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.