Scholasticism: Illuminating the Way
By Tyler Batstone
The Middle Ages is often characterized by modern media, as a savage and unintelligent period that required the period known as the Renaissance to save the world from its Dark Age. However, there were many “Renaissances” during the medieval period that sought to further the knowledge and education of contemporary scholars, theologians, alchemists, and philosophers. This knowledge not only came from the translated manuscripts of classical thinkers but also from the great minds of Muslim and Jewish intellectuals during the Golden Age of Islam and the Golden Age of Jewish Culture in Al Andalus respectively. This spread of knowledge led to an intellectual movement called Scholasticism that saw the rise of educational universities and the creation of the first few monastic orders in the Middle Ages. From the Carolingian Renaissance to Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, when we examine Scholasticism, we see where magic meets science and how the path to enlightenment starts by looking up at the stars in the sky.
Origins in Europe:
Scholasticism originally began at the height of the Carolingian Empire when Emperor Charlemagne began to create schools in Christian abbeys to continue the Roman tradition of sponsoring education and the arts. At the time, the knowledge of the Greeks and the Romans was scarce due to the dissolution of the Roman Empire after the last emperor was deposed. Leading up to that, much of the Roman funds were pulled from various institutions that supported education and the arts due to the Empire’s over-expansion which had begun to slowly implode. It wasn’t until the reforms of the Carolingians that the subjects of literature, architecture, music, and philosophy had once again become the center focus of culture in Western Europe. The leading scholars at this time were Irish monks who had been spending the better half of the past 200 years on missionary missions to the divided Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England to convert the pagan kings and communities to Christianity. The church of Ireland had been one of the strongest focal points of education and literature in the Early Middle Ages, their monastic lifestyles allowed them to hone in on their skills of scholarship, illumination, and literacy. When Emperor Charlemagne of the Carolingian Empire summoned these Irish monks to his court in Aachen he was so astounded by their thirst for knowledge and intellect, that he bade them to study at the abbeys he had constructed throughout Frankia. One of these monks, John Scotus Eriugena, was indeed one of the founders of the scholasticism movement.
The Golden Age of Islam:
In the Middle East, the Golden Age of Islam was burning bright with the knowledge of many Muslim scholars, alchemists, theologians, juristic intellectuals, philosophers, mathematicians, poets, musicians, and artists. The Quran places a large emphasis on educational betterment and the acquisition of science which is what led to the employment and patronage of many scholars throughout the territory of the Umayyad Caliphate. Through the Islamic conquests of the Early Middle Ages, many manuscripts of Antiquity were recovered and had begun to be translated into Arabic in learning centers across the territory. The most popular and famous of these learning centers was the House of Wisdom, the largest public library and scholastic center in the Islamic world. Located in Baghdad during the reign of the Abbasid Caliphate, the library contained many books and manuscripts of rare Eastern knowledge and was eventually converted into a public center for education and learning. When their expansion reached Iberia and the Visigothic kingdom of Hispania was conquered, the Arab and Muslim territory of Al-Anadalus became a haven for intellectual and scholastic learning. This made cities like Toledo and Córdoba the centers of knowledge in the medieval world and had attracted many Jewish theologians and scholars who helped spread more information about astronomy and mathematics.
Al-Andalus & The Golden Age of Jewish Culture:
In Al-Andalus, the Golden Age of Jewish Culture had contributed significantly to the spread of education and scholarship under the protection of Muslim rule. This protection allowed the Jews to harmonize in many urban societies across the Iberian Peninsula which led to the prosperity of Jewish knowledge to flow and mingle with Muslim enlightenment. Among the many spheres of knowledge such as astronomy, mathematics, and science, Jewish philosophy was the most treasured and valuable form of knowledge. It impacted the very lifestyles that Jews practiced and became an important cultural focal point within Jewish society in the Muslim controlled region of Al-Andalus. Many Jewish physicians were popular at noble and royal courts, such as the famous Hasdai ibn Shaprut who acted as both physician and diplomat for Umayyad Emir Abd al-Rahman III of Córdoba. When the Iberian Crusades of the Reconquista reached the city of Toledo in 1085 AD, the Toledo school of Translators helped translate these Arabic and Hebrew copies of classical manuscripts as well as manuscripts of Muslim and Jewish enlightenment into medieval Latin, helping spread more knowledge and information from Antiquity throughout Europe.
Universities & Monastic Orders:
During the High Middle Ages, the transfer of knowledge between Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars created such a wealth of information that the creation of institutional universities could now be possible. The universities of the High Middle Ages were seen as the successors to the monastic educational centers of the Early Middle Ages and following the Gregorian Reforms, they became the premier route for gaining ecclesiastical renown. The students that went to these universities often came from middle class or noble backgrounds due to the prestige associated with having an education, but it was not unnatural for the son of a tradesman to be admitted into an institution such as the university. Medieval universities taught curriculum centered around the seven liberal arts of logic, arithmetic, rhetoric, grammar, geometry, astronomy, and music. After a period of study, students were able to attain a Bachelor of Arts after four years, a Master of Arts after six years, and if they decided to continue their education further at the university, they could resume their studies further through the subjects of theology, law, and medicine.
