Anselm of Canterbury

Anselm (1033–1109), born in Aosta, entered the Benedictine abbey of Bec in Normandy under Lanfranc, becoming prior (1063), abbot (1078), and eventually Archbishop of Canterbury (1093). His tenure at Canterbury was marked by sustained conflict with William II and Henry I over lay investiture and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, leading to two exiles. Anselm's philosophical theology combines Augustinian inheritance with a distinctive program of 'fides quaerens intellectum'—faith seeking understanding—in which rational demonstration proceeds from, rather than replaces, belief. The Monologion (1076) develops a cumulative argument for a supreme nature from degrees of perfection and exemplarist Neoplatonic premises. The Proslogion (1077–78) advances the celebrated argument from the concept of God as 'that than which nothing greater can be thought,' inferring existence from the coherence of this notion. The argument was contested in Anselm's own lifetime by the monk Gaunilo (Liber pro insipiente), to which Anselm replied in the Responsio. Later critics include Aquinas (rejecting the move from concept to extramental existence), Kant (challenging existence as a predicate), and modern critics such as Frege and Russell; defenders and reformulators include Descartes, Leibniz, Charles Hartshorne, Norman Malcolm, and Alvin Plantinga (modal versions). Anselm's Cur Deus Homo developed satisfaction soteriology. He is recognized as a Doctor of the Church (1720) and a pivotal figure transitioning patristic theology toward scholasticism.