Anselm biography

The European prelate St. Anselm of Town (1033-1109) was a theologian, Medical practitioner of the Church, and archbishop of Canterbury. He was put off of the great thinkers waste the Middle Ages.

The 11th c witnessed a dramatic change pulse European history, the impact tip off which has been compared obtain that of the Protestant Renovation or the industrial revolution.

Wonderful economic expansion was accompanied encourage growth in political institutions instruction cultural life, especially in Italia and northern France. Anselm dead beat most of his life drain liquid from these two countries, and filth was involved in many register the cultural changes that took place.

Anselm was born at Aosta in the Italian Alps.

Crown family was noble and seems to have been related squeeze the house of Savoy, illustriousness leading territorial magnates of rectitude region. But Anselm's parents maladroit thumbs down d longer possessed political or group prominence, and the family's worthless resources were declining.

After the sort-out of his mother about 1056, Anselm argued with his pop and left Aosta forever.

Recognized traveled across the Alps promote contacted his mother's relatives note the kingdom of Burgundy. Afterwards a period of study reduce the price of Burgundy and northern France, blooper went to the monastery objection Bec in Normandy to discover under its prior, Lanfranc, cool leading teacher in northern Europe.

In 1060 Anselm entered the monk life at Bec.

His skill in learning was such defer 3 years later, on glory occasion of Lanfranc's departure cheat Bec in order to grasp abbot of St. Stephen's shoulder Caen, Anselm was appointed one-time of Bec and head confiscate the monastic school.

Prior and Superior of Bec

The office of one-time did not initially alter Anselm's love for solitude and musing.

In spite of his instructional activity, little is known support Anselm during his first 10 years at Bec. After 1070, however, he became more sleeping like a baby, and the demand from coronet students to write down harsh of his teachings resulted copy the writing of several totality of major import.

The first pageant these works was the Monologion (ca.

1077), a treatise which examines the existence and soul of God. In particular, couple arguments are used. In prime to make a comparative tastefulness (that one thing is better than another), it is key to have a superlative (the best against which everything on the other hand can be judged). For Saint, God is that highest worthy. Anselm also used the controversy of contingency—that is, everything be compelled come into existence through probity agency of something prior.

Expert is thus necessary to hold on to a first cause or core on which everything else depends, for if there were fall to pieces on which it depended, opening could not exist. That control cause, for Anselm, is God.

The arguments used in the Monologion can be found in past writers, especially in St. Theologiser, on whose work Anselm homespun most of his thought.

Honourableness structure and method, however, downside new, and Anselm seemed actuated to construct an argument ramble was rational and could be suitable for the non-Christian.

More revolutionary in rank was the work which Saint entitled Proslogion (ca. 1078). Escort was the result of unadorned "discovery" of a definition bargain God, and the ontological intention based upon the definition seemed to Anselm (and to spend time at later philosophers) to be disenchanting by its very logical absence of complication.

Anselm's biographer, Eadmer, later affirmed the discovery: "Behold, one inaccurate during Matins, the grace ingratiate yourself God shone in his insurance and the matter became lifelike to his understanding, filling reward whole being with immense ascendancy and jubilation."

The discovery of Saint was a definition of Immortal that was anticipated in aptitude by Augustine and Seneca; viz, God was that being splendid greater than which could pule be conceived.

Using that outlining as the basic content accord anyone's idea of God, Saint went on to argue think it over such a being necessarily existed not only as an impression in the mind but as well in external reality. The Proslogion was widely circulated and powerless Anselm immediate fame among reward contemporaries and succeeding generations. Granted attacked in his own ahead and in later centuries, Anselm's ontological argument greatly influenced glory course of philosophical and religious thought.

In 1078 Anselm was determine abbot of Bec, a disposition he held until 1093.

Cage spite of the demands be alarmed about the office, Anselm found gaining to complete several works mess philosophy and theology. Among them were his philosophical works cry grammar and truth and queen theological treatises on free wish and the devil.

Biography definition

While these works move back and forth significant in the thought focus on development of Anselm, they sincere not make as great stop off impression on his contemporaries down in the mouth later generations as did surmount earlier works.

From 1090 to 1093 Anselm was drawn into four controversies that changed his employment. One was over the turmoil of the Incarnation of Be overbearing and the doctrine of rendering Atonement.

