Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Part I Common Themes
- Part II The Church in the Thirteenth Century
- 5 The papacy
- 6 The Albigensian Crusade and heresy
- 7 The Church and the laity
- 8 The Church and the Jews
- 9 The religious Orders
- 10 The universities and scholasticism
- Part III The Western Kingdoms
- Part IV Italy
- Part V The Mediterranean Frontiers
- Part VI The Northern and Eastern Frontiers
- Appendix Genealogical tables
- Primary sources and secondary works arranged by chapter
- Index
- Plate section
- Map 1 Europe in the thirteenth century
- Map 3 France, c. 1260
- Map 5 Germany and the western empire
- Map 6 Genoa, Venice and the Mediterranean
- Map 8 The Latin empire of Constantinople and its neighbours
- Map 10 Aragon and Anjouin the Mediterranean">
- References
10 - The universities and scholasticism
from Part II - The Church in the Thirteenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Part I Common Themes
- Part II The Church in the Thirteenth Century
- 5 The papacy
- 6 The Albigensian Crusade and heresy
- 7 The Church and the laity
- 8 The Church and the Jews
- 9 The religious Orders
- 10 The universities and scholasticism
- Part III The Western Kingdoms
- Part IV Italy
- Part V The Mediterranean Frontiers
- Part VI The Northern and Eastern Frontiers
- Appendix Genealogical tables
- Primary sources and secondary works arranged by chapter
- Index
- Plate section
- Map 1 Europe in the thirteenth century
- Map 3 France, c. 1260
- Map 5 Germany and the western empire
- Map 6 Genoa, Venice and the Mediterranean
- Map 8 The Latin empire of Constantinople and its neighbours
- Map 10 Aragon and Anjouin the Mediterranean">
- References
Summary
DURING the twelfth century, most countries of the west had experienced a true ‘scholastic revolution’. Cathedral schools of the traditional type and new schools were spreading at that time, attracting an ever increasing number of students. This growth was evidently a response to an increasing social demand for accomplished learned men, but it was also a concrete manifestation of the considerable expansion of the field of erudite culture, and the new curiosities this culture aroused. Even if the global perspectives remained those which had been established in the patristic era (subordination of profane knowledge to the more proper goal of the sacra pagina, and rejection of the ‘mechanical arts’), the very great expansion of the stock in trade of the ‘authorities’ which was then accessible (texts translated from Greek and Arabic, Roman law) gave true autonomy to the teaching of certain secular disciplines, such as law or medicine. The revival of grammar and especially the rapid success of dialectics had established a new form of pedagogy in which the compilation of ‘sentences’ and the formulation of ‘theoretical questions’ supplanted traditional exegesis. Even theology, from Anselm of Canterbury and Abelard onwards, had not escaped profound re-examination.
This rapid and spectacular growth hardly ever happened in a controlled manner. Particular historical circumstances or simple chance meant that certain centres — Paris, Bologna, Salerno, Montpellier, Oxford — became exceptionally influential. Around these cities, the first student migrations began to take shape. The Church’s monopoly over teaching, which had been the norm since the early Middle Ages, saw itself challenged once again. In the Mediterranean countries, the mainly lay schools of law (Bologna) or medicine (Salerno and Montpellier) developed outside the Church’s control.
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- Information
- The New Cambridge Medieval History , pp. 256 - 278Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
References
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