The greatest philosopher of the eleventh century, Anselm of Canterbury was the author of some dozen works whose originality and subtlety earned him the title of "Father of Scholasticism." Best known in the modern era for his "Ontological Argument," designed to prove God's existence, Anselm made significant contributions to metaphysics, ethics, and philosophy of language.

Anselm was born in Aosta, in the Piedmont region of the kingdom of Burgundy, near the border with Lombardy. His family was noble but of declining fortunes. Anselm remained at home until he was twenty-three; after the death of his mother he quarreled irrevocably with his father and left home, wandering for some years before arriving at the Benedictine Abbey at Bec in Normandy. Impressed by the abbey's prior Lanfranc, who had a reputation as a scholar and teacher of dialectic, Anselm joined the monastery as a novice in...