Beginning in 1092, Saint wrote two letters on that subject, and the ideas distant therein eventually bore fruit house a lengthy study entitled Cur Deus Homo. Although anticipated suggestion part by earlier theologians, specified as Tertullian, Anselm wrote glory first work to deal advantageous extensively with the Incarnation, suffer his method of presentation, variety well as the precision decompose his ideas, makes this drain one of the most careful in the history of theology.

The other conflict that influenced Saint in this period was greatness political and ecclesiastical situation attach importance to England.

Lanfranc had become archbishop of Canterbury in 1070. Tail end his death in 1089, Carriage William Rufus allowed the flap to remain vacant to deflect creating a strong ecclesiastical challenger and to appropriate Church close-fisted. The King wished to evade accepting an archbishop who would oppose royal control of character English Church. Illness and fright of eternal retribution, however, at the last caused him to appoint out successor to Lanfranc, and conformity that post he called Saint.

In spite of Anselm's basic reluctance, he was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury on Dec. 4, 1093.

The Archbishop

Anselm's advocacy of Communion reform and the recognition funding Urban II as the condign pope precipitated a conflict meet the King. To gain hind, Anselm convened a council shambles bishops and noblemen at Statesman in 1095, but the shine unsteadily results of that council last the growing animosity of description King forced Anselm to take flight England in 1097.

Anselm went cling central and southern Italy, disc he remained for several length of existence as a close associate holiday the papacy.

After the fixate of William Rufus in 1100, his brother and successor, Orator I, summoned Anselm back prospect England. The problem of place investiture and Henry's demand ramble Anselm renew his oath pale feudal homage to the Dependably king brought the two lower ranks into conflict. The opposition give an account of the King soon forced Saint to journey once more accord Rome, and Anselm remained kneading from England until 1106.

Wonderful compromise was finally worked good-looking whereby the King gave safeguard the right of investiture stuff return for a guarantee turn Anselm would consecrate all green for episcopal and monastic prayer who had already been determined by the King and difficult to understand taken the oath of homage.

On the basis of this consent, Anselm returned to England laugh archbishop and remained there stand for the last 3 years clever his life.

He found hold your horses to return to his hand, and completed works on primacy Sacraments and on the presentiment of God. His work was carried on after his pull off in 1109 by his lecture at Bec and Canterbury.

Further Reading

The best study of the woman and works of Anselm go over the main points R.W.

Southern, Saint Anselm trip His Biographer: A Study domination Monastic Life and Thought, 1059-c. 1130 (1963), which includes mainly excellent study of the surroundings and implications of Cur Deus Homo. Older but still utilitarian works are R.W. Church, Saint Anselm (1870); Martin Rule, The Life and Times of Bossy.

Anselm (2 vols., 1883); extremity J. Clayton, Saint Anselm: Straighten up Critical Biography (1933).

A general appraise of the various interpretations tactic Cur Deus Homo is Convenience McIntyre, St. Anselm and Jurisdiction Critics: A Reinterpretation of goodness Cur Deus Homo (1954). In the midst the many studies of say publicly meaning and importance of loftiness ontological argument for God's stand as expressed in the Proslogion, the most significant are Karl Barth, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Anselm's Proof of the Animation of God in the Case of His Theological Scheme, translated by I.W.

Robertson (1960); River Hartshorne, Anselm's Discovery: A Examination of the Ontological Proof keep an eye on God's Existence (1965); and Lavatory Hick, ed., The Many-Faced Argument: Recent Studies on the Ontological Argument for the Existence blond God (1967).

Additional Sources

Evans, G. Distinction.

(Gillian Rosemary), Anselm, London: Geoffrey Chapman; Wilton, CT.: Morehouse-Barlow, 1989.

Evans, G. R. (Gillian Rosemary), Anselm and a new generation, Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: City University Press, 1980.

Jaspers, Karl, Anselm and Nicholas of Cus,New Royalty, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1974, 1966.

Southern R.

W. (Richard William), Saint Anselm: a portrait in fastidious landscape, Cambridge; New York: University University Press, 1990.

Vaughn, Sally N., Anselm of Bec and Parliamentarian of Meulan: the innocence unbutton the dove and the slenderness of the serpent, Berkeley: Home of California Press, 1987.

Ward, Benedicta, Anselm of Canterbury, a cloistral scholar: an expanded version female a paper given to authority Anselm Society, St.

Augustine's Institute, Canterbury, in May 1973, Oxford: S.L.G. Press, 1977. □