Medieval Philosophy profoundly challenges one’s ability to craft a simple synopsis or brief introduction.  What is medieval philosophy?  When is the medieval period?  Some time between antiquity and modernity?  Where did it take place?  Intellectual centers were declining and being invented anew, some were in “pagan” lands, some in the Islamic world, and some in Jewish and Christian lands.  Were these different centers all to be considered producing one medieval period? 

Thus, this introduction will make gross summations and sacrifice detail to the aim of an initial characterization:

When?  “Medieval” comes from the Latin medium aevum, “middle age,” thus, Medieval Philosophy will refer to the philosophic work done in the “Middle Ages,” from the end of the Roman Empire to the rise of the Renaissance, that is, roughly from the 5th to the 15th centuries (although late antique philosophy, post the death of Aristotle in 322 b.c.e, is important to its study and philosophy conducted in the medieval style persisted into the late 17th c. with some scholars including oft-considered modern philosophers, e.g. Descartes, in its reign).

What?  A rough declaration about medieval philosophy can say that it was one half influenced by Plato and Platonists and the other half by Aristotle and Aristotelians.  These parts were then intellectually synthesized, necessarily distorting “pure” Platonic and Aristotelian arguments, especially as they were mixed with esoteric thought (namely Hermeticism, Gnosticism, and the philosophical commentary born from the Chaldaean Oracles*) and then conforming the yield to a monotheistic conceptual framework.  This foundation yielded a remarkably complex world of thought. 

Medieval philosophy is primarily religious thought, but in talking about religion through this history, few topics are left unaltered.  For instance, one cannot think about religion without considering cosmological and teleological questions, metaphysical and ontological questions about being and reality, human nature, and those about the self and its relation to the other, thus, ethical, social, and political questions.  And, when one thinks about any of these, one cannot escape logical and epistemological questions, too. 

Where?  The intellectual loci of course centered on Athens, Rome, Paris, and Alexandria, but also included London, Canterbury, Oxford, Hippo, Carthage, Jerusalem, Constantinople, Chalcaedon, Naples, Ravenna, Florence, Louvain, Cologne, and many more cities.  Discussing where, it is perhaps easiest to consider location as ideological regions, those lands that became Christian, Jewish, and Islamic, spreading across Europe and North Africa. 

We can see already the breadth of the study we are to undertake: philosophy spanning over and beyond a whole continent, roughly ten centuries, and three monotheistic traditions and their influence by numerous veins of pagan culture, religion, and spirituality.

Perhaps the greater question as we embark on our study of Medieval Philosophy is why this vast and rich historical period in philosophy is and has been so neglected? 

Most philosophy programs and texts skip from Aristotle to Descartes, that is from 322 b.c.e. to 1596 c.e..  The presumption is often that, in between, was nothing but the “Dark Ages,” those times in which nothing of philosophic merit happened.  The term “medieval” itself is a derogatory term, indicating something primitive or out of date; it was a name for the period invented in the 15th c. (1469) by the Italian humanist and pope’s librarian, Giovanni Andrea to differentiate the humanists’ rebirth (renascentia) of the better, illustrious and glowing ancient Greek and Roman culture, from the “middle” or intervening “dark ages,” the gloomy years of barbarism.  The designation of their “modern times” became synonymous with cultural rehabilitation and revolution.  Many modern thinkers excluded this period as barbarism and its philosophic work by saying it is nothing but theology; some rejected the period as monotonous and nothing but linguistic obsession (i.e. the Scholastics) with rethinking already given content; and some dismissed it as full of mere misunderstandings of or only having minor commentaries on the Greeks. 

While the late 1800’s brought a wealth of rigorous study into medieval intellectual history and philosophy, demonstrating the richness and originality of medieval thought, many scholars and the profession of philosophy continue to routinely neglect its serious study. 

“Today, in our highly developed societies, we take a complex and ambivalent interest in the Middle Ages, but centuries of scorn lie just below the surface.  We view the Middle Ages as primitive, attractive, perhaps, like African art but definitely barbarous, a source of perverse pleasure and a way of revisiting our origins” (Jacques le Goff, The Medieval Imagination, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), 19).

e Note, from above g

* :  Hermeticism is a religious-philosophical dialogic system attributed to the Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus (1600’s scholarship dates it ca. 200 b.c.e – 200 c.e) and advocates the One as ultimate source in a tripartite system and entails a mystical doctrine concerning alchemy, astrology, and theurgy.  Gnosticism (gnosis, knowledge), attributed to Alexandria, Athens, Rome, and the greater Indian empires with wide affinities from Judaism to Buddhism, promises salvation through mystical knowledge via a pantheistic, idealist, and dualistic truth of divine union versus entrapment in the degradation of matter. Equally obscure are the origins of the surviving fragments of the Chaldean Oracles, the second century Hellenistic commentary on an unknown mystical poem attributed to the unknown Zoroaster.

