MCGUIRE, P. Love, Friendship and Sex in The Eleventh Century The Experience of Anselm

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Love, friendship and sex in the eleventh century: The

experience of Anselm
Brian Patrick McGuire
Published online: 30 Jun 2010.
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
Love, friendship and sex in the eleventh century:

The experience of Anselm
BRIAN PATRICK MCGUIRE

Downloaded by [University of Dayton] at 16:08 09 January 2015
In trying to find meaning, purpose, and direction in currents of life and

thought in the European Middle Ages, the historian is often confronted
by an almost insurmountable problem: a lack or even total absence of
information about the personalities being examined. Such a magisterial
figure as Thomas Aquinas, for example, is known to us almost exclusively
through his theology alone. We have only a few biographical details,
and they present a fragmentary picture at best.1
A typical reaction to this situation is to say that what matters is not
the man but his work, and how that achievement affected other men's
thought and lives. Aquinas would have agreed, for he wrote theology in
order to reduce the self and to move towards union with God. But if,
for other reasons, the historian ignores personalities, he moves easily
over into a watertight compartmentalization of his activity. Let the
theologians take the nature of Aquina's teachings, while the economic
historians look after city life in thirteenth century Italy, and the ecclesias-
tical historians investigate the immediate impact of the Summa Theologiae
on church doctrine and the power of the pope. Somewhere amid these
far-flung efforts, Aquinas as a man who lived, felt, thought, wrote, and
loved, disappears from sight.2
If we leave Aquinas and the sophisticated, already fragmented life of
the thirteenth century, however, and go back to the very threshold of the
High Middle Ages, we find a man whose life and work are such a unity
that we cannot possibly take one without the other. Anselm of Aosta,
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
of Bee, and of Canterbury (1033-1109) becomes flesh and blood for us

not only as a result of Eadmer's biography of him,3 but also because of
a remarkably personal collection of letters from his time at Bee. 4 After
Anselm was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093, the letters devel-
oped into tedious accounts of church business, while previously they had
often contained sparkling assertions of friendship and love. The early
letters, from 1070 onwards, provide a unique witness to the inner life
of Anselm. Because of Eadmer's unique biography, which breaks through
all the conventions of hagiography and presents us with the freshness
of Anselm's own conversation, and because of Anselm's letters, we can
penetrate a certain distance into the heart and mind of Anselm. And by
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.
1. Parents and Early Life

Many of us spend a lifetime, or at least a good part of one, in a constant
inner battle between the forces which seek to cut us off forever from
the influences our parents have had on us, and the forces which try to
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.
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.
Eadmer tells us that this is what happened to Gundulf himself on his

deathbed,10 and it must have been a common practice at the time in
order to assure eternal reward.
Anselm did fall ill, an indication of his almost unlimited ability to
become obsessed with a single intention or purpose. Still the abbot refused
to let him become a monk. Eadmer says nothing about the father's role
in this refusal. Anselm managed to recover from his illness and began
to lose bis ardour about becoming a monk. Eadmer is predictably (but
unhappily for us) vague about what Anselm did during this time of frus-
tration and indecision. He does say that the young man not only lost his
religious zeal but also his interest in studying: "He gradually turned from
study, which had been his chief occupation, and began to give himself
up to youthful amusements."!! This sparse sentence does not present the
young Anselm as anything more or less than a confused adolescent. He
has lost his sense of direction and has given himself over to momentary
distractions. In this period he had the guidance of his mother, who tried
to hold him back from these "amusements", whatever they may have
been.
The semi-final blow to Anselm's childhood world came when Ermen-
berga died. She had been one of those dedicated women with a difficult
husband and a sensitive young son. As long as she was alive, she had
been able to maintain an uneasy balance between Gundulf and Anselm.
But now the two of them faced each other nakedly. Anselm lost any
sense of purpose in his life.12 The father revealed his full contempt for
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.
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
been a facade for contempt shown by a young, arrogant intellectual to-

wards a boorish and uncouth father.
Apart from any speculation about the character of Gundulf and the
reaction of Anselm, Eadmer's narrative leads us to one certain conclusion:
father and son did not get on at all. Not only could Anselm not tolerate
living under the same roof as his father; he could not accept living in
the same district as him. He preferred to renounce his inheritance and
locality, to pack his bags and flee across the Alps to Burgundy, where
his mother's relatives Iived,i3 instead of continuing to live in fear of
his father and what might happen between them.
This total break with family, home, and country had two effects of
immeasurable importance on Anselm's life. After 1056, when he left
Aosta, he sought a father figure, some ultimate authority to which he
could submit himself with a totality that would perhaps compensate for
the absoluteness of his rejection of his first father. This search has the
quality occasionally of a Greek tragedy in which Oedipus-Anselm, having
lost his father (by putting him out of sight), immediately starts looking
for him again in every strong, self-assured man whom he meets.14 It is
thus no surprise that the next time we see Anselm, it is three years later,
and he is an eager, devoted student at the abbey of Bee under the re-
nowned teacher Lanfranc.15 Three years is a big gap, and in his wander-
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.
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-
tionally and intellectually. Anselm never returns to Aosta, for he has

made himself a new home in which he tries to put all the certitude of
mind and heart that he missed as a child. Anselm becomes a truly inter-
national man, for his nation is wherever his fellow monks are. He is
equally at home in England, Normandy, or Italy, for the bonds of
monastic life and friendships are his replacement for the bonds of family
and locality. It is no wonder that almost every time Anselm had a
chance, he wrote letters to friends, relatives, and totally unknown people
urging them passionately to enter a monastery.16 Not only the general
interest of Anselm in the salvation of souls plays a role here. We see
also the Anselm who had left one home and found a far better one.
2. First Years at Bee: 1060-1070

