ANSELM, Saint, a celebrated theologian, regarded by some as the founder of scholas ticism: b. Aosta, in Piedmont, 1033; d. Can terbury, 21 April 1109. At 27 he became a monk at Bee in Normandy, whither he had been attracted by the celebrity of his country man Lanfranc, then prior of the monastery there. When Lanfranc was promoted to the abbacy of • Caen, Anselm was elevated to the dignity of prior and in 1078 he was made ab bot, which office he retained for 15 years. During this period he wrote his first philo sophical and religious works: the dialogues on (Truth and Free-will,' (De Veritate' and (De Libertate Arbitrii> and the treatises
legitimate demand of reason, although he re peats again and again the doctrine that faith is necessary to the intelligence of the Christian mysteries, that the teaching of revelation must first be accepted by faith and afterward shown to have the support of reason. His celebrated ontological proof of the existence of God is to be found in the
The
Deus Homo,' treating,. as already mentioned, of the atonement, is the most important of Anselm's works. In order to satisfy the reason of the need of an atonement and of the efficacy of the particular atonement that the Christian religion represents as having been made in the death of Christ, Anselm endeavors to establish the following positions: First, that God's honor is wounded by sin and His jus tice therefore requires satisfaction; second, that this satisfaction can be given only through one who is at once God and man; and third, that the voluntary death of Christ actually accomplished this satisfaction. The works of Anselm have often been published. The last complete edition forms the 155th volume of Abbe Migne's (Patrologiz Cursus Completus.' Among the numerous separate editions of the