A scholar who stood up to kings
by Mike Oettle
WHEN someone
tells you that he doesn’t believe in God, or can’t accept that God is Three in
One, be grateful for the life of St Anselm. For it’s thanks to him that you
have logical arguments to prove your case.
Before Anselm, almost everyone “proved” the existence of God by pointing to some great person or persons in the past and saying: “Well, if he believed, so should you.” But that sort of proof isn’t likely to satisfy sceptics for long.
Anselm was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109, and one might think he was an Englishman. But he was born at Aosta[1] in northern Italy (about 1033 or ’34) – but no, he wasn’t strictly speaking an Italian either. His father belonged to an aristocratic Lombard family, and his mother was a Burgundian noblewoman. Although these peoples had adopted the Romance language and would later be regarded as Italian and French, they were
Germanic invaders (don’t forget, so were the English and the Normans).
Anselm’s earliest memory was a dream in which he climbed the mountains and found the palace of the Lord God resting on the peaks. There he spoke with the Heavenly King and was fed by His order. This dream gave him a lifelong desire to speak with God.
After his mother’s death, Anselm’s father wanted him to become a politician and disapproved of the youth’s desire to become a monk. When Anselm had completed his Latin schooling he quarrelled with his father and, attracted by the great teacher Lanfranc, who was Abbot of Bec, in Normandy, he headed for Bec by way of his mother’s relatives in Burgundy. He entered the monastery in 1060 and took his vows shortly afterward. Because of his reputation for intellectual ability and sincere piety, he was elected prior as early as 1063, after Lanfranc had become Abbot of Caen, and in 1078 Anselm became Abbot of Bec.
Under him, Bec became a great centre of learning, for he soon surpassed his master. In 1077 Anselm wrote his Monologium, which “attempted to demonstrate the existence and attributes of God by an
appeal to reason alone”.[2] His further writings developed these arguments into a system of theology and logic which became known as Scholasticism, which served as the basis of mediæval learning until the time of St Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274). In fact, Anselm was the first great theologian to emerge since the time of Augustine of Hippo (AD 364-430).
But Anselm is also remembered for the political and doctrinal controversies that arose after he became involved in England. Duke William had been generous to the
Church in Normandy, and after becoming King of England[3] in 1066 he granted lands in that country to Bec. Anselm made three visits across the Channel to inspect them, and during the third visit in 1093, when he founded a priory at Chester, King William II Rufus named him Archbishop of
Canterbury. Lanfranc had held the see under the older William, but no successor
had been appointed since his death in 1089 and the Crown had grabbed its lands
and revenues. The scene was set for conflict.
Anselm first refused to be consecrated until William restored the lands to Canterbury and acknowledged Urban II as the rightful pope rather than the antipope Clement III. Ill and in fear of death, William agreed and Anselm was consecrated on 4 December – but William recovered, demanding money from the archbishop which Anselm refused as this would look like simony.[4] William in turn would not allow Anselm to go to Rome to receive the pallium (mantle, symbol of papal approval of an archbishop), since this would look as if William supported Urban. Two years later at Rockingham, in 1095, the bishops of England supported Anselm against William. The papal legate brought Anselm’s pallium from Rome, but Anselm would not accept it from William because it would look as if he owed his spiritual authority to the king. Anselm received permission to go to Rome – and as soon as he left William seized the lands of Canterbury.
Anselm attended the 1098 Council of Bari, which confirmed that lay officials (even kings) should not invest ecclesiastics. At Bari Anselm took a leading role in defending the doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (the so-called filioque clause in the Nicene Creed, which the Greek patriarchs would not accept), and which had led to 1054’s Great Schism between East and West.
The dispute with William was resolved by his murder in 1100; his brother Henry seized the throne and ingratiated himself with Anselm. But when Anselm again refused to be invested by the king, the dispute dragged on until 1107, when at the Synod of Westminster Henry renounced investiture of bishops with ring and crosier. His demand that they do homage was accepted. This solution to the lay investiture controversy was accepted on the Continent, too.
Anselm died on 21 April 1109, and appears to have been canonised in 1170.
