Unless You Believe, You Shall Not Understand: Logic, University, and Society in Late Medieval Vienna
276
Unless You Believe, You Shall Not Understand: Logic, University, and Society in Late Medieval Vienna
276Paperback
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Overview
Like most other scholars of the period, Henry of Langenstein (d. 1397) at one time believed that Aristotle's syllogistic was universally valid even in Trinitarian theology. In touch with the vibrant Jewish community in Vienna, Langenstein had high hopes of converting its members by logical argument. When he failed in his purpose, he lost his confidence in Aristotle's syllogistic as a universal tool of apologetics and handmaiden to Trinitarian theology. ("Unless you believe, you shall not understand," he quoted from Isaiah, in order to express his change of opinion.) During the next generation, the intellectual climate at the university changed from academic openness to increasing rigidity, and theologians turned from argument to persecution.
Originally published in 1988.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691606934 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 07/14/2014 |
| Series: | Princeton Legacy Library , #904 |
| Pages: | 276 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.60(d) |
Read an Excerpt
"Unless You Believe, You Shall Not Understand"
Logic, University, and Society in late Medieval Vienna
By Michael H. Shank
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1988 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-05523-7
CHAPTER 1
Vienna and the Rise of Its University
Est vero in hac nostra marchia civitas Wienna ... nulli autem omnium urbium, quas vel in Germania vel Gallia vel Ytalia viderim, inferior.
GUTOLF OF HEILIGENKREUZ (late thirteenth century)
The republic of the Christian faith is composed of three parts, wrote the Cologne canon Alexander of Roes in the late thirteenth century. "The priesthood (sacerdotium) in Italy keeps the faith, kingship (regnum) in Germany rules so that the faith can be kept, and learning (studium) in France teaches the faith that ought to be kept." The separation of powers that Alexander advocated in this elegant scheme served above all a political purpose, specifically the attempt to limit the encroachments of the French crown on the traditional prerogatives of Italy and the Holy Roman Empire. Almost in passing, it confirmed another notable development within European society: the growing perception that the university was a power in its own right. Nowhere was this power more obvious than in the far-reaching influence of the University of Paris, which Alexander and his contemporaries considered to be the exemplar of preeminence in learning. In the late thirteenth century, former Parisian masters not only administered the possessions of the Church and decided the limits of the faith; they even sat on the papal throne.
Throughout the fourteenth century, however, Alexander's model of Christendom became ever more implausible as a description, and fanciful as a prescription. The most extended and virulent conflict over regnum during this period would involve not Germany, but the Hundred Years' War between France and England. Alexander's apprehensions about France, which grew out of its domineering role in the election of Pope Martin iv in 1281, proved to be fully justified. During the following decades, matters continued to deteriorate until 1303, when agents for Philip the Fair of France held the elderly Boniface vm prisoner for three days. The pope died a month later. His successor, the Italian Benedict XI, was pope less than a year. The Frenchman who was elected to succeed him remained for a while in Avignon, a French city surrounded by papal territories, where he awaited the outcome of the posthumous trial of Boniface VIII. This temporary sojourn would eventually last three quarters of a century — the "Babylonian Captivity" of the papacy in Avignon. While Italy was losing its grip on sacerdotium, France was losing some of its preeminence in studium. Already in the thirteenth century, France could claim no monopoly on higher education. During the following century, however, particularly in the years between the beginning of the Avignon papacy and the end of the Great Schism, new universities mushroomed at an unprecedented rate throughout the Holy Roman Empire. When Alexander wrote, there were no universities east of Padua. By the outbreak of the Hussite wars, two dozen new ones had been founded throughout Europe, at least seven of which endured in and around the Holy Roman Empire.
Contrasting sharply with this efflorescence of university foundations is a more common picture of the fourteenth century, in which images of decline and disaster predominate. This general interpretation of a period punctuated by real as well as metaphorical plagues has much to recommend it. Although more research into the social and economic history of the fourteenth century still remains a desideratum, broad trends have emerged. The arrival of the fourteenth century signaled the conclusion of an era of economic growth, and the beginning of a series of large-scale disasters. The Great Famine of 1315–1317, the collapse of the most important banking houses between 1327 and 1343, the onset of the Hundred Years' War, and the Great Plague at mid – century followed each other in short succession. The "Black Death" cut the population of Europe by one-third to one-half. This demographic collapse had unprecedented consequences. Unlike the victims of war and famine, the survivors of the Great Plague found themselves with a surplus of goods and food. Full storehouses and bleak prospects for the future encouraged a decline in productivity often combined with unbridled consumption, which eventually generated ripples of rising prices until the end of the century.
In matters spiritual, the Church was widely thought to be in decline. This perception was of course not new: reformers had decried abuses throughout the Church's history. In the fourteenth century, however, the voices of the critics grew more numerous and insistent. From the "Babylonian Captivity" of the papacy in Avignon to the end of the Great Schism, observers as different as William of Ockham, William Langland, and Saint Catherine of Siena all agreed that the Church was not what it ought to have been, and they often said so stridently.
