The Tradition of Affective Spirituality: Love and Friendship from Anselm’s Prayers to the 12th c.

This paper examines the nature and role of emotions and love in Anselm’s spirituality, especially in his prayers and letters, by considering its roots in Augustine, and the development of these ideas in two 12th century figures, Hugh of St. Victor and Aelred of Rievaulx. This line of thinkers embraces emotion and love as central to human life and spirituality. They thus reject the suspicion of passion and affectivity in the Stoics but also Plato and Aristotle. That embrace of affectivity and passionate friendship only grows stronger from Augustine to Anselm and from Anselm to the 12th c. The paper focusses on two aspects of this transformation. The first is the development of a new model of friendship, in which the friend is loved in his or her particularity as an individual, a need that cannot be (and should not be) redirected but has to be satisfied. The second is that this fundamentally different attitude about affectivity is driven by a deeper shift—from the ancient philosophical attempt to avoid or overcome vulnerability to the seeking of it.