The Scholastic Culture of the Middle Ages, 1000-1300

by John W. Baldwin

Now available from Waveland Press, this highly regarded essay seeks to unify medieval culture by emphasizing its common institutions. The controlling theme is scholastic. Defined in a technical sense, it is simply that manner of thinking, teaching, and writing devised in and characteristic of the medieval schools. From the "Unity of theme can best be achieved by ignoring what is irrelevant. To concentrate my efforts, I have limited attention chronologically to the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries and geographically to France and Italy, when and where, I believe, scholastic culture attained its apogee."

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medieval History, Medieval, Science, Academic, School

125 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1971

About the author

John Wesley Baldwin was Charles Homer Haskins professor of history at the Johns Hopkins University. Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1956 and joined the faculty in 1961.

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars in the literal, "it was okay" way specified by Goodreads.

It was probably a bit of a poor decision to read this book right after Ronald Witt's lovely The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy. The Scholastic Culture of the Middle Ages is not a bad book by any means, but it almost reads like a Cliff Notes version of the less interesting parts of Witt's book. That sounds harsh, and it's somewhat unfair of me: Baldwin's work is not trying to do remotely the same thing as Witt's, and is not even aiming at stating something new. It's designed more to be an introductory text on medieval scholastic culture for undergrads, a totally noble goal. And Baldwin is a great scholar: his Masters, Princes, and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter & His Circle is one of my favorite books of medieval intellectual history.

But this is just not a very inspiring book, and I'm not sure it really manages to find an effective tone or audience. For people who don't have a background in medieval history I'd imagine that it's pretty confusing, especially at the start: the 'political prologue' tries to cover all of medieval political history in about eight pages, and winds up explaining Frederick Barbarossa before the Ottonians and the Avignon papacy before the Norman Conquest. For people who do have a background in medieval history, it just doesn't add very much - even the book's final chapter, which ties together scholastic intellectual thought and cathedral architecture, is lifted largely from Erwin Panofsky. The book does get better in its second half, which focuses more closely on the rise of universities and their curricula, but I think it's an overview that's been done better elsewhere.

Again, it's not a bad book by any means, and Baldwin does occasionally shine when he has room to delve a bit more into specifics: a short section on the problem of accepting fees for university professors is a lot of fun. Introductory books on intellectual history are really, really hard to write, and I'm glad that Baldwin at least gave it a go. I just think there are better and more engaging ways in which it could have been done.

PS: this is a really shallow complaint, but I was confused as to why Baldwin skipped over the juicier bits of main protagonists' biographies. Poor Abelard's castration never gets mentioned and Siger of Brabant getting stabbed to death with a pen is only alluded to. I know the latter case is possibly apocryphal, and that neither case really matters to the story Baldwin is telling, but tossing some color into an undergrad textbook never hurt anyone.

[Judy]

Commerce led to a need for more educated merchants. "Since the early Middle Ages, society traditionally divided into three groups: the clergy, to nobility and the peasants. According to a simplistic division of labor, the world was consisted therefore into those who prayer, those who fought and those who labored." p. 31 By the end of the thirteenth century, Frenchmen was boasting: Italy has the Papacy, Germany has the Empire, but France has the university. " p. 59 It was Bernard of Chartres who said "they were puny dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants." "As suggested by Peter the Chanter, the medieval master conceived of himself as constructing an edifice of learning from the elements of reading, disputing and preaching, skills which have since become known as the scholastic method because they were fashioned in the schools. According to its fundamental meaning, the term scholasticism is simply that system of thinking, teaching, and writing produced in the medieval schools." p. 79 "Without doubt the medieval genius was expressed in theology." p. 79
(Note: Whatever was produced was considered common property, so modern ideas of plagiarism was not considered.)
"As innovators, the speculative theologians of the twelfth century were exposed to attacks from their conservative colleagues. For example, Abelard at his most radical moment proposed that since Christian theology was rational, then reasonable-minded men such as Socrates before the time of Christ must have known of the mystery of incarnation. In reply, the Victorines, to whom Christian revelation was a matter of history not of logic, protested that this was historical nonsense." p. 90
"Since the school was placed at the cathedral and the scholar was a cleric, particularly in
France, the stone and glass of churches became the popular expression of scholastic culture." see Gothic Art

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hanging out with my parents a couple of weekend's ago, and they asked, "Who do you talk about these history books with?" And I was like, "nobody." I literally don't have a single friend or acquaintence remotely interested in the subject of the history of the middle ages. No one. IN fact, I don't thing I've ever met a... midevialist? I guess that's why I like to review these books on line. It's really the only chance I get to write about them, let alone talk about them.

I picked up "The Scholastic Culture of the Middle Ages" because it's a topic I'm interested in. I find the university/monk culture of the middle ages to be both foreign and familiar. Sometimes I kind of sort of fantasize about being a monk- even though I'm jewish. Ha ha.

Baldwin writes a clean, concise summary of the subject that is accesible to anyone with a college degree. It's only 120 pages, with a list of books for further reading. Baldwin lays out the political scene (increadingly effective central authority), the setting (Paris, basically), the organization of the schools themselves and then spends a couple chapters on the cirriculum, emphasizing the impact that the discovery of Aristotle's full program of logic and philosophy in the 13th century (via the muslims).

Attempts to reconsile faith and reason occupied the best scholars of this period and their best representative was Thomas Aquinas. Scholasticism was a fairly rigorous style of intellectual inquiry and I could read more about it, though I felt the last chapter of this book- which delved into gothic architecture and style was kind of a bummer an unnecessary.

[Ak Hauck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting reading. Appreciated the flow of the book as we see the roots of education born out of need both of Church and governances. Fascinating history.

[Inna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant little book on the medieval (1000-1300 AC) community of teaching and learning.

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoying this book. Reading in preparation for my CZ project.