Anselm of Canterbury, Saint: Monologion

The Monologion (spelled Monologium by Migne) is Anselm’s first major work, written while he was prior of Bec. In the preface he explains that some brothers had asked him to write down, as a model of meditation, what he had said to them about the divine essence, on condition that nothing be proved by the authority of Scripture but everything be shown by plain argument and the necessity of reason. In some eighty chapters he argues from the degrees of goodness and being in things to one supreme nature through which all things exist, and then considers its attributes, the creative Word, the Trinity and the soul’s love of God.

The work is one of the founding texts of medieval philosophical theology, showing Anselm’s programme of reaching by reason what faith already holds. Anselm said that nothing in it was inconsistent with the Fathers, especially Augustine, and his later Proslogion was written to find a single argument in place of its many linked ones. It remains a key source for medieval arguments for the existence of God and for reflection on divine attributes.