SOURCE: Fröhlich, Walter. “The Letters Omitted from Anselm's Collection of Letters.” Anglo-Norman Studies 6 (1984): 58-71.

[In the following essay, Fröhlich surveys Anselm's collected correspondence, highlighting the monk's efforts to suppress letters that could potentially damage his reputation.]

The writing of letters and the gathering of such letters in large letter-collections is one of the striking features which distinguish intellectual life of the eleventh and twelfth centuries from those immediately preceding and following. This activity blossomed forth from the numerous schools which were attached to the monasteries and cathedrals of western Europe.

In the Middle Ages the writing of letters was closely linked to the writing of verses for teaching purposes. Both exercises were conscientiously practised; they were expressed by the same verb ‘dictare’ which can be rendered as either ‘to write according to dictation’ or ‘to write poetry’. Thus, as C. Erdmann conclusively demonstrates, the writing of letters became an important and self-conscious genre of literary composition.¹ It provided a means of expression for the culture and the learning of the writers. Yet the letters themselves also have an intrinsic importance in relation to the significance and purpose of their subject matter. Many letters, therefore, acquired a twofold value derived from their form and their content.

Among the most important letter-writers were the teachers and scholars of the monastic and cathedral schools. Their learning, displayed in their writings, made them well-known so that a great number of these teachers were promoted to abbacies and episcopal sees and thus also occupied important political positions.²

One of these teachers and scholars was Anselm, a native of Aosta, monk, prior and abbot of Bec until 1093 and then archbishop of Canterbury until his death in 1109. In reply to a letter from Warner, a novice of Christ Church Canterbury, Anselm sent a brief piece of spiritual advice in 1104 (Anselmi Epistola, = AEp, 335). He added that if Warner wished for more profound counsel on the monastic way of life he should look up an earlier letter which he had written to a Dom Lanzo when the latter had been a novice (AEp 37). The letter to Warner was written while Anselm was spending his second exile in Lyon. The letter to Lanzo, prior of the Cluniac house of St Pancras at Lewes 1077-1107, was sent while Lanzo was still a novice at Cluny some thirty years before.

It seems unlikely that Anselm would have expected Warner to search for that particular letter among numerous miscellaneous manuscripts but rather that he would be able to find it in the library of his monastery, the cathedral priory of Christ Church Canterbury, in the codex containing the collection of Anselm's letters. For Anselm had assembled a collection of his letters which he enlarged and rearranged over a number of years.³

From the evidence available it appears that Anselm, in reply to enquiries and requests from various people, started collecting letters he had written from about the early 1070s. No letter written by him before 1070 has been preserved. His motive for collecting his early letters—those written while he was prior and abbot of Bec—seems to have been on account of their moral content of exhortatic and spiritual advice rather than for their literary form. Business matter and day-to-day information were almost totally excluded and entrusted to the oral report of the bearer of the letter.⁴ Anselm's collection of his early letters, with a few exceptions, contains only his outgoing correspondence.⁵

Anselm's correspondence covering his archiepiscopal period comprises 328 items. It contains not only the outgoing letters but also some he received as well as some letters between third parties.⁶ In those letters written while he was archbishop of Canterbury the emphasis of the contents shows a shift from pastoral advice to political problems of church reform, Anglo-Norman statecraft and the struggle for supremacy in the ‘corpus christianorum’. Thus the character of the collection changed from being a compilation of letters valued for their moral content to that of letters dealing with state affairs of the utmost political importance.

The final part of this collection seems to contain all letters bearing upon the renewed outbreak of the primatial controversy between the metropolitan sees of Canterbury and York which took place in the autumn and winter 1108 and spring and summer 1109. Thus yet again the character of the collection was changed. It acquired the character of a register of the archbishop's correspondence.

The first part of Anselm's collection of letters—those while he was prior and abbot of Bec—passed through three stages. The oldest manuscript containing the first stage is British Library, MS Cotton Nero VII (henceforth referred to as N), since it is the only manuscript that styles Anselm merely as prior and abbot of Bec. It contains 99 letters on 142 pages. Some pages are missing at the end but the letters on these lost pages can be reconstructed from London Lambeth Palace, MS 224 (M).⁷ The latter is an autograph of William of Malmesbury who had copied Anselm's works and letters into this manuscript and had used N for the purpose.

The letters in N do not follow any strict chronological order, their only division being the letters written as prior and those written as abbot of Bec. This division is provided by a rubric after letter N 69 (= AEp 87) at the bottom of fol. 94r: ‘Hactenus continentur epistole domni Anselmi abbatis, quas fecit donec prior Beccensis fuit. Quae vero iam deinceps sequuntur, egit postquam abbatis nomen et officium suscepit’. As this rubric is written on an erasure it must be the work of the original scribe or his immediate corrector and not that of a later copyist.⁸ This points to the fact that the scribe or his corrector knew Anselm only as abbot of Bec and not yet as archbishop of Canterbury. The rubric at the beginning of the collection of Anselm's letters supports this: ‘Incipit liber epistolarum domni Anselmi abbatis.’ This rubric separates Anselm's letters from the letters of Lanfranc which are collected in the first part of N. Both collections appear to have been written by the same hand. This consideration is supported by the fact that two letters (AEp 30, 31) from Archbishop Lanfranc (one to Prior Anselm and one to his nephew Lanfranc at Bec) are excluded from Anselm's collection since they are already among the collection of Lanfranc's letters.

