Scholarly Community At The Early University Of Paris

This book explores the individuals and ideas involved in one of the most transformative periods in higher education's history.

This study of the social, geographical and disciplinary composition of the scholarly community at the University of Paris in the early fourteenth century is based on the reconstruction of a remarkable document: the financial record of tax levied on university members in the academic year 1329–1330. Containing the names, financial level and often addresses of the majority of the masters and most prominent students, it is the single richest source for the social history of a medieval university before the late fourteenth century. After a thorough examination of the financial account, the history of such collections, and the case (a rape by a student) that precipitated legal expenses and the need for a collection, the book explores residential patterns, the relationship of students, masters and tutors, social class and levels of wealth, interaction with the royal court and the geographical background of university scholars.

Can ecstatic experiences be studied with the academic instruments of rational investigation? What kinds of religious illumination are experienced by academically minded people? And what is the specific nature of the knowledge of God that university theologians of the Middle Ages enjoyed compared with other modes of knowing God, such as rapture, prophecy, the beatific vision, or simple faith? Ecstasy in the Classroom explores the interface between academic theology and ecstatic experience in the first half of the thirteenth century, formative years in the history of the University of Paris, medieval Europe’s “fountain of knowledge.” It considers little-known texts by William of Auxerre, Philip the Chancellor, William of Auvergne, Alexander of Hales, and other theologians of this community, thus creating a group portrait of a scholarly discourse. It seeks to do three things. The first is to map and analyze the scholastic discourse about rapture and other modes of cognition in the first half of the thirteenth century. The second is to explicate the perception of the self that these modes imply: the possibility of transformation and the complex structure of the soul and its habits. The third is to read these discussions as a window on the predicaments of a newborn community of medieval professionals and thereby elucidate foundational tensions in the emergent academic culture and its social and cultural context. Juxtaposing scholastic questions with scenes of contemporary courtly romances and reading Aristotle’s Analytics alongside hagiographical anecdotes, Ecstasy in the Classroom challenges the often rigid historiographical boundaries between scholastic thought and its institutional and cultural context.

Essays exploring and problematizing the idea of an "exceptional" England within Western Europe during the long thirteenth century. The theme of this volume, "Exceptional England", follows on from that of the previous one, "England in Europe". Both respond to two long-term historiographical trends among British medievalists: to place England and Britain in a wider European context, and, conversely, to emphasise the differences between developments in England and those elsewhere, either explicitly or implicitly. The essays here, in tackling aspects of political, religious, cultural and urban history, are often concerned with shifts that transcend the "national" because they are driven by forces operating on a European, or at least a western European, scale. A number bring developments in England into conversation with those in other regions, turning not only to France, a traditional comparator, but also ranging further, using Poland, Italy, Spain and Hungary as points of comparison. Others problematise England's boundaries by considering the fates of people caught between worlds as English continental possessions shrank. If England emerges in these essays as rather less "exceptional", some of the contributions highlight its unusually rich sources, suggesting ways in which these riches might illuminate the history of Europe in the long thirteenth century more generally. Particular subjects addressed include the fortunes of the knightly class, the dynamics of episcopal election, and models of child kingship, along with new studies of Gerald of Wales and Simon de Montfort.

A greater fluidity in social relations and hierarchies was experienced across Europe in the early modern period, a consequence of the major political and religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At the same time, the universities of Europe became increasingly orientated towards serving the territorial state, guided by a humanistic approach to learning which stressed its social and political utility. It was in these contexts that the notion of the scholar as a distinct social category gained a foothold and the status of the scholarly group as a social elite was firmly established. University scholars demonstrated a great energy when characterizing themselves socially as learned men. This book investigates the significance and implications of academic self-fashioning throughout Europe in the early modern period. It describes a general and growing deliberation in the fashioning of individual, communal and categorical academic identity in this period. It explores the reasons for this growing self-consciousness among scholars, and the effects of its expression - social and political, desired and real.

The legacy of late medieval Franciscan thought is uncontested: for generations, the influence of late-13th and 14th century Franciscans on the development of modern thought has been celebrated by some and loathed by others. However, the legacy of early Franciscan thought, as it developed in the first generation of Franciscan thinkers who worked at the recently-founded University of Paris in the first half of the 13th century, is a virtually foreign concept in the relevant scholarship. The reason for this is that early Franciscans are widely regarded as mere codifiers and perpetrators of the earlier medieval, largely Augustinian, tradition, from which later Franciscans supposedly departed. In this study, leading scholars of both periods in the Franciscan intellectual tradition join forces to highlight the continuity between early and late Franciscan thinkers which is often overlooked by those who emphasize their discrepancies in terms of methodology and sources. At the same time, the contributors seek to paint a more nuanced picture of the tradition’s legacy to Western thought, highlighting aspects of it that were passed down for generations to follow as well as the extremely different contexts and ends for which originally Franciscan ideas came to be employed in later medieval and modern thought.

Nu s-au introdus date

A picture of pre-Revolutionary Paris as a structured local community based on neighbourhood ties.