This page provides a brief account of the nature, development, and principal parts of medieval philosophy and theology. For resources on studying medieval philosophy, see the Medievalism Resources tab.

The Greatness of Medieval Philosophy

Medieval philosophy taken broadly stretches for over a thousand years and, in some stage of its development, touches six of the seven continents. In many ways, medieval philosophy was the culmination of three antique traditions: the peripatetic tradition (i.e., the tradition begun by Aristotle), the Platonic tradition (i.e., the tradition begun by Plato, especially as re-founded by Plotinus and Porphyry), and the patristic tradition (i.e., the tradition of the Fathers of the early Christian Church). Modern institutions in the West today—from higher education to constitutional government to the national and international legal systems—are intelligible only in reference to the ideas developed during the Middle Ages, a period when, despite the poverty of empirical and historical sciences (or perhaps because of this), the liberal arts (esp. grammar and logic), human psychology, philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophy of law, and theology were developed within a fully professional, academic setting to a level of sophistication never seen before or since except, perhaps and only in a few areas, during the last 150 years.

The Analogous Character of "Medieval Philosophy"

When people speak of medieval philosophy, they principally have in mind the philosophical culture of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries—the golden age of the University of Paris and scholasticism, when we find the likes of Bonaventure, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham—as well as, in a lesser way, the period immediately preceding this golden age, during which the advanced study of the liberal arts (esp. grammar and dialectic) as preparation for the study of scripture transformed the practice of theology into a rigorous systematic discipline and gave rise to the first universities of Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. We can refer to this period as the "High Middle Ages." It serves as something like a prime analogate for the phrase "medieval philosophy." Taking this as the prime analogate of medieval philosophy, we can extend the phrase "medieval philosophy" backwards and forwards to cover a vast region of intellectual history, stretching over more than a millennia, from Augustine at the turn of the fouth century to Suárez and John of St. Thomas in the seventeenth century. We can also use it to extend the phrase "medieval philosophy" to cover the non-Christian or non-Latin philosophies contemporaneous with or preceding High Medieval Latin philosophy.

The Fuzzy Chronological Boundaries of Medieval Philosophy

On both ends, this vast period of intellectual history overlaps with other periods—antiquity, on the one end, and early modernity, on the other. At and after the time of Augustine, significant works of Greek-speaking philosophy in the Platonic and Peripatetic traditions would continue to be produced. Descartes and Galileo were contemporaries of Suárez and John of St. Thomas. 

The Geographic Range of Medieval Philosophy

Likewise, on both ends, medieval philosophy extends beyond the bounds of western and central Europe. Early on, "medieval philosophy" is found, with Augustine, in central N. Africa, where the Latin-Roman and slowly Christianizing culture was first shaken by the Vandal conquest during Augustine's own lifetime (420s). With the Arab conquest of N. Africa in the second half of the seventh century, N. Africa was definitively subsumed into a new Arabo-Muslim culture. With this conquest, the sole remaining Latin-speaking portion of the Christian world was that of western and central Europe now governed, on the whole, by various Germanic and, later, Nordic kingdoms and principalities, ever in competition with the Greek-speaking remnant of the Roman Empire (now centered in the east on the Anatolian Peninsula [roughly modern-day Turkey]) for control of what ever-fluctuating portions of western Europe it could exert its influence. On the opposite end of the history of medieval philosophy, the Latin-language, Christian culture, matured in the High Middle Ages, had, with the help of the global imperial and mercantile expansion of western European powers, burst beyond the bounds of western Europe and taken root in monastic houses and institutions of higher education as far apart as the Americas (North and South) and East Asia.

These facts make it impossible to simply identify "medieval philosophy" with European philosophy. Still, after its initial stimulus in the writings of the North African, Augustine, the primary developments within medieval philosophy all took place within the confines of Europe and, specifically, western Europe. We can even be more specific than this. Though Spain eventually took a leading role in developing scholastic thought in the later Middle Ages (overlapping with early modernity), the principal developments of medieval philosophy took place within the region that, in modern terms, stretches from the British Isles, in the North, through France and Germany to southern Italy.

