Doctor Magnificus
by Fr. Roger Landry - May 1, 2009
Ten days ago the Church marked the 900th anniversary of the birth into eternal life of the man Pope Benedict calls "one of the most luminous figures in the tradition of the Church and in the very history of western European thought." He is one of the most famous monks of all time, the greatest theologian the Church produced in the eight centuries between St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, and, in the twilight of his life, a courageous reformer and defender of the Church as Archbishop of Canterbury. Future generations have called him the "Magnificent Doctor." History knows him as St. Anselm.
His life is really divided into three stages, lived in three different countries, each of which contains lessons for us in the Church today.
He was born in 1033 and grew up in Aosta, Italy, near what are now the French and Swiss borders, in the heart of the Alps. The mountains that surrounded him formed him always to look upward; the clouds that would obscure the peaks inspired him to search beyond what he could see. One night he dreamed that he had climbed to the top of one of the mountains and found himself before the divine majesty. It's no surprise that much later, when he would write a famous book on prayerful study, he would dub it the "upward journey of the mind into God."
When he was 15, he told his parents that he desired to enter into a monastery to deepen his interior pilgrimage into the divine communion. His father, a highly choleric man, vehemently refused to give his consent. That rejection damaged his son greatly. After undergoing what seemed to be a nervous breakdown, Anselm decided — whether out of depression, sadness, or anger, it's hard to say — to give up his studies and live a worldly and irresponsible life.
As we approach on Sunday the world day of prayer for vocations, it's important to recall how many young people still today suffer due to the opposition of their parents to their seeking to do the will of God.
After his mother died and his father grew increasingly unbearable, Anselm repented of the way he had been living, rediscovered his hunger for God, and decided at the age of 23 to leave home to study under the famous abbot-teacher Lanfranc at Le Bec Abbey in Normandy. It was there that he would spend the next 30 years and finally answer the call he had heard within years before.
In this second stage of his life, Anselm quickly progressed from a superb pupil, to a friend and disciple of Lanfranc, to a brother monk at the age of 27, to prior at 30 and finally to abbot. As effective as he was in these positions as an exemplary Benedictine monk, his most lasting contributions were as a scholar and teacher.
In contrast with the rigid pedagogy of his day, he did everything he could to expand the minds of his monks and students. He cultivated what would become the scholastic method whereby every possible objection to a truth of theology or philosophy would be seriously considered and answered. In himself and in others, he tried to integrate and maximize the full and complementary power of faith and reason, of prayer and study. He coined the phrase "faith seeking understanding" which has been used to describe the discipline of theology ever since.
Today some Biblical scholars and theologians at Catholic colleges and universities proudly "prescind from faith" in their study of revelation or the teaching of the Church, thinking that such dispassionate "objectivity" is consistent with the search for truth. Anselm would argue that such a perspective, rather than helping them find the truth, actually blinds them from understanding the real meaning of their study, which can be grasped only through faith. "I do not try to understand in order to believe," Anselm famously stated, "but I believe in order to understand. For unless I first believe, I shall not understand." Just as to learn to swim we really need to get in the water, so to understand what God has revealed, we need to enter the living water of faith. Faith and reason are not opposed or incompatible, as some today try to claim. Anselm taught and demonstrated, rather, how we are to have great faith in the power of human reason and to see faith as the highest and most reasonable exercise of our intellect.
Anselm put his faith and reason to work in writing a famous "ontological" proof for the existence of God, beautiful contemplative expositions on God's attributes, the most thorough theological work on why God chose to become man, books and treatises on the Trinity, creation, truth, freewill, the origin of evil, and so many other subjects. For all his work, this "father of scholasticism" was declared a doctor of the Church by Pope Clement XI in 1720.
The third stage of his life took place in England when he was selected to succeed his old mentor Lanfranc as Archbishop of Canterbury. He begged and pleased to get out of the appointment. "It's known to many," he wrote later to Pope Urban II, "what violence was done to me and how reluctant and opposed I was when I was made Bishop in England; how I laid out the reasons of health, age, weakness and ignorance [of politics and ecclesiastical affairs] which show how much I'm unfit for this office; how I reject and absolutely detest secular responsibilities; and how I am simply not fit to manage them without putting the salvation of my own soul in danger." His remonstrations didn't work.
For the last 16 years of his life, he needed to leave the fruitful and relative tranquility of the monastery — where despite the problems that exist in any community, he presided over a group of men dedicated to God who had taken a vow of obedience — to reform and defend the Church in a situation that was chaotic and vicious, both inside and outside the Church. The virtues he had cultivated in the monastery, however, helped him not only preserve the sanctity of his soul but also courageously bring about much needed reforms of ecclesiastical discipline, clerical morality and in the relationship between Church and state.
He arrived at a time in which the King William Rufus of England was trying to dominate the Church and most of the bishops cowardly and unfaithfully let him, choosing to obey Caesar rather than God. With patient and fierce determination, Anselm fought to free the Church from the regal stranglehold and acquire greater juridical control in the appointment of bishops. These were long protracted battles, full of political intrigue and even exiles, during which he seemed to be fighting almost alone. With the eventual help of the Pope, the power of his honest and sympathetic personality, and some fortunate turns of events, he eventually brought about a reform that no one had thought possible. Eventually King Henry, William's son, and originally a fierce opponent, grew to regard him with such confidence that he made him regent during the King's foreign trips.
Within the Church, he battled against clerical scandals, passed regulations against simony and enforcing priestly celibacy, and when the latter was ignored by disobedient priests, got the crown to tax all married clergy to persuade them to the same result by the love of mammon rather than of God. He was also the first leader in England to oppose the slave trade, passing a resolution to prohibit the selling of human beings like animals.
He remains a great model or "magnificent doctor" for bishops (and priests) today, particularly in our country, who need to lead the reform the Church from within and oppose an increasingly militant secularism that seeks to dominate the Church from without. Anselm was able to be courageous, first, because of his love of God. "I prefer to be in disagreement with men," he said to his brother bishops, "rather than, agreeing with them, being in disagreement with God." The second reason for his boldness was because he wasn't afraid to die: "I have no fear of shedding my blood; I do not fear any bodily wounds or the loss of material goods." A man who's not afraid to die is not easily intimidated.
Pope Benedict says it's easy for all these reasons to understand why Anselm's life is "still very relevant" and "strongly fascinating." For that reason, he says, it's important for the whole Church together to "meditate again on his life."
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
