What does it look like?

The manuscript, which is written on vellum and bound in leather, contains several other writings by Anselm, as well as Augustine’s ‘De Doctrina Christiana’ and ‘Enchiridion’.

It is a rare copy, as inside the cover the owner’s name is written, (John de Brinkley, Abbot of Bury St Edmunds 1361-1378), as well as the cost, and there are some delightful ‘pointing hands’ in the margins to indicate specific passages of interest (see photograph). Thank you to Suzanne Paul, Keeper of Manuscripts and University Archives, University of Cambridge, for this information, and the above details about the provenance of the manuscript.

Who, what and where?

This version of the Proslogion was produced by monks for the Abbey at Bury St Edmunds.

Anselm’s Proslogion is considered one of the earliest versions of the so-called ‘ontological argument’. Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality. An ontological argument is a philosophical argument for the existence of God, that uses ontology. Anselm wrote that God must necessarily exist, even if someone denies the existence of God, because it contradicts logic that he should not exist. He went on to argue that if something exists in the mind, then it must also exist in reality. This is apparently the focus of the first three chapters.

Why is it significant to the study of religion?

Modern scholars (e.g. Jacob Sherman, Robert McMahon, Catherine Pickstock) have questioned whether these first three chapters, that focus on ontology, are central to the whole of the text. Later chapters seem to undo the argument, for example, by stating that God is “beyond what can be known” (Chapter 15).

This is typical of philosophical questions about the nature of God, that were raised as early as Augustine of Hippo, (354-430 CE). He asked: why it is that, if God is all around us, nonetheless we cannot perceive Him? Rene Descartes, (1596-1650), took the ontological argument further in the ‘Meditations’ (1641).

Recent books, such as Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (2006), set out to prove that God doesn’t exist. However, it is thought that readers of the Proslogion, particularly because of the time in which it was written, would assume God’s existence, rather than start out being sceptical about it.