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ULRICH OF STRASSBURG (ca. 1220–1277). Ulrich is well known as a student and close friend of Albert the Great, under whom he studied in Cologne from 1248–1252. His best known work is his Summa de summo bono [Summa on the Highest Good], which does not limit itself to a study of the Highest Good, but also considers all that comes forth and returns to the Highest Good (God). The work is more adequately described by its adjusted title, Summa de bono [Summa on the Good]. Ulrich spares Aristotle rejection by treating him as a natural philosopher, not a metaphysician. On the question of the eternity of the world, he interprets the Philosopher as a person who does not raise the question of creation or answer it. Aristotle, according to him, simply assumes the existence of the world and dedicates himself to explaining its nature and laws, not its origin. His principal sources are Neoplatonic, as is evident from his extensive use of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite’s On the Divine Names for the earlier parts of his Summa.

UNIVERSALS. Since Plato and Aristotle, the biggest philosophical influences on medieval thought, described the objects of science as universal, necessary, and eternal, then scientific studies like philosophy and theology must have as their objects of study something universal, necessary, and eternal, if they are going to be sciences. Plato argued that the objects of sense are particular, contingent, and temporal. To have science, then, we must have, or must have had, some contact with the world of pure forms that are universal, necessary, and eternal. Aristotle rejected any knowledge of pure forms (as understood by Plato), and argued that we can still have science of particular, contingent, and temporal things because these objects have in them dimensions of universality, necessity, and eternity. An individual man like Socrates is particular, contingent, and temporal, but for him to be a man he must have certain characteristics that make him to be a man. These essential characteristics are universally, necessarily, and eternally found in every man as long as he is a man. In short, there is in each particular a universal dimension that makes it to be the kind of thing it is. It has to always have such essential traits if it is to be not just an individual but to be an individual of a particular type or class.

Medieval thinkers will consider these Platonic and Aristotelian answers to the question “How is science possible?” and develop their own ways of nuancing a solution. In general, throughout the medieval period, people follow one or the other solution to the problem of universals. Some might say that universality is found only in the words or names we use, since we do use class names, such as man, animal, lion. These will be called nominalists. Others say that not only are our written or spoken words for classes of things universal, but that we also have interior words or concepts that are universal. These are conceptualists, and in their case, our written or spoken class names correspond to our universal concepts. We do not just simply make up classes; we think in terms of classes of things. Another group of philosophers goes even further. This group says that we think universally because the objects we think about are, independently of our thinking of them, universal. These will be called realists, since they believe universals are real. These are three classical explanations for universals, but they will be understood and presented with different nuances. See also BURLEY, WALTER (ca. 1274–1344); WILLIAM OF OCKHAM (ca. 1285–1347).

UNIVERSITIES. In the Middle Ages, the Latin term universitas, which at first simply meant humanity (Cicero), and later on a body or society of individuals, acquired its academic significance when it first designated a unified body of masters and students. This was in 1221 in documents referring to the young University of Paris. Studium or studium generale was another common designation for university. Universities emerged as a third power, representing “wisdom,” which was granted rights and privileges (and sought out for support) by the other two powers, the empire and the papacy. The guild model of urban organization, an established tradition of scholarship at (canonical and cathedral) schools, and the translation of classical texts (in, e.g., liberal arts and Roman law) all prepared the ground for the development of European universities, which were originally grounded in Catholic doctrine. Some universities became organized into colleges; originally, before becoming relatively autonomous centers of teaching and learning within universities, colleges were simply endowed institutions providing room and board for students.

The inauguration of the first universities (such as Paris, Bologna, Oxford, and Orléans) generally meant the formalization of school traditions that already existed in the 12th century, and so it is difficult to determine their exact time of origin; Cambridge (1209) and Padua (1222) were among the first to be created strictly as universities. Paris, a model for other universities, consisted of four faculties: arts, law, medicine, and theology. The Arts Faculty, focusing mainly on Aristotelian philosophy, was originally a preparatory faculty for higher studies in the other three faculties (although its preparatory status changed when Averroists decided to remain in this faculty, pursuing philosophy for its own sake). The Theology Faculty held the highest authority. Drawing from the philosophical tradition in its efforts to synthesize reason and revelation, it focused on Holy Scripture, texts from the Church Fathers and standard textbooks (especially Peter Lombard’s Sentences). Across Europe at the time theology faculties attracted the greatest intellectual talent.

Teaching and learning was based on the critical study of these traditional texts embodying secular and Christian wisdom. A logical or dialectical method, emphasizing clear definitions, distinctions, and inferences, was rigorously applied. Questions arising from the curriculum were posed and systematically handled; the question became the commonest mode of intellectual activity. Disputed questions (quaestiones disputatae), posed and developed by masters in class discussion with students, and “quodlibetal” questions (questions from the audience on whatsoever: quaestiones de quolibet), publicly handled by masters at fixed times during the academic year, were not only central to academic life but also the basis, after revisions and at the discretion of the master, of publications. The resolution of a question usually followed upon analysis of relevant contemporary and traditional arguments. Quaestiones disputatae (called “reports” or reportationes when a listener wrote them for the master), quaestiones quodlibetales, and other works based on questions, were standard works by medieval masters. Another genre (less common due to its monumental nature) was the theological summae (summations or summaries), long systematic expositions of an author’s doctrines (also usually arranged by questions), such as Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae and Henry of Ghent’s Summa quaestionum ordinariarum. The commentary on an authority (such as biblical texts, Aristotle, or Lombard), often very detailed treatments, was another important mode of scholarly writing; its classroom counterpart was the lecture, an explanatory reading by the master. Finally, treatises of various kinds were produced. At the Parisian theology faculty, some of the greatest minds of medieval Europe (not just France) taught and studied, such as Albert the Great, Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus. This method of teaching, learning, and writing associated with medieval universities is often referred to as the Scholastic method, and the philosophical and theological doctrines it produced as Scholastic philosophy and Scholastic theology respectively; Scholasticism refers to the whole.

The duties of a master of theology at the university included other offices besides those of lecturing. One of these principal duties was to preach. Among the more famous university sermons were, for example, the series of sermons delivered in Lent. Noteworthy instances of such serial sermons are the conferences delivered by St. Bonaventure during the crisis times of the late 1260s: Conferences on the Six Days of Creation, Conferences on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, and Conferences on the Ten Commandments. However, among the works of St. Bonaventure are found many other sermons on the different feasts and the temporal cycle of the Church year. Many theologians of the Middle Ages, like Bonaventure, have left long lists of sermons; some of them, such as inaugural sermons, connected with their classroom duties, while others related to their duties as priests.

Among the various centers, schools, sponsors, and traditions of learning in the medieval Byzantine, Islamic, and Jewish worlds, there is no precise analogue to the university, a medieval inheritance still providing the resources for much of intellectual life around the world.