The Unity of Truth and the Origin of the Christian University in the Middle Ages

By Rick Plasterer, Institute on Religion and Democracy, 

Christians are familiar with a long struggle to reconcile faith and reason, which really stretches back centuries. But many generations ago, when Christian higher education originated in the Middle Ages, it was thought possible that they could be part of a single system.

John Hodges, conductor, composer, writer, and founder and director of the Center for Western Studies discussed the origin and development of the medieval university, and with it the origin of Christian higher education, at the annual L’Abri Conference in Rochester, Minnesota in February. His comments are worth considering as postmodernism has dismantled the rationalist hope of pursuing truth by reason alone.

Hodges said Christians must “create culture. We can’t just stand by and criticize what other people make.”  He referred to the maxim that “your education begins when you become a believer.” But in our world, new directions in culture come from the secular academic world. He said God repeatedly told his people in the Old Testament to “remember.” We must then remember the origins of Christian higher education, which are in the medieval university. We stand on the shoulders of Christians “who have gone before us.”

Hodges discussed the rise of the medieval university in four stages. These are the Greek background of education inherited by the first universities, followed by the monasteries and cathedral schools of the early Middle Ages, the universities of the High Middle Ages, and the close of the Middle Ages.

The Greek Educational Background

The Greeks believed that there were two kinds of education. These were education for free men and education for slaves. Education for the free was called “liberal education,” education for the slave was vocational education, or “servile education.” This vocational education was not necessarily elementary or rote. It could involve shipbuilding, household accounting, or other complex tasks. But it was education for a particular task. Liberal education, by contrast, was aimed at learning to think. The meaning and value of life were in view, and the conduct of politics. “Liberal arts” are to be understood as tasks that involve skills. Astronomy, for instance, was understood as an art. Included in astronomy was belief in the “nine muses.” These were goddesses who ruled the arts. Terpsicore was held to be the goddess of dance, Calliope of epic poetry, Clio of history, etc. These goddesses were believed to ‘sing the inspiration for works of art.” In fact, he said that the original meaning of “music” was “that which is inspired by the muses.” Similarly, “museum” comes. from the same meaning.

The muses’ parents were believed to be Zeus, the king of the gods from whom power was believed to come, and Demosthenes, the goddess of memory. The Greeks thus believed that to be inspired, you have to have memory of the past. The Greeks were also strong dualists, believing human nature to consist of body and soul. Education thus included gymnastics (for the body), and music (for the soul). Divine and human, unity and diversity, community and the individual, universal and particular, reason and revelation, slave and free, etc. were all dualisms in Greek thought, “and none of them was completely resolved.” But in the medieval period, they were resolved, Hodges said.

The Seven Arts

The seven arts inspired by the muses were held to be grammar, logic and rhetoric (the trivium), and music, arithmetic, astronomy, and geometry (the quadrivium). He cited Stratford Caldicott, and his book “Beauty for Truth’s Sake” to say that Greek dualism has introduced a “profound malaise” in our civilization. Such dualisms as art and science, faith and reason, nature and supernature, etc., have a “common root,” and result, Caldicott believed, from “a failure to understand the full scope of human reason in its true grandeur.” Hodges proposed to show “the systematic scope of reason that was held in the Middle Ages.”

“The order of the soul, and the ability to think well is summed up in the trivium,” Hodges said, whereas the quadrivium deals with numbers, and is needed to describe the universe, an idea going back to Pythagoras. With music, the different notes in harmony are in definite ratios to one another, and this “sounds good to your ear.” In a surprising reported discovery by Pythagoras, it was found that striking anvils of different sizes, in definite ratios to one another, produced a desirable sound. Thus, the pleasing sound of harmony is due to “the nature of vibrations in the world.” And so harmony has an objective basis in the world. It is not “just something I happen to like with my ears.”

