8 - Schools and Universities in Medieval Latin Science

Summary

During the medieval millennium, three overlapping phases and a coda characterize the schools of the Latin world. The three phases are monastic schools, urban schools, and universities. Boethius, a Christian layman, had been an advocate of the several liberal arts, which the Benedictine schools would eventually embrace as aids to their religious life. The masters of various trades likewise formed guilds, or universitates, that, within their domain, were literally autonomous. By the mid-thirteenth century, the guild (universitas) of masters of arts controlled its own teaching and degrees. The universities made natural philosophy, however ill-fitting, a central feature of their arts curriculum, and they turned into higher faculties the three disciplines of law, theology, and medicine, each of which had recently undergone a major transformation. As for members of the universities, students in Italy generally did not have clerical status by virtue of their matriculation. Both colleges and the institutional practice of small-group supervision also favored specialization.