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Saint Anselm was born to a noble family in Aosta, in what is now Italy. Following a
youth of travel and learning, Anselm joined the Benedictine monastery in the town
of Bec, Normandy (in modern France). He remained in this monastery for the next
thirty-three years, the last fifteen as abbot. During this time, he wrote a number of
books on theological and philosophical topics. In 1093, Anselm was coerced into leav-
ing the monastery to become Archbishop of Canterbury. Most of his sixteen years in
Canterbury were spent skirmishing with the king of England for control of the church
(a pattern that continued for five centuries until Henry VIII severed the English church
from Rome entirely in 1534). Anselm died in 1109 and was canonized in 1494.
Anselm’s thought can be summed up in the Augustinian phrase, “faith seeking
understanding.” Anselm was a deeply devoted Christian who began his thinking
with the assumption that the doctrines of Christianity are true. And this faith drove
him to seek understanding, to find rational explanations for the Christian teachings
he already believed. His writings reflected this yearning to understand rationally
particular problems in faith; he wrote a number of short treatises on such subjects
as the Incarnation and the Trinity. He believed that he could demonstrate the truth
of these revealed doctrines.
Anselm’s most famous work is his attempt to prove the existence of God in the
Proslogion(or Discourse) known now as the “ontological argument” (from
Immanuel Kant’s description). The ontological argument attempts to show that if
one can conceive of “something greater than which we can conceive of nothing,”
one must also acknowledge that this being exists in reality as well as in the under-
standing. That is, if God is thought of, then God must exist. Recent scholars have
pointed out that there are actually two arguments here: one, in Chapter II, that
proves that God exists in reality; and another, in Chapters III to IV, that proves that
God’s existence is necessary.ANSELM (AND GAUNILO)
1033–1109