ANSELM OF CANTERBURY, SAINT

born 1033/34, Aosta, Lombardy died April 21, 1109, possibly at Canterbury, Kent, Eng., canonized 1163?; feast day April 21 founder of Scholasticism, a philosophical school of thought that dominated the Middle Ages; he was recognized in modern times as the originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God (based on the idea of an absolutely perfect being, the fact of the idea being in itself a demonstration of existence) and the satisfaction theory of the atonement or redemption (based on the feudal theory of making satisfaction or recompense according to the status of a person against whom an offense has been committed, the infinite God being the offended party and man the offender). Incomplete evidence suggests that he was canonized in 1163. Additional reading Major bibliographies are U. Chevalier, Rpertoire des sources historiques du moyen ge, vol. 1, pp. 256259 (1905); for more recent periodical literature in English, French, German, and Italian, see F. van Steenberghen, Philosophie des Mittelalters (1950); and George Watson (ed.), The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, vol. 1, pp. 752754 (1974).For Anselm's life and thought, see M. Rule, Life and Times of St. Anselm, 2 vol. (1883), and Rule's edition of Eadmer's Vita Anselmi, Rolls Series (1884); R.W. Church, St. Anselm (1870, many reprints); J. Clayton, St. Anselm: A Critical Biography (1933); J. McIntyre, St. Anselm and His Critics: A Re-interpretation of the Cur Deus Homo (1954); W.R.W. Stephens, Saint Anselm, in Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 1, pp. 482503 (1908); E. Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (1955); F. Copleston, History of Philosophy, vol. 2 (1950); F. Cayr, Manual of Patrology and History of Theology (1940); Z.N. Brooke, The English Church and the Papacy (1931, reprinted 1968); R. Fairweather (ed. and trans.), A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham (1956); R.W. Southern, St. Anselm and His Biographer (1963).