To those historians of philosophy who see Thomas Aquinas as the pinnacle of medieval thought, the critical spirit associated with nominalism has signified decline as well. In a similar vein, but with much less argumentation, a recent history of medieval technology dates the onset of technological decline at the Bishop of Paris's condemnation of 219 Aristotelian and Averroist propositions in "1277, when mysticism gained ascendancy over reason."
For all of these reasons, the language of decline has seemed eminently appropriate to characterize the fourteenth century as a whole. More recently, the more dramatic concept of "crisis" has overtaken the imagery of decline. But the era was not one of unmitigated doom, even for contemporaries. In addition to such cultural contributions as the harpsichord, polyphony, the dissemination of paper, eyeglasses, and the mechanical clock, historians of science have long considered the fourteenth century to be one of the high points of medieval thought. Nor have the only optimists been historians. Indeed there were grounds for optimism, which the leader of the recently founded University of Vienna exuded. In the eyes of Henry of Langenstein, the decline of the University of Paris was obvious, but it merely represented another passing phase in the translatio studii — the transfer of learning from the ancient wisdom of Moses and the Egyptians to Athens, then to Rome, and finally to Paris. But Paris had now had its day; it was waning. In the Empire, however, learning was waxing. Around 1386, Langenstein wrote with exuberance:
Behold the universities of France are breaking up, the sun of wisdom is eclipsed there. Wisdom withdraws to light another people. Are not three lamps of wisdom now lit among the Germans, that is three universities (studia generalia) shining with rays of glorious truth? Let now that Italian Boethius be silent, let him no longer say "We have seen a few marked by German fury," for blindness has now fallen in part on Israel so that the multitude of the Gentiles might be enlightened."
In Vienna, where Langenstein had recently moved from Paris, the mood was buoyant. At long last the Empire was beginning to overcome its sense of inferiority in European culture.
As an aspiring center of learning, Vienna was promising enough. From the modest outpost that had once sheltered Marcus Aurelius's garrison on the northeast border of the Roman Empire, Vienna by the late Middle Ages had grown into a sizable city. This development undoubtedly had much to do with its location at the intersection between the east-west Danube traffic and the north-south Semmering road that linked the Danube to Venice. When the Babenberg dukes first ruled the surrounding area in the late tenth century, Vienna was a city without walls. In the wake of increasing economic activity in the late twelfth century, however, Leopold V of Babenberg erected extensive fortifications around the entire settlement, which now included his own residence. The walls extended as far as the present-day Ringstrasse, ambitiously enclosing a large area that was not yet inhabited, but that presumably would soon be.
In Lower Austria, the Habsburgs came to power in the thirteenth century. They used a brief stint at the helm of the Holy Roman Empire, together with holy matrimony, as steppingstones to expansion. With their acquisition of Carinthia, Krain, and Tyrol during the fourteenth century, Austria became a strategic territory from the commercial point of view. The Habsburgs now controlled several important trade routes between Germany and Italy, including the road to Venice by way of the Semmering range and Villach.
Although the geography and the demand for goods were propitious enough, these advantages were tempered by the heavy restrictions that taxation placed on trade in the late Middle Ages. One scholar has counted as many as seventy-seven tolls on the relatively short Lower Austrian course of the Danube. These limitations notwithstanding, Vienna benefited to some extent from the transit of eastbound English, Rhenish, and Flemish cloth, and of cattle moving westward from Hungary. Luxury goods and consumer products destined to the court accounted for a substantial portion of the local manufacturing. The city also profited from the trade between the Lower Austrian and Styrian iron mines and their clients in Northern and Eastern Europe. Last but not least, viticulture, controlled for the most part by the burgesses, constituted the backbone of the Viennese economy, which depended on exports of local wine to Bavaria and the Sudetenland.
The importance of viticulture for the city's livelihood might seem to imply that the bourgeoisie played a leading role in city politics, but this was only partially the case. Vienna had a three-tiered social system that distinguished it from many of its Flemish or North German counterparts. The guilds and the patricians were not entirely powerless, of course, but the decisive element in fourteenth-century Viennese politics was the presence of the Habsburg court. After 1275, when the construction of the ducal stronghold, the Hofburg, began within the city walls, the town faced a concrete reminder of the proximity of ducal power: there could be no doubt that what was good for the Habsburgs was good for Vienna. Only rarely — and in the end unsuccessfully — did the city display the streaks of independence so characteristic of the cities of the Low Countries during these years.
One scholar has gone so far as to claim that during the fourteenth century the city of Vienna had no political history. In the first third of the fourteenth century, the patrician families that had played an important role in earlier city history were either in decline or had completely disappeared. Throughout that century, the Habsburgs steadily consolidated their power. The city council took care of perfunctory administrative duties, but played no discernible political role. The few conflicts crystallized around problems of Habsburg succession. Thus, when in their privileges the Habsburgs referred to the city as unsere Stadt, they were expressing not merely fondness for their place of residence, but also an uncontested political fact.