The date for the compilation of this first stage of Anselm's letter collection is provided by AEp 145 sent to Abbot Ralph of Séez congratulating him on his promotion in 1089. This letter is not to be found in N but it can be assigned to N on the evidence of M. Since the itinerary of Abbot Anselm shows no absence of the abbot of Bec from his monastery in 1089 it would seem that Anselm's first collection of his letters was assembled and written into N at Bec under Anselm's supervision and assistance.⁹ The death of Archbishop Lanfranc on 26 May 1089 and the compilation of a collection of his letters could have been the incentive to do this some time in 1090. Anselm's letter to his former pupil Maurice in 1085 (AEp 104) points to the probability that Anselm had been thinking about collecting his letters for some time, for this letter closes: ‘We are still waiting for our letters which Dom Maurice is supposed to have sent us’.

Barely two years later Anselm was engaged on improving the first stage of his letter collection. In autumn 1092 (AEp 147) he informs Prior Baldric and the community of Bec about the delay of his return to Bec due to King William's refusal to grant him leave to do so. He asks: ‘Send me the Prayer to St Nicholas which I wrote and the letter which I had started writing against the propositions of Roscelin; and if Dom Maurice has any other letters of ours which he has not yet sent, send them as well.’ It would appear that he intended using this period of enforced leisure to improve the first collection of his letters and thus required all the letters which had been collected at Bec since the compilation of N to be sent to him in England. He improved the rough chronology of N—which had only divided the letters into those of the prior and those of the abbot—by rearranging all the letters in their proper order. He also inserted in their correct order five of the letters to Maurice which had meanwhile been returned to him. Abbot Anselm's enforced stay in England took place in the wake of his third inspection tour of the English cells and estates of Bec for which he had set out on 26 August 1092.¹⁰ Having accomplished the purpose of his journey he spent the autumn and winter 1092-1093 with his friend Abbot Gilbert Crispin at St Peter's, Westminster, waiting for the king's leave to return to Bec. Therefore the second edition of his letters was most likely executed at Westminster during this period.

The best example of this second stage of Anselm's letter collection is to be found in the first part of his collection in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 135 (E₁). Having thus been gathered and compiled in two stages by Anselm himself—in 1090 at Bec and 1092/93 at Westminster—this collection of the letters of the prior and abbot of Bec developed differently in Canterbury and Bec. They are the collections of Anselm's letters to be found in London Lambeth Palace, MS 59 (= L) written at Canterbury and in Paris Bibliothèque Nationale, MS 14762 (= V) written at Bec, forming L₁ and V₁ and representing the third stage of the first part of the Anselmian letter collection. L₁ and V₁ differ from N and E₁ and from each other by the addition of further letters and in the chronological sequence of the letters which they contain. L₁ contains 132 letters while V₁ comprises 156 of which 27 are duplicates.

The earliest collection of Anselm's letters written as archbishop of Canterbury from 6 March 1093 to 21 April 1109 is to be found in the second part of L (= L₂) since all other manuscripts containing letters of the archiepiscopal period depend upon this part of L. The collection in L₂ comprises 257 letters. They were compiled by Anselm himself during another period of enforced leisure. From December 1103 to September 1106 he was banished from the Anglo-Norman realm because of the dispute about investitures between King Henry I and Pope Paschal II. Anselm spent most of this, his second exile, with his friend Archbishop Hugh of Lyon. During this time also, he directed the production of a final edition of his works and letters. Following Anselm's instructions (AEp 334, 379) this task was conscientiously and meticulously carried out by the scribe Thidricus at Christ Church Canterbury. The fruits of Thidricus' labours are the magnificent manuscripts Oxford Bodleian, Bodley 271, containing Anselm's philosophical and theological works, and London Lambeth Palace MS 59 comprising his letters. After Anselm's return to Canterbury in September 1106 his letter collection acquired the character of a registry into which new letters were copied. Soon after Anselm's death an appendix—L_a—was added to L₁ and L₂. On thirty-one pages L_a contains a miscellany of letters, tracts, poems and other documents.¹¹ A number of the letters in L_a are referred back to the collection of L₂ by symbols and instructions in the margin.¹² Two poems in praise of Anselm are also to be found in L_a. The second of these is introduced by the following rubric: ‘Item versus de eodem praesulis Anselmi quem nuper obisse dolemus’. If ‘nuper’ is understood as ‘recently’, just as Anselm himself had used it e.g. in AEp 104, it appears that L_a was written shortly after Anselm's death on 21 April 1109, but that L₁ and L₂ were written during his lifetime.

The Bec tradition of part I of Anselm's letter collection of V₁ took over part II of the collection of L₂ in order to form V₂ without taking cognizance of possible duplications of letters or the need for inserting letters of the Bec tradition into the Canterbury tradition.

.....

The final edition which Anselm made of his letters is to be found in L. It comprises 389 letters. The most recent modern edition of Anselm's works and letters by F. S. Schmitt contains 475 letters. In his edition Dom Schmitt excluded a considerable number of spurious letters which had found their way into the collection by various means during the course of centuries.¹³ Indeed, had Anselm kept all the letters written to him requesting a reply, his collection would have been much larger still since in at least 120 letters he refers to some written supplication as the cause for his written reply.¹⁴

In all there are therefore some 206 letters—86 items from Dom Schmitt's edition and 120 items referred to—that did not find their way into L. This would amount to about 30 per cent of the items of Anselm's total correspondence or nearly 53 per cent as compared to the collection entered into L. For this reason it seems obvious that Anselm carefully selected from the mass of his correspondence and diligently compiled a collection of the letters he considered worth preserving.

Between the 389 letters of L—Anselm's final collection of his correspondence—and the 475 letters of the recent Anselmi Opera Omnia in which Dom Schmitt included all known items of Anselmian correspondence, there is a difference of 86 letters.¹⁵ Why were they not included in L? Was L purely a random selection or did Anselm omit these letters because he regarded them as unworthy of preservation or unfitting for the purpose of his final collection?

