Anselm

Anselm, Saint, of Canterbury, was of Lombard family and born at Aosta 1033. From boyhood he had a desire to become a monk, and having left home became a pupil of Lanfranc at Bec in Normandy, assumed the cowl at the age of twenty-seven, and became first prior and then abbot of that foundation. His intellect was always engaged in theological speculations, but this did not interfere with his active duties, his ascetic habits, or his affectionate and kindly attention to those under his charge. In several visits to England he won the confidence of William I. and of the clergy, and some time after Lanfranc's death William II, appointed him to the see of Canterbury. Then began a struggle between the royal and ecclesiastical authority which ended in Anselm's going to Rome and remaining abroad until William's death. Henry I. invited him to return and proposed to reinvest him, but both Pope and Archbishop denied the royal right of investiture, and after Anselm had visited Rome again in 1103 the king gave way. The prelate now returned and set about the reform of the Church and of the monastic establishments. At the Synod of Westminster, 1102, the celibacy of the clergy was insisted upon. His many writings put him at the head of the scholastic theologians. They include Dialogus de Veritate, Monologium, Proslogion, De Fide Trinitatis, and Cur Delis Homo, besides many devotional treatises. In philosophy he was one of the chief upholders of the "Realist" doctrine, that the "Essences" or "essential nature" of genera and species exist independently of the individual objects, and have existed from all eternity in the Divine Mind.