Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape

by Richard William Southern

In this magisterial study of the life and work of St. Anselm, Sir Richard Southern provides the definitive study of one of the most complex and fascinating philosophical minds in Christian history. St. Anselm brings together all the elements of a man whose intensely concentrated search for God filled all the phases and aspects of his life and work. Nothing in Anselm's thinking was simply ordinary or typical of his age.

Genres: History, Biography, Philosophy, Religion

524 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Sir Richard William Southern was a noted English medieval historian, based at the University of Oxford. He was educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated with a first-class honours degree in history. At Oxford, Southern's mentors were Sir Maurice Powicke and Vivian Hunter Galbraith. He was a fellow of Balliol from 1937 to 1961 (where he lectured alongside Christopher Hill), Chichele Professor of Modern History at Oxford from 1961 to 1969, and president of St John's College, Oxford, from 1969 to 1981. He was president of the Royal Historical Society from 1969 to 1973, and was knighted in 1974.

Reviews

[Joel Zartman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is a title to judge the book by: A Portrait in a Landscape. If that is not inviting, I hope I never have to send you an invitation.

Southern occupies my pantheon of great church historians. There are at the moment three: Christopher Dawson, Henry Chadwick and Richard Southern. There are other good historians, but these are those who I think are best prepared, most insightful and most reliable. The best historians have carefully digested all the primary sources and know what the secondary literature has done and is doing. For most people, that limits us to a very narrow focus. These three historians have a broader range of mastery than most, and Dawson is by far the greatest. Chadwick is king of the Early Church, and Richard Southern is king of the middle ages up through the 12th century. Anything that happened after that date is probably inconsequential.

Here are two things these three historians do for me, and Southern does in this book. The first is that they can plunge into the details of a remote situation, read between the lines, discern what is going on, and explain sympathetically what the situation is. It is the more remarkable in Southern because he does not seem himself to believe as Christians have. Dawson obviously does, and Chadwick maintains neutrality but is clearly positive. Southern is not, but knows how to understand what it meant to the object of his inquiry, in this case Anselm. Southern has written a whole careful, detailed, sympathetic biography of a man of whom he said, “The only important aim in his life was the discovery of God.” The second thing all three do, and that which raises them above the average good historian, is to be able to discern what is going on in general. The details can be confusing and chaotic. Discerning a general tendency, one that makes sense of the chaos of detail and besides describing, explains, is difficult. It is what requires mastery of what most of us are not qualified to master. It is what Dawson, Chadwick and Southern never fail to do. If the past is a vast, unlit cavern, and historians go into the past with a candle, reading in isolated lit places, then what these historians do is set up a series of candles by which the larger proportions of their cave can be discerned. They provide deft and reliable orientation. Southern does this for Anselm and his times: figures out the man, figures out the broader situation, demonstrates how his writing and responses come together in his character and outlook. It is the most humane thing possible, and it takes a great historian to achieve it at such a tremendous distance in time.

Here are two instances of this: “Among other themes, Anselm’s ideal and practice of friendship remains an important clue to the general character of his life and work. It needs to be understood as an expression of a religious ideal shared by all those who were his teachers, his pupils, and his actual or hoped-for companions in the monastic life.”

And, “The Cur Deus Homo was the product of a feudal and monastic world on the eve of a great transformation. With all its originality, and personal intensity of vision, it bears the marks of this rigorous—and if the word can be used without blame—repressive regime.”

Here is my second favorite greatest thing Southern says of Anselm: “But, even if he had not read the Timaeus, he had imbibed elements of Platonic thought from St Augustine. As we shall see in the dispute with Roscelin, he thought that any other kind of philosophy not only led to heresy, but was also indicative of hopeless intellectual blindness.”

This is one of the most characteristic statements about Anselm Southern makes: “The future lay with minds of a different type—minds which saw that government was a matter of administration, and not an attempt to reproduce on earth a pattern of things laid up in Heaven. Anselm aimed at the latter.”

