Anselm Sentence Examples

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.

In Anselm's case we have the further sanguine hope of justifying not theism merely but all Christian doctrine to the scientific reason.

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.

However, he regarded St Anselm as his friend, and he showed the customary liberality to religious houses.

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.,.

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.

Anselm's motto, Credo ut intelligam, marks well the distance that has been traversed since Tertullian's Credo quia absurdum est.

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.

Anselm's natural element was theology, and the high metaphysical questions which are as it were the obverse of theology.

To Anselm speciall y belongs the motto Credo ut intelligam, or, as it is obscurity of the schools..

But the Platonically conceived proof of the being of God contained in the Monologion shows that Anselm's doctrine of the universals as substances in things (universalia in re) was closely connected in his mind with the thought of the universalia ante rem, the exemplars of perfect goodness and truth and justice, by participation in which all earthly things are judged to possess these qualities.

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.

So long as the Neoplatonic influence remained strong, attempts were still made to demonstrate the doctrine of the Trinity, chiefly in a mystical sense as in Erigena, but also by orthodox churchmen like Anselm.

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.

The last book (xvii.) treats of theology or (as we should now say) mythology, and winds up with an account of the Holy Scriptures and of the Fathers, from Ignatius and Dionysius the Areopagite to Jerome and Gregory the Great, and even of later writers from 'Isidore and Bede, through Alcuin, Lanfranc and Anselm, down to Bernard of Clairvaux and the brethren of St Victor.

The method of Ticonius was dominant in the Church down to the middle ages, amongst his followers being such notable churchmen as Augustine, Primasius, Cassiodorus, Bede, Anselm.

He became a monk in the Benedictine monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury, where he made the acquaintance of Anselm, at that time visiting England as abbot of Bec. The intimacy was renewed when Anselm became archbishop of Canterbury in 1093; thenceforward Eadmer was not only his disciple and follower, but his friend and director, being formally appointed to this position by Pope Urban II.

Anselm and the scholastics regarded the atonement as an offering to God of such infinite value as to outweigh men's sins, a view sometimes styled the " Commerical Theory."

After studying under Anselm of Laon and Roscellinus, he taught in the school of the cathedral of Notre Dame, of which he was made canon in 1103.

He drew from the Moslems the mass of his infantry, and St Anselm visiting him at the siege of Capua, 1098, found "the brown tents of the Arabs innumerable."

It was easy, therefore, to understand why Anselm's method did not become the dominant one in theology.

In and after the middle of that century the Norman monastery of Bec flourished under the rule of Lanfranc and Anselm, both of whom had begun their career in northern Italy, and closed it at Canterbury.

The principal institutions of higher learning in the state are Dartmouth College (non-sectarian, opened in 1769), at Hanover, and Saint Anselm's College (Roman Catholic, opened in 1893), at Manchester.

The works of the classical authors before mentioned were printed, and other treatises were published by John de Indagine, Codes, Andreas Corvus, Michael Blondus, Janus Cornaro, Anselm Douxciel, Pompeius Ronnseus, Gratarolus, Lucas Gauricus, Tricassus, Cardanus, Taisnierus, Magnus Hund, Rothman, Johannes Padovanus, and, greatest of all, Giambattista della Porta.

He is said to have studied under St Anselm at Bec. About 1076 he taught with great success at Paris, where, as the associate of William of Champeaux, he upheld the realistic side of the scholastic controversy.

Other commentaries apparently by him have been ascribed to various writers, principally to the great Anselm.

A list of them, with notice of Anselm's life, is contained in the Histoire litteraire de la France, x.

He was one of the bishops elect whom Anselm refused to consecrate (1101) as having been nominated and invested by the lay power.

During the investitures dispute Giffard was on friendly terms with Anselm, and drew upon himself a sentence of banishment through declining to accept consecration from the archbishop of York (1103).

He was, however, one of the bishops who pressed Anselm, in 1106, to give way to the king.

He became a close friend of Anselm, aided the first Cistercians to settle in England, and restored Winchester cathedral with great magnificence.

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.

From Anselm's time (12th century A.D.) this theory of Marcion's is held as orthodox in substance but is made monotheistic in form.

St Anselm denied that any penalty was due to the devil, and in terms of feudal honour restated the problem.

This doctrine of St Anselm's attaches itself readily to texts of St Paul, for his teachings contain undeniably the vicarious propitiatory element.

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."

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.

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.

He seems to have been a man of independent character, for he assisted Anselm against William Rufus, although he supported Henry I.

Anselm felt himself obliged to accept this decision, and refused to accept his own pallium from William when Urban sent it across the sea by the hands of a legate.

Henry won much applause at the same time by filling up all the bishoprics and abbacies which his brother had kept so long vacant, by inviting the exiled Anselm to return to England, and by imprisoning Williams odious minister Ranulf Flambard.

Anselm had come back from Rome confirmed in the theories for which he had contended with Rufusnay, taught to extend them to a further extreme.

Anselm was equally reluctant to force matters to an open breach, yet would not shift from his position.

There followed an interminable series of arguments, interrupted by truces, till at last Anselm, at the kings suggestion, went to Rome to see if the pope could arrange some modus vivendi.

He managed the king's case against Anselm, and at Rockingham (1095) actually claimed the right of appeal, when it was claimed by the archbishop. Notwithstanding his zeal for the royal interests, William was soon afterwards disgraced.

Anselm of Canterbury stands almost alone among the great theological masters in working purely from a scientific interest; this holds alike of his contribution to theism and of his doctrine of Atonement.

An important contribution to doctrine is contained in the Cur Deus Homo of Anselm of Canterbury.

Anselm holds that it was best for the injured honour of God to receive from a substitute what the sinner was personally in no condition to offer.

