Anselm was born at Besate shortly after the year 1000 to a notable local family.
[2] Anselm received his education in Padua and Reggio, and became attached to the church of Milan.
It is one of the first works on rhetoric to appear in western Europe after Rabanus Maurus' De institutione clericorum of 819.
[4] It is a treatise in three books, ostensibly a letter to his nephew Rutiland to correct his confusion about rhetoric.
[5] The main targets of Anselm's rhetoric are magic and clerical vice, but he also attacks logic.