Chartres School

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West facade of Chartres Cathedral

The term Chartres School has two meanings:

  • On the one hand, it refers to the cathedral school in Chartres , which existed as a training center for clergy as early as the early Middle Ages and, thanks to excellent teachers, experienced a heyday in the 11th and 12th centuries.
  • On the other hand, it is understood as a group of supraregional influential scholars of early scholasticism who shared certain interests and philosophical - theological convictions and thus formed a current in the history of ideas that postulated a rationally determined humanism compared to the previous belief in authority.

Usually the term is used in this second sense, which is problematic and controversial. There are differences of opinion as to the extent to which the assumed current can be distinguished from other directions on the basis of specific characteristics, how original their teachings were and to what extent the traditionally assumed local reference to Chartres actually existed.

requirements

Chartres Cathedral

In the Byzantine Empire , the writings of Plato and Aristotle in the Middle Ages were in principle accessible in the original, but met with limited interest. Knowledge of Greek was extremely rare in the Latin-speaking world of scholars in western and central Europe. One had to rely on Latin translations, of which only a few were available. At first nothing was known of Plato's works apart from incomplete translations of Timaeus ; From the middle of the 12th century translations of the Menon and Phaedo were added. In addition, Neoplatonic ideas flowed through the works of Boethius . The discussion with the Timaeus and especially the question of the extent to which his worldview can be brought into line with the cosmology of the biblical account of creation or how the Catholic doctrine of creation can be interpreted philosophically was a focus of interest for the scholars who are usually included in the Chartres school .

development

Sculpture of a philosopher on the cathedral

Names of teachers and students at the cathedral school can be traced back to the middle of the 6th century; first references to instruction appear even at the end of the 5th century. Fulbert von Chartres († 1028), who presumably came from Italy and had been a student of Abbot Gerbert in Reims , built and took care of the library as Chancellor of the bishop and the cathedral chapter - in this capacity he was also head of the cathedral school for the appointment of capable teachers; hence he is sometimes referred to as the "founder" of the Chartres School. He became Bishop of Chartres in 1006. Fulbert was a respected theologian, but is not considered an original thinker. He advised his students to follow the writings of their fathers. The most famous student of Fulbert was Berengar von Tours . Under the bishop Ivo of Chartres (1090-1115 / 16), who was known for his canonical collections Decretum and Panormia , the cathedral school took another boom. From around 1110/1115 Bernhard von Chartres was a magister (teacher) at the cathedral school, at the latest in 1124 he was promoted to chancellor and thus to head of the school. He became a pioneering role model for his students through his literacy, his didactic skills and his understanding of Platonism .

With Chartres, Thierry von Chartres (Theodoric), Wilhelm von Conches , Gilbert de la Porrée (Gilbert von Poitiers, Gilbertus Porreta), Clarembaldus von Arras , Bernardus Silvestris and Johannes von Salisbury (died as Bishop of Chartres). Today it is widely believed that Thierry and Gilbert taught primarily in Paris and were only intermittent in Chartres. Gilbert's students formed a special group, the "Porretaner", among whom Alanus from Insulis stood out. It is uncertain whether William actually taught in Chartres and whether John of Salisbury ever studied there. However, if the term “School of Chartres” is used for a movement in the history of ideas, the authors mentioned can be assigned to it.

Course content

In Chartres, philosophical and literary interests were combined. Formative was the common Platonism, which - since one knew only the Timaeus of Plato's works - especially in the field of mathematics and natural science. Plato's concept of a world soul as a cosmological principle was particularly well received. In addition to high quality teaching, the library's unique wealth provided excellent conditions for the students' educational endeavors. Subjects were as elsewhere the seven liberal arts ( liberal arts ): The Trivium formed grammar , rhetoric and dialectic , the Quadrivium formed arithmetic , geometry , music and astronomy ; a peculiarity of Chartres was the relatively great emphasis placed on the Artes and the thoroughness with which it was studied. The commentary on Timaeus played an important role ; The influence of Aristotle asserted itself in logic and the philosophy of language. A characteristic of the scholars assigned to "Chartres" was a relatively high esteem for philosophy in relation to theology and reason in relation to authority at the time.

