Feast day of St Anselm

"For I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe in order to understand. For I believe this, unless I believe I will not understand."

The quote carved on this stone is from Saint Anselm of Canterbury. He was born in about 1033 in Aosta in Italy and died on this day in 1109. He was a Benedictine monk and a philosopher who had a major influence on Western theology. He was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 during the reign of William II until his death in 1109 during the reign of Henry I. Both kings exiled him for some years as he defended the church against their power. Anselm was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1720 by a Papal Bull of Pope Clement XI.

Richard Kindersley carved this standing stone as one of a modern stone circle of ten stones called The Millennium Stones. They marked the double millennium from AD1 to AD2000. The first stone in the series is inscribed with the words from St John's Gospel, "in the beginning the word was". The subsequent nine stones are carved with quotations contemporary with each 200 year segment, ending with the words of T S Eliot. Our stone is for the period 1000AD to 1200AD. Richard has used the hammerhead shape of this Caithness stone beautifully to carve the letters of this repeating quote in a spiral.

I'm there to add scale (I'm not a midget, it is a big stone!). I'm hiding as I've just finished feeding the cows and my clothes are not very smart ;-)