The Twelfth Century

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell

Ch. XI The Twelfth Century

Let me start by saying that I find the word, "Twelfth" to be one of the strangest in the English language. It takes a lot of concentration for me to say it without sounding a lot younger than I was on my twelfth birthday.

Four aspects of the 12th century that are especially interesting
1) The continued conflict of empire and papacy
2) The rise of the Lombard cities
3) The Crusades
4) The growth of scholasticism

The papacy continued to grow stronger in the 12th century, generally defeating the emperor and the kings of England and France and also having more strength over bishops, who were on the whole, more virtuous than prior to the reforms of the 11th.

The Italian, Lomabard cities of Northern Italy were able to fight off the Emperor. Their independence allowed the papacy to grow stronger as well as there was a buffer between Rome and the Germans.

The power of the popes was increased by the religious zeal and propaganda of the Crusades.

The first scholastic philosopher was Roscelin, born around 1050. He disappeared around 1120.

Abelard is a more well known scholastic whose writings have survived more in tact than the barely knowable Roscelin.

Abelard's most famous works, "Yes and No" show he loved disputation itself as he gave dialectical arguments for and against a variety of topics. His works being regarded as heretical might have arisen from his love of disputation as he was generally hostile to a lot of other thinkers. His lapses into actual heretical doctrine were fixed in his lifetime.

In addition to the rise of scholasticism there was a rise in mystical expressions as evident by the rise of Bernard of Clairvaux.

"The whole of early scholasticism may be viewed, politically, as an offshoot of the Church's struggle for power" (Russell, 441). The earliest scholastics were primarily French, which the papacy used as a counterbalance to the power of the Emperor.