ANSELM of BESATE, called the PERIPATETIC. — A wandering master of the 11th century, one of the first representatives of the resurgent dialectic in early scholasticism. Of his life it is known only that he was of noble family from Besate (Pavia); that he belonged to the Milanese clergy; that his teachers in the liberal arts were Drogone of Parma and Sischmo of Reggio Emilia; that he traveled through Italy, Burgundy, and southern Germany, reaching as far as Mainz and Bamberg; everywhere displaying his rhetorical skill and affirming its remarkable demonstrative capacities even with regard to the truths of faith.
His teaching has come down to us in a curious little work, part logical treatise and part polemical-autobiography, entitled Rhetorimachia, dedicated first to his teacher Drogone and later to Emperor Henry II, under whose successor he held the office of court chaplain. In this work, written in a convoluted and bombastic style, he develops Cicero’s theory of the fundamental importance of rhetoric, flaunts his erudition in the arts of the trivium, and in particular discusses the applicability of the logical principle of contradiction even within the sphere of dogmatic doctrine. The sources of his dialectic are those same as those of his learned contemporaries, such as Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II) and Fulbert, founder of the school of Chartres—namely, Porphyry’s Isagoge, Aristotle’s writings on the categories and On Interpretation, and finally the logical treatises of Severinus Boethius.
In comparison with other dialecticians of his time (also called “philosophers,” “sophists,” or “peripatetics” in a more or less ironic and disparaging sense), who, like the ancient Sophists of Greece, traveled through their lands offering proofs of their rational prowess and affirming its character as the exclusive and supreme norm of knowledge even in matters of faith—thus placing it above Holy Scripture and the Fathers—he is distinguished by a certain moderation, even as he accords real prominence to dialectic. Nevertheless, even against him, confused as he was with the “sophists” of the age (of whom the most representative is Berengar of Tours), was directed the vigorous reaction of conservative anti-dialectical spirits, particularly that of St. Peter Damian.