Anselm of Canterbury

« twenty-six years old.

After his father's death (presumably in 1060), Anselm chose to enter the monastic order atBec rather than return to the family estate.

In 1063 he was elected prior of Bec, succeeding Lanfranc, who hadbeen called to the abbey of St.-Etienne in Caen; in 1078 he was chosen abbot, in spite of his disinclination toassume the office.

He showed even more reluctance and protestation when selected as archbishop of Canterbury in1093, again in succession to Lanfranc.

Eadmer tells of Anselm's vigorous and poignantly futile efforts to resistelection, first to the abbacy at Bec and later to the archepiscopacy at Canterbury.

When the monks of Becbesought Anselm to dispense with the customary protests and agree to become abbot, he threw himself prostrateon the floor, begging them not to weigh him down with so burdensome an office.

A similar scene took place inEngland: when King William II, fearing that his sudden sickness was mortal, named Anselm archbishop and when thebishops carried him forcibly to William's bedside to receive from him the episcopal staff, Anselm kept his fistclenched, thus refusing the staff.

Nonetheless, the staff was pressed against his hand by the bishops, the Te deum was chanted and he was proclaimed archbishop-elect on 6 March 1093.

His consecration followed on 4 December.Anselm's subsequent quarrels with William II (son of William the Conqueror) and with his brother and successorHenry I are well known.

He contested William's exercise of jurisdiction over the church, in particular William's claimthat he alone, as king, was entitled to convoke future reform synods and had the right to decide which rival for thepapacy - Urban II or Clement III - to recognize.

Relations became so tense that Anselm, acting on his owninitiative, chose to leave England for three years (November 1097-September 1100) to consult with Urban II inRome.

Upon his return to England after William's death, he then quarrelled with Henry I over Urban's injunctionagainst any bishop doing homage to a king or being invested with his bishop's office by a king or any other layman.Anselm, at Henry's behest, once again departed from England for three years (April 1103-August 1106), this time toconsult with Pope Paschal II.

The investiture controversy was settled only in 1107, twenty months before Anselm'sdeath, when King Henry formally forswore the right of investiture at the Concordat of London.

Two conflictingportraits of Anselm's mature life and of his attitude towards his roles as theologian and prelate have emerged.

Thestandard portrayal, that of R.W.

Southern, who agrees in general with Eadmer, shows Anselm as a devout monkwho was committed to the ideals of monasticism and who aspired to a life of scholarly study and spiritualmeditation.

Dreading to trade the tranquillity of Bec for the combative milieu of Canterbury, he experienced hiselevation to the archbishopric as ‘his nearest approach to hell' ( Southern 1988: 187 ).

In his preface to the Cur deus homo (Why God Became a Man) , Anselm spoke of his tribulation of heart and his great suffering, presumably because of his clashes with King William over the extent of regal power.

Anselm seemed most content when hecould withdraw from the public arena, as he did in the Italian mountain village of Liberi while finishing the Cur deus homo , during his first exile.

A contrary portrait of Anselm is that of S.N.

Vaughn ( 1987 ), who dismisses much of Eadmer's report as tendentious and too intent upon depicting Anselm as a saint.

Anselm, says Vaughn, was a manpolitically astute and personally calculating, manipulative enough to enlist the support of his friends against hisenemies and clever enough actively to fashion a positive historical image of himself by omitting from his collection ofletters those that would have cast him in a less favourable light.

Moreover, his very remonstrations andprotestations when assuming high office were not only a formality - the expected and requisite display of humility -but also a test of the intensity of his electors' support.

In fact, Vaughn claims, Anselm adroitly schemed to becomeselected as archbishop once he became convinced that God had destined him for this office.

He did not desire theoffice and its burdens; but, despite this disinclination, he manoeuvred cleverly to obtain it in compliance with theperceived will of God.

Once in the office he executed it with talent, protecting against regal confiscation theholdings and preserving from regal encroachment the prerogatives of the previously weakened English church.

Boththese mutually incompatible pictures of the historical Anselm seem extreme.

Neither is likely to be shownconclusively wrong by future scholarly debate, except in the unlikely event that new evidence is forthcoming.Scholarly caution must be exercised, however, in attempting radically to reshape Eadmer's testimony that Anselmneither sought nor desired to become archbishop - testimony corroborated by Anselm's own letters and not clearlycontradicted by circumstantial evidence.

2 Philosophical method Anselm did not write his first philosophical treatise, the Monologion , until he was forty-three.

Even his earliest letters, prayers and meditations do not antedate 1070.

Thus his entire corpus of writings arises from his mature years, after he had already been a monk atBec for at least ten to sixteen years.

Not surprisingly, his works show a consistency that cannot be found in a moreprolific writer such as Augustine, who in later years felt obliged to write retractationes (reconsiderations) of his earlier work.

Stylistically, Anselm often uses streamlined Latin sentences that are set out in simple vocabulary.However, his concise style and his well-focused treatment of topics do not ensure that his ideas are easy tounderstand.

On the contrary, understanding is frequently impeded by his failure to introduce more elaboratedistinctions and to explore the metaphysical complexities that underlie his ostensibly straightforward assertions.More like Aristotle than like Augustine, he introduces into his argumentation appeals to common linguistic parlance,as when he explains that our saying ‘Nothing caused it' ordinarily means that it is not the case that anything causedit.

Similarly, when we say that God is unable to sin (an expression that seems to convey the idea of imperfectionbecause of powerlessness), we usually mean that God has the ability always to keep from sinning (and to have thisability is to have a perfection).

Anselm is called the ‘Father of Scholasticism' because he endeavours to show thatrevealed truths can be established on an independent rational basis.

In the Monologion , where he professes to proceed sola ratione (by recourse to rational considerations alone), he regards himself as having demonstrated not only that God exists but also that God is triune and that the human soul is immortal.

Similarly, in the concludingchapter of the Cur deus homo , he claims unhesitatingly that ‘whatever is contained in the Old and in the New Testament has been proved, by the solution of the single problem which we have set forth.' Thus he goes furtherthan his predecessor Augustine and his successor Aquinas, neither of whom supposed that either the doctrine ofthe Trinity or the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture is rationally demonstrable.

An example of Anselm's reasoningas a Scholastic may be drawn from De casu diaboli (The Fall of the Devil) 21, which asks the question of whether Satan was able to foreknow that he would fall.

Anselm begins by stating that either Satan did know this or he didnot.

On the assumption that he foreknew, he either was willing that the fall should occur, or he was unwilling.

Were. »