A Brief Historical Sketch:

The Medieval period is typically divided in three parts: Early Middle Ages (476-1000, which includes Late Antiquity), High Middle Ages (1000-1300), and Late Middle Ages (ca. 1300-1453). 

I) Late Antiquity (322 b.c.e.-480 c.e.) and the Early Middle Ages (476-1000):

The Roman Empire:  The Hellenistic Period:

Roughly between Aristotle (post-322 b.c.e) and Boethius (pre-480 c.e.). 

The 2nd c. saw the Roman Empire at its greatest size and power, with the 3rd and 4th c. seeing its decline.  Alexander the Great (d. 323 b.c.e.) led the Greek armies against the Persian Empire and established Greek Kingdoms throughout Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor.  The Greeks called themselves “Hellenes,” thus the name we call the period by: the Hellenistic.  This period was Greek, but distinct from Classical Greek culture; Greek was a second language for most new-Hellenes, and Alexandria became a new locus of Greek education and culture, especially for science, mathematics, medicine, and philosophy, while Athens remained an educational and cultural center for philosophy and rhetoric.  During this time, educated Romans knew Greek and exerted much energy (especially Cicero, Lucretius, and Seneca) translating and commenting on Greek philosophy in Latin, while many other thinkers simply wrote still in Greek (e.g., Epictetus, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, and Plotinus).

The Two “Roman Empires:”

The empire was too large to be singularly controlled, extending as it did from England to North Africa to Syria, its eastern half speaking Greek, its western half speaking Latin.  Many regions were invaded or infiltrated by outsiders, the “barbarians” of the Goths, Vandals, Huns, Franks, etc.  The Emperor Diocletian divided the empire in 286 c.e. into two halves: the Eastern and Western [some histories attribute the split to Constantine and others to the death of Emperor Theodosius I in 395], thus, the middle ages had two “Roman Empires” beginning from the 3rd c., the Eastern one in Constantinople (Greek Orthodox) and another in the West declared by Rome and eventually housed in Germany (Latin Catholic). 

The Eastern Roman Empire:  The Byzantine Empire:

The Western Roman Empire: 

Rise of Christianity and the Re-Conquest by the Eastern Empire of the Western:

This period is remarkable for its rise and spread of Christianity.  In the Western part of the empire, amidst harsh living conditions and no sense of security, Christianity proved the only thread of unity amongst people otherwise divided and quickly combative.  It also promised people who lived in constant wariness a hope of everlasting peace. 

Constantine, in the East, converted to Christianity, which led many to follow suit.  Including Clovis (d.511), in the West, the Barbarian King of the Franks, who converted and used Christianity as a way of converting the people whose territories he took over (then called the Merovingian Dynasty).  Christianity also provided him an excuse for his constant invasion: holy war.

In 533 c.e., from Constantinople [Eastern/Byzantine Empire], Roman armies led by Emperor Justinian I (483-565, ruled 527-565) pushed west to reclaim their former lands.  The Byzantium warriors from Constantinople surge west to Rome, reconquering lands, leaving immense bloodshed in its wake.  His reign saw the rewriting of Roman law, a revival of Byzantine culture, and much building, including the greatest cathedral in Constantinople.  He was largely, albeit temporarily successful in his reunion of the Empire.  By 542 c.e., his armies had reclaimed most of the Mediterranean, however, at the same time came the bubonic plague.  The disease was fierce and deadly.  The plague infected one half of the population of Constantinople (it is approximated that 100 million were killed), including the emperor (but, he survived, no matter how scarred both physically and mentally, the disease making him even more ruthless).  Following the plague came starvation and a general halting of all work and everyday activity.  In 542 the plague mostly died (future centuries had further bouts), but it took centuries to rebuild and repopulate.  With the death of Justinian I, the empire could not continue to sustain the lands they had recaptured.  The troops began to withdraw, bringing back a deeper darkness to start the 7th c.

Trade ceased, architectural innovation ceased, education was nil, the populations were sparse, culture was sparser.  Myth and superstition took over.  The Catholic Church condemned these stories, but the villagers paid little heed.  Most of life was misery; half of all children died; most children who lived lost at least one parent before they became adults.  The only unity at this time was found in the Church; the Churches were the only centers of commerce, light, and diversion.

