea from
his first letter that he did not realize his joy in Gilbert until he had
lost him. He who has something does not realize its worth until it is lost
to him. Anselm looks forward to the time when again, as in the past,
72
Schmitt IIΙ, 84: p. 208. The decisive letter to Maurice is 79.
142 Brian Patrick McGuire
they can be eye to eye, mouth to mouth, embrace to embrace. The full
force of Anselm's words can only be rendered by leaving them in their
original Latin:
the idea of these persons as potential sharers with him in the monastic
life. The physical content of the words is meant only to express this
anticipation.74 With Gilbert, however, we have a man who already is a
monk, who has been together with Anselm for a number of years at
Bee, and whom we know Anselm stayed with for a number of months
on his visit to England in 1092-3. 7 5 Furthermore we have Anselm's
word for it that in the past at Bee there were physical manifestations
of affection between him and Gilbert:
73
Schmitt ΙII, 130: p. 273.
74
The most extreme example of this style in Anselm is at the opening of Letter
120, to Haimo and Rainald, relatives of Anselm whom he probably had never seen.
See Anselm and his Biographer, pp. 72-73.
75
One of the indications of Anselm's stay with Gilbert is Letter 147, to the
prior and monks of Bec, from Anselm in England. He says that the bearer of the
letter is a monk of Gilbert Crispin's. F o r Anselm's movements during this period
immediately prior to his becoming archbishop, see R. W. Southern's article in
Medieval and Renaissance Studies IIΙ, 1954, pp. 87-92.
76
Schmitt IIΙ, 130, p. 273.
The experience of Anselm 143
does he use the phrases of endearment that fill his letters to his fellow
monks and to lay men who are thinking of becoming monks.
The same respectful, cautious tone is evident in a letter to a holy
woman of Caen, Frodelina (45). Anselm never uses the word "amicitia"
in his letter. He only says he would like to have contact with this pious
woman, for she has indicated such a desire. Instead of referring to any
feelings he might have for her, he concentrates on praising her for her
exemplary life. Anselm seems to be performing what we would call a
social duty. He does not mind it, but he is by no means especially inter-
ested in going beyond what custom and politeness oblige him. Once he
has carried out his obligation, he can have a good conscience. Not sur-
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prisingly, there are no other letters to Frodelina. Even if Anselm did have
more contact with her, he obviously did not consider it important enough
to include in his letters to be preserved.
In other letters, we find the same respectful distance maintained.
Anselm writes only because he has to do so, as in Letter 86, to the
Countess of Flanders, where he icily tells her to let a certain man be
released from military service so that he can enter a monastery. "You
ought to do this even if you were not asked," he tells her peremptorily
at the end of his letter.77
To Ida Countess of Boulogne (82,114,131) Anselm is much kinder.
His respectful attitude is mixed with friendly devotion. She seems to
be a benefactress of Bee, for Anselm thanks her profusely for her
generosity towards the community and especially for the help she has
given a certain brother who had come to her. Despite the happy sense
of gratefulness, there are no declarations of friendship of the type we
find from Anselm to his monastic brethren. The world of women cannot
in Anselm's mind create the same bonds as he feels for his fellow monks.
The letters to women thus follow one of two patterns. Anselm writes
either because he is socially obliged to do so (as to thank Ida or greet
Frodelina), or else because he wants the woman to use her power to
see to it that a man is allowed to become a monk.78 Only once do we
find Anselm using the expressions of love and concern to a woman
that he does to men, and this is with Gunhilda, the runaway nun and
last descendant of the last Anglo-Saxon king.79 Gunhilda must have
77
Schmitt IIΙ, 86: p. 212.
78
One of the most vivid and disturbing of the latter group is Letter 134, to
Ermengarda, in which Anselm uses every possible argument to convince her to
let her husband leave her to become a monk.
79
Schmitt IV, 168, 169.