For this decade our dependence on Eadmer's narration is heavy, but no
longer total. The letters of friendship do not begin until after 1070,
when Lanfranc became Archbishop of Canterbury and took a number
of Anselm's companions from Bee with him. The first letters mention
nothing about Anselm's early life at Bee, and so we turn back for the
moment to Eadmer.
First we find that the 26 year old who arrived at Bee in 1059 had
decided, after a period of doubt and uncertainty, to become a monk
there.17 Typically enough, he had others make his decision for him,
among them his teacher Lanfranc, who had come to mean so much to
Anselm that he asserted to Eadmer that if Lanfranc had ordered him to
go into the woods near Bee and remain there until he died, Anselm would
18
See, for example, Letters 35, 44, 117, 121, 134 in Schmitt, m .
17
Life for Anselm, I: v, vi.
have done so willingly and with no questions. The problematic child

has become a paragon of blind obedience.18
From 1060 to 1063 Anselm must have continued his studies under
Lanfranc, but in the latter year his teacher was called away to Caen
to become abbot. Anselm was given his place as prior.19 Eadmer does
not tell us anything about his duties, which do not seem to have interested
Anselm excessively. Instead he concentrates on describing Anselm's
advancement in theology. Also we are given some insight about Anselm's
way with people who came to him for advice, how he opened up their
hearts. Simultaneously he exercised a strict discipline on himself, elim-
inating all worldly comforts, fasting, and working far into the night.20
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.
Intende, infelix, intende sceleris tui horrorem et protende horrificum

terrorem et terrificum dolorem . . .
Ο virginitas, iam non dilecta mea, sed perdita mea; iam non iucunda
mea, sed desperata mea: quo devenisti, in quam foetido, in quam
amaro caeno me dereliquisti!23
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
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.
childhood fears of fire and damnation, can perhaps visualize. He de-

scribes how worms live within the flame of hell and torture sinners by
gnawing on their flesh as the fire burns around them: "What strange
eagerness of gnawing burns within you, whom even the fire of fires
does not burn."25
Finally after the inferno scene comes the plea to God for mercy and
forgiveness. But this is not nearly as vivid and convincing as the pre-
ceding exposition of sin and punishment. Somehow Anselm never gets
beyond asserting the theological truth that God can rescue the sinful
soul: "It is not impossible to your omnipotence, nor unfitting to your
justice, nor unusual for your mercy." 26 There is no final bursting upon
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.
convince Gunhilda to return to her vocation as a nun, Anselm used the

same sexual imagery, this time mingled with the language of bodily
putrefaction in the grave, to warn Gunhilda to return to her nunnery.
The reappearance of this powerful, almost sickening language indicates
that Anselm's revulsion for sexual matters (when they come in the
way of eternal salvation) was never too far from the surface of his
consciousness. In rejecting physical love, Anselm was sticking fast to the
Augustinian tradition within Christianity, and so he was doing nothing
new or different. What interests us is the strength and desperation of
that rejection, which indicate Anselm's own fear of the forces of sex
within himself.
Another witness to Anselm's fear and rejection of sex is provided by

Eadmer in his description of a vision Anselm once had of the difference
between the river of life and the monastic cloister.28 Eadmer does not
tell us when this vision came, whether it was during Anselm's early
period at Bee or after he became abbot in 1078. I think that in the
vividness of its images and the emphasis on sexuality, the vision may
stem from the early period. But this is not as important as the fact that
the two images, with their rich details, represent the picture of life
Anselm developed for himself in the course of his years at Bee.
First he saw the river of life, full of filth. The water is turbulent and
unclean. We can almost see foaming up from within it all the refuse of
humanity: "The water therefore appeared both raging and impure,
disgustingly contaminated with all its (the world's) filth."29 The river
seized for itself whatever it could grab onto and so managed to con-
sume all types of people. Anselm talks of the "so obscene twisting and
turning" of these hopeless inhabitants of pollution. One thinks imme-
diately of the almost instinctual movement of bodies in a passionate act
of sexual intercourse.3*) When Anselm asked these people how they lived,
what they ate and drank, they said they took delight in the water, their
one and only source of life. Immediately we see (Eadmer does not need
to fill in the words) individuals consuming foul-smelling polluted water,
full of urine and excrement. It is important here that Anselm states that
people enjoyed drinking such filth: as a monk and one of the select few
who has a chance of eternal salvation, he sees that secular people enjoy
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.
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
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).
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-
form the boy. B u t instead of disciplining him, he decides by " a certain

