Anselm

Anselm of Canterbury was born around 1033 in Aosta, a mountain town in what is now northern Italy, to a Lombard noble family. His father Gundulf was reportedly harsh and worldly; his mother Ermenberga was devout. The tension between them created an atmosphere that drove young Anselm toward the spiritual life as refuge and aspiration both. At fifteen, after his application to enter a monastery was refused — perhaps due to his father's opposition — Anselm experienced what he later described as a period of spiritual coldness. He spent his twenties wandering through Burgundy and France, pursuing secular learning but finding no lasting satisfaction.

In 1060, at twenty-seven, Anselm arrived at the Abbey of Bec in Normandy, drawn by the reputation of Lanfranc, the prior whose intellectual rigor was reshaping monastic education. Here Anselm found what he had been seeking: a community where prayer and rigorous thinking were not enemies but partners in the pursuit of God. He took monastic vows in 1061 and when Lanfranc departed to become Abbot of Caen in 1063, Anselm succeeded him as prior. Under his leadership, Bec became the most distinguished center of learning in Europe, attracting students from across Christendom. Anselm's reputation grew not merely as an administrator but as a spiritual father whose letters reveal a pastor of extraordinary tenderness — addressing his correspondents as "beloved son" or "sweetest friend," offering counsel that was both practical and mystical.

In 1078 Anselm became abbot of Bec, but his most challenging years lay ahead. When Lanfranc died in 1089, King William Rufus kept the see of Canterbury vacant for four years, appropriating its revenues. Only when the king fell seriously ill in 1093 did he appoint Anselm as archbishop — a decision both men would come to regret. Anselm accepted reluctantly, reportedly having the pastoral staff forced into his hands. The conflicts that followed were inevitable: Anselm insisted on the church's independence in spiritual matters, while William Rufus viewed the archbishopric as a source of income and political control. When Anselm sought to travel to Rome to receive the pallium from Pope Urban II — whose authority the king refused to acknowledge — the confrontation escalated into exile. Anselm spent three years in Italy and France (1097-1100), writing and teaching while his see remained in dispute.

William Rufus's death in 1100 brought Henry I to the throne and Anselm's return, but new conflicts arose over lay investiture — the king's claimed right to invest bishops with ring and staff. This led to a second exile (1103-1106) until a compromise was reached that preserved the essential principle Anselm had fought for: the church's spiritual independence. Through these trials, those who knew him remarked on his gentleness and his refusal to respond to political machinations with worldly weapons. He died at Canterbury on April 21, 1109, and was canonized in 1494.

His Writing and Its Influence

Anselm began writing at Bec, producing works that established him as the most important theologian between Augustine and Aquinas. His first major work, the Monologion (1076), was an extended meditation on the nature and existence of God using reason alone. This was followed by the Proslogion (1077-1078), which contained what would later be called the "ontological argument" — the proof that God's existence follows necessarily from the concept of God as "that than which nothing greater can be conceived." The argument emerged, Anselm tells us, after long seeking a single, self-contained proof of God's existence and nature. When it came to him, he experienced it almost as a revelation.

The Proslogion is structured as a prayer, beginning "Come now, little man, turn aside for a while from your daily employment, escape for a moment from the tumult of your thoughts." This reveals something essential about Anselm's method: his philosophy was never merely academic but always spiritual, aimed at the believer's deeper understanding rather than the skeptic's conversion. His famous phrase "faith seeking understanding" (fides quaerens intellectum) captured this integration of devotion and rigorous thought. Later works included Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man), a systematic examination of the Incarnation that argued Christ's death was necessary to satisfy the infinite offense of sin against God's honor — a framework that profoundly influenced medieval and Reformed theology.

Anselm's theological method was groundbreaking in its confidence that human reason, properly directed, could illuminate divine truth. Unlike the dialectical debates that characterized much medieval theology, Anselm's arguments proceeded with geometric precision, each step building inevitably toward its conclusion. His influence extended through scholasticism to Aquinas, who incorporated Anselmian insights while developing different proofs. The ontological argument has provoked debate from Anselm's contemporary Gaunilo (who objected that one could prove the existence of a perfect island by similar logic) through Kant's critique to twentieth-century reformulations by philosophers like Alvin Plantinga.

Who should read Anselm: Readers drawn to the conviction that rigorous thinking and deep faith not only coexist but require each other. He is essential for those who want to understand how Christian theology developed between the patristic and scholastic periods, and for anyone grappling with questions about God's existence and nature. He is not for readers seeking devotional comfort or practical guidance, but for those who find that intellectual struggle can be a form of prayer, and that the mind's reach toward God is itself a spiritual discipline.