The Institutional Factor

Throughout the century, Cologne was the main centre of Albertism, with important representatives in Paris, Krakow, and Uppsala. The special position of Cologne was closely linked to an institutional peculiarity. As was the general trend at late-medieval universities, courses were held increasingly in the colleges and bursae, where students lived together with one or more masters. This meant that not only daily disputations and exercises, but also the regular curricular courses were stamped with the personality of a specific group of masters, namely, those who had their home in the bursa. In Cologne, several bursae of this type existed, one of which bore a clear Albertist signature, namely the Bursa Laurentiana, named after Laurentius Berungen de Groningen, who in 1439 or 1440 became its regent master, in the legacy of such famous Albertists as Heymericus de Campo and Johannes Hulshout of Mechelen. In its later years, the bursa housed masters like Gerardus de Harderwijck and Arnoldus Luyde de Tongeris, who were active in the writing of Albertist manuals and commentaries on Aristotle.

These manuals, some of which survived in manuscripts, others in printed editions, document the daily practice of reading Aristotle according to the processus albertistarum. The text was divided into small sections introduced by a division of the text and elucidation of its content. A number of short questions followed, in which specific problems linked to the text were discussed. It is especially in these questions that the doctrinal views ofthe Albertists came to the fore, and the arguments ofThomists and Scotists were refuted. The Thomists and Scotists employed largely the same arrangement in their own commentaries, the most important distinction being the sources they used in dividing and explaining the text of Aristotle. As a rule, in separating the different sections of the text, the Albertist used the commentaries of Albert the Great as a model, not those of Thomas Aquinas. Most of the distinctions introduced to clarify the meaning of Aristotle, as well as the solutions to the questions, also had their origin in the works of Albert.