10 Facts About Eadmer

Eadmer or Edmer was an English historian, theologian, and ecclesiastic.

Eadmer is known for being a contemporary biographer of his archbishop and companion, Saint Anselm, in his Vita Anselmi, and for his Historia novorum in Anglia, which presents the public face of Anselm.

Eadmer's history is written to support the primacy of Canterbury over York, a central concern for Anselm.

Eadmer was born of Anglo-Saxon parentage, shortly before the Norman conquest of England in 1066.

Eadmer became a monk in the Benedictine monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury, where he made the acquaintance of Anselm, at that time visiting England as abbot of the Abbey of Bec.

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The intimacy was renewed when Anselm became archbishop of Canterbury in 1093; afterward Eadmer was not only Anselm's disciple, but his friend and director, being formally appointed to this position by Pope Urban II.

Eadmer must be credited with influencing the spread of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the West when he defended popular traditions in his De Conceptione sanctae Mariae.

Whilst Eadmer argued that Christ's human perfection required that his Mother should be without sin, Anselm held that by excluding any person from the taint of Original Sin destroyed the absolute necessity for the Incarnation.

Eadmer left a large number of writings, the most important of which is his Historia novorum in Anglia, a work which deals mainly with the history of England between 1066 and 1122.

The manuscripts of most of Eadmer's works are preserved in the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.