Concept
School of Chartres
Overview
During the High Middle Ages, the Chartres Cathedral established the cathedral School of Chartres, an important center of French scholarship located in Chartres. It developed and reached its apex during the transitional period of the 11th and 12th centuries, at the start of the Latin translation movement. This period was also right before the spread of medieval universities, which eventually superseded cathedral schools and monastic schools as the most important institutions of higher learning in the Latin West.
In the early 11th century (c. 1020), Bishop Fulbert established Chartres as one of the leading schools in Europe. Although the role of Fulbert himself as a scholar and teacher has been questioned, his administrative ability established the conditions in which the school could flourish.
Great scholars were attracted to the cathedral school, including Bernard of Chartres, Thierry of Chartres, William of Conches, and the Englishman John of Salisbury. These men were at the forefront of the intense intellectual rethinking that culminated in what is now known as the twelfth-century Renaissance, pioneering the Scholastic philosophy that came to dominate medieval thinking throughout Europe.
As with most monastic and cathedral schools, the school's teaching was based on the traditional seven liberal arts, grouped into the trivium (study of logic, grammar and rhetoric) and into the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). There were, however, differences among the schools on the emphasis given to each subject. The Chartres school placed special emphasis on the quadrivium (the mathematical arts) and on natural philosophy.
Chartres' greatest period was the first half of the twelfth century, but it eventually could not support the city's large number of students and its masters lacked the relative autonomy developing around the city's other schools. By the later 12th century, the status of the school was on the wane. It was gradually eclipsed by the newly emerging University of Paris, particularly by the School of the Abbey of St. Victor (attended by the 'Victorines').
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
The full scope of this fact escapes us, moreover, until we recognize that this subject matter compelled recourse to a dialectical method. Scholasticism frequently has been used since the time of the revival of learning as a term of reproach. But all that it means is the method of The Schools, or of the School Men. In its essence, it is nothing but a highly effective systematization of the methods of teaching and…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
States what School of Chartres is.
Xenophanes, Parmenides, Melissus and Zeno are to be reckoned as belonging to this school. Xenophanes may be regarded as the founder of it; Parmenides is supposed to have been his pupil, and Melissus, and especially Zeno, are called the pupils of Parmenides. In fact, they are to be taken together as forming the Eleatic school; later on it lost the name, being then called Sophistic, and its locality was transferred to…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
States what School of Chartres is.
Other regulations, of a similar tendency, were established in other parts of Europe. But the power of the pope, in the collation of the great benefices of the church, seems, before the reformation, to have been nowhere so effectually and so universally restrained as in France and England. The concordat afterwards, in the sixteenth century, gave to the kings of France the absolute right of presenting to all the…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
States what School of Chartres is.
Philosophers who discussed School of Chartres
Related ideas
- John of Salisbury
- William of Conches
- Renaissance of the 12th century
- Natural philosophy
- Scholasticism
- High Middle Ages
- Latin translations of the 12th century
- France
- University of Paris
- Medieval university
- Monastic school
- Bernard of Chartres
- Thierry of Chartres
Place in the tradition
Part of French philosophy.