The impact of the Berengarian controversy

Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) in his literary work opened a new and highly individual chapter in the great controversy about the relationship of reason and belief. Before he became Primate of England in 1093 he had lived, studied and taught as a Benedictine in the Norman abbey of Bec, in contact with the spiritual and intellectual movements which at this time had their centre in the French-speaking countries of Western Europe. He had come from Aosta in the south-east corner of ancient Burgundy near the Lombard border. From his mother's side he was related to an important family of dynasts ruling in these parts. As a young man he was attracted by the revival of learning in France, like the Lombard Lanfranc before him, who in the fifties was prior of the newly founded monastery of Bec and had established there a school of some renown. Anselm joined him, first as a secular student and in 1060 as a monk. At this moment Lanfranc was deeply involved in the controversy with Berengar; he had attended the council of Rome, where the teaching of the famous master of Tours was condemned. When Anselm joined the monastic community this had been the great event of the previous year. Lanfranc himself was considered a pioneer in the revival of dialectical studies, and he was certainly anxious to strike the right balance between loyalty to the authority of biblical and ecclesiastical tradition and interest in a technically correct argument. Anselm remained in intimate contact with him for three years and became his successor as prior and head of the school, when Lanfranc left Bec on his appointment as abbot of St Stephens in Caen.