Nurit Golan, PhD., The Cohn Institute for the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University: Why is Lady Grammar Holding a Birch Rod? Medieval Art as an Indication of Intellectual Changes
A discerning historian may find that art, especially monumental art, offers an additional perspective by which to improve one’s understanding of the undercurrents of intellectual and political changes in medieval society.The abundance of artworks depicting the Seven Liberal Arts, especially Lady Grammar as a teacher holding a rod, starting in the 12th century and reaching a peak in the 15th century, suggests that the development of literacy and education during that period of time was considered of great importance and was lauded. The expansion of literacy in medieval society is explained by the development of the cities, in which different kinds of schools were established, and by the invention of printing. This led to the development of new centers of influence, altered the power system in medieval society, and encouraged the secularization of knowledge. Visual material provides an indication of the ways in which the transfer of knowledge took place and of the rising power of the newly literate. In the 15th century Mary, Mother of the Word, appears as a teacher, leading the young Jesus to school, sometimes holding a birch rod in her hand.The birch rod attests not only to the use of corporal punishment during the first years of language studies (Latin), but also strongly symbolizes the Church’s understanding of the importance of education and its striving to control it, securing thereby its political and intellectual dominance. The rod constituted a symbol of the Church’s protection of its dogma, with the grammar teacher as its executor. Various works of art might suggest a pedagogical change. It seems that the previous brutal approach that had advocated corporal punishment was under challenge, and that alternative ways by which to educate were beginning to arise. Many Books of Hours present illustrations of women teaching children, boys and girls, to read –– but now in an aura of intimacy and joy in learning.
Conclusion: The depictions of Lady Grammar with the rod in her hand from the 12th century to the 15th, attest to the understanding of the intricate and important role of reading and writing being the gate to culture. The rod signifies how the Church used education to exercise its power, understanding the threat of unsupervised knowledge which could lead, as indeed it did, to secularization. After the 15th century acquiring the ability to read and write was expanded, books began to be sold at markets and were no longer as rare and expensive as before. Changes in the depictions of teaching can also be noticed.
Will Mahan, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff: Mocking the University and the Educated: Comic Lessons in German Medieval Schwankmaeren and Anecdotal Tales
Medieval scholars are familiar with the literary convention of mocking religious institutions, often a theme in such collections as Bocaccio’s Decameron. Such comic tales from German medieval tales include the particularly erotic monk’s ordeal (Des Mönches) or ‘the priest with the cord’ (Der Pfaffe mit dem Schnur). The irony of religious corruption is both comical and promising for didactical ethical and moral considerations, hence a popular motif especially when paired with the erotic. Yet a number of stories crucially, and similarly, make the same point of mocking the medieval university or the conventions of education – making fools of the educated while also making a moral lesson available to an audience. Much like in Der Pfaffe Amis by Der Stricker, when Amis is challenged by a bishop to teach a donkey to read, Till Eulenspiegel twice plays pranks on medieval professors and becomes involved in a similar dispute. Till’s pranks highlight the fallibility and hubris of professors and the corruption of the institution of higher education.
The Studentenabenteuer (students’ adventure) takes up the archetype of the wandering student and contrasts courtly love with lustful lewdness. The students’ adventure, in which the students never reach their destination of higher education, nonetheless pokes fun at the institution of higher education – much like Till’s pranks. Version A ‘von zwain studenten’ (mid-thirteenth century) tells the more tale of two student friends who set off to travel to Paris. Version B by Rüdeger von Münre (ca. 1300) becomes a warning against the two kobolds (hobgoblins) Irregang (aberration) and Girregar, the constants of Rüdeger’s poem: „dich hat geriten der Mar/ ein elbisches as.“ (Hier ist der Mahr männlichen Schlecht und steht für einen Alptraum.) The warning pertains to male sexuality when it becomes a nightmare. In both versions, the two students are offered lodging in an urban version of what is ultimately a parallel plot to the internationally widespread comic medieval tale known commonly as “the tale of the cradle,” appearing from the late twelfth to early sixteenth centuries – such as within Bocaccio’s Decameron (Day IX, tale 6) and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (‘The Reeve’s tale’). One of the students falls quickly for a maiden he sees in town, and the two proceed to make the girl’s father host them, with the other student tricking the host’s wife into sleeping with him.