The experience of Anselm 145
a. Homosexuality in Anselm
Despite all that we have said about the non-physical nature of the
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emotion Anselm describes in his letters, we still are left with a nagging
feeling that Anselm might be a latent homosexual. All his emotions were
centred on men. He lived at Bee in daily contact with men of all different
backgrounds and age groups.
At least once we do find him revealing openly an awareness of physi-
cal beauty in a young man. He is writing to William, a young man, and
trying to convince him to join the monastery of Bee. Every possible
means of persuasion is used, including the example set by a treasurer
of Beauvais who had become a monk at Bee:
Are you afraid of loving God less than the treasurer at Beauvais,
who being a young man of your own age or a little younger, being
both sensitive and most beautiful, very rich and noble, and an
excessive lover of the world, lately after I had gone to England,
came to Bee, for which reason I am unaware.80
80
Schmitt IIΙ, 117: p. 254.
81
Schmitt III, 99: pp. 229-30.
The experience of Anselm 147
82
Life of Anselm I, xi.
83
Ibid., I, xiv.
84
Eadmer, Historia Novorum. This is the Council of London, 1102. The decrees
are to be found in Bosanquet's translation on pp. 150-152. The one dealing with
homosexuality comes last.
148 Brian Patrick McGuire
85
Historia Novorum, p. 49 in Bosanquet.
86
Ibid., pp. 50-51.
87
William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. W. Stubbs (Rolls Series
1889), vol. II, pp. 369-370 (lib. iv, 314).
88
Ordericus Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. A. le Prevost and L . Delisle
(1838-55), iv, 90.
The experience of Anselm 149
breach or exception could not ignore such matters and clearly ad-
monished Rufus to behave better.89
We can thus attribute Anselm's concern with homosexuality during
this period not to any special obsession within the man but to the fact
that homosexuality was in evidence at Rufus's court. This problem ap-
parently continued into the early 1100's, for Eadmer tells us in his
summary of Anselm's efforts to improve the moral life of England
that after Anselm's death long hair was more the rage than ever. Other
activities, of which Eadmer dares not speak, are also still in fashion.
He may be referring to homosexual behaviour:
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Moreover the men with long hair were, as we very well know,
excommunicated by Father Anselm and banished from the doors
of holy Church; yet they now so abound and so boastingly pride
themselves on the shameful girlish length of their locks that anyone
who is not long-haired is branded with some opprobrious name,
called "country bumpkin" or "priest". The rest of such doings
I shall pass over in silence.90
89
The first time Anselm came to England and met William Rufus, he im-
mediately began to speak alone with the king and criticized him strongly for the
rumours and reports about his personal life (Life II, 1). Southern (p. 64, n. 1) links
this passage with those we have mentioned in William of Malmesbury and Orderic
and concludes that Anselm was speaking of "the homosexual vices of Rufus's
court".
90
Historia Novorum, p. 229.
150 Brian Patrick McGuire
This conclusion may sound very unmodern, and it varies from the
impression I had of Anselm before I made a closer study of his letters
and of Eadmer. But as far as I can possibly determine, we are dealing
with a man who was homoerotic but not homosexual. All his desires
for love were centred on men, but this did not lead to any need for
physical expression of this love.
Such an outcome to this study of Anselm is not so very surprising in
view of the huge fact upon which Anselm built his life: his infinite God,
his search for the spiritual part of existence, and his fierce desire for
union with that God. Like the true platonist and Christian that he was,
Anselm was constantly starting with the individual and moving away,
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into the abstract and the immaterial. Whatever sexual desires he may
have had, he spent his whole life in sublimating them to his desire for
God. He almost certainly achieved what he set out for. The passion and
peace of his writings indicate that his inward journey led him to a truth
and a centre of being which did not disappoint him.
Our view of Anselm as the man who continually disappointed his
friends and in many cases hurt them has to be tempered by an under-
standing of the goal and the code Anselm set for his life. The mystical
experience must in the final analysis be a separation from other men and
other loves.
