21st April 2009 is the 900th anniversary of the death of St. Anselm, theologian, pastor and defender of the Church's freedom from state intervention. Anselm was probably the greatest theologian ever to have been appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. Apart from his meditations, letters and a treatise on grammar, he is best known for three works: the Monologion, the Proslogion with its ‘ontological' proof of the existence of God, and Cur Deus homo, a brilliant defence of the doctrine of the Incarnation.
This image shows the opening of Cur Deus homo in a 12th century copy of Anselm's works in Lambeth Palace Library. Much of the text, including this section, seems to have been written in the clear, elegant, hand of the historian William of Malmesbury, with some contemporary and later additions by other scribes.
Two hundred years after Anselm's death Dante placed him, with Donatus the grammarian, Nathan the prophet and St. John Chrysostom the preacher, among the stars garlanding St. Bonaventure in the twelfth Canto of the Paradiso. In our own day, Archbishop Michael Ramsey, speaking to the monks of Bec in 1967 said of Anselm "One great theme was constantly in his mind, the consistency of the truth of Christian doctrine with human reason. Reason indeed cannot create the truth, reason cannot discover it: the order must always be ‘fides quarens intellectum' [faith seeking understanding]. But because reason in man is a God-given faculty theology must be capable of commendation to reason. And all those who through the centuries have understood the role of reason in theology can hail Saint Anselm as a guide and father."
