St. Anselm
by the Revd Dr Robert Wilson PhD (Cantab), Old Roman Apostolate UK
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Anselm. He was born in Aosta in Piedmont in around 1033. He had a difficult relationship with his father and eventually left home and travelled into northern Europe. He finally settled at Bec in Normandy and became a monk there. He had been attracted by the fame of Lanfranc, the famous abbot of Bec. St. Anselm became prior of Bec in 1063 and later in 1078 became abbot. Lanfranc had become Archbishop of Canterbury after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. After Lanfranc’s death William Rufus (the son of William the Conqueror) had kept the see of Canterbury vacant for three years. In 1092 Anselm was in England and the king suddenly became so ill that his death seemed imminent. He was persuaded to nominate Anselm as Archbishop of Canterbury. Anselm pleaded that he was not suitable for this position, but was eventually persuaded to accept the role. Anselm’s initial misgivings were soon seen to be justified when the king’s health recovered and he regretted nominating Anselm. The king returned to his dissolute and immoral life and tried to prevent Anselm from occupying his see. Recognising that the conflict between them could not be resolved, Anselm sought leave to travel to Rome to seek advice on how to settle the dispute. The king twice refused, but eventually agreed on the condition that Anselm would never be allowed to return to England while the king remained alive.
Anselm left England in 1097. He appealed to Pope Urban II to relieve him of his archbishopric, but this request was refused. He therefore continued his theological writings (he had the most original theological mind since St. Augustine) and was present at the Council of Bari in 1098. The death of William Rufus put an end to Anselm’s exile and he was finally able to return to England. The new king (Henry I) was a far more able monarch than his predecessor, but conflict soon developed between them over the issue of investiture. Henry I had wanted Anselm to be reinvested by him and make the customary act of homage to the king for his see. This was contrary to a recent Roman synod which had forbidden lay investiture for cathedrals and abbeys, and in obedience to this Anselm refused the king’s request. The dispute continued for many years. Anselm again had to spend more time in exile. Finally, a compromise agreement was reached in which the king renounced the right of investiture for bishoprics or abbeys, but the bishops would be free to do homage for their temporal possessions. By this time Anselm’s health was failing and he died not long after this in 1109.
Why was the controversy over investiture so intense? At the heart of the problem was the complex relation and interaction between the ecclesiastical and the civil power. In the earliest centuries of the Church the bishops had been elected by the consent of their clergy and people. Later, when Christianity became the established religion the Roman emperor and subsequently the monarchs who ruled over the kingdoms that replaced the empire (after it had fallen in the West) saw themselves as protectors of the Church. They consequently wanted to influence who was appointed to the bishoprics, especially the most important sees in a given country. Over the course of time the election by the clergy and people became a formality and in practice it was the monarch who had the decisive influence in who was appointed to the bishoprics. This arrangement worked well under a conscientious monarch, but when the ruler was corrupt they often sought to undermine the Church by appointing their own placemen as bishops. Simony (the buying of ecclesiastical offices) was rife. In the eleventh century a reform movement arose in the church which sought to resolve the problem by prohibiting lay investiture and returning to the original practice of bishops being appointed without being invested with the ring and staff (the symbols of their office) by the civil power. This created a clash with the monarchs, who wanted to continue making the appointments themselves. They needed to do this to ensure the stability of their kingdoms. St. Anselm was a child of this new movement, whereas the Norman kings wanted to continue the tradition of lay patronage. St. Anselm’s great strength was that, unlike many of his fellow combatants, he was prepared to compromise when the main principle was not at stake. Hence, the agreement he finally reached with Henry I in which, though the king renounced the right to invest the bishops with the ring and staff, the bishops would in return do homage for the temporalities of their sees. Consequently, the reform movement was victorious in principle, but in a manner that was acceptable to the concerns of the monarch. In practice, if no longer in theory, the monarch still retained a decisive influence over who was appointed. It was the agreement pioneered by St. Anselm that paved the way for a similar agreement to be subsequently reached between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Emperors to end the investiture controversy.
