THE CONSECRATION OF LEARNING

BACKGROUND

As a new Western Europe was approaching the second millennium, the kingdoms that for centuries had been warring among themselves, and with fighting bands of organized (and disorganized) plunderers fighting for “their share,” the nations of Western Europe as we know them today began to emerge.  These “old and famous states” included Mercia, Wessex, and Northumbria, which would come to compose Anglo Saxon – and then Norman England; Neustria, the “new” Kingdom of the Franks {Frankreich, in German}, when Latinized, Francia; and with the coming of the Normans, France; Burgundy, the Papal states and the Kingdom of Naples constituted the Italic peninsula (although it would not be until 1870 that the Italian state emerged as a unified nation); and Austrasia, the “Eastern” kingdom, or Austria, as it came to be known, as integral to the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, today’s Germany.  As these regions stabilized into their more or less present form, they took time from fighting feuds to settle their differences, and to find ways in the aftermath to deal with the consequences of primogeniture: the plight and problem of younger sons for a place in the new feudal society.

While the task of primogeniture was to provide stability in the form of large landed estates passed on through inheritance to the oldest son reporting directly to a sovereign, this left the problem of providing a place for younger sons in the new order.  Every society known to history that does not guide and direct the lives of young males is asking for trouble.  How then to deal with the problem of landless homeless sons (and there were very many of them)?  Some, on their own initiative, chose soldiering; others, the clerical state, still others to the apprenticeship of the trades and the activities of commerce.  Many of these men, without means or connections to follow these outlets, flocked to the urban centers, in search of a better life, as millions of men and women throughout history, have always done.

Although formal higher education was not yet established until the eleventh century with the establishment of universities in Bologna (1088), and followed shortly thereafter by the University of Oxford (1096), higher education had been around for several centuries.  The best known and most famous of the medieval universities – the University of Paris – gradually emerged over the course of the twelfth century, as a corporation* hived off from the cathedral school** of Paris. 

*

A corporation is a legal entity, representing a group of people, and recognized as a single legal person, that receives a charter by the sovereign, to carry out a defined set of activities.  It has a collective identity distinct from that of any particular person who belongs to it, and is authorized to act as an individual.  A creation under Roman Law, cities were the first entities the Romans treated as corporations. Over time, the concept was extended to certain community organizations called collegia. These included artisan associations, religious societies, and social clubs, formed to provide funerals for members.  Most Roman corporations served exclusively community or religious purposes.

**

Cathedral schools were forerunners to the university.  Emerging in Europe in the aftermath of the western Roman Empire’s collapse, bishops began to establish schools associated with their cathedrals, to educate men for the clergy.  These early schools developed an apprenticeship model in religious learning, usually under a bishop of scholarly leanings.  They first appeared in Visigothic Spain and Gaul in the sixth and seventh centuries, thence spreading to England and to the East.  Over time, the cathedral schools would undertake the education of the sons of the nobility, as they expanded the scope of their subject matter to the liberal arts, in general, and to the higher learning of medicine and law, and “natural philosophy”, i.e., the natural sciences.  

In addition to the cathedral schools organized around canons of clergy, education for those interested in the clerical estate and in acquiring the rudiments and refinements of education for civil administrative positions in the courts, communes and municipal corporations (see *Note above) was made available as early as the sixth century in monastic schools.  Pioneered by the Benedictine order, with other orders in their wake, they applied the Benedictine rule that ‘to work is to pray’, freely undertaking the education of youth, in monasteries staffed by monks or nuns as instructors.  The monastic schools taught students not just the attainment of reading and writing literacy; it became more about studying texts and their meaning.  

For those of ‘means’ (i.e., wealth and status), the Classical Tradition of private tutors, long-established in the Greco-Roman Hellenistic and Imperial eras, was still around, in the tradition of paideia*** education, simulating the style and substance of the classical canon of authors that would form the rough-hewn youth into a patrician of refined manner and speech. It was, perhaps, the finest education to be had for those with the inclination and discipline to master such a corpus of work.  Its limitation was that it was not widely available. In addition, its content was not reducible to fostering literacy on a wider scale.  It was essentially an elite education, while church and state needed a class of clerks and record keepers to handle the influx of landless sons arriving by droves into the urban centers.

