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Subject: TMR 12.09.21 Niskanen, The Letter Collections of Anselm (Koopmans)

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Niskanen, Samu. <i>The Letter Collections of Anselm of
Canterbury</i>. Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia vol. 61
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). Pp. iii, 345. 90.00 Euros. ISBN-13: 978-
2-503-54075-7.

   Reviewed by Rachel Koopmans
        York University, Toronto
        [log in to unmask]


Letter collections are among our most important medieval sources. In
the eleventh and twelfth centuries in particular, the leading lights
of the day conducted business, created networks of friends, and showed
off their rhetorical talents via a blizzard of letter-writing. Making
collections of one's letters became highly fashionable in this period,
which is fortunate for us, for nearly all the letters that survive
were encased in such collections. Sometimes authors themselves
created their own collections. Sometimes others collected letters for
them. Sometimes multiple collections were made, reflecting different
points in a prelate's career. All such letter collections might be
merged or split or corrupted by later copyists. Often, as in the case
of Anselm of Canterbury's 475 known letters, the result is an
immensely complicated manuscript tradition, with no clear guideposts
to determine who might have first created an individual collection or
what its contents originally were. Anselm himself refers to
collections of his letters being made at two, possibly three separate
points in his career--twice while he was abbot of Bec (1079-1093), and
once when he was archbishop of Canterbury (1093-1109). No original
letter sent or received by Anselm has survived, nor is there any known
manuscript that can be confidently read as an original authorial
collection.

Many readers will be aware that F. S. Schmitt OSB published an edition
of Anselm's letters. It appeared in six volumes between 1938 and
1961. Samu Niskanen has undertaken his work because of the
inadequacies of this edition: Schmitt, Niskanen writes, "never put
together a comprehensive and systematic survey of the textual
tradition, and furthermore the critical apparatus of his edition
reveals that at times his work was unsystematic and inaccurate…it is
impossible to understand the interrelationship of the manuscripts from
the edition" (22). These inadequacies have resulted in mistaken views
and considerable debates among scholars over Anselm's letter
collections, particularly over the significance of London, Lambeth
Palace Library 59, in the textual tradition. Niskanen's book,
published in Brepol's Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia series,
summarizes the results of his new and painstaking examination of
dozens of manuscripts. In the course of the book, he links together
the manuscript witnesses and reconstructs the probable contents of
three major authorial collections, which he terms [alpha], [beta], and
[omega], and three minor collections as well. Niskanen carried out
his detailed manuscript studies using the "traditional" methods of
textual analysis familiar to medievalists, but he also utilized
computer-based analyses to help test and confirm his understanding of
the relationship between the manuscripts and his proposed stemma for
the three major and three minor collections. His overall goal is "to
establish a store and framework of information essential to the
execution of a critical edition" (22).

The result is a very impressive book, one that undoubtedly supersedes
Schmitt's study and is indispensable reading for any scholar utilizing
Anselm's letters in any capacity. In the book's first section or
introduction, Niskanen spells out the parameters of his study and
discusses recent historiography on Anselm's letters. The second
section is a very clear and readable overview of letter-writing in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries in general and Anselm's letter-writing
in particular, including an interesting analysis of how Anselm
arranged names in salutations in line with his own perceived position
within social hierarchies. Niskanen's well-crafted subsections on the
delivery, reception, preservation and collection of letters are
especially worth the reading. The third and by far the longest
section of the book is Niskanen's analysis of the textual tradition of
the three major collections. Here, Niskanen begins with the [alpha]
collection, likely created under Anselm's direction at Bec c.1086 and
consisting of 60-100 letters. Niskanen cautiously notes that this is
a "hypothetical" collection and its existence "cannot be positively
determined" (74), though the evidence Niskanen puts forward reads very
convincingly. The most important surviving witness to [alpha] is BL
Cotton Nero A. VII, a late eleventh-century Rochester manuscript that
Niskanen discusses at length. The second collection, [beta], "can be
linked with Anselm's efforts to collect his letters in the winter of
1092-93," shortly before he departed for Canterbury (181). Niskanen
further subdivides this collection into two branches he terms [beta]1
and [beta]2, the first representing a Bec and the second a Canterbury
branch. Niskanen's discussion of the manuscript witnesses to [beta]
is very extensive, and I will highlight just three points of interest.
Niskanen demonstrates that BL Cotton Claudius A. XI, the manuscript
that contains more of Anselm's letters than any other, is a much more
important witness to the textual tradition than Schmitt and others
have believed (see 166-169). He also points out that Paris, BNF lat.
14762, fols. 1r-23v, is a striking case of a set of "real" letters
written by Anselm--that is, letters that were almost certainly sent--
that were abridged and selected so as to serve as a model letter
collection, an <i>ars dictaminis</i> (see 162-164). Another
intriguing manuscript, Troyes Médiathèque 1614, was designed for
readers "who were not interested in Anselm's activity outside the
monastic sphere" (174). With only one exception, letters Anselm sent
to the pope or to lay recipients were excluded from the first forty-
eight letters found in this manuscript. After working through letters
closely concerned with issues of the monastic life, the copyist then
went back to the beginning of his exemplar and copied in the letters
he found less interesting, namely those more concerned with church-
state politics.

