It is not the role of this entry to decide who, of Richard Southern or the supporters of the School of Chartres (N. Haring, P. Dronke, and E. Jeauneau), is correct. We can adopt a neutral attitude by saying that Chartres can be described as a group of twelfth-century masters working in various centers, who shared some interests but not others, some references but not all.
Among the Chartrian masters, the first of the new school was Bernard, master at Chartres by c. 1119 and chancellor by 1124, dying perhaps by 1126. Bernard initiated one of the fields of reflection characteristic of the Chartrian milieu: divine ideas. This theme originates in two texts that were centrally important to thinkers associated with Chartres - the Timaeus and Boethius’ Opus-cula sacra. As a Platonist, Bernard distinguished between the ideas, which are eternal, and the forms, reflections of the ideas, created by nature with the things which they specify. It was he who originated the phrase ‘‘native forms’’ (formae nativae). This reading was echoed by later authors associated with Chartres who found a similar idea in Boethius. Bernard of Chartres inspired a community of learning (to use an expression less controversial than ‘‘school’’) in which Platonic texts, notably the Timaeus, Macrobius’ Commentary on the Dream of Scipio and the Consolation of Philosophy played a key role.
Among his disciples, two were great philosophers: Gilbert of Poitiers (born c. 1080, a canon of Chartres in 1124 and chancellor there from 1126 to 1137 succeeding to Bernard) and William of Conches (c. 1080-c. 1154). William of Conches wrote glosses to Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, to Macrobius’ Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, and possibly to the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus Capella, as well as a Philosophia and a commentary on Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae based on the anonymous eleventh-century Glosule to Priscian. He wrote a Dragmaticon - largely a reworking of his Philosophia, made during his spell in the household of the Duke of Normandy, after he had left the schools.
Thierry (‘‘the Breton’’ or ‘‘of Chartres’’) became Chancellor in about 1142; previously he had taught in Chartres and almost certainly at Paris. Thierry demonstrates various interests, touching on rhetoric, logic, mathematics, and natural philosophy. His most distinctive philosophical teaching - in which both his realism and his Platonism are expressed - is his activity as commentator on Boethius’ Opuscula sacra (some of the texts published under the name of Thierry were probably written by disciples). In his exegesis of Boethius, Thierry denies proper substantial reality to individuals; he considers that the essence is common to the individuals of a same species and that it is possessed in proper by none of them. Only the images of the forms exist in matter, and they come from the real forms that exist in the divine mind. According to him, a species is one and the same form for all the subordinate individuals. In Plato, Socrates, and Cicero, Thierry sees three distinct human beings, three individuals who differ through their accidents. But in them all, there is only one nature, humanity (una natura una et eadem sit humanitas In omnibus). The plurality of individuals comes from the diversity of accidents, not from diversity of natures (see the Commentum super Boethii librum de trinitate, I, 8; Haring (1971) 64:66-82 which reflects Thierry’s teaching).
Whatever may be the status of their school, we can mention some common elements of the intellectual projects of the various concerned authors. The first common trait of the thinkers associated with Chartres is a strong commitment to the artes liberales (as distinct from theology). This is true for authors such as Bernard of Chartres, William of Conches, and Bernard Silvestris, who, unlike most of the leading teachers of their time, remained - insofar as we can judge - masters of the arts and did not venture into theology at all, and for those like Thierry of Chartres and, to an even higher extent, Gilbert, who were interested in theology and demonstrated a vivid desire to integrate the seven liberal arts into theological reflection. The second is to believe in the relevance of reading pagan texts as allegories of Christian truth. The most noticeable example of this phenomenon is the interpretation according to which Plato’s Timaeus is to be related to theology, and that Plato’s teaching in this work is consistent with the first chapters of Genesis. Thierry of Chartres is probably the thinker who went furthest in this direction, by identifying, in his early commentary on the 6 days of the creation, that which Plato called the anima mundi as the Christian Holy Spirit (Tractatus de sex dierum operibus, in Commentaries on Boethius by Thierry of Chartres and his School, ed. N. M. Haring (Toronto, 1971), 566-567: ''Plato uero in Timeo eundum spiritum mundi animam uocat [...]. Christiani uero illud idem Spiritum sanctum appellant’’). It is possible that Abelard’s Theologia summi boni is, at least in part, an answer to this attempt to relate Platonic teaching to Christian doctrine. The third is the important role given to grammar: Bernard of Chartres, William of Conches, and Bernard Silvestris greatly valued the study of grammar; however, differently from the Parisian masters and their contemporaries, they were not interested in logic. The fourth concerns their characteristic interest for natural philosophy.
The importance of these common points must not be exaggerated. We may indeed acknowledge the central role occupied by Boethius' Opuscula sacra in the thought of some of the authors associated with Chartres. Gilbert and Thierry both wrote commentaries on these texts. However, their reading is different in many ways, the most obvious being that Gilbert develops a particularist ontology on the basis of his interpretation of the Opuscula sacra, whereas Thierry defends an unsophisticated universalism. From this fundamental disagreement stem many others, on essential unity (Thierry insists against Gilbert that humanity is one for all men; when he mentions Gilbert's opinion on this point, he adds the comment quod omnino falsum est), on the explanation of individuality (Thierry defends a literal reading of Boethius, according to which the individuality of an individual is explained by accidental properties, whereas Gilbert limits the role of accidents to the epistemological distinction between two individuals of the same species, ontological individuality being caused by the fact that each individual possesses its own essence).
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