SOURCE: Southern, R. W. “The Monk of Bec.” In Saint Anselm and His Biographer: A Study of Monastic Life and Thought 1059-c. 1130, pp. 27-76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963.

In the following excerpt, Southern describes the content of Anselm's early works, the Monologion and Proslogion, the latter of which features his arguments concerning the existence of God.

The Early Treatises

Until he became archbishop, Anselm's life for over thirty years was one of monastic peace disturbed only by the occasional enmities inseparable from the life of men living in close proximity in a small community, and by material cares which weighed less heavily upon him, as some thought, than they ought to have done. All his writings of this period are the witnesses of this peace: his intimate correspondence with friends at Canterbury and elsewhere, his prayers and meditations, his Proslogion and Monologion—themselves meditations on the nature of...