St. Anselm of Canterbuy (1033-1109) and the Petri Privilegium of the Apostolic See of Rome

S. Anselm, who is both a Saint and Doctor in the Catholic Church, states the following in dedicating his book on the Holy Trinity to the Pope. He writes: ‘Forasmuch as the providence of God has chosen your Holiness, to commit to your custody the life and faith of Christians, and the government of His Church, to no other can reference be more rightly made, if so be anything contrary to the Catholic faith arise in the Church, that it may be corrected by his authority; nor to any other can anything which may be written against such errors be more safely submitted, that by his prudence it may be examined.’[22] Again: ‘Let those who despise the Christian decrees of the Vicar of Peter, and in him the decrees of Peter and of Christ, seek for other gates of the kingdom of heaven; for certainly they shall not enter in by those, the keys of which the Apostle Peter bears.’

Source: Henry Edward Manning – https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Petri_Privilegium/II/Chapter_3#77

2 thoughts on “St. Anselm of Canterbuy (1033-1109) and the Petri Privilegium of the Apostolic See of Rome

  1. This kind of approach to the papacy resonates with me — proper recognition of the scope of the papal office in light of its proper purpose, expressing filial reverence without the excess and exaggerations.

  2. Hi Erick, thank you for all you do for the Papacy! I was wondering if you could look at Saint Ignatius of Antioch in his letter to the Roman’s? He says that the Church of Rome is without blemish and I have seen without blemish, or freed From taint, etc. to describe the infallibility of the Pope. Was Ignatius hinting at this ?

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s