holy g u i l e " 3 3 to win over the b o y by flattery. H e allows Osbern to
have privileges that a young man of his age normally would not be given
at B e e . His childish habits are tolerated. Instead of being punished, he
is treated with gentleness. Osbern "rejoices" in this special treatment
and begins to behave better. H e starts to love Anselm and follow his
orders. Anselm responds by giving him a love beyond that which he
shows to any other person at B e e . H e continues to instruct him in the
ways of virtue and goodness.
T h e uncanny power that Anselm gained over O s b e m appears to be
a result of a mixture of many roles. First of all, Anselm relates to Osbern
as father to son, for Anselm is clearly the senior here, more than twice
Osbern's age. Secondly Anselm is master, Osbern disciple in learning
how to become a better monk, more dedicated to the rule. B u t thirdly
there is also a love of friendship here, for Anselm and Osbern are able
to form a perhaps unspoken alliance that survives the jealousy of the
other monks and moreover only grows stronger when Anselm deprives
O s b e m of the extra privileges he had formerly enjoyed. Osbern's con-
version to Anselm and the rule recalls the words o f Alcibiades concern-
ing his relationships to Socrates:
H e (Socrates) is the only person in whose presence I experience a
sensation of which I might b e thought incapable, a sensation of
shame; he, and he alone, positively makes me ashamed o f myself.
T h e reason is that I am conscious that there is n o arguing against
the conclusion that one should d o as he bids, and yet that, whenever
I am away from him, I succumb to the temptations o f popularity. 3 4
32
Life of Anselm, I, x.
33
"Quadam sancta calliditate", Life, I, x, p. 16.
34
Plato, The Symposium, trans, by W. Hamilton (Hannondsworth: Penguin
Books, 1967), p. 102.
Compared to the conviction of Eadmer's narration, however, and to the

witness of Anselm's letters from the 1070's, the comparison of Anselm-
Osbern with Socrates-Alcibiades seems inadequate, for the Greek pair lacks
the emotional intensity and exclusivity of the former. During Osbern's pe-
riod of correction, for example, if the lad went back to his childish ways,
Anselm would reprove him "not only by words but also by blows."35
If Anselm were any other monastic figure from the period, we would
take these words as indicative of the age's harsh methods of discipline.
But Anselm was one of the few at the time who believed in gentle
persuasion and constant good example instead of corporal punishment.36
His use of the latter in Osbern's case indicates that his concern and love
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.
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
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.
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:
But the immensity of mutual love so bound me and this brother,

the son of this widow that, his life demanding this, we became
as two in one. So now that he is dead I want to substitute myself
• as a son for his mother insofar as it would not displease my own
mother or be too much to ask for. 42
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
in the non-physical expression of the latter. This holding back from

an erotic manifestation may actually have increased the intensity of
the feelings. In this context, it is not difficult to understand why Anselm
wanted to become the son of Osbern's mother: this relationship would
in a tiny way prevent total separation from the dead Osbern. The
bonds of affection here are strange and unfamiliar to us. But the
letter is one more indication that Anselm's relationship with Osbern
was one of the central emotional events of his life.
One final question about this letter. What does it tell us about Osbern's
social background? Very little. His family was significant enough to
send him to Bee. From Anselm's letters we hardly get the impression
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:
At ille in conversione ipsorum deo gratias agens omnibus omnia

factus est, ut omnes faceret salvos.46
Despite its pious shell, this statement may be more revealing than any
other in the Life. We see a man shaken by the death of his loved one
trying to revive himself by giving the love he once offered to one person
to anyone and everyone who asked for it. In the monastic situation,
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.
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
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.
4. The Canterbury Circle 1070-1078

In 1070 Lanfranc became Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1078 Anselm
became Abbot of Bee. It is during the years in between that we find
the most intimate part of Anselm's collection of letters. After he became
abbot and before he himself was elected Archbishop of Canterbury in
47
Anselm and his Biographer, 67-76.
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
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.
more nor less."5* This ought to suffice, he says in an almost peremptory

tone. Underneath the surface of these professions of love, so carefully
and artistically phrased, is the hint of impatience that Gundulf expects
Anselm to repeat something he already has said before. For Anselm
this is becoming a nuisance.
The note of impatience disappears, however, in the next letter to
Gundulf (28). Anselm assures him that his love for him will never
change by diminishing but will always be changed by increasing. 5 2
But instead of devoting the rest of the letter to similar assertions of
love, Anselm goes over fairly quickly to practical matters. Until now
all the letters to Gundulf have been pure statements of friendship with
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.
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
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.
find no further instances in which he writes to a number of the Canter-

bury monks in common.
Gundulf apparently remained dissatisfied with Anselm's treatment
of him. Anselm had to come forward with a firmer definition of his
friendship in his next letter (59). Everyone coming from Canterbury
has told Anselm that Gundulf desired letters from him. This is natural,
says Anselm, for Gundulf only wants to share the inner part of Anselm's
mind. But Gundulf should know that the strength of shared affection
cannot be expressed by any senses but can only be known by the heart.
And so how can Anselm be expected to express this feeling to Gundulf
in words?
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
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.
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
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:
Concerning your return which you indicate you desire, I decided to

keep silent about it, until at a more opportune time we can suggest
our desire in a rational way to our revered lord and father arch-
bishop Lanfranc, whose will it is necessary for us to b
The one word which deserves particular attention is "rationabiliter".

Ansehn apparently does not want to request Maurice's return simply
by telling Lanfranc how much they miss each other. This would not be
a sufficiently rational justification. And so he must wait until some other
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.
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.
The letter ends on a note of deep affection. Still, Anselm warns

Maurice to expect only infrequent letters from him because of all the
"sterilia impedimenta" that hold him back (probably a reference to his
practical duties as prior). Nevertheless, Anselm asks Maurice to write
him often, a request he never made to Gundulf. We finish the letter with
the feeling that Anselm's devotion to Maurice was much stronger than
what he felt for Gundulf.
Our preliminary intuition is strengthened by the following letter (43),
which actually was sent to Canterbury at the same time as Letter 42.
Anselm explains the delay in sending the first letter. There are so few
messengers whom he can trust to take letters to Canterbury that he had
delayed sending the first letter. But now a second letter has come from
Maurice, apparently full of concern at Anselm's long silence. Anselm
is clearly worried that Maurice, and along with him the Canterbury
circle, will feel that his silence has been due to lack of concern for the
young monk. He talks of the "incredulous and suspicious" and what
they might conclude in their ignorance of Anselm's practical difficulties.
Anselm's bad conscience might explain why he overcame his hesita-
tions about acting "rationally" and wrote to Lanfranc on Maurice's
behalf.61 Unfortunately we have no copy of the letter Anselm wrote
the archbishop, so we do not know what reasons Anselm used in his
request for Maurice's return. But for once Anselm tried actively to
respond to the needs of a friend.
The remainder of this second letter to Maurice deals with a book on
medicine, De Aphorismo, which Anselm wants to have brought to him
when and if Maurice returns to Bee. The careful and precise instructions
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."
given here indicate that Anselm thinks there is a strong possibility

Maurice will be returning fairly soon. Anselm also tells Maurice that
in correcting texts, he should go about the matter with great care. First
he is to take the text proper, and only afterwards is he to consider the
glosses. Clearly Anselm has a great deal of confidence in Maurice's
abilities to act as his secretary and researcher.
After these two long, detailed letters, we might think that Anselm's
relationship with Maurice is on a completely different level than his
friendship with Gundulf had been. There is more warmth and personal
concern here, and Anselm seems more willing to look after Maurice's
interests. But the tone and contents of the next letter to Maurice (47),
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
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
heard that Maurice is learning grammar from master Arnulf. He is happy

at this news. Because of his own dislike for teaching grammar, he is
afraid Maurice left Bee with insufficient training (another indication that
Maurice has been a pupil of Anselm). If Maurice can work under Arnulf,
he should not feel shy about devoting himself to such an elementary
study and should be open to all of master Amulf's corrections. Just in
case the report Anselm received was incorrect and Maurice is not Ar-
nulf's student, Anselm insists that he read classical authors, especially
Virgil and others whom he did not read at Bee, except for those in
whom "there is any suggestion of baseness".63
When we compare these specific, detailed directions with the total
silence about Maurice's return to Bee, we might attribute the gap to
the possibility of this letter being written before Letter 60. Schmitt says
60 was not written after 1078 (when Anselm became abbot), while 64
was not written after 1077, 6 4 so the letter in which Anselm deals with
Maurice's instruction in grammar may precede the letter discussing the
transfer to Bee.
The next letter (69), however, is equally silent about Maurice's desire
to leave Canterbury. The only difference with Letter 64 is that instead
of limiting himself to Maurice's education, Anselm restates the entire
range of his emotions for Maurice and defends himself from the charge
that his love for him is growing tepid.65 Anselm insists that the distance
between them, instead of decreasing his love, only increases it. The
reason is that the more·Anselm hears how Maurice is loved by others,
the more his appreciation and thus love of Maurice grows. Because
63
Schmitt IIΙ, 64: p. 181 - "exceptis his in quibus aliqua turpitudo sonat".
6 4
Schmitt ΙII, pp. 174, 180.
65
Ibid., p. 189: "Sed ne qua occasione amor ipse ab aliquo putetur tepere, ex-
pedire puto ut aliquando schedulis, quasi scintillis ab invicem emicantibus, videatur
fervere.
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
him "make good" there instead of continuing to bear the responsibilities

that loving and being loved imply.
The remainder of the letter develops the theme that wherever Maurice
may be, he can continue to love and be loved, obviously by others and
without Anselm's active participation:
Truly, you cannot be wherever you have someone you love,

