[In the following excerpt, Mews concentrates on the text and arguments of Anselm's Epistola de Incarnatione Verbi, a polemical treatise aimed against Roscelin of Compiègne's conception of the Trinity.]

The solid reputation of St Anselm as thinker and saint could scarcely be more different from the few hazy details commonly remembered about Roscelin of Compiègne.¹ Was not St Anselm a deeply spiritual monk determined to explain his religious faith in terms of reason rather than of written authority? The contrast is often drawn between a saint who was also a sophisticated intellectual and a secular minded logician like Roscelin of Compiègne, whose attempt to apply secular reasoning to the doctrine of the Trinity resulted in nothing short of heresy. Was he not, as St Anselm implied, a leading exponent of the nominalist heresy that there were no eternal realities beyond the evanescent categories of human language? In any history of philosophy in which he is mentioned, Roscelin is remembered as someone who challenged philosophical and religious authority, but without anywhere near the success of his most famous pupil, Peter Abaelard.

These stereotypes owe much to the way St Anselm was able to commit his reflections on language and theology to writing and become quickly recognized as the outstanding intellectual of the Latin Church in the late eleventh and early twelfth century. He had the ear of the Pope when he wrote a treatise De incarnatione uerbi, condemning the absurd and dangerous argument of Roscelin of Compiègne, who was reported to maintain that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit had to be three separate things if the Father did not become incarnate with the Son in the person of Jesus Christ. Anselm reminded the Pope that as a logician Roscelin held the equally absurd belief that universal substances were in Roscelin's view no more than “the puff of an utterance”—flatum uocis. Anselm's rhetoric has been all the more persuasive given that Roscelin seems to have left us no major treatise to put his side of the argument. The only document so far successfully attributed to him is a letter to Peter Abaelard, accusing his former pupil in no uncertain terms not just of despicable ingratitude towards his master, but of heresy in the exposition of Christian doctrine.²

Despite an occasional attempt to re-evaluate the very scant and almost uniformly hostile surviving testimony about Roscelin as a thinker, no historian has been able to escape the opacity of the historical record with regard not just to Roscelin but to intellectual life in the late eleventh century in general. Anselm of Bec has been the only figure of the period to have a mind and feelings which we can explore with a degree of intimacy.³ Much of our problem has to do with the stubborn anonymity of texts which may be significant, but which have hitherto eluded efforts at firm identification of their author and specific milieu. In the studies which follow we shall present some new or relatively little studied texts relating to intellectual life in the late eleventh century, making suggestions as to their provenance and authorship, in the hope that they may deepen our understanding of a period of dramatic intellectual ferment. We shall begin by looking more closely at Anselm's treatise against Roscelin, the Epistola de incarnatione uerbi, addressed to Pope Urban II.

1. THE EPISTOLA DE INCARNATIONE UERBI AD URBANUM PAPAM.

Anselm's De incarnatione uerbi has never attracted the same critical attention as some of his more famous writings. Philosophers have long been fascinated by those chapters of the Proslogion which seem to offer a proof for the existence of God, while theologians have admired the Cur deus homo for its exposition of the redemption in terms of reason alone. Anselm is generally remembered as a calm, meditative thinker whose natural environment was that of the cloister, rather than as a disputatious polemicist of the schools like Roscelin of Compiègne or Peter Abaelard. Among Anselm's writings the small treatise is often seen as marking a short uncomfortable moment between the philosophical tranquillity of over thirty years at Bec (1059-1092) and the firm intellectual authority of his time as archbishop of Canterbury (1093-1109). The polemical tone of the De incarnatione uerbi, first drafted in his last years at Bec and then rewritten shortly after he had been appointed archbishop, fits awkwardly into an image of Anselm as a progressive and meditative thinker. Roscelin must have been a singularly unattractive figure to merit such condemnation from a philosophical saint.

Anselm was, however, profoundly troubled by the ideas that he thought Roscelin represented. As a result of the pioneering work of Dom André Wilmart and Dom Franciscus Schmitt, we have learnt that five different versions survive of the De incarnatione uerbi.⁴ The earliest (DIV¹) Anselm drafted sometime between 1090 and 1092 while he was still abbot of Bec, in response to a report that Roscelin was arguing that the three persons of the Trinity had to be distinguished as three things. Apparently he claimed that if the divine persons were not three separate res, the Father must have become incarnate with the Son—and that Anselm would concede this in debate. The abbot of Bec initially prepared an open letter (known through only a single copy: London, Lambeth Palace 224, ff. 121^v-124^v [W]) for a forthcoming council at Soissons, where Roscelin was obliged to abjure all heretical views on the Trinity.⁵ Soon after being appointed archbishop of Canterbury (6 March 1093) Anselm transformed and greatly lengthened his earlier text into a letter to Pope Urban II (DIV²), countering ideas that Roscelin was continuing to propagate after supposedly abjuring heresy at this council, or so he explains in its revised introduction.⁶

