Anselm of Laon
| Anselm of Laon | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1050 Laon, Kingdom of France |
| Died | 15 July 1117 Laon, Kingdom of France |
| Education | |
| Academic advisor | Anselm of Canterbury |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Medieval philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Scholasticism |
| Institutions | Cathedral school of Laon |
| Notable students | Gilbert de la Porrée Peter Abelard William of Champeaux |
| Main interests | Theology |
| Notable ideas | Biblical hermeneutics, glossa ordinaria |
Anselm of Laon (Latin: Anselmus; d. 1117), properly Ansel (Ansellus), was a French theologian and founder of a school of scholars who helped to pioneer biblical hermeneutics.
Biography
Born of very humble parents at Laon before the middle of the 11th century, he is said to have studied under Anselm of Canterbury at Bec, though this is almost certainly incorrect. Other potential teachers of Anselm have been identified, including Bruno of Cologne and Manegold of Lautenbach. By around 1080, he had moved back to his place of birth and was teaching at the cathedral school of Laon, with his brother Ralph. Around 1109, he became dean and chancellor of the cathedral, and in 1115 he was one of Laon's two archdeacons. His school for theology and exegesis rapidly became the most well known in Europe. Famously, in 1113, he expelled Peter Abelard from his school.[1]
The Liber Pancrisi (c. 1120) names him, with his brother Ralph, Ivo of Chartres, and William of Champeaux, as one of the four modern masters.
Work
Anselm's greatest work, an interlinear and marginal gloss on the 'Scriptures', the glossa ordinaria, now attributed to him and his followers,[2] was one of the great intellectual achievements of the Middle Ages. It has been frequently reprinted. The significance of the gloss, which was most likely assembled after Anselm's death by his students, such as Gilbert de la Porrée, and based on Anselm's teaching, is that it marked a new way of learning — it represented the birth of efforts to present discrete patristic and earlier medieval interpretations of individual verses of Scripture in a readily accessible, easily referenced way. This theme was subsequently adopted and extended by the likes of Hugh of St. Victor, Peter Lombard and later Thomas Aquinas, who gave us 'handbooks' for what we would now call theology.
Other commentaries apparently by Anselm have been ascribed to various writers, principally to Anselm of Canterbury.[3]
The works are collected in Patrologia Latina.[4] Some of his Sententiae were edited at Milan by G. Lefevre in 1894.[5] The commentary on the Psalms attributed to Haymo of Halberstadt by Migne[6] has also been identified as possibly being the work of Anselm.
From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia
Anselm of Laon — (ANSELMUS LAUDINENSIS.)
Died 15 July, 1117, one of the famous theologians of the Middle Ages, known from his learning as Doctor Scholasticus. He was educated at the abbey of Bee, under St. Anselm of Canterbury, who made him acquainted with the new scholastic theology. From 1076 he taught for a while with much distinction at Paris, and co-operated with William of Champeaux in establishing the university there. He returned to Laon about the end of the eleventh century and set up a theological school which became so famous that Abelard, then thirty years of age, who was teaching philosophy at Paris, removed to Laon in order to study theology under him. Anselms chief work is his "Glossa interlinearis", a commentary on the whole Vulgate (Antwerp, 1634), one of the two chief exegetical works of the Middle Ages, the other being the "Glossa ordinaria" of Walafrid Strabo. His known writings are found in Migne, P.L., CLXII, 1187-1660.
HEFELE in Kirchenlex., s. v.; LEFÈVRE (Evreux, 1904); Hist. litt. de France, X, 170.
References
- Back to citation Schulman, J. K. (2002). The Rise of the Medieval World 500-1300: A Biographical Dictionary. United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 3
- Back to citation Lindberg, David (1978). Science in the Middle Ages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226482324.
- Back to citation A list of them, with notice of Anselm's life, is contained in the Histoire littéraire de la France, x. 170-189.
- Back to citation Migne, Jacques Paul, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Patrologia Latina, Vol. CLXII. (in Latin)
- Back to citation Hauréau, Barthélemy (1895), Journal des savants.
- Back to citation PL, Vol. CXVI.