A Escola de Chartres

Chartres, School of

In the first half of the twelfth century, the most advanced work in teaching and discussion of logic, philosophy and theology took place in the schools attached to the great cathedrals. Chartres was undoubtedly one of the more important of these schools, and Gilbert of Poitiers and Thierry of Chartres were certainly connected with it. To some historians, Chartres was the great intellectual centre of the period, and the greatest achievement of early twelfth-century thought was a brand of Platonism distinctive of this school. However, this view has been challenged by scholars who stress the pre-eminence of Paris, where the schools emphasized logic.

1 Who taught at Chartres?

When Clerval (1895) first claimed the particular importance of early twelfth-century Chartres as an intellectual centre, he believed that he could point to four outstanding figures who had been schoolmasters there. First, there was Bernard, described as teaching at Chartres in John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon (see John of Salisbury); Clerval identified him with Bernard Silvestris (Bernard of Tours), author of the Cosmographia, a prosimetrum recounting the creation of the world and of man in terms closely reminiscent of Plato’s Timaeus. Second was the polymath Thierry of Chartres and third was Gilbert of Poitiers, one of the leading theologians of the mid-twelfth century. Finally, most scholars of Clerval’s time believed that William of Conches, the grammarian and commentator on Platonic texts, was also a teacher at Chartres, although more recent research has cast doubt on various aspects of this claim.

The Bernard described in the Metalogicon – who was probably born circa 1060, and is mentioned in charters as master of the school at Chartres between 1114 and 1119 and as Chancellor between 1119 and 1124 – is no longer identified with Bernard Silvestris, who taught at Tours in the mid-twelfth century and whose only link with Chartres was his friendship with Thierry. The Chartrian Bernard was a grammarian, interested in Priscian and the theory of grammar as well as in expounding classical Latin tests. Although a commentary on Plato’s Timaeus has been attributed to him with some plausibility, he was not, like the author of the Cosmographia, one of the great writers of the time.

The distinction between Bernard of Chartres and Bernard Silvestris is now accepted by all historians. The relation of other leading teachers to Chartres remains controversial: Sir Richard Southern (1970) has been the leading sceptic, while Edouard Jeauneau (1973), Peter Dronke (1969) and Nikolaus Häring (1974) have argued for the importance of Chartres. No one queries that Thierry (‘the Breton’ or ‘of Chartres’) was linked with Chartres, where he became Chancellor in about 1142. However, it is questionable how much teaching he did there; he is also known to have taught John of Salisbury on the Mont Sainte Geneviève in Paris in 1136–8. Where was his teaching predominantly based? A similar question applies to Gilbert of Poitiers, who was a canon of Chartres in 1124 and chancellor there from 1126 to 1137. Gilbert certainly taught in Paris, and one student mentions attending his lectures both at Paris among an audience of three hundred, and at Chartres in an audience of only four. Does this mean that Chartres was a scholastic backwater, or rather (as Dronke has argued) that Gilbert reserved his most advanced teaching for Chartres?

The connection of William of Conches with Chartres is even more problematic. He very probably studied at Chartres under Bernard and is regarded by John of Salisbury as a continuer of Bernard’s approach. Jeauneau has found a few remarks in his work which might hint that he was himself teaching at Chartres, and an unclear and much discussed passage in John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon (II.10) can be argued to support this surmise. However, this hardly constitutes solid evidence for placing him at Chartres, and there is much to recommend Southern’s final view, that William taught neither at Paris nor at Chartres. In sum, Chartres may well have been a more important scholastic centre in the first half of the twelfth century than Southern allows, but there is no denying the pre-eminence of Paris in almost all branches of learning from about 1110 onwards.

2 ‘Chartrian Platonism’

The dispute about the school of Chartres has gone beyond the merely factual questions of who taught where, to become a debate about the very nature of twelfth-century thought. Many modern supporters of the school of Chartres hold that, in Dronke’s words, it stands for ‘what is freshest in thought, richest and most adventurous in learning, in northern Europe, in the earlier twelfth century’ (Dronke 1969: 117), and some have suggested that ‘Chartres’ should be understood less as the name of a place where certain masters taught and more as the label for a distinctive brand of Platonism which was followed by masters such as Thierry, William of Conches, Gilbert of Poitiers and Bernard Silvestris.

Southern disputes this. In his first attack on the idea of a school of Chartres, he wrote of Bernard (of Chartres), Thierry and William of Conches that ‘all their thoughts were old thoughts’ (Southern 1970: 83). More recently, he has refined his criticisms. The Platonism of the masters who are described as ‘Chartrian’ was, he suggests, a very scholastic Platonism. It did not involve adopting, knowingly or instinctively, Plato’s underlying positions or attitudes, nor some special ‘poetic Platonism’, but centred rather on the close scrutiny of the one work of Plato’s they know, the Timaeus in Calcidius’ partial translation. The ‘Chartrian’ scholars, he says (Southern 1979: 10), regarded Plato as an authority on ‘the primitive organization of the elements of the universe’ and used him not to reach a ‘philosophical Platonism’ but as ‘a contribution to the vast jig-saw puzzle of universal knowledge about the origin of the world’. Such an authority was important as a doorway, but was quickly left behind when more scientific knowledge became available, especially from Arab sources. The ‘Chartrian’ scholars are better understood, he urges, ‘by being freed from the school of Chartres and placed in the wider setting of a common scholastic enterprise’ (Southern 1979: 40).

Powerful though it is, Southern’s argument has some serious weaknesses. It overlooks the close link, in the work of Bernard of Chartres, William of Conches and Bernard Silvestris, between the study of grammar (which included both the interpretation of classical texts and the theory of grammar, based on Priscian) and what we would now call science. The breaking of this link in the course of the twelfth century should not be seen straightforwardly as scientific progress, but as a fundamental shift in assumptions and methods. Moreover, Southern fails to bring out an important peculiarity shared by at least three of these masters. Unlike most of the leading teachers of their time, Bernard of Chartres, William of Conches and Bernard Silvestris apparently remained arts masters and did not venture into sacred doctrine at all. Further, none of them seems to have been very interested in logic, the area to which (apart from theology) most twelfth-century masters gave the greatest attention (see Logic, medieval). Thierry fits this pattern only partly, since he did write about the Trinity and the creation and seems to have been interested in logic. Gilbert of Poitiers fits it not at all, conforming rather to the more usual twelfth-century mould of the logician who goes on to write theology. Perhaps what the enthusiasts for the school of Chartres have hit upon, half unconsciously, is a group of twelfth-century masters (working in various centres) who rejected the pattern and priorities of intellectual life which were becoming the norm and who, in their lifelong dedication to the arts as opposed to theology, might be seen as forerunners of late thirteenth-century arts masters such as Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia.