Anselm

Anselm was a Lombard who became a monk at Bec in Normandy, its abbot, and, against his will, archbishop of Canterbury, where he fought two kings over the church’s independence and was twice exiled. He is the father of scholasticism, the first to apply reason systematically to faith, and the Proslogion contains the ontological argument: that God, being that than which nothing greater can be thought, must exist, since to exist is greater than not to. Aquinas rejected it, Descartes revived it, and philosophers are still arguing. His motto was faith seeking understanding.