Anselm, St

Anselm, St (1033–1109). Archbishop of Canterbury (1093–1109). Anselm was born at Aosta in northern Italy. We are especially well informed about his life because of the biographies written by Eadmer and the archbishop's own voluminous correspondence. Inspired by a monastic vocation, he travelled to northern France in the late 1050s, where he became a monk at Le Bec and a pupil of Lanfranc. Thereafter he rose to be both prior and abbot of the monastery. A great philosopher whose works include the Monologion, the Proslogion, and Cur Deus homo, his promotion to Canterbury in March 1093 occurred after William II had kept the archbishopric vacant for four years after Lanfranc's death in order to exploit its revenues. Anselm subsequently quarrelled bitterly with both William II and Henry I. His disputes with both kings ultimately focused on his belief that obedience was owed first and foremost to the papacy; those with Rufus also concerned Anselm's desire to protect the rights of Canterbury and his wish to reform clerical and lay morals. The arguments were given a sharper edge by the way in which the late 11th-cent. papacy, during the period known as the Gregorian reform, was asserting its moral and spiritual authority at the expense of long-established customs. By 1097 the breach between Rufus and Anselm was irreparable and the archbishop went into voluntary exile. He was recalled in 1100 by Henry I, who was anxious to give an appearance of legitimacy to his rule, and Anselm was for a time able to hold ecclesiastical councils and rule the church as he wished. In time fresh quarrels developed about the practice of lay investiture of bishops, still practised in England, although prohibited by the papacy since the 1070s, and in 1103 Anselm again went into exile. A settlement was not finally reached until 1106–7. The causes of these protracted quarrels remain difficult to interpret. In particular, the question of whether Anselm was a principled but other-worldly monk out of his depth in the rough-and-tumble of politics or an astute politician who calculatingly sought to increase the church's authority is the subject of a highly charged debate. Equally, while there is probably agreement that the kings should be seen as the protectors of the long-established rights of the monarchy over the church in the face of dangerous innovations, some commentators regard the blasphemous and apparently cynical William Rufus as an oppressor whom no principled churchman could tolerate, while others think that he was mostly bluff and bluster. It is impossible to see Anselm as in any serious sense a revolutionary figure; his often-expressed wish to co-operate with kings and his determination to protect the property rights of his archbishopric—even against the papacy—clearly show this. But he possessed a sharper sense of the nature of authority and obedience than his Anglo-Norman contemporaries, a consequence undoubtedly of an outstanding philosophical mind, which made it difficult for him to accept compromises. He is in some respects representative of a changing intellectual and political climate, in which notions of authority were being redefined. His consistently expressed preference for the quiet world of the contemplative monk should not be allowed to conceal a robust personality who saw it as his God-given duty to engage with the world.

David Richard Bates