However, it is for his theological writings rather than his political skills as a negotiator that St. Anselm is most famous. He had the most original theological mind since St. Augustine. This was already apparent during his time as prior and later abbot of Bec. It was during this period that he put forward his celebrated ontological argument for the existence of God. Anselm stated that “God is that, greater than which cannot be conceived”. He reasoned that the very fact that the human mind cannot conceive anything greater than God must entail that God must exist by very definition. Anselm was challenged in this assumption by a monk called Gaunilo who said that he could conceive of the greatest possible island and on Anselm’s reasoning that greatest possible island must by definition exist because he could envisage it. Anselm replied that God was a special case, in that (unlike the greatest possible island) the being of God was not made up of contingent parts. He therefore held that the ontological argument remained valid. It has to be said that Anselm’s position has not met with universal acceptance (it was in fact later rejected by St. Thomas Aquinas) but it remains an important contribution to the history of philosophy.
St. Anselm’s treatise on the doctrine of the Atonement has been far more influential. Written during his exile in Italy from William Rufus he argued that the sin of the human race was so great that it could not be atoned for by a finite being. It was therefore necessary for God to become man to achieve the atonement in substitute for sinful humanity that the human race could not achieve by means of its own efforts. This doctrine of penal substitution has been so influential in later western Christian thought that it has sometimes been seen as the only way of understanding the atonement (to the neglect of the other patristic model of the Christus Victor, of Christ defeating the devil and the forces of evil on the cross). Both St. Anselm’s penal substitutionary model and the Christus victor theory have been strongly attacked and equally resolutely defended. Most probably they have been wrongly played off against one another, for in fact they both have deep roots in the New Testament and the writings of the early Church Fathers.
St. Anselm’s greatest contribution lay less in his actual conclusions, but in his pioneering a new method of theology. His was a faith seeking understanding and he therefore deemed it right to argue for positions on rational grounds alone, without recourse to previous authorities. This is usually deemed the first instance of the scholastic method that came to dominate later theology. For some this is seen as the right and proper use of reason, for others it is and remains a corruption of theology into an alien rationalism in which a barren syllogistic logic is substituted for the faith expressed in the life and liturgy of the Church. While this type of sterile rationalism later did develop, the greater minds who practised this method, beginning with St. Anselm himself, remained rooted in the liturgical life of the Church (he was first and foremost a Benedictine monk) and did not simply confine themselves to the theology of the schoolroom.
St. Anselm’s greatest strength lay in his ability to combine having clear principles with being pragmatic about their application. For example, after the Norman Conquest of England, the new rulers, with the support of Anselm’s friend and patron Lanfranc sought to suppress the older culture of the English, including their saints. They even went so far as to destroy the relics of some of the previous English saints. By contrast, St. Anselm favoured a more pragmatic approach. St. Alphege, the archbishop of Canterbury whose feast we celebrated a few days ago and who had been killed by the Danes a century earlier than Anselm, had been removed from the calendar by Lanfranc. St. Anselm argued against this. He said that a martyr is strictly speaking one who died for truth, whereas St. Alphege died for justice. But, he added that truth cannot be wholly dissociated from justice. They are ultimately the same thing in different situations. Truth, he said, is “justice in discourse” whereas justice is “truth in action”. This meant that Alphege in suffering for justice had equally suffered for truth. He was therefore properly venerated as a martyr. Lanfranc was persuaded by this argument to retain St. Alphege in the calendar of saints. It is fitting that St. Anselm’s own feast falls a few days after that of St. Alphege.
Let us take heed to this great example today. If we admire St. Anselm’s role in pioneering a new theological methodology and as an ecclesiastical statesman, let us also not forget that his success also lay in his wide and charitable toleration in areas where matters of principle were not at stake. In honouring the life and witness of St. Anselm today let us continue to uphold the cause of truth, which is justice in discourse, and justice, which is truth in action. In so doing we may be able to find a way to resolving the great problems and seemingly insoluble conflicts that confront us in our own time and place.
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