The middle ages, in the person of Anselm of Canterbury, contribute the first clear form of the Ontological argument for theism.
Anselm tells us that a most perfect being must exist, since the perfection which includes existence is manifestly greater than a perfection confined to an object of thought.
Lanfranc brought law and discipline; Anselm brought theology and philosophy.
Such is the teaching, along different lines, alike of St Anselm and of Abelard.
At many points it follows Anselm closely, and, of course, very often " makes light work " of its task.
Stone Anselm Joseph McLaurin Andrew Houston Longino James Kimble Vardaman Edmund Favor Noel .
However, he regarded St Anselm as his friend, and he showed the customary liberality to religious houses.
Paul Johann Anselm, Ritter Von Feuerbach >>
Only two of the volumes are known to be in existence; one is a copy of John of Salisbury's works in the British Museum, and the other some theological treatises by Anselm and others in the Bodleian.
He was educated under Bernard of Chartres and Anselm of Laon.
Ralph of Coggeshall, who used information gained from crusaders, and William of Newburgh, who had access to a work by Richard I.'s chaplain Anselm, which is now lost.4 The French side is presented in Rigord's Gesta Philippi Augusti and in the Gesta (an abridgment and continuation of Rigord) and the Philippeis of William the Breton.
Many of them afterwards attained high positions in the Church; one, Anselm of Badagio, became pope under the title of Alexander II.
In 1102 a national synod at Westminster under Anselm adopted canons against simony, clerical marriages and slavery.
In the meantime the new king, by issuing his famous charter, by recalling Anselm, and by choosing the Anglo-Scottish princess Edith-Matilda, daughter of Malcolm III.,.
Anselm preached in his favour,, English levies marched under the royal banner both to repel Robert's invasion (1 ior) and to crush the revolt of the Montgomeries headed by Robert of Belleme (1102).
Henry was sharply criticized for his ingratitude to Anselm (q.v.), in spite of the marked respect.
He accompanied, and wrote the history of, the Dominican embassy;under Friar Ascelin or Anselm, which Pope Innocent IV.
It is divisible into two well-marked periods - the first extending to the end of the 12th century and embracing as its chief names Roscellinus, Anselm, William of Champeaux and Abelard, while the second extended from the beginning of the 13th century to the Renaissance and the general distraction of men's thoughts from the problems and methods of Scholasticism.
Hence the strength with which a champion of the faith like Anselm insists on the subordination of reason.
With which he formulated his position were the im mediate occasion of the contemporaneous crystallization of Realism in the theories of Anselm and William of Champeaux.
From the scanty and ill-natured notices of his opponents (Anselm and Abelard), we gather that he refused to recognize the reality of anything but the individual; he treated " the universal substance," says Anselm, as no more than " flatum vocis," a verbal breathing or sound; and in a similar strain he denied any reality to the parts of which a whole, such as a house, is commonly said to be composed.
Some of the expressions used by Anselm in controverting his position favour this idea.
This theological deduction from his doctrine drew upon Roscellinus the polemic of his most celebrated opponent, Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109).
Roscellinus appears at first to have imagined that his tritheistic theory had the sanction of Lanfranc and Anselm, and the latter was led in consequence to compose his treatise De fide Trinitatis.
" The manner in which humanity exists in the individual was soon to be the subject of keen discussion, and to bring to light diverging views within the Realistic camp; but St Anselm does not go into detail on this point, and seems to imply that it is not surrounded by special difficulties.
To Anselm speciall y belongs the motto Credo ut intelligam, or, as it is obscurity of the schools..
Besides its connexion with the speculations of Anselm, the doctrine of Roscellinus was also of decisive influence within the schools in crystallizing the opposite opinion.
Anselm had made an elaborate employment of reason in the interest of faith, but the spirit of pious subordination which had marked the demonstrations of Anselm seemed wanting in the argumentations of this bolder and more restless spirit; and the church, or at least an influential section of it, took alarm at the encroachments of Rationalism.
Albert and no doubt stood on a higher level than Anselm and Abelard, not merely by their wider range of knowledge but also by the intellectual massiveness of their achieve ments; but it may be questioned whether the earlier writers did not possess a greater force of originality and a keener talent.
The existence of God is maintained by Albert and Aquinas to be domonstrable by reason; but here again they reject the ontological argument of Anselm, and restrict themselves to the a posteriori proof, rising after the manner of Aristotle from that which is prior for us to that which is prior by nature or in itself.
With a view to facilitating the crusade, a council was held at Bari in October 1098, at which religious differences were debated and the exiled Anselm of Canterbury combated the Eastern view of the Procession of the Holy Ghost.
He seems to have been a man of independent character, for he assisted Anselm against William Rufus, although he supported Henry I.
P. Fournier as the first manual of the Reform; the collection of Anselm, bishop of Lucca,' in 13 books (1080-1086); that of Cardinal Deusdedit,7 in bo oks dedicated to Pope Victor III.
There, in the great cathedral school of Notre-Dame, he sat for a while under the teaching of William of Champeaux, the disciple of St Anselm and most advanced of Realists, but, presently stepping forward, he overcame the master in discussion, and thus began a long duel that issued in the downfall of the philosophic theory of Realism, till then dominant in the early Middle Age.
From his success in dialectic, he next turned to theology and attended the lectures of Anselm at Laon.
The cathedral of St Martin was begun in 1063 by Bishop Anselm (later Pope Alexander II.); but the great apse with its tall columnar arcades and the fine campanile are probably the only remnants of the early edifice, the nave and transepts having been rebuilt in the Gothic style in the 14th century, while the west front was begun in 1204 by Guidetto (lately identified with Guido Bigarelli of Como), and "consists of a vast portico of three magnificent arches, and above them three ranges of open galleries covered with all the devices of an exuberant fancy."
The fifth and last book, dealing with the reign of Henry I., is chiefly remarkable for its desultoriness and an obvious desire to make the best case for that monarch, whose treatment of Anselm he prudently ascribes to Robert of Meulan (d.
And Anselm in 1107.
In spite of Dunstan's reforms at the end of the 10th century, the Norman Lanfranc found so many wedded priests that he dared not decree their separation; and when his successor St Anselm attempted to go further, this seemed a perilous novelty even to so distinguished an ecclesiastic as Henry of Huntingdon, who wrote: "About Michaelmas of this same year (1102) Archbishop Anselm held a council in London, wherein he forbade wives to the English priesthood, heretofore not forbidden; which seemed to some a matter of great purity, but to others a perilous thing, lest the clergy, in striving after a purity too great for human strength, should fall into horrible impurity, to the extreme dishonour of the Christian name" (lib.
St Anselm denied that any penalty was due to the devil, and in terms of feudal honour restated the problem.
In the same year he brought to an end the investiture struggle in England, in which Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, had been engaged with King Henry I., by retaining himself exclusive right to invest with the ring and crozier, but recognizing the royal nomination .to vacate benefices and oath of fealty for temporal domains.
Von Konstanz (1857) and Anselm der Peripatetiker (1872).
