The medieval sophismata literature is a genre of academic argument that began to take shape by the early twelfth century, grew in importance in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and lasted to the end of the Middle Ages. This chapter offers only the briefest overview of that literature. Although some overall patterns can be discerned, the boundaries of the genre are ill-defined and seem to have been so even in the Middle Ages. Still, it is clear that sophisms were the occasion for drawing many subtle distinctions and pursuing theoretical issues in a variety of fields.

BACKGROUND

Sophismata is the plural of the Greek singular noun sophisma. Originally, the words did not have the derogatory sense of the modern English ‘sophism’ or ‘sophistry.’ Instead they referred to whatever a sophistēs or “sophist” produced. A “sophist” was anyone who dealt in “wisdom” (sophia) in a very broad sense of the term. The word was applied, for example, to Homer and to the Seven Sages of ancient Greece. By the time of Socrates, however, ‘sophist’ had come to be used especially to refer to those who used debate and rhetoric to defend their views and who offered to train others in these skills. Because they accepted payment for their services, and because some of them employed their skill to pursue unjust cases in courts of law, the term acquired the connotation of someone who uses ambiguous, deceitful and fallacious reasoning to argue a point.