but wherever you may be, you can be loved and be good.67
Was this letter written before or after Letter 60, in which Anselm for
the first time hinted that Maurice might not be able to return to Bee?
Schmitt says that 69 was not written after 1077, and so it could be
anterior to 60. But it does not have to be, for it might be that by a letter
of this kind, Anselm was preparing Maurice in a more obvious way for
what he had already hinted in Letter 60: the impossibility of Maurice's
return to Bee. Anselm concentrates so strongly on telling Maurice to
emphasize the chances for friendship he enjoys at Canterbury that we
have to conclude one of two intentions: either Anselm knows that Mau-
rice will not be given permission and wants to soften the blow, or else
Anselm himself does not want Maurice to come because he has no desire
to resume their relationship.
But still no decision is forthcoming. The next letter (74), deals pri-
marily with the procedures Maurice is to follow after Lanfranc has
corrected Anselm's Monologion. Only in the first paragraph does Anselm
say anything about Maurice's desire to return. The message is far from
68
We have Eadmer's recollection of a sermon Anselm preached to the monks
of Canterbury on his first visit to England. Life of Anselm, I, xxix. See also
Schmitt ΠΙ, 91, to Gundulf on his elevation to the bishopric of Rochester, for a
related theme: the possession of love for others is timeless, while the bestowal
of it upon them is only temporary.
67 Schmitt III, 69: p. 189.
promising. Maurice is in no way to go against the will of those author-

• ities who are set over him; he is to obey them so long as they order that
he be separated from Anselm. Probably in order to dampen what little
enthusiasm Maurice still might have had, Anselm says that even if
Lanfranc concedes Maurice's request, this still might not be enough:
. . . si bénigne tuae favet voluntati, nee domno abbati
displicet et mihi valde placet. Si autem non bénigne
favet supplicanti, sed cum aliquo rancore permittit
extorquenti, nee domino abbati nee mihi placet ut sic redeas.68
As far as Anselm is concerned, Lanfranc has to say yes unconditionally
and without any overt indication of displeasure. If he is reluctant, even
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.
68 Schmitt III, 74: p. 196.

69
Schmitt III, 79: p. 202 - "Quoniam enim te non tam mihi quam deo et tibi
diligo, plus te diligo quia talem te exhibes, ut qui te habent difficile velint dilectum
remittere, quam si facile vellent neglectum dimittere.
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
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.
Canterbury to Bee, it is ironic that there is no mention of any trouble

in having him transferred to a totally different house. But Anselm says
nothing about the change. His only reason for writing Maurice is that
a monk from Bee has fled to the court of the French king. Anselm
gives instructions on how to treat the runaway if he comes to Maurice's
monastery. Anselm's tone is gentle and forgiving, consistent with his
teaching that harsh discipline is useless for disobedient monks. Attached
to this letter is a text discussing a philosophical problem which later
was incorporated in Anselm's De Casu Diaboli. Anselm says that Mau-
rice knows about this text, which he had composed at the request of
some of the brethren at Bee. The text follows, and that is all. No indi-
cation whatsoever, except for the greeting of Maurice as "filius", that

Anselm feels any closeness for him. The affair is over. Anselm has moved
on to other concerns - and to other people.
Why did Anselm treat Maurice in this way? Lacking Maurice's own
letters, we can only see one side of the relationship, but because Anselm
is almost always on the defensive, answering Maurice's questions and
reproaches, we can form a fairly accurate idea of the content of his
letters. Maurice, like Gundulf, had taken Anselm literally and personally
in his words of love. When Anselm did not write, Maurice felt hurt and
must have demanded letters. What he got back was small consolation,
for he must have noticed the hesitation and hedging of Anselm. But the
words of love were still there, in new formulations, so he probably kept
hoping that Anselm would see to his return to Bee. The more Maurice
wrote, the more he became an irritation to Anselm, who, as with Gun-
dulf, was thereby forced to become more specific about the extent and
limitations of his love for Maurice. Gundulf, as we have said, became
Bishop of Rochester in 1077, and his expectations towards Anselm must
have decreased because of the burdens of his office. Thus Anselm could
reach a kind of compromise with him, still writing to him in loving
language, but really only using such terminology as a prelude to dealing
with practical matters.71
With Maurice it was not so easy to separate himself from Anselm.
He was still young. He missed Anselm, the formative influence of his
life, and he wanted to be with him. The warnings and hints of Anselm's
letters were ignored, and so by the time the matter was decided, it
looks as though Anselm's affection for Maurice had diminished to the
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.
vanishing point. It is impossible to say whether or not Anselm cut

himself off completely from Maurice after the last letter, but it is clear
that Anselm's concern and feelings for Maurice had lest their former
ardour.
It is tempting to interpret Anselm's behaviour as that of the loyal
father figure, raising his child to maturity, sending him out into the
world, being solicitous about his first few steps, and then letting the
young man go his own way without further fatherly guidance. But this
way of looking at Anselm ignores his hesitation, his half-promises, and
his final tardy revelation of the truth of the matter to Maurice. Anselm
react more as a man misunderstood by his friend than as a father who
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 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
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.
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:
Quoniam ergo nee scribo sufficienter potest quid nobis invicem

sit, nee ignoranti loquor, his interim omissis oro vobiscum, ut ali-
quando nos invicem videntes oculo ad oculum, osculo ad osculum,
amplexu ad amplexum non oblitum amorem recolamus."
It is not unusual for Anselm when writing to people whom he knows

only slightly or not at all to speak of his love for them in terms of
physical signs of affection. Anselm does so because he is excited by
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:
Qui affectus quantus et quam veras sit cum multum cognoscerem,

