Professor Martial Staub, University of Sheffield
This paper can be downloaded from: http://www.wun.ac.uk/ideasanduniversities/seminars/2009_programme/staub.html
March 11, 2009 by ideasanduniversities
Professor Martial Staub, University of Sheffield
This paper can be downloaded from: http://www.wun.ac.uk/ideasanduniversities/seminars/2009_programme/staub.html
Dear Martial,
Thank you very much indeed for an extremely stimulating and enjoyable paper.
You placed great stress on intellectuals understanding their own role in society, and you argued that the aim of the men who created the first universities was emancipation, for themselves and for society. Could you say a bit more about the sources that you would use to support this interpretation, and the vocabulary that they used to express this idea? Most of the material that I’ve used to discuss their self-image and purpose has stressed their sense of pastoral mission. Some of this material seeks to encourage fear of damnation or a tough time in purgatory. But some of it sets out a more positive sense of what is licit or even desirable behaviour for various social groups. Is the latter relevant to your argument? Or do you have in mind completely different types of text?
Thank you again for a great paper.
Ian
Dear Ian,
Thank you very much for your kind comment. I am very grateful for the discussion of my paper. Your question provides me with the opportunity to clarify a central claim of my paper, i.e. the masters’ interest in emancipation for society.
This claim runs contrary to the predominant opinion in recent scholarship. In his very last book, to which my colleague Charles West drew my attention, Thomas Bisson has re-emphasised Baldwin’s and Duby’s approach. According to Baldwin (Masters), Duby (Three orders) and Bisson (Crisis), the Parisian masters of the late 12th century aimed, on the one hand, to legitimate the order of society as part of the elite; on the other hand, however, they were keen to enhance their own role within the elite (and within society).
My interpretation is based on Ferruolo’s material (Origins), which happens to overlap to a great extent with Baldwin’s. Yet Ferruolo’s interpretation of the sermons of the scholars, in particular (pp. 184ff.), pays much more attention than Baldwin’s to the audience. Above all, however, Ferruolo painstakenly examines who the addressees of the moral teaching of the scholars were. This is, I guess, the sense of your question.
As hinted at in my paper, exile is an important issue in this context. The sermons reflected on it (think, for instance, of Peter Comestor). Exile, however, was was not a mere reflection on the condition of many scholars. This can be shown if the scholars’ reflection on exile is included in the political discourse of the communes, for instance. Exile, it would then appear was seen as a condition that crossed boundaries of states, classes, etc. I am currently working on this very issue, which has not found the attention it desserves.
I hope that this will help you clarify a central point of my paper.
Martial