Without the monks, we would have had almost no ancient works preserved.  There was no real education or literacy outside of the clergy and books were being burned constantly when labeled as heretical.  Jews in Alexandria were translating the Jewish Scriptures into Greek, and the New Testament was written in Greek, as well.  Thus, Christianity spread first through the Greek-speaking residents, then later through the Latin speakers.  Its literature (what Christians call the Old and New Testaments, and other religious writing from the 1st to 6th c., called “Patristic” literature, that is, “of the Fathers [patres] of the Church”) accounts for most of the volume of work of this period.  Some of the most notable patristic thinkers included (Greek writers) Athanasius, Chrysostom, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, (Latin writers) Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great. 

Central patristic debates: Trinitarian and Christological controversies.  Whether Jesus was both God and man, whether he had two natures and their relation, if so, and whether he had a human soul?  How the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit can be reconciled with the doctrine that God is One? 

These debates led to several ecumenical councils at Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon.  Those accepting their decisions were named orthodox (“right-teaching”) or Catholic (“found everywhere”), while those who did not were named heretics (variously, Arians (the Goths), Nestorians, etc.).

Islam and Muslim Attacks in the 7th c. and the rise of the Carolingian Dynasty:

Followers of the prophet Mohammed (d. 632 c.e.) began attacking the Roman empire from the 7th c. onwards.  Islam became the dominant religion (and Arabic the dominant language) in the Middle East, North Africa, and some of Spain, although these lands still were home to Jews and Christians, both heretics and orthodox, and their knowledge of Greek, especially Greek medicine, permitted their favor and survival.  This was the period of the Islamic Golden Age and saw the massive advance of science and philosophy.  Massive translation projects were undertaken around the 9th c. of Greek medical, scientific, and philosophical texts into Arabic (sometimes also Syriac), as well as Persian and Indian writings.  In the 12th c., Spain became a center of translation of these texts, as well as Arabic originals, into Latin, often by Jews who knew both Arabic and Latin. 

In 732 there was the massive battle between the Christian Franks and the Muslim Moors.  The Moors, rightly, saw that Europe was too busy fighting amongst itself.  They entered and tore through France, causing widespread casualties.  They turned northward and met the Frankish general Charles “the Hammer” Martel, who had seen the threat coming and enlisted a professional army, funded by the Church (rather unwillingly on their part).  Charles Martel was an early member of the Carolings, a Frankish noble family, whose power was consolidated in the late 7th c. (known as the Carolingian Dynasty, which usurped power from the Merovingian Dynasty, the former rulers of the Franks, in 751 with papal consent).  Charles Martel defeated the Moors.  The general was noted as the defender of Christendom, making this victory into an eventual Christian empire, his grandson being Charlemagne, King of the Franks, the first official Emperor in nearly three centuries.  

Carolingian Renaissance and the rise of Charlemagne: (late 8th – 9th c.):

The Carolingian Renaissance is one of three commonly designated medieval renaissances.  It was a period of intellectual and cultural revival centering in the reigns of the Carolingian rulers, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious.  The period hearkened the original Roman Empire of the 4th c. and saw an increase in educational and cultural practices, from writing to the arts, architecture to religious study and reform. 

Charlemagne rose to power strongly, viciously and with ruthless religious fervor, beheading all those who failed to convert or were caught worshiping other gods.  He never lost a military conquest, rebirthed education, stabilized and rebirthed the financial importance of Europe in the world, and reawakened culture, his empire spreading (at its largest around 800 c.e.) from France to Switzerland to Poland and to most of Italy.  This new Holy Roman Empire is as large as the first Roman Empire, albeit not the same exact territory as the original, but it is beginning from near ruin: its infrastructure is mostly rotted and destroyed, its people mostly ignorant.  He tires his best to pull Europe from the darkness. 

Establishment of the Schools and Intellectual Growth: While Charlemagne himself was illiterate, although took great effort to learn to read and write, he founded numerous schools for children of all ages and classes throughout the empire to increase literacy and address the increasing problem of the court not having anyone who could be scribes and parishes that had no one who could read the Bible and more and more regions developing dialectics unintelligible to the rest of the empire.  With the establishment of schools, Charlemagne called leading scholars to his court.  This period also saw the invention, by Alcuin of York, of the Trivium and Quadrivium, the form and ordering of subjects of study.  Another invention was the Carolingian Minuscule, a script, called a “book-hand,” that introduced clear uppercase letters, invented lower case letters, added spaces between words, and standardized overall the Roman alphabet.  This initiated the mass translation of philosophic works into Latin. 