The Language of Medieval Philosophy

In the period and geographic region covered by medieval philosophy, there was never a time when some leading figures were ignorant of Greek. Boethius (480–524) knew Greek. So did John Scottus Eriugena (800–877), Robert Grosseteste (1168/70–1253), Roger Bacon (1219–1292). Yet, what is perhaps the single most important factor uniting "medieval philosophy" in the geographical region described above is that it is carried on in the Latin tongue and within a culture in which Latin is the primary international academic language. Augustine had no mastery of Greek—though he studied it in school—and Greek was unknown by a majority of the leading thinkers in the period and geographic region corresponding to medieval philosophy. The end of medieval philosophy corresponds to the rise of vernacular literature and the widespread knowledge of Greek in the late Middle Ages and early modernity.

Jewish, Muslim, and Byzantine Medieval Philosophy? Chinese Medieval Philosophy?

If medieval philosophy is roughly the philosophical tradition of Europe flowing from the influence of the Latin writings of Augustine (N. Africa) and Boethius (Italy) and extending until the decline of Latin as the international intellectual tongue, does it make any sense to speak of Jewish, Muslim, or Chinese medieval philosophy? Of medieval philosophy written in Arabic in Baghdad or Alexandria? The answer is, "Yes," if we keep in mind that the phrase "medieval philosophy" is analogous.

The phrase "Middle Ages" (from medium aevum => medi[a]eval) comes from the late Middle Ages in Europe, when scholars, belonging to its Latin culture, but impressed with what they knew of classical and Christian Roman antiquity as well as the Greek East, referred to the immediate past of their own culture as a "Dark Age" and "Middle Age" between the rebirth ("renaissance") of classical, patristic, and Greek culture that they themselves were trying to usher in and the classical-patristic past. Thus, "medieval" originally referred (in a derogatory way) to a specifically Latin-speaking culture, the heartland of which was western and central Europe, during a specific period of time from the fall of the Roman Empire until the revival of Greek learning and birth of vernacular literature. Of course, given the origin of the term "medieval," from which we take the primary meaning of this term, it cannot apply in any straightforward way to the Greek-language philosophy of the Byzantine Empire (the eastern remnant of the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on the Anatolian Peninsula [roughly modern-day Turkey]) or the mostly Arabic-language philosophy of the Muslim and Jewish scholars of the same period (mostly located in Spain, N. Africa, the Lavant, or Persia).

With that said, this intellectual period in European history developed in tandem with political and intellectual developments in the Arabic and Byzantine worlds and through the dialogue between the three primary Mediterranean religions of the time (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam). Thus, there is considerable overlap in content, method, and context for the development of Jewish, Islamic, and Byzantine philosophy during the period we call the "Middle Ages." In this sense, we can speak of a "medieval" Jewish, Islamic, and Byzantine philosophy. By a similar, but vastly more remote analogical extension of the term, we can even speak of "medieval" Chinese or Indian philosophy, but since there was very minimal contact between Europe and the far East, the intellectual and political developments of these two geographic regions were not nearly as closely linked as those in the Latin-, Greek-, and Arabic-speaking parts of the Mediterranean world.

While Chinese and Indian medieval philosophy still receive relatively little attention in modern Western universities, Arabic Muslim and Jewish philosophy—and to a lesser extent, Byzantine philosophy—have received considerable attention in the last century. As a result, while "medieval philosophy" still principally focuses on the philosophical developments in France, Italy, England, and Germany, it is usually divided into three (or four) portions: 

(1) Western (i.e., Latin-language) medieval philosophy; 

(2) Islamic medieval philosophy; 

(3) Jewish medieval philosophy; and 

(4) Byzantine philosophy—the last of these being frequently omitted.

1) Proto-Middle Ages

In many ways, the works of two specific Church Fathers—the North African bishop, Augustine (354–430), and Roman philosopher-stateman, Boethius (480–524)—define the Latin Middle Ages since it was these two authors who established the basic scaffolding of high medieval thought, its basic conclusions, problems, and modes of argument, and its point of comparison as new ideas from the Arabic and Greek worlds entered the Latin West beginning around the twelfth century. Thus, in any history of the Middle Ages, the first period must be the proto-Middle Ages, when—under the shadow of the long-enduring institutions of classical Rome, now slowly losing their hold over western Europe and North Africa—the classical works that would eventually dominate high medieval thinking, were written.

