St. Anselm of Canterbury and His Profound Marian Spirituality

Years ago I did a paper (somewhat legendary in the length of time it took for me to finish) on St. Anselm’s Mariology. Now that I’m teaching a Mariology class, I’ve dug out the old paper. It’s not bad! Well, it did take years to write.

Fr. Johann G. Roten, S.M. wrote some thoughts on St. Anselms’s Marian Spirituality, conveniently including the three famous prayers to Mary written by him.

Here’s a little from Prayer 3:

Palace of universal propitiation,
cause of general reconciliation,
vase and temple of life and universal salvation:
I have made too little of your praises,
and in a little man like me it is especially vile
to belittle your merits.
For the world rejoices in your love
and so proclaims what you have done for it.
O Lady, to be wondered at for your unparalleled virginity;
to be venerated for a holiness beyond all reckoning—
you showed to the world its Lord and its God
whom it had not known.
You showed to the sight of all the world
its Creator whom it had not seen.
You gave birth to the restorer of the world
for whom the lost world longed.
You brought forth the world’s reconciliation,
which, in its guilt, it did not have before.

St. Anselm recognizes the profound role Mary has played in being the Theotokos, the one who gave birth to God incarnate.

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