Charlemagne ruled for over three decades before being coroneted as Emperor, as which he ruled for over 14 years.  In this time, 793 c.e., he faced a vicious onslaught of heathens from the north: The Vikings.  They came in and sacked every Church and monastery they found, finding enormous wealth and no fighting back.  They quickly moved further and further south, eventually setting its sight at the heart of the empire.  The empire paid bribes to the Vikings to keep them back; this impoverished the empire and fostered the Vikings.  They vicious raids pushed back much of the advancement that Charlemagne’s reign had produced.  The Carolingian Dynasty saw its decline. 

The Vikings plundered and ruled for a quarter of a century, until King Alfred the Great (d.899), in the south of England, eventually defeated them in the British Isles.  The Vikings persisted throughout the world for another half century or so. 

By the middle of the 11th century:

… 600 years of misfortune had faced the Europeans of the middle ages.  The Viking threat faded, but a new threat rose from within: the medieval knights themselves.  With the end of the Viking invasions, there were a surplus of Knights who had nothing to do.  They allied with local lords and became their thugs; they then attacked the local peasants regularly, terrorizing them, taking from them what they needed.  The Catholic Church, which spent this century undergoing immense monastic reform, namely in the advancement of general virtuosity, which also inspired secular reform and the advancement of morality, thus, the Church tried hard to control the knights and ease the violence.  Often doing this by bringing the knights together at night in open fields lit by fires before large piles of all the relics of the Saints; they commanded the knights to obey them and cease their violence or else the Saints would haunt them.  The Church issued two dictates on their stance on war; the Peace of God and the Truce of God (do not fight against those who cannot defend themselves and there should be truce times at night and holidays). 

II) The High Middle Ages (1000-1300):

The Crusades:

Thus, the High Middle Ages see Europe’s overall revival in urbanization, military expansion, and intellectual pursuits.  Infrastructure projects saw roads and rivers connecting growing urban centers and trade began to flourish once more.  Political power was consolidated under kings (mainly in France, England, and Spain), instead of papal authority (although, most of the empire was considered to be under Christian authority), while new kingdoms in Central Europe, newly converted to Christianity, began to flourish (until the 16th c. brought invasions of the Ottoman Empire). 

There were numerous religious movements in the High Middle Ages.  The general increase in wealth and security in the lands led to the endowment of land and building of parishes for the Church, which, in turn, increased its influence on the peasants.  But, this time also saw a strong increase in what it deemed heretical notions of religion. 

III) The Late Middle Ages (ca. 1300-1453):

From the comparatively flush good times of the High Middle Ages, the Late Middle Ages began with crisis.  The first factor was the Great Famine (1315-17), the next was the Black Death, which killed a third of the population by the mid-14th c.  The increased populations and urbanization from the High Middle Ages permitted the effects of famine and disease to spread rapidly and be felt intensely.  The new and sharp decrease of populations led to shortages of workers and popular uprisings.  The Church also suffered strongly from internal rifts.  Nevertheless, amongst the calamities of these times, innovation and intellectual life continued to be strong. 

There was a strong rise of nation-states in this period, especially the Kingdoms of England and France (and others along the Iberian Peninsula), precipitated by the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) between those two kingdoms, mainly over claims by the English kings to the French throne.  The war led to the decline of the fortunes of both kingdoms, although increased nationalism in each. 

The Church suffered from great disarray in the 14th c.: 

The Avignon Papacy was one initiating disaster: a deadlocked conclave elected Clement V as pope; he was a Frenchman and decided to keep his papal enclave in France, in Avignon, instead of moving to Rome.  This was a deep offense to Rome, and persisted 67 years, which the Romans called the “Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy.”  Seven popes stayed in Avignon, all of them French, each increasingly under control by the French crown.  It was not until 1377 the Gregory XI moved his court to Rome that this period ended.

Western Schism: The Avignon Papacy led to the build up of the Western Schism (1378-1417).  This schism led to the birth of a second line of popes (now considered illegitimate)—that is, two different men deemed themselves to be pope.  Gregory XI died, which ignited the Romans to riot to insist on the election of a Roman pope; the cardinals elected Pope Urban VI in 1378, but he turned out to be a fierce and suspicious man with a violent temper; the cardinals fled to Anagni and elected Robert of Geneva (cum Pope Clement VII) as a rival pope (antipope), who then reestablished court in Avignon.  The schism was ended by the Council of Constance in 1414-18.  This religious turmoil quickly became a political, diplomatic crisis, splitting the Continent.  The Schism continued until after the deaths of both the popes.  Force and diplomacy failed to solve the problem; eventually, a Church Council was called in Pisa in 1409.  This council only succeeded in making matters worse: they elected a third pope, Alexander V, who ruled for a year before dying, upon which, John XXIII took his position.  The Church now had three popes.  Finally, the Council of Constance met in 1414 and secured the resignations of John XXIII and the Roman successor, now Pope Gregory XII, and excommunicated the Avignon Pope Benedict XIII, who refused to resign.  The council then elected Pope Martin V.  Rival factions persisted and a few more antipopes were elected, but the schism was mostly over.  (Although it took until well into the 19th c. for the history to be cleared up as to who was real, who was anti-, etc., with some records remaining blurry until the 20th c.)

Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation: The turmoil gave the widespread impression of its clear corruption.  While disdain had been building for a while, the turmoil prevented the complete silencing of dissidents; taking advantage of this, Martin Luther (1483-1546) published his objections against the Church, Ninety-Five Theses (mainly against the Catholic practice of Indulgences, payments for holy favor), in 1517.  They were translated from Latin into German in 1518, printed, and widely copied and read (first protest aided by the printing press).  Students flocked to Wittenberg to hear him lecture.  He refused to retract his statements, demanded by Pope Leo X in 1520 and by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521, and was excommunicated by the former and condemned as an outlaw by the latter.  The Lutherans split from the Church in 1517 (organized by Luther et al in 1526-9), launching the further division of Catholicism from Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anabaptism. 

15th Century:

By its end, the Ottoman Empire advanced throughout Eastern Europe and conquered the Byzantine Empire and Slavic states.  The key battle ground was Hungary, the edge of the Christian world.  John Hunyadi, a great military figure, was named its regent-governor, and he succeeded in several massive victories against the Ottomans (these battles were cast as holy wars, Christians versus the Muslims).  His son, Matthias, succeeded him as the King of Hungary and continued the campaigns against the Ottomans with papal support, eventually building the largest army of its time (called the Black Army of Hungary, mainly composed of mercenary soldiers), and repelling and stopping all attacks.  Literati, artists, and scientists flocked to Hungary (the second site after Italy of the Renaissance), and the largest library of the age, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was built.  After Matthias died, the army disbanded and the Kingdom was left defenseless.   They resisted the Ottoman resurgence of attacks until 1526, but then caved before the Ottoman power and the West’s general turmoil and weakening of its support by the Church due to the Protestant split.  The fall to the Ottoman Empire generally signals the end of the Medieval period. 

A Brief Philosophic Sketch:

I) Late Antique to Early Middle Ages:

The Patristic Philosophers (2nd c. ff.):

Early monotheistic philosophers were the religious minority surrounded by vast dispersions of pagan philosophers; early Christian philosophers were an even more minoritarian minority.  Their New Testament doctrines were unexplained, their theological concepts were undeveloped, and their responses were unformed against pagan arguments.  There was much work to be done. 

Most early patristic philosophy consisted in defenses of its religious principles.  Aristotelian, Stoic, Materialist, and diverse esoteric doctrines can be found within this work, but it is for the most part Platonic (of course, as defined by Neoplatonism, not by Plato’s writings themselves). 

The first real schism in late antique/early patristic philosophers was about the relation of Scripture and Greek (i.e. pagan) philosophy.  The divide, specifically, was between those (eventually, mainly Protestant) who argued that the New Testament utilized Greek philosophy and those (eventually, mainly Catholic) who eschewed any Greek philosophical influence on religious Scripture. 

The second real schism between these philosophers concerned their answers to the interplay between faith and reason.  Both groups held the religious teachings to be supreme, but one argued that reason (i.e., philosophy) positively supplemented or helped elucidate faith, whereas the other argued that reason (i.e., philosophy) had no part to play in matters of faith whatsoever, and when it intervened, this was often the source of heresies. 

The 4th c. brought positive news to Christian philosophy with the conversion of Constantine and his command of the Empire being the official religion, which initiated the concretization of the political ordering of the Church. The Council of Nicea was called in 325, at which the Church concretized its views on the conception of the Trinity.  This legitimacy and clarification of Church position aided the philosophical undertaking. 

The Greek Philosophers of the 4th c. include: Eusebius, Gregory of Nazianz, Basil the Great, Nemesius, and, most importantly, Gregory of Nyssa—who undertook the first rational argumentation for all the teachings of the Church (including its mysteries), a pursuit continued by Anselm; Gregory’s Platonism made him emphasize the purification of the human soul and humanity’s return to God, which deeply influenced the mystical philosophies in John Scotus Eriugena and Bernard of Clairvaux.  The Latin philosophers of the 4th c. include: Marius Victorinus, Ambrose, and Augustine—see below for detail on the last.

