AN'SELM of Canterbury, a scholastic philosopher, was b. at Aosta, in Piedmont, in 1033. He led at first a dissipated life; and, like Abelard, wandered through France, after the fashion of the scholars of those days, disputing wherever he could find an adversary. Attracted by the reputation of Lanfranc, he went, in 1060, to study at the monastery of Bec, in Normandy. Three years after, lie became prior, and in 1078, abbot of tlas munastery, the most Minolta school or the 11th century. Lanfrane, who in the meantime had gone to England, and became archbishop of Canterbury, d. in 1089; and the diocese remained four years without a successor, till, in 1093, A. was appointed. lie was distinguished both as a churchman and a philosopher. His numerous embroil meats with William Rufus and Henry I., and the unbending spirit which he displayed in these, even when subjected to banishment, indicate the vigor and resoluteness of his character, as much as his writings exhibit the depth and acuteness of his intellect. In 1720, Clement XI. expressly placed him in the list of church authorities. A. was a second Augustine, superior to all his contemporaries in sagacity and dialectical skill, and equal to the most eminent in virtue and piety. Embracing, without question, the
doctrines of the church, mostly as stated by Augustine, and holding that belief must precede knowledge, and must be implicit and undoubting, he yet felt the necessity of a religious philosophy, urged the duty of proceeding from belief to knowledge, and sought to reduce the truths of religion into the form of a connected series of reason ings. It was for this purpose he wrote his Monologium sire Exemplum Meditandi de Rations Fidel. In his Proslogium, otherwise entitled Fides qucerens intellectum (faith, seeking intellect), he strove to demonstrate the existence of God from the conception of a perfect being. This ontological proof, however, has never been held satisfactory His writings, Car Deus Homo, and De Coneardiei Prcescientice et Praylestinationis, made an epoch in Christian philosophy. A. may justly be reckoned the earliest of the schoolmen, although Alexander of Hales (q.v.) was the first who completely systematized in the scholastic manner the doctrines of the Catholic church. Ile d. 21st April 1109, and was buried at Canterbury. The day of his death is observed in the Roman Catholic church. See Remusat's ilitschne (1858) and Church's A. (1870).