***

Paideia encompassed the rearing and education of the ideal member of the polis or state, incorporating subject-based schooling and socialization.  (In modern times, this served as the model for making the English Victorian ‘gentleman’.)  The “apprentice” would acquire intellectual mastery of the liberal arts; ‘practical’ education in rhetoric, grammar, and logic; in ‘natural philosophy’, i.e., mathematics and medicine; moral ‘training’ by music and poetry; and “physical refinement”, consisting of gymnastics and wrestling for its effect on the body.

COLLEGIALITY

Shortly after arriving in the urban centers, younger sons sought out their fellow compatriots, for companionship, for mutual aid, and for protection against burghers, church officials and local residents who kept a watchful, wary eye on these loosely organized “bands of brothers”.  With neither apprenticeship skills, nor experience in commerce – nor was their education much beyond the basics learned in the monastic schools, these younger sons organized themselves collegially – finding strength in corporate association, and for legal protection from unjust, and often arbitrary treatment by local magistrates.  As they were generally young, they did not organize to pay for funerals; nor were they skilled artisans; nor were they adequately catechized to form religious societies. What they knew is that they did not know.  But what they wanted (or needed) to learn was known by others.  This is not quite ignorance, but a recognition that these ‘known-unknowns’ had to be identified.  These are identified unknown facts. To uncover these “facts”, groups of young men banded together to form a collegial association.  This “learning community” secured the legal framework of incorporation, to proceed in an organized way to ‘uncover the facts known by others.’   They were organized as multiple collegia, primarily by national groupings.    As a corporation, each collegium assisted fraternally in securing board and lodging, especially for destitute, would-be learners. Endowments became the mechanism for continuous funding. Colleges arrogated the organization of social life and teaching.  It was these Learning Communities that established the university – from the bottom up, by collegial and national universal groupings – by nation (univeritas).  It was not top down.  Lost in the chaos of lawless scattered bands of refugees, birth of the great universities of Europe began to appear in Bologna, Oxford, Paris, and other cities of the continent.  Organized learning among themselves ‘collegially’ resulted in the establishment of the university.

THE UNIVERSITY

There is a common assumption that the university arose in Europe based on an incorrect reading of the etymology of the word university.  In the past, when Latin was offered as a core language of study in parochial and elite prep schools, it was widely thought that the word university had a Latinate etymology, derived from the Latin unus (“one”); and veritas (“truth”).  Many draw a wrong inference from this false derivation of meaning of the word university: they assume that the university was established ab initio by the Church to teach the One (unus), Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith to instruct         young men in the essentials of the Faith. Rather, it was initiated from ‘below’, especially young men motivated to learn.  Moreover, in addition to inculcating doctrines and dogmas into a receptive body of students, the “new teaching” would stimulate learning through the use of reason, which would flourish into a diversity of viewpoints supported by standards of rigorous scholarly analysis.

As we have seen above, the university arose around mutual aid societies of foreign students – “nations” (grouped by nationality).  Originally organized for protection against city laws, which imposed collective punishment on foreigners, for crimes and debts of their countrymen, these collegia of young men transformed their society into a guild of scholars, funded almost entirely out of their own resources, and yet aiding for their poorer brethren to pursue the life of learning.  The word university itself is derived from the full name of their societies, expressed in Latin as universitas magistrorum et scholarium (“community of teachers and scholars”).

To advance their education, these students then hired teachers from the city to teach them.  As the university evolved, students secured the services of qualified teachers (i.e., “masters”), rather than the “journeymen” teachers of the liberal arts – some of whom were not baccalaureates (B.A., Bachelor of Arts degree), that is, some had yet to attain the minimum qualification to teach – the bachelor’s degree. 

