Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033 – 21 April 1109, also called of Aosta for his birthplace, and of Bec for his home monastery) was a Benedictine monk, a philosopher, and a prelate of the church who held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. Called the founder of scholasticism, he is famous as the originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God.
Born into the noble family of Candia, he entered the Benedictine order at the Abbey of Bec at the age of twenty-seven, where he became abbot in 1079. He became Archbishop of Canterbury under William II of England, and was exiled from England from 1097 to 1100, and again from 1105 to 1107 under Henry I of England as a result of the lay investiture dispute. Anselm was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1720 by Pope Clement XI. Dante, en la Divina Comedia lo sitúa en la quinta esfera del cielo.
Anselm wrote many proofs within Monologion and Proslogion. In Anselm’s other works, he strove to state the rational grounds of the Christian doctrines of creation and the Trinity. He discussed the Trinity first by stating that human beings could not know God from Himself but only from analogy. The analogy that he used was the self-consciousness of man.