quando sese oculo ad oculum, osculo ad osculum, amplexu ad am-
plexum ostenderet... 7 6
To no other monk in the Canterbury circle does Anselm speak so openly

of physical affection. This letter suggests then that Anselm shared some-
thing with Gilbert that was unique and permanent.
The final letter we have from Anselm to Gilbert (142), starts with
the usual assertions of friendship and devotion. He thanks him for his
favours (but does not specify what they were) and says there is no way
he can express his gratefulness. If Gilbert were a stranger, then he
would have to try to find the words, but because Gilbert is his friend,
73
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.
it is not necessary to use words, but only to store up his gratitude in

his heart. Ansehn tells Gilbert about his recent sickness in France and
closes by asking that a certain Richard, who has been with Gilbert, be
protected from his enemies. The tone of the letter is warm, friendly, at
times almost chatty. We do not come away from it with the feeling
that we gain from many of Anselm's later letters to Gundulf : that the
initial words of friendship are only a prelude to a request.
There is nothing in these letters to indicate that Gilbert had come to
replace Osbern. Over a period of perhaps ten years there are only four
letters, hardly evidence of a passionate friendship. The sparseness of
communication coupled with its continued warmth may be due to Gil-
bert's own relaxed personality and even to an understanding of his friend

Anselm. Whatever the reason, Gilbert did not make the demands on
Anselm that Gundulf and Maurice did. Ansehn was not forced to
apologize for not writing, for Gilbert did not keep writing him and
asking why he did not reply. Gilbert was content with hearing very
rarely from Ansehn and getting on with his own affairs first at Canter-
bury and then at Westminster. Gilbert thus gave Anselm exactly what
he needed: a friendship without demands. Paradoxically, because of
this unpassionate quality, Anselm could allow himself to express himself
passionately. There was no danger of misunderstanding.
Anselm's idea and practice of friendship with men thus becomes
clear. He wanted to share his mind and heart with people who would
be affectionate towards him but who would not come to expect too
much of him. He was always on his guard for the moment when a
friend started claiming exclusiveness. Such a friend, if he continued in
his demands, would eventually be dropped. Anselm wanted to love,
but gently and from a distance. For him the individual was only a
stepping stone, and a fragile and dubious one, to the much more
dependable world of unchanging ideas and truths.
5. Contact with Women

A number of Anselm's letters are addressed to women. Because they
provide a strong contrast to his letters of friendship, they are worth
examining. The first letter we have is to Adelaide, whom Schmitt thinks
is a daughter of William the Conqueror (10). Anselm is sending her one
of his meditations and seven of his prayers. He denigrates the quality of
his gift and asks her not to despise it. Then he counsels her to do every-
thing possible to assure the salvation of her soul. His tone is respectful,
kind, a little distant. He is interested enough in the lady to send her his
works and expects her to get something out of them, but by no means
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-
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
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.
been a beautiful and remarkable person if she could move Anselm, by

now aged and an archbishop, to such declarations of loyality and con-
cern. But it was not really Gunhilda who interested Anselm, but the
fact that she had taken the habit of a nun. Anselm did everything in
his power to convince her to return to her nunnery and accept her
vocation. Once again, it is the principle at hand that moves Anselm
to write an emotional letter, not the individual person.
Gunhilda is the exception that proves the rule. Anselm sought friend-
ship and love only from men. Women are for him beings to be respected
and handled with extreme care. The language of his letters to them is
sometimes almost unnecessarily diplomatic. It is not as if he is com-
municating with the enemy. Rather he is dealing with a segment of

humanity that has never captured his fantasy.
6. The Limits of Loving

In the preceding pages I have tried by careful and perhaps tedious anal-
ysis to trace the character and personality of Anselm as it developed
in his relationships with other people from his adolescence and into
his middle age. From Eadmer's Life of Anselm and from Anselm's
letters, we can conclude the following:
1. Having abandoned home and country, Anselm tried to make

another home and country for himself through his life at Bee.
2. Having abandoned bis own father, Anselm looked for a father
in others, and he became a father to many of his monks.
3. In every sense of the phrase except the physical one, he fell in
love with a monk, Osbern, and gave him all his love.
4. After Osbern, Anselm generalized his love. He succeeded to
a certain extent but caused much misunderstanding and probably
hurt many of his friends.
5. Anselm at least had one friend who did not demand much from
him and so was given a great deal: Gilbert Crispin.
6. His relations with women are subdued and distant. Far from
being afraid of them, he hardly bothered with them.
With these conclusions in mind, we can pose two questions. First, on
the personal level, are we to conclude that Anselm was a latent homo-
sexual who kept his physical urges repressed within himself and led a
frustrated life? Secondly, what does the nature of Anselm's personal
experience tell us about the quality of life and the possibilities for the
expression of love in the second half of the eleventh century?
For different reasons, both these questions cannot be answered in any
final sense. The first calls for an intimate, direct knowledge of Anselm
that no source can give us. The second question asks for the dangerous
leap of generalization from one man's personal experience to the char-

