CSVF Blog

The man who not only teaches but does what is right
will be counted great in the kingdom of God, alleluia.

Today the Church celebrates the feast of St. Anselm, the late eleventh-century Archbishop of Canterbury and Doctor of the Church.  As one of the first of the medieval Schoolmen, Anselm brought the patristic age to perfection–and also to its close–by approaching the Christian theological project from a different angle, that of speculative inquiry.  In so doing, he began a mode of theological investigation that founded the Middle Ages and continues to this day.

From the Christian Classics Ethereal Library:

Although born at Aosta in Alpine Italy and educated in Normandy, Anselm became a Benedictine monk, teacher, and abbot at Bec and continued his ecclesiastical career in England. Having been appointed the second Norman archbishop of Canterbury in 1093, Anselm secured the Westminster Agreement of 1107, guaranteeing the (partial) independence of the church from the civil state.

In a series of short works such as De Libertate Arbitrii (On Free Will), De Casu Diaboli (The Fall of the Devil), and the lengthier dialogue Cur Deus Homo (Why God became Man), Anselm propounded a satisfaction theory of the atonement, upon which the incarnation promises relief from the strict demands of divine justice. He defended a notion of the relation between philosophy and theology that, like Augustine’s, emphasized the methodological priority of faith over reason, since truth is to be achieved only through “fides quaerens intellectum” (“faith seeking understanding”).  Anselm’s combination of Christianity, neoplatonic metaphysics, and Aristotelean logic in the form of dialectical question-and-answer was an important influence in the development scholasticism during the next several centuries.

As a philosopher, Anselm is most often remembered for his attempts to prove the existence of god: In De Veritate (Of Truth) he argued that all creatures owe their being and value to god as the source of all truth, to whom a life lived well is the highest praise. In the Monologion he described deity as the one most truly good thing, from which all real moral values derive and whose existence is required by the reality of those values.

Most famously, in the Proslogion (Addition), Anselm proposed the famous Ontological Argument, according to which god is understood as “aliquid quod maius non cogitari potest” (“that than which nothing greater can be conceived”). The being so conceived must necessarily exist in reality as well as in thought, he argued, since otherwise it would in fact be possible to conceive something greater—namely, something exactly simliar except that it really does exist. Thus, at least for Anselmian believers guided by a prior faith, God must truly exist as the simple, unified source of all perfections, a reality that excludes corruption, imperfection, and deception of every sort.

For more on the life and thought of St. Anselm, click here, here, and here.

Father,
you called Saint Anselm
to study and teach the sublime truths oyou have revealed.
Let your gift of faith come to the aid of our understanding
and open our hearts to your truth.

Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, forever and ever. Amen.

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Join young adults for a series of lectures at Metro 53 Bar and Restaurant, 307 East 53rd Street, between 2nd and 1st Avenues. The event is from 7pm-8:30pm.

The final lecture of 2009 is on May 4, 2009, by Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap, Archbishop of Denver. The topic for this night is “This Dual life Will Self-Destruct.” On this night, he will talk about how we lead two lives: a Catholic life and a secular life.

For more details, visit www.totnyc.org.

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From Dr. Mark Bani, the parish’s organist and music director:

Dear Friends,

I invite you to our next music event here at The Church of St. Vincent Ferrer (Lexington Ave. at 66th St.) in Manhattan:

Tuesday, April 21 at 7:00 P.M.

James Wetzel, a talented young artist who has been hailed by audiences throughout the US, will perform a program of organ music by English composer Herbert Howells on our 86-rank Schantz pipe organ. Mr. Wetzel is currently a senior at the Juilliard School, studying with Paul Jacobs. Mr. Wetzel is the organ scholar at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

You are cordially invited to this recital. Admission is free (a free will offering will be gratefully accepted.)

Hope to see you here!

Mark Bani
Director of Music and Organist

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Lamentatio: A Historical Exploration and Musical Performance
of Six Franco-Flemish Déplorations

Lamentatio will explore the déploration, the musical honoring of a composer upon his death. After the composition of the first known déploration by F. Andrieu honoring Guillaume de Machaut, Armes, amours/O flour des flours, five other stunning compositions were written by and for sequential generations of Franco-Flemish composers: Mort tu as navré de ton dart, by Ockeghem in honor of Binchois; Nymphes des bois by Josquin des Prez in memory of Ockeghem; and three laments for Josquin des Prez, Musae Iovis by Gombert, a piece of the same name by Benedictus Appenzeller, and O mors inevitablis by Hieronimus Vinders.

Lamentatio is presented by Alyssa DeSocio, a Barnard College senior and Centennial Scholar, who will speak on the evolution of the déploration, the history of these compositions, and the lives of these composers. The evening will also feature a live performance of these six déplorations by an ensemble of musicians from Pomerium.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 8 PM
Church of Notre Dame, 405 West 114th Street
Admission: FREE

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