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This essay analyzes Anselm of Canterbury’s (c. 1034-1109) correspondence with two of his life-long correspondents and friends, Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, and Countess Ida of Boulogne. Gundulf was a monk of both Bec and Caen who became bishop after Lanfranc ascended to the archbishopric of Canterbury, and Ida was the pious wife of Eustace II, count of Boulogne, and mother of the crusaders Godfrey of Boullion, Eustace III, and Baldwin of Jerusalem. Anselm wrote to both Gundulf and Ida throughout his life, and these friendships are more than mere rhetorical expression. Anselm valued each friendship on an individual, personal, and spiritual level, and the reality of these relationships is corroborated by other primary sources. An investigation into the letters that Anselm wrote to the two reveals Anselm’s ideals of friendship, his influences, and his affections for Ida and Gundulf. Building upon an established tradition, and using ideas found in John Cassian’s Collationes, Anselm articulated a classical Christian model of friendship, applied to both a man and a woman, which corresponds to actual lived experience.
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