Prooemium
The Search for a Single Argument
Anselm recounts his desire to find one self-sufficient argument that proves God's existence and goodness, replacing the many arguments of his earlier work.
After I had published a short work — something like a model for meditating on the nature of faith — at the urging of certain brothers who pressed me, as it were, as someone silently reasoning with himself about things he doesn't know he's investigating, and considering that it was woven together from a chain of many arguments, I began to ask myself whether perhaps a single argument could be found that would need nothing other than itself to prove itself, and would suffice on its own to establish that God truly exists, that he is the highest good needing nothing else, that all things need him in order to exist and to exist well, and that whatever we believe about the divine substance would be sufficiently grounded in it.12
The Relentless Pursuit of Understanding
Anselm describes his inner struggle as the elusive insight alternately approaches and retreats, until surrendering to its persistent pressure brings the breakthrough he had despaired of finding.
Whenever I eagerly turned my thinking toward this, it sometimes seemed to me that what I was seeking could now be grasped, and at other times the sharpness of my mind completely fled from it. At last, in despair, I wanted to give up, as though abandoning a search for something that couldn't be found. But since I wanted to shut that thought out entirely, lest by occupying my mind uselessly it keep me from other things in which I could make progress, more and more it began to press itself upon me — reluctant and defending as I was — with a kind of stubborn insistence.3 So one day, worn out from resisting its relentless pressure in the very struggle of my thoughts, what I had despaired of seized the moment and offered itself, so that I eagerly embraced the very thought I had been anxiously pushing away.4
Writing Under the Persona of Faith
Anselm decides to record his discovery for the benefit of others, writing under the persona of one seeking to understand what he believes, and gives the work its defining title: faith seeking understanding.
So I was pleased to think that if it were written down, what I had found would be welcomed by someone reading it — and so I wrote the little work that follows, on this very subject and on certain other matters, under the persona of someone trying to lift his own mind to contemplate God and seeking to understand what he believes. And since I didn't think either this work or the one I mentioned above deserved the name of a book, or that an author's name should be placed before it, yet I also didn't think they should be sent out without some title — something that would, in a way, invite whoever they reached to read them — I gave each its own title: so that the first would be called an example of meditating on the reason of faith, and the second, faith seeking understanding.
Yielding to Apostolic Authority
Under obedience to Archbishop Hugh of Lyon, Anselm attaches his name to the works and gives them their final titles, distinguishing the Monologion as a soliloquy and the Proslogion as an address.
But by now both had already been copied out by several people, each under two titles, and several of them urged me to do the same — especially the reverend archbishop of Lyon, Hugh by name, who was serving as legate of the apostolic see in Gaul — and he commanded me by apostolic authority to put my name on them for his people. To make this more fitting, I named the first one Monologion — that is, a soliloquy — and the second, by contrast, Proslogion — that is, an address.
Read the original Latin
Postquam opusculum quoddam velut exemplum meditandi de ratione fidei cogentibus me precibus quorundam fratrum in persona alicuius tacite secum ratiocinando quae nesciat investigantis edidi: considerans illud esse multorum concatenatione contextum argumentorum, coepi mecum quaerere, si forte posset inveniri unum argumentum, quod nullo alio ad se probandum quam se solo indigeret, et solum ad astruendum quia deus vere est, et quia est summum bonum nullo alio indigens, et quo omnia indigent ut sint et ut bene sint, et quaecumque de divina credimus substantia, sufficeret.
Ad quod cum saepe studioseque cogitationem converterem, atque aliquando mihi videretur iam posse capi quod quaerebam, aliquando mentis aciem omnino fugeret: tandem desperans volui cessare velut ab inquisitione rei quam inveniri esset impossibile. Sed cum illam cogitationem, ne mentem meam frustra occupando ab aliis in quibus proficere possem impediret, penitus a me vellem excludere: tunc magis ac magis nolenti et defendenti se coepit cum importunitate quadam ingerere. Cum igitur quadam die vehementer eius importunitati resistendo fatigarer, in ipso cogitationum conflictu sic se obtulit quod desperaveram, ut studiose cogitationem amplecterer, quam sollicitus repellebam.
Aestimans igitur quod me gaudebam invenisse, si scriptum esset, alicui legenti placiturum: de hoc ipso et de quibusdam aliis sub persona conantis erigere mentem suam ad contemplandum deum et quaerentis intelligere quod credit, subditum scripsi opusculum. Et quoniam nec istud nec illud cuius supra memini dignum libri nomine aut cui auctoris praeponeretur nomen indicabam, nec tamen eadem sine aliquo titulo, quo aliquem in cuius manus venirent quodam modo ad se legendum invitarent, dimittenda putabam: unicuique suum dedi titulum, ut prius exemplum meditandi de ratione fidei, et sequens fides quaerens intellectum diceretur.
Sed cum iam a pluribus cum bis titulis utrumque transcriptum esset, coegerunt me plures et maxime reverendus archiepiscopus Lugdunensis, Hugo nomine, fungens in Gallia legatione Apostolica, qui mihi hoc ex Apostolica praecepit auctoritate, ut nomen meum illis praescriberem. Quod ut aptius fieret, illud quidem Monologion, id est soliloquium, istud vero Proslogion, id est alloquium, nominavi.
Notes
- 1 ↩The 'persona alicuius tacite secum ratiocinando' construction frames the request as coming through the figure of an anonymous inner dialoguer; the meditandi exemplum is thus presented as arising from an imagined solitary inquirer rather than from Anselm's own voice directly.
- 2 ↩Substantia rendered as 'substance' in its philosophical sense (ousia/nature), not in a sacramental sense; context is the divine essence, not Eucharistic.
- 3 ↩cum (token 1) rendered as causal ('since') rather than concessive; the context supports a reason for the attempted exclusion.
- 4 ↩ut (token 18) rendered as result ('so that') rather than purpose; the context strongly suggests the thought presented itself as a consequence of exhaustion, not as a purposeful aim.
Proslogion (Address / Discourse on the Existence of God) companion
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