Into the 5th c., the most notable Greek-inspired Christian philosopher is Pseudo-Dionysius (see below for detail on him).  P-D’s work influenced many following medieval thinkers, notably Eriugena, Hugh of St. Victor, Robert Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus, Bonaventure, and Aquinas, who all commented on P-D’s writings and ideas.  The 6th c. saw a great decline in learning and philosophy until Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance in the 8th c.

Augustine (354-430 c.e.):

St. Aquinas wrote of him: “Whenever Augustine, who was saturated with the teachings of the Platonists, found in their writings anything consistent with the faith, he adopted it; and whatever he found contrary to the faith, he amended.”  These Platonic currents in his thought can be seen throughout his works.  Notable examples in his work On Free Choice of the Will include the stylistic form of the work as a dialogue and his methodological and pedagogical relation he demonstrates to his student Evodius.  Further, in its content, the Greek influence can be seen in his relation of faith and reason wherein the former is required as a foundation but the latter is of the utmost importance.  Augustine, like Plato, privileged non-dogmatic reason; Plato and Augustine both held that the highest truth was a grasp on the form of the good, only diverging insofar as Augustine’s interpretation of the good is either God. While the forms, as either the Good itself or God, may be universal, knowable truths, this does not mean we have perfect knowledge of them.  (Image: Illuminated Manuscript illustration of Augustine praying at an alter and making all the Pagan idols fall and die.)

Boethius (ca. 475-524/5/6):

Pseudo-Dionysius (ca. 471-512/518):

We do not know his real name, this Christian faithful one, the Pseudo-Dionysius, who wrote about the power of names.  We believe that this Neo-Platonist believer wrote from Syria sometime between 471-512/518 C.E.  He adopted the name of Dion (the) Areopagite in place of his own; Dion, or Dionysius was the distinguished convert of St. Paul from the Acts 22:17 ff.  Perhaps the nameless one wants us to know nothing else about him that any truthful biography could offer.  Instead of his birth date and parent’s names, we read his history through his philosophy; through the pseudonym we will deduce a biography where fragments and negations are more truthful than a narrative could ever be.

Pseudo-Dionysius wrote a number of works including Letters, which are predominately exegeses of his thought and moral advice and four surviving treatises:  The Celestial Hierarchy, which delineates the ranks of angels, the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, which delineates the ranks of religious figures.  The Divine Names, which undertakes a study of the intelligible names applied to God (i.e., Goodness, Wisdom, Yearning).  The Mystical Theology, which philosophical promotes one to abandon the sensible and intelligible in order to experience a union with God.  Then there are the two questioned treatises, the Theological Representations (Outlines of Divinity), which was said to be on the trinity and incarnation, and the Symbolic Theology, which reputedly analyzed the sensible names representing God (i.e. Rock, Right Hand). 

Pseudo-Dionysius’ work had a great influence, even when his identity and authority began to be questioned and challenged and even after he was declared blasphemous.  I consider the most impressive of his works to be The Divine Names in which he radicalizes a method to balance denial and affirmation of our knowledge of God in reaction to our tenuous claims to knowing God.  How can we know what exceeds all that we can conceive?  Surely, we can know His emanations, what proceeds from Him, and therefore we can talk about these things, His creations, in order to talk about Him as their creator, but, these things are not properly God and our knowledge of them cannot apply to Him properly.  Thus, every name of God we affirm, we must also negate.  This means that we must stutter the names of God: He is Good and He is not Good.

8th – 9th Centuries: 

The Carolingian Renaissance (late 8th – 9th c.): was a period of intellectual and cultural revival centering in the reigns of the Carolingian rulers, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious.  The period hearkened the original Roman Empire of the 4th c. and saw an increase in educational and cultural practices, from writing to the arts, architecture to religious study and reform.  Charlemagne founded numerous schools throughout the empire and called leading scholars to his court.  Intellectual concerns included the controversy of universal concepts and growing use of dialectic.  The most (and arguably the only) notable thinker of the period was John Scotus Eriugena (ca. 810-877), who systematically fused Christian and Neoplatonic thought.

