Anselm of Laon

Anselm of Laon (also Anselme de Laon, Latinized Anselm of Laon, * 1050, † July 15, 1117 ) was a Catholic theologian and early scholastics.

Life

Anselm was the son of a farmer. He studied at the Abbey of Bec and Anselm of Canterbury was a student, then taught (from about 1090 ) at the Episcopal School in Laon, where he gathered many students around him, most notably William of Champeaux and Peter Abelard. As his teaching, however, only reflected the traditional teaching and more founded on the strict interpretation of the texts on their own considerations, a thinker like Abelard turned quickly away from him. Anselm leaned in particular from every problem that could not be cleared by authorized texts.

He declined several times from being bishop, and dealt in his last years exclusively so, to illustrate his teaching. His works, especially the Sentences and interlinear glosses, which is only a meticulous listing of Scripture were soon supplanted in the favor of teachers and students from those of the next generation, such as the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Anselm, however, has done much to find rules for a scholasticism, which is the argument accessible and consists not only of quotations, and to illuminate the intellectual heritage to which founded the medieval theology. The Sic et non method should not only by Abelard, but earlier, have been maintained, among others, of the school of Anselm of Laon.