Plato held that harmony could apply to the soul. He argued that harmonies should be taught to young people before they are introduced to methods of arguing. People’s hearts should be formed by the beauty of harmony before they engage in thought. People will then seek harmony in what they encounter in life. The harmony of the polis, or city, is the result of people who are harmonious in the souls. This means, Hodges said, that “justice is the highest form of harmony.”

Rewards and punishments given by the city were held to be part of the harmony of justice. Plato also held that “to be is to be intelligible.” This means that all that exists can be understood in rational terms. The supreme reality, which Plato held to be completely intelligible, he called “the god.” It was held to be the “organizing principle in the world.” This divine reality is “the Logos,” a concept later used by the apostle John. The Greeks could easily accept the idea of a divine logos, but not that it became incarnate in a human being. Hodges believes that this is why the apostle Paul said that “the gospel is foolishness to the Greeks.”

For both the Greeks and the medieval Christians, the point of education was to study both the Word and number “to get at the truth about God.” For the Greeks, this ultimate reality was impersonal, a principle that holds all things together. Aristotle however, while agreeing that there was a divine reality behind the world, thought that the purpose of education was to understand the world in terms of a natural law. Music, Hodges said, is a “crossover art,” because it deals both with number, as noted above, but also concerns reason and the soul.

At the time of Plato, rhetoricians held “truth” to be “a relative term.” They took pride in making compelling sounding arguments for opposite claims. But Plato held that rhetoric should concern itself with “learning the truth about things.” By taking the system of numbers known at the time and applying it to rhetoric, Plato developed dialectics. Plato “started making rules” for rhetoric, thus developing logic. These rules showed that there are “formal and informal fallacies.” Aristotle further developed these logical rules.

Grammar was then held to result from dialectic. The use and meaning of words were examined, and correct use identified. Dialectic then puts grammar in proper form to reach the truth. Aristotle wrote “The Topics,” which included eight sections on proper argument. He also identified the four causes (material, formal, efficient, and final, or the matter involved in an event, the structure of the event, the action precipitating the event, and the purpose of the event).

In the early medieval world, Augustine organized and understood Plato “through the lens of a Christian worldview.” The popularity of Plato in the Greco-Roman world caused a need for this. He also developed the idea of the “Ordo Amoris” (or rightly ordered loves). Plato already recognized the importance of rightly ordered loves, but Augustine held that it is the Christian revelation that enables us to identify them. This then is “the criteria for ordering your heart.” Education, from a Christian perspective, is not primarily for “communicating facts.” Rather it is “to teach you to love that which is worth loving.” It is “to order your sensibilities.” Facts are necessary, but the true purpose of education is to learn God’s purposes for life and to overcome sinful desires. “The Fall affects us in our preferences just like anything else,” Hodges said. We must “know God and apply his truth in our hearts to life,” This is what medieval education aimed at.

Next, Hodges discussed a contemporary of Augustine, Martianus Capella, and his book “On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury.” Here Mercury represents reason, and philology represents words. It endeavors to explain how reason correctly connects with words. In it, the seven liberal arts give speeches. Capella’s work was a textbook for learning in monasteries and the cathedral schools that developed in the late eighth century. These schools trained young people in the Middle Ages. Capella’s work served as a textbook for six centuries, well into the High Middle Ages.

Hodges then discussed the importance of the medieval scholar Gerbert of Aurillac, who lived in the late tenth century and on into the eleventh, and briefly reigned as Pope Sylvester II. He brought ancient learning into the medieval world through his contact with Spanish Muslims. In particular, he advanced the work of the philosopher Avicenna. He secured translations of Aristotle’s works from Arabic into Latin, thus introducing Aristotle to medieval Europe. He also introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals to the West. Gerbert’s students became headmasters of many cathedral schools in northern France.

