This Element explores the papacy's engagement in authorial publishing in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. The opening discussion demonstrates that throughout the medieval period, papal involvement in the publication of new works was a phenomenon, which surged in the eleventh century. The efforts by four authors to use their papal connexions in the interests of publicity are examined as case studies. The first two are St Jerome and Arator, late antique writers who became highly influential partly due to their declaration that their literary projects enjoyed papal sanction. Appreciation of their publication strategies sets the scene for a comparison with two eleventh-century authors, Fulcoius of Beauvais and St Anselm. This Element argues that papal involvement in publication constituted a powerful promotional technique. It is a hermeneutic that brings insights into both the aspirations and concerns of medieval authors. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

St Anselm (d. 1109) is the most interesting theologian and philosopher of his time. In many respects, his career encapsulates the principal intellectual, religious, and political developments of high medieval Europe. In 1060, Anselm took monastic vows at the abbey of Bec, a reformist community in Normandy, where he was soon promoted to the office of prior and subsequently elected abbot. In 1093 he was elected archbishop of Canterbury, and became a dynamic representative of the new papal claims for the freedom of the Church from the control of lay rulers. Throughout, he wrote theological and spiritual treatises which still resonate today. Anselm was also an avid letter-writer, and his correspondence is one of our best testimonies to an active, cosmopolitan, and cultured life in the Middle Ages. His almost 500 surviving letters represent the man. They are an acute witness to his mind and action, illuminating his monastic teaching, intellectual journey, leadership, and positions respective to rivalries within the church and between ecclesiastical and lay rulers. The first volume of this new critical edition of Anselm's letters comprises his correspondence, 148 letters, from his Norman years. The letters demonstrate at first-hand how he emerged as a respected monastic leader, a distinguished author, and a powerful influence in Normandy with networks in France and England. The present volume includes a new critical edition, established from almost thirty manuscripts, and an English translation of the letters from Anselm's Norman years. A detailed commentary accompanies the text. The critical apparatus provides a means of studying the letters' reception up to c. 1140. The introduction comprises a systematic analysis of the text's transmission from Anselm and his followers to the present day, and a fresh account of his life before Canterbury.