The fine texture of Viennese social fabric is not well known. Based on the 1405 census, recent estimates suggest that two thousand burgesses constituted the core of the citizenry. These figures include males above the age of eighteen who had received from the city council "the citizen's rights" in exchange for the obligation of living in Vienna in their own households. According to one scholar, the population comprised the following categories: approximately 100 patricians, 300 merchants, and 1,600 artisans (1,130 technical artisans, 300 small shopkeepers, and 170 members of various auxiliary services — physicians, gardeners, winetasters, etc.). On the assumption of five persons per hearth in the early fifteenth century, the total population of the city has been estimated at fifteen to twenty thousand, including 1,000 persons associated with the university, 500 Jews, 1,500 courtiers and related occupations, 1,500 religious, and 2,000 journeymen, beggars, prostitutes, etc. Since the second half of the fourteenth century witnessed demographic upheavals, it is very difficult to know precisely the size of the population at any given date.
Whatever the exact figures, the broad outlines of the various social groups are discernible, and the dukes seem to have been particularly skilled at playing off various factions against each other. Rudolph iv (d. 1365), for example, consciously favored the burgesses against the old patrician families. Otto Brunner has argued that the peculiar social and political constraints on Vienna, combined with its idiosyncratic economic activities, account for the relatively stable social and political history of the city, especially by comparison with towns like Bruges, Liège, or Florence. With heavy investments in viticulture and the wine trade, a large portion of Viennese society placed a high premium on compromise to avert violent solutions that would ruin the city's economic base for years to come. The citizenry, not the Habsburg court, was almost always the compromising party, however, and this for good economic reasons: unlike the Viennese townsfolk, the Habsburgs disposed of considerable sources of income beyond the city.
Like many other medieval towns, Vienna boasted a long, if decentralized, tradition of learning well before the foundation of the university. Various religious orders had established houses in and around the city. In the mid-twelfth century, the Babenberg ruler Heinrich Jasomirgott had invited Irish Benedictines from St. Jacob's in Regensburg to found a sister monastery in Vienna. The newcomers settled within the city walls, on the location of the present-day Schottenstift. Along with their reputation for holiness, they also brought a library. Traces of a school that taught the trivium have survived, but its influence is difficult to evaluate.
By the fourteenth century, however, the Benedictines themselves were on the decline. The torch of reform passed on to the Augustinian Eremites, established in the vicinity of Vienna since the mid-thirteenth century. They eventually came to occupy a prominent position within the educational hierarchy of the order. By 1327, when they relocated inside the city walls, the Viennese House had been the studium of the Augustinian order's Bavarian province for some twenty years. According to received wisdom, their teachings reflected the views of Giles of Rome, at least until the mid-fourteenth century when the influential theologians Thomas of Strasbourg and Gregory of Rimini succeeded each other at the head of the order.
Beyond the scattered libraries and schools of its religious orders, Vienna in the thirteenth century also supported a school associated with the parish of St. Stephen. In 1296 Duke Albert 1, who had been the patron of the school, transferred its jurisdiction to the burgomaster and city council. In the same ordinance, he gave the rector of St. Stephen's oversight responsibilities not only for the Bürgerschule, but for the other schools in the city. Although the names of several other rectors have survived, Conrad of Megenberg's tenure as headmaster of the Bürgerschule (1342–1348) stands out as one of the high points of learning in Vienna before the foundation of the university. The details of his activities as a teacher remain obscure. He presumably brought to his vocation the same interest in the dissemination of knowledge that led him to produce both a German version of Sacrobosco's On the Sphere as well as Das Buch der Natur, allegedly the first natural history in German — even if it was heavily indebted to Albertus Magnus. Interestingly, these scientific interests went hand in hand with a vociferous antipathy for Ockhamism. Little else is known about the school curriculum during these early years.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from "Unless You Believe, You Shall Not Understand" by Michael H. Shank. Copyright © 1988 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
- FrontMatter, pg. i
- Contents, pg. vii
- Preface, pg. ix
- Bibliographic Abbreviations, pg. xv
- Critical Symbols, pg. xvii
- CHAPTER ONE. Vienna and the Rise of Its University, pg. 1
- CHAPTER TWO. Intellectual Life in the Revived University, pg. 26
- CHAPTER THREE. On Paralogisms in Trinitarian Doctrine (i): The Early Fourteenth Century, pg. 57
- CHAPTER FOUR. Trinitarian Paralogisms Come to Vienna: Henry of Oyta and Henry of Langenstein, pg. 87
- CHAPTER FIVE. On Paralogisms in Trinitarian Doctrine (π): The Viennese Students, pg. 111
- CHAPTER SIX. Langenstein and the Viennese Jews, pg. 139
- CHAPTER SEVEN. "Unless You Believe, You Shall Not Understand", pg. 170
- Conclusion, pg. 201
- APPENDIX. The Notebook of Johannes Bremis, pg. 205
- Bibliography, pg. 221
- Index, pg. 249