The university is an association of masters and scholars leading the common life of learning – making the university a corporation.  As a corporation, it is properly characterized as “a body, a brotherhood, (possessing) ownership in common”.  As the corporation grew, the university developed a curriculum of study, covering a host of subjects and prescribed times, competency and mastery of material to be tested by examinations, leading to ‘degrees’ – bachelor, as a stage toward mastership; master, with the requisite authority to teach and “practice”; and doctor, in one of four schools: Liberal Arts; Law; Medicine; and Theology.  To gain recognition as a doctor, the candidate had to present a masterpiece in defense of a doctoral thesis.  If successful in his defense, he was immediately granted full status and voting rights in the university faculty. 

THE ROAD TO SCHOLARSHIP

The scholarly life is a very demanding and not easy life. Men, in the green spring of youth, devote themselves to a way of life requiring years of grinding preparation.  And once degreed, there is no guaranteed road to riches or rewards – or even steady employment.  To “play it safe”, many left the scholarly life, and there must have been many.  Enrollment fluctuated, and decisions by magistrates – both just and unjust – caused scores more to leave.  In a time when life expectancy was not much beyond forty years of age, there would not be enough years to earn the fruits of their labors.  For those willing to stay, they found their reward in sharpened minds resulting from their struggle to understand concepts in order to master difficult and complex material, while tolerating ambiguity and continua of indistinctness as found in the study of dialectic and the syllogism.  They learned the ways of scholasticism.  They became scholars.

INTELLECTUALISM

A scholar is not an intellectual.  Nor does being an intellectual make one a scholar.  Both, however, must be intelligible, or manifest intelligence – to be either or both.  The Greeks had three words for types of intelligence: nous, which refers to the mind itself, as constituting the process of thinking itself, as manifested in the activities of the brain and in the developing science of artificial intelligence (AI); phronesis****, a type of intelligence manifested in everyday life in the forms of prudence and making judgments; and sophia, expressing intellectual accomplishment from a long, arduous pursuit of knowledge, considered as the archetype of the philosopher, who properly understands that there is still much that he does not know, and will never know.    

****

See my previous blog entitled Aristotle’s Impact on The Wisdom Tradition for discussion of phronesis.

Intellectuality, or the intellectual life, is a reflection of culture.  It is manifested as a worldly, subjective acquaintance with many areas of knowledge.  It is the episteme “of the current year”.  It represents a body of ideas that is somewhat certain, but only at a particular time (the current year).  It calls attention to ‘progressive’ trends that have nothing to do with progress, (that is, advancements made in the arts, commerce, science, and technology). Rather, it is the paradigm of trends – to display the stigmata of trendiness, the human need to be “up-to-date.”  Trendiness is not getting closer to truth, but more about style, as used in expressions such as styles of living or being, as manifested in various forms of contingency: crazes (very short-lived); fads (short-lived, shared enthusiasm); fashion (prevailing behavior or manner of dress); mode (the current fashion), all the rage (currently very popular); and “in vogue” (popular at a certain time).

Detached intellectualism manifested as progressive, trendy, and stylish is all moonshine. It is light without heat, secondary light reflected from a dead world, to be deluded by the illusion.  Such intellectuality is not light shining from the mind – but discursive and shallow.  Discursive, as in rambling digressively, jumping from topic to topic; shallow, in not getting to the depth of things, and reaching conclusions by intuition, not reasoning.  Such thinking is ultimately superficial, insincere, and mere posturing. While it may be resourceful to have a fund of temporal and ephemeral ideas in believing that one can better affect the course of events, to be “full of ideas”, however, does not deepen understanding, nor make one a scholar.

