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St. Anselm and St. Bruno of Segni: The Common Ground
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
Extract
Thirty years ago, J. de Ghellinck suggested that an examination of the thought of St. Bruno, bishop of Segni, might reveal some parallels with the thought of St. Anselm. More recently, R. Gregoire has explored the notion in his study of St. Bruno. He concedes that some similarities are noticeable, particularly in the conservative monastic attitude which both Bruno and Anselm display towards the theologian's task. But he questions the worthwhileness of any attempt to compare the two on two grounds. First, diere is some question as to the authenticity of one of the works attributed to Bruno, whose thought most closely resembles that of Anselm's treatises. And secondly, he finds insufficient grounds for believing that Bruno can have borrowed from Anselm in composing this piece—even if it is, indeed, his; there are demonstrably other possible sources of their common ideas. If de Ghellinck had in mind any such direct borrowing, the evidence is certainly most unsatisfactory. But die term he chooses is ‘rapports’. It may be that we are dealing here, even if not always wim works of Bruno himself, with writings which are the product of the contemporary community of thought upon which Anselm himself drew. The interest of the ‘rapports’ which are undoubtedly present would then lie in the evidence they provide as to the climate in which Anselm himself thought and wrote.
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References
1 Ghellinck, J. de, Le mouvement théologique du xie siècle, Bruges 1948, 83 n. 5Google Scholar.
2 Grégoire, R., Bruno de Segni, Spoleto 1965, 101–2Google Scholar. The De Incarnatione Domini survives in only one twelfth century MS., Monte Cassino, Abbaye 196, fols. 194–9, while many of Bruno's undoubted works were copied enthusiastically, and circulated in many MSS. which are still extant. This would seem uncertain grounds for denying its authenticity.
3 Grégoire, op. cit., 861–7.
4 Ibid., 16–58, especially p. 41 on the possible encounter at the Council of Bari in 1098.
5 Southern, R. W., St. Anselm and his Biographer, Cambridge 1963, 357–61Google Scholar.
6 Southern, R. W., ‘St. Anselm and Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminister’, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies, 3 (1954), 78–115Google Scholar, and St. Anselm and his Biographer, 88–91.
7 This is particularly notable in the case of the Monologion. See, for example, Anselm's discussion of the Augustinian ‘trinity’ in the mind of man (De Trinitate, x. 11–12) in Monologion lxvii: Anselmi Opera Omnia, ed. Schmitt, F. S., Rome/Edinburgh 1938–68, (hereafter cited as S.), 1.78.1–4Google Scholar.
8 P.L., 180.211.
9 On Bruno's life, in addition to Grégoire, 16–58, see Gigalski, B., Bruno, Bischof von Segni, Abt von Monte Cassino, 1049–1123, sein Leben und sein Schriften, Kirchengeschichtliche Studien, Bd. 3, Hft. 4 (1898), 42–53Google Scholar, and see P.L., 164.137–48 for various testimonia which fill out Peter the Deacon's account. On the meeting at Rouen in 1106, see Grégoire, 46, for a testimony in Suger Gesta Ludoviti regis cognomento Grossi, ch. 9 and Eadrner Historic. Novorum, ed. Rule, M., London 1884, 179Google Scholar.
10 S., 2.42.3.
11 P.L., 165.977.
12 P.L., 165.984, 987, 989.
13 St. Anselm and his Biographer, 226.
14 The surviving accounts of Anselm's preaching (none of his sermons is extant) are included in the collection of Anselmian texts in Memorials of St. Anselm, ed. Southern, R. W. and Schmitt, F. S., London 1969Google Scholar.
15 Bruno is the author of a great deal of scriptural commentary in addition to the treatises.
16 P.L., 165.978.
17 Ibid.
18 Eadmer's Life of St. Anselm, ed. Southern, R. W., London 1962, 90Google Scholar has a particularly striking example, but Eadmer refers to other similes of Anselm's, and there are many more in the De Humanis Moribus which is edited in the Memorials.
