Abstract

A critical edition of Eadmer’s Vita Sancti Anselmi is the natural supplement to a modern biography. Professor Southern has established the original text with meticulous care, adding a lucid translation en face and has enriched it with an editorial preface and notes which carry their scholarship lightly for the contemporary reader. This Life was written shortly after the death of Anselm in 1109 in order, apparently, to rebut criticisms of his sanctity and of his administrative success at Canterbury; hence as a complement to Eadmer’s earlier Historia Novorum in Anglia, which expounded Anselm’s defence of Church autonomy against royal dominance, as Eadmer’s preface here explains