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In his prayers to the saints, Saint Anselm struggles with his willful sinfulness, which causes him not only to distance himself from God but also to make it hard to close that distance and draw closer to God. Anselm seeks the saints’ intercession on his behalf. There are two prayers in the Anselm collection, however, one addressed to God the Father and the other addressed to Christ, which present a different approach. In these prayers, he expresses his love for the Father and the Son and lays out his desire for a closer intimacy with them. His goal is to acknowledge the power and supremacy of the Divine over human affairs, to honor and adore the Divine for the love, mercy, and compassion shown to him and all sinful creatures, and to express his deep, reverential love for the Father and the Son. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In St. Anselm and the Handmaidens of the Lord, Sally Vaughn explores the relationships that Saint Anselm established with the women in his life as monk, abbot and archbishop. One of these young girls was Princess Adelaide, daughter of King William I of England. Along with his letter to Adelaide, Anselm included some selected psalms as well as seven prayers of his own composition. Two of these prayers are mentioned by name: a prayer to Saint Stephen and a prayer to Saint Mary Magdalen. Of these two prayers in particular Anselm notes "there are some passages which, if they are recited from the inmost heart when it is at leisure, tend instead to increase love's flame [ad accendendum amorem]." Although Anselm does not specify which passages he means, this paper will argue, after a careful examination of the prayer to Saint Stephen, that there are very good reasons to consider the reflection on Stephen's death in the penultimate stanza to be a passage which is intended by Anselm to increase love's flame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]