With the publication of her dual biography Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan in 1987, Sally N. Vaughn emerged as an opponent of Richard Southern, who had monopolised the biographical study of St Anselm (d. 1109) since 1963 by virtue of his monograph Anselm and his biographer. Vaughn's book led Southern to rewrite his; Southern's final word on the man was published in 1990 as a monograph entitled Saint Anselm: a portrait in a landscape. Having been commissioned to contribute a volume to Ashgate's new Archbishops of Canterbury series, Vaughn found herself in a somewhat similar position as Southern did more than twenty years ago: she would retell the story of her hero's life one more time and she could update it with recent scholarship. The aim she set herself for her new contribution was ‘to clarify and expand the argument for Anselm's conscious and administrative effectiveness’ (p. 6).

The book explores Anselm's career from the monastery of Bec in Normandy to the cathedral priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, using a clear chronological framework. The first chapter focuses on Bec, seeking to define the intellectual, spiritual and religious foundations by which Anselm was subsequently to model his aims and deeds as archbishop of Canterbury. The last chapter attends to the primacy of Canterbury and the related dispute with York, concluding that Anselm ‘was perhaps England's most successful archbishop’ (p. 166), an assessment that stands in stark contrast to Southern's evaluation of him as a church politician.

Vaughn uses a set of broad perspectives as hermeneutical keys to unfold the mystery of Anselm. These perspectives are largely her own historical constructions and are in the main built on her, occasionally radical, readings of a number of narrative sources. Her constructions do not always stand critical evaluation, sometimes stretching the interpretation of the evidence past breaking-point.

A case in point is Vaughn's understanding of Bec's role in the world and its part in shaping Anselm and his circle. She seeks to define an ‘ordo Beccensis’, ‘stand[ing] out clearly in the consciousness of its members as a confraternity linked together by deep mutual affection to a mode of religious life developed and perfected at Bec, and then spreading outward to the Anglo-Norman world’ (p. 26). True, Bec's brethren certainly held their own house in higher esteem than any other house. But their ideas of reform were neither so exclusive nor so idiosyncratic as Vaughn maintains throughout her book. Her definition of Bec's ‘missionary mentality’, for instance, demonstrates her tendency to inflate the monastery's singularity and to read the evidence in too radical a way. She regards Proslogion, together with Monologion (which are two of Anselm's magna opera), as ‘aimed at least partly toward the unbeliever in need of conversion – a kind of missionary document, as Anselm's preface to both tracts together – the form in which they circulated – makes clear’ (p. 42). I am not sure what Vaughn means by ‘the form in which they circulated’, but it is clear that nothing in the prefaces to Monologion and Proslogion hints that the current orthodoxy about the works’ intention needs emendation: they were meant to be not missionary texts, but, as presently held by many, literary instruments through which the reader can reach for a rational comprehension of what he believes.

This is not to say that Anselm and his brethren were unconcerned with missionary work. Their mission was, however, an overtly monastic one: men were to be led from the world into monastic religion, which was preferably but not necessarily to be performed in Bec. The most telling expressions of Anselm's ‘missionary calling’ are found in his correspondence; a particularly illuminating text is ep. cxii, advising the addressee how to preach to illiterate laymen. The letter demonstrates that Anselm and his brethren were not unlike other monastic reformers: they combatted what they saw as deficient and perverted forms of Christianity, not unbelief.

Bec's understanding of reform was less exclusive than Vaughn proposes. On assessing, for instance, Lanfranc's contribution to the spreading of Bec's religious practice to England, she fails to discuss the best document available to us for evaluating the archbishop's commitment to such a mission: the monastic constitutions that he composed for the community of Christ Church and also disseminated to other houses. Lanfranc's constitutions were more likely to draw on those of Cluny than on those of Bec. The suggestion is, then, that he did not seek systematically to implement the monastic life of Bec where he could have done so. The same applies to Anselm, who, as archbishop, publicly endorsed the monastic constitutions of his former master. Here the lesson from the anecdote is that Bec's reform should not be studied in isolation from the monastic reform movement(s) of the era. Yet, because Ashgate's series is directed to the general reader, it is perhaps acceptable that Vaughn's book does not attempt to do so. Nevertheless, when she adds as an obiter dictum that Bec's ‘network of abbeys’ was preceded by that of Cluny and followed by that of the Cistercians, she promotes Bec – particularly in view of the general reader – to a position far above its league. Her subsequent qualification that Bec's affiliated network ‘lacked the formal constitutional structure’ of these other orders is not enough to balance her implicit identification of Bec with its peers (p. 27).

Vaughn's other grand schemes include Herluin's exemplary monastic pattern and Anselm's theory of the dual and finally triumviral governance of England. I must observe that much of Vaughn's argumentation for them rests on evidence that is too thin to sustain her inferences. Surmises are promoted to conclusions. This does not happen, at least, when she speculates on who might possibly have murdered King William ii in the New Forest in 1100 (pp. 114–24). She admits that her evidence of a conspiracy to kill the king in order to advance Anselm's cause (without his knowledge) is far from conclusive. To me the evidence seems less than circumstantial.

A somewhat similar condition characterises Vaughn's treatment of one of the most important manuscript witnesses to Anselm's correspondence, Lambeth Palace Library, ms 59. This is of importance since she deploys a compilation from the correspondence found in that manuscript as a chief vantage point from which to assess Anselm's career as archbishop; her book, for that reason, provides a number of letters from the manuscript in its appendices. According to Vaughn, Anselm ‘carefully corrected the historical record for his successors in collecting the letters – and omitting some of them – that eventually took form as Lambeth 59’ (p. 12). She implies inconsistently that Lambeth 59 was or was probably made under Anselm's oversight (for example, pp. 92, 94, 95). But the palaeographical and textual evidence indicates that this is unlikely to have been the case. With some degree of certainty the manuscript can be dated to c. 1120 × 1130, well after Anselm's death. The burden of proof falls to those who assert the contrary.

Despite the critical tone of this review, it behoves every student of Anselm's career as prior, abbot and archbishop to familiarise herself or himself with Vaughn's understanding of her hero. Even so, it is Vaughn's 1987 biography that will serve her readers better.