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Despite a general negative assessment of Byzantine contributions, there were periods during the eleventh century, and especially during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, even as the empire was disintegrating, that Byzantine intellectual life burgeoned forth to such an extent that scholars have labeled these periods “renaissances”. In the first half of the fifteenth century, some Byzantine scholars brought knowledge of Greek and Greek manuscripts to Italy, helping to spark what has been called the Italian renaissance. Although during these “renaissance” periods we find much greater interest in Greek literature and science, no significant works were composed that had any detectable influence. Edward Grant 2004
The Islamic Empire Cf. 2 videos about the development of : • alchemy (=chemistry, notably distillation) and • medicine in the Arabic world
Several outstanding Islamic scholars particularly well known in the West • Jabir ibn Hayyan al Azdi, known in the West asGeber (c.721-c. 815) • al Khwarizmi (c.780-c.850) • al-Kindi, known in the West as Alkindus (c.801-873) • al-Farghani, known in the West as Alfraganus (9th century) • ibn Zakariya Razi, known in the West as Rhazes or Rasis (865-925) • al-Batani/Battani, known in the West as Albategnius, Albategni or Albatenius (c.858-929) • al-Zahrawi, known in the West as Abulcasis (936-1013) • ibn al Haytham, known in the West asAlhazen(965-c.1039) • ibn Sina, known in the West asAvicenna(981-1037) • ibn Rushd, known in the West asAverroes(1126-1198) • al-Betrugi/al-Bitruji/ al-Bitrogi/al Bidrudschi, known in the West as Alpetragius (?-1204)
Before universities: cathedral schools
By the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the locus of educational activity had moved from monasteries to schools connected with cathedrals. Since cathedrals were in the major cities of dioceses, the emergence of cathedral schools marks a significant shift of education from the countryside to the cities of Western Europe. Among cathedral schools, those at Paris, Liège, Rheims, Orleans, Laon, and Chartres achieved great fame in their day. Established initially to educate secular clergy, the cathedral schools soon attracted laymen who wished to learn Latin and other subjects useful for professional purposes in medicine, law, or civil or ecclesiastical administration. Many famous teachers were associated with cathedral schools, from Gerbert of Aurillac, founder in the school at Rheims in the late tenth century, to Peter Abelard of the cathedral school of Paris in the first half of the twelfth century, who was perhaps the most famous teacher in the Middle Ages. Sandwiched between these two was Fulbert of Chartres, who is the patriarch among the masters of the great cathedral schools, and who was the first to form a school with distinctive tradition which persisted long after his death. Grant, 2002, p.26
Mary throne of Wisdom, is surrounded by wise men of the antiquity. Insead of the usual progression : • Triduum: grammar, rhetoric, logic • Quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music, one finds in the cathedral of Chartres, starting from below in the second (external) arch, on the left: Aristotle +Dialectic (= Logic)Cicero +Rhetoric Euclid +Geometry starting from below in the second arch, on the right: Aelius Donatus (known for his Latin grammar) + Grammar Ptolemaeus +Astronomy Boethius +Arithmetic In the first arch, starting from below, on the right: Pythagoras + Music
"Philosophy has two main instruments", wrotes Thierry of Chartres, "namely intellect (intellectus) and its expression. Intellect is illumined by the quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy). Its expression is the concern of the trivium(grammar, logic and rhetoric)".
Cathedral of ChartresTrivium (3 philosophers + 3 feminine figures)Donatus + GrammarAristotle + LogicCicero + RhetoricQuadrivium (4 philosophers + 4 feminine figures)Euclid + GeometryPtolemaeus + Astronomy Boethius + ArithmeticPythagoras +Music
Boethius (c. 480 – c. 525) has been called “last of the Romans, first of the scholastics”. He was instrumental in preserving and transmitting several essential Greek works in Latin. His greatest contribution was in Logic.