Schmitt also argued intermediate recensions were preserved in three other manuscripts, all twelfth-century.⁷ The Hereford Cathedral MS P.1.i, ff. 154^v-155^v(H) comprised in his view three fragments of the De incarnatione uerbi: the first two were of its introduction (the first closer to that of DIV¹ as printed in 1, 281.3-283.25, the second identical to that in DIV² in 2, 7.5-9.11, almost identical to 1, 283.26-284.29), the third a preliminary version of chapters 8-10 in DIV² (2, 22.22-28.3). DIV¹ had extended only as far as the beginning of ch. 6 in DIV².⁸ He also found a complete text of DIV² in Vatican, Reg. lat. 452, ff. 131^r-141^r(V) and Paris, Bibl. nat. lat. 2479, ff. 1^r-10^r(P) slightly earlier than the most widely disseminated version, and which may have been the one originally sent to Urban II.⁹

Schmitt did not notice another recension of chapters 10-11 of the De incarnatione uerbi, occurring in three other manuscripts (none of which he notes in his 1968 list of manuscripts surveyed):¹⁰

A Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal 269, ff. 107^r-108^r (s. xii), introduced with the rubric Anselmus. Quod magis conuenit filio incarnatio quam patri uel spiritui sancto.

B London, British Library, Royal 5 E xiv, ff. 81^rb-82^va (s. xiii), untitled, but within a collection of the works of St Anselm.

C Cambridge, U.L. Dd. 1.21, f. 147^rb-147^vb (s. xiv), untitled, but within a collection of the works of St Anselm.

The text begins in the same way as ch. 10 of DIV² (apart from an autem added after Cur in all three recensions): “Cur deus magis assumpserit hominem in unitatem persone filii, quam in unitatem alicuius aliarum personarum?” However, while the second sentence in CDM (as we shall subsequently call the text, after its incipit) begins with a factual response, “I think this reasoning should be given: (Hanc reddendam rationem existimo:)”, Anselm begins the equivalent sentence in DIV² with an apology for digressing from the subject matter of the treatise. He explains that another question had come to mind: “Quamvis in hac epistola nostrum hoc non fuerit propositum, tamen quoniam huius rei mentio se obtulit, aliquam reddendam rationem existimo.” The remaining first half of CDM is identical to the text of ch. 10, as found in the Hereford MS, a passage radically revised in VP and then touched up slightly in the final version. The remaining part of CDM, although touching the same subject matter as ch. 11 in VP and the final version, is significantly different from Schmitt's published text of the chapter. Is CDM a disciple's modification of this part of the De incarnatione uerbi, or an authentic draft of chapters 10-11 by its author?

Before answering this question, we need to examine Schmitt's analysis of different recensions of the work. He thought that the scribe of H had copied out in continuous form fragments of three originally separate recensions, which he titled Rec. I, 2, Rec. II (indeterminate recension) and Rec. II, 1. respectively.¹¹ The second fragment he was inclined to think had been extracted from a complete text of DIV², even though the third fragment certainly contained a preliminary version of chs. 8-10. He did not explain why the copyist should wish to make such an apparently arbitrary selection from three different copies of DIV. Such an analysis seems unnecessarily complicated. For our discussion it is simpler to consider all three fragments in H as part of a single recension, transitional between DIV¹ and DIV², and a sketch for a future revision rather than a series of extracts from separate, larger wholes.

Taken on its own, the text of CDM reads as a separate essay on why God assumed manhood in the person of the Son rather than of any other divine person. There would be too many “inconveniences” if it were otherwise, compromising the evident equality of the three persons. CDM has no direct invective against the absurdity of Roscelin's trinitarian argument, as in ch. 9 of DIV². In H this essay about the rationale for the incarnation in the Son occurs within a longer, although still incomplete text of the De incarnatione uerbi. Anselm is obliged to include an apology for diverting from the main subject matter of the treatise “because it had come to mind”. Only at the end of ch. 11 in DIV²—to which there is no parallel in CDM—does Anselm abruptly return to Roscelin: “As to the writings of him to whom I am replying in this letter, I was not able to see anything beyond what I have mentioned above [i.e. the argument reported to him]”.¹² In chapters 12-16, found only in VP and the final version, Anselm continues his earlier assault against any attempt to identify plural substances within the divine nature.

