Anselm of Besate (''Anselmus Peripateticus'', "Anselm the Peripatetic") was an 11th-century churchman and

rhetorician Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse (trivium) along with grammar and logic/dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or write ...

. Anselm was born at Besate shortly after the year 1000 to a notable local family. He describes his genealogy in detail. He was related on his father's side to Bishops Sigifred of Piacenza, John II of Lucca and

Cunibert of Turin Cunibert of Turin (died c.1082) was an Italian bishop. According to Anselm of Besate, Cunibert was a member of the Besate dynasty from Milan. Cunibert is first documented as bishop of Turin at the Council of Pavia (October 1046). His episcopate la ...

, and to Archbishop John X of Ravenna. His mother belonged to the House of Arsago, through which he was related to Archbishop Arnulf II of Milan and Bishop Landulf II of Brescia. Anselm received his education in

Padua Padua ( ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Veneto, northern Italy, and the capital of the province of Padua. The city lies on the banks of the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice and southeast of Vicenza, and has a population of 20 ...

and Reggio, and became attached to the church of Milan. He later served in the chapel of the

Emperor Henry III Henry III (, 28 October 1016 – 5 October 1056), called the Black () or the Pious, was Holy Roman Emperor from 1046 until his death in 1056. A member of the Salian dynasty, he was the eldest son of Conrad II and Gisela of Swabia. Henry was rais ...

(reigned 1046–1056). Around 1047, he composed the ''Rhetorimachia'' (or ''De materia artis'') and dedicated it to Henry III. It is one of the first works on rhetoric to appear in western Europe after

Rabanus Maurus Rabanus Maurus Magnentius ( 780 – 4 February 856), also known as Hrabanus or Rhabanus, was a Frankish Benedictine monk, theologian, poet, encyclopedist and military writer who became archbishop of Mainz in East Francia. He was the author of t ...

' ''De institutione clericorum'' of 819. It is a treatise in three books, ostensibly a letter to his nephew Rutiland to correct his confusion about rhetoric. The main targets of Anselm's rhetoric are magic and clerical vice, but he also attacks

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure o ...

. To some scholars it represents a continuation of the

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises tha ...

nian tradition, or its rediscovery in 11th-century Italy, but to others it is "unlike anything that went before" (

Peter Dronke Ernst Peter Michael Dronke FBA (30 May 1934 – 19 April 2020) was a scholar specialising in Medieval Latin literature. He was one of the 20th century's leading scholars of medieval Latin lyric, and his book ''The Medieval Lyric'' (1968) is con ...

) and represents the birth of a new medieval "art of controversy". It has received two

critical edition Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts (mss) or of printed books. Such texts may range i ...

Karl Manitius Karl Manitius (23 July 1899 – 26 December 1979) was a German historian. He was the son of the historian and Latinist Max Manitius (1858–1933), born in Dresden. Returning from World War I he studied Latin and German history in Leipzig. His publi ...

, ''Gunzo: Epistola ad Augienses und Anselm von Besate: Rhetorimachia'',

Monumenta Germaniae Historica The (Latin for "Historical Monuments of Germany"), frequently abbreviated MGH, is a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published primary sources, both chronicle and archival, for the study of parts of Northwestern, Central and Souther ...

GH Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters G vol. 2 (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1958), 95–183.

Editions

* ''Anselm der Peripatetiker nebst anderen Beitragen zur Literaturgeschichte Italiens im eilften Jahrhundert'', ed. Ernest Dümmler. Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1872. dition of ''Rhetorimachia''* ''Gunzo: Epistola ad Augienses und Anselm von Besate: Rhetorimachia'', ed. Karl Manitius. Monumenta Germaniae Historica GH Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters G vol. 2. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1958. dition of ''Rhetorimachia''

Notes

Sources

* * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Anselm of Besate 11th-century Italian Roman Catholic theologians Rhetoricians 11th-century writers in Latin 11th-century Italian philosophers