St. Anselm and the Handmaidens of God: A Study of Anselm's Correspondence with Women (review)

Scholars usually have seen Anselm as living almost entirely in a man's world and cultivating friendships with fellow monks; monastic friendships with women could have attracted suspicion. Vaughn corrects this bias for good by offering a detailed study of Anselm's correspondence with women. Seventy-three letters out of a total of 475 in Schmitt's edition are to, from, or about women. Of these, fifty-six are to, from, or about noble lay women and seventeen to nuns. Correspondence with nuns and abbesses is chiefly extant from the time Anselm became archbishop and assumed broader responsibilities, but his surviving correspondence shows even greater involvement with aristocratic lay women, including especially Queen Edith-Matilda and the countesses Adela of Blois, Matilda of Tuscany, Ida of Boulogne, and Clemence of Flanders. All these, through their networks of power, played critical roles in the years of political struggle. Anselm's sister, Richeza, received five loving letters. During his thirty years at Bec Anselm gave support to many women in Normandy, including the young Adelaide, daughter (certainly) of William the Conqueror, and also Eva de Montfort, the mother of Gilbert Crispin. Eva and some other "mothers of Bec" lived as part of the community, but how far "integrating the sexes" (p. 113) really happened there is unclear from the sources Vaughn alleges. Vaughn endeavors to place Anselm's letters in their historical contexts and to convey his understanding of women friends as well as his positive views on marriage and parenthood. She finds parallels with the correspondence of Gregory the Great to which Anselm had access.

This book is therefore welcome. But it needs to be read critically. Vaughn stands by her conviction, first expressed elsewhere and against Southern, that Anselm himself collected his correspondence and did so to create a kind of autobiography and public image of himself which has historical value as "a splendid teaching document" (p. 263). Anselm's selections show both his discourse with real women and his construction of ideal types of women. Whether Anselm did arrange the collection may, at the end of the day, not matter too much, for the historian can only work with the texts he has, but Vaughn tends to inflate her arguments. She states, for example, that Anselm was "in the forefront of the rediscovery of reason" (p. 279) and "of the writing of autobiography" (p. 280), that "individualism was very widespread in both pre-Conquest and post-Conquest Normandy" (p. 280) and that he wrote "at the very beginning" of the transition "from an oral to a written tradition" (p. 21; thus giving the impression that before Anselm people did not write). These clichés look tired. It is surprising that the book has appeared in the series of "Utrecht Studies of Medieval Literacy," for there is little in it about literacy and there are many errors which have been unnoticed by the series editors. Texts are translated loosely. For example, "sancta tua dilectio" becomes "since I love your sanctity," and "she knows him" should be "Dom Rainer knows me" (p. 134 and Anselm, letter 167). The Latin cannot be conveniently checked since it is generally not cited, but when it is reproduced mistakes creep in (pp. 176, n. 56, 178, n. 61). Other errors include Arbrissal for Arbrissel (p. 6 and Index); St. David's for St. Andrews (p. 30); Sororae for Sorores (p. 116 etc.); do for ad (p. 285, n. 109); ancillae for ancilla (p. 288); William Crispin IV for William Crispin III; Hainalt for Hainault (p. 300); Tilliérs for Tillières, Neufles for Neaufles (p. 301), and so on.