Anselm of Canterbury 1033 – 1109

Anselm of Canterbury was an 11th and early 12th-century Italian-Norman Benedictine monk, philosopher, and theologian, who served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. He is regarded as one of the founders of medieval scholasticism and one of the most original Christian philosophers of the Middle Ages. His Proslogion presents the famous ontological argument for the existence of God, deriving God's existence from the very concept of God as that than which nothing greater can be conceived. The Cur Deus Homo developed the satisfaction theory of the atonement, which became central to Western Christian theology. He held that faith seeks understanding, fides quaerens intellectum, and that reason is to be exercised within Christian revelation rather than against it.

Anselm was born in 1033 in Aosta in the Burgundian Alps. After a period of restless wandering following his mother's death, he crossed the Alps and in 1060 entered the Benedictine abbey of Bec in Normandy under the famous teacher Lanfranc. He rose quickly, becoming prior in 1063 and abbot of Bec in 1078, and in those years made the monastery a leading center of theological learning in Latin Europe.

His major writings — the Monologion, the Proslogion (with its celebrated argument that God is 'that than which nothing greater can be thought'), De Veritate, De Libertate Arbitrii, and Cur Deus Homo — were composed largely at Bec and during his troubled tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury, to which he was reluctantly elevated in 1093. As archbishop he twice went into exile in disputes with William II and Henry I over royal control of the English Church.

Anselm's program of fides quaerens intellectum — faith seeking understanding — set the agenda for the scholastic synthesis of reason and revelation, and his ontological argument and satisfaction theory of the atonement remain points of reference in philosophy of religion and theology. He died at Canterbury in 1109 and was canonized in 1494.