19 P.L., 165.876 and 898–902, for example.
20 PL., 165.901 and 940.
21 P.L., 165.605, cf. S., 1.7.2–5.
22 P.L., 169.15.
23 S., 1.7.10, 2.48.12.
24 P.L., 164.147–8.
25 S., 2.434–5.
26 P.L., 164.695
27 S., 2.4.13–15.
28 P.L., 165.875–6.
29 P.L., 165.63 and 313.
30 S., 2.48.5–6.
31 S., 2.49.7–13. The De Conceptu Virginali was written to accommodate a sequence of argument for which space could not be found in the Cur Deus Homo.
32 P.L., 165.313–14 and 956.
33 S., 6.2i lists Anselm's cross-references between his treatises.
34 On the school of Laon see Flint, V. I. J., ““The School of Laon”: a Reconsideration’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et medievale, xliii (1976), 89–120Google Scholar.
35 SL Anselm and his Biographer, 212.
36 Vita Bosonis, P.L., 150.725: Turbatus ergo et mente confusus adiit Anselmum.
37 P.L., 165–973.
38 P.L., 165.977.
39 P.L., 165.605.
40 S., 1.7.9–11.
41 Letter 77, S., 3.199–200.
42 S., 2.9.20–10.17.
43 S., 2.19.U-16. Grégoire speaks, perhaps a little too strongly, of Bruno's ‘phobie de la dialectique': op. cit., 250.
44 P.L., 165.978.
45 Ibid.
46 P.L., 165.976.
47 P.L., 165.980.
48 S., 1.196.10–18, S., 2.248.5–7, for example.
49 P.L., 165.977.
50 P.L., 165.977.
51 On the De Grammatico see Henry, D. P.; Commentary on De Gramatico, Dordrecht 1974CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
52 S., 1.282.28–283.6.
53 P.L., 165.977.
54 Ibid.
55 S., 2.178.4.
56 P. L., 165.977.
57 See my article ‘St. Anselm's Images of Trinity’, Journal of Theological Studies, xxvii (1976), 56Google Scholar.
58 S., 2. 31. 1 0
59 P. L., 165. 980, cf. Anselm's videamus enim in rebus creatis: loc. cit.
60 P.L., 165.980.
61 Ibid.
62 See above, n. 4 and ‘Images of Trinity', 50–1.
63 P.L., 165.980.
64 Something has already been said about Grégoire's doubts as to the authenticity of this work. There seem, however, to be no clear grounds for excluding it altogether from Bruno's corpus. Grégoire himself acknowledges it to be a rudimentary Cur Deus Homo (op. cit., 261) and it is precisely its relation to the Cur Deus Homo with which we are concerned.
65 Grégoire, 155; Gigalski, 283.
66 P.L., 165.1079.
67 P.L., 165.1079, cf. Augustine De Trinitate, 1v.xiv.19.
68 S., 2.68–9.
69 St. Anselm and his Biographer, 93–7.
70 P.L., 165.1080.
71 S., 2.58.13–24, and 2.101.3–21.
72 P. L., 165.1081.
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid.
76 S., 2.69.6.9; 2.105.21 etal.
77 Cur Deus Homo, 11. vii: S., 2.102–4.
78 See Hopkins, J.A Compan ion to the study of St. Anselm, Minneapolis 1972, 246–53Google Scholar.
79 S., 2.3.3; 2.39–41.
80 S., 2.26.3–4. There are as Grégoire points out (264–5) precedents in patristic writings for the theme of this argument, but he is unable to show that Bruno draws directly on any one of these, although he claims that the likeness to Anselm's argument is ‘fortuite'.
81 P.L., 165.1082.
82 Ibid.
83 On the work Anselm did in England, see Eadmer's Life, 107; St. Anselm and his Biographer, 77.
84 S., 2.50.15.