SOURCE: Pranger, M. B. “Reading Anselm.” In The Artificiality of Christianity: Essays on the Poetics of Monasticism, pp. 162-76. Stanford, Calif..: Stanford University Press, 2003.

In the following essay, Pranger explains how Anselm's reading of Augustine illuminates the monastic mindset.

In his recent book Augustine the Reader Brian Stock has drawn attention to a remarkable paradox in Augustine's thought. On the one hand, the act of meditative reading establishes, through the decoding of signs, the link between the reflective self and its ultimate goal and model, God, alias the Trinity. But on the other hand, the very same goal that acts as the incentive for the mind's search of both itself and its destination in the end proves to be beyond the reader's grasp. Stock summarizes his analysis of Augustine's use of texts (mainly in the Confessiones and De trinitate) as a means to come to terms with the...