St Anselm

l'Abbaye Notre-Dame du Bec-Hellouin, the monastery of St Anselm's profession.


Today the Roman Rite celebrates the feast of St Anselm, the Italian Archbishop of Canterbury from the French monastery.

It is not often that a Catholic saint wins the admiration of German philosophers and English historians. But Anselm has this singular distinction. Hegel's appreciation of his mental powers may be matched by Freeman's warm words of praise for the great Archbishop of Canterbury. "Stranger as he was, he has won his place among the noblest worthies of our island. It was something to be the model of all ecclesiastical perfection; it was something to be the creator of the theology of Christendom -- but it was something higher still to be the very embodiment of righteousness and mercy, to be handed down in the annals of humanity as the man who saved the hunted hare and stood up for the holiness of Alphege." (History of the Norman Conquest, IV, 444).[from the CE article linked above.]