Augustine

St. Augustine (354–430) was born in the town of Thagaste in N. Africa, at the time an important agricultural province of the Roman Empire. His mother, St. Monica, was a Christian, but his father, Patricius, was not. His parents, living on the lower fringes of the upper class of their town and hoping to make a better life for their son, made considerable sacrifices to allow him to study grammar and oratory in the metropolis of central N. Africa, Carthage. Their ambitions for their son are reflected in the name they chose for him, "Augustine," which has something of the force of "Little Emperor"—not a common name at the time (see Lancel, Augustine).

Though Augustine seems to have always been committed to Christianity in some form, as described in his famous spiritual biography, the Confessions, he would undergo a dramatic series of intellectual and spiritual conversions before eventually joining the catholic and orthodox Christian communion. First, he joined the heretical Christian sect, the Manichees, who professed a materialistic dualism in which the two gods, light and dark, were in perpetual warfare and responsibility for sin was attributed to opaque matter. The Manichees attacked the Hebrew scriptures on account of the apparent barbarity of the Hebrew patriarchs and Old Testament, creator god. Reading Cicero—who embraced a moderate form of skepticism (called "Academic" skepticism after the Academy founded by Plato in Athens)—and meeting with one of the luminaries of the Manichaean sect, Augustine became disillusioned with it, but continued to remain in it for social reasons. Finally, after reading some works of the Platonists, Augustine came to admit the existence of certain incorporeal, intellectual, or spiritual realities to which the mind could ascend within itself. 

These transformations in Augustine's thought corresponded to his journey as a teacher of oratory northward from Carthage to Rome and from Rome to Milan, where, under the influence of his mother, who had followed him, he began to listen to the preaching of the former imperial governor turned bishop, St. Ambrose of Milan (339–97), someone who was not only a political giant within the empire, but also, like himself, classically educated and capable of explaining difficult Old Testament passages in an intellectually satisfying way. After a famous conversion experience, involving the reading of Romans 13:13–14, described in his Confessions, he decided to end his relationship to his common law wife with whom he now had a adolescent son, Adeodatus, and, with his son, to enter the catholic Church. He returned to N. Africa, where he intended to live as a monk, but he was eventually compelled to become a priest and, later, bishop. As bishop, he functioned as the leading spokesperson for the bishops of N. Africa.

Augustine's intellectual endeavors as a Catholic came in roughly three overlapping periods of polemic: first, against the Manichess; second, against the Donatists; and third, against the Pelagians and the remaining pagans. The Donatists were a Christian sect in N. Africa, much like the catholics, who had broken with the catholic communion over the question of how to treat Christians who had fallen away during the pagan imperial persecutions. Augustine's controversy with the Donatists was eventually caught up with such topics as the possibility of rebaptism, the role of priests in the administration of the sacraments, the universality of the Church, and the possibility of state coercion in Church affairs. 

Pelagianism is a loosely defined movement within Christianity associated with the British spiritual master, Pelagius (354–418), popular among the Roman, Christian aristocracy, who came to N. Africa as a refugee after the Visigothic sack of Rome in 410. Though it is difficult to identify a single common body of doctrine among the Pelagians, the debate between them and Augustine, which ended up involving thinkers from across the empire, including two bishops of Rome, centered on questions of grace, free will, original sin, the purpose of baptism, and the possibility of sinlessness. The Pelagians insisted on the possibility of sinlessness through human free will and were somewhat vague about the role of grace in human sinlessness and the reason for the possibility of infant baptism. Augustine insisted on the necessity of grace for upright action and on the necessity of infant baptism to counteract the transmission of Adam's sin by sexual reproduction.

During Augustine's time, although the empire was officially Christian, the Roman aristocracy still included many powerful pagans. When Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410, these pagans blamed the new religion for the city and empire's calamaties. Augustine responded by writing his largest work, City of God, in which he, first, painstakingly described and attacked the popular form of Roman paganism, the superstitions of the astrologers, and the errors of the pagan philosophers. The remainder of the book was dedicated to expounding the Christian religion and salvation history. The central theme in the book is the duality of the City of God (the Kingdom of Heaven) and the City of Man—the earthly city. This book has always exercised a powerful influence over Western political thought. In the later tradition, there has been much dispute about whether or to what extent Augustine's two cities can be identified with the visible Church and the secular state, respectively.

