St Anselm

Anselm of Canterbury, OSB (; 1033/4–1109), also called ( it, Anselmo d'Aosta, link=no) after his birthplace and (french: Anselme du Bec, link=no) after his monastery, was an Italian Benedictine monk, abbot, philosopher and theologian of the Catholic Church, who held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. After his death, he was canonized as a saint; his feast day is 21 April.

As archbishop, he defended the church's interests in England amid the Investiture Controversy. For his resistance to the English kings William II and Henry I, he was exiled twice: once from 1097 to 1100 and then from 1105 to 1107. While in exile, he helped guide the Greek bishops of southern Italy to adopt Roman rites at the Council of Bari. He worked for the primacy of Canterbury over the bishops of York and Wales but, though at his death he appeared to have been successful, Pope Paschal II later reversed himself and restored York's independence.

Beginning at Bec, Anselm composed dialogues and treatises with a rational and philosophical approach, sometimes causing him to be credited as the founder of Scholasticism. Despite his lack of recognition in this field in his own time, Anselm is now famed as the originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God and of the satisfaction theory of atonement. He was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by a bull of Pope Clement XI in 1720.

Biography

Family

Anselm was born in or around Aosta in Upper Burgundy sometime between April 1033 and April 1034. The area now forms part of the Republic of Italy, but Aosta had been part of the post-Carolingian Kingdom of Burgundy until the death of the childless Rudolph III in 1032. The Emperor and the Count of Blois then went to war over his succession. Humbert the White-Handed, Count of Maurienne, so distinguished himself that he was granted a new county carved out of the secular holdings of the bishop of Aosta. Humbert's son Otto was subsequently permitted to inherit the extensive March of Susa through his wife Adelaide in preference to her uncle's families, who had supported the effort to establish an independent Kingdom of Italy under William V, Duke of Aquitaine. Otto and Adelaide's unified lands then controlled the most important passes in the western Alps and formed the county of Savoy whose dynasty would later rule the kingdoms of Sardinia and Italy.

Records during this period are scanty, but both sides of Anselm's immediate family appear to have been dispossessed by these decisions in favour of their extended relations. His father Gundulph or Gundulf was a Lombard noble, probably one of Adelaide's Arduinici uncles or cousins; his mother Ermenberga was almost certainly the granddaughter of Conrad the Peaceful, related both to the Anselmid bishops of Aosta and to the heirs of Henry II who had been passed over in favour of Conrad. The marriage was thus probably arranged for political reasons but was incapable of resisting Conrad's decrees after his successful annexation of Burgundy on 1 August 1034. ( Bishop Burchard subsequently revolted against imperial control but was defeated; he was ultimately translated to Lyon.) Ermenberga appears to have been the wealthier of the two. Gundulph moved to his wife's town, where she held a palace, likely near the cathedral, along with a villa in the valley. Anselm's father is sometimes described as having a harsh and violent temper but contemporary accounts merely portray him as having been overgenerous or careless with his wealth; Anselm's patient and devoutly religious mother, meanwhile, made up for her husband's fault with her own prudent management of the family estates. In later life, there are records of three relations who visited Bec: Folceraldus, Haimo, and Rainaldus. The first repeatedly attempted to impose on Anselm's success but was rebuffed owing to his ties to another monastery; the latter two Anselm attempted in vain to persuade to join his community.

Early life

At the age of fifteen, Anselm desired to enter a monastery but, failing to obtain his father's consent, he was refused by the abbot. The illness he then suffered has been considered a psychosomatic, and wandered through Burgundy and France for three years. His countryman Lanfranc of Pavia was then prior of the Benedictine abbey of Bec in Normandy; attracted by the fame of his fellow countryman, Anselm reached Normandy in 1059. After spending some time in Avranches, he returned the next year. His father having died, he consulted with Lanfranc as to whether to return to his estates and employ their income in providing alms or to renounce them, becoming a hermit or a monk at Bec or Cluny. Professing to fear his own bias, Lanfranc sent him to Maurilius, the archbishop of Rouen, who convinced him to enter the abbey as a novice at the age of 27. Probably in his first year, he wrote his first work on philosophy, a treatment of Latin paradoxes called the '' Grammarian''. Over the next decade, the Rule of Saint Benedict reshaped his thought.

Abbot of Bec

Early years

Three years later, in 1063, Duke William II summoned Lanfranc to serve as the abbot of his new abbey of St Stephen at Caen