St. Anselm: The Benedictine monk who followed the motto ‘faith seeking understanding’

On April 21, the Catholic Church honors St. Anselm, the 11th- and 12th-century Benedictine monk and archbishop best known for his writings on the existence of God and Christʼs atonement.

When remembering St. Anselm in a general audience on Sept. 23, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI said he was “a monk with an intense spiritual life, an excellent teacher of the young, a theologian with an extraordinary capacity for speculation, a wise man of governance and an intransigent defender of the Churchʼs freedom.”

St. Anselm, Benedict said, stands out as “one of the eminent figures of the Middle Ages who was able to harmonize all these qualities, thanks to the profound mystical experience that always guided his thought and his action.”

Anselm was born in Aosta, part of the Piedmont region of present-day Italy, around 1033. While his father provided little in the way of moral or religious influence, his mother was a notably devout woman and chose to send Anselm to a school run by the Benedictine order where he received a classical education and reportedly became a great Latinist of his time. 

The boy felt a profound religious calling during these years, spurred in part by a dream in which he met and conversed with God. At 15, he wanted to be a monk, but his father forbade it, wishing his son to have a political career. This disappointment was followed by a period of severe illness for Anselm as well as his motherʼs early death.

Unable to join the monks, and tired of mistreatment by his father, Anselm left home and wandered throughout parts of France and Italy for three years. His life regained its direction in Normandy, where he met the Benedictine prior Lanfranc of Pavia and became his disciple.

Lanfranc recognized his pupilʼs intellectual gifts and encouraged his vocation to religious life. Accepted into the order and ordained a priest at age 27, Anselm succeeded his teacher as prior in 1063 when Lanfranc was called to become abbot of another monastery. Anselm became abbot of his own monastery, Bec, in 1079.

Just prior to that, in 1077, Anselm wrote the “Monologian” (“Monologue”), which was both an apologetic and religious treatise attempting to demonstrate the existence of God using reason alone.

With Anselm at the helm, Bec became a center of monastic learning.

By this time, the Normans had conquered England and sought to bring monks from Normandy to influence the Church there. Lanfranc became archbishop of Canterbury and asked Anselm to come and assist him.

The period after Lanfrancʼs death, however, in the late 1080s, was a difficult time for the English Church. King William Rufus, the son of William the Conqueror, refused to allow the appointment of a new archbishop. Anselm went back to his monastery and did not want to return to England, but in 1092, he was persuaded to do so.

The following year, the king changed his mind and allowed Anselm to become archbishop of Canterbury, but the monk was extremely reluctant to accept the charge, which would involve him in further struggles with the English crown in subsequent years.

For a three-year period in the early 12th century, Anselmʼs insistence on the self-government of the Church — against the claims of the state to its administration and property — caused him to be exiled from England. But he was successful in his struggle and returned to his archdiocese in 1106.

Anselm continued to develop theological ideas and teaching. His doctrine of the atonement eventually became part of the theology of the Latin Church, forming the basis of both the Catholic and Protestant understanding of the work of Christ.

In his last years, Anselm worked to reform the Church and continued his theological investigations — following the motto of “faith seeking understanding.” After his death in 1109, his influence on the subsequent course of theology led Pope Clement XI to name him a doctor of the Church in 1720.

This story was first published on April 15, 2012, and has been updated.

Source: https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/europe/st-anselm-the-benedictine-monk-who-followed-the-motto-faith-seeking-understanding