One of the most influential aspects of Augustine's thought was his sophisticated and highly original psychology. In works, like De magistro and De libero arbitrio, Augustine put forward a theory of divine illumination in which all learning comes from Christ teaching the soul from within and from the perception of the ideas in the mind of God. In De trinitate, Augustine defended the coherence of the orthodox Christian doctrine of the Trinity—namely, that there is only one God, but that God subsists in three persons (the Father, the Son [or the Word], and the Holy Spirit—by saying that the persons of the Trinity do not differ absolutely, but by their mutual relations. Apart from laying the groundwork for later medieval theories of predication about God (i.e., for theories of how we can speak about God), this book also had a foundational role in medieval psychology because of its extensive discussion of the images of the Trinity in the human mind, including its distinction between the "inner word" (i.e., the concept in the mind) and the "outer word," perceived by the ears, which signifies the concept in the mind.

Boethius

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480–524) was a Roman philosopher and stateman living under the Ostrogothic rule of central Italy at a time when the Ostrogoths and eastern Roman Empire were vying for control of the peninsula. He was educated in Greek and Latin and attempted to preserve classical peripatetic and Platonic philosophy at a time when knowledge of Greek was waning in the West by translating Aristotle's complete works along with commentaries on these into Latin. Unfortunately, Boethius was executed by the Arian, Ostrogothic king, Theodoric, for an alleged plot against the king before he could see this massive translation project to completion. 

The translations, commentaries, and paraphrases he did complete (commentaries and translations of Porphyry's Isagoge and Aristotle's Categories and De interpretatione; paraphrases of parts of Aristotle's Analytics; and commentaries on Cicero's Topics) formed the basis of later medieval education in dialectic or logic. His contribution to medieval education in the liberal arts also included his own logical treatises and a treatise on music. 

Boethius also wrote five short theological tractates and, while in prison awaiting execution, his magnum opus, the Consolation of Philosophy, a dialogue with a personified Philosophy, who instructs him in the midst of his earthly misfortune about true and apparent happiness, fate and divine providence. This dialogue formed the basis for later medieval Christian discussions of the nature of happiness, the nature of divine eternity, and the relation of divine providence to future contingent events and sin. 

Hi Contra Eutychen (a treatise against the heresies of Eutyches and Nestorius) he discusses the hypostatic union—that is, composition of the person of Christ, the second person of the Trinity, out of two natures, human and divine. This treatise begins with a very influential section in which he explained the correspondence between basic terminology in Greek and Latin philosophy, relevant to discussions of the hypostatic union, for instance, the meaning of the words "nature" (natura), "substance" (substantia), "hypostasis" (hypostasis), "essence" (ousia), "person" (prosopon), and so on.

His theological treatise De trinitate—a treatise against the Arians, showing the possibility of three persons in one God—apart from providing a basic Augustinian model for later Trinitarian theology, stimulated medieval discussions of the problem of individuation (how there can be multiple individuals of the same kind; e.g., multiple individual humans, who are alike in species) and the problem of divine predication and simplicity (how we can attribute to God multiple non-synonymous predicates given that God is perfectly simple). 

His treatise De hebdomadibus (Quomodo substantiae), which aims to show how creatures can be good in their very substance without being God himself, who is substantial goodness itself, stimulated later medieval discussions of the transcendentals (i.e., the common attributes of every being, such as goodness, truth, and unity) and of divine simplicity and creaturely complexity. Especially important was his claim that every composite thing is composed of what it is (quod est) and its being (esse), but that in every simple thing (and he is clear God alone is simple), these two are the same. 

In the High Middle Ages, an apparent (arguably not real) discrepancy between Boethius's assertions about created incorporeal substances (e.g., the human soul and angels) in De trinitate and Contra Eutychen contributed to debates about whether spiritual substances (angels) are pure forms or whether, on the contrary, they are composed of spiritual matter (i.e., matter without corporeal dimensions) and form. The latter position is known as universal hylomorphism. Likewise, an apparent discrepancy between De trinitate and Consolation of Philosophy, on the one hand, and Boethius's long commentary on the Isagoge, on the other, helped to catalyze perhaps the most well-known and highly sophisticated medieval dispute—that of the problem of universals. What is signified by common terms, like "man" or "red"? Do these terms signify real things that are themselves common to multiple individuals—to multiple humans or red things? If so, what are these common things or "universals"? Are the ideas in the mind of God (divine ideas), creatures, mere objects of thought, constructed by our mind's activity, real accidents in our intellect, or something else? The problem of universals is closely tied to the problem of individuation, closely tied to Boethius's De trinitate and Aristotle's Metaphysics VII (Z). This problem concerns the causal principle explaining the possibility of a multiplicity of individuals of the same specific kind. What accounts for the fact that Cicero and Cato are two distinct individuals if both are essentially the same thing, a man? Is it their place, their matter, their quantity, some mysterious individuating property, nothing at all, or some combination of these?

