You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute,

an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Catholic Saints. My name is Taylor Kemp. I'm your host and the vice president of content here at the Augustine Institute. And with me is Dr. Elizabeth Klein, who is a professor for our graduate school of theology. Dr. Klein, it's great to have you back. Thanks for having me. It's my joy. You're one of my favorite people to talk to, especially when we're talking about Catholic Saints. Dr. Klein, today we are talking about St. Anselm of Canterbury, whose feast date is

April 21st. Who is St. Anselm of Canterbury? St. Anselm of Canterbury is a monk,

abbot, bishop, theologian doctor of the church. Yeah, he's got a lot of,

a lot of accolades to his name, in a life of Christ. He lived from 1033 to 1109, so an early

medieval saint. He's probably one of the first theologians I ever read in my course of

theological study. Yeah, his, we can talk about it a little more later, but his masterpiece

Cure Deus Homo, why God became man, kind of one of the earliest theological reflections on the nature of the

incarnation and Christ's atonement, still very appealing, I think, today people still use it today.

And of course, he's famous for his

ontological argument for the existence of God. That's what I've heard. Which I talked to an Anselm of Canterbury

scholar before I did this episode and he said, don't talk about the ideological argument. Talk about

this and that and the other thing. So I'll try to honor Father Maloney and his love of love of St. Anselm. But actually, what this

scholar told me about Anselm was that really his life is actually really interesting in addition to his

theology. So to talk a little bit about his life, which I, of course, happy to do.

Ansela O'Cansbury was actually largely admired by the more famous later English saints, Thomas Beckett and Thomas Moore, because he kind of sets the stage for resisting English kings, papacy over kings during the investiture controversy, which you may or may not be familiar with.

Nope.

Not familiar with the investor controversy.

And if I'm not, I'm assuming most listeners are not either.

Do we need to know much about it?

I mean, I could explain it pretty quickly.

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