Medieval Semiotics (meier-oeser, Stephan) / quote 6 of 30
Anselm of Canterbury : verbum mentis + mental concepts
In the late 11th century Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) revived the Augustinian doctrine of the verbum mentis, combining it with the Aristotelian view on mental concepts outlined in the opening chapter of Peri Hermeneias. Thus, the two aspects of the mental word — which are found more or less implicitly in Augustine's work already — became explicit in Anselm. First: mental words are natural words and thus identical for all human beings (they are “verba … naturalia … et apud omnes gentes eadem”) (Anselm of Canterbury, Monolog., 1968: 25); and second: they are similitudes and mental images of things (similitudines et imagines rerum).[13] Due to this, they signify their objects in a more expressive way (expressius signant) than any other kind of words, and thus they are, as Anselm agrees with Augustine, what has to be termed ‘word’ in its most proper sense (Anselm of Canterbury, Monolog., 1968: 25).