91
As in Ailred's lament for his dead friend and love, Simon, Patrologia Latina
195, in the Speculum Caritatis. See col. 545, where he says that others might think
his love for Simon "too carnal", but God knows its true nature. Others deal with
exterior matters but cannot penetrate the interior reality.
The experience of Anselm 151
As has already been pointed out,92 Ansehn incorporates both the new
and the old in almost everything that he does. In his monastic life, he
was a rock of conservatism, for he wanted nothing to be changed in
the old ways.93 But at the same time his desire for close meditation
on the truths of religion and intimate friendships between monks meant
an end to the old style Benedictine monasticism, concerned mainly with
the outward forms of life and not with the life within the individual
monk.
We can look upon Anselm's letters as a breakthrough to a new world
where individual emotions are decisively important. And yet the letters
are also maddeningly hesitant in their assertions of love and devotion.
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The old stiff world is dying, but the new world of personal feeling is
only on the way to being born.
If we look a half century ahead to Ailred of Rievaulx, we find this new
world full of a confidence and a certitude that it could never have had
in Anselm's time. While Anselm had wanted to live in intimate personal
contact with his monks but at the same time grew angry when he found
out that Eadmer was writing about his life,94 Ailred tells us without
hesitation a great deal about his own life and his relationship with his
friends.95 While Anselm had written of love between monks but had
held himself back from loving them in the way they wanted to be
loved, Ailred gave everything he had emotionally in the two major love
relationships of his life.96
Ansehn belongs to the eleventh century, Ailred to the twelfth. Ansehn
with all his hesitancy, uncertainty, and backtracking; Ailred with his
generosity, self-confidence and loquaciousness. In Ailred's friendships
Anselm's strictness and uncompromising solidity have given way to
romantic emotions. There is a danger here that if the emotions flow
unimpeded, then those involved might cut themselves off from the com-
munity and concentrate on each other. And what is to prevent emotional
love from turning into physical love? Ailred confronted these problems
92
Anselm and his Biographer, p. 75: "Here as so often, Anselm hovers between
the old and the new. In his intellectual intention he is on the side of tradition;
but in the vividness of his experience and the novelty of his language he points
to the future."
93
See, for example, his letter to Lanzio (Life, I xx), who represents the critical
element within monasticism. Anselm counsels him to accept things as they are.
94
The Life of Anselm, II, lxxii, p. 150.
95
See especially Prologue to De Spirituali Amicitia, Pat. Lat., 195: 659.
96
Described in Ailred's Speculum Charitatis, P L 195: 539-545, and the De
Spirituali Amicitia, 698-700.
152 Brian Patrick McGuire
could not give. He wanted to love God and men but spent much of his
life in feeling frustrated in his attempts. The incompleteness and unful-
filled hopes of his life make him one of medieval Europe's most fascinat-
ing and troubling personalities.
Postscript
Since writing this article in the fall of 1972 I have been happy to find
a similar approach to Anselm in Sister Benedicta Ward's introduction
to her excellent translation of The Prayers and Meditations of Saint
Anselm (Penguin Classics: Harmondsworth, 1973).
Another recent attempt to understand a medieval personality is John
F. Benton's introduction to his translation of Guibert of Nogent's Me-
moirs: Self and Society in Medieval France (Harper, 1970). One of our
most learned and brilliant medieval scholars, Jean Leclercq, has given
his blessing to this type of investigation in an article, "Modern Psychology
and Interpretation of Medieval Texts", Speculum, 1973.
In America this approach has been baptized psychohistory and has
come under attack for its narrowness and construction of elaborate
theories on indirect evidence. I have tried not to reduce Anselm to a
case in psychohistory. In this paper I have looked at one side of him,
the most private. Any full understanding of the man would necessitate
the kind of multifaceted historical investigation Southern has made in
his Saint Anselm and his Biographer.
Finally I should like to thank John Baldwin of the John Hopkins
University, Leif Grane and Niels Skyum-Nielsen of Copenhagen Uni-
versity, and Jacob Jervell of Oslo University for their help and in-
spiration.