Theology was considered the reallyĬrazy good stuff, as medieval theologians were sorta held up in the way we Then if they wanted more theyĬould go do medicine, law, or theology. Which is how the whole Abelard thing comes about. Basically that meant all undergrads spent their time learning to argue, Everyone had to attend the Arts school first where they would beĪsked to learn the trivium, which was comprised of rhetoric, logic, and In Paris there were four faculties: Arts, Medicine, Law, and The University of Paris, for example, described itself as “a guild of teachers and scholars” ( universitas magistrorum et scholarium). They were, more or less, a loose affiliation of scholars who would provide lessons to interested students.
![medieval church medieval church](https://britishheritage.com/uploads/article/2020/11/2381/Norwich_Cathedral_from_Cloisters_2__Norfolk__UK_-_Diliff_CC.jpg)
Medieval universities weren’t like universities now, in that they didn’t have established campuses or anything like that. Again teaching had been happening there from much earlier, and at least 1045. Second was the University of Paris, which was established in 1150. The first degree awarding institution to call itself a university was the University of Bologna established around 1088, though teaching had been going on there previously and students had been going to Bologna from at least the late tenth century. If you wanted a life where you strove for new scholarly heights, odds were that in the early medieval period you did that inside a monastery on nunnery.Īs the medieval period moved on, scholarship eventually moved out of the cloister and into cities when the medieval university was established. They also had their own scriptoria and were busy scribbling away, reading, writing, and thinking. Lest you think this is all one big sausage fest, women were also very much about that book life within nunneries. Many of them took the medical texts and used them to set up hospitals within their monasteries, as we have talked about before. They were also reading this work of course, and writing their own commentaries on it. A lot of that knowledge was, of course, pagan, because they were extremely into classical thinkers. They saw themselves as charged with transmitting knowledge. Sometimes this work took place inside what we call “scriptoria” where more than one scribe is working at a time. Monks copied and embellished manuscripts and kept impressive libraries. A late medieval Scriptoria, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, c.
#Medieval church manual
Sometimes this took the form of doing manual labour to feed themselves, but as monasteries such as Cluny rose to prominence they did more and more work in libraries as well.
![medieval church medieval church](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-X3TYpuhtevQ/V7-ON9imD9I/AAAAAAAAIfE/WeJ1kFiXhzQOd5RUAGatE7Q1ogdyzuJtACEw/s1600/IMG_2253.jpg)
Because monks took a vow to eschew idleness, they were always looking for new ways to work for the greater glory of God, or whatever.
![medieval church medieval church](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vKZ6zPbGyUw/V0TMcONi8nI/AAAAAAAAA20/xg6Mb-eU0rwte8mDZBe-0KyR5w7qG-afACLcB/s1600/Monastic%2Bporch.jpg)
Initially, in the early medieval period much learning was focused in monastaries in particular. The Church was in all actuality the medieval period’s largest benefactor of scholars of all stripes. There is a real belief on behalf of a not insignificant subset of society that the medieval Church was a shadowy organisation dedicated solely to suppressing knowledge and scientific advancement. While the specifics of this particular basic relate to him, he is tapping into a not so uncommon trope. I am looking at you, Romans.) He also feels that he should communicate these thoughts both in public and to a medieval historian. So, whew, this is a lot to unpack, but to sum up: my man here thinks that the medieval Church a) understood the intricate biological ways the body worked, and more specifically in terms of reproduction and b) intentionally suppressed that knowledge in order to own the pagans (?) who were apparently very sex positive. My lovelies, ya girl as per usual, was just trying to have a normal conversation about No Nut November in a nice way on twitter this week when I was presented with a view so wrong, so wild, and yet so unsurprising that I have been compelled to write a whole ass blog about it.