St. Anselm of Canterbury was an Italian prelate. He also was a theologian, Doctor of the Church, and archbishop of Canterbury.
Background
Anselm was born at Aosta in the Italian Alps. His family was noble and seems to have been related to the house of Savoy, the leading territorial magnates of the region. But Anselm's parents no longer possessed political or social prominence, and the family's economic resources were declining. After the death of his mother about 1056, Anselm argued with his father and left Aosta forever. He traveled across the Alps and contacted his mother's relatives in the kingdom of Burgundy.
Education
After a period of study in Burgundy and northern France, he went to the monastery of Bec in Normandy to study under its prior, Lanfranc, a leading teacher in northern Europe. In 1060 Anselm entered the monastic life at Bec. His proficiency in learning was such that 3 years later, on the occasion of Lanfranc's departure from Bec in order to become abbot of St. Stephen's in Caen, Anselm was appointed prior of Bec and head of the monastic school.
Career
The office of prior did not initially alter Anselm's love for solitude and meditation. In spite of his teaching activity, little is known of Anselm during his first 10 years at Bec. After 1070, however, he became more active, and the demand from his students to write down some of his teachings resulted in the writing of several works of major import. The first of these works was the Monologion (ca. 1077), a treatise which examines the existence and nature of God. In particular, two arguments are used. In order to make a comparative judgment (that one thing is better than another), it is necessary to have a superlative (the best against which everything else can be judged).
The Proslogion was widely circulated and brought Anselm immediate fame among his contemporaries and succeeding generations. Although attacked in his own time and in later centuries, Anselm's ontological argument greatly influenced the course of philosophical and theological thought. In 1078 Anselm was elected abbot of Bec, a position he held until 1093. In spite of the demands of the office, Anselm found time to complete several works on philosophy and theology. Among them were his philosophical works on grammar and truth and his theological treatises on free will and the devil. While these works are significant in the thought and development of Anselm, they did not make as great an impression on his contemporaries or later generations as did his earlier works. From 1090 to 1093 Anselm was drawn into two controversies that changed his career. One was over the understanding of the Incarnation of Christ and the doctrine of the Atonement.
Beginning in 1092, Anselm wrote two letters on this subject, and the ideas contained therein eventually bore fruit in a lengthy study entitled Cur Deus Homo. Although anticipated in part by earlier theologians, such as Tertullian, Anselm wrote the first work to deal so extensively with the Incarnation, and his method of presentation, as well as the precision of his ideas, makes this work one of the most influential in the history of theology. The other conflict that influenced Anselm in this period was the political and ecclesiastical situation in England. Lanfranc had become archbishop of Canterbury in 1070. After his death in 1089, King William Rufus allowed the position to remain vacant to avoid creating a strong ecclesiastical opponent and to appropriate Church revenues. The King wished to avoid accepting an archbishop who would oppose royal control of the English Church.
Illness and fear of eternal retribution, however, finally caused him to appoint a successor to Lanfranc, and to that post, he called Anselm. In spite of Anselm's initial reluctance, he was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury on December 4, 1093. The Archbishop Anselm's advocacy of Church reform and the recognition of Urban II as the rightful pope precipitated a conflict with the King. To gain support, Anselm convened a council of bishops and noblemen at Rockingham in 1095, but the indecisive results of that council and the growing animosity of the King forced Anselm to flee England in 1097. Anselm went to central and southern Italy, where he remained for several years as a close associate of the papacy. After the death of William Rufus in 1100, his brother and successor, Henry I, summoned Anselm back to England.
The problem of lay investiture and Henry's demand that Anselm renew his oath of feudal homage to the English king brought the two men into conflict. The opposition of the King soon forced Anselm to journey once more to Rome, and Anselm remained away from England until 1106. A compromise was finally worked out whereby the King gave up the right of investiture in return for a guarantee that Anselm would consecrate all candidates for episcopal and monastic office who had already been appointed by the King and had taken the oath of homage. On the basis of this agreement, Anselm returned to England as archbishop and remained there for the last 3 years of his life. He found time to return to his writing, and completed works on the Sacraments and on the foreknowledge of God. His work was carried on after his death in 1109 by his students at Bec and Canterbury.
