THE TWELFTH-CENTURY RENAISSANCE
Universities, Dialectic, Transmission, Models, Refinement,
and Self
Dr Simon Parsons, East Wing C8B,
[email protected] CLASSICAL REBIRTH
CLASSICAL REBIRTH
CLASSICAL REBIRTH
ANIMULA VAGULA, BLANDULA, Little soul, gentle and wandering,
you are the guest and companion
HOSPES COMESQUE CORPORIS, of the body, now you dwell
QUAE NUNC ABIDIS IN LOCA diminished in pallid places, rigid,
stark and bare; there you will
PALLIDULA, RIGIDA, NUDULA, abandon the play to which you
have become accustomed.
NEC, UT SOLES DABES JOCOS...
The emperor Hadrian, death
poem
RENAISSANCES
Jakob Burckhardt, Die
Kultur der Renaissance in
Italien (1860)
Charles Homer Haskins, The
Renaissance of the Twelfth
Century (1927)
Walter Ullmann, The
Carolingian Renaissance and
the Idea of Kingship (1969)
JOHN OF SALISBURY, METALOGICON (1159)
‘Bernard of Chartres used to say that
we are like dwarfs perched on the
shoulders of giants, and thus we are
able to see more and farther than the
latter. And this is not at all because of
the acuteness of our sight or the stature
of our body, but because we are
carried aloft and elevated by the
magnitude of the giants.’
Right: Cathedral Notre Dame de Chartres,12th c.
STRUCTURE
Universities (schools, outside of monasteries, into organised and unionised
bodies of learning & teaching particular curricula)
Dialectic (interrogation which pits thesis against antithesis, in iterations, until a
logically stable answer is derived)
Transmission (transfer of learning from Arabic and Hebrew worlds to the
Christian scholastic one)
Models (the idea of types: types of ‘lifestyle’ under god, types of identity,
types of virtue/vice, types of quality)
Refinement (refinement of these types towards an ideal or perfected form,
driving shifts in architecture, law, and administration)
Self (internal self is knowable and discoverable, and provides a likely venue
for the unveiling of God’s Creation)
UNIVERSITIES
TRIVIUM AND QUADRIVIUM
Grammar
Logic
Rhetoric
Master of Arts
Arithmetic Magister artium
Geometry
Music
Astronomy
LAW
Civil (Roman) Law
Corpus Iuris Civilis Doctor of both laws
(Doctor utriusque iuris)
Canon Law
Decretum
BOLOGNA AND PARIS
Bologna (1088) —> charter 1158
universitas scholarium
Paris (early 12th c.) —> charter 1200
universitas magistrum
UNIVERSITIES IN EUROPE
Universities as state
foundations:
• Salamanca (1218 King
Alfonso IX of León)
• Naples (1224 Emperor
Frederick II)
• Prague (1347 Emperor
Charles IV)
• Kraków (1364 King
Casimir III of Poland)
• Heidelberg (1386 Rupert
I Elector Palatine)
BOOKS FOR
STUDENTS: GOTHIC
SCRIPT AND THE
‘PECIA’ SYSTEM
DIALECTIC
THESIS ANTITHESIS
SYNTHESIS
LOGIC, THEOLOGY, AND DIALECTIC
Anselm of Laon (-1117)
William of Champeaux (1070-1121)
Ivo of Chartres (1040-1115)
Peter Abelard (c. 1080-1142)
Hugh of Saint-Victor (1096-1141)
Peter Lombard (1096-1160) : Sentences
and eventually
Thomas Aquinas (1224-1275) wrote so so so much and it’s so so so dry
(but clever)
THE DISCIPLINES
FLORENCE, THE TRIUMPH OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, SANTA MARIA NOVELLA, CAPPELLONE DEGLI
SPAGNOLI, 1364-7
AL-ANDALUS
Reconciling reason and faith in the 11th and 12th
centuries
Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980-1037) Canon of Medicine
Avicebron (Solomon Ibn Gabrirol, 1021-1070)
Maimonides (Moses ben Maimum, 1135-1204)
Averroës (Ibn Rushd, 1125-1198) commentaries on Aristotle
Translations of Arabic mathematical works
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (ca. 825), translated in Latin in
1143 (Decimal System and Algebra)
Ishaq ibn Hunayn (ca. 800), translated all of Euclid into Arabic and
was translated into Latin in the twelfth century
Leonardo Fibonacci (1170-1250), Liber Abaci (Arabic numerals)
ARCHITECTURE
EQUESTRIAN STATUES
MODELS
PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS
Aristotle had been pretty keen on this, as it is a way of assessing the
existence of observed phenomenon
Fundamentally existential and epistemological in nature (what exists
and how can I know it through experience)
Aristotle recently rediscovered (when exactly depends on text)
through translations from Boethius, and produced in Latin from c.
1050-1200.
Super exciting thing to be thinking with in 12th c.
COWNESS?
PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS
Nominalism
These three cows are alike only in that people all call them ‘cows’
Realism
These three cows are manifestations of a pre-existing ‘cowness’ which is
embodied in physical things
Conceptualism
The concept of ‘cowness’ is an abstraction of human thought from
experience of real ‘cows’.
PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS
Nominalism
These three cows are alike only in that people all call them ‘cows’
Realism
These three cows are manifestations of a pre-existing ‘cowness’ which is
embodied in physical things
Conceptualism
The concept of ‘cowness’ is an abstraction of human thought from
experience of real ‘cows’.
SURPRISE ABELARD: Realism-Conceptualism
The concept of ‘cowness’ is an abstraction from human thought, but human
thought is ‘real’ because God, therefore so is ‘cowness’, which is embodied
in physical ‘cows’
PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS
Nominalism
These three Gods are alike only in that people all call them ‘Gods’
(heretical?)
Realism
These three Gods are manifestations of a pre-existing ‘divinity’ which is
embodied in physical things
Conceptualism
The concept of ‘divinity’ is an abstraction of human thought from experience
of real ‘God’.
SURPRISE ABELARD: Realism-Conceptualism
The concept of ‘divinity’ is an abstraction from human thought, but human
thought is ‘real’ because God, therefore so is ‘divinity’, which is embodied in
physical ‘God’
TRINITY
Thesis: The question, ‘is God the Son different from the Holy Spirit’
should be resolved in the same way as ‘is cow A different from cow B’.
Antithesis: God is indivisible, and so to distinguish between the parts of
the Trinity is impossible.
Synthesis: the Trinity are essentially the same (God-ness), but differ in
terms of attributes
TYPES & ROLES
Monk
Philosopher
Virgin
Knight
King
Bishop
Mendicant
laicus
REFINEMENT
We can see the administrative efforts of governments to control and
universalise their legal and administrative systems as a function of the
desire to perfect the role of the ‘perfect’ clerical administrator
What does the ‘perfect’ king do – know everything?
John of Salisbury in England (Polycraticus), Geoffrey of Viterbo in
Germany (Speculum regum), Vincent of Beauvais (De Eruditione
Filiorum Nobilium 'The Education of Noble Children') and Thomas
Aquinas (De regno) in France
SELF
‘[his teacher has beat him for being slow…] and being grieved to the
heart by the very savage punishment inflicted on my tender body,
troubled, agitated and weeping with sorrow, she said: " You shall
never become a cleric, nor endure such suffering for the sake of
learning." At that I, looking at her reproachfully, replied: " If I had to
die on the spot, I would not give up learning from books and
becoming a cleric."
Guibert of Nogent, Monodiae (his autobiography), early 12th century.