Although Boethius, unlike Augustine, is not a canonized saint in the Catholic Church, in 1883, the Sacred Congregation of Rites approved a customary local cult of Boethius in Pavia (Turner, "Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius," in Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907).

2) Early Middle Ages

A Note on the "Fall" of Rome

In conventional histories, this period began with the "fall" of the Roman Empire due to German barbarian invasions, the sorry state of Roman morals, and the pacifistic character of Christianity—all of which combined to produce a long "dark age." This version of history is now known to be deeply mistaken (see esp. Peter Brown, Rise of Western Christendom).

• For one thing, the Roman Empire as such did not collapse during the fifth century. What collapsed—if anything—was the Roman Empire's control over western Europe (Gaul, Italy, Spain). Even this is overstating matters. The Roman Empire, for which Constantinople (in modern-day Turkey) had long-since been the primary capitol, continued to exercise sporadic control over parts of the western European Mediterranean for hundreds of years, sometimes to the dismay of the native population. The Roman Empire itself survived until 1453, when Constantinople finally fell to the Ottoman Empire after centuries of glacial decline due to a variety of factors—the bubonic plague of the sixth century, the disastrous wars with the Persian empire and, then, with the Muslim empires and, even, the sack of Constantinople by Franks and Venetians (1204). Though we often refer to the Roman Empire after the fall of the empire in the West as the "Byzantine Empire," this is a retrospective label. When the Ottomans overthrew the Byzantines, they understood themselves as overthrowing the "Romans."

• Secondly, the German cultures on the frontiers of the Roman Empire were agricultural in character and not terribly distinct from Roman culture. While contemporary moralists attributed their calamities to invading, uncivilized barbarians and decadent Roman morals, this version of events was more imagined than real.

• The "invasions" of the western Roman Empire (especially in Gaul and Italy) were really minor, local events brought, mostly occasioned by Roman generals themselves, who recruited German mercenaries during the Roman civil wars.

• Fourth, the "fall" of the Roman Empire in the West in the early fifth century did not result in an immediate collapse in Roman culture there, but to a decentralization of Roman culture and governance such that the Roman Empire in the West devolved into a collection of local Roman-nesses, gradually evolving independently of each other. This significantly lessened the tax burden on the peasant and laboring classes (making it something of a golden age for them), but also contributed to a dramatic drop in the wealth of the higher ranks of society, on which the great intellectual and civic monuments of a society depend. This is why we get the sense that this was the start of a sort of "dark age." The civilization was poorer, but the laborers and peasants were not.

• Finally, much of what was once thought to be a forced importation of Germanic culture on former Roman subjects—such as the militarization of the ruler class (who started to wear swords on their hips), the swearing of homage and fealty oaths, et cetera—in fact, reflected the mostly voluntary subsumption of the general Roman populace or ruling class into a Roman-army culture that had been forced on the German mercenaries during the civil wars. Due to the decentralization of Roman governance, the Roman ruling class in the West, which had not previously been militaristic, came to take on the culture of the former Roman army, a culture now found among the German tribes, which offered protection and political stability in a newly fragmented world.

Early Medieval Philosophy as Such

With all these caveats in place about the "fall" of the Roman Empire, we can recognize a long and fairly heterogeneous period in medieval philosophy (called laconically the "Early Middle Ages") 

stretching from the fall of the Roman Empire in the West to the second half of the eleventh century, when a series of new factors—marked population growth, the rise of the Norman states, the papal and monastic reform movements, and the first crusade (1095–1099)—combined to usher in a new era in Western thought. 

Most histories of the Middle Ages pass very briefly over this long, second period, which produced the great encyclopedic and commentatorial works of Isidore (560–636) and Bede (672–735) as well as the Neoplatonic speculations of John Scottus Eriugena (800–877). It was also during this period that two of the Greek-speaking authors who would have a tremendous influence on later Latin thought lived (or probably lived). First, there was the unknown Greek-speaking author of the Corpus Dionysiacum Areopagiticum ("Pseudo-Dionysius"), whose works were translated by Eriugena. Second, there was the Greek-speaking, Syrian Christian monk, John Damascene (675/6–749), who wrote the encyclopedic De fide orthodoxa, translated in the twelfth century.

