St. Anselm of Canterbury | C. J. Mews (essay date 1992)
C. J. Mews (essay date 1992)
SOURCE: Mews, C. J. “St. Anselm and Roscelin: Some Texts and Their Implications.” Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen age 58 (1992): 55-98.
[In the following excerpt, Mews concentrates on the text and arguments of Anselm's Epistola de Incarnatione Verbi, a polemical treatise aimed against Roscelin of Compiègne's conception of the Trinity.]
The solid reputation of St Anselm as thinker and saint could scarcely be more different from the few hazy details commonly remembered about Roscelin of Compiègne.1 Was not St Anselm a deeply spiritual monk determined to explain his religious faith in terms of reason rather than of written authority? The contrast is often drawn between a saint who was also a sophisticated intellectual and a secular minded logician like Roscelin of Compiègne, whose attempt to apply secular reasoning to the doctrine of the Trinity resulted in nothing...
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