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The saints

St. Anselm

A monk who said his motto was faith seeking understanding.

Feast: 21 April · 1033 to 1109 · The Middle Ages · Aosta, Bec (Normandy) and Canterbury

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Engraved portrait of St. Anselm in profile, with long gray hair.

Unknown author. Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

Home / The saints / St. Anselm

The abbey of Bec, Normandy

Anselm left home in the Alps after fights with his father and wandered into the abbey of Bec in Normandy.1

He became a monk, then abbot, and one of the great thinkers of the Middle Ages.1

His motto was faith seeking understanding: believe, and then think hard about what you believe.

Patronage No official patronage we can cite yet. The Church honors him as the Father of Scholasticism.

01St. Anselm

Why God became man

He wrote famous works on God’s existence and on why God became man.1

02St. Anselm

Archbishop of Canterbury

Made archbishop of Canterbury, he was exiled twice for defending the Church’s freedom from the English kings.1

Live it this week

Think through one thing you believe

Anselm believed and then thought hard. Take one article of the Creed this week, look it up in the Catechism, and try to explain it in your own words to someone.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Anselm”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.