Hanz Folz’ story ‘die drei studenten’ (ca. 1480) similarly deals with students – in this case, three, focused on winning the favor of and (unsuccessfully) seducing a landlady. Peter Schmieher’s ‘Student of Prague’ (first half of the fifteenth century) also deals with trickery, deceit and adultery after a student meets a townswoman on the street who does not reveal that she is married. In all these cases, we see students failing to remain focused on the rewards of education, pursuing instead the instant gratifications of sexual pleasure. Tellingly, these tales are comic in their ludicrous sexuality or other forms of lust. This is a feature not only of Schwankmaeren; a majority of Maeren predicate literary entertainment on the erotic which is paired with the didactic. The tales reveal not only what could make medieval audiences laugh and hold their interest, but also how medieval poets wished to instruct their audiences in matters of faith and everyday conduct. Pairing this erotic humor with the theme of students, professors and university education allowed German medieval authors to raise awareness of another form of bureaucratic corruption in their society beyond the more commonly challenged corruption of the church. The authors seem to suggest that students and professors of the medieval university might use their authority for sexual exploitation – becoming in turn a larger political critique of the abuse of power in society.
Emanuele Piazza, Universita di Catania, Italy: INSIGHTS INTO SOME ASPECTS OF CLERICAL EDUCATION IN THE AGE OF CHARLEMAGNE
The central theme of the paper is the great importance attributed to the education of the clergy during the reign of Charlemagne. Particular emphasis is placed on the extensive efforts to reform and strengthen the cultural preparation of members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which served the Frankish ruler and his successors as a crucial instrument of governance. Attention is given to specific measures such as the Admonitio generalis and the Epistola de litteris colendis, which marked the phases of profound reorganisation of educational institutions at the end of the eighth century. The need for an increasingly extensive network of schools and greater care in the transmission of written knowledge, particularly through the accurate compilation of liturgical texts, emerges as a consistent concern of Charlemagne. He was well aware of the importance of culture as a means of governing his vast territories, as sources from Einhard to Notker attest.
Thomas Willard, University of Arizona: Paracelsus as Teacher Inside and Outside the Academic Establishment of His Time
Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493–1541) spent less than one full year as a university professor of medicine, at Basel in 1527–1528 while serving there as City Physician (Stadtartzt). However, he spent nearly forty years preparing master teachings he called Archidoxes for students he considered “our disciples.” He circulated manuscripts among these students and arranged to have the as-yet unpublished texts stored in the residence of a Swiss nobleman whom he had attended as a physician. A key to these teachings, which he planned to assemble in a book on the “Great Astronomy” (Astronomia Magna), was a revolutionary theory of teaching and the teacher-student relationship that resembles that of Socrates and a slave boy in Plato’s Meno – a theory in which each person has the potential to remember the laws of God and Nature, based on the proposition that “truth” (Greek alethea) is etymologically ‘un-forgetting’. Using the further proposition that imagination is a power of the soul greater than reason, because it connects the human mind with the mind of God, Paracelsus developed a teaching based on the “power of imagination” (vis imaginativa). These ideas were later introduced into medical education by Theodor Zwinger, who held the chair in medical theory at the University of Basel, which had expelled both Paracelsus and his first posthumous editor, Adam von Bodenstein. These ideas influenced esoteric writers in the German-speaking world, including Zwinger’s student Johann Arndt and extending from Heinrich Khunrath to Jakob Böhme. Contemporary scholars of Western esotericism such as Antoine Faivre and Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann have treated the Paracelsian imagination as an influence on religious, philosophical, and artistic ideas into the modern era. Meanwhile, psychologists following the lead of C.G. Jung and James Hillman have acknowledged the insights of Paracelsus in their own analyses of individual and social problems.