Anselm was born in the year 1033 to a family with a partly noble background in or near Aosta, a town situated in an Alpine valley in northwestern Italy, which at the time belonged to the kingdom of Burgundy. His father was Gundulf, his mother, Ermenberga, and he had one sister, Richeza. One of our main sources for Anselm’s life, Vita Anselmi by Eadmer (an English monk who was Anselm’s associate after 1093), discloses that the study of the liberal arts was Anselm’s chief occupation some time in his youth, but Eadmer fails to give any details of Anselm’s studies. He also tells us that Anselm later started giving himself to ‘‘youthful amusements,” which has led some commentators to infer, unnecessarily, that Anselm’s youth was a misspent one. At some point Anselm’s mother died, and after that Anselm’s relation to his father grew difficult. At the age of 23, after a clash with his father, Anselm decided to leave his home country, and he crossed the Alps. Of the following three years, Eadmer only says that Anselm spent them ‘‘partly in Burgundy, partly in France.’’
The year 1059 is a turning point in Anselm’s life. At the age of 26, he arrived at the Benedictine monastery of Bec in Normandy. At Bec, there was a school run by the prior of the monastery, Lanfranc, who was of Italian origin and had made a career as a teacher of the liberal arts in his youth. Anselm became Lanfranc’s associate in the school at Bec, and a little later (1060) he decided to become a monk. In 1063, Lanfranc left Bec to become the abbot of a new monastery in Caen. Anselm was elected prior of Bec and he served in this position for 15 years. In 1078, the founding abbot of the Bec monastery, Herluin, died. Anselm succeeded him and served as abbot for another 15 years, until 1093. Altogether, Anselm was ‘‘Anselm of Bec’’ for more than three decades.
In 1066, the Normans had conquered England. Lanfranc became the first Norman Archbishop of Canterbury. After Lanfranc’s death, in 1089, King William II held the seat of archbishop vacant for several years to be able to expropriate ecclesiastical revenue. In the end, Anselm was nominated as archbishop. Anselm’s tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury (1093-1109) was rife with heavy conflicts with the kings of England (William II and after him Henry I) about the relation of ecclesiastical and secular power (the investiture controversy). Because of the conflicts, Anselm was twice in exile: 1097-1100 and 1103-1107. During the first exile, Anselm went to meet the Pope in Rome and stayed in Italy for more than a year. Anselm died at Canterbury on April 21, 1109.
World History
