On the Eve of the Reformation

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On the Eve of the Reformation
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The basic realities

• Lack of security of persons and of property
  Chauvigny Carcassone
• Despite the apparently unified nature of western
  Europe in respect to Christianity, the continent
  was deeply divided politically. 1360 1600

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Population and Economy

• Population
• Economy
• Overwhelmingly agricultural and villages
• Feudal no sense of public property private
  armies secured by personal oaths of allegiance
• Church ownership significant amounts of land

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Higher Culture

• Universities. Yes, primarily for the study of
  theology, philosophy, law, medicine --all
  directed at the support and/or service of
  ecclesiastical and civil authorities.
• Lecture room sample

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Aristotle

• Why was he important? And why was his vision of
  the material world so dominant?
• Offered a comprehensive cosmology that was
  consistent with the intuitive
• Perspective was consistent with Church dogma

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Methodology

• basic
• define the issue,
• review the generally accepted views about the
  subject (thanks to this element we know something
  about atomism and other "deviant" schemes),
• present own arguments and conclusions
• the dialectic arguing from first principles (and
  these might be wrong! movement of planets must be
  circular) and empiricism

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Significance

• The important point here is that the re-discovery
  of Aristotle (and of Greek science in general) in
  the 12th Century was a powerful stimulus to
  intellectual development all across Europe. The
  most important aspect of this problem was simply
  the translation from Greek and Arabic of all of
  the Greek texts on science, culture and law.
• The major consequence was Aristotle gained the
  status of a virtual saint in the Church. To
  dispute Aristotle (something the ancients had
  done) came to be construed as "heresy".