3) High Middle Ages

The third period (the “High Middle Ages”) in medieval philosophy—the period archetypically associated with medieval thought—stretches from the second half of the eleventh century to about middle of the fourteenth century, when another series of factors—the papal exile in Avignon (1309–1376), the Hundred Years War (1337–1453), the Black Death (starting 1347), the Great Western Schism (1378–1417), dramatic population decline, an influx of previously unknown works from the collapsing Byzantine empire, the rise of radical social theorists and movements (Marsilius of Padua [1270–1342], William of Ockham, OFM [1287–1347], John Wycliffe [1328–1384], Jan Hus [1370–1415]), and so on—again combined to usher in a new era in Western thought. 

This period can itself be divided into roughly three parts. 

a) Early High Middle Ages: The Youth of Scholasticism

First, between the latter half of the eleventh century and the first half of the twelfth century, there was a sudden growth in the number and quality of formal educational institutions (“schools”; from which we get the term scholasticism) outside of monasteries as well as a marked interest in the study of the secular liberal arts (esp. grammar and dialectic) as tools for the interpretation of scripture. The latter trend—exemplified by the likes of Berengar of Tours (d. 1088), Lanfranc of Bec (d. 1089), Anselm of Canterbury (d. 1109), William of Champeaux (d. 1121), Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141), Peter Abelard (d. 1142), Gilbert of Poitiers (d. 1154), and Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173)—provoked a negative reaction from the great monastic reformer, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). 

Liberal arts are so-called because they were disciplines suitable to and expected of free persons in classical antiquity—that is, to those not engaged in servile labor, but free to exercise their minds. The traditional seven liberal arts are the trivium (grammar, logic / dialectic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy / astrology). In the High Middle Ages, the liberal arts were primarily studied by clerics (monks, friars, and secular clergy). Thus, these arts came to be viewed as "liberal" not in the sense they were practiced by free persons (non-serfs or slaves), but in the sense that they freed the mind for the study of theology. In the High Middle Ages, the two liberal arts primarily studied were grammar and dialectic. Rhetoric was mostly suspect and neglected. The liberal arts in general were associated in the medieval imagination with pagan antiquity, and grammar and dialectic, specifically, were all but identified with two particular pagans, Priscian (fl. 500) and Aristotle (384–322 BC), respectively. Grammar was the study of the rules of written symbols, used for forming correct speech. Logic or dialectic was the study of spoken sounds (vox) as signifying thoughts. Priscian and Aristotle's teachings, often apparently contradictory, were usually combined into a hybrid logico-grammatical discipline called "speculative grammar," which was characterized roughly by the assumption that the ways we signify things (modi significandi), pertinent to grammar, somehow map onto the way things actually are (modi essendi).

b) Central High Middle Ages: The Maturation of Scholasticism

Second, there was a period from about the middle of the twelfth century to the middle of the thirteenth, during which there was an initial attempt to assimilate an influx of newly translated Greek and Arab (pagan, Muslim, and Jewish) scientific or philosophical works—especially those of Aristotle, Avicenna, Avicebron, Averroes, Maimonides, and Proclus. This period, which centered on the newly established University of Paris, was characterized by the production of great summaries of theology, aimed at addressing the whole scope of revealed doctrine on the model of an Aristotelian science. 

During this period, the now-standard practice of studying the liberal arts (esp. grammar and dialectic) as preparation for theology expanded to incorporate philosophy (esp. natural philosophy, metaphysics, ethics), mostly taken from newly translated works of Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes. The study of logic or dialectic itself expanded during this period with the expansion of the canon of ancient logical texts studied in schools. The old logic (logica vetus) consisted in the study of words, propositions, and universals (roughly Aristotle's Categories and De interpretatione and Porphyry's Isagoge, with Boethius's commentaries on them). The new logic (logica nova)—by incorporated Aristotle's Prior Analytics [on reasoning or inference in general], Posterior Analytics [on scientific knowledge (scientia)], Topics [on probabilistic or plausible reasoning], and Sophistical Refutations [on fallacious reasoning]—drew into the study of logic topics that may now be classified as matters for epistemology or philosophy of science, such as the nature of certainty, the proper method of scientific investigation, and the causes of error. (On the distinction between logica vetus and nova, see Stephen Brown, "Intellectual Context of Later Medieval Philosophy," in RHP:MP, 190– 91.)

