The article studies the remarkable success of Anselm of Canterbury’s Meditationes sive orationes, in order to show how the authority of the saint was understood and how the spiritual exercise of meditation was practiced. Through the study of this medieval text in age of print, it is possible to highlight the varied reception of a textual authority and the diverse history of the meditative practice. The contextualization of the humanistic editions and of the editions given by scholars as diverse as the Jesuits Sommal and Raynaud, or the Maurist Gerberon and the Benedictine Aguirre, shows how the meditative genre was reshaped by the spiritual issues of the modern period, between affective devotion and mystical contemplation.