not only in chains of significant masters and pupils but also in rivalries. The
network center shows where the action is: around Abelard, who not only
studied with everyone but also debated with everyone; and in the extraordinary
complication of the network of important thinkers four to six generations later,
where the lightning bolts of controversy surround Thomas Aquinas, Henry of
Ghent, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and several others (see Figure 9.4).
The network builds up charges of creative energy and discharges them at its
points of maximal tension, like an electric field giving off current.
From the beginning, the networks are organized in chains of leading mas-
ters and pupils interwoven by conflicts. Anselm’s teacher, the most eminent of
the time, was Lanfranc, who disputed with Berengar of Tours over the existence
of universals; in the next generation Anselm disputed with Abelard’s teacher
Roscelin. There was a third party to these disputes, comprising scripturalists
such as Peter Damiani, Otloh of St. Emmeran, and Manegold of Lautenbach,
who attacked the whole business of dialectic as un-Christian. There was no
doubt provocation in Berengar’s application of dialectic to deny the transub-
stantiation of the Host, or Roscelin’s application of nominalism to the Trinity
with the conclusion that it must consist of three individuals. The intensity of
creative energy was being driven upward by this Christian version of the
dispute between kalam and hadith. It was this context which fostered Anselm’s
creation of one of the most famous of all metaphysical arguments, his onto-
logical proof for the existence of God.
Scripturalists such as Damiani had taken the line against the dialecticians
that God is superior to logic, indeed that God’s will can change the laws of
logic. Anselm, educated in the secular schools of Italy, and teaching at the
Norman monastery at Bec, where recruitment and even income depended on
its fame as a center of learning, was primed to rise to the challenge. For him,
reason is the very basis of scripture. If Christ had never existed, it would still
be possible to show the logical necessity of human salvation, the Incarnation,
the Trinity, even details such as the virgin birth (Monologium, esp. Preface;
Cur Deus Homo)—points which more moderate philosophers such as Thomas
Aquinas later regarded as mysteries understandable only by faith. The oppo-
sitions of the intellectual field threw Anselm’s energy into the extreme ration-
alist corner. Against nominalist philosophers such as Roscelin, he held out for
the primacy of general ideas, prior to and untouched by experience. From this
arose Anselm’s dissatisfaction: Could he find a single sufficient proof of the
most important reality of all, the existence of God, which did not depend on
chains of argument that included empirical premises? After much struggle the
answer came to him: the highest of all concepts must be that which includes
its own existence; for if it did not exist, it would be less perfect than another
conception which did exist. Anselm builds his proof using the sole rational
criterion of avoiding contradiction.
Academic Expansion: Medieval Christendom^ •^465