Abstract
This paper examines the interrelation between justice and mercy in Anselm’s prayers.
Divine justice and human injustice seem to rightly cut off a human being from any
assistance, grace, or reformation, since human beings has set themselves in a condition of
injustice from which they cannot extricate themselves. Mercy then seems the only solution,
but appears not only unjust, but also to trump divine justice, a position inconsistent with
Anselm’s explicit statements. So then, how are justice and mercy rendered compatible,
even complementary with each other? Human beings are brought into integral roles for
each other as intercessors within a divine economy of justice offering mercy within the
scope of that very justice. Anselm’s rhetorically and dramatically structured prayers
perform an educative as well as petitionary function in assisting the human being to locate,
understand, and exert themselves within that divine economy of justice and mercy.