The second part of CDM continues with a version of ch. 11 quite different from that found in either VP or the final form of DIV². It opens with an apology of touching honesty, for which there is no equivalent in other versions of DIV:

“Why however or by what beautiful and necessary reason or rational necessity did the supreme majesty—since he is capable of everything by will alone—assume our nature with our weakness and mortality without sin to conquer the devil and to free man? If I included this—which many are asking—within this letter, the digression would be too long. Sometime however, if divine grace gives any effect to my will, because it has deigned to show this to me, I want to write ‹on this›, driven by the prayers of the many who have heard this from me.”¹³

The voice echoes closely that of Anselm in the opening chapter of the Cur deus homo.¹⁴ The author of CDM broaches an issue that he is anxious to talk about—why should God have assumed mortal nature—but realises that this is not the subject matter of the letter which he is writing. The reference to the present text as an epistola within CDM is as clear an indication as any that it is written as a draft for the Epistola de incarnatione uerbi. Having voiced this thought on a subject about which many people ask, the author of CDM then continues with another question about the incarnation—the adequacy of Boethius's refutation of the Nestorian argument that there were two persons in Christ.

If we compare the subsequent text of CDM with that of ch. 11 in the second recension in VP (not significantly modified in the final form), we see that much fairly tortuous technical questioning in CDM has been radically abbreviated when incorporated within the larger work. …

CDM is not the work of a less sophisticated disciple amplifying the thought of Anselm, even though stylistically DIV² is clearly the superior text. A wordy, but thoughtful preamble about a possible question about Christ's nature “against our faith” needing to be dissolved rationally is reduced in DIV² to a terse: “it seems not without use to me to say something”. The author of CDM explicitly criticises the adequacy of Boethius' reasoning in the Contra Nestorium et Euticen: “Although Boethius argues against Nestorius that Christ does not exist out of two persons, he does not seem to me to destroy the reason by which he [Nestorius] asserts that there are two persons in Christ.” In DIV² this is turned into an unintimidating “Certain people say”. While such explicit critical citation of a traditional authority is unusual in Anselm's published writing, it is complicated to argue that someone else has here made explicit the complex tissue of authorities to whom Anselm alludes so indirectly in the De incarnatione uerbi. CDM makes more clear what is only indirectly evident in the final text, namely that Anselm glimpsed an indirect parallel between the argument of Nestorius about Christ and that of Roscelin on the Trinity. His preferred solution went beyond that of Boethius by focussing on common semantic problems of unity and plurality.

2. THE MAKING OF THE DE INCARNATIONE UERBI.

The relationship of CDM to Anselm's treatise is so complex that it must be an authentic draft of ch. 10-11 of the De incarnatione uerbi. (While the numbering of chapters in DIV is Schmitt's device, they do correspond to authentic dividing marks in the manuscript tradition.) In this draft Anselm explicitly identifies the common ground of any discussion about unity and plurality as philosophical definition of an individual (in fact from Porphyry) as that which is distinct in its collection of properties: “Philosophi utique diffiniunt esse indiuiduum, cuius proprietatum collectio non est in alio eadem, id est non dicitur de alio.”¹⁵ Although the definition of an individual might suggest that as the properties of God are different from those of man, there have to be two individuals in Christ, there is such a connection of God and man in Christ that one cannot say that God and man are two individual things. One can only say of a tongue that it makes speech and of a hand that it makes writing (and not a tongue writing or a hand speech), even though only one person is involved. Apparently contradictory statements about Peter being buried in Rome and being in Paradise can both be true if one distinguishes whether each signifies secundum spiritum or secundum se. Anselm's argument in CDM relied on a strict application of the semantic principles articulated in the De grammatico. It was not so far removed from the argument Roscelin claimed to have heard Anselm use, that the three divine persons were predicated of God in the same way as albus, iustus and grammaticus were predicated of an individual man.¹⁶

In DIV² Anselm summarizes a rather long argument into a single brief paragraph. He also leaves out the reference to philosophi as the source of the definition of an individual as that which has a distinct collection of properties, perhaps as being too ‘academic’ in tone. He prefers instead to begin with a more concrete illustration that the proper name “Jesus” like “this man” or “that man” referred to a particular collection of properties. Only at the end of the paragraph does he conclude with a definition, seemingly his own but in fact based on Porphyry: “Diversarum vero personarum impossibile est eandem esse proprietatum collectionem, aut de invicem eas praedicari.” As with so many Augustinian ideas, Anselm took a traditional thought (in this case of Porphyry), and presented it in his own words as a reflection evident to reason. Even though there is more explicitly philosophical semantic discussion in CDM, the revised form of ch. 11 in DIV² still stresses as an underlying theme that one must pay attention to the particular mode of signification of a phrase like “Son of God”, different from that of “Son of Man”, albeit expressed in more compact form. The smooth, deceptively simple philosophical style of Anselm did not spring automatically from his pen. It emerged only from careful pruning of initially elaborate and complicated reflections generated by a sophisticated and subtle mind.

