ANSELM OF BEC
(or Canterbury, or Aosta; 1033–1109)
Anselm of Bec was born in Aosta, Italy. After the death
of his mother, he left for Burgundy and France, where he
was attracted to the monastic life and entered the remote
monastery of Bec in Normandy in 1059. His countryman
Lanfranc of Pavia (d. 1089) was prior at Bec and taught
grammar and logic. Anselm became Lanfranc’s student,
then his assistant, and fi nally a fellow teacher. When in
1063 Lanfranc became abbot of Saint-Étienne, Caen
(before becoming archbishop of Canterbury in 1070),
Anselm succeeded him as prior at Bec and became ab-
bot after the death of the monastery’s founder, Herluin,
in 1078. As abbot, he paid frequent visits to England to
inspect the lands owned by Bec. While at Bec, Anselm
wrote works of a mixed devotional and philosophical
nature: De grammatico (1060–63), a linguistico-philo-
sophical treatise about the term “grammarian”; Mono-
logion, a soliloquy on proving the existence of God by
reason alone; Proslogion, an improved version of the
Monologion; and three treatises, De veritate, De liber-
táte arbitrii, and De casu diaboli. During this period,
he also wrote his Orationes sive meditationes.
Anselm succeeded Lanfranc as archbishop of Canter-
bury in 1093. Before long, he clashed with King William
II Rufus over such issues as church property, the right of
appointment to ecclesiastical offi ces, and the recogni-
tion of Urban II as pope. Another contentious issue was
Anselm’s wish to travel to Rome to receive the token
of his episcopal dignity, the pallium, directly from the
pope. In the end, Anselm did not go, yet he did succeed
in preventing the king from usurping the right of inves-
titure. There followed a period of relative calm during
which Anselm published his Epistola de incarnatione
verbi in 1094 and started work on his magnum opus, Cur
Deus homo. In the meantime, Anselm’s relations with
the king had once more become strained; in 1098, he
went in exile to Rome, where he completed Cur Deus
homo. He also attended the Council of Bari, at which
he defended the “double procession” of the Holy Spirit
(from the Father and the Son) against the Greeks (later
published as De processione Spiritus Sanctus).
Following William Rufus’s death in 1100, Anselm
returned to England. After a peaceful interval, he col-
lided with the new king, Henry I, over old issues, such as
homage and investiture. From 1103 until 1106, he lived
in exile, mainly in France, and returned to England only
after a compromise had been reached with the king. He
died in 1109 at Canterbury, having completed in 1108 his
De concordia (on the concordance of foreknowledge and
predestination and the grace of God with free will).
Anselm’s writings are marked by a balance between
rational argumentation and contemplative intensity.
Claiming in his Proslogion to prove the existence of God
by one single argument and by reason alone, he takes
his starting point in a negation of that existence. This
negation has to be seen as a dialectical-intellectual game
within the monastic context in which it serves the aim
of bringing out the presence of the divine. The fool who
denies the existence of God is met with the argument
that God is that than which no greater can be thought.
The logical implications of this formula are such as
to exclude the possibility of God’s nonexistence. As a
consequence, God’s presence, which in the beginning of
the treatise had been phrased in terms of monastic des-
peration, frustrated by an inaccessible light, gains clarity
and offers joy to the meditating mind. Cur Deus homo
follows the same pattern. The accusation by the infi dels
that the Christian concept of incarnation is primitive is
met by an analysis of the beauty of God’s order. God
is bound by intrinsic necessity to keep his order intact
and save humanity, which for its part is bound to make
satisfaction for its sin. The two elements come together
in the necessary appearance of a God-man, who is no
other than Christ.
Anselm’s dense style of argumentation is further
developed in his treatises on truth, on the will, and on
the fall of the Devil. In conformity with his monastic
way of life, it is the real truth and the real existence of
justice that count most. As a result, the freedom of will
is the freedom to do the right thing. By the same token,
the freedom to sin turns out to lack a real object—in-
justice having no subsistence of its own—and therefore
to be illusory.
Although Anselm has always been held in high es-
teem, his philosophical and theological infl uence has
been limited mainly to the so-called ontological proof
of God’s existence and the argument of Cur Deus homo.
The Orationes sive mediationes, on the other hand, were
widely read all through the Middle Ages.
See also Lanfranc of Bec; Henry I; Urban II, PopeFurther Reading
Anselm of Bec. S. Anselmi Cantuariensis archiepiscopi opera om-
nia, ed. Franciscus S. Schmitt. 6 vol. Stuttgart: Fromann, 1968.
——. Anselm of Canterbury, ed. and trans. jasper Hopkins
and Herbert Richardson. 4 vols. 2nd ed. New York: Mellen,
1975–76.
——. The Prayers and Meditations of St. Anselm, trans. Benedicta
Ward. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.
Eadmer. The Life of St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury by
Eadmer, ed. and trans. Richard W. Southern. Oxford: Clar-
endon, 1972.
Campbell, Richard. From Belief to Understanding: A Study of
Anselm’s Proslogion Argument on the Existence of God. Can-
berra: Faculty of Arts, Australian National University, 1976.
Hopkins, Jasper. A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm. Min-
neapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1972.
Evans, Gillian R. Anselm and Talking About God. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1978.
Southern, Richard W. Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.ANSELM OF BEC