II) The High Middle Ages (1000-1300):

The 11th c. saw the rebirth of philosophic work, first with Anselm of Canterbury (see below for detail on him), who defended a Neoplatonic system of philosophy, following Augustine’s lead.  Following Anselm, the 11th and 12th c. philosophers became increasingly concerned with the problem of universals—that is, mereological questions of the one and the many and whether genera and species exist only in the mind or in reality, and, if in reality, whether they exist in substances or separate from them.  These dialectical investigations were logical exercises that held tremendous philosophic weight for answering broader questions about religious philosophical concerns.  Two notable 12th c. thinkers in these areas were Peter Abelard and his student, who took an opposing position, John of Salisbury.  This century also saw the rise of a new Platonic influence centered in the school of Chartres, notable for its humanistic studies and interest in science and natural philosophy.  In addition to Plato and Boethius, Chartres abounded with the writings of Hippocrates, Galen, and Islamic thought, which had preserved Aristotle throughout the early medieval turmoil.  Notable thinkers there included Adelard of Bath, Thierry of Chartres, Clarenbaud of Arras, William of Conches, Gilbert de la Porrée, John of Salisbury, and Alan of Lille.  The final important movement in 12th c. medieval philosophy is the mystical movement, notably Bernard of Clairvaux and students at the school of St. Victor, who sought to fuse dialectical and mystical teachings. 

11th century:

St. Anselm (1033-1109):

Al-Ghazali (1055/8-1111):

(Image: an original manuscript of Al-Ghazzali’s Revival of Religious Science.)

Yehuda (Judah) ben Samuel Halevi (ca.1075-1141):

Spanish Jewish philosopher, theologian, physician, and, most notably, poet; while educated in philosophy, he is perhaps predominately a poet (writing over 800 religious and secular poems), who turned to religious clarification and philosophical defense in large part due to the social and political upheaval in this period of Spanish history spawned from both Muslim and Christian attacks against the Jewish communities.  Aristotle inspired his medical practice, and he was talented in logic and mathematics, but he also feared the mysteries of religion being corroded by the philosophical goals of truth as knowledge over belief as opinion (this led his thought to an almost Kierkegaardian position of faith requiring a certain ‘leap’ beyond reason).  The socio-political climate led to his choice of dialogue (with anonymous narrator) as the style of his main work, the Kuzari, or, Book of Refutation and Proof on Behalf of the Despised Religion, and based it upon the well-known historical account of the Khazar kingdom converting to Judaism four centuries prior, a conversion that was chosen through dialogue and decision amongst many competing religions, with Judaism being chosen for its unique grasp of the truth, yet also because the king had repeatedly dreamed the same dream of an angel appearing to him.  Just as the style shows a synthesis of rationalism and mysticism, the work’s philosophical themes echo this synthesis, stressing an ordering of being (a Neoplatonist tendency to hierarchy as well as an Aristotelian refinement of the Platonic soul creating a hierarchy of beings), proofs for God’s existence (employing mainly rational but some mystical features), delineations of spiritual exercise and his truth’s esoteric dimensions (predominately a Neoplatonist tendency), and arguments for creation and eternity (employing both).

Hildegard of Bingen (ca. 1098-1179):

12th Century:

(Founding Schools of Chartres, St. Victor)

13th Century:  (syntheses)

St. Bonaventure (1221-1274): 

Doctor of the Church, Cardinal-Bishop of Albano, and Minister General of the Friars Minor; he entered the Order of the Friars Minor in 1238 or 1243 and then was sent to the University of Paris for his education under Alexander of Hales (founder of the Franciscan School); he received his “licentiate” to permit him to teach, which he did until a crackdown on the Friars, which barred them from teaching around 1256; he was readmitted eventually and awarded, along with Aquinas, the degree of Doctor in 1257.  In addition to the exclusively recognized life of St. Francis, some of his writings are mystical, concerning the perfection of the soul by discharging vice and ecstatic prayer.  His other writings are, variously, ascetic, dialogues on spiritual questions, meditations on the life of Christ, a work on the passion, and a treatise on the virtues.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274):

Aquinas’ project predominately endeavors to systematize the ideas in the works of the Church fathers and work out a consistent theology.  Nonetheless, he incorporates numerous new interests and pieces of knowledge into religion as he reconciles the Christian notions of God with Greek philosophy.  He argues that truth can be known both by reason and by faith; thus, reason is a tool for faith.

Aquinas held that the nature of humanity is essentially what Aristotle’s De Anima argues: one is a natural being with natural functions and has natural ends, yet, he adds that each is also a child of God and thus has a supplemental end: loyalty and obedience to God.

Aquinas held that the nature of God is also both like and more than what Aristotle had argued; that He is the supreme: pure actuality, pure intelligence, and a being whose perfection inspires the universe’s movement, yet adds that God is also creative providence, loving father, and exacting ruler.

