World History Notes
High Middle Ages
Jews in Christian Society
- Protected from hostile Christians
- Small businesses, became wealthy as money lenders (to kings, popes &
business people)
- Loaned Christian students books and such
- Jewish intellect & sophisticated culture both dazzled & threatened
- Money, intellect, culture encouraged suspicion – still held responsible
for Jesus’ death
- Exiled from France, persecuted elsewhere
- Surge in anti-Jewish feelings: kings wanted to confiscate their property
& weakening central government = a chance for the church to surge ahead,
crusades against infidels (witches, heretics & Jews at home, infidels
abroad)
Schools & Universities
- Islamic scholars had preserved the Aristotle, Euclid, Greek medicine texts,
Roman law and so on.
- 1st Western University Bologna by Emperor Barbarossa in 1158
- university meant cooperation of students & masters who joined for protection
from church authority and local townspeople – students were foreigners
in town without civil rights
- students demanded high-quality teaching from their masters – students
often set pay, hired teachers, created courses of study
- universities moved from place to place as rents were unfairly increased
- Bologna (Spain) revived Roman Law (using Justinian’s compilation
of Roman Law) & expanded it
- Northern Europe studies Theology, later language arts (grammar, rhetoric,
logic) & mathematics arts (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music)
- Cathedral schools taught the clergy – strict church doctrine, but
later they taught the lay for free
- Businessmen eventually needed Latin and intellectual disciplines, studied
with the priests
- Church lost monopoly on education as more secretaries & notaries were
needed (vocation schools = colleges)
- Eventuality indistinguishable
- Students were well to do & spoiled – townspeople beat them, later
laws were created to forbid the beating of students
- Curriculum = people assumed the truth was already known – no need
to go out and find it, truth only needed to be organized clearly & defended,
no independence – comment on authoritative texts – truth was
drilled into them
- Discover truth by finding contradictions in the arguments against it (Dialectic)
Medical students debated known truths & did not work practically (similar
to law & theology)
- Few books – learn through memorizing & debate & lecture &
discussion – think on one’s feet, Rhetoric (persuasive arguments)
were valued – students were walking encyclopedias
- University began for those between 12 & 15 – Latin (3-4 years)
then masters (3-4 years) studying classical texts, a degree in theology could
take up to 20 years
- Summa = summary of all that was known on a particular subject – a
body of clarified truth