In the twelfth century schools, Boethius’ influence reached its peak. His works became central to the syllabus of instruction, and strongly stimulated that thoroughgoing study of logic for its own sake which becomes so prominent a hallmark of the mediaeval schools. The Opuscula Sacra taught the theologians that they did not necessarily need to fear the applications of rigorous logic to the traditional language of the Church. He made his readers hungry for more Aristotle, and prepared the welcome given to the new twelfth century translations of the Analytics and the Topics, although his own versions were scarcely known at all. From the first of the Opuscula Sacra mediaeval philosophers learnt to draw up a hierarchy of the sciences and to see the different departments of knowledge, now being pursued together in community as the newly founded universities set themselves to their common task, as an organized and coherent scheme in which the various parts could be seen to be rationally related to each other. Chadwick, Boethius, pp 252-253
The cathedral school was an evolutionary step on the path to the formation of the university, which was a wholly new institution that not only transformed the curriculum but also the faculty and its relationship to state and church. Grant 2002, p.29
the invention of the university (universitas)
Lecturing in a Medieval University by Laurentius De Voltolina (14th Century)
An example: the foundation of the university of Oxford. At the beginning of the 13th century, just as the Oxford schools were beginning to develop a sense of identity, the whole educational structure at Oxford nearly collapsed because of a murder that triggered an exodus: Three Oxford students had been sharing a house. Although the students were supposed to maintain a chaste life they had not taken a vow of chastity, and one of them had a mistress. One cold night in December 1209, after a heated argument, he killed his mistress and fled, leaving the house and Oxford far behind. The girl was local, and news of her death brought an angry mob onto the streets. The mayor and officers of Oxford panicked. They decided that action was quickly needed if they were to keep control of the town. They swept into the house, seized the other two students who lodged there, and dragged them away to be hanged in front of the mob. The masters of the Oxford schools were appalled. It wasn’t that they considered themselves above the law, rather that they expected to be left to themselves to handle a crime in which one of their students was implicated. Because every student in Oxford was a cleric in the minor orders, students should be subject to the law enforcement of the Church, not that of the town. In protest, seventy masters departed from Oxford with remarkable swiftness, taking hundreds of students with them. Many of the deserters moved to the newer, then much smaller group of schools in the quieter and presumably safer East Anglian town of Cambridge. […] Only after the king had submitted to the pope in 1213 was there an opportunity to restore the town’s schools. The papal legate, Cardinal Nicholas, was sent out to England to sort out the details of king John’s submission. He restored order in Oxford, and in 1214 set in place the structures that effectively established the university. He gave the Oxford schools a chancellor and drew up a binding charter with the town, which henceforth had to keep its legal hands off the masters and scholars. The penalties for the town were detailed and financially crippling. Rents on lodgings provided by townspeople for the students were slashed to half their previous values for the next ten years. The town was obliged to provide 52 shillings a year – the cost of building a couple of typical houses in perpetuity for the support of poor scholars. It also had to give a dinner for 100 of the poorest scholars each St Nicholas Day (6 December), probably the anniversary of the hanging. Those who took part in the killing were forced to do penance at their graves. […] The schools were granted corporate rights in a charter that the town was forced to renew each year. Technically, though Oxford was not referred to as a university until 1231, Nicholas made it such in all but name. from: Brian Clegg, The First Scientist, a life of Roger Bacon
Gregory VII (1073-1085) began the process that culminated in 1122 in the Concordat of Worms, whereby the Holy emperor agreed to give up spiritual investiture on bishops and allow free ecclesiastical elections. The process manifested by the Investiture Struggle has been appropriately called the Papal Revolution. With control over its own clergy, the papacy became an awesome, centralized, bureaucratic powerhouse, an institution in which literacy, a formidable tool in the Middle Ages, was concentrated. Grant 2001
