CrucisSt. Anselm of Canterbury
St. Anselm was born in 1033 at Aosta, in what is now northern Italy, and died on 21 April 1109 at Canterbury, England. Drawn to the monastic life, he entered the Benedictine abbey of Bec in Normandy, where he became prior and then abbot, and gained fame as a teacher and spiritual guide. In 1093 he was made Archbishop of Canterbury, an office in which he twice suffered exile for defending the Church's freedom against the English kings in the Investiture Controversy.
Often called the father of scholasticism, Anselm sought to understand the faith through reason, summed up in his motto 'faith seeking understanding.' In the Proslogion he set out the famous argument for God's existence from the very idea of God, and in Cur Deus Homo ('Why God Became Man') he offered a profound account of the redemption. He was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1720.
Selected quotes
“I believe in order to understand — for if I did not first believe, I would not understand; faith is not the enemy of reason but its truest guide.”
“Faith is not blind — it is the eye of the soul; without it the mind stumbles in the dark even when surrounded by an abundance of facts.”
“Without faith I could not begin; without reason illuminated by faith I could not proceed; without love I would never arrive at all.”