John Duns Scotus (1265/6-1308):

A Scottish philosopher likely educated in England (reputedly Cambridge and Oxford, as well as Paris) and ordained a Franciscan priest in Northampton, England; he lectured in Paris, in between expulsions for political-theological disputes, and in Cologne, where he died in 1308.  He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1993.  He is the founder of “Scotism,” a form of Scholasticism; also dubbed “Doctor Subtilis,” for the delicate nuance of his thought, almost to the charge of sophism.  His intellectual legacy includes doctrines on the “univocity of being” (existence is most abstract and applies to all; follows Aristotle’s assertion that the subject matter of metaphysics is being qua being; his doctrine denies a real distinction between essence and existence (contra Aquinas), that is, between whether something is and what it is), the “formal distinction” (distinguish different aspects of same thing), “haecceity” (that which individuates a thing), a proof for the existence of God (an a posteriori proof, proceeding from His effects; uses a causal argument), and argument for Mary’s immaculate conception (which caused tremendous opposition).

III) The Late Middle Ages (ca. 1300-1453):

Philosophy in the 14th c. is often characterized by its contrast to the earlier centuries, thus as a decline of such philosophy and rise of a destructive critique.  There was a more or less firm solidification of philosophy into competing schools: the Thomists, Scotism, Albertism, and Nominalism.  There is also the argument for the divorce of philosophy from theology, which would signal the end of Scholasticism and the end of medieval philosophy.  There was also a growing doubt in metaphysical presumptions to knowledge and a more welcoming stance to empiricism (as is notable in Early Modern philosophy).  In general, the attention had been turned from the relation of the soul to knowledge as an activity to knowledge as demanding evidence and seeking claim to validity and/or certainty.  By the 15th c., philosophical debates had divided the “older way” (via antiqua) from the “modern way” (via moderna) of thinking.  This modern way was predominately nominalism, and bolstered by Ockham and Buridan. 

14th Century:

William of Ockham: (and following him, the Ockhamist School)

Nicholas of Autrecourt

Marsilius of Padua

John Buridan

Transition to Modern Philosophy:

The transition into modern philosophy quickly set history at a point where its backwards consideration of times before were strongly negative.  The key feature of the disdain—designed to establish the “now” as one of revolution (the scientific revolution) and rebirth (the renaissance)—was that since the fall of the Roman Empire, thought had been too controlled by authority (privileging religious representatives and institutions over human sense and/or human reason), and, simply, “scholasticism,” which became a name of slander:

1. Scholasticism can be considered ‘Christian Rationalism’ most properly as a historical event, but as a philosophical school and style, it is a type of rationalism just as prevalent in Jewish and Islamic thought—e.g., Averroes.  It was a school of thought that sought to reconcile faith and reason, or (Greek) philosophy and (Abrahamic) theology.  It employed a dialectical method that mostly rejected the mysticism of Platonist Christianity and embraced the rationalism of Aristotelian readings of Christian thought.  Starting in the 11th-12th c., critics began to voice concern that Scholasticism was taking rationalism too far (e.g., there was most lively debate about how many angels can sit on the head of a pin?—the answer?: an infinite number, for angels are pure form, they have no matter, hence occupy no space.  More specifically, the charges against it were: (1) abuses of reason and (2) eliminations of “mysteries” of faith.  In 1204, the Fourth Crusade’s goal was to take back Muslim-controlled Jerusalem, although, instead it ended up capturing and occupying Eastern Orthodox Constantinople; this event heightened all political and religious relations and just as much deeply upset the Christian lands, throwing them into utter turmoil by the returning crusaders bringing back books … thereby (re-)introducing the people to Jewish and Middle Eastern beliefs, and these beliefs into their theory and practice of Christianity.  This contributed to a flurry of Scholastic advancements because now they had Aristotle.  The logic and process transformed philosophy and started to denigrate some of the Platonist veins of theological and philosophical work.  Then, in the 13th c., St. Aquinas’ Summa Theologica encouraged greater tolerance between the faith and reason.  The tolerance was necessary to (1) answer the charge against Scholasticism for making religious authority subservient to reason and (2) to re-popularize what had become so highly specialized and technical that it appeared to be disconnected from life itself.  Further: Scholasticism’s rational system became itself a closed system and had (3) difficulty handling the introduction of modern scientific discoveries and (4) the papacy had been left far behind in the rationalization of religion that they began to issue edicts condemning many of the teaching put forth as consistent by Scholasticism.  By the 14th c. and following, the school began to fade.  Descartes and his time may be viewed as the decisive “nail in the coffin” of Scholasticism—he considered it to be spinning in circles, unable to discover new truths; his ‘reason’ was scientific, not ‘Greek’—although the influence of Scholasticism on and in Descartes and just about every modern philosopher is enormous.