Religious Orders

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Religious Orders

• Religious Orders during the High Middle Ages
• nunneries
• monasteries
• begging orders of the Franciscans and Dominicans
  (Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican friar)
• The beguine and beghard communities (p.237)
  Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
• The heretics the Albigensian (at Albi in
  southern France), whose belief derived partly
  from Zoroastrianism, and partly from Manichaeism

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Peter Abelard

• Peter Abelard one of the most brilliant and
  controversial figures who was the first Medieval
  thinker who proclaimed a clear distinction
  between reason and faith. His major disagreement
  with his teacher William Champeaux was on the
  problem of the universals, a supreme intellectual
  issue between 1050 and 1150. The two schools of
  realism and nominalism debating on the existence
  of the universals. Abelard argued for a moderate
  realism.

3
Peter Abelard

• Abelard, Peter, in French, Pierre Abailard or
  Abélard (1079-1144), French theologian whose
  writings, particularly Theologia Christiana,
  constitute one of the more impressive attempts of
  the medieval period to use logical techniques to
  explicate Christian dogmas. He was born of a
  minor noble family in Brittany and studied logic
  and theology under some of the most notable
  teachers of the early twelfth century, including
  Roscelin, William of Champeaux, and Anselm of
  Laon.

4
Peter Abelard

• He rapidly eclipsed his teachers in logic and
  attracted students from all over Europe. His
  forays into theology were less enthusiastically
  received. Twice his views on the Trinity were
  condemned as heretical. Abelard led a dramatic
  life punctuated by bitter disputes with his
  opponents and a dangerous and celebrated love
  affair with Héloïse (c.1117). Much of this story
  is told in his autobiographical work, Historia
  calamitatum.

5
Latin Averroists

• Latin Averroists (the followers of Ibn Rushd, or
  Averroës) argued for the separation of reason and
  faith (like William of Ockham in the Late Middle
  ages) in the wake of the introduction of Arabic
  writings. Bonaventure, on the other hand, denied
  any knowledge apart from Gods Grace. Thomas
  Aquinas took a middle path, a via media,
  reconciling Christian belief with Aristotelian
  reason.

6
Thomas Aquinas

• He argued for the necessity of a secular state.

7
Thomas Aquinas

• Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274) in his masterpiece,
  Summa Theologica, he argued that God has given
  human beings two divine paths to truth reason
  and faith. Thomism reconciled the strict
  rationalism of the Latin Averroists with the
  conservative ideas of Bonaventure.

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Literature during the High Middle Ages

• Courtly Romance
• Chretien de Troyes the first poet to write
  substantially about Arthurian material, esp. the
  Arthur-Lancelot-Guinevere triangle (1100s)
• Thomas Mallory Le Morte dArthur (1485)
• A mixture of courtly and religious themes,
  including the quest to achieve honor and/or
  religious grace, the idealization of the
  aristocratic woman, and courtly love.

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Literature during the High Middle Ages

• After 1150 courtly romances became popular.
  Romances were long narratives of the chivalric
  and sentimental adventures of knights and ladies.
  By 1300, Italy brought forth the greatest
  literary figure of the High Middle Ages, Dante
  Alighieri (1265-1321) and his masterpiece, Divine
  Comedy.
• The stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the
  Round Table were written in the vernacular.

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Dante
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Dante

• Dante Alighieri, La Commedia Divina (The Divine
  Comedy)
• Perhaps the highest achievement of medieval
  literature
• Religious allegory describing both relgious
  beliefs and medieval culture