[Henry Sturcke · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Anselm is remembered today, it is usually for one of two of his teachings. One is the so-called ontological argument for the existence of God: God is that object of thought, greater than which cannot be conceived. An object of thought that has real existence is greater than one that does not, therefore . . . . Well, you see where this one is going. The other is his argument for the necessity of the incarnation, which is basically that sin requires an expiation. The collective sin of humanity throughout history is so great that only a sacrifice of infinitely great value could atone for it, therefore . . . . This is known as the satisfaction theory of atonement.
I’ve rendered these arguments in the form in which they are usually cited today, often in a condescending tone of voice, dripping with pity for this old archbishop’s naive medieval mind.
It was then a surprise to read this book, ostensibly a biography, but also a learned discussion of the thought of this philosopher and theologian, and find not only that Anselm's reasoning was more sophisticated than the form in which it is now known, but also that he anticipated many of the objections to his positions, and gave well-reasoned answers to them. With regard to the ontological argument, Southern points out: “It is a simplification to say that [it] aimed at proving the existence of God. What he sought to prove is that justice, goodness, and truth are necessarily united in a single Being, who by definition is God. And since justice, goodness, and truth exist, God cannot not exist” (p. 117)
The book is very much a “life and times”, filling in the background modern readers need to understand both Anselm’s actions and thought. He is repeatedly compared and contrasted with his mentor and predecessor, Lanfranc. His mysticism, his assiduous promotion of education and monastic life are explored, as well as his reflection on the nature of friendship, something he not only thought about, but practiced to an avid degree.
Why should we be interested in a monk who has been dead for 900 years? As Southern points out: “It can scarcely be too strongly emphasized that the span of Anselm’s life covered one of the most momentous periods of change in European history, comparable to the centuries of the Reformation or the Industrial Revolution. It is only against this background that his own balancing of the old and new, his mixture of political conservatism and intellectual and spiritual innovation can be justly measured” (pp. 3–4). The author goes so far as to place Anselm together with Gregory VII and William the Conqueror as the three greatest Europeans of the period. The achievement of this scholarly yet readable study is that this reader came away convinced of the justice of this daring claim.
Usually when I rate a book with five stars, I mean it to indicate that anyone interested in books should read it. That may be going a bit far for a book that might appeal to a limited range of readers, but it is so good that I find it impossible to award fewer than five stars.

[Simonetta Carr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written and accurate. I would have liked a different structure - I found it a little difficult to go back and find something I had read.

[Lucia Graziano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Penso che vi sia un comune consenso circa il fatto che non ci si può approcciare alla figura di Anselmo senza leggere innanzi tutto il fondamentale testo di Southern - e per buoni motivi. E' imperdibile, è curatissimo, è approfondito fin nel dettaglio. Leggetelo: non potete farne a meno. Lo amerete.

E allora perché quattro stelline invece di un cinque pieno? Per alcune criticità che forse val la pena di evidenziare a vantaggio dello studente che si approccia a questo libro:

1) il saggio parte dal presupposto di star parlando a gente che ha già un'ottima conoscenza della storia istituzionale della Chiesa d'Inghilterra. Se non è il vostro caso (magari perché non siete inglesi e il vostro interesse per Anselmo muove da altre ragioni), è molto probabile che vi troviate un po' spiazzati, e con l'impressione di esservi persi dei pezzi per strada (es. perché la pretesa primaziale di Canterbury? Perché la lite tra Canterbury e York? In che senso i Normanni non riconoscevano come papa quello che era riconosciuto come papa in Normandia?). L'autore non si dilunga a spiegare concetti che dà già per acquisiti da tutti i suoi lettori; se questo non fosse il vostro caso, consiglio di approfondire a parte la storia istituzionale di quel tempo (il saggio di Bartlett sull'Inghilterra normanna vi chiarirà tutti i dubbi);

2) c'è molto "landscape", dietro a questo "portrait", col risultato che a tratti risulta un po' faticoso districarsi tra i mille approfondimenti per focalizzarsi sulla biografia in sé. Le continue digressioni costringono il lettore a fare salti avanti e indietro tra i capitoli per ricostruire le vicende biografiche di Anselmo (e, caso eclatante: o sono io a essermi persa il paragrafo in cui se ne parla, oppure l'autore non ci dice nemmeno quando/come/in che anno è morto Anselmo!!! 😂). Diciamo che la lettura del saggio Southern è imperdibile ma io l'accompagnerei a quella di una biografia più "terra a terra" e meno approfondita. Da Southern io andrei per gli approfondimenti, ma solo avendo già in testa un quadro molto preciso della vita di Anselmo, cronologicamente parlando;

3) stiamo parlando di un tomo di 500 pagine che sviscera ogni singolo aspetto della vita di sant'Anselmo. Personalmente, ho sentito la mancanza di un ulteriore capitolo dedicato al "dopo": storiografia, fortuna letteraria di Anselmo, sua eredità culturale nel lungo periodo, sviluppo del suo culto in seno alla Chiesa cattolica. Avrebbe reso tutto più completo, ecco.