Anselm of Canterbury, Saint: De Grammatico

The De Grammatico is a dialogue on logic by Anselm, written at the abbey of Bec. A student asks whether ‘grammaticus’ (literate, or grammarian) is a substance or a quality, so that he may understand other words used denominatively in the same way; he claims that both answers can be proved by necessary reasons, since every grammarian is a man and every man a substance, while the philosophers call it a quality. The teacher examines these syllogisms in twenty-one short chapters, exposing their faults and distinguishing between what a word signifies and what it names, so that ‘grammaticus’ signifies literacy directly and the man only indirectly.

In the preface to De Veritate Anselm himself sets this dialogue apart from his three works on Scripture as an introduction to dialectic. It is his only purely logical work and an important witness to the study of Aristotle’s Categories and Boethius in the eleventh century, especially to questions of paronymy, signification and reference. Modern historians of logic have given it close attention for its precise handling of these semantic distinctions.