Great Minds of the Medieval World

In this course, we’ll
meet some of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages, beginning with Saint
Augustine, the North African Christian bishop whose life story and philosophical
writings arguably laid the foundation and limned the outlines of most of the
major developments in philosophical and religious thinking for centuries to
come. We’ll meet Augustine’s “heirs”— such writers as Boethius, Isidore of
Seville, and Pope Gregory the Great. We will learn how the military minds of
such figures as Charlemagne and Alfred the Great were influenced by the
religious sphere and vice versa. The great cross-fertilization of medieval
thinking will get considerable attention as we examine the careers and thinking
of Islamic scholars, including Avicenna, Averroes, and Alhacen, whose work and
innovations in the fields of medicine and science would profoundly affect the
shape of the medieval world. Great Jewish scholars, such as Rashi and
Maimonides, are engaged against the backdrop of a growing university system; in
the 12th century, universities in Paris, Bologna, Oxford, and elsewhere were
reengaging with works from classical antiquity and seeking answers to old
questions in new places.