THEOLOGY
Until the Protestant Reformation training in theology meant the Christian theology of the Catholic Church. Theology, literally “the study of gods,” in western Europe referred to the one god, the Christian God. In the theology of Saint Augustine (354-430) God is a distant, omniscient power, and this church father dominated much of religious thought during the Renaissance. Entire faculties of universities worked on his texts, and an 11-volume opus was published in Antwerp in 1577. Saint Augustine’s concepts of predestination and grace were two of the subjects debated in schools of theology. The theological works of Saint Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) were promoted by members of his order, the Dominicans (literally dogs of God). Saint Thomas’s God was more anthropomorphic than that of Saint Augustine; by the time of the Renaissance God was visualized as a wise old man. Thomism, as his theology was called, served to formulate many decrees at the Council of Trent (1545-63, several separate meetings). Theological studies included the subjects of the seven sacraments, the Holy Trinity, biblical traditions, prayer, purgatory, and the place of miracles in church history. Most humanists criticized the cerebral, dialectical method of theological dispute, in which all conclusions were based on predetermined authority. Humanists, on the other hand, advocated the rhetorical approach to teaching and debate,
Education
Which could move the emotions of listeners if effective. Desiderius Erasmus was quite outspoken against the Scholastic disputations by which theology was being taught. In his Moriae encomium (Praise of folly 1511), Erasmus strongly criticized the labyrinthine expostulations of theologians, complaining that not even the apostles could follow such arguments.
MEDICINE
Around 1328 Emperor Frederick II established a university in Padua, which became the most famous medical school of the Renaissance. Its students included several of the individuals discussed in chapter 10, Science and Medicine. Some universities had a separate school of medicine; in others the medical faculty shared a facility with liberal arts. Medical schools graduated physicians, who supposedly understood the nature of illnesses and the theoretical basis of treatments and were thus prepared to treat internal ailments. Although surgeons did not attend the university, but were trained in an apprenticeship system of hands-on experience, famous surgeons could become professors of medicine. Midwives, of course, received no formal training and developed expertise through instruction by other midwives, often their mother or aunt. The university schooling of physicians during the Renaissance directly benefited from humanistic study of the ancient Greek medical texts of Galen and Hippocrates. Galen’s works had nearly 600 printings in the 16th century, which generated a multitude of textbooks for medical students. Not only the texts themselves provided instruction; so also did the humanistic criticism of certain points of anatomy. Dissections of human cadavers, mostly of criminals condemned to death, were of paramount importance in the training of young physicians. This pedagogical tool had been introduced in European medical schools during the 14th century. Andreas Vesalius (1514-64), a Flemish physician trained in Paris, entered the faculty of the Padua school of medicine in 1537. His extensively illustrated anatomical handbook De humani corporis fabrica (On the structure of the human body, 1543) revolutionized the study of anatomy.
LAW
As urban societies spread throughout western Europe during the 11th and 12th centuries and trade increased during the Crusades, the secular worlds of commerce and politics demanded new systems of legal and political administration. Culture in general became more secular, though religion continued to play a major role in daily life. The 12th century, in fact, experienced a “renaissance” in classical studies that many scholars consider more significant than that of the 15th and 16th centuries. The study of canon (ecclesiastical) law was revived along with a new focus on Roman (civil) law. During the Middle Ages legal scholars at the University of Bologna studied the sources for both canon and civil law, preparing glosses (commentaries). They debated questions that involved current legal affairs as well as textual problems. Law students were expected to do research on the questions at hand and participate in the debates. Gradually jurists in towns across Italy wrote books of statutes codifying the law, a system that came to be called common law in England. In addition, some courts and towns created statute books of their own local laws; law students in the Renaissance had to consider these additional laws in their deliberations. Training in the law was complicated because areas of western Europe operated under different rules of law. Unlike medical training, which was relatively universal because physical maladies had common treatments, legal training necessitated a knowledge of regional interpretations and local precedents.
The system of legal education that developed during the Middle Ages continued to be used into the Renaissance, becoming more complicated as more laws were recorded in writing. Universities that had not previously included legal training in the curriculum established law schools, and chairs in law were funded by monarchs such as Henry VIII (1491-1547). Law students had to learn how to document legal procedures and contracts, which required the skill of a notary. Scribes who wrote letters and other simple texts were not qualified for legal writing. Notaries became an important asset for law schools and formed their own guilds. Several Italian humanists, including Petrarch (1304-74), Salutati, and Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72), were trained in law and members of such a guild. They
Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe
First learned to interpret classical texts through the standard sources of Roman law.
World History
