The 12th Century

In the century in which cities recover their ancient role as the center of economic life and monastic reform becomes more common and detailed, two intellectual worlds collide: the monastic world, where philosophy is characterized by the prevalence of Platonic-based Augustinian ideas, and the urban world, where philosophic teaching begins to assume a central place in the schools, though remaining within the framework of the liberal arts. The increasing realization that few philosophic sources were available encouraged the Latin world to look to Byzantine and Islamic culture, a process that wass facilitated both by new commercial routes and by the crusades. As a consequence of this willingness to look eastward, a new philosophic awareness was born which became autonomous and self-driven. The rise of urban schools produced a cultural moment which has been called the ‘the12th Century Renaissance’ (Haskins, 1927), and which in reality, at least during the first half of the century, had a double aspect: on one side it was of Latin origin and especially linked to Boethian philosophy, took place in the schools of dialects at Paris and was characterized by the rhetorical arts (grammar, logic, and its application to theology). A representative of this first aspect is Abelard (1079-1142), whom Bernard of Clairvaux, a key figure of monastic culture, viciously criticized. The schools of logic took shape around single masters whose teaching defined each of the schools. The second aspect, centered mainly around the schools of Chartres and St. Victor, was characterized by the enormous increase of new philosophic and scientific teaching materials, mostly translated from other languages. The school of Augustinian canons at St. Victor is known for using new philosophic sources in a mystical context centered on the themes of God and love; the masters of St. Victor, and especialy Hugh (d. 1141), the author of the Didascalicon, stress the importance of practical knowledge (the mechanical arts), due to a new conception of man’s life on earth as a path or journey of salvation. This idea, which prompted Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173) to formulate the notion of man as a microcosm, reappears even in the writings of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), who firmly adheres to the monastic cultural tradition but still develops many original concepts; while the added interest in the concreteness of human life and in the various types of mystical experience, developed by William of Saint-Thierry in the Golden Epistle (1085-1145), characterize the culture of the Cistercians. A Platonism founded on Hellenistic thought, infused with Christianity and linked closely to Stoic doctrines, philosophic notions, and a science influenced by the Arabs, define instead the school at Chartres, whose most important representatives were William of Conches (d. 1154) and Thierry of Chartres (1142-1150). The position of the Chartrians, well synthesized in the declaration of William that ‘for all things one must seek a rational explanation’ (in omnibus rationem esse quaerendam), grounded itself mainly in a close study of nature: the Timaeus of Plato was used to rationally explain the creation of the world in Genesis, and in this context, writers also inserted new scientific discoveries derived from Arabic translations (above all from medical and astronomical texts). The plurality of interests and a critical attitude define Chartrian writings, as the works of John of Salisbury (c. 1125-1180) demonstrate, whose philosophic reflection focuses on political discussions about the source of power. Among texts translated from Arabic, those on occult sciences attributed to Hermes Trismegistus form a consistent group. In connection with texts properly called ‘philosophic,’ either of classical origin, such as Asclepius, or those produced in the 12th c., the Hermetic technical writings introduced into the Latin culture the idea that man can transform nature to his own advantage in the context of the idea of salvation, in accordance with the then ongoing processes of renewal and growth, whether demographic, agricultural, or economic.

In the second half of the century, the need to reorganize knowledge emerged along with a new notion of theology, which had been rendered possible by the logical and theological works of Abelard and by the Victorine writings on the sacraments. The four books of the Sententiae of Peter Lombard (d. 1160) lay the bases for Scholastic theology by systematically collecting the Patristic doctrines relating to the Trinity, creation, incarnation, the role of the Holy Spirit, and the sacraments. The Sententiae will become the base text for teaching theology in the 13th c. Another thinker, Alan of Lille (c. 1120-1202/3), who depicted the new concepts of nature and man in his poetical works, proposed in the Regulae a theology constructed on axioms which intend to prove the truths of the faith in a non-heretical manner. Catharism, a dualist religious movement, posed in fact a difficult challenge to the theologians of the period well into the first decades of the 13th c. It disappeared only following the extermination of the Cathar culture in the region of Provence, after a military intervention significantly defined a ‘crusade’ (siege of Toledo, 1229; siege of Montségur, 1242). This is not, however, the only heresy of philosophic import to appear in this period of social and doctrinal upheaval: the writings of David of Dinant and Amalric of Bène were included as heretics in the first condemnation of the books of Aristotle (1210); while the Free Spirit movement was still around at the beginning of the 14th c.

In Islamic culture, it is the 12th c. that sees the flourishing of the great thinkers of al-Andalus: in his Regimen of the Solitary (also known as the Hermit’s Guide), Ibn Bagga (Avempace, d. 1139) developed a political interpretation of the ‘philosophic life,’ central to Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics; Ibn Tufayl (d. 1185) inaugurated the genre of the philosophical novel and suggested that the purpose of the philosophic life is the passage to ecstasy; the philosopher of Sufism, Ibn Arabi (1165-1240); and finally Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1126-1198) proposed an innovative solution to the problem of the relation between philosophy and religion, and composed the most complete and comprehensive interpretation of the works of Aristotle in the Islamic world. Even in oriental Islam, the work of interpreting and evaluating Aristotelian philosophy continued by authors who, however, since their works were not been translated, remained unknown to the Latin West: Shahrastani (1086-1153); Abu’l Barakat al-Baghdadi (d. 1164), who elaborated a nominalist logic; and Fakr al-Din al-Razi (1149/50-1209). Even Moses Maimonides (1135/38-1204), the Jewish philosopher that influenced Albert the Great and St. Thomas, had been born in al-Andalus at Cordoba. His Guide of the Perplexed combines ideas from Kalam and from philosophy in a theological synthesis whose apparent explicative disorder is in reality a renewal of a hermeneutic order based on intertextuality.