Anselm was born in Aosta (Northern Italy) in 1033, which, at that time, was part of Burgundy. He moved to France, and studied at the Benedictine monastery of Bec, in Normandy, where the illustrious Lanfranc was teaching. In 1060 Anselm took his vows as monk. When Lanfranc left Bec, Anselm succeeded him as principal teacher. In 1078 Anselm was elected abbot. It was around this time that he wrote the Proslogion, which we will discuss shortly. In 1093 Anselm was asked to become Archbishop of Canterbury, a responsibility he reluctantly assumed. Given the investiture struggle between the Church and the rulers of England, Anselm’s initial misgivings about his episcopal duties proved well founded. His years as archbishop were “a time of grief and affliction.” Anselm died on April 22, ad 1109.

Anselm and the eleventh century

Anselm lived in a period in which reason and dialectic acquired a renewed significance in the intellectual history of the West. When dialectic was applied to theological mysteries, the outcomes were at times theologically unacceptable. Berengar of Tours (d. 1088) is an example of this more controversial approach. Augustine had made a distinction between sacramentum and res, between the sacramental sign and the reality to which it refers. Appealing to this distinction, and arguing that something is either a sign or the reality it refers to, Berengar concluded that the consecrated bread and wine (the sacramental sign) cannot possibly be the reality (res) that is the real body and blood of Christ. Although Berengar may only have wanted to deny a physicalist interpretation of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and not the real presence as such, his contemporaries (including Lanfranc) took exception to his views. Later theology would solve the issue by introducing a threefold distinction between sacramental sign (sacramentum tantum), the reality of grace it refers to (res tantum), and that which can be both (sacramentum et res).