is the freedom to do the right thing. By the same token, the freedom to sin turns out to
lack a real object—injustice having no subsistence of its own—and therefore to be
illusory.
Although Anselm has always been held in high esteem, his philosophical and
theological influence has been limited mainly to the so-called ontological proof of God’s
existence and the argument of Cur Deus homo. The Orationes sive mediationes, on the
other hand, were widely read all through the Middle Ages.
Burcht Pranger
[See also: LANFRANC OF BEC; PHILOSOPHY; THEOLOGY]
Anselm of Bec. S. Anselmi Cantuariensis archiepiscopi opera omnia, ed. Franciscus S.Schmitt. 6
vol. Stuttgart: Fromann, 1968.
——. Anselm of Canterbury, ed. and trans. Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson. 4 vols. 2nd ed.
New York: Mellen, 1975–76.
——. The Prayers and Méditations of St. Anselm, trans. Benedicta Ward. Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1973.
Eadmer. The Life of St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury by Eadmer, ed. and trans. Richard
W.Southern. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972.
Campbell, Richard. From Belief to Understanding: A Study of Anselm’s Proslogion Argument on
the Existence of God. Canberra: Faculty of Arts, Australian National University, 1976.
Hopkins, Jasper. A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis
Press, 1972.
Evans, Gillian R. Anselm and Talking About God. Oxford: Clarendon, 1978.
Southern, Richard W. Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990.
Vaughn, Sally N. Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan: The Innocence of the Dove and the Wisdom
of the Serpent. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
ANSELM OF LAON
(ca. 1050–1117). As schoolmaster at the cathedral of Laon, Anselm stands at the
beginning of an era that saw the expansion of literacy and intellectual training beyond the
cloister walls, reaching out to a burgeoning urban population. Through a curriculum that
focused on the study of the Bible and basic Christian principles of belief and daily living,
Anselm helped to channel both the spiritual awakening that was sweeping Europe and the
ecclesiastical reform that was an important focus of the Gregorian papacy.
Anselm composed commentaries on several books of the Bible, including Isaiah,
Matthew, the Psalms, the Song of Songs, the opening chapters of Genesis, and
Revelation. With his brother Ralph and a younger contemporary, Gilbert the Universal
(later schoolmaster at Auxerre and then bishop of London), Anselm began to compile a
commentary that was to become the standard (Glossa ordinaria) for the Bible by the end
of the 12th century. Anselm and his associates digested, abbreviated, supplemented, and
otherwise edited the vast deposit of commentaries produced by the Christian authors of
late antiquity and the Carolingian era, placing the longer comments in the broad margins
of Bibles designed for this purpose and the shorter comments between the lines of the
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 86