Alongside the rise of Universities, the Monasteries and Monastic Orders of western Europe grew in popularity as the scholastic movement swept across the masses, inspiring many religious and independent thinkers such as the Dominican and Franciscan Orders respectively. By the leadership of Bonaventure, an Italian bishop and later canonized saint, the Franciscans mainly followed the teachings of their founder Francis of Assi as well as St. Augustine of Hippo. Bonaventure himself was a stout follower of Augustinian thought of theology and began to implement the works of Plato and Neoplatonism itself into the order’s rhetoric. Oppositely, the Dominican Order placed more emphasis on Aristotelian thought rather than Plato and became the favored doctrine of great scholastic thinkers such as St. Thomas Aquinas.
High Scholasticism:
At the height of the Scholastic period, a Dominican friar named Thomas Aquinas employed Aristotelian thought and classical Greek ideas of rationalism and reasoning to Christian doctrine. His literary masterpiece, Summa Theologica, not only served as a compendium of all church teachings but the book also utilized the many Muslim, Jewish, Greco-Roman, and Patristic teachings, harmonizing the history of Abrahamic religions and the scholastic legacy of the medieval world’s Antiquity past. The book itself was split into three parts: Theology, Ethics, and Christ, and analyzed religious concepts of law, virtue, sin, and Aristotelian thought. Aquinas also presents the culmination of the scholastic effort through utilizing and referencing many key classical and medieval (both western and eastern) thinkers and scholars from around the world such as Al-Ghazali, John Scotus Eriugena, Aristotle, Plato, Paul the Apostle, and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite to name a few.
In Theology, Aquinas analyzes the concept of God’s governance over the world and using Areopagite teachings, recognizes that while humanity is entitled to their freedom mortally, their freedom is only allowed because God willed it so. In doing so, Aquinas believed that it is in human reasoning itself that can explain God’s existence in our universe but also stated that the timeline of our universe cannot be solved by the same method. Moving onto Ethics, Aquinas analyzes the concept of sin and how it factors into defining the moral law of the divine and utilizes previous commentary by Aristotle to define morality and its habitual evolution. Using this train of thought, Aquinas then concludes that while God may govern all things, neither he nor Satan do not cause sin but rather it is humanity that holds power over it since Adam’s original sin. Aquinas believes that it is through grace, love, and faith of God that allows humanity to shed their sin to become virtuous beings that strive for moral perfection and the betterment of their intellect to be closer to God.
Concerning the concept of law, Aquinas utilizes the term Natural Law to describe God’s law that governs the universe and contrasts it with mortal or human law which while aims to punish humans for acts of evil, it cannot wholly destroy evil. On the topic of Christ, Aquinas delves into the century-old debate about the humanity contrasted with the divinity of Christ and how the relationship between the two allows Jesus to be the redeemer of the world’s sins due to his humanity. In turn, the humanity of Christ is meant to be the personification of human perfection as Aquinas writes, which is the reason why followers of the Christian religion are meant to strive and emulate their life after Christ and his teachings. In contrast to God, who would punish those outright for their sins, Christ intercedes on humanity’s behalf and allows the chance for redemption of humankind through living an exemplary life of Christian morals and values.
Legacy:
The intellectual movement of Scholasticism of the Middle Ages is a testament to the period’s continuation of educational and spiritual enlightenment since Antiquity. Not only did it carry through many ideas of science, logic, and theology but it also served as the connective bridge between the knowledge of Antiquity and our modern-day concepts of math, science, philosophy, and the arts. Furthermore, there was a great effort to spread these concepts in the Middle Ages as well as a larger cooperative network between many different scholars who all came from very different cultural and ethnic backgrounds from one another. These cooperative scholars also came from different religious backgrounds as well and as we see in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, that many different ideas and concepts of knowledge from Islam and Judaism were not only utilized but featured in a text that whose main goal was to try and rationalize the concept of Christ between his humanity and divinity. Such cooperation was also seen during the many pauses of war during the Iberian Crusade between Christian, Muslim, and Jewish scholars. The creation of monastic orders and universities were also directly influenced by these relationships due to the wealth of new knowledge that made its way into Europe during the High Middle Ages from the Reconquista of Iberia. Despite the world’s best efforts to paint the Middle Ages as time of ignorance and a “Dark Age” for science and culture, when you closely examine the evidence, material, and stories of Scholasticism in the Middle Ages, we learn about a wider and more connected world that not only valued knowledge but engaged one another constantly through cultural exchange to provide spiritual and intellectual betterment. Over the span of hundreds of years, medieval scholars sought to light a way for those of their world who pursued enlightenment in Scholasticism and through the titular cooperation, collaboration, and inspiration from one another, they were able to provide the groundwork for the modern understanding of both our material and immaterial world.