acteristics of an historical epoch in Western civilisation. But we must
at least try to answer these questions. We do know a great deal about
Anselm. And we cannot deny his central place in the history of the
European revival which began after 1050. Not only did he contribute
to monasticism and theology. He also was one of the first to articulate
the emotions that underlie both these areas of human endeavour: friend-
ship and love.
a. Homosexuality in Anselm
Despite all that we have said about the non-physical nature of the
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
This youth, "delicatus et pulcherrimus", has decided to become a monk

and "now asserts that he is happier than ever before in his life." 8 1
This "treasurer of Beauvais" turns out to be Ralph, who as a novice
at Bee Anselm wrote to on his first trip to England, in about 1081. Al-
though the letter is very affectionate and Anselm says he will not be
able to rest until he can speak with Ralph, there is not the emotional
urgency here of the letter to William. Anselm is more worried about
the possibility that the devil might try to trick Ralph than overwhelmed
that he will be seeing a beloved one on his return. The implication is
clear. The emotional outpouring of the letter to William is due to An-
selm's desire to convince him to become a monk. But with Ralph, al-
80
81
Schmitt III, 99: pp. 229-30.
ready on his way to becoming a monk, it is more important to give

advice of a paternal kind than to deliver declarations of love. Once
again Anselm shows more enthusiasm for the idea - dedication to the
monastic life - than the person, the beautiful young Ralph. Anselm
is aware how Ralph looks, but this fact is only important to him insofar
as it serves as one of many reasons for convincing a similar youth to
take the same steps as Ralph.
There may have been a time early in Anselm's life when he felt
physically attracted to men, and it may be that the "Deploratio virgini-
tatis male amissae" is a lament on these feelings. But we have no way
of knowing. We can assert with certitude, however, that Anselm pre-
ferred to be with young men, as he himself said.82 This desire probably

helped him to become not only a dependable authority figure at Bee,
but also a good teacher. And there is no doubt that the young monks
with sexual problems came to Anselm, as we can see from a single
incident in Eadmer.83 Out of what we would call obsession but the
eleventh century would consider religious zeal, a monk of Bee had made
a vow not to touch his sexual organs. The result was a terrible pain in
his genitals. Still refusing to break his vow, the monk went to Anselm.
His reaction is full of common sense. He took the man aside (together
with an old monk in order to assure that nothing evil could -be thought)
and had a look at the monk's genitals. According to Eadmer, the pain
went away immediately. Whatever the psychological explanation for this
incident might be, Anselm shows here a frankness and directness in
dealing with a sexual problem that hardly is the sign of someone ob-
sessed with male sexuality.
After Anselm became Archbishop of Canterbury, he became publicly
concerned with the problem of homosexuality. At one of his church
councils, he saw to it that anyone who committed "sodomy" (no specifi-
cation is given, but the word probably refers to homosexual acts in
general) would be severely punished.84
Those committing the crime of sodomy and those voluntarily abetting

them were in this Council condemned and subjected to a heavy
curse until by penitence and confession they proved themselves fit
to receive absolution. Anyone found notoriously guilty of this
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.
crime, so it was decreed, if he be one of the religious order, is not

to be preferred to any further step in the hierarchy; and, if he al-
ready holds such a preferment, is to be deposed from it. If a
layman, he is throughout the whole of England to be deprived of
the status which by law belongs to this rank; and no one except
a bishop is henceforth to presume to give absolution from this
crime to any who have not vowed to live under rule. It was also
decreed that throughout the whole of England such excommunica-
tion should be renewed in all churches every Sunday.
The weekly renewal of the decree of excommunication in all churches
Anselm decided not to enforce "for the time being". This is the only
decision of the council that Anselm immediately made milder. If he had
been obsessed with the thought of homosexuality, he would certainly

have wanted this decree to be applied with the utmost rigour.
Anselm may have been concerned with homosexuality not because
of the desire in himself but because of goings-on at the court of Wil-
liam Rufus. Just after Anselm was consecrated archbishop, he preached
against long hair at court.85 He asked Rufus for a council to rectify evils,
which were primarily "the most shameful crime of sodomy" and illicit
marriages between persons of kindred blood.86 Rufus ordered Anselm
to "say no more about it", but the problem clearly occupied Anselm for
a number of years until he could bring it up at the Council of London.
The monastic historian William of Malmesbury says that at Rufus's
court, young men were expected to compete with women for softness
of body. They walked about in the nude and tried to "break their step
with a licentious gesture".87 This anecdote appears in William's Gesta
Regum Anglorum, finished in 1125. Because William wrote more than
twenty years after the time of Rufus, we might be tempted to dismiss
his story as distorted court gossip. But Orderic Vitalis also refers to
homosexuality at court,88 and even though he too wrote in the 1120's
and later, the agreement of his description with that of William lends
some credence to the tatter's story.
Anselm's remarks and those of William and Orderic point to a general
acceptance and perhaps encouragement of homosexual behaviour by
Rufus. Anselm with his concern for following the moral law without
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.
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:
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
Although these references to homosexuality are from the last period

in Anselm's life, they are still valuable because they are consistent with
the evidence of the letters and of Eadmer's biography. Anselm loved
men, but the physical desires that this love may have created never
seem to have become a problem for him. Perhaps the most dependable
evidence we have for this assertion is the simple fact of his silence about
the matter. If Anselm had been afraid of .his sexual inclinations, then
he would have tried to eliminate from the declarations of affection so
common in his letters any sexual interpretation. He would have had to
protest the innocence of his desires, as Ailred of Rievaulx did in the
next century.91 But Anselm did not have to plead his innocence and
purity, for the possibility of impurity in his desires never came to the
surface of his mind. Anselm's very naivety about kissing and being to-
gether with his beloved monks indicates that homosexual contact with
men was not on his mind.
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.
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,
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.
b. Anselm and Love in the Late Eleventh Century