A detailed examination of these omitted letters will attempt to provide clues and reasons for their omission and may point to Anselm's method and intention in compiling his collection.

The eighty-six letters not to be found in L can be split into two groups: twelve date from the period while Anselm was prior and abbot of Bec, the remaining seventy-four to the time of his archiepiscopal pontificate.

The first group of twelve letters omitted from L all date from Anselm's time as prior and abbot of Bec.¹⁶ One is received from, and all the others are sent to, ecclesiastics—including two to Archbishop Lanfranc and two to Pope Urban. Ten of these letters deal with pastoral problems and contain advice to abbots and other monks on how to deal with excommunicated persons, with married priests or with secretly penitent priests. Anselm also intercedes with heads of monasteries on behalf of other monks and advises monks on their day-to-day problems. These letters were most likely omitted from L because of their relative unimportance, their purely local relevance, their rather lenient treatment of sinning priests which clashed with Anselm's rigorous attitude of later years, or because of some criticism Anselm may have made or demonstrated with regard to Archbishop Lanfranc.

The two letters sent to Pope Urban (AEp 126, 127) deal with Bishop Fulk of Beauvais who had been a monk of Bec. Abbot Anselm had consented to his uncanonical promotion by appointment of King Philip I of France in 1088. Having gained pardon for his uncanonical promotion from Pope Urban, and having been reinstated as Bishop of Beauvais, he was unable to administer his diocese for various reasons. In AEp 126 Anselm begs Urban's help for Fulk and in AEp 127 he implores the pope secretly to relieve Fulk of the burden of episcopal office which he is too weak to bear. He ends this letter: ‘If it pleases you I wish and beg that this letter be for your eyes alone.’ It seems likely that this embarrassing affair caused the exclusion of these letters from L. A third letter dealing with this problem—written when Anselm was archbishop of Canterbury—AEp 193, was also omitted from L, probably for the same reason. The positive suppression of these letters is confirmed by evidence supplied by the MS itself. There would have been enough space for both letters on fol. 54 of L. The folio between the present folios 53 and 54: that is to say, the original fol. 54 bearing these two letters has been removed, probably following Anselm's instructions. AEp 193, also omitted from L, was later added as the first item in L_a.¹⁷

The seventy-four letters written when Anselm was archbishop of Canterbury and which are not to be found in L, are too numerous to be examined individually. These letters can be divided into nine groups which will account for fifty-seven of them while seventeen will be left undiscussed.

1. There is a large batch of nineteen letters which were all sent to the monks of Bec as a community or to individual members of it.¹⁸ Some were forwarded via Bec to other individuals i.e. to Bishop Gilbert of Evreux (159), Countess Ida of Boulogne (167) and Archbishop Hugh of Lyon (176). According to Dom Schmitt this is why they were preserved in V, forming the Bec tradition of Anselm's letter collection.¹⁹ It does not, however, answer the question why they were not preserved in L at Canterbury since they were written there. Having collected his letters for some ten years up to that time and having compiled them into N of 1090 and the later E₁ in 1092/93, Anselm almost certainly kept drafts and copies of the letters he sent to his monastery following his investiture as archbishop of Canterbury on 6 March 1093.

A review of the subject matter of these letters may provide some clue to the reason for their omission from L. A few were written in reply to the widespread gossip about Anselm's cupidity for the archbishopric (156, 159, 160, 164). This gossip seems to have been common in and around Bec, in the diocese of Evreux and in the whole duchy of Normandy. Anselm saw himself repeatedly forced to protest his innocence and lack of cupidity when he travelled to England in summer 1092 and to emphasise his surprise at being made archbishop in March 1093 by King William II, by the clergy and people, the bishops and barons of the Anglo-Norman kingdom (148). In their persistent demand for him to accept the burden of archiepiscopal office he perceived the will of God which he was obliged to obey. Despite Anselm's assurances a number of the community of Bec were not convinced and refused their consent to his relinquishing the abbatial office in order to accept the archbishopric of Canterbury (150, 155). They pointed out that they were bound to him in obedience and he to them for ever. Anselm replied that his obedience to God transcended his commitment to the community but on the other hand he demanded their obedience in accepting his choice in the election of his successor. Moreover, he expected their continued obedience to him for the rest of his life, even after the election of a new abbot. In fact, the monk Boso, disregarding the authority of the new abbot, obediently followed Anselm's call to Canterbury (174, 209).

In order to assure that his nominee was elected as abbot of Bec, Anselm suggests a candidate in AEp 157 which is included in L. However two letters in which he assures the duke's consent as well as the king's protection (164) and the help of an old friend (163) for the election of his protegé are missing from L. Did he suppress these in order to conceal the extent of his interference? His demands in this connection contravene the Rule of St Benedict which does not require any bond of obedience between an abbot and members of the community after the abbot's departure from the monastery, but which postulates the free election of a new abbot by the members of the community. The long-drawn-out procedure of electing William of Beaumont as Anselm's successor, from August to October 1093, amply demonstrates the community's resentment at Anselm's intrusion in this matter.

Anselm's exclusion of these letters from L could point to the fact that he felt his image might be damaged by their publication, or the realisation that his too-frequent refutations of greed for the archbishopric might raise suspicion that he did indeed protest too much!

