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Anselm of Canterbury and the Language of Perfection

The Proslogion in Context Anselm of Canterbury is the typical monastic philosopher, so much so that his principal contribution to the philosophical tradition is today most easily available in English dress as part of an anthology of his prayers and meditations.' This is as it should be. Anselm's life is unintelligible except in terms of search for transcendence, itself regarded as the heart and goal of the metaphysical enterprise by traditional philosophy in the West. At the same time, his philosophy cannot be placed until we recognize that we are dealing with a monk, a man of prayer and brotherhood. In his prayers which are formal and highly structured but nevertheless deeply felt set pieces that initiated a fresh devotional style in the Latin Church, it is characteristic of Anselm, as Professor Sir Richard Southern has pointed out, that he 'moves from inertia to a vivid apprehension of the being and love of God'.2 This also happens to be the programme of his philosophical masterpiece, the Proslogion, which he wrote in a single gust of inspiration in 1078. Anselm was fortunate in his biographer, a member of what became eventually his own monastic family at Christ Church, Canterbury." Eadmer's account of the political events of Anselm's episcopate, the Historia Novorum, has been hailed as 'the first major Latin historical work in England since Bede and ... one of the greatest achievements of Anglo-Norman historiography'. 4 In a more personal chronicle, the De Vita et Conversatione Anselmi Archiepiscopi Cantuarensis, Eadmer gives us a childhood image of Anselm which is evidently meant to serve as a parable of the whole man. In his childhood in the Alpine foothills Anselm imagined heaven perched atop the snow-capped mountains around Aosta: once in a dream, he scaled them and was graciously received at