Anselm of Laon | |
---|---|
Anselme de Laon | |
Born | c. 1050 |
Died | 15 July 1117 |
Era | Medieval philosophy |
Region | Western philosophy |
School | Scholasticism |
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.
Born of very humble parents at Laon before the middle of the 11th century, he is said to have studied under Saint Anselm at Bec, [1] 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.[ citation needed ] His school for theology and exegesis rapidly became the most well known in Europe. [1] Famously, in 1113, he expelled Peter Abelard from his school.[ citation needed ]
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.
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. [1] 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] [1]
The works are collected in Migne. [4] Some of his Sententiae were edited at Milan by G. Lefevre in 1894. [5] [1] The commentary on the Psalms attributed to Haymo of Halberstadt by Migne [6] has also been identified as possibly being the work of Anselm.
Alexander of Hales, also called Doctor Irrefragibilis and Theologorum Monarcha, was a Franciscan friar, theologian and philosopher important in the development of scholasticism.
Richard of Saint Victor was a Medieval Scottish philosopher and theologian and one of the most influential religious thinkers of his time. A canon regular, he was a prominent mystical theologian, and was prior of the famous Augustinian Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris from 1162 until his death in 1173.
Laon is a city in the Aisne department in Hauts-de-France in northern France.
Jacques Paul Migne was a French priest who published inexpensive and widely distributed editions of theological works, encyclopedias, and the texts of the Church Fathers, with the goal of providing a universal library for the Catholic priesthood.
Procopius of Gaza was a Christian sophist and rhetorician, one of the most important representatives of the famous school of his native place. Here he spent nearly the whole of his life teaching and writing and took no part in the theological movements of his time.
Bernard of Chartres was a twelfth-century French Neo-Platonist philosopher, scholar, and administrator.
Alberich of Reims was a scholar who studied under Anselm of Laon and later became an opponent of Peter Abelard.
Peter Lombard was an Italian scholastic theologian, Bishop of Paris, and author of Four Books of Sentences which became the standard textbook of theology, for which he earned the accolade Magister Sententiarum.
Gilbert de la Porrée, also known as Gilbert of Poitiers, Gilbertus Porretanus or Pictaviensis, was a scholastic logician and theologian and Bishop of Poitiers.
Walafrid, alternatively spelt Walahfrid, nicknamed Strabo, was an Alemannic Benedictine monk and theological writer who lived on Reichenau Island in southern Germany.
The Patrologia Latina is an enormous collection of the writings of the Church Fathers and other ecclesiastical writers published by Jacques-Paul Migne between 1841 and 1855, with indices published between 1862 and 1865. It is also known as the Latin series as it formed one half of Migne's Patrologiae Cursus Completus, the other part being the Patrologia Graeca of patristic and medieval Greek works with their medieval Latin translations.
Hugh of Saint Victor was a Saxon canon regular and a leading theologian and writer on mystical theology.
Gaius Marius Victorinus was a Roman grammarian, rhetorician and Neoplatonic philosopher. Victorinus was African by birth and experienced the height of his career during the reign of Constantius II. He is also known for translating two of Aristotle's books from ancient Greek into Latin: the Categories and On Interpretation. Victorinus had a religious conversion, from being a pagan to a Christian, "at an advanced old age".
The Glossa Ordinaria, which is Latin for "Ordinary [i.e. in a standard form] Gloss", is a collection of biblical commentaries in the form of glosses. The glosses are drawn mostly from the Church Fathers, but the text was arranged by scholars during the twelfth century. The Gloss is called "ordinary" to distinguish it from other gloss commentaries. In origin, it is not a single coherent work, but a collection of independent commentaries which were revised over time. The Glossa ordinaria was a standard reference work into the Early Modern period, although it was supplemented by the Postills attributed to Hugh of St Cher and the commentaries of Nicholas of Lyra.
In Biblical studies, a gloss or glossa is an annotation written on margins or within the text of biblical manuscripts or printed editions of the scriptures. With regard to the Hebrew texts, the glosses chiefly contained explanations of purely verbal difficulties of the text; some of these glosses are of importance for the correct reading or understanding of the original Hebrew, while nearly all have contributed to its uniform transmission since the 11th century. Later on, Christian glosses also contained scriptural commentaries; St. Jerome extensively used glosses in the process of translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible.
Anselm of CanterburyOSB, also called Anselm of Aosta after his birthplace and Anselm of Bec after his monastery, was an Italian Benedictine monk, abbot, philosopher and theologian of the Catholic Church, who held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. After his death, he was canonized as a saint; his feast day is 21 April. He was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by a bull of Pope Clement XI in 1720.
Hugh of Amiens, also known as Hugh de Boves, monk of Cluny, prior of Limoges, prior of Lewes, abbot of Reading and archbishop of Rouen, was a 12th-century Picard-French Benedictine prelate.
Peter Abelard was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, leading logician, theologian, poet, composer and musician.
Berengaudus (840–892) was a Benedictine monk, supposed author of Expositio super septem visiones libri Apocalypsis, a Latin commentary on the Book of Revelation. He has traditionally been assumed to be a monk of Ferrières Abbey, at the time of Lupus Servatus. The attribution has been questioned, but the Expositio was later much circulated in manuscript. It was printed in Patrologia Latina vol. XVII under Ambrose, following an attribution by Cuthbert Tunstall.
The Collectanea, or Magna glossatura as it came to be known, is a collection of commentaries on the Psalms and the Pauline Epistles written by Peter the Lombard between 1139 and 1141.