Anselm

Anselm OF CANTERBURY, a scholastic philosopher, was born at or near Aosta, in Piedmont, in 1033. At the age of fifteen, Anselm ardently desired to enter the monastic life, but his father sternly refused his consent. After his mother's death, he resolved to escape from his father's oppression, and to seek a career across the Alps. Here he spent three years in Burgundy, and being attracted by the reputation of Lanfranc, he went in 1060 to study at the monastery of Bec, in Normandy. Three years after, he succeeded his master as prior, and in 1078 became abbot of this monastery, the most famous school of the 11th century. Lanfranc, who in the meantime had gone to England, and become Archbishop of Canterbury, died in 1089; and the diocese remained four years without a successor, till in 1093 Anselm was appointed. He was distinguished both as a churchman and a philosopher. His numerous embroilments with William Rufus and his successor, and the unbending spirit which he displayed in these, even when subjected to banishment, indicate the vigour and resoluteness of his character, as much as his writings exhibit the depth and acuteness of his intellect. Exiled by Rufus, Anselm returned at Henry's urgent request; but the new monarch's demand that he should renew his homage, and be again invested with his archbishopric, was met with an absolute refusal, and led to a second exile of two years' duration. In 1105, however, Anselm's threat of excommunication led to the reconciliation of king and prelate, and the compromise was devised which, in 1122, was accepted by pope and emperor at Worms (see INVESTITURE). Anselm was a second Augustine, superior to all his contemporaries in sagacity and dialectical skill, and equal to the most eminent in virtue and piety. Embracing without question the doctrines of the church, mostly as stated by Augustine, and holding that belief must precede knowledge, and must be implicit and undoubting, he yet felt the necessity of a religious philosophy, urged the duty of proceeding from belief to knowledge, and sought to reduce the truths of religion into the form of a connected series of reasonings. It was for this purpose he wrote his Monologion. In his Proslogion, he strove to demonstrate the existence of God from the conception of a perfect being, as Descartes also subsequently did. His Cur Deus Homo (Eng. trans. by Prout, 1887) argues the necessity of the Incarnation, all subsequent speculation on which it has profoundly influenced (see ATONEMENT). Besides his philosophical treatises, his Meditations and Letters have come down to us, revealing his humble fervent faith, and the tender sympathy of his nature. Anselm may in a sense be reckoned the earliest of the schoolmen, to whom, although they employed a different method, his works first supplied the impulse to justify Scripture and the church by reason. He died April 21, 1109, and was buried next to Lanfranc at Canterbury. In 1494 he was canonised, but Dante had long before placed him among the greatest saints in paradise. In 1720 Clement XI. expressly placed him in the list of church authorities. See Rémusat's Anselme (1853; 2d ed. 1868); Dean Church's Anselm (1870); Life and Times of St Anselm (2 vols. 1883), by Mr Martin Rule, who has also edited for the Rolls Series Eadmer's two lives of Anselm (1884).