Anselm
Newland Smith
Seabury-Western
April 20, 2007
In 1067 a great fire either destroyed or made unusable the Cathedral Church and the monastic buildings at Canterbury, England. The library with its surviving books and manuscripts was in shambles. Lanfranc who arrived in Canterbury from France in 1070 as the first Norman Archbishop of Canterbury had little patience with the remaining English monks and what he perceived to be irrelevant late Anglo-Saxon culture including the books and manuscripts from that time. Lanfranc set out to bring Canterbury, its cathedral and monastic community, up to stuff with the vibrant scholastic learning of northern France. Lanfranc rebuilt the library and acquired the key texts of secular and religious learning of his time. But he was not of a mind to restore the old English saints to the church calendar. In 1067 he sent one of his most obstinate monks, Osbern, to Bec to learn about obedience from Anselm who then was prior of this Benedictine monastery. Anselm, brilliant an intellectual as he was, was also deeply rooted in the Benedictine rule and had a gift of establishing friendships. Such a friendship he established with Osbern. In 1079 Anselm visited Canterbury. It was during this visit that Anselm learned that Lanfranc was dead set against restoring Alphege to the church calendar. Just two days ago we celebrated this saint’s feast day and learned that he had been killed by the Danes in 1012 because “he refused to permit a ransom to be extracted from his people.” But Lanfranc resisted restoring the name of Alphege to the calendar, to quote R. W. Southern “because there was no written record of his life or death, nor any present monk of the community who remembered this English monk.” Anselm was able to persuade Lanfranc to change his mind by arguing that Alphege had died in his effort to save his people from an unjust exaction, and hence had died for justice and for truth which was what martyrdom meant. Anselm also asked Osbern, that obstinate monk, to write a biography of Alphege. For Anselm while being the most creative theologian of his time, also knew the importance of preserving the tradition of the old Canterbury monks.
So if it is not too great a leap of time from eleventh century England to twenty-first century America, permit this librarian in his final homily here to commit briefly on not libraries and fire but libraries and water and libraries and acquisitions. First libraries and water: on Easter eve 1983 I discovered here at Seabury water flowing into the room off of the hallway outside the boiler room where some 100 boxes of diocesan journals were temporarily being stored. Fortunately I was able to call upon my son and two of his friends to help me get those boxes out of the room before the water reached them. Several years later a window well at Garrett became so full of leaves that a heavy August rainfall resulted in a powerful burst of water into the west stack section which contained works by and about Zwingli. Because the power was out, library staff worked by candle light in the annex as we placed paper towels between the wet pages of the volumes. Then on Christmas Day 1989, not wanting to pay for a New York Times, I stopped at Garrett to pick up the paper and walked right into what became know as the Christmas flood as a pipe had broken behind the receptionist desk with the result that hot water was pouring into the North Stacks. The only good outcome of this disaster was becoming aware of the existence of Midwest Freeze Dry in Skokie whose employees were able to restore some four thousand volumes that had been water damaged.
Now a few words on libraries and acquisitions: early in my years as librarian I got on the mailing list of L. B. Walker, the proprietor of Nelson’s Bookroom, located on the Welsh border. One of the first sets the library ordered was the seventeen volumes of the collected works of James Ussher, Abp. of Armagh. A number of years later the library also purchased from Nelson’s Bookroom a large back run of the Chronicle of the Convocation of Canterbury (from 1847 to 1938). Ussher and the Chroncile of the Convocation of Canterbury, two examples of works documenting the history and thought of the Anglican church.
Anselm fled his native town of Aosta in Italy in 1056. Three years later at the age of twenty-six he arrived at the Benedictine abbey of Bec in France and put himself into the hands of its prior, Lanfranc. It was during the next ten years that Anselm submitted himself to the demands and joys of the Rule of Benedict in that monastic community. Seabury is not a monastic community. But it is a community of faith -- a community which has formed and challenged me. In the Gospel reading from Matthew Jesus said to his disciples, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” I have learned much from this Jesus in this community, especially in the context of the daily round of services in this chapel and in Seabury Lounge and as a result the burden of following him on the Way has been lightened greatly. Indeed my brothers and sisters, fellow sojourners on the Way, you have sustained me in countless ways. For this I give thanks.