ABSTRACT
Before we look at Anselm’s exile, we must consider the main sources for its details: Eadmer’s Historia Novorum and Vita Anselmi. Eadmer tells us explicitly that at some time he was hard at work writing what became Vita Anselmi with great care, first in a draft on wax tablets, then in a fair copy on parchment. Anselm read it, and at first approved it with corrections and reordering, then a few days later ordered Eadmer to destroy the parchment quires “because he considered himself far too unworthy for future ages to place the least value on a literary monument to his honor.” Eadmer did so, but disobediently made a parchment copy first, which he did not destroy. 1 Southern dates this incident to 1100, which “would account for the very full treatment of the years down to 1100 and the almost complete absence of personal detail or vivid narration in the years which followed.” 2 This “vivid narration” of events up to 1100 is also true of Historia Novorum. After Anselm’s death in 1109, Eadmer wrote Historia Novorum first, dealing with Anselm’s archbishopric and the Canterbury primacy, and only afterwards, at the request of friends, wrote Vita Anselmi, a biography of Anselm starting with his childhood. 3 Eadmer makes clear that the text Anselm saw was a text that would become Vita Anselmi, 4 but of course Eadmer had observed much more of Anselm’s archiepiscopal career under King William Rufus—to which Anselm might have objected—that Eadmer would later include in Books 1 and 2 of Historia Novorum, probably having taken notes on them as events unfolded.
