Mostly written between 1070 and 1080, before he became Archbishop of Canterbury, the prayers and meditations of Anselm of Aosta created a tradition of intimate, intensely personal devotional works written in subtle and theologically daring prose. While the Prayer to God is based on the Lord's Prayer, the Prayer to Christ is inspired by ardent private emotion and other prayers invest saints with individual attributes, with John the Baptist as the friend, Peter as the shepherd and Mary Magdalene as the forgiving lover, among many others. The meditations include a searching exploration of the state of the soul and a lament on the loss of purity, and the Proslogion discusses the mysteries of faith. With their bright imagery, beautiful language and highly original thought, the works of Anselm have secured a lasting place in both religious and secular literature.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1872.

Introducing new reprints by Gerald Heard: The Creed of Christ The Code of Christ Training for the Life of the Spirit Prayers and Meditations "There was a period in my early thirties when these four small books by Gerald Heard served almost as my bible. I read and reread them, and invariably found them to be uplifting and inspiring." - Professor Huston Smith "Gerald Heard was an inspiring voice for the life of the spirit. Wipf & Stock is to be commended that Heard's remarkable work is being made available to a new generation of spiritual seekers." - Dr. William H. Forthman "These prayers and meditations are traces of an experiment," writes Gerald Heard in his Introduction to Prayers and Meditations. "Seven were written by one of our ablest authors." That experiment was Trabuco College, which Heard founded in California in 1941. The ablest author was Aldous Huxley, Heard's sometime co-adventurer in mystical voyages. Along with Huxley's seven contributions are selections by St. Albert, St. Anselm, Dionysius the Areopagite, William H. Forthman, and Margaret Gage. Heard penned all the others. Altogether these powerful reflections, "are present-day renderings of those thoughts and feelings which have been rising in men since they began to reach out to Him who is beyond the senses." Prayers and Meditations equips the contemporary spiritual aspirant with a wellspring of inspirational devotions, ever invoking, "the desire to remember constantly the all-pervading, transcendent Presence of God."

In this magisterial account of the life and work of St Anselm, now in paperback, Sir Richard Southern provides a study in depth of one of the most fascinating minds in Christian history.