If the draft CDM was incorporated into the longer text of DIV in the Hereford MS, why is the latter recension still so manifestly incomplete? Its text is too incomplete to make sense as another draft of a projected revision. In H Anselm sketches out a revised introduction, modifying or leaving out certain phrases. Thus instead of saying “I have recently been informed by a letter that …”, he writes “It is known to many that …” His earlier admission that “I knew this man [Roscelin] because he is my friend”, he left out altogether as too compromising.¹⁷ Anselm did not include the remaining part of DIV¹ in his draft H, because he was reasonably satisfied with its substance. Only technical details would be modified in the writing out of VP. Chapters 8-10 in H are written to bridge what he had already written in DIV¹ to the new ideas sketched out in CDM, introducing the idea that it was quite possible for one divine person to be in man, and the other not in man.¹⁸ That part of CDM which Anselm felt still needed revision (equivalent to ch. 11), he did not copy out into H. Only with the writing out of VP, very likely the recension sent to Urban II, did Anselm knit together a text based on H (introductory), DIV¹ (ch. 2-6.2-10), H (ch. 8-10) and CDM (ch. 10-11), simplifying ch. 11 significantly.¹⁹

He also added a new section to where DIV¹ left off (= ch. 6.10) recommending a reader who wished to understand by “necessary reasons” without scriptural authority how God was both a single nature and three person—a doctrine firmly taught by the Fathers and above all by Augustine—to consult his Monologion and Proslogion. Insisting that in those works—“neither teaching what our doctors did not know, nor correcting what they did not say well, but saying perhaps what they were silent about, which, far from disagreeing with their propositions, coheres with them”—he was only countering those who “deride believers”. He wished to help those who “humbly seek to understand what they firmly believe”. For those who did not want to trouble themselves with reading further, he then supplied a short summary of the ideas mapped out in those earlier works.²⁰ When writing out the complete text in VP Anselm also greatly simplified the subtle argument of CDM's version of c. 11. He left out its criticism of Boethius' Contra Euticen et Nestorium, and then added chs. 12-16 to the text of H. Anselm's major new argument in this final part, was in fact adapted from an analogy suggested by Augustine in a relatively minor work, the De fide et symbolo, although he presented it as his own: that of the Trinity as like a spring from which flowed a river, which then became a lake. All might be called “the Nile”, even though each was also something separate. Anselm emphasised the philosophical aspect of Augustine's analogy, not making any direct identification of one person with the spring or the river, rather making a point about predication, that things could be different while being the same. Only in one sentence did he extend Augustine's image to the Incarnation, in comparing the channel through which the water flowed from its source to the lake to the incarnate Son.²¹ These new passages in the first complete text of the treatise (VP) give the impression of being written in a hurry. He concluded his rather brief discussion of how the Son was born of the Father and the Holy Spirit proceeded from both, as he had begun the section tagged onto DIV¹, by appealing to the authority of Augustine, whose De trinitate could be supplemented by what he had himself said in the Monologion.

Perhaps the most significant change which Anselm made in writing out the letter was to re-address it to Pope Urban II, submitting it for censure and correction if anything was to be found therein contrary to the catholic faith.²² In no earlier treatise had Anselm offered such a dedication to the Pope. Neither Lanfranc nor any other writer against heretical opinions had ever before made such a direct appeal to papal authority, allowing a work to be corrected.²³ This act of personal submission needs to be seen in the light of another change in tone in the introduction, emphasizing the orthodoxy of his position. In VP Anselm deleted his reference to Roscelin's specific charges against himself of doctrinal unorthodoxy (repeated in H), instead emphasising that everything he had said in the Monologion and Proslogion conformed totally to what Augustine taught. He avoided any hint that he (or Lanfranc for that matter) might ever have sympathised with any aspect of Roscelin's teaching. By appealing directly to the Pope Anselm was presenting himself as a totally loyal son of the Church, defending the catholic faith from a pernicious intellectual, one of a breed of “modern pseudo-logicians or rather heretics of dialectic, who do not think universal substances to be anything but the breath of an utterance, say they understand a colour as nothing other than a body, nor wisdom of man as anything other than the soul who had to be excluded from discussion of all spiritual questions”.²⁴ In rhetorical language Anselm repeated such claims of a radical gulf between himself and Roscelin (never named explicitly except as “a certain cleric in France”) to an audience which now included the Pope.