Cathedrals Give Birth to Universities

In connection with medieval learning, Hodges then presented a picture of an entrance to Chartres Cathedral. A sculpture of Christ at his birth is there, together with his mother, surrounded by angels worshipping him. Near them are sculptors of seven muses. These include “the lady music” (together with Pythagoras’ monochord which he used to find harmonies, and a sculpture of Pythagoras himself). Next there is the lady logic holding the light of truth, along with a sculpture of the philosopher Aristotle. The lady grammar holds a book in her hand, together with switches, which symbolize discipline. A sculpture of the Roman grammarian Donatus accompanies her statue. The lady astronomy looks up, and below her is the astronomer Ptolemy. The cathedral has sculptures of seven muses near its door, and a man underneath each who exemplified that art in the visible world.

Thus, the sculptures at the cathedral show Christ at the center, together with his mother, surrounded by angels worshipping him, and around them the seven muses, in his service. The medieval mind saw no contradiction between Christian faith and education, which expanded a system of knowledge based on Christ as revealed in Scripture. Classical learning was being absorbed “into the mindset of the Christian world.”

The cathedral schools taught the Greek trivium and quadrivium from the early Middle Ages. When Aristotle’s thought was introduced at the beginning of the High Middle Ages, medieval thinkers had to make sense of it in Christian terms. Hodges said that Thomas Aquinas “did for Aristotle what Augustine did for Plato.” The university, Hodges said, was born out of the cathedral schools of the early Middle Ages. The Chartres cathedral school became the basis of the University of Paris (the Sorbonne), which became the model for Oxford University, which was then the model for Cambridge University. It was Puritan students from Cambridge who later founded Harvard College in 1636.

Hodges said that the quadrivium and trivium “match perfectly the desire to understand God, because God reveals himself in two different ways …  special revelation [the Bible] … [and] general revelation [nature].” In the trivium is the way to understand words, and ultimately the written Word of God. The natural world is understood by number. Through mathematics, and the application of mathematics to the world, we can see the hand of God working in the world. “

The point of education was to get to know God better.” Based on this, “we would be the people God intended us to be, which glorifies him.”

Hodges found four great accomplishments in the Middle Ages. These include Dante’s Divine Comedy, the gothic cathedral, Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, and the medieval university. Hodges noted a conservation with a Catholic priest from India, who reported that universities there were 150 to 200 years old. They were founded by men who studied at universities in Great Britain. Only recently have specifically Hindu universities opened.

The Importance of Keeping God at the Center

Hodges then mentioned Hugh of St. Victor, a twelfth century scholar. He developed the seven liberal arts in his book “Didascalicon.” He warned against the separation of sacred and secular learning. That is, the trivium and quadrivium must not be made independent of Christian theology. Their purpose is to glorify God. Such a division would mean that they would no longer glorify God, but also would result in the loss of a reason to pursue secular learning. As noted in a previous article, it would also result in a loss of the unity of truth. This loss of purpose in education is, Hodges said, “exactly what we see today.” The removal of theology from education, Hodges said, is not a new idea. It is, in fact, centuries old. The church, Hodges said, has not been able to defend the claim that “the truth is not a set of facts, the truth is a person.” The incarnation, Hodges said, is unique to Christianity. It is also “an answer to the question ‘can’t we be good without God?’ … it’s like saying ‘can I breathe without air.’” He said that “learning the truth is an exercise in theology, it’s not just an exercise in intellectual pursuit.”

This separation of theology and secular learning began in earnest with William of Ockham, in the fourteenth century, whose doctrine of nominalism separated general words from general meanings, making general words stand only for the individual things they apply to. This was the beginning of “the new modern world.”

And so in answer to the claim that God is an unnecessary addition to learning, the modern world shows that falling away from God leads to a loss of the unity of truth, and a loss of purpose in any area of academic enquiry. Today, we face a universe and a human world that in many of its features would have been inconceivable to people in past centuries, and certainly in the Middle Ages. Yet God and his revelation gives a unity to knowledge and to life, and the beauty of that unity we see in the works of the Middle Ages, in the many holy lives lived in the centuries since, and in the promise of the consummation of history, in which Christ will be victorious, and beauty will reach perfection.