Schools and universities

Medieval philosophical literature is closely associated with medieval schools and universities as well as with the material and psychological conditions prevailing at these institutions. The economic prosperity of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which is manifest in the rise of towns and the specialisation of labour, also had far-ranging repercussions in the world of learning. Learning was no longer confined to monasteries and monastic schools, but a new guild of professional intellectuals was created, which developed new intellectual aspirations. Such men were no longer satisfied with the traditional concept of Christian wisdom but wanted to pursue the whole domain of human learning, and they resolutely set out to recover and develop the intellectual heritage of antiquity.

Even in the very early Middle Ages, schools clustered around ecclesiastical centres, especially the chapters of episcopal sees, which throughout the Middle Ages provided the most important financial support for learning. Scholars shared the privileges of clergy although they were not required to take higher orders; in fact their clerical status was the best way of securing a certain amount of protection and independence against local authorities in surroundings which for the most part were hostile and brutal.

This description is especially appropriate for the situation in one of the centres of the twelfth-century intellectual expansion, the central part of France, between the Loire and the Rhine. Here schools flourished and decayed within short spans of time, often due to the presence or absence of one especially gifted teacher; Laon, Rheims, Melun, and Chartres are but a few examples of such schools.