2. The next group of eight letters which are not preserved in L are written to Bishop Osmund of Salisbury and various members of convents in his diocese: two to Gunhilda, daughter of King Harold and nun at Wilton (168, 169), two to Abbess Eulalia of Shaftsbury (183, 337), one to the nun M., the daughter of Earl Richard of Clare (184) and three to Bishop Osmund (177, 190, 195).²⁰ At first sight it is surprising that these letters to nuns were not entered into L. They abound in advice and encouragement to persevere step by step towards the celestial kingdom by leading a good life as a spouse of Christ, abandoning the secular world of sin and misery. Yet Anselm's first letter to Bishop Osmund in spring 1094 might hold the reason for their exclusion.

Anselm intimates to the bishop of Salisbury that pastoral care and canon law ought to have moved him to act in regard to a certain ‘filia perdita’. The lady here referred to is Eadgyth, ‘filia regis Scotorum’. Eadgyth was the daughter of Malcolm, king of Scotland and Margaret, the kinswoman of Edward, of the true royal family of England, and niece of Edgar the Atheling.²¹ She had possibly come to England with her aunt Christina in 1086. In 1093 both were at Wilton where Christina was a nun. King Malcolm had never intended his daughter to become a nun. In fact, since she was at the marriageable age of about fifteen she played an important part in his political plans and was to be married to Count Alan Rufus, lord of Richmond and most powerful baron in the north of England. This planned marriage came to nothing, however, since Alan Rufus became involved with the nun Gunhilda, whom he abducted from her convent in Wilton, and he died on 4 August 1093. His brother, Count Alan Niger, who succeeded him not only in his estates but also in his matrimonial plans also died soon after this.²² The nun Gunhilda seems to have returned to Wilton as she was later remembered with honour there.²³

The proposal of marriage with Eadgyth, then known as Mathilda, was taken up by King Henry I in 1100 as a calculated political move. In order to open the way for the planned marriage Anselm had to conduct a complicated procedure to prove that Mathilda/Eadgyth had never been a nun although she had worn the veil. For his part in the investigation Anselm was harshly criticised. Eadmer reports that many people maligned Anselm, saying that he had not kept the path of strict right in this matter.²⁴ After Mathilda's marriage to King Henry on 11 November 1100 Anselm became her spiritual advisor. A large number of letters bear witness to their relationship thereafter.²⁵

Having referred to this lady as a ‘filia perdita’ in the early stages of his pontificate this letter may have been embarrassing for Anselm when he enjoyed the queen's close friendship in later years. Moreover, the inclusion of this letter and those connected with it might have stirred the sleep of dormant critics and blown about the dust of past scandals. Such considerations would explain the omission of these eight letters from L.

3. The complete collection of Anselm's letters contains fifty-four which name King Henry or Queen Mathilda as sender or recipient. Eight of these, which not only bear the names of the king or queen but also that of Pope Paschal II as sender or receiver, are omitted from L.²⁶

King Henry started this correspondence in January 1101 by congratulating Pope Paschal on his promotion (215). He offered friendship, obedience and the payment of Peter's Pence as his predecessors had done. In return he expected to hold his kingdom unimpaired like his predecessors. At the end of the same year he requested the pallium for Archbishop Gerard of York from the pope (221). In reply Paschal praised Henry for the good beginning of his reign and admonished him to abstain from investitures for the sake of the liberty of the Church (224). The pope demonstrated by the authority of Holy Scripture and the Fathers that the right of investiture of bishops and abbots belonged to the Church and not to kings. He promised to grant the king whatever he asked for provided he gave up investitures (216).

In November 1103, after the failure of the four embassies to Rome in order to obtain a mitigation of the papal decrees on lay investiture and the homage of clerics, the pope resumed direct relations with the king, congratulating him on the birth of his first-born son and heir William. He once more admonished the king to abandon investitures (305). A year later Paschal assured Henry of his care for his salvation. He informed him that he was retaining his messengers until the following Lenten synod (1105) so that his queries on homage and investiture might be answered according to the will of God. He chided the king for having sent Anselm into exile once more and also for having despoiled him of his possessions. The pope praised the king, however, because the decrees of the Westminster Council of 1102 were being implemented (348). A few months later—January/February 1105—the pope admonished the king for the third time not to despise the Church, to receive Anselm back according to the papal decrees and to allow Anselm to publish them, to protect the Church in her lawful liberty and to give up his evil advisors, two of whom he was planning to excommunicate (351). At the same time the pope urged Queen Mathilda to persuade her husband to abandon investitures and to obey the will of God so that he might not lose what God had given him. He warned her about the king's evil advisors and their imminent excommunication (352). These letters represent the preserved correspondence between the king/queen and the pope. They are all omitted from L. Other letters included in L hint at even further items of this correspondence which have not yet come to light.²⁷

The fact that the pope's correspondence with King Henry and Queen Mathilda is excluded from L recalls Anselm's letter to Thidricus in 1105 in which he replies to the latter's enquiry thus: ‘Litteras quas quaeris regis ad papam, non tibi mitto, quia non intelligo utile esse, si serventur’ (379). This letter to Thidricus seems most likely to refer to the latter's work of compiling the collection of the archbishop's letters and copying them into L. This work had been going on since about 1105. While Anselm was forced to suffer his second exile he sent these instructions to Thidricus who obediently followed them by omitting all but one of the items (323) of the correspondence between the king, the queen and Pope Paschal II from L.²⁸

This correspondence was not entirely suppressed, however, since six of these eight letters are to be found in a separate integral collection of twenty-three letters from Christ Church Canterbury.²⁹ The pope's cautious negotiations with the king and his lenient treatment of him while Anselm was suffering the hardship of exile for having upheld the pope's decrees might well be the reason for Anselm's exclusion of this correspondence from L.

