8.4 Learning and Culture Flourish

Objectives

• Explain the emergence of universities and their importance to medieval life.

• Understand how newly translated writings from the past and from other regions influenced medieval thought.

• Describe the literature, architecture, and art of the High and late Middle Ages.

Universities Emerge

• Church needs well educated clergy• Royals need literate members of their

governments• Many Italian cities had medical schools as

early as the early 900s

Early studies

• School days were very regimented• Much learning was in Latin, using Latin texts.

Why?• Women were not permitted to attend

universities, most men felt women had “natural gifts” away from the classroom.

Learning: the struggle between faith and reason

• Many “new” ideas were from ancient Greece, that were translated by scholars – mostly of Muslim origin.

• What is scholasticism?

Thomas Aquinas

• Summa Theologica – faith and reason can exist together

• God rules over an orderly universe• Successfully brings together both the faith of

Christianity and the Greek philosophy. Impact? How might people begin to look at their world differently?

Literature• Utilizes the vernacular,

Significance?• Geoffrey Chaucer• The Song of Roland –

describes loyalty, and honor

• Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy (1300s)– Ethical work, your

actions determine your afterlife

Romanesque to Gothic

• What are the characteristics of Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals?

Stained glass window - Notre Dame, Paris

Illumination

Canterbury Tales (late 14th Century)

• This duc of whom I make mencioun,Whan he was come almoost unto the toun,In al his wele and in his mooste pride,He was war, as he caste his eye aside,Where that ther kneled in the hye weye A compaignye of ladyes, tweye and tweye,Ech after oother, clad in clothes blake;But swich a cry and swich a wo they make,That in this world nys creature lyvyngeThat herde swich another waymentynge; And of this cry they nolde nevere stenten,Til they the reynes of his brydel henten. "What folk been ye, that at myn hom-comyngePerturben so my feste with criynge?"Quod Theseus. "Have ye so greet envye Of myn honour, that thus compleyne and crye?Or who hath yow mysboden or offended?And telleth me if it may been amended,And why that ye been clothed thus in blak?"