The Papal revolution allowed the Church to create an autonomous legal order.[…] But the Papal Revolution achieved more than that. By insuring that secular authorities were excluded from ecclesiastical involvement, the Church inadvertently helped create a more positive environment for secular affairs. It enabled Western civilization to avoid the pitfalls of Caesaropapism, which had bedeviled the Byzantine empire. It had helped create secular governing entities within which reasoned discourse, without revelation, could be carried on. In time, these secular governments would assume responsibility for most of the universities of Europe and assume many functions that had previously been conducted by the Church. Grant, 2002 Despite their legal autonomy, universities in the thirteenth and fourteenth century were subject to some ecclesiastical influence and pressure, but they were also recipients of ecclesiastical benefits. Grant 2004
Another key ingredient of the 12th century Renaissance: the study of Greek and Arabic science
Among the most prominent actors of the Latin translation of Greek and Arabic texts in the Middle Ages figure:Constantine the African (c. 1020 – 1087), Adelard of Bath (c. 1080 – c. 1152) Gerard of Cremona (c. 1114–1187), Robert of Ketton, Herman of Carinthia, Michael Scot, John of Seville, Plato Tiburtinus, James of Venice, Robert of Chester, etc Gerard of Cremona was the most prolific translator in Toledo. In total, he translated at least 71 books from the Arabic language, including such originally Greek works as Ptolemy's Almagest, Archimedes’ On the Measurement of the Circle, Aristotle’s On the Heavens, and Euclid's Elements of Geometry; such originally Arabic works as al-Khwarizmi's On Algebra and Almucabala, Jabir's Elementa Astronomica, and works by al-Razi (Rhazes)
location of Toledo
Al Razi’s Compilation of Medicine Treatises, translated by Gerard of Cremona (c. 1114–1187)
Theorica Platenarum by Gerard of Cremona
In continuity with translations from Arabic, a rediscovery of Greek sources paved the way for the Renaissance spirit of the 14th/15th centuries. At the request of Thomas of Aquinas, so it is assumed (the source document is not clear), the Dominican friar William of Moerbeke (c. 1215 – 1286) undertook a complete translation of the works of Aristotle directly from the Greek or, for some portions, a revision of existing translations. The reason for the request was that many of the copies of Aristotle in Latin then in circulation had originated from Arabic whose texts had often passed through Syriac versions before being re-translated into Arabic. By the thirteenth century there was concern that the Arabic versions had distorted the original meaning of Aristotle, and that the possible influence of the rationalist Averroes could be a source of philosophical and theological errors. William of Moerbeke was the first translator of the Politics (c. 1260) into Latin, as the Politics, unlike other parts of the Aristotelian corpus, had not been translated into Arabic. William's translations were literal (de verbo in verbo), faithful to the spirit of Aristotle and without elegance. For several of William's translations, the Greek texts have since disappeared: without him the works would be lost. Source: Wikipedia In Umberto Eco’s puzzle-mystery set in the 1320s, The Name of the Rose, Eco imagines that a Benedictine monastery possesses the last remaining manuscript of the Poetics of Aristotle.
The period between 1175 and 1300 sees the birth of five large encyclopedias. Chronogically, the first of these is the De Naturis Rerum of the Benedictine abbot of Cirencester Alexander Neckam (1157-1217). The beginning of the 13rd century also coincides with the birth of two religious orders of an original, itinerant type, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, whose mobility was particularly well suited to the circulation of ideas between the universities founded during the same period. After the encyclopedia of Alexander Neckam, the three next largest encyclopedias were composed by Franciscans or Dominicans: the Opus de Natura Rerum, whose composition lasted from 1228 to 1244, was written by the Dominican Thomas de Cantimpré (1201-1272); the De Proprietatibus Rerum, composed between 1230 and 1250, was written by the Franciscan Bartholomeaus Anglicus (ca. 1190-1250), and the Speculum Majus (dealing with theology, psychology, physiology, cosmography, physics, botany, zoology, mineralogy, agriculture), finished around 1257-1258, was written by the Dominican Vincent de Beauvais. The fifth large encyclopedia of the same period was the Compendium Philosophiae, finished around 1300, whose author is unknown. Konrad von Megenberg (1309-1374) translated the encyclopedia of Thomas de Cantimpré in German; his edition includes original printed botanical illustrations.
Speculum naturale of Vincent de Beauvais (c. 1190 – 1264?) (right) followed by the Buch der Natur of Konrad von Megenberg (1309-1374)
