I encourage all Catholics to
write the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Directors, to protest the sodomitic
slurs against St.
Anselm at Wikipedia. Below is the letter I sent today: you can copy and
paste it to the link of this post (which is the email address to the Board),
and send it on your own.
Dear Board of the Directors of the Wikimedia foundation, I am writing to
express my concern that Wikipedia is being used to promote anti-catholic hate,
by some users and administrators in regard to the article on Anselm of
Canterbury.
The anti-catholic hate I refer to is the section "dilecto dilectori"
and the article by Dobbins links in the Notes section of the same article,
which appeared in the Anselm article at the beginning of January, 2006, posted
by Wetman, a contributer whose home page lauds his interest in nonconformity
and challenging prevailing assumptions -- not a scholar, more of a self
proclaimed intellectual anarchist.
Dobbins is an undergraduate essay at the University of Southern Connecticut.
The author is listed on the web, not as a historian of theology or medievalist,
but as a member of the Alabama Art History association.
Karl Bunker, a regular contributor to the article has on numerous occasions
protected the continued presence of this anti-catholic hate at the article. And
several administrators, Tom and Hall Monitor, also anonymous persons, have
defended it.
The matter being brought to my attention, as a major contributor on the
Internet on the subject of Scholastic Theology, I consider it a duty as a Roman
Catholic, to bring it to your attention.
I ask that non-scholarly articles not be cited or quoted in the Anselm article,
as this will be a peaceful and professional manner of both preventing Wikipedia
being used to attack the Catholic Religion, and insuring a more scholarly
content. The reference to Dobbins should be deleted, and the section on Dilecto
Dilectori should present all sides of the debate, if any side is mentioned at
all. Failing a scholarly citation on any side, no side should be quoted, as
that would be certainly fair.
Sincerely in Christ Jesus,
Brother Alexis Bugnolo
B.A. Anthropology, with a co-major in Classical Studies, University of Florida: Gainesville, 1986: cum laude, Phi Kappa Beta
B.A. equiv. in Catholic Philosophy, Our Lady of Grace Seminary, Boston, 1988
Editor
The Franciscan Archive
“A WWW Resource on St. Francis and Franciscanism"
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/
The first significant citation for this allegation against St. Anselm is Norman Cantor. One graduate student of one of his colleagues mentions that Cantor calumniated him as a Nazi, a charge he never retracted before his death in 2004.
His obit in one major USA paper, mentions the very article cited at Wikipedia for the source of this charge: needless to say the citation is to a book Cantor wrote on the 14th Century, whereas Anselm lived at the beginning of the 12th. I would doubt very much if therein is enclosed any scholarly treatment of Anselm’s poems.
Cantor is also criticized for a lengthy diatribe against the Jewish People, in his book "The Sacred Chain".
An a book review of Cantor's most recent work on the Middle Ages is very critical of his methodology used to reach conclusions about the Black Death, saying: "Not only is this ridiculous from both a medical and practical standpoint, it is a typical example of Cantor's tendency to make broad generalizations based on evidence that is limited in its scope and relevance".
It would seem then, that the citation to Cantor, though a scholar, is in this instance of no scholarly value.
The second citation is to an article by an undergraduate student at the University of Southern Connecticut, who is listed on the web, elsewhere, as a Art-Historian: his name is Mark Dobbins. His article footnotes almost entirely pro-gay authors, not the least of which is Paul Halsall at Fordham University, who maintains a page on sodomites throughout history, replete with the colored banner of the Gay Movement. It is from Hasalll’s extensive information database that we learn that Dobbins’ sources cite the pro-gay activist Carpenter, who seems to be the first to allege that the Poems of St. Anselm were homosexual in nature; though he himself only asserts this, by citing apparently the intrepid pro-Catholic Comte de Montalembert’s own citation of the poems. Neither Dobbins nor Carpenter, apparently can/could read Latin themselves. Hasell’s other citation is to a Professor McGuire, a Danish scholar, who admits having written his own article on the Poems of St. Anselm as an undergraduate, and seems to admit the tendentious nature of his conclusions. He in fact declares on his website, that in this article he posed the question of Anselm’s sexuality. He himself does not say he determined anything about that question.