4. Also missing from L are the two letters from the pope (282) and Cardinal John (284) of December 1102. Paschal reminded Anselm of the condemnation of simony by the Council of Bari and restated his advice on married priests and deacons. Cardinal John thought it necessary to encourage Anselm to defend the right of the Church against the king and the false bishops. In view of the second exile which Anselm was suffering because of his defence of the liberty of the Church in England and the propagation of its reform these letters must have irked him somewhat, which would explain their exclusion from the main collection of his letters.³⁰

5. A small batch of three very short letters representing the correspondence between Bishop Lambert of Arras and Anselm is also omitted from L. In the first of these letters Anselm asked Lambert for safe conduct for a papal cleric through his diocese (437). In reply Lambert enquired about Anselm's health and sent greetings to Dom Baldwin (438). Anselm replied very briefly that he was healthy in body but suffering from growing weakness (439).

Anselm's contacts with Flanders and Arras in particular had been intensive ever since Girard, the moneyer of Arras, and Baldwin had entered the monastery at Bec.³¹ Bishop Lambert, together with the exiled Anselm, was present at the synod of Rome in 1099 when Urban pronounced sentence of excommunication on ‘all lay persons who conferred investitures of churches, all persons accepting such investitures from their hands and all persons who consecrated to the office of any preferment so given’.³² Moreover, during his stay in Rome Anselm, in the face of some opposition, had helped to secure papal promotion of John, the archdeacon of Arras, to the see of Térouane. Anselm and the bishop of Arras had become close friends as Anselm's letter of summer 1103 to Dom Conus, included in L, testifies (285).

The final expression of the intimate friendship between Anselm and Lambert can be perceived in the fact that after Anselm's death the monks of Christ Church Canterbury sent the late archbishop's personal manuscript of his works to Arras where it is still kept.³³ Despite this close connection with Arras these three short letters were omitted from L, probably because of their triviality.

6. Shortly after the Council of Westminster at Whitsun 1108 Anselm wrote to Pope Paschal requesting confirmation for the Council's decision to divide the diocese of Lincoln and to create a new bishopric of Ely (441). The see was to be established at the abbey of Ely and the monks were to assist the bishop as cathedral chapter.³⁴ Paschal's letters to King Henry and Archbishop Anselm granting and confirming the creation of the new see of Ely and the nomination of Hervey of Bangor as first bishop are not included in L. These four letters (457, 458, 459, 460) were all issued at Troia on 21 November 1108. Allowing at least eight weeks for a winter journey from Troia near Foggia in southern Italy to England they would not have been delivered until January or February 1109 after work on manuscript L had been completed and it was being copied in its turn. They might not even have arrived before Anselm's death in April. They were never incorporated into any copy of the Anselmian letter collection.³⁵

7. Another group of five more letters is missing from L. These letters are part of the correspondence dealing with the renewed outbreak of the primatial controversy between Canterbury and York following the promotion of Thomas of Beverley to the see of York after the death of Archbishop Gerard on 27 May 1108.

The whole correspondence on this issue numbers thirteen letters, eight of which are in L.³⁶ Three of the missing letters are from Thomas, the elect of York, and the Chapter of York to Anselm at Canterbury. They dispute the archbishop's right to demand a profession of obedience from the elect before his consecration at the primate's hands (453, 454, 456).³⁷ Another letter (470) from the king to Anselm requests him to defer the consecration of the elect of York until Easter 1109 so that after his return to England he himself might settle the case between the two metropolitans.³⁸ Since the letters from York demonstrate the York opinion in this dispute and the king did not side wholeheartedly with the claim of Canterbury it would seem likely that the open and veiled threats to the primatial claim of the archbishop of Canterbury were the grounds for the omission of these letters from the final edition of Anselm's letters in L. Therefore it is surprising that Anselm's letter to Rannulf of Durham, representing the Canterbury point of view in this controversy (442), is also missing from the collection.³⁹ In this letter Anselm states that Turgot, the elect of St Andrews in Scotland, could not be consecrated by anybody but the archbishop of Canterbury as long as Thomas, the elect of York, had not received his consecration at Canterbury.

8. Five of the thirteen letters which constitute the correspondence with Archbishop Gerard of York are omitted from L.⁴⁰ The first of these (255) was written by Gerard to Anselm after the Council of Westminster 1102. He informed Anselm that clerics were spurning the statutes of the Council and sought his help against those who evaded the canons through sophistry. He also confessed a sin of simony he had once committed. This letter demonstrated Gerard's zeal for church reform and his personal repentance.

However, after the return of Gerard and the bishops of Norwich and Chester from Rome in summer 1102 the relationship between Anselm and Gerard deteriorated considerably. The royal envoys delivered a report on their negotiations with Pope Paschal about the mitigation of the decrees forbidding lay investiture which was vehemently contradicted by Anselm's messengers. The pope refuted the bishops' report as a lie and excommunicated the royal envoys and anybody who had received investiture or had consecrated those thus invested since August 1102. Gerard caused further disagreement when, at the king's command, he was prepared to consecrate the recently invested bishops of Winchester, Hereford and Salisbury after Anselm had refused their consecration on the ground of the papal decrees of 1099, confirmed by Paschal in 1101 and 1102.⁴¹ The letter from Paschal to Gerard in spring 1105 (354) reprimanding him for his wrongdoing and for not having been a support to Anselm is indeed included in L. Gerard's reply (362), which is not included in L, points out that the papal charge was based on false reports and that he had always favoured Anselm's cause. In summer and winter 1105/6 Gerard sent two letters to Anselm informing him that since he had found the truth he and many others would be obedient to the archbishop (363) and admitting that he now perceived the danger of lay investiture (373) he begged Anselm's prayers to assist him in his good intentions. In spring 1108 Gerard sought Anselm's help at the recommendation of Pope Paschal (440). These last four letters, demonstrating Gerard's conversion to the pope's and Anselm's position on investiture and his renewed harmony with the pope are missing from L. They and the letter of 1102 are all favourable to Gerard.

