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ST ANSELM

St Anselm was a Christian philosopher and theologian. He was born in 1033 at Piedmont and died in 1109. At the age of twenty-seven he became a monk at Bec, in Normandy, whither he had been attracted by the celebrity of Lanfranc. Three years later he was elected prior, and in 1078 he was chosen abbot, which he remained for fifteen years. During this period of his life he wrote his first philosophical and religious works: the dialogues on Truth and Free-will, and the treatises Monologion and Proslogion; and at the same time his influence made itself so felt among the monks under his charge that Bec became the chief seat of learning in Europe. In 1093 Anselm was offered by William Rufus the archbishopric of Canterbury, and accepted it, though with great reluctance, and with the condition that all the lands belonging to the see should be restored. William II soon quarrelled with the archbishop, who would show no subservience to him, and would persist in acknowledging Pope Urban in opposition to the antipope Clement. William ultimately had to give way. He both himself acknowledged Urban and conferred the pallium upon Anselm.

The king became his bitter enemy, however, and so great were Anselm's difficulties that in 1097 he set out for Rome to consult with the pope. Urban received him with great distinction, but did not venture really to take the side of the prelate against the king, though William had refused to receive Anselm again as archbishop, and had seized on the revenues of the see of Canterbury, which he retained till his death in 1100. Anselm accordingly remained abroad, where he wrote most of his celebrated treatise on the atonement, entitled Cur Deus Homo (Why God was made Man; translated into English, Oxford, 1858). When William was succeeded by Henry I Anselm was recalled; but Henry insisted that he should submit to be reinvested in his see by himself, although the popes claimed the right of investing for themselves alone. Much negotiation followed, and Henry did not surrender his claims until 1107, when Anselm's long struggle on behalf of the rights of the church came to an end. Anselm was a great scholar, a deep and original thinker, and a man of the utmost saintliness and piety. The chief of his writings are the Monologion, the Proslogion, and the Cur Deus Homo. The first is an attempt to prove inductively the existence of God by pure reason without the aid of Scripture or authority; the second is an attempt to prove the same by the deductive method; the Cur Deus Homo is intended to prove the necessity of the incarnation. Among his numerous other writings are more than 400 letters. His biography was written by his domestic chaplain and companion, Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury.
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