Anselm of Besate (''Anselmus Peripateticus'', "Anselm the Peripatetic") was an 11th-century churchman and

rhetorician Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...

. Anselm was born at

Besate Besate (Milanese: ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Milan in the Italian region Lombardy, located about southwest of Milan. Besate borders the following municipalities: Morimondo, Vigevano, Casorate Primo, Motta Visc ...

shortly after the year 1000 to a notable local family. He describes his genealogy in detail. He was related on his father's side to Bishops Sigifred of Piacenza, John II of Lucca and

Cunibert of Turin Cunibert of Turin (died c.1082) was an Italian bishop. According to Anselm of Besate, Cunibert was a member of the Besate dynasty from Milan. Cunibert is first documented as bishop of Turin at the Council of Pavia (October 1046). His episcopate last ...

, and to Archbishop John X of Ravenna. His mother belonged to the House of Arsago, through which he was related to Archbishop Arnulf II of Milan and Bishop Landulf II of Brescia. Anselm received his education in

Padua Padua ( ; it, Padova ; vec, Pàdova) is a city and ''comune'' in Veneto, northern Italy. Padua is on the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice. It is the capital of the province of Padua. It is also the economic and communications hub of the ...

and Reggio, and became attached to the church of Milan. He later served in the chapel of the

Emperor Henry III Henry III (28 October 1016 – 5 October 1056), called the Black or the Pious, was Holy Roman Emperor from 1046 until his death in 1056. A member of the Salian dynasty, he was the eldest son of Conrad II and Gisela of Swabia. Henry was raised by ...

(reigned 1046–1056). Around 1047, he composed the ''Rhetorimachia'' (or ''De materia artis'') and dedicated it to Henry III. It is one of the first works on rhetoric to appear in western Europe after

Rabanus Maurus Rabanus Maurus Magnentius ( 780 – 4 February 856), also known as Hrabanus or Rhabanus, was a Frankish Benedictine monk, theologian, poet, encyclopedist and military writer who became archbishop of Mainz in East Francia. He was the author of the ...

' ''De institutione clericorum'' of 819. It is a treatise in three books, ostensibly a letter to his nephew Rutiland to correct his confusion about rhetoric. The main targets of Anselm's rhetoric are magic and clerical vice, but he also attacks

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...

. To some scholars it represents a continuation of the

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...

nian tradition, or its rediscovery in 11th-century Italy, but to others it is "unlike anything that went before" (

Peter Dronke Ernst Peter Michael Dronke FBA (30 May 1934 – 19 April 2020) was a scholar specialising in Medieval Latin literature. He was one of the 20th century's leading scholars of medieval Latin lyric, and his book ''The Medieval Lyric'' (1968) is consi ...

) and represents the birth of a new medieval "art of controversy". It has received two

critical edition Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books. Such texts may range in da ...

s. Karl Manitius, ''Gunzo: Epistola ad Augienses und Anselm von Besate: Rhetorimachia'',

Monumenta Germaniae Historica The ''Monumenta Germaniae Historica'' (''MGH'') is a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published primary sources, both chronicle and archival, for the study of Northwestern and Central European history from the end of the Roman Empire ...

GH Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters G vol. 2 (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1958), 95–183.

Editions

* ''Anselm der Peripatetiker nebst anderen Beitragen zur Literaturgeschichte Italiens im eilften Jahrhundert'', ed. Ernest Dümmler. Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1872. dition of ''Rhetorimachia''* ''Gunzo: Epistola ad Augienses und Anselm von Besate: Rhetorimachia'', ed. Karl Manitius. Monumenta Germaniae Historica GH Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters G vol. 2. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1958. dition of ''Rhetorimachia''

Notes

Sources

* * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Anselm of Besate 11th-century Italian Roman Catholic theologians Rhetoricians 11th-century Latin writers 11th-century Italian philosophers