January 22, 2023 - "Saint Anselm"

I am continuing this series on the Doctors of the Church.  This week we are looking at Saint Anselm (1033-1109), known as Anselm of Aosta, Anselm of Bec, and Anselm of Canterbury because of the three cities with which he was associated.  He was the first son of a noble family.  His father has been described as being a coarse man who was dedicated to the pleasures of life.  As a result, he squandered his possessions.  Anselm’s mother, on the other hand, was a profoundly religious woman of high moral character.  His mother looked after Anselm’s initial human and religious formation.  In time she entrusted her son to the Benedictine monks at their Priory at Aosta.  At the age of fifteen Anselm, seriously ill, requested permission to enter the Benedictines.  His father adamantly refused this request.  After Anselm’s recovery and the premature death of his mother, he went through a period of moral dissipation.  He neglected his studies and, consumed by earthly passions, grew deaf to the call of God.  He left home and went to France in search of new experiences.  After three years of wandering, he ended up in Normandy and went to see Lanfranc of Pavia, Prior of the Benedictine Monastery at Bec.  The meeting with Lanfranc proved to be a life-changing event for Anselm.
 
Under Lanfranc’s encouragement, Anselm eagerly resumed his studies.  His interest in a monastic vocation was rekindled.  After a period of evaluation by Lanfranc and other monks in charge of formation of the candidates for monastic life, Anselm entered the Benedictine order.  In due course he was ordained a priest.  After three years of monastic life, Anselm’s situation changed. Lanfranc became the Abbot of the Benedictine Monastery at Caen.  Anselm was named the Prior in place of Lanfranc.  He was also appointed the teacher at the monastic school, where he proved to be an effective teacher.  This arrangement continued for a number of years.
 
In 1079, Abbot Herluin, the founder of the Monastery at Bec, died.  Anselm was unanimously elected to succeed him.  In the meantime, various monks from the Monastery at Bec had been sent to Canterbury to bring to their brethren on the other side of the Channel the renewal that was being brought about on the continent.  Their work was so well received the Lanfranc, Abbot of Caen, was named the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Lanfranc asked Anselm to spend a certain amount of time with him to instruct the monks and help him in the difficult plight in which his ecclesiastical community had been left after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066.  Anselm’s stay turned out to be very helpful to Lanfranc, the monks, and the ecclesiastical community that had suffered so.  When Lanfranc died in 1093, Anselm was prevailed upon to become the next Archbishop of Canterbury.
 
I would like to say that the story ended happily at this point, but unfortunately that was not the case.  Anselm became involved in a strenuous struggle for the freedom of the Church.  He valiantly supported the independence of the spiritual power from the temporal power.  He defended the Church from undue interference by political authorities, notably Kings William Rufus and Henry I.  In his struggles Anselm had the support and encouragement of the Roman Pontiff.  Things became so difficult that Anselm was forced into exile in 1103.
 
Three years later Anselm was able to return to England when King Henry I renounced his right to the conferral of ecclesiastical offices as well as to the collection of taxes and to the confiscation of church properties.  Thus the long battle Anselm fought with perseverance and goodness ended on a happy note.  He spent the remaining three years of his life in the moral formation of the clergy and in the intellectual research of theological topics.
 
In the end Anselm is remembered more for contributions as a philosopher and a theologian than he is for his ecclesiastical accomplishments.  Anselm stated that anyone who wishes to study theology cannot rely on his or her intelligence alone but must cultivate at the same time a profound experience of faith.  According to Anselm, the theologian’s activity develops in three stages:  faith, a gift God freely offers that must be accepted with humility; experience, which consists on incarnating God’s word in one’s daily life; and therefore true knowledge, which is never the fruit of ascetic reasoning but of contemplative intuition.
 
Let me close with these famous words by St. Anselm, which the late Pope Benedict XVI thought remain more useful than ever for healthy theological research and for anyone who wished to deepen his or her knowledge of the truths of the faith:
 
“I do not endeavor, O Lord, to penetrate your sublimity, for in no wise do I compare my understanding with that; but I long to understand to some degree your truth, which my heart believes and loves.  For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand.  For this also I believe, that unless I believed, I should not understand (Proslogion, chapter 1).”
 
Until next week,
Fr. John