The learned Fr. Alan Butler has this to say about the letters of the Saint to one monk, which Carpenter et alia claim are homosexual:
“Three years after, Lanfranc was made Abbot of St. Stephen's at Caen, and Anselm Prior of Bec. At this promotion several of the monks murmured on account of his youth; but, by patience and sweetness, he won the affections of them all, and by little condescensions at first, so worked upon an irregular young monk, called Osbern, as to perfect his conversion and make him one of the most fervent. He had indeed so great a knowledge of the hearts and passions of mete, that he seemed to read their interior in their actions; by which he discovered the sources of virtues and vices, and knew how to adapt to each proper advice and instructions; which were rendered most powerful by the mildness and charity with which he applied them. In regard to the management and tutoring of youth, he looked upon excessive severity as highly pernicious. Eadmer has recorded a conversation he had on this subject with a neighbouring abbot,1 who, by a conformity to our saint's practice and advice in this regard, experienced that success in his labours which he had till then aspired to in vain by harshness and severity.”
As one who holds a B. A. in Anthropology, and who has lived in monasteries in the USA and Europe as a Catholic Religious, I hold these charges to be utterly false. They neglect some important historical facts, cited even by Halsall, that Anselm’s letters were occasionally to his own blood relatives, and that he preached against sodomy at the royal court. We often forget that as an Italian and an Abbot, the Saint had the duty to recall errant monks as a father would, and the sexual proclivities of some moderns just cannot understand how a properly functioning Catholic Family can express love in a non sexual manner, and yet vivaciously. I would also think that any historian of note would first learn Latin and read the actual poems before making any conclusions, something that Professor Cantor, Halsall and McGuire evidently have not done. I would try to discover who were these recipients. Were the letters forged, as were a great number of other famous documents ascribed to St. Anselm? Was St. Anselm assisting a major benefactor(ess) who requested him to write some romantic letters on behalf of their fiancés or spouse? (We often forget that not every man or woman in the Middle Ages, even among the nobility, could read and write: and that monks were often asked to write secular texts, on behalf of the less than literate; and that to protect the honor of others, monks would go to great lengths to conceal this aide d’amour). In conclusion, even the poems alleged by Dobbins and Carpenter in no way cite anything sexual. The conclusion that St. Anselm was a homosexual, therefore, is not only tendentious, but unfounded and unsubstantiated.
As one who has the equiv. of a co-major in Classical Studies, and who has translated a number of Latin texts from the Middleages (see The Franciscan Archive for more on this), I would like to point out that the address “Dilecto Dilectori” is in now way sexual. In Christian circles since the time of the letters of St. Paul the Apostle, it has been the habit to address other Christians, especially those under one’s pastoral care, with the phrase “Dearly Beloved in Christ” or “Dearly Beloved of Christ” or “Christ’s Dearly Beloved”; and in the Liturgies of East and West to invoke Christ with a variety of epiteths, among which is “the Only Lover of Mankind”, the “Lover of Men”. And for that reason “Dilecto Dilectori” can mean in an epistolary context of an Abbot to another monk or student or relative, “To the one beloved by the Lover of Men”, that is “to Christ’s beloved”. It is not of itself an address with sexual overtones or implications.
From the time of Eadmer’s Biography of the Saint, Anselm has been hailed as an example of fraternal charity and chastity for 800 years. The charges of him being a homosexual, are not, as the Wikipedia article claims, long standing and among scholars of repute.
But Wikipedia has been used in the past to promote anti-catholic screed. I found this article by Theresa E. Carpinelli which details how one Wikipedia article’s misinformation made its way into national media outlets of major standing, and how despite her objections, nothing was done to correct it.
The Anonymous Editors operating to defend the “Dilecto Dilectori” section of the Article on St. Anselm at Wikipedia, would do well to consider whether what pro-homosexual activists have or are saying about Anselm is not rather more appropriately placed on a page about Homosexual Historic Revisionism or the like, rather than in a Wikipedia Article about the historical St. Anselm.
Furthermore, I would respectfully ask that those Wikipedia Editors and Moderator and Administrators who cannot read Latin, allow those who can among them, handle this dispute, rather than insisting on something which they do not and cannot understand.