Humanites

The twelfth century in Europe was in many respects an age of fresh and spirited life. It was the era of the Crusades, of the rise of towns, and of the earliest bureaucratic states of the West that saw the height of Romanesque art, the beginnings of Gothic, Roman law, the recovery of Greek science, and the origin of the first European universities. The first European medieval institutions were established in Italy, France, and England in the late eleventh and the twelfth centuries for the study of arts, law, medicine, and theology. These universities evolved from much older schools and monasteries. University studies took six years for a Bachelor degree and up to twelve additional years for a master's degree and doctorate. (Publishing) The first European university was founded in Italy in 1119. By the end of the thirteenth century, universities had been established in Paris, Bologna, Padua, Ghent, Oxford, and Cambridge. These were major sites for the institution of a new relationship to books, learning, and the Word of God. These were important institutions because, prior to the arrival and rise of the university, learning in Europe had been dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. (12thcentury) In the eleventh and the twelfth centuries new types of schools were developed in some cities. These schools were different because they were usually located in city cathedrals rather than in monasteries, and they were dedicated to more advanced studies than the other schools. For this reason, they attracted students and teachers not just from the neighborhood but from all over Europe, who were interested in studying subjects such as philosophy, medicine, and law. (Publishing) There was an increasing professionalism of teaching and learning in the society during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Learning became essential to advancing and teachers gained prestige. However, demand quickly exceeded the capacity of cathedral schools. These schools were essentially run by just one teacher. In addition, tensions rose between the students. So, cathedral schools migrated to larger cities. (Rise and fall) By the end of the middle ages, there were nearly 80 universities throughout Europe. They were largely independent, enforcing their own rules about dress codes, classroom activities, and the materials that were taught. Teachers decided when the students were ready to get their degrees or to be allowed to teach. (Publishing) The author who most fired the excitement of late medieval scholars was Aristotle. He seemed to have the answers to everything and people wanted to know what they were. Students learned about Aristotle from Arab scholars, who had rediscovered, translated, and commented on his writings. (12th Century) When the newly translated works of Aristotle first appeared at the University of Paris, for instance, it was in the faculty of arts. The works were not "Sacred Doctrine," and Paris ruled that Aristotle's "natural theology" could not be "read" or lectured on. It did not mean that students and masters couldn't study and discuss these works in private. Despite these bans, study and discussion of Aristotle could not be stopped and people were openly lecturing on everything they had of Aristotle's. This meant that his ideas started to be tested and abandoned if they did not measure up. But in fact they were a vital step on the way to modern science. What is important about the condemnations is that they forced a refocusing on the way we look at the world. For this purpose the recovery of Aristotle seemed fortunate to the Scholastic theologians, because it managed to combine a loyalty to Scripture and tradition with a positive, though critical, attitude toward the "natural" mind. (12th Century) Christianity had an important impact on every step of the road to modern science, because it is a literary religion based on sacred texts and informed by the writings of the early church fathers. Christianity was solely responsible for the preservation of literacy