When he came to writing out this new version of the De incarnatione uerbi, Anselm had no further knowledge of why or how Roscelin had arrived at his conclusion about the three divine persons as three res.²⁵ He still thought that it must be a consequence of inflated intellectual self-esteem and spiritual blindness. He was particularly upset by Roscelin's apparent failure to recognize that the word “thing” had a different meaning dependent on its context. The only extra information Anselm admits to (not present in H, but found in VP) is that after he had been captured for the episcopate he had heard “the author of the aforesaid novelty, persevering in his opinion, say that he had only abjured what he used to say because he feared being killed by the people”. Roscelin apparently justified his approach by saying that “the pagans defend their Law, the Jews defend their own Law; therefore we Christians ought to defend our faith.”²⁶ Yet, as the isolated promise in CDM to write a work about the reason for the Incarnation makes clear, Anselm was already thinking about bigger issues than Roscelin's argument when he wrote out the complete text of DIV². His heart was set on the theme of why God should have become man, an issue that touched on the very essence of the human condition, not just on the language one should use about God.

Anselm touched up his letter to Urban II only slightly after finishing the version VP (very likely that sent to the Pope). The biggest change was the title. Only in this modified version, the one most widely diffused in the manuscript tradition, is the subject matter of the letter to the Pope defined as De incarnatione uerbi.²⁷ The letter in fact says relatively little about the incarnation of the Word, as Roscelin's argument concerned the nature of the Trinity. As late as 1097-98, perhaps four years after its redaction, Malchus, bishop of Waterford, asked Anselm for that book “composed about the Holy Trinity and commended by apostolic authority.”²⁸ One reason why Anselm gave the title De incarnatione uerbi to the revised final version is suggested by the draft CDM. Here he was concerned with a question raised indirectly by Roscelin's argument: why did God assume man in the Son rather than in any other person? Roscelin had maintained that it was logically necessary to distinguish the three persons as three things; otherwise the incarnation would have involved the whole Trinity.²⁹ After rejecting Roscelin's conclusion in DIV¹ as palpably absurd, Anselm then tried in the draft CDM to explain why God became incarnate in the Son and not in the other persons. We see in its second part that he was here groping towards a way of explaining how God and man could co-exist in the Son, going beyond the arguments of Boethius in the Contra Euticen et Nestorium. As the apology added to the beginning of CDM in H makes clear, Anselm was aware that this was not the proper subject of the letter. Only in CDM does Anselm promise to write sometime in the future about the “beautiful and necessary reason and rational necessity” as to why God should have assumed human nature with its weakness and mortality. The promise confirms Southern's argument—based on comparison of passages in DIV² with Gilbert Crispin's Disputatio Iudei et Christiani—that Anselm was already starting to think about the reasons why God became man in the winter of 1092/93, spent in England prior to being appointed archbishop of Canterbury 6 March 1093.³⁰ After he had been consecrated archbishop (4 December 1093), he sent for Boso, his disciple at Bec since 1090, to come to Canterbury. Boso's stimulation was instrumental in writing the Cur Deus homo, a work he says he began in England at a time “of great tribulation of heart”.³¹ Anselm completed it in 1098 at Sclavia (modern day Liberi), in southern Italy, while staying at a mountain-top manor belonging to John, abbot of Telese, the Roman cleric and former monk of Bec who first informed Anselm about the dangerous opinions of Roscelin of Compiègne.³²

Notes

1. I am indebted to the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes, whose fichier led me to the British Library manuscript with which this study is largely concerned, to the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton) for enabling me to research and write this paper, and particularly to Giles Constable for his prudent comments. I am also grateful to Irène Rosier for checking my transcription of the Arsenal manuscript in situ.

2. The letter was discovered by J. A. Schmeller in the Bavarian State Library, Munich Clm 4643, ff. 93^v-99^r (s. xii) and published with arguments for its authenticity in the Abhandlungen der philosophisch-philologischen Klasse der königlichen bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 5 Bd. 3 Abt. (Munich, 1849), 187-210; it was re-edited by J. Reiners as an appendix to his study, Der Nominalismus in der Frühscholastik. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Universalienfrage im Mittelalter, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie [und der Theologie] des Mittelalters, Bd 8.5 (Münster, 1910), pp. 62-80.

3. By far the most important attempt to bring together the known testimony as it stood in 1911 was that of François Picavet, whose Roscelin, philosophe et théologien d'après la légende et d'après l'histoire (2nd revd ed. Paris, 1911) was a much enlarged version of a study of the same title published in Paris in 1896. The few other studies that have been produced since then rely on the same limited evidence and have been very lacking in historical context: cf. Heinrich Christian Meier, Macht und Wahnwitz der Begriffe. Der Ketzer Roscellinus (Aalen, 1974); Eike-Henner W. Kluge, “Roscelin and the Medieval Problem of Universals”, Journal of the History of Philosophy 14 (1976), 405-14. Medieval nominalism has its own not inconsiderable literature; for most recent views, see Calvin G. Normore, “The Tradition of Medieval Nominalism”, in Studies in Medieval Philosophy, ed. John F. Wippel, Studies in the Philosophy and the History of Philosophy 17 (Washington, 1987) and William J. Courtenay's “Nominales and Nominalism in the Twelfth Century” to appear a volume being published by Vrin in honour of Paul Vignaux. I am indebted to Courtenay for allowing me to see this article in typescript, as for the same reason to Yukio Iwakuma, who is preparing an article on “Vocales, or early nominalists”.

