Anselm the Theologian

In this course, students will examine the writings of Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), an eleventh-century Italian thinker who became a monk, prior, archbishop and ultimately a leading theologian of his day. Scholars often treat Anselm as the first scholastic theologian, which to some degree is true. In this course, however, we will seek to understand Anselm the theologian as a constituent of the eleventh century, and of eleventh-century Anglo-Norman monasticism in particular.The focus of the seminars will be mainly on a close reading of theCur Deus homo, a text that Anselm completed by 1098, after he had become archbishop in 1093. We will therefore explore two major contexts: (1) the world of eleventh-century monasticism of Normandy and (2) the world of the archiepiscopacy of Canterbury at the end of this same century. We will seek the read this text in light of the broad tradition of pre-modern treatments of Soteriology andthe Incarnation, but also within the two more immediate contexts.