SOURCE: Bestul, Thomas H. “St. Augustine and the Orationes sive Meditationes of St. Anselm.” Anselm Studies 2 (1988): 597-606.

In the following essay, Bestul elucidates the stylistic influence of St. Augustine's work on Anselm's devotional writing.

St. Anselm composed most of his nineteen prayers and three meditations between the years 1060 and 1078, while he was a monk at Bec. As scholars have frequently observed, those Orationes sive Meditationes mark a turning point in the devotional literature of the Western Church. Composed in an effusive, exclamatory, highly personal style, making use of lengthy balanced periods and carefully balanced cadences, his writings are characterized by an intense, emotional intimacy that is quite unlike anything known before his time. In seeking to identify the sources of Anselm's devotional writing, most scholars have rightly identified three contributing influences: the Psalms, the liturgy, and the earlier, mainly Carolingian, tradition of private prayer.¹ Yet these influences, important...