SOURCE: Law, Richard. “The Proslogion and Saint Anselm's Audience.” In Faith Seeking Understanding: Learning and the Catholic Tradition, edited by George C. Berthold, pp. 219-26. Manchester, N.H.: Saint Anselm College Press, 1991.

In the following essay, Law summarizes the rhetorical effects of the Proslogion while observing that the work was probably originally drafted simply to bring joy to its first intended audience, the monks of Bec.

The epigraph for this talk is from Sir Richard Southern's notable book first published twenty-five years ago, Saint Anselm and His Biographer (1963): the Proslogion “was written in a state of philosophical excitement which (it is probably safe to say) had never before been experienced so intensely in any Benedictine monastery, and was probably never again to be repeated in Benedictine history.”¹ Taken literally, this historical generalization is no less disputable than any other containing the phrases, “never before” and “never again,” but...