4. André Wilmart edited the hitherto unknown initial version in “Le premier ouvrage de saint Anselme contre le trithéisme de Roscelin”, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 3 (1931), 20-36. Franciscus Salesius Schmitt edited both this text and the final version (DIV¹ and DIV², as the two major recensions will subsequently be referred to) quite independently in the same year along with other relevant documents in S. Anselmi Epistola de incarnatione verbi; accedit prior eiusdem opusculi recensio nunc primum edita, Florilegium Patristicum 28 (Bonn, 1931). He edited the two recensions again in S. Anselmi Opera vol. 1 (Seckau, 1938), pp. 281-90 and vol. 2 (Rome, 1940), pp. 1-17, volumes reprinted as the first two of a six volume series of the Opera (Edinburgh, 1946-61), reprinted again with an important Prolegomena seu Ratio Editionis and corrections in S. Anselmi Opera (Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt, 1968), 2 vols. Schmitt's editions of DIV¹ and DIV² have been photographically reproduced with accompanying notes and translation into French by Alain Galonnier in L'œuvre de S. Anselme de Cantorbéry, vol. 3 (Paris, 1988), pp. 171-193 and 195-275 respectively. References to Anselm's writing will be to the volume, page and line of the 1946-61 edition, retained in the 1968 reprint.

5. The council is not specifically mentioned in DIV¹, but we know that in Ep. 136 (2, 279-81) he asked Fulco, bishop of Beauvais, asking to carry has autem litteras to the forthcoming council, as much as anything to disassociate himself from any opinion attributed to him by Roscelin. In the Lambeth MS (of which f. 122^r is reproduced by Schmitt facing 1, 282) the treatise is untitled, but addressed as an open letter “Dominis et patribus et fratribus omnibus catholicae et apostolicae cultoribus, qui hanc legere dignabuntur epistolam” (1, 282.3-4)

6. DIV² 2, 4.5-5.6.

7. “Cinq recensions de l'Epistola de incarnatione verbi de s. Anselme de Cantobéry”, Revue bénédictine 51 (1939), 20-36, substantially unchanged as “Die verschiedenen Rezensionen der Epistola de Incarnatione Verbi”, in the 1968 Opera 1, 78*-89*.

8. Schmitt learnt about the Hereford MS from Richard Southern after having prepared the 1938 Seckau edition of DIV¹; consequently the variants to its text in H are to be found in the apparatus to DIV² in vol. 2 (Rome, 1940). On H, see A. T. Bannister, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Hereford Cathedral Library (Hereford, 1927), pp. 96-98. Rodney M. Thomson is preparing a new catalogue of the Hereford Cathedral Library. In none of the MSS of the De incarnatione uerbi are chapter divisions identified by number. Schmitt's numerical divisions are however based on dividing signs within the MS tradition, and consequently will be used for convenience; cf. his notes to Opera 1, 281 and 2, 3.

9. V is our oldest copy (c. 1100, of unknown provenance) of DIV² (f. 133^v illustrated facing Opera 2, 12). The Greek associations of its contents lend weight to Schmitt's thought that this was the copy sent to the Pope, who used the work in his debate with the Greeks at Bari in 1108 according to Eadmer, Historia novorum, ed. Martin Rule, Rolls Series (London, 1884), p. 105. V also contains the Liber Prognosticon of Julian, the Vita Johannis Eleemosynarii of Leontius and the Historia Lausiaca of Palladius. P is from the first half of the 12th century, probably from Canterbury. In both V and P DIV² is followed by Augustine's De doctrina christiana; Catalogue général des manuscrits latins de la Bibliothèque nationale 2 (Paris, 1940), pp. 479-480.

10. Schmitt lists the manuscripts he used in his edition in the 1968 Prolegomena to Opera 1, 213*-225*. For description and bibliography of these three manuscripts, see below, pp. 68-81.

11. “Die verschiedenen Rezensionen”, pp. 79*-86* (see note 4).

12. DIV² (2.30): “De scriptis illius cui respondeo in hac epistola, nihil potui videre praeter illud quod supra posui; sed puto sic rei patere veritatem ex eis quae dixi, ut nulli lateat intelligenti nihil quod contra illam dicitur vim veritatis tenere.”

