Anselm of Canterbury

Anselm was born in 1033 at Aosta, in the Alps of northern Italy. His mother was devout; his father was not, and after her death the household became impossible. Anselm left home at twenty-three, crossed the mountains, wandered through Burgundy and France for three years, and in 1059 arrived at the abbey of Bec in Normandy because Lanfranc was teaching there. He entered the monastery the next year, became prior in 1063 when Lanfranc left, and abbot in 1078.

He was a teacher before he was anything else, and his monks loved him. Eadmer, who wrote his life, records him saying that a boy is like a young tree: pen him in on every side and he grows crooked.

What he wrote at Bec changed how the West thought.

The Monologion and the Proslogion are attempts to see whether faith can give an account of itself by reason alone, without appealing to Scripture as proof. In the Proslogion he set out the argument that has been fought over ever since: God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, and such a being cannot exist merely in the mind, since existing in reality would be greater. He put it forward not as a debating trick but as prayer; the book is addressed to God throughout. His motto was fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding: I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand.

Cur Deus Homo, Why God Became Man, was finished in 1098. It asks why the incarnation was necessary, and answers in terms of honour and debt: sin is an infinite offence against infinite honour; only man owes the debt, only God can pay it; therefore only one who is both can make satisfaction. That account of the atonement dominated Western theology for eight hundred years and is still the starting point for the argument.

In 1093, against his own wishes, he was made archbishop of Canterbury. He spent the next sixteen years in conflict with two kings, William Rufus and Henry I, over the church's independence and the question of who invests bishops. He was exiled twice, spending years in Italy and France, and each time came back. A compromise was reached in 1107.

He died at Canterbury on 21 April 1109. He had written, in a late prayer, that he was a man who had learned to love God by first being astonished at Him.

Sources: Anselm, Proslogion, Monologion, and Cur Deus Homo; Eadmer, The Life of St Anselm; R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. V.