600 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
his Creator." He lies buried in Canterbury Cathedral at the side of Lanfranc.
Anselm was a man of spotless integrity, single devotion to truth and righteousness, patient in suffering, and revered as a saint before his official canonization in 1494. l Dante associates him in Paradise with Nathan, the seer, and Chrysostom, both famous for rebuking vice in high places, and with the Calabrian prophet, Joachim.2
Writings. — - Anselm's chief works in the departments of theology are his Monologium and Proslogium, which present proofs for God's existence, and the Cur Deus homo, " Why God became Man," a treatise on the atonement. He also wrote on the Trinity against Roscellinus ; on original sin, free will, the harmony of foreknowledge and foreordination, and the fall of the devil. To these theological treatises are to be added a number of writings of a more practical nature, homilies, meditations, and four hundred and twelve letters in which we see him in different relations, as a prelate of the Church, a pastor, as a teacher giving advice to pupils, and as a friend.3 His correspondence shows him in his human relations. His meditations and prayers reveal the depth of his piety. His theological treatises betray the genius of his intellect. In extent they are far less voluminous than the works of Thomas Aquinas and other Schoolmen of the later period.
Theology. — Anselm was one of those rare characters in whom lofty reason and childlike faith work together in per fect harmony. Love to God was the soul of his daily life and love to God is the burning centre of his theology. It was not doubt that led him to speculation, but enthusiasm for truth and devotion to God. His famous proposition, which Schleiermacher adopted as a motto for his own the ology, is that faith precedes knowledge — fides prcecedit intellectum. Things divine must be a matter of experience
1 See quotations in Freeman, W. Rufus, II. 661.
2 Paradiso, XII. 137.
3 Freeman has an excursus on Anselm's letters in his W. Rufus, II. 570-
588.
§ 98. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY. 601
before they can be comprehended by the intellect. " He who does not believe,'1 Anselm said, " has not felt, and he who has not felt, does not understand." 1 Christ must come to the intellect through the avenue of faith and not to faith through the avenue of intellect.2 On the other hand, Anselm declared himself against blind belief, and calls it a sin of neglect when he who has faith, does not strive after knowl edge.3
These views, in which supernaturalism and rationalism are harmonized, form the working principle of the Anselmic theology. The two sources of knowledge are the Bible and the teaching of the Church which are in complete agreement with one another and are one with true philosophy.4 Anselm had a profound veneration for the great African teacher, Augustine, and his agreement with him in spirit and method secured for him the titles " the second Augustine " and the " Tongue of Augustine."
Anselm made two permanent contributions to theology, his argument for the existence of God and his theory of the atonement.
The ontological argument, which he stated, constitutes an epoch in the history of the proofs for God's existence. It was first laid down in the Monologium or Soliloquy, which he called the example of meditation on the reasonableness of faith, but mixed with cosmological elements. Starting from the idea that goodness and truth must have an exist ence independent of concrete things, Anselm ascends from the conception of what is relatively good and great, to Him who is absolutely good and great.
In the Proslogium, or Allocution, the ontological argument is presented in its purest form. Anselm was led to its construction by the desire to find out a single argument,
1 Qui non crediderit, non experietur, et qui expertus non fuerit non intelligety defide trin., 2; Migne, 158, 264.
2 Ep., II. 41 ; Migne, 158. 1193, Christianus per fidem debet ad intellectum proficere non per intellectum ad fidem.
3 Cur Deus homo, I. 2 ; Migne, 158. 364.
4 Eadmer: nihil asserere nisi quod aut canonicis aut Augustini dictis posse d.efendi videret.