13. A f. 107^v-108^r, B f. 81^vb-82^ra, C f. 147^va: “Cur autem uel quam pulchra et necessaria ratione siue rationabili necessitate summa maiestas cum omnia sola uoluntate possit, nostram naturam cum infirmitate et mortalitate nostra absque peccato ad uincendum diabolum et liberandum hominem assumpserit, quod utique multi querunt, si huic epistole insererem, nimis longa esset digressio. Aliquando tamen si diuina gratia effectum uoluntati mee tribuerit, quod inde michi dignata est ostendere multorum qui hoc a me audierunt precibus compulsus, scribere desidero.”

14. Cur deus homo I, 1 (2, 47.5-7): “Saepe et studiosissime a multis rogatus sum et verbis et litteris, quatenus cuiusdam de fide nostra quaestionis rationes, quas soleo respondere quaerentibus, memoriae scribendo commendem. ‹ … › (47.11-48.3) Quam quaestionem solent et infideles nobis simplicitatem Christianam quasi fatuam deridentes obicere, et fideles multi in corde versare: qua videlicet ratione vel necessitate Deus homo factus sit, et morte sua, sicut credimus et confitemur, mundo vitam reddiderit, cum hoc aut per aliam personam, sive angelicam sive humanam, aut sola voluntate facere potuerit. De qua quaestione non solum litterati sed etiam illitterati multi quaerunt et rationem eius desiderant.”

15. Isagoge 7.21, transl. Boethii, ed. Laurenzo Minio-Paluello, Aristoteles Latinus 1, 6-7 (Bruges, Paris, 1966), pp. 13.24-14.2: “Individua ergo dicuntur huiusmodi quoniam ex proprietatibus consistit unumquodque eorum quorum collectio numquam in alio eadem erit.”

16. DIV¹ (282.10-15): “Dictum quoque mihi prius fuerat similiter, quia Francigena quidam—hunc autem novi, quia amicus meus est—assereret se a me audisse ita de Deo dici patrem et filium et procedentem a patre et filio spiritum, quomodo albus et iustus et grammaticus et similia de quodam individuo homine.” In translating this passage Galonnier considered that Francigena was the name of a friend different from that of Roscelin, in L'œuvre de S. Anselme 3 (see n. 1), pp. 175 and 193. The reading of this passage in H (omitting Francigena … meus est, as indicated in the apparatus on p. 202 of the Schmitt-Galonnier edition-translation) makes clear that the Francigena is identical to the quodam clerico in Francia, as Richard W. Southern pointed out in Saint Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge, 1963), p. 80 n. 1.

17. DIV¹ (1, 281.4, 11-12; cf. apparatus on 2, 6).

18. DIV² (2, 24.1-2).

19. This construction of the text also explains Schmitt's observation that certain phrases in VP replicate those in DIV¹ (see his apparatus to 2, 12.8-11, 14.21, 16.16, 17.7).

20. DIV¹ (20.11-21.10).

21. DIV² (2, 31.2-33.8), alluding to Augustine's De fide et symbolo c. 8.17 (CSEL [Corpus Scriptorum Ecclasiosticorum Latinorum] 41, p. 18).

