03: The City Takes Shape: Schools

Basic government structures

borse

 restricted by 1328 to guild members (21 guilds) and Guelfs—ca 5-6k  

selection by lot (borse)

      Scrutiny (squittinio)

  Signoria: 9 priors, 2 month terms

  College of the Priors (advisors)

       12 buonuomini. 3-month term

       16 gonfalonieri  4-month term

       

  Ca 15 magistracies  

   Special executive commission: balia  

   2 legislative assemblies

 Judicial

Italian Schools (Focus on Florence)

First expansion: 11th-century Church reforms

  • Moral clerics. Particular issues: simony celibacy
  • Monastic, Cathedral Schools
  • Latin Clerical Liberal arts
  • Trivium: grammar dialectic (logic) rhetoric
  • Quadrivium: arithmetic geometry music astronomy
  • Northern Europe: remained dominant form of education

 

Seven Liberal Arts

 

BL Royal 6 E IX  f. 29 

Origin: Italy, Central (Tuscany, perhaps Prato) , ca 1335-40
Attribution: Pacino di Buonaguida

Seven liberal arts: Astronomy, Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, Rhetoric, Logic, Grammar.

 

 

 

 

 

computus: church calendar, Easter holidays

 

 

computus

 

 Computus and hand calculation. ca 1100, British Library

Italian schools and their development

  • Antiquity: lay education
  • Investiture Controversy: derails northern-style rise of cathedral schools
  • Urban: business education lay 13th c education
    • city funding of teachers
    • fully private schools
    • private education in home

Typical features

  • Teachers: Notaries
  • curriculum Vernacular
  • Practical — from business point of view
  • Ex: Abbacus schools
    • reading, math skills for business
    • Accounting
    • Story problems
    • Arabic numbers
  • Grammar schools: Latin education for elites

Benedetto da Firenze, Trattato d’arismetrica, ca. 1460.

Chain calculcation for figuring currency exchange rates

 arith

Arte dell’Abbaco. Treviso: Gerardus de Lisa de Flandria or Michele Manzolo, 1478. Columbia University Libraries.

vernacular literacy

  • modern authors and translations of ancient ones
  • ricordanze books
  • Ex: Florence: Giovanni Villani, 1338 population approx. 100-120,000: 8-10,000 children in school 550-600 in grammar schools, ca. 1000 in abacus schools

Universities: north and south

Bologna: Florentines studied especially here (even after FI has its own university)

Civil Law:

Canon Law:

  • Gratian: Concordance of Discordant Canons (Decretum) probably ca. 1145
Gratian Decretum Gratiani with commentary by B da Brescia (d. 1258). s. XIII.Madrid, Fundacion L. Galdiano. ms. 15462

Gratian with commentary by Bartolomeo da Brescia, 14th c, now in Lyon

  • Guild model
  • Papal charter
  • Paris: international center for theology (so some Florentines studied here)
  • cathedral school
  • guild
  • Cathedral chancellor: right to grant teachers’ licenses
  • study of theology: papal attention. 1231: Gregory IX grants charter

Students        nations       “university”  

studium generale

Curriculum and organization of subjects

Four faculties: arts, law, medicine, theology

Arts course: main fields

New subjects, new texts

  • recovery of ancient sources
  • Greek and its loss in Latin west
  • Main source of texts: Islamic world
  • scientific subjects especially medicine, astronomy; logic
  • Translations: Salerno, Sicily, Spain, S. France

Main field: logic Aristotle (his books formed a general curriculum)

North: theology as star faculty

South: Law, medicine

instruction

  • Lectures: ordinary and extraordinary
  • debates (disputationes)
class
Henry of Germany lecture to university students in Bologna.
Artist: Laurentius de Voltolina; Liber ethicorum des Henricus de Alemannia; Kupferstichkabinett SMPK, Berlin/Staatliche Museen
Preussiischer Kulturbesitz, Min. 1233

gloss or commentary

scriptoria 

Signs of success:

  • church leadership roles
  • Secular leaders promote universities

signs of controversy

  •  monastic criticism: secular, urban, religious thought subject to logical analysis
  •  use of non-Christian authors
  •  claims to interpretive authority

Florence 1348/9-1473                            Paul Gehl, Humanism for Sale

l
Cristoforo Landino at the University of Florence

 

Aristotle, Ethics, trans. Moerbeke

Aristotle