With Anselm Ritschl takes Abelard, who explains the Atonement simply by God's love, and thus is the forerunner of " moral " or " subjective " modern theories as Anselm is of the " objective " or " forensic " theory.

It must be admitted, however, that there is less definiteness of outline in Abelard than in Anselm.

Contemporaneously with the new and vivid intellectual life of an Anselm or an Abelard, the " freezing up " of traditionalism is evidenced by the preparation of volumes of Sentences from Scripture and the Fathers.

The Reformation doctrine of Atonement, while akin to Anselm's, differs in making God the guardian of a system of public law rather than of His private or personal honour.

Yet Ritschl claims that his doctrine of Christ as Head of the Church combines the lines of thought found separately in Anselm and Abelard, while Schleiermacher is said to have been one-sidedly Abelardian.

Anselm further softens the statement of Augustinian predestinationism by explaining that the freedom to will is not strictly lost even by fallen man; it is inherent in a rational nature, though since Adam's sin it only exists potentially in humanity, except where it is made actual by grace.

As Lanfranc and Anselm were both anxious to extend their jurisdiction over the whole of Ireland, the submission of Dublin opened the way for Norman and Roman influences.

Gundulph, his father, was by birth a Lombard, and seems to have been a man of harsh and violent temper; his mother, Ermenberga, was a prudent and virtuous woman, from whose careful religious training the young Anselm derived much benefit.

It was during these quiet years at Bec that Anselm wrote his first philosophical and religious works, the dialogues on Truth and Freewill, and the two celebrated treatises, the Monologion and Proslogion.

Meanwhile the convent had been growing in wealth, as well as in reputation, and had acquired considerable property in England, which it became the duty of Anselm occasionally to visit.

About four years after, in 1092, on the invitation of Hugh, earl of Chester, Anselm with some reluctance, for he feared to be made archbishop, crossed to England.

Eager to make atonement for his sin with regard to the archbishopric, he nominated Anselm to the vacant see, and after a great struggle compelled him to accept the pastoral staff of office.

After obtaining dispensation from his duties in Normandy, Anselm was consecrated in 1093.

Anselm, accordingly, insisted that he must proceed to Rome to receive the pall.

A great council of churchmen and nobles, held to settle the matter, advised Anselm to submit to the king, but failed to overcome his mild and patient firmness.

It was not given by the king, but was laid on the altar at Canterbury, whence Anselm took it.

Little more than a year after, fresh trouble arose with the king, and Anselm resolved to proceed to Rome and seek the counsel of his spiritual father.

Anselm was received with high honour by Urban, and at a great council held at Bari, he was put forward to defend the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost against the representatives of the Greek Church.

But Urban was too politic to embroil himself with the king of England, and Anselm found that he could obtain no substantial result.

In 1100 William was killed, and Henry, his successor, at once recalled Anselm.

Henry, however, remained firm, and at last, in 1103, Anselm and an envoy from the king set out for Rome.

Practically this left matters as they were, and Anselm, who had received a message forbidding him to return to England unless on the king's terms, withdrew to Lyons, where he waited to see if Paschal would not take stronger measures.

In 1106 Anselm crossed to England, with power from the pope to remove the sentence of excommunication from the illegally invested churchmen.

The remaining two years of Anselm's life were spent in the duties of his archbishopric. He died on the 21st of April 1109.

Anselm may, with some justice, be considered the first scholastic philosopher and theologian.

His only great predecessor, Scotus Erigena, had more of the speculative and mystical element than is consistent with a schoolman; but in Anselm are found that recognition of the relation of reason to revealed truth, and that attempt to elaborate a rational system of faith, which form the special characteristics of scholastic thought.

Anselm was not thoroughly satisfied with this reasoning; it started from a posteriori grounds, and contained several converging lines of proof.

This reasoning, in which Anselm partially anticipated the Cartesian philosophers, has rarely seemed satisfactory.

Anselm replied to the objections of Gaunilo in his Liber Apologeticus.

Anselm's speculations did not receive, in the middle ages, the respect and attention justly their due.

Church, St Anselm, first published in Sunday Library (London, 1870; often reprinted); Martin Rule, Life and Times of St Anselm (London, 1883).

It is expressly repudiated by Anselm and Abelard.

Meanwhile, Peter Damian and Bishop Anselm of Lucca had been sent by Pope Nicholas to Milan to adjust the difference between the Patarenes and the archbishop and clergy.

The middle ages, in the person of Anselm of Canterbury, contribute the first clear form of the Ontological argument for theism.

Some of the impression of paradox here is due to Anselm's treating the Absolute simply as one among many other beings, and to his treating existence simply as one element in the quantitative sum of perfections.

Still, Descartes has marked idealist traits, as when he refurbishes the ontological argument with clearer emphasis on the perfect being as " necessarily " existent 5 - reasoning a shade less quantitative or a shade more subtle than Anselm's.

A more liberal estimate might include John Scotus Erigena or even Anselm or Bernard of Clairvaux in the West and Photius in the East.

Finally, to contemporary writers we may add contemporary letters, especially those written by Stephen of Blois and Anselm of Ribemont, and the three letters sent to the West by the crusading princes during the First Crusade (see Hagenmeyer, Epistulae et Chartae, &c., Innsbruck, 1901).2 (b) The later compilations are chiefly based on the Gesta, whose uncouth style many writers set themselves to mend.

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).

In this way he rises like Plato to the absolute Goodness, Justice and Truth, and then proceeds in Neoplatonic fashion to a deduction of the Trinity as involved in the idea of the divine Word (see further Anselm).

Anselm represented this to the king; but Henry would not relinquish a privilege possessed by his predecessors, and proposed that the matter should be laid before the Holy See.

Another argument for univocal predication is based on an argument from Anselm.

At this point Anselm wields what is perhaps his most controversial premise.