Who is St. Anselm of Canterbury in St. Anselm: Basic Writings by ?

St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033 - 1109) is one of the most important philosophers of the medieval period, third only to St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. He produced many of the most important arguments in the history natural theology, the branch of theology that attempts to establish religious truths the reason alone. Anselm: Basic Writings contains Anselm's most famous works in natural theology - The Prologium, Monologium and Cur Deus Homo. Anselm believes that while faith should be the ultimate source of Christian belief, that faith can seek understanding and look for reasons that justify it. And Anselm believes that unaided reason is extremely powerful. Not only can it establish the existence of God in multiple ways, some arguments so easy that only a "fool" could doubt them, but it can also establish all of God's properties, the relations between those properties, God's Trinitarian Nature and the relationship between the three members of the Trinity. Furthermore, unaided reason can establish that the second person of the Trinity, Christ, must become man to reconcile humanity to God. Thus Anselm: Basic Writings is almost exclusively a long chain of extremely dense and complicated arguments. Despite this, Anselm shows his deep faith and religiosity when he argues for the primacy of faith and phrases many of his writings in the form of prayers and praises to God. Further, Anselm plays a role as a member of a dialogue in Cur Deus Homo with a fictional interlocutor, Boso.