The remaining seven letters of this correspondence which are included in L create a negative image of Archbishop Gerard of York as a wicked, bickering and obstinate man. Only one letter of late 1105 somewhat mitigates this picture: in this together with other bishops, Gerard beseeched Anselm to return to England and promised him their help (386).

It would appear that Anselm omitted this correspondence with Gerard, his ecclesiastical opponent in the investiture dispute, even though it might have improved the bad impression conveyed by the other letters of Gerard's correspondence retained in L. This must support the feeling that there was method in Anselm's omissions. Was the injury inflicted by Gerard's behaviour and actions during the controversy still rankling?

9. Three more items in the list of omitted letters level harsh criticism at Anselm for his prolonged absence from the see of Canterbury and the Church of England due to his second exile from December 1103 to September 1106.⁴² A member of the community of Christ Church Canterbury, possibly Prior Ernulf himself, informed the archbishop about the increase of evil caused by his long absence from England (310). He declared that Anselm's absence was unbearable and stated that his presence was essential to any improvement. He entreated him urgently to return to England to resume his duties. Another anonymous person judged the long-drawn-out quarrel between King Henry and Archbishop Anselm as nothing but the illusion of diabolic tricks and complained that it was causing the destruction of the whole Church of the English. He blamed all the misery in England on Anselm's failure to return (365). Moreover, in a long poem Gilbert Crispin, abbot of Westminster and Anselm's friend, displayed to the absent archbishop the evils which had invaded the Church of England because of the pastor's absence and beseeched Anselm to return to his flock (366). Apart from these three voices there were many people who did not understand the reason for Anselm's refusal to return to England. Even after the agreement of L'Aigle between king and archbishop on investiture and homage (21 July 1105) Anselm delayed his return because he had not yet received the pope's endorsement to the compromise agreed upon there, nor his explicit permission to absolve excommunicated persons and to associate with them, even though he was aware that the English churches were suffering cruel treatment because of his absence. In their ignorance of the dealings between the pope, the king and the archbishop, a number of Anselm's friends, his episcopal colleagues (386, 387) and many other people also criticised the absent archbishop and informed him that his absence was causing more evil than good.⁴³ Since in Anselm's eyes this criticism was unjustified, it would appear that he excluded these letters in order not to mar the image of himself which he wanted to convey and preserve.

This survey of letters omitted from L has thus covered the contents of sixty-nine of the missing eighty-six letters.⁴⁴ Why did Anselm omit certain letters from the final edition of his letter collection in L? Apart from those omitted for their triviality or lack of general interest, the intention of these omissions on the one hand appears to suggest that everything was suppressed which might have caused embarrassment (criticism of Lanfranc, the case of Bishop Fulk of Beauvais, Anselm's part in arranging the king's marriage with Eadgyth/Mathilda) or revive criticism of Anselm's supposed cupidity for the wealthy archbishopric or of his long absences from England. Moreover, such letters which might have challenged Anselm's claim to be the sole advocate and protagonist for the reform and freedom of the Church (Henry, Gerard) and the mighty defender of the primatial claim of Canterbury were also omitted.

On the other hand, in the compilation of the last edition of his letters Anselm seems to have wished to supply a compendium of his thoughts on a great variety of spiritual matters as well as his ideas and the concepts underlying his disagreements with the kings of the Anglo-Norman realm on the issues of the ‘usus atque leges’ and lay investiture as well as church reform and the primatial claim of Canterbury over York.

More important still, the letter collection displays Anselm as a faithful monk and ardent soldier of Christ who devoted his life totally to God and His service. He appears as a zealous labourer in creating a loving and truly Christian community of monks and as an active reformer of the Church of God in unity with the pope and in agreement with papal ordinance. Thus he set the example of the impeccable Christian prelate whose faultless public conduct was to serve as a model and a precedent for others to act in the same way. The image of his behaviour was intended to create binding customs and eventually good laws. Anselm's letter collection was to be a manual of examples for his own time and for the future.

Therefore manuscript L containing this letter collection is a monument to Anselm's righteousness and firm demeanour as a churchman vigorously pursuing the demand for ‘libertas et reformatio ecclesiae’ and defending the Church of God resolutely in the face of threats and isolation as well as personal suffering and disadvantages. From the survey of the letters omitted from this MS it would appear that Anselm took great care to suppress any correspondence which would have damaged the picture of himself which he intended for posterity.

Notes

1. Carl Erdmann, Studien zur Briefliteratur Deutschlands im 11. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1938; the same, Briefsammlungen, in Wilhelm Wattenbach-Robert Holtzmann, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter, Teil II, Darmstadt 1967, 415-22; see also The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Giles Constable, Harvard Hist. Studies, 78, Harvard 1967, 1-12; the same, Letters and Letter-Collections, in Typologie des Sources du Moyen Âge occidental, fasc. 17, Turnhout 1976.

2. For a selection of promoted scholars see The Letters of St Anselm, transl. Walter Fröhlich, Kalamazoo, in the press, Introduction.