More than once in the preparation of this paper, I have come up against
passages in Anselm and Eadmer that I have been unable to explain.
Anselm is so full of contradictions of intention and feeling. At one
moment he loves fiercely; at the next he cannot even be bothered to
write a good friend. By trying to grasp the qualities of Anselm's mind,
we have made some progress in seeing Anselm as a human being who
wanted to love and be loved and yet was very much afraid of the
responsibilities of such love.
With this bundle of contradictory feelings Anselm could fit into any
age. Simultaneous desire for love and fear of it must be one of the main-
springs of human activity. But Anselm also belongs to his own period,
for his dilemmas are representative of a transitional age, in which new
forms of language, human grouping, and idealism were coming forth.
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.
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.
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.
in his treatise On Spiritual Friendship by sharply distinguishing between

physical alliances between persons and the true emotion of friendship.
He believed, with a confidence so typical of the twelfth century, that
friendships, if they were of the right kind, would not upset the order
of the monastic community.
In Ailred we have left Anselm far behind, for we have entered into
a world of friendship and love that Anselm could never have allowed
himself. Despite the occasionally neurotic undertones of Anselm's treat-
ment of his friends, there is something splendidly lonely and amazing
in his combination of self-isolation and involvement with other people
after Osbem's death. Anselm wanted to give himself to others, but he
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.

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Studia Theologica - Nordic Journal of Theology

Love, friendship and sex in the eleventh century: The

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Love, friendship and sex in the eleventh century:

BRIAN PATRICK MCGUIRE

In trying to find meaning, purpose, and direction in currents of life and

of Bee, and of Canterbury (1033-1109) becomes flesh and blood for us

1. Parents and Early Life

Eadmer tells us that this is what happened to Gundulf himself on his

been a facade for contempt shown by a young, arrogant intellectual to-

tionally and intellectually. Anselm never returns to Aosta, for he has

2. First Years at Bee: 1060-1070

have done so willingly and with no questions. The problematic child

Intende, infelix, intende sceleris tui horrorem et protende horrificum

childhood fears of fire and damnation, can perhaps visualize. He de-

convince Gunhilda to return to her vocation as a nun, Anselm used the

Another witness to Anselm's fear and rejection of sex is provided by

form the boy. B u t instead of disciplining him, he decides by " a certain

Compared to the conviction of Eadmer's narration, however, and to the

But the immensity of mutual love so bound me and this brother,

in the non-physical expression of the latter. This holding back from

At ille in conversione ipsorum deo gratias agens omnibus omnia

4. The Canterbury Circle 1070-1078

more nor less."5* This ought to suffice, he says in an almost peremptory

find no further instances in which he writes to a number of the Canter-

Concerning your return which you indicate you desire, I decided to

The one word which deserves particular attention is "rationabiliter".

The letter ends on a note of deep affection. Still, Anselm warns

given here indicate that Anselm thinks there is a strong possibility

heard that Maurice is learning grammar from master Arnulf. He is happy

him "make good" there instead of continuing to bear the responsibilities

Truly, you cannot be wherever you have someone you love,

promising. Maurice is in no way to go against the will of those author-

68 Schmitt III, 74: p. 196.

Canterbury to Bee, it is ironic that there is no mention of any trouble

cation whatsoever, except for the greeting of Maurice as "filius", that

vanishing point. It is impossible to say whether or not Anselm cut

Quoniam ergo nee scribo sufficienter potest quid nobis invicem

It is not unusual for Anselm when writing to people whom he knows

Qui affectus quantus et quam veras sit cum multum cognoscerem,

To no other monk in the Canterbury circle does Anselm speak so openly

it is not necessary to use words, but only to store up his gratitude in

bert's own relaxed personality and even to an understanding of his friend

5. Contact with Women

been a beautiful and remarkable person if she could move Anselm, by

municating with the enemy. Rather he is dealing with a segment of

6. The Limits of Loving

1. Having abandoned home and country, Anselm tried to make

leap of generalization from one man's personal experience to the char-

This youth, "delicatus et pulcherrimus", has decided to become a monk

ready on his way to becoming a monk, it is more important to give

ferred to be with young men, as he himself said.82 This desire probably

Those committing the crime of sodomy and those voluntarily abetting

crime, so it was decreed, if he be one of the religious order, is not

been obsessed with the thought of homosexuality, he would certainly

Although these references to homosexuality are from the last period

b. Anselm and Love in the Late Eleventh Century

in his treatise On Spiritual Friendship by sharply distinguishing between

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