The chief debates during the central High Middle Ages, mostly arose from the new non-Christian books now in circulation. Theologians and arts masters debated the nature of science and certainty, the scientific character of theology and its relation to other disciplines, the nature of the human soul, and the character of the distinction and relation between God and creatures. It was during this period that new mendicant (or beggar) orders (the Order of Friars Minor [Franciscans; founded 1209] and Order of Preachers [Dominicans; founded 1216]) were founded and—in the figures of Alexander of Hales, OFM (1185–1245), Hugh of St.-Cher, OP (1200–1263), Robert Kilwardby, OP (1215–1279), Albertus Magnus, OP (1200–1280), Roger Bacon, OFM (1219–1292), Bonaventure, OFM (1221–1274), and Thomas Aquinas, OP (1225–1274)—came to dominate intellectual life in the Latin world. Important thinkers during this period, who did not belong to the mendicant orders, include William of Auxerre (1140/50–1231), Thomas Gallus (1200–1246), William of Auvergne (1180–1249), Robert Grosseteste (1168/70–1253), and Siger of Brabant (1240–1284).

Though exact dating of the origin of any university as such is somewhat hard to define, we can roughly date the major universities of Europe—Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, and Bologna—to this period or the early High Middle Ages. For instance, the University of Paris was formed as a master-student guild out of the cathedral school of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Abbey of St. Victor (the home of the twelfth-century "Victorines"), and the study houses of the new mendicants, Franciscans and Dominicans (Stephen Brown, "Intellectual Context of Later Medieval Philosophy," in RHP:MP, 189). The university was divided into two main faculties—the Faculty of Arts, which was supposed to teach the liberal arts (esp. grammar and logic), and the Faculty of Theology, which was supposed to teach sacred scripture. The introduction of new scientific or philosophical works that did not fall neatly under either the liberal arts or theology catalyzed something of a turf war between the two faculties over the teaching of philosophy. This was reflect in the episcopal condemnations in 1270 and 1277, made in consultation with the theology faculty, of a series of philosophical propositions being taught by members of the Arts Faculty. From the central High Middle Ages until well into the Late Middle Ages, the University of Paris, above all, functioned as a sort of intellectual capitol for the Catholic Church.

c) The Decline and Fall of Medieval Philosophy and Theology

Third, arguably it was the tremendous work of Albert and Thomas at systematizing theological reflection on the model of an Aristotelian science and of explaining the newly translated works of Aristotle that catalyzed a new era in the High Middle Ages. After around the death of St. Thomas, medieval philosophy and theology—still centered on Paris and now thoroughly professional in character—comes to take the form of extended, formalized, and highly sophisticated debates (quaestiones) about a standard set of logical, metaphysical, and theological questions, such as whether universals are substances or whether there is a real distinction between essence and existence in creatures. 

Some of the chief figures in this period are Henry of Ghent (1217–1293), Godfrey of Fontaines (d. 1306/9), Giles of Rome, OSA (1243–1316), James of Viterbo, OSA (1255–1307), Hervaeus Natalis, OP (1260–1323), John Duns Scotus, OFM (1265–1308), Durandus of Saint-Pourçain, OP (1275–1332), Peter Aureoli (1280–1322), Walter Burley (1275–1344), William of Ockham, OFM (1287–1347), Geraldus Odonis, OFM (1285–1349), and John Buridan (1301–1359). 

Conflicts among the mendicant orders themselves and with ecclesiastical authorities contributed to the crystallization of various scholastic factions (“schools”)—the Thomists, the Scotists, the nominalists, and so on—each adhering to standard sets of conclusions. 

4) Late Middle Ages

The final phase of the Middle Ages (the “Late Middle Ages”) stretches vaguely outward from the mid-fourteenth century with no clear terminus. Wherever and to whatever extent the old scholastic institutions and methods, which reached maturity in the thirteenth century, lived on, so too, in a way, did the Middle Ages. Arguably, the late Middle Ages includes such scholastic thinkers as Paul of Venice, OSA (1369–1429), John Capreolus, OP (1380–1444), Thomas de Vio, OP (“Cajetan”) (1469–1534), Francisco Suárez, SJ (1548–1617), and John of St. Thomas, OP (“Poinsot”) (1589–1644). These influence of these institutions and methods on society began to decline in the mid-fourteenth century with the birth of two rather difficult to define, but closely associated ressourcement movements: “humanism” and the “Renaissance.” 