3. The following summary is based on André Wilmart, ‘La destinataire de la lettre de S. Anselme sur l'état et les voeux de religion’, Revue Bénédictine (=RB) 38, 1926, 331-4; the same, ‘Une lettre adressée de Rome à S. Anselme en 1102’, RB 40, 1928, 262-6; the same, ‘La tradition des lettres de S. Anselme, lettres inédites de S. Anselme et de ses correspondants’, RB 43, 1931, 38-54; Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ‘Zur Überlieferung der Korrespondenz Anselms von Canterbury, Neue Briefe’, RB 43, 1931, 224-38, reprinted in Anselmi Opera Omnia (=AOO) ed. F. S. Schmitt, 6 vols, Edinburgh 1946-1963 and Stuttgart 1968. André Wilmart, ‘Une lettre inédite de S. Anselme, à une moniale inconstante’, RB 40, 1928, 319-32; F. S. Schmitt, ‘Zur Entstehung der handschriftlichen Briefsammlungen Anselms von Canterbury’, RB 48, 1936, 300-17 = AOO 154*-171*; the same, ‘Die Chronologie der Briefe Anselms’, RB 64, 1954, 176-207 = AOO 172*-203*; the same, ‘Die unter Anselm veranstaltete Ausgabe seiner Werke und Briefe, Die Codices Bodley 271 und Lambeth 59’, Scriptorium 9, 1955, 64-75 = AOO 226*-239*; Walter Fröhlich, ‘Die Entstehung der Briefsammlung Anselms von Canterbury’, Historisches Jahrbuch 100, 1980, 457-66; the same, ‘The genesis of Anselm's collection of letters’, American Benedictine Review 35, 1984. The opinion maintained in these articles is at variance to that of Richard William Southern, Saint Anselm and his biographer, Cambridge 1963, 67-8n, 238n.

4. See e.g. Anselmi Epistola (= AEp) 4, 5, 14, 22, 66, 68, 89, 121, 124, 126, 132.

5. Anselm sent 138 letters; he received 8 letters; one letter names Anselm neither as writer nor as addressee.

6. Anselm is the author of 234 letters, the recipient of 76 letters and neither of both in 18 letters.

7. AEp 88 = M 63; AEp 96 = M 69/70; AEp 102 = M 1; AEp 112 = M 17; AEp 113 = M 10; AEp 120 = M 79; AEp 130 = M 47; AEp 131 = M 46; AEp 132 = M 58; AEp 134 = M 57; AEp 140 = M 15; AEp 144 = M 16; AEp 145 = M 75; AEp 146 = M 74.

8. See Neil Ripley Ker, The English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest, Oxford 1960, 50-1.

9. For the itinerary see Walter Fröhlich, Die bischöflichen Kollegen Erzbischof Anselms von Canterbury, Diss. München 1971, 191-9; now in Letters of St Anselm.

10. For Anselm's journeys to England in 1079, 1086 and 1092 see Marjorie Chibnall, ‘The Relations of St Anselm with the English Dependencies of the Abbey of Bec 1079-1093’, Spicilegium Beccense, Paris 1959, 521-30; the same, Le domaine du Bec en Angleterre au temps d'Anselme, Paris 1984/5.

11. L₁ and L₂ cover fol. 1r to fol. 160v, line 3 of right column. They are most carefully written with very few mistakes. L_a comprises fol. 160v to 190r. It is split into two parts by nine and a half empty pages. The first part of L_a consists of a letter (L 390), a tract on ‘velle’, a deathbed confession, a sermon on the bliss of eternal life, three tracts on ‘aliquid’ and ‘facere’, on ‘de potestate’ and on different modes of ‘causa’, two poems in praise of Anselm, the covering letter for Anselm's work ‘Cur Deus Homo’ to Urban II, another letter (L 391), the canons of the synods of London of 1102 and 1108 and finally seven other letters (L 392, 393, 394, 395, 396, 397, 398). The remaining folios after the gap of nine and a half empty pages contain, in a different hand, a miscellaneous collection of writings as follows: two letters (L 399, 400), two tracts on ‘velle’, one a repetition of those written before the gap, a repetition of the deathbed confession, another letter (L 401), a draft of a part of Anselm's tract ‘De concordia’, Anselm's epitaph on Hugh, a fragment of a tract on the presence of God in the Blessed Sacrament, a distich of two lines, a legal document and a repetition of the first poem in praise of Anselm. For a detailed account see Walter Fröhlich, ‘The Genesis of the Collection of St Anselm's Letters’, American Benedictine Review 1984. There are thirteen letters in L_a: L 390 = AEp 193; L 391 = AEp 411; L 392 = AEp 331; L 393 = AEp 212; L 394 = AEp 255; L 395 = AEp 202; L 396 = AEp 200; L 397 = AEp 440; L 398 = AEp 207; L 399 = AEp 471; L 400 = AEp 472; L 401 = AEp 469; L 402 = AEp 475. L 399, L 400 and L 401 are duplicating L 388, L 389 and L 387 which are the last entries into L before L_a was added.

12. These letters are referred into L₂: L 390, L391, L 392, L 393, L 394, L 398.

13. F. S. Schmitt, ‘Die echten und unechten Stücke der Korrespondenz Anselms von Canterbury’, RB 65, 1955, 218-27 = AOO 204*-212*.

14. See e.g. AEp 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 23, 24, 35, 36, 38, 40, 42, 43, 45, 46, 52, 53, 57, 58, 60, 61, 65, 73, 77, 80, 83, 85, 87, 88, 97, 100, 109, 113, 118, 121, 132, 138, 147; 148, 161, 162, 163, 164, 166, 173, 175, 186, 187, 191, 192, 204, 209, 218, 223, 232, 233, 246, 247, 250, 254, 262, 263, 264, 292, 293, 294, 298, 299, 300, 301, 305, 307, 315, 316, 319, 320, 322, 323, 327, 328, 329, 330, 331, 333, 334, 343, 345, 347, 348, 349, 355, 356, 357, 361, 363, 374, 375, 376, 379, 395, 399, 406, 407, 413, 415, 416, 417, 418, 419, 421, 425, 432, 433, 440, 447, 451, 457, 458, 460.