Religion
Anselm of Canterbury held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. After his death, he was canonized as a saint.
For Anselm, God is the highest good. Anselm also used the argument of contingency-that is, everything must come into existence through the agency of something prior. It is thus necessary to posit a first cause or being on which everything else depends, for if there were nothing on which it depended, it could not exist. That first cause, for Anselm, is God. The arguments used in the Monologion can be found in previous writers, especially in St. Augustine, on whose work Anselm based most of his thought. The structure and method, however, are new, and Anselm seemed motivated to construct an argument that was rational and could convince the non-Christian.
More revolutionary in nature was the work which Anselm entitled Proslogion (ca. 1078). It was the result of a "discovery" of a definition of God, and the ontological argument based upon the definition seemed to Anselm (and to many later philosophers) to be convincing by its very logical simplicity. The discovery of Anselm was a definition of God that was anticipated in part by Augustine and Seneca; namely, God was that being greater than which could not be conceived. Using that definition as the basic content of anyone's idea of God, Anselm went on to argue that such a being necessarily existed not only as an idea in the mind but also in external reality.
Views
Saint Anselm was one of the most important Christian thinkers of the eleventh century. He is most famous in philosophy for having discovered and articulated the so-called "ontological argument;" and in theology for his doctrine of the atonement. However, his work extends to many other important philosophical and theological matters, among which are: understanding the aspects and the unity of the divine nature; the extent of our possible knowledge and understanding of the divine nature; the complex nature of the will and its involvement in free choice; the interworkings of human willing and action and divine grace; the natures of truth and justice; the natures and origins of virtues and vices; the nature of evil as negation or privation; and the condition and implications of original sin.
In the course of his work and thought, unlike most of his contemporaries, Anselm deployed argumentation that was in most respects only indirectly dependent on Sacred Scripture, Christian doctrine, and tradition. Anselm also developed sophisticated analyses of the language used in discussion and investigation of philosophical and theological issues, highlighting the importance of focusing on the meaning of the terms used rather than allowing oneself to be misled by the verbal forms, and examining the adequacy of the language to the objects of investigation, particularly to the divine nature. In addition, in his work, he both discussed and exemplified the resolution of apparent contradictions or paradoxes by making appropriate distinctions. For these reasons, one title traditionally accorded him is the Scholastic Doctor since his approach to philosophical and theological matters both represents and contributed to early medieval Christian Scholasticism.
Quotations:
"For I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe-that unless I believe I shall not understand."
"Lord, give me what you have made me want; I praise and thank you for the desire that you have inspired; perfect what you have begun, and grant me what you have made me long for."
"Come now, insignificant man, fly for a moment from your affairs, escape for a little while from the tumult of your thoughts. Put aside now your weighty cares and leave your wearisome toils. Abandon yourself for a little to God and rest for a little in Him."
"And what we say - that what He willeth is right and what He doth not will is wrong, is not so to be understood, as if, should God will something inconsistent, it would be right because He willed it. For it does not follow that if God would lie it would be right to lie, but rather that he were not God."
"For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe, but I believe so that I may understand. I believe this also, that unless I believe, I shall not understand."
"God has made nothing more valuable than rational existence capable of enjoying him."
"I do not endeavor, O Lord, to penetrate thy sublimity, for in no wise do I compare my understanding with that; but I long to understand in some degree thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand."
"For by the just judgment of God it was decreed, and, as it were, confirmed by writing, that, since man had sinned, he should not henceforth of himself have the power to avoid sin or the punishment of sin; for the spirit is out-going and not returning (est enim spiritus vadens et non rediens); and he who sins ought not to escape with impunity, unless pity spare the sinner, and deliver and restore him. Wherefore we ought not to believe that, on account of this writing, there can be found any justice on the part of the devil in his tormenting man. In fine, as there is never any injustice in a good angel, so in an evil angel there can be no justice at all. There was no reason, therefore, as respects the devil, why God should not make use of his own power against him for the liberation of man."