Lanfranc

Lanfranc of Bec OSB (French Lanfranc; * to 1010 in Pavia, † May 28 1089 in Canterbury ) was a theologian, Prior of the Abbey of Bec and Archbishop of Canterbury.

Life

Lanfranc came from a distinguished family in Pavia and studied the liberal arts at various northern Italian schools. From about 1030 he worked as a teacher of grammar, logic and rhetoric ( Trivium ) in Burgundy, the Loire Valley and at the cathedral of Avranches.

After a conversion experience, he entered in 1042 into the hermit community of Le Bec Abbey, whose Prior, he was from 1045 to 1063. Among his many pupils were Gilbert Crispin and from 1059 Anselm of Canterbury.

In the eucharistic controversy he sat from 1050 especially against Berengar for the view of the real presence and created his recourse to Aristotle's theory of substance and accident ( de corpore et sanguine domini, chap. 18 ) the basis for the later doctrine of transubstantiation.

In 1063 he became abbot of the abbey of St. Stephen in Caen and was under William the Conqueror from 1070 to 1089 in the English Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a great patron of the abbey Abbey of St Albans, the first Norman Abbot Paul was his relative.