In his discussion of [alpha] and [beta] in the third section of the
book, Niskanen frequently refers to [omega], the last major collection
of Anselm's letters which included correspondence from both Bec and
Canterbury. The [omega] collection may have been commenced after
Anselm's death, or he may have commissioned it in his final years at
Canterbury. In the last part of the book's third section, Niskanen
argues that the latter is more likely--that "[omega] was begun while
Anselm was still alive"--and that Thidricus, one of Anselm's
secretaries, had a role in the creation of [omega], which may have
been "an updatable register book" (214). Schmitt had argued that this
Thidricus was the maker of Lambeth Palace 59, a theory Niskanen
rejects. He suggests instead that that Eadmer of Canterbury may well
have directed the making of Lambeth Palace 59 and another closely
related manuscript at the scriptorium of Christ Church in the 1120s.
Niskanen builds this argument in a subsection entitled "The Making of
the Major Collections and Manuscript <i>L</i>," (200-225), an
especially important part of the book that is remarkably readable
despite the complexity of the material.

In book's fourth section, Niskanen turns to the "minor collections."
None of these appear to have been authorial (one definitely could not
have been), and they include no more than fifteen letters. However,
these collections circulated more widely than the major collections,
and are "significant historical sources" for how Anselm's
correspondence was read outside of Bec and Canterbury: "Their coherent
selection of high-quality letters were admirably suited to the needs
of communities outside the focus of Anselmian influence" (228). One
of the minor collections appears to have been, interestingly, created
at the nunnery of Shaftesbury (see 258-259), while another could have
been created by Bishop Osmund of Salisbury (273-274). Many of the
manuscripts Niskanen discusses in this section are compilations of a
broad range of Anselm's works, including philosophical and devotional
treatises as well as letters. Niskanen is naturally interested
primarily in the letters, but the ways in which these manuscripts
shaped medieval readers' understanding of Anselm's works more broadly
would be an interesting avenue for further research. Niskanen turns
to the history of the printed editions of Anselm's letters from
<i>incunabula</i> to the <i>Patrologia Latina</i> in the fifth section
of the book. Niskanen's diligence and scrupulous attention to detail
is as evident here as in the rest of his work. One has to admire his
willingness to tackle what he terms the "almost indigestible mess,
characterized by duplication and misattribution" that is the edition
of Anselm's letters in the <i>PL<i/> (275).

In the book's conclusion, Niskanen outlines "the desiderata for a new
edition" (289). He believes that two manuscripts should serve as the
base texts for the edition, namely Cambridge, Corpus Christi College
135 for the Bec correspondence, and Lambeth Palace 59 for the
Canterbury correspondence, though "the editorial text should,
naturally, correct the mistakes of the base manuscripts with the aid
of our other witnesses" (291). In the case of the Bec letters, the
goal would be to reconstruct the probable arrangement of the letters
within Anselm's authorial collection [beta]. The manuscript witnesses
are not good enough to reconstruct [omega], so the goal there would be
to retain Lambeth Palace 59's arrangement of the letters and to place
additional letters in what could be best deemed as their correct
places, using marginal notation in the Lambeth manuscript. The
arrangement of letters in this new edition "would differ considerably
from Schmitt's arrangement, which derives partly from earlier editions
and partly from his own relative chronology" (292). Such
rearrangement will create cross-referencing difficulties with earlier
scholarship, but there is no question that this should take place. In
the last sentence of the book, Niskanen writes the introduction to the
new edition is "already under construction" (293). With so much of
the groundwork prepared in this book, one hopes that the edition is
indeed well underway and can be published soon.

Scholars working on Anselm and his letters need to read this book, of
course, but scholars interested in any of the manuscripts Niskanen
examines should also consult it (there is a manuscripts cited index).
Scholars concerned with letters in the eleventh and twelfth century
will find much of note. I also believe that this book could be very
profitably used in courses on manuscript studies and text editing.
Niskanen's presentation of his arguments and evidence is
extraordinarily clear, thorough, and carefully structured. He uses
numerous charts and graphics to illustrate and enumerate his points,
and there are also eleven black-and-white plates of key manuscript
pages. This book would make an excellent introduction to the nitty-
gritty world of text editing for graduate and advanced undergraduate
students. Niskanen has untied the knots of a particularly tangled
textual tradition, and the multi-faceted study of Anselm's letters--
which constitute one-half of his overall literary output--will greatly
benefit as a result.






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