Anselm of Canterbury: Teacher of Prayer by Benedicta Ward, S.L.G (review)

Reviewed by: Anselm of Canterbury: Teacher of Prayer by Benedicta Ward, S.L.G John R. Fortin O.S.B. Anselm of Canterbury: Teacher of Prayer by Benedicta Ward, S.L.G. (Oxford: SLG Press, 2022. Pp. 54. Paperback, £6.00. ISBN 978-0-7283-0333-1). In this monograph, Mother Benedicta Ward, S.L.G., (d. 23 May 2022) discusses Anselm as a teacher of prayer who shared his personal, creative prayers with others even as he encouraged them to pray in their own way. The book is divided into two sections. (An abridged version of the first section appeared in Fairacres Chronicles 55.1 Summer, 2022: 20–32.) In the first section, Ward writes about Anselm as a man of prayer himself and the influence of his prayers. The second section is an appendix which includes selections of Anselm's prayers from Ward's 1973 translations, The Prayers and Meditations of Saint Anselm with the Proslogion. The first section consists of three parts. In the first part, Ward describes Anselm as a man who prayed. She recounts the well-known story of Anselm's vision from his youth, as found in Eadmer's Life, of being entertained in the court of the Great King. Ward notes from that account several elements of prayer that had a lasting effect on Anselm and summarizes them as a yearning for something beyond himself, for self-knowledge, repentance, enjoying God's presence, conversing with God as a friend, thanksgiving and appealing for mercy. In his End Page 105 prayers, Anselm offered a new way to pray that was spontaneous, intimate and personal, while not rejecting the received tradition of reciting the Psalms. There are four stages to Anselm's prayers. First, there is the realization of estrangement from God due to sin and the need to be shaken out of one's apathy and lethargy brought on by this estrangement. Second, there is the movement from contrition to contemplation and a need to rouse oneself to a devotion to the humanity of Jesus Christ and an ardent desire to know him. Third, there is the unity of souls in the love of God, a unity with the saints, with one's monastic confreres and consoeurs, and with many others; for friendship with God, with Christ, with the saints and with others is fundamental to Anselm's prayers. Finally, there is the piercing of the heart by joy in the vision of God. The second part of the first section is an exploration of the circulation and influence of Anselm's prayers. Listing a few works that have Anselm as an obvious source, Ward focuses her remarks on a study by R. W. Southern of a Middle English devotional treatise entitled A Talkyng of the Love of God (13th-14th centuries). In addition to reflecting some of Anselm's notions on prayer, the text also contains English translations of a few of Anselm's prayers. Ward, however, also notes significant differences between Talkyng and Anselm. For example, in regard to sorrow for sin, Talkyng, although relying on Anselm's "Prayer to St John the Baptist," has reduced Anselm's three elements of "self-abasement and contrition for sin, confidence in Christ and adoration of Christ as Saviour of the sinner who repents" to one element which results in "an intense and self-centred monologue in which the person praying dwells at depressing lengths on his own sins and guilt" (p. 21). Overall, Ward laments the diminishment of the depth and vitality of Anselm's approach to prayer. The third part, with which the first section ends, is a brief conclusion entitled "Faith Seeking Understanding." Here Ward affirms the value of Anselm's prayers for today, especially to avoid the extremes of the third millennium "when in academic circles the concept of God has become so rarified that he can be seen not only as to be irrelevant but non-existent and when, among the devout, attention to the humanity of Jesus has dissolved into personal sentimentality" (p. 23). There follows the second section of the book, which gives Anselm's preface to his prayers, the preface to Talkyng, a bibliography and selections from...