Towards the end of the 12th century, the importance of Chartres as a training center declined sharply, which was due to a reduced interest in the teaching content, which was particularly cultivated there. Paris as a university city increasingly came to the fore. However, some of the works of scholars who were active in Chartres or who were influenced by the local tradition had a considerable aftereffect until the late Middle Ages.

Research controversies

There has only been talk of a “School of Chartres” since the end of the 19th century. Reginald Lane Poole (1857-1939) and Jules Alexandre Clerval had endeavored to localize various thinkers who can be associated with Chartres, and to show connections between them. The assumption of a “school” of Chartres in this location-related sense, which would have been the place of study or teaching for all these people, has been considered obsolete since the studies of Richard W. Southern and Peter Dronke. What is undisputed, however, is the heyday of the Chartres Cathedral School, at which at least some of the scholars traditionally assigned to it actually worked or studied. Opinions differ as to whether the expression “School of Chartres” has to be restricted to the cathedral school as a training facility or whether one can speak of a general schooling with specific content characteristics, even if this has only limited reference to the town of Chartres. Richard Southern, who died in 2001, was the leader among the representatives of a skeptical attitude that hardly gave the School of Chartres any specific contours. Heinrich Schipperges , John Marenbon, Nikolaus Häring, Peter Dronke and Kurt Flasch , among others, have advocated a certain profiling of an intellectual peculiarity of a group of scholars, which one might call the conventional name "Chartres" .

literature

  • Tilman Evers: Logos and Sophia. The King's Portal and the School of Chartres. Kiel 2011
  • Bernhard D. Haage: Chartres, School of. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 239.
  • Roland Halfen, Chartres, Vol. IV: The Cathedral School and its Surroundings, Stuttgart-Berlin 2011
  • Michel Lemoine / Clotilde Picard-Parra: Théologie et cosmologie au XIIe siècle. L'Ecole de Chartres. Bernard de Chartres, Guillaume de Conches, Thierry de Chartres, Guillaume de Saint-Thierry , Paris 2004 (texts in translation)
  • John Marenbon: Article Chartres, School of , in: Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Vol. 2 (1998) pp. 290-292
  • Heinrich Schipperges: Chartres, school of . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 2, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1983, ISBN 3-7608-8902-6 , Sp. 1753-1759.
  • Richard W. Southern: The schools of Paris and the school of Chartres , in: Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century , Cambridge (Mass.) 1982, pp. 113-137
  • Winthrop Wetherbee: Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century: The Literary Influence of the School of Chartres , Princeton 1972
  • Winthrop Wetherbee: The School of Chartres , in: Jorge JE Gracia, Timothy B. Noone (eds.): A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages , Blackwell, Malden (MA) 2007

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jules Alexandre Clerval: Les écoles de Chartres au Moyen Age , Paris, 1895, reprinted Frankfurt / Main 1965; Reginald L. Poole: The Masters of the Schools at Paris and Chartres in John of Salisbury's Time , in: The English Historical Review 139 (1920), pp. 321-342.
  2. ↑ Peter Dronke: New approaches to the School of Chartres , in: Anuario de estudios medievales 6 (1969), pp. 117-140. Nikolaus M. Häring: Commentaries on Boethius by Thierry of Chartres and his school , Toronto 1971; ders .: Chartres and Paris revisited , in: JR O'Donnell (ed.): Essays in Honor of Anton Charles Pegis , Toronto 1974, pp. 268–329. Richard W. Southern: Humanism and the School of Chartres , in: Southern: Medieval Humanism and Other Studies , Oxford 1970, pp. 61-85. Edouard Jeauneau: Note sur l'école de Chartres , in: Studi medievali , 3a serie , Vol. 5 (1964), pp. 821–865, also in: Jeauneau: Lectio philosophorum , pp. 5–49.
  3. ↑ Kurt Flasch: The philosophical thinking in the Middle Ages. From Augustine to Machiavelli . 2nd edition, Stuttgart 2001, pp. 255-258; Heinrich Schipperges: Article Chartres, Schule von , in: Lexikon des Mittelalters Vol. 2 (1982) Sp. 1755–1757.

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