From the second half of the twelfth-century until the middle of the thirteenth century the Parisian schools gradually fashioned themselves into a universitas (university) of masters and scholars. Its teaching was organized into four different faculties: theology, canon law, medicine, and the arts, which included philosophy, that is, physics, metaphysics, and ethics. The arts faculty was deemed to provide the necessary study skills to progress to the other faculties. A structure of examinations was developed that took a student from studying the liberal arts to his bachelor of arts degree. This degree entitled him to teach these subjects. If he wished to progress to a master’s or a doctorate, he had to join one of the other three faculties. Ultimately the university was under papal control, but in practice ecclesiastical control was mostly enforced by the faculties through the masters. Importantly, all masters and students fell under canon law, enjoying ‘benefit of clergy’*.
Bologna was the university that from its inception was geared to the study of law. It was there that Roman law began to be studied again at the end of the eleventh century. The renewed interest in Roman law inspired scholars at Bologna to systematize all available ecclesiastical legal material into an overview of canon law*. Anders Winroth’s ground-breaking work has demonstrated that this text was completed in two stages, the first in 1139 or 1140, the second by 1158. This was Gratian’s Decretum. Gratian’s Decretum drew on the work of Burchard of Worms (c.925-1025) and Ivo of Chartres (c.1040-1115) and many others. It was to canon law what Peter Lombard’s Sentences were to theology. It gave canon law the structure that was required to put into practice the ruminations of the theologians in Paris. As the Decretum was used in the classroom, it accumulated layers and layers of commentaries and additional material. From 1210 onwards popes began to promulgate officially what additional material had to be taught (and used by ecclesiastical courts). Thus Gregory IX decreed in 1234 that his Decretals, an enormous collection of canonical materials, should supplement Gratian’s work.
Medicine was already being taught in Salerno at the end of the eleventh century through practical demonstrations. But in the course of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries scholars in Salerno collected a number of Hippocratic and Galenic medical treatises, which had been translated from the Arabic or Greek into Latin. They taught their students by commenting on these texts. In addition to this material they began to display an interest in Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy, which were becoming available from the second half of the twelfth century in translations from the Greek into Latin by among others James of Venice (fl. ii3os and ii4os). New and further translations of the Aristotelian corpus from the Greek were executed in the thirteenth century by for example Robert Grosseteste (C. U75-1253) and William of Moerbeke (c.1215-1286). Aristotelian texts that were translated from the Arabic were soon replaced by Latin translations from the original. Only Aristotle’s De Animalibus (‘On Animals’) remained in a translation from the Arabic (by Michael Scot, d. c.1236). As medicine declined in Salerno in the early thirteenth century, it gained a foothold in Bologna. The University of Padua followed. Montpellier had become a centre for medicine by c.1150. By 1220 Montpellier was a university and in 1289 it gained papal recognition for its teaching in law, the arts, and medicine. Medicine was also a major faculty in Paris. And it was here that medical scholars from the second half of the thirteenth century greatly enhanced the Aristotelian aspects of the subject by mining Aristotle’s scientific works for information on anatomy, psychology, physiology, physics, biology, and the effects of drugs. Peter of Abano was one of these men. He taught in Paris from before 1295 to 1306 before returning to Padua to teach medicine, philosophy, and astrology there. His book Conciliator of the Differences of the Philosophers and, Especially, the Physicians was widely used in Italy.
The University of Oxford was well known for its endeavours in the field of theology, but it was in the area of natural philosophy that it proved particularly strong. Grosseteste, who was chancellor of Oxford before becoming bishop of Lincoln in 1235, was an accomplished scientist who wrote on magnification through the use of lenses. Moving beyond Aristotle, he insisted on the importance of experiments to the study of science, relying heavily on mathematics. To his mind science buttressed by sound mathematics should be studied as part of the whole corpus of knowledge, which included theology and ethics. Roger Bacon (c.1219-92), who spent many years in Oxford and Paris, continued this kind of experimental work, contributing much to the development of optical studies. His Opus Maius (‘Greater Work’) outlines a complete programme for research in and teaching of the natural sciences. But it also includes a section on moral philosophy. As far as biblical studies were concerned, Bacon insisted on the importance of the correct translation of the original Hebrew and Greek, and to this end he composed grammars of those languages.
The availability of Latin versions of Aristotelian natural philosophy and metaphysics and Latin translations of Arabic commentaries on these works was causing problems by the early thirteenth century in Paris. It seems that theologians feared that the works could form a threat to the Christian faith in the hands of their colleagues in the arts faculty. In 1210 and in 1215 and again in 1231 the books were banned from the syllabus. But renewal of the ban must have meant the books continued to be read. In any case by 1255 almost all Aristotle’s works were made compulsory in the faculty of arts. We have already seen how they were used by medical scholars. We now need to see what theologians made of the comprehensive theory of the universe that Aristotle presented to them in contrast to their Christian outlook.
Almost as important as the works of Aristotle were the commentaries by Muslim scholars that were translated along with them. Especially important were the ideas of the Spanish Muslim philosopher Averroes (ibn Rushd, 1126-98), who commented on all Aristotle’s works. Averroes taught that there were three routes to the single truth. Revelation conveyed the uneducated to truth. Theology directed the educated, while philosophy helped highly trained minds reach truth. Philosophy was seen as the best medium for solving any contradictions that might seem to arise from travelling these different routes. In an attempt to clarify what Aristotle meant in his De Anima (‘On the Soul’), Averroes posited that what is personal to man is his passive intellect. This is man’s potential disposition for knowing things and constitutes his individual make-up. The active intellect, which is a separate heavenly intelligence, enables our minds to activate our intellectual potential. This is material or potential intellect. Man’s passive intellect dies with man; there is no personal immortality. The only immortality man has is a kind of common intellectual immortality through the material intellect that is one for all men. Obviously, these views were as at odds with Islam as with Christianity and, for that matter, Judaism. It is not surprising that Parisian Latin Averroists like Siger of Brabant (1240-84) were heavily censured for propounding that philosophy should be studied on its own terms without taking account of theology and for denying personal immortality of the soul. They also followed Averroes in claiming that matter was eternal and had not, therefore, been created out of nothing (ex nihilo). The approach of the Franciscan friar Bonaven-ture (1217 [i22i?]-74) was strongly Augustinian*, subordinating all knowledge to faith. Bonaventure discussed God in terms of light. Using Neoplatonic concepts, he posited that God as light exists in order for human beings to know him and through the operation of his divine light to know other things. With Augustine (d. 430), he deemed the original models of all creatures to be ideas in the mind of God. God creates individuals by stamping these models onto created matter. Christ, the supreme model, functions as the rational principle of creation. Bonaventure considered God, the light, to be the Good, heading the Chain of Being* made up of goodnesses in descending order according to their status of being. In this way, the whole of creation could be seen as a set of steps leading back to God, the ultimate good.
The approach of the Dominican Thomas Aquinas (1224/5-74) was much less contemplative. Aquinas received his earliest education in the arts at the new University of Naples, founded in 1224 by the Emperor Frederick II. After becoming a Dominican he learnt his Aristotle from Albert the Great (1206/7-80) in his order’s school at Cologne. He also studied in Paris and taught there in the latter half of the 1250s and again between 1269 and 1272. He composed his massive Summa Theologica (‘The Summary of Theology’) as a new theological textbook to show young students of the arts how Aristotle’s ideas could be safely absorbed into Christian (Augustinian) thinking. At the same time, he was responding to the ideas of Averroes and the work of the Aristotelian Jewish philosopher, Maimonides (1135-1204), who had fled from Muslim persecution in Spain to Egypt and whose Guide for the Perplexed had been translated into Latin by the mid-1220s. Unlike Aristotle’s unmoved first mover or first cause, Aquinas’ God is a God who is actively engaged with his creation, which he has created ex nihilo. Using Aristotelian principles as well as Neoplatonic and stoic concepts of reason, Aquinas argued that Natural Law, which human beings know through reason, teaches them how to strive for good (that is, wholeness) and avoid evil (that is, disintegration). As such they can know that God exists, and they can discover a great deal about God as a grand organizer of creation and also know much about the kind of society they need to fashion in order to fulfil their natural potential. Aquinas’ man is both social and political. Politics belong to the natural order of things. But there is, of course, a lot more to knowing God than what humans know through reason alone. Through faith Christians know that God is triune (three-in-one), became incarnate, and so on. But none of this obviates what reason teaches about nature. Man is sinful and is in desperate need of grace to fulfil the dictates of reason. But grace perfects nature; it does not destroy it. And, once matters of Christian truth, like the Eucharistic change from bread and wine to the body and blood of Christ, are known through faith, they can be most usefully explored by using the tools of reason. In short, Aquinas presented a remarkable synthesis of the full Aristotelian world view with traditional Christian teaching.
Not everyone was enamoured of Aquinas’ innovative work. There were many who were profoundly uneasy about the way Aristotelian thought was being absorbed into Christian thinking. In 1277 a group of scholars submitted a list of 219 propositions to the bishop of Paris for condemnation. The propositions included the 13 Averroist ones that had already been condemned in 1270; a number of others were ascribed to Aquinas. Aquinas’ Dominican followers managed to get the statements that were attributed to their teacher removed from the list of banned propositions in 1325 after their beloved doctor had been canonized in 1323. But it would take many more generations before Thomist* teaching started to gain the prominence it now enjoys within the Catholic Church.
In the closing years of the thirteenth century scholars like Henry of Ghent (c.1217-93) adopted a more metaphysical approach to learning and displayed greater interest in knowledge that was not empirical. The Franciscan John Duns Scotus (c.1265-1308), who taught at Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris before retiring to Cologne, emphasized God’s absolute freedom while stressing the limitations of reason. He felt that Aquinas had subjected God to the natural laws he had formulated for the natural world. Duns Scotus did not think that studying God’s creation could teach man more about God than that He had desired to create things as He did.
The Oxford Franciscan William of Ockham (c.1285-1347) ended his life in Germany under the protection of the Holy Roman Emperor, Louis of Bavaria, after his papal condemnation in 1328 over the issue of apostolic poverty. He posited that, as far as theological matters were concerned, human beings were completely reliant on faith. God has absolute power; his essence surpasses human analysis. The authority of revelation and the gift of grace allow humans to know what they believe is true. Reason plays a role only in facilitating logical inferences from the data of faith. As a radical empiricist, Ockham taught that certain scientific knowledge does not extend beyond individuals; it does not cover the relationship between individuals or the laws of nature. Scientific knowledge of these abstracts can only be probable. ‘Ockham’s razor’, the maxim that account should be taken of only what is strictly relevant to what is under investigation, refers to the fact that, when Ockham explained how phenomena worked, he rejected the need to discuss their being, essence, or purpose. Scholars have pointed to the fact that Ockham bequeathed starkly different positions to his successors. Some interpreted him as expounding a strict form of fideism that cut out reason altogether. Others concluded from his teaching that there was no discernible order in the natural world. Still others felt he had given them the licence to study natural phenomena without any interference from theology. As such Ockham is a suitable person with which to end this account of education and learning in the central Middle Ages!
World History
