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Anselm of Canterbury , also called Anselm of Aosta after his birthplace and Anselm of Bec 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.

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.

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.

✵ 1033 – 21. April 1109   •   Other names Sant'Anselmo d'Aosta
Anselm of Canterbury photo

Works

Proslogion
Proslogion
Anselm of Canterbury
Anselm of Canterbury: 4   quotes 0   likes

Famous Anselm of Canterbury Quotes

“God often works more by the life of the illiterate seeking the things that are God's, than by the ability of the learned seeking the things that are their own.”

Anselm of Canterbury

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 123.

“Therefore, lord…we believe that you are something than which nothing greater can be thought.”
Ergo domine...credimus te esse aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit.

Anselm of Canterbury Proslogion

Proslogion, ch. 2; Gregory Schufreider Confessions of a Rational Mystic: Anselm's Early Writings (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1994) pp. 324-5.

“God was conceived of a most pure Virgin … it was fitting that the virgin should be radiant with a purity so great that a greater purity cannot be conceived.”

Anselm of Canterbury

In Mary for Earth and Heaven: Essays on Mary and Ecumenism http://books.google.com/books?id=Dx4WrfzZMsoC&pg=PA116&dq=%22it+was+fitting+that+the+virgin+should+be+radiant+with+a+purity+so+great%22&hl=en&ei=ELNATrLoCIXMsQLbsvmuCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22it%20was%20fitting%20that%20the%20virgin%20should%20be%20radiant%20with%20a%20purity%20so%20great%22&f=false, 2002, William McLaughlin, Jill Pinnock, eds., Gracewing, ISBN 0852445563 ISBN 9780852445563pp. 115-116.

“But since it is better to have perception or to have omnipotence, to be pitiful or to be without passions, than not to have these attributes; how hast Thou perception, if Thou art not a body? or omnipotence, if Thou canst not do everything? or how art Thou at one and the same time pitiful and without passions? For if only bodily things have perception, since the senses with which we perceive belong and attach to the body; how canst Thou have perception, since Thou art not a body but the Supreme Spirit, which is higher than a body can be? But if perception is only knowledge or a means towards knowledge; since he who perceives, has knowledge thereby, according to the special character of the senses, by sight of colours, by taste of savours and so forth: then whatsoever has knowledge in whatsoever manner may be said without impropriety in some sense to perceive. Therefore, O Lord, although Thou art not a body, yet of a truth Thou hast in this sense perception in the highest degree, since Thou knowest all things in the highest degree; but not in the sense wherein an animal that has knowledge by means of bodily feeling is said to have perception.”

Anselm of Canterbury Proslogion

Proslogion, chapter 5 by Anselm of Canterbury, translated by Clement C. J. Webb (1903).

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