SCHOLARSHIP

Scholarship is derived from Scholasticism, which, in turn, is the body of knowledge associated with the Medieval Schoolmen – the masters and doctors of the Medieval University.  As “schoolmen”, they taught, wrote tractates, and engaged their fellow scholars in public debate on announced topics, in the open airing of views.  These debates were heavily attended by learners, scholars, and officials of the university – and of Church and State.  The scholars themselves were associated with a variety of schools, emphasizing different themes under different charisms.  Subsumed within medieval scholasticism are many schools, under the sanction of the Catholic Magisterium.  Contrary to a popular understanding of the forms of inquiry that engaged the minds of the schoolmen, (i.e., how many angels does it take to dance on the end of a pin?), they took as the scope of their inquiry, the entirety of the natural world (natural philosophy); the abundance of rediscovered classical texts and an efflorescence of ideas from non-Catholic sources; and methods of canons of reason in their infinite variety, depending on the topic or charism.

Scholarship is not sustained by the dabbler or dilletante.  Scholarship is rigorous, meaning it is undertaken to meticulously investigate the historical records of a concept, not as a mere chronicler.  But rather, the scholar attempts to trace out the development of a concept, to substantiate findings through demonstration, supporting documentation, and with strength of evidence.  Like modern scholars, they had to put forth a hypothesis or idea, in an academic discipline, to advance the frontiers of knowledge.  In each discipline, scholars had to apply canons of reason and the methods used in their discipline.

The scholar’s purpose was a public one also: to advance the state of knowledge (what today would be referred to as cutting-edge research), through teaching, announcing, and issuing treatises for presentations at public forums for debating an announced, specific topic. Scholarship had to be documented, elaborated [developed in great detail], and replicated for peer review, not only for their scholarly peers, but for faculty deans and their university higher officers such as chancellors, rectors, and residential college officials assembled to award degrees.

In all fields at the university, the expression of a range of competing views within the boundaries of acceptable teaching, was seen as a natural outgrowth of scholarship, and was regarded as invigorating and healthy, not threatening.  The twelfth century maxim, ‘diverse but not adverse’, sums up this attitude.  In positioning their own opinions in the context of other views, scholastics did not rely on reason alone. They also had to show their mastery of past authorities and to demonstrate their ability to winnow out those that were irrelevant, inconsistent, or addressed to outdated conditions, to harvest those that illuminated their subject, and to offer principled reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with their sources. More than receiving and expanding on the classical and biblical traditions, they set aside ideas from those traditions deemed to have outlived their usefulness. 

TRADITIONAL APPROACH TO SCHOLARSHIP

Scholarship is a way of thinking, a way of life, that can function only if scholars have a willingness to conform to canons of scholarship – a non-scholarly value.  Implicit within the scholarly community is a widely-known acceptation of canons in their disciplines, which promotes continuity and the advancement of learning.  Scholarship, in other words, constitutes a tradition.  As I have covered elsewhere in my earlier blog posts (See especially What is Tradition?), traditions are not frozen hand-me-downs to be rotely learned.  Inquiries may affirm traditions; disaffirm them; or call into question doubt and uncertainty, requiring resolution. 

Contrary to the popular imagination, progress in scholarship does not obtain from maintaining an open mind, devoid of earlier scholarship.  Rationality in scholarship, and pretty-much any other human endeavor, is achieved only from a point of view.  All points of view spring from some tradition.  Reason, outside a tradition, is a form of insanity. It is reason used without root, reason in the void. Reason is itself a matter of faith. In catholic tradition, the French Enlightenment was a heresy; not because of its appeal to Reason per se; rather it was an act of faith in reason that admitted no criticism.  Deists and materialists of their time shared the belief in the transcendence of Reason, and the inevitability of intellectual and moral progress.  The problem with this train of thought was that there was nothing in their premises to warrant such assumptions.  To compare medieval scholars to the illuminati of the Enlightenment would be to describe the Middle Ages as an age of faith based upon reason, while the eighteenth century was an age of reason based on faith.