The Renaissance

Though it used to be common to speak of the Renaissance as a specific period in time after the Middle Ages, this practice has justly gone out of favor. The Renaissance is now, correctly viewed as, first and foremost, a movement in literature and the fine arts, overlapping with both the late Middle Ages and early modernity, characterized by an attempt to recover literary and artistic works or methods from classical Greek and Roman antiquity as well as a fascination with Christian antiquity, its martyrs, catacombs, and lesser-known patristic writings. In neither secular nor sacred art and literature was the Renaissance purely antiquarian. Poets, such as Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), and artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) and Michelangelo (1475–1564), tried to outdo their classical counterparts. Dante, for instance, thinks he surpasses Virgil in poetry. In sacred art, the Renaissance was most novel in its attempt to depict and emphasize the humanity of Christ (and the saints) through the perfection of classical naturalistic techniques and application of these to sacred subjects. 

Humanism

Late medieval humanism was characterized by an antagonism to the by-then-established Aristotelian methods of formal disputation in the universities and preference for newly discovered antique Latin, Greek, and Hebrew literature, outside the Aristotelian tradition—for instance, from the Greek patristic, Epicurean, Pythagorean, Hermetic, Platonic, or cabalistic traditions. Not all humanists, of course, embraced all newly recovered non-Aristotelian traditions. For instance, Erasmus and Thomas More did not think much of the hermetic or magical ressourcement of the likes of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. Humanism was also closely associated with the so-called "devotio moderna" (exemplified in Thomas à Kempis's Imitation of Christ), a movement in Catholic devotion, which emphasized the internal and spiritual aspects of devotion over against the external and emotional ones. It was critical of the excesses of contemporary academic theology and of popular lay devotion.

While humanism as a movement was generally characterized by varying degrees of antagonism to scholasticism, some leading humanists—such as the bishop of Rochester and martyr, St. John Fisher, and the Spanish reformer, Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros—combined scholastic learning with the new ressourcement of Greek and Hebrew literature. Eventually, as, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, knowledge of Greek came to be the norm for scholars (and even knowledge of Hebrew quite common), and as the practice of speculative grammar and terminist logic started to decline, the distinction between scholastic and humanist mostly faded away.

Some representative humanists include Francis Petrarch (1304–1374), Giovanni Boccacchio (1313–1375), Lorenzo Valla (1407–1457), Nicolas of Cusa (1401–1464), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (1436–1517), John Fisher (1469–1535), Thomas More (1478–1535), and Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536). 

Ficino was a central figure in the newly founded "Platonic Academy" in Florence, which benefited from the patronage of Cosimo de’ Medici. Though Plato's works were relatively unknown in the Middle Ages, mostly known only through portions of Plato's cosmogonical work, Timaeus, and second-hand reports in other authors, especially Aristotle, Ficino translated Plato's complete dialogues. 

Lorenzo Valla, apart from his extensive work as translator and biblical commentator, was a pioneer and iconoclastic figure in the burgeoning field of textual criticism—taking on the authenticity of the Donation of Constantine and of Corpus Dionysiacum Areopagiticum (then treated as deutero-canonical) and challenging the apostolic origins of the Apostles' Creed. Though his works sparked controversy, he was buried in the papal cathedral, St. John Lateran. 

Valla's work had a significant impact on the thought of Erasmus, who was the first to publish in print the complete Greek text of the New Testament along with a new translation of it into Latin (1516)—although the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, New Testament, complete with Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, produced by Spanish scholars with the backing of the Spanish humanist, Cardinal Cisneros, had been prepared for publication, but not actually published by 1514. Despite some important scholarly flaws in its production, Erasmus's edition of the Greek Bible became the standard Greek text for generations. Apart from his work as a translator, Erasmus also wrote extensive Biblical commentaries, moralistic works, polemical treatises, and, with Thomas More, helped to pioneer a rebirth of the satirical genre.

For an excellent site for visualizing the politico-geographical divisions of the long Middle Ages, see Euroatlas.net.