15. These are AEp 18, 26, 27, 63, 64, 65; 88, 123, 124, 126, 127, 145; 148, 150, 151, 152, 155, 159, 163, 164, 165, 166, 168, 169, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 183, 184, 190, 195, 204, 205, 208, 209, 215, 216, 224, 225, 226, 239, 282, 284, 304, 305, 310, 337, 348, 351, 352, 362, 363, 365, 366, 367, 373, 398, 407, 437, 438, 439, 442, 453, 454, 456, 457, 468, 459, 460, 470, 473 and the ten letters from L_a: AEp 193, 200, 202, 207, 212, 255, 331, 411, 440, 475. See footnote 11 above.

16. AEp 18, 26, 27, 63, 64, 65; 88, 123, 124, 126, 127, 145.

17. This letter fills four lines above and six lines below the margin as well as the usual writing area of two columns of 31 lines on fol. 160v and spills five lines right across into the bottom margin of fol. 161r.

18. AEp 148, 150, 151, 152, 155, 163, 165, 166, 173, 174, 178, 179, 205, 209.

19. See AOO 156*-162*.

20. According to F. S. Schmitt AEp 177, 183, 184, 190, 195 form a small local collection preserved on folios 67 and 68 in Cambridge, Trinity College Ms B. I. 37, see F. S. Schmitt, ‘Zur Überlieferung der Korrespondenz Anselms von Canterbury’, RB 43, 1931, 230-8; AEp 337 is in M and AEp 168 and 169 in Trier, Stadtbibliothek MS 728; see also André Wilmart, RB 38, 1926, 331-4, footnote 3.

21. ASC 1100.

22. See David C. Douglas, William the Conqueror, London 1964, 267-9, 426.

23. See ‘William of Malmesbury’, Vita Wulfstani, ed. R. R. Darlington, Camden Society, 3rd series, 40, 1928, 34.

24. Eadmer 121.

25. AEp 242, 243, 246, 288, 296, 317, 320, 321, 323, 346, 347, 384, 385, 395, 400, 406; see also F. S. Schmitt, RB 43, 1936, 231-4.

26. AEp 215, 216, 221, 224, 305, 348, 351, 352.

27. See e.g. AEp 315, 318, 323, 368.

28. R. W. Southern, St Anselm and his biographer, Cambridge 1963, 68 n is of different opinion. He holds that ‘there is not the slightest reason to think that this letter AEp 379 refers to the making of this or any other collection of letters’. In his judgement R. W. Southern merely relied on palaeographic evidence, see Walter Fröhlich, ‘The Genesis of Anselm's collection of letters’, see footnote 3.

29. This is British Library, MS Add. 32091; for a description of the manuscript see Walter Holtzmann, Papsturkunden in England, vol. 1, Berlin 1930/31, 166-7, 221-31. The letters are AEp 216 = Add. 5; AEp 224 = Add. 10; AEp 305 = Add. 16; AEp 348 = Add. 17; AEp 351 = Add. 18; AEp 352 = Add. 19; AEp 215 and 221 are preserved in Quadripartitus, ed. Felix Liebermann, Halle 1892, 151-2.

30. They are preserved: AEp 282 = M 83, AEp 284 = Add. 12.

31. See AEp 14, 15, 23, 96, 164; 124, 151, 223, 284, 339, 349, 367, 371, 377, 378, 390, 397, 430, 438, 462; 86, 180, 248, 249, 298.

32. Eadmer 114. Anselm sent three Paschal-letters AEp 222, 281, 353 to Lambert. These papal letters to Anselm are in accordance with the decrees of Urban's synod of 1099 and represent Paschal's hard line on investitures. Anselm included them into L as L 162, L 226 and L 287 and sent copies of them to Flanders. They were incorporated into a collection of canonical material of the bishopric of Térouane in the second half of the twelfth century being letters 11, 12 and 13 therein. Max Sdralek dealt with the material in Wolfenbüttler Fragmente, Münster 1891, 55-9. It seems very unlikely that Lambert received more than these three letters otherwise they would have been entered into this collection, see also Councils and Synods, ed. Dorothy Whitelock, Martin Brett, Christopher N. L. Brooke, Oxford 1981, vol. i, 658, 660.

33. Arras, Stadtbibliothek MS 484, catalogue nr. 805; see AOO 91*-94*, 213*.

34. AEp 441 = L 370.

35. They are 6210, 6211, 6212, 6213 in P. Jaffe, S. Löwenfeld, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, vol. i, Leipzig 1885.

36. AEp 443 = L 367; AEp 444 = L 368; AEp 445 = L 369; AEp 455 = L 376; AEp 464 = L 382; AEp 465 = L 383; AEp 471 = L 388 and again in L_a, L 399; AEp 472 = L 389 and again in L_a, L 400.

37. They are in Hugh the Chanter, the history of the Church of York 1066-1127, ed. Charles Johnson, Oxford 1961, 19 = AEp 453; 20 = AEp 454; AEp 456 = Eadmer 204.

38. AEp 470 = Eadmer 205.

39. AEp 442 = M 102.

40. AEp 238, 250, 253, 255, 256, 283, 326, 354, 362, 363, 373, 386, 440. Those in italics are omitted from L. They are preserved: AEp 255 = L 394; AEp 362, 363, 373, = Quadripartitus 155-9; AEp 440 = L 397.

41. See AEp 216, 219, 222, 224, 281.

42. AEp 310, 365, 366.

43. See Eadmer 162, 167, 171; AEp 386, 387.

44. The following letters were not dealt with: AEp 181, 200, 202, 204, 207, 208, 212, 225, 226, 239, 255, 304, 331, 367, 398, 407, 411, 473.