22. DIV² (2, 3.2-4.4).

23. G.B. Flahiff, “The Censorship of Books in the Twelfth Century”, Mediaeval Studies 4 (1942), 1-22 did not notice this example of voluntary pre-censorship in DIV². He thought that the earliest known example of a writer to seek approval directly from the Pope (as distinct from any other patron) was Gerhoch of Reichersberg, who asked c. 1150 for Eugenius III to correct his commentary on the Psalms, as well as the archbishop of Salzburg and Otto of Freising (PL 193, 491); three others were Godfrey of Viterbo, Herbert of Bosham and Ralph Niger. Nonetheless such examples of voluntary pre-censorship are extremely rare, prior to the mid twelfth-century. The one earlier example Flahiff thought to be provided by the reason for Abaelard's condemnation at Soissons in 1121, as explained in the Historia calamitatum 11. 848-854, ed. Jacques Monfrin (Paris, 1978), p. 87: “Dicebant [scil. emuli mei] enim ad dampnationem libelli [scil. de unitate et trinitate divina] satis hoc esse debere quod nec romani pontificis nec Ecclesie auctoritate eum commendatum legere publice presumpseram, atque ad transcribendum jam pluribus eum ipse prestitissem; et hoc perutile futurum fidei christiane, si exemplo mei multorum similis presumptio preveniretur.” Flahiff assumed this passage to mean that “the legate was persuaded to condemn the book … solely, it is said, because he had taught this book publically and allowed copies to be made without its being approved by the Pope or by the Church” (art. cit., p. 4 and n. 16). Flahiff's interpretation was cited by Hubert Silvestre as evidence against the authenticity of the Hist. cal. (“L'idylle d'Abélard et Héloïse: la part du roman”, Académie royale de Belgique. Bulletin de la classe des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques, 5^e sér., 71 [1985-5] 183, following John Benton's assumption in the Cluny volume Pierre Abélard-Pierre le Vénérable. Les courants philosophiques, littéraires et artistiques en Occident au milieu du xii^e siècle [Paris, 1975], p. 484). In “Abelard's Mockery of St Anselm”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 41 (1990), 1-23, Michael Clanchy has followed the same assumption that Abaelard's failure to pre-censure his book provided sufficient grounds for its condemnation, arguing that his accusers cited this passage in Anselm's DIV² to persuade the legate. Yet the Latin of Hist. cal. 1.849 says that his critics thought his failure ought to be sufficient, not that it was sufficient. The charge made at Soissons which prompted the archbishop's sentence was that Abaelard had said only God the Father was omnipotent (Hist. cal. ll. 871-4). Flahiff's reading of Hist. cal. is undermined by his much more important general observation (ignored by Clanchy) that such rare examples as survive from the twelfth-century of submission to papal censorship are all voluntary and not legal obligations. Alberic may have thought pre-censorship should be accepted practice and have admired Anselm's precedent in DIV², but this was not the grounds of the actual condemnation at Soissons.

24. DIV² (2, 9.21-10.1): “illi utique nostri temporis dialectici, immo dialecticae haeretici, qui non nisi flatum vocis putant universales esse substantias, et qui colorem non aliud queunt intelligere quam corpus, nec sapientiam hominis aliud quam animam, prorsus a spiritualium quaestionum disputatione sunt exsufflandi.” The passage is taken over from DIV¹ (1, 285.4-7) with the addition in H and DIV² of nostri temporis and immo dialecticae haeretici.

25. DIV² (2, 30.7-9).

26. DIV² (2, 10.19-21): “Dicit, sicut audio, ille qui tres personas dicitur asserere esse velut tres angelos aut tres animas: “Pagani defendunt legem suam, Iudaei defendunt legem suam. Ergo et nos Christiani debemus defendere fidem nostram.”

27. Schmitt notes (apparatus to 2, 3.1) that in P the treatise is just known as an epistola to Pope Urban II; no titles occur in W, H or P. Only one MS (Munich, Clm 21248, from Ulm; early twelfth century) adds to the title “contra blasphemias Ruzelini Compendiensis”. The title De fide trinitatis, retained by Migne in PL 158, 259-84, was first given by Gerberon in his 1675 edition without any manuscript foundation.

28. Epist. 207 among the letters of Anselm (2, 101-2).

29. John, Ep. 128 (270.8-271.11); DIV¹ (282.5-7), DIV² (2, 4.6-9).

30. Shown by Richard Southern through comparison of the De incarnatione uerbi (for which he used H) and Gilbert Crispin's Disputatio, “St Anselm and Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster”, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 3 (1954), 78-115.

31. De conceptu virginali et de originali peccato (2, 139.5): “quem ut ederem tu maxime inter alios me impulisti”; Vita Bosonis, PL 150, 725D.

32. Cur deus homo, Pref. (2, 42.6-9); Eadmer, Vita Anselmi c. 30, ed. Richard W. Southern, The Life of Saint Anselm (Oxford, 1962, reprinted with corrections 1979), p. 107. While the traditional date for Anselm's beginning CDH, first suggested by Gerberon, has been 1094, René Roques thinks that it was begun closer to the first exile of Anselm from England in late October 1097; Pourquoi Dieu s'est fait homme, Sources chrétiennes 91 (Paris, 1963), p. 65. The period February 1095 - May 1097 was a relatively peaceful one for Anselm; cf. Sally N. Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan. The Innocence of the Dove and the Wisdom of the Serpent (Berkeley, 1987), pp. 185-203. Schmitt is open on the question 1, 59*-60*. Eadmer tells us more about John in his Historia novorum, ed. Martin Rule, Rolls Series (London, 1884), p. 96. From Pope Urban II's first known letter to Anselm (Ep. 125 in the collection, 3, 265-6) we learn that John was a Roman cleric who came to France to study under Anselm, became a monk and priest at Bec (incurring some controversy in Rome), returned to Rome at the Pope's behest, but was released to France at the request of Fulco, bishop of Beauvais, to serve as his secretary for a year. John subsequently became abbot of Telese, cardinal-bishop of Tusculum by around 1100, and papal legate to England in 1101; Southern, Vita Anselmi, p. 106 n. 1.