Proslogion (Address / Discourse on the Existence of God)
Proslogion (originally Fides quaerens intellectum)
Catalogue updated 2026-06-08
Full Sub Rosa translationRead the full translationOpen reader →Open the chapter reader with the full English translation, source text, notes, and scripture echoes.What is Proslogion (Address / Discourse on the Existence of God)?
Written at Bec during Anselm's priorship (1063–1078) at the request of fellow monks who needed a meditative model for rational reflection on faith, the Proslogion is structured as a prayer—an address to God—in which Anselm works out the ontological argument as a devotional exercise rather than a formal philosophical treatise.
Da mihi, Domine, scire et intelligere utrum sit prius gratias tibi agere an invocare te.
Our renderingGrant me, Lord, to know and understand whether I should first give thanks to you or first call upon you.
What it is
Written at Bec during Anselm's priorship (1063–1078) at the request of fellow monks who needed a meditative model for rational reflection on faith, the Proslogion is structured as a prayer—an address to God—in which Anselm works out the ontological argument as a devotional exercise rather than a formal philosophical treatise. The title means 'discourse' or 'address,' chosen because the text is a sustained prayer addressed to God. As the signature product of the most important Norman monastery of the era and a text circulating immediately in the Norman monastic network, it would have been known to educated members of the Norman court. Its original title, 'Faith Seeking Understanding,' encapsulates its devotional purpose.
Why it still matters
The Proslogion's opening chapters are among the most beautiful prayers in Latin Christian literature; a reader today can use chapters 1–3 as a morning meditation on seeking God and chapters 14–26 as an extended contemplation of the divine attributes.
Common questions
What is Anselm's Proslogion about?
Answer-first notes for readers and search engines
What is Anselm's Proslogion about?
The Proslogion by Anselm of Bec is a sustained prayer addressed to God in which he works out the ontological argument for God's existence as a devotional exercise rather than a formal treatise. Its original title, 'Faith Seeking Understanding' (Fides quaerens intellectum), captures its aim: reasoning about God from within an attitude of worship and belief.
Who wrote the Proslogion and when?
Anselm of Bec, later Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote the Proslogion around 1077 to 1078 during his years at the Norman abbey of Bec, at the request of fellow monks who wanted a meditative model for rational reflection on faith. The title means 'discourse' or 'address,' since the whole text is framed as a prayer to God.
Where can I read the Proslogion in English?
Anselm of Bec's Proslogion is a short work whose opening chapters count among the most admired prayers in Latin Christian literature. Sub Rosa publishes a complete modern English translation you can read free online, letting a reader use its early chapters as a meditation on seeking God and its later chapters as contemplation of the divine attributes.
Proslogion (Address / Discourse on the Existence of God) companion
One chapter of historic wisdom, every day
Chosen Portion delivers works like the Proslogion as short daily readings with a prayer — free on iOS.
Anselm designed the Proslogion to be read slowly as prayer, and the Chosen Portion app serves it exactly that way — one short portion per day.
- Finish the entire Proslogion in 14 days at about 10 minutes a day
- Modern-English rendering of all 27 chapters, no Latin required
- Each reading paired with Anselm's own prayers so study ends in worship
Kept alongside
Orationes sive Meditationes — Collection sent to Countess Matilda of Tuscany
Orationes sive Meditationes
In 1104, during his second exile, Anselm sent the completed corpus of his Prayers and Meditations to Matilda of Tuscany, the most powerful female ruler in the Latin West and a key imperial-papal political figure. Surprised that she did not yet possess a copy, he assembled the full collection urgently. This marks the moment the Orationes circulated as an independent canonical collection rather than in individual tranches, cementing their status as the premier aristocratic devotional prayer book of the era. Matilda, born c. 1046, had political and religious ties spanning Norman, imperial, and papal networks, making this the most socially prestigious documented distribution of any eleventh-century private prayer collection.
The Jesus Prayer
Молитва Иисусова
The short invocation 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner' has been the central personal prayer of Orthodox hesychasm for fifteen centuries, transmitted through the Desert Fathers, the Sinai tradition, and the Athonite hesychasts to Russian monasticism and lay piety. It appears within the Molitvoslov prayer rule documented as belonging to the Romanov family, and Empress Alexandra explicitly commended the prayer to her children by name in her letters and spiritual counsel. Elder Nikolai Guryanov later testified that Tsar Nicholas II recited it daily, though this oral tradition postdates the Tsar by decades and cannot be treated as primary documentation. The prayer's centrality to the Romanov spiritual world is well established; the personal frequency of its use by individual family members is plausible but cannot be confirmed from contemporary primary sources.
The Ladder of Divine Ascent (Scala Paradisi)
Κλῖμαξ τοῦ Παραδείσου
John Climacus (c. 579–649), abbot of the monastery on Mount Sinai, composed this thirty-step guide from renunciation to divine union, organizing the steps as an ascent corresponding to the thirty years of Christ's hidden life before his public ministry. Translated into Latin, Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, and Old Church Slavonic, and surviving in hundreds of manuscripts from the 9th century onward, it became the most widely used handbook of ascetic life in the Greek-speaking Church and was universally known at Orthodox royal courts. An iconic 12th-century miniature from Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, depicts the Ladder as a literal climb with demons pulling souls downward, and the text is still read aloud in Orthodox monastic refectories throughout Great Lent. Step 28, on prayer, is a foundational source for hesychast practice and directly shaped the Jesus Prayer tradition.