Every tradition in the advancement of scholarship begins from a time when authorities, beliefs, and canonical texts have been widely accepted, and not yet under the screen of doubt.  Tradition advances scholarship in a series of steps, as follows: As already mentioned, authorities, beliefs, texts have not yet been put in question.  When inadequacies are discovered, these ‘shortcomings’ need to be identified, in the language of the tradition.  This is a first step towards remedying the problem. Scholars then address the inadequacies to overcome limitations of the existing conceptual framework.  Sacred authorities are not repudiated, but are reinterpreted in light of new evidence, using new methods (‘tools’) for analysis.  This results in new formulations that transform the tradition by “new articulations”.

A Tradition can be viewed as a series of actors ‘gumshoeing’ tradition like an investigator tracking paths and tracing clues.  It starts with Mr. Gumshoe learning as much as he can through absorbing, critiquing, reading and evaluating critically what he has learned.  He assimilates all that was important in the past that might offer clues. After numerous interviews, examining traces of evidence, and chasing down tracks that led nowhere, he encounters a clear and convincing source of information that resolves the problem which falls within, continues, and renews the tradition. 

When an issue is ‘unresolved’, later on it becomes possible to explain why the disagreement occurred, and why, at that time, the resources to resolve it were unavailable.  Later stages may not resolve the matter, but may provide a theory of error and falsity to account for the inadequacies at the earlier time.  Progress in rationality is achieved only from a point of view. Through ‘more’ comprehension, scholars advanced rationality by elaborating objections or criticisms which identify incoherences, omissions, explanatory failures; and then attempt to restate the position which overcomes these objections.

CONTINUITY OF THE SCHOLARLY TRADITION

Tradition, as I used the term for the purpose of relating it to the canons of scholarship, consists of daring, self-discipline, loyalty, self-control – the virtues that are sine qua non necessary to be possessed by the scholar.  Tradition, in the sense of moralism or moral philosophy, is not the essence of scholarship that I wished to elaborate in this essay.  Morality, as traditionally understood by praxis, is merely concerned with social conventions and propriety. 

Tradition is continuity of inspiration and spirit through the generations, dynamic and metahistorical, immanent and eternal, but also actual – not a nostalgic love for the distant past.  If continuity, or what had been custom, is breached or broken, only then is it valuable to look to other eras, cultures, or societies for deriving inspiration.  But to “appropriate” from other traditions, requires assimilation of at least one scholarly tradition – preferably your own – before you can criticize and alter another’s way of conducting inquiry.  

By attempting to rationalize without assimilation of at least one tradition of ideas, it is a failure to understand and therefore is considered unscholarly.  Without a starting point of comprehending the whole of one’s own tradition, scholarly studies in the history of ideas, across cultures and non-situatedness in place and time, becomes a hash of incoherent bricolage.  To assume the posture of an “objective”, uncommitted outsider, without a sympathetic understanding of the tradition on its own terms, and without allegiance or loyalty to a particular tradition, is scholarly failure, in which all conceptions of truth are discredited. 

What is found today in the rush to publish is an accretion of pointless research into questions of detail.  It is analogous to revisionist history, in getting people to focus on trivialities and non-issues, at the expense of clear thinking which comes by going back to earlier history and interpretations, to find meaning in words that ‘evolve’ over time, before the massive layering of illusory truths upon the past.  This is not enlightenment – the minds use and misuse of ideas and methods that make sense in one tradition and not in another.  Also, focusing on minor, short periods in the history of a civilization, i.e., dadaism, misses the sweep of the history (of art) of a civilization.  As a result of predominant materialism and the mirage of progress, the traditional scholar must necessarily see today’s Ragnarök world of chaos, strife, and social decadence as part of a secret occult war to remove the support of spiritual and traditional values in order to turn man into a passive instrument of the powerful.  Scholarship, if anything, needs to return to its founding precepts of the university as a community of scholars and masters, fired by learning, that tolerates diversity, rather than adversity, in the competitive country of the mind.  Then, as now, the university ought to have, as its main business, the training of scholars and the maintenance of the tradition of learning and investigation, that comes from dedicating one’s life to serve God, to a sacred and specific purpose, and solemnly to a worthy goal – that is, to the consecration of learning.