r>98 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
eulogistic and ultramontane. — P. RAGEY : 2 vols. Paris, 1890. — J. M. RIGG : London, 1896. — A. C. WELCH, Edinburgh, 1901. — * W. R. W. STEPHENS in Diet. Natl. Biog., II. 10-31. — P. SCHAFF, in Presb. and Eefd Review, Jan., 1894. — *Eo. A. FREEMAN : The Reign of William Rufus, 2 vols. London, 1882. — H. BOHMER: Kirche u. Staatin England u. in der Normandie im XI. u. Xllten Jahrh., Leip., 1899. — Anselm's philosophy is discussed by RITTER, ERDMANN, and UEBEHWEG-HEINZE in their Histories of Philos. ; his theology is treated by BAUR : Gesch. d. Christl. Lehre.von d. Versohnung, Tubingen, 1838, 142-189. — RITSCHL : Rechtfertigung u. Versohnung, and in the Histories of Doctrine. — ROLLING: D. satisfactio vicar ia, 2 vols., Gtitersloh, 1897-1899. A vig orous presentation of the Anselinic view. — LEIPOLDT : D. Begriff meritum in Anselm, in Theol. Htiidien u. Kritiken, 1904. — LE CHAN- OINE POREE : Hist, de rAbbaye du Bee, Paris, 1901.
Anselm of Canterbury, 1033-1109, the first of the great Schoolmen, was one of the ablest and purest men of the mediaeval Church. He touched the history of his age at many points. He was an enthusiastic advocate of monasticism. He was archbishop of Canterbury and fought the bat tle of the Hildebrandian hierarchy against the State in Eng land. His Christian meditations give him a high rank in its annals of piety. His profound speculation marks one of the leading epochs in the history of theology and won for him a place among the doctors of the Church. While Bernard was greatest as a monk, Anselm was greatest as a theologian. He was the most original thinker the Church had seen since the days of Augustine.1
Life. — Anselm was born at Aosta, in Piedmont, at the foot of the great St. Bernard, which divides Italy from western Switzerland.2 He had a pious mother, Ermenberga. His father, Gundulf, a worldly and rude nobleman, set him self violently against his son's religious aspirations, but on his death-bed himself assumed the monastic garb to escape perdition.
In his childish imagination, Anselm conceived God Al-
1 Loofs, p. 271, says, " He is perhaps the most important of all the mediaeval theologians."
2 Church gives a graphic picture of " wild Aosta lulled by Alpine rills." Aosta was a Roman settlement bearing the name Augusta Prsetoria, and was made a bishopric about the fifth century.
§ 98. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY. 599
mighty as seated on a throne at the top of the Alps, and in a dream, he climbed up the mountain to meet Him. Seeing, on his way, the king's maidens engaged in the harvest field, for it was Autumn, neglecting their work he determined to report their negligence to the king. The lad was most graciously received and asked whence he came and what he desired. The king's kindness made him forget all about the charges he was intending to make. Then, refreshed with the whitest of bread, he descended again to the valley. The following day he firmly believed he had actually been in heaven and eaten at the Lord's table. This was the story he told after he had ascended the chair of Canterbury.
A quarrel with his father led to Anselm's leaving his home. He set his face toward the West and finally settled in the Norman abbey of Le Bee, then under the care of his illustri ous countryman Lanfranc. Here he studied, took orders, and, on Lanfranc's transfer to the convent of St. Stephen at Caen, 1063, became prior, and, in 1078, abbot. At Bee he wrote most of his works. His warm devotion to the monastic life appears in his repeated references to it in his letters and in his longing to get back to the convent after he had been made archbishop.
In 1093, he succeeded Lanfranc as archbishop of Canter bury. His struggle with William Rufus and Henry I. over investiture has already been described (pp. 88-93). Dur ing his exile on the Continent he attended a synod at Bari, where he defended the Latin doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit against the Greek bishops who were present.1
The archbishop's last years in England were years of quiet, and he had a peaceful end. They lifted him from the bed and placed him on ashes on the floor. There, " as morning was breaking, on the Wednesday before Easter," April 21, 1109, the sixteenth year of his pontificate and the seventy-sixth of his life, he slept in peace, as his biographer Eadmer says, "having given up his spirit into the hands of
1 His views were set forth in the de procession?, Spiritus Sancti. He argued that the Spirit proceeded from the Father not as father but as God. He must therefore also proceed from the Son as God.