Introduction
INTRODUCTION IN THE LECTURE ROOMS that lined the narrow, crowded streets of the "Latin quarter" of Paris, there evolved during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries an approach to learning that would dominate the intellectual world of northern Eu rope for the next three hundred years. This new method of thought, known to historians as scholasticism, held out the intoxicating possibility that, through reason and the powerful tool of Aristotelian logic, men could resolve the seeming con tradictions between faith and reason, Christian truth and Greek science, and attain insights into the nature of the world, of man, and of God. In these same years, as the teaching masters of Paris gained a corporate identity as the University ofParis, they formally adopted this new intellectual program as the basis oflearning and instruction. Subsequently, these Parisian methods became the model for dozens of universities founded in England, Spain, the Low Countries, and the Holy Roman Empire. As a result, scholasticism-with its veneration of Aristotle, cultivation oflogic, and enthusiasm for disputation and debate-became synonymous with northern European academic life for the remainder of the medieval era. Some two hundred years after the emergence of scholas ticism, another intellectual movement, known as Renaissance humanism, began to evolve in the rich and populous cities of northern Italy. Unlike the scholastics, the disciples of this new cultural movement had scant interest in Aristotelian thought, theological speculation, and sophisticated logical concepts. Spurred by a new appreciation of the classics, these Italian thinkers-in particular Petrarch (1304-1374)-warmed to the ix Introduction - Ciceronian ideal of